The Virtual Retreat (Day 4): Liturgies of Creation
Rituals, routines, personal liturgies—we all have them whether we realize it or not. This week, we’re taking on a Virtual Retreat to create personal, meaningful liturgies. Don’t miss the previous posts.
In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.
It’s a simple sentence, and when you strip away the prepositional phrase and the direct object, it becomes an even simpler soup.
God made.
God made, and made, and made, the Scriptures say, and when the world was populated by his artistry, he turned to the pièce de résistance. Humankind.
God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
In a stroke of emphatic redundancy, the Scriptures iterate and reiterate that God created men and women in his own image as if to drive some cosmic point home. And though I’m no theologian, though I’ve no background in the Jewish tradition of the depths of meaning in the creation story, my working hunch is that being created in the image of a Creator has consequences.
Creativity—it’s baked into our DNA, has been from the start. Early humans made paint from elderberries, charcoal, and wildflowers and painted buffalo (and some say aliens) on cave walls. More advanced men chiseled Roman gods and biblical characters from stone. Architects labored over buildings hundreds of years ago that still stand today. You play guitar, or piano, or scratch out poems, or knit beanies in your spare time. And what about your eight-year-old, the prodigious crayoner who creates tapestries rich with every color in the box? (Except burnt sienna; no one has a use for burnt sienna.)
We were made to create, and come to find out, creation has benefits. It’s been said that engaging in creative work has long-term benefits, including increased happiness. Creativity—it can be a hedge against the despair that’s so pervasive in this world of digital handwringing.
I have my own daily liturgy of creativity, one I’ve written about before. It begins in the morning with a cup of water and my computer. It begins here. Some days I’m more pleased with the work than others. But always, I start with nothing (a blank screen) and end up with something (words on the page). Always I create. Always, I walk away from the writing incrementally happier. And that, I suppose, is an accomplishment, an incremental increase in my happiness.
Do you have a liturgy of creation, a set time each week to sit down and make something new? If not, why not? And don’t give me that I’m not creative garbage. Each of us has a creative bone somewhere in our body. (Some knit, some work with wood, some tinker on car engines, some scrapbook, some write novels in their spare time, etcetera ad infinitum.) So, create a liturgy of creation and push back despair.
Life Examined: A Liturgy of Creation
As you did in the Silence retreat, identify one hour a week where you can create something.
Enter into the time with no expectations (and even more importantly, no cell phone), and turn to the work of your hands.
As you create, have compassion for yourself. Remember, the goal of creation is not perfection. It’s simple to bring something new to life, and in that way, to connect with the Creator who made you creative.
After your hour of creation, reflect. What did you notice? Did you get into a flow state, a state where you blocked everything else out?
Commit to practicing this weekly ritual of creation on the same day for two months. See what happens.
***A Special Invitation***
What to hear more about how you can help bring a book on silence to life? Don’t forget to head to my latest Substack post for more.
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.
Creation: How Art Wakes Us Up to The World Around Us
Yesterday we examined how the act of creation can be therapeutic, how it wakes us to the meaning of our more complex emotional realities. Creation not only helps us make sense of our emotional realities, though. It wakes us to the world around us, helps extract meaning from our physical realities too.
I sat with Sean Womack at The Depot—the best and only creperie in Fayetteville—and we “scraped the universe.” (Scraping the universe: Sean’s term for agendaless, free-range conversation.) We discussed his most recent piece of art, one made with heat-fused polyethylene, wood, and galvanized steel. The polyethylene came from Walmart grocery sacks, the steel from chicken wire. His media grew from our particular context. Northwest Arkansas is the home of both Walmart and Tyson, the worlds’ largest retailer and chicken producer respectively, and so, there are sacks and chicken wire aplenty. I asked Sean why he’s poured himself into his art these days, and why he chose these particular materials for his most recent art. He said,
“I started doing art again therapeutically because I needed to make stuff… and I starting making things with different materials, but the materials weren’t indigenous to me. I wanted something more from my world. I started looking for materials we had around the house, and I found these Walmart bags. As a material, it represented an amazing substrate.”
