To Compose from Fragments
T. M. Moore
Creativity Is a Kingdom Calling
In times of crisis we can’t be bothered with extraneous things. When the rafters are sagging, it’s not the time to discuss what color to paint the room. If a sinkhole has swallowed the family car and is gaping toward the back porch, there’s no time for considering how to re-landscape the yard. Times of crisis demand immediate actions to address immediate concerns—staunch the life-flow now and we’ll talk about improving the red blood cell count later.
The churches in America and the West, and the people who occupy their pews, certainly find themselves in a time of crisis, as scandal after scandal, setback after setback, poll after poll, and tome after tome remind us. In the eyes of many, Christianity has become irrelevant, marginal, and even a nuisance. We are told that old ways of being the church aren’t producing the results they used to; new ideas and new ways must be found. We’ve got to take decisive action now, make the necessary adjustments, reposition ourselves in the eyes of our neighbors, and see if we can’t get back a little respectability. We’ve reached a critical juncture in the life of faith; we can’t be bothered with those “extra” things. While they might be interesting, and might even have some contribution to make, they mustn’t be allowed to clutter the radar screen at this time. Plus, the demands of our everyday lives—jobs, families, deadlines, bills, and all the rest—don’t leave much time or room for any but the most important endeavors.
The church isn’t the only hotbed of crisis: pressures to produce, conform, achieve consensus, maintain a clientele, satisfy an electorate, and keep out of the media’s sights bear down on business and professional people and politicians of every sort. Every day brings some new difficulty. Who’s got time to think about anything other than the daily crunch and grind in the pressure-cooker environment of Western society and culture?
Among those seemingly extraneous, unimportant matters the subject of “creativity” must surely rank high. Judging by the paucity of Christian books and journals on such subjects as literature, poetry, and the arts; the dearth of well-known and much-admired Christian composers and artists; the frenzied focus of local congregations on restructuring, repositioning, and revamping the liturgy; and the continuing pressure on Christian educators to teach for economic success, giving serious, extended attention to creativity and the disciplines that go with it is just going to have to wait.
Yet this position, in this or any generation, is a short-sighted mistake.
Human beings, and particularly those who follow Jesus—the redeemed of the Lord—are made for creativity. Through creative work of all kinds we mimic the one who created us in his image, and we discover a key component of our calling in the Kingdom of God. Through creative disciplines and activities, the followers of Christ may not only enjoy a measure of fulfillment, satisfaction, and delight they cannot otherwise know, they also reify their vision of the life of faith in ways that bear public witness to the beauty, goodness, and truth of God, and of the divine economy. To neglect or minimize the work of creativity in any generation is to fail in one of the most foundational aspects of our calling.
This, at least, is the view put forth by Paul Johnson in his book, Creators: From Chaucer and Bach to Picasso and Disney (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). The