Something out of nothing.
I have been thinking a lot recently about creativity. As “luck” would have it yesterday two talks on creativity popped up on my Ted Talk app – one by Elizabeth Gilbert entitled “Your Elusive Creative Genius” and another by Amy Tan entitled “Where does creativity hide?” Then this morning, again as “luck” would have it, the On Being podcase with host Krista Tippett of November 21, 2019 features novelist and science lover Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser having a conversation entitled “The Mystery We Are”.
The fact that the subject of creativity and creation just “happened” to confront me from different directions is itself part of the creative process. I need to be present enough to be able to tune in and consider how I am to use this nudge.
Elizabeth Gilbert reminds the listener that the Greeks “believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant sprits of creativity ‘daemons’…..The Romans called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius.”
In my mind creativity is a cousin of faith and hope. I am reminded of the poem by Emily Dickinson “Hope Is The Thing with Feathers” and the quote from the Christian bible in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hope is a significant theme in most religions.
Marilynne Robinson says of the first creation story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, “…it does anticipate the modern cosmology, the creation of something out of nothing.”
I am reminded of the nurturing of the creative spirit in us adults who have often long forgotten what we “naturally” knew as a child. As children, barring early traumas or other neurological issues, we know magic is real; we are constantly creating stories and a reality from no recognizable past. We are not afraid to anticipate the arrival of daemons.
All to soon we are told to color within the lines; to be realistic; to sing or dance to someone’s dictated rhythm. Soon we are no longer able to duplicate the magic of our conception; the magic of the divine spirit introducing a particular sperm and egg to each other to create this body and spirit which is us.
As Mr. Gleiser reminds us “The way we understand the world is very much based on what we can see of the world, right”. Yet, faith and hope are based on what we cannot see or not what we think we cannot see. The artist, the musician, and the writer know that it is only the space outside of the lines, the space between the note, or the space between the words which give meaning or holds the object, the notes or the words.
Similarly, in the work that I do as a counselor I must see beneath the depression, the active addiction, the brokenness of what has often been a lifetime of trauma to that soul which can soar; to that person waiting to be reborn. We all can, if we allow ourselves, see beneath those labels – immigrant, illegal, criminal, male, female, professional title to that which is the divine spirit waiting to ignite.
We must all be willing to be that divine spirit; that genius; that embodiment of hope for ourselves and others.
Written November 22, 2019
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
I have been thinking a lot recently about creativity. As “luck” would have it yesterday two talks on creativity popped up on my Ted Talk app – one by Elizabeth Gilbert entitled “Your Elusive Creative Genius” and another by Amy Tan entitled “Where does creativity hide?” Then this morning, again as “luck” would have it, the On Being podcase with host Krista Tippett of November 21, 2019 features novelist and science lover Marilynne Robinson and physicist Marcelo Gleiser having a conversation entitled “The Mystery We Are”.
The fact that the subject of creativity and creation just “happened” to confront me from different directions is itself part of the creative process. I need to be present enough to be able to tune in and consider how I am to use this nudge.
Elizabeth Gilbert reminds the listener that the Greeks “believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant sprits of creativity ‘daemons’…..The Romans called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius.”
In my mind creativity is a cousin of faith and hope. I am reminded of the poem by Emily Dickinson “Hope Is The Thing with Feathers” and the quote from the Christian bible in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hope is a significant theme in most religions.
Marilynne Robinson says of the first creation story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, “…it does anticipate the modern cosmology, the creation of something out of nothing.”
I am reminded of the nurturing of the creative spirit in us adults who have often long forgotten what we “naturally” knew as a child. As children, barring early traumas or other neurological issues, we know magic is real; we are constantly creating stories and a reality from no recognizable past. We are not afraid to anticipate the arrival of daemons.
All to soon we are told to color within the lines; to be realistic; to sing or dance to someone’s dictated rhythm. Soon we are no longer able to duplicate the magic of our conception; the magic of the divine spirit introducing a particular sperm and egg to each other to create this body and spirit which is us.
As Mr. Gleiser reminds us “The way we understand the world is very much based on what we can see of the world, right”. Yet, faith and hope are based on what we cannot see or not what we think we cannot see. The artist, the musician, and the writer know that it is only the space outside of the lines, the space between the note, or the space between the words which give meaning or holds the object, the notes or the words.
Similarly, in the work that I do as a counselor I must see beneath the depression, the active addiction, the brokenness of what has often been a lifetime of trauma to that soul which can soar; to that person waiting to be reborn. We all can, if we allow ourselves, see beneath those labels – immigrant, illegal, criminal, male, female, professional title to that which is the divine spirit waiting to ignite.
We must all be willing to be that divine spirit; that genius; that embodiment of hope for ourselves and others.
Written November 22, 2019
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
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