Melting those bags to chicken wire, Sean has created something unique, something indigenous to my landscape. And on the way to the office this morning, I saw an unmelted Walmart sack caught on a barbed-wire fence. I thought of Sean’s work, how his art is an homage to the common Arkansas eyesore (I don’t have to drive five miles to see a Walmart sack hung on a fence). At the same time, his art helps me see this eyesore in a new way, helps me recognize the beauty hiding in it. (If only I could apply a little heat.)
As he creates, Sean offers me the imagination to see beyond the raw materials of my locality, gives me new imagination for the possibilities hiding under my nose. And isn’t this the purpose of art? To wake us to the realities hiding in plain sight.
Check out Sean’s art. What do you think?
***
Wake Up?
My next book, The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life* is available for pre-order NOW. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) It’s a book that explores true, inner sobriety, and how to attach to and adore Divine Love. Pre-orders are vital to the success of a book, so please do not wait. Order today. And if you do, let me know via email. I’ll send you a sample along with the 3-part video series that gave rise to this book!
*All links Amazon links above are paid affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Creation: How Creativity Silences Demons
If I were to name the season, I’d call it tempestuous. If you’re human, you know this sort of season. The adrenaline rush at two in the morning. The mind loops of arguments and justifications. The white-hot pulse throbbing behind your eyes, in your stomach, in the back of your knees. Searching for that mythical animal resolution, that unicorn of rest—this is how those sorts of seasons go.
The details matter less than the chaos, the anger, the sorrow, the trauma, whatever, particularly in my own circumstance. But in those seasons, how do we break free of what Henri Nouwen calls our frozen anger ?How do we silence the stabbing midnight voices and move into something more like rest?
In her article, “What are the Health Benefits of Being Creative,” Dr. Maria Cohut, Ph.D wrote of the power of creativity in managing emotions. She wrote,
“Drawing, painting, or molding objects from clay has been scientifically proven to help people to deal with different kinds of trauma. In a comprehensive article on The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health, Heather L. Stuckey and Jeremy Nobel say that ‘[a]rt helps people express experiences that are too difficult to put into words, such as a diagnosis of cancer.’
‘[A]rtistic self-expression,’ they continue, ‘might contribute to maintenance or reconstruction of a positive identity.’
A number of studies have also found that writing — expressive writing, in particular, which requires participants to narrate an event and explain how it affected them — can help people to overcome trauma and manage negative emotions.”
Creation—it’s a way to stop the deconstruction of the self, to cry out “let there be light” in the middle of a dark night. It’s a way to pull meaning from chaos.
In my own tempestuous season, my own season of frozen anger, I’ve turned to acts of daily creation. I’ve reached for the guitar daily. I’ve eked these little daily offerings. And what have I found? Something like the slowing of my mind-loops, the easing of the heat, the relief in my chest. I’ve found something like light. I’ve found something like soothing music. (Link for newsletter subscribers.)
Are you practicing a daily act of creation?
If not, why not?
What keeps you from saying “let there be light,” in some small way each day?
***
Wake Up?
My next book, The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life* is available for pre-order NOW. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) It’s a book that explores true, inner sobriety, and how to attach to and adore Divine Love. Pre-orders are vital to the success of a book, so please do not wait. Order today. And if you do, let me know via email. I’ll send you a sample along with the 3-part video series that gave rise to this book!
*All links Amazon links above are paid affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Creation: In the Beginning
In the beginning and for the seven days that followed, God created. Heavens and earth. Sky and land. Animals and humans. You remember the story. And after the close of the first week of Creation, he gave humans the best gift—the ability to be co-creators in the world around him.
Painting, writing, playing the guitar, sculpting, woodworking, knitting, cooking up a batch of gumbo—these are all acts of creation, things we humans do every day. But why do we create? What are the benefits of creation in our life? More importantly, how do acts of creation keep us connected with the bigger story, the Divine Love that reorders a life?
These are the questions I hope to tackle this week in this series of posts. I hope to show how the simple act of daily creation, which is a thing far different than production, can bring a renewed sense of purpose and calm. I hope to show how creation brings beauty to the world.
But before we get to those questions, let’s ask: Where does creativity come from? Watch this video for more.
Wake Up?
My next book, The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life is available for pre-order NOW. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) It’s a book that explores true, inner sobriety, and how to attach to and adore Divine Love. Pre-orders are vital to the success of a book, so please do not wait. Order today. And if you do, let me know via email. I’ll send you a sample along with the 3-part video series that gave rise to this book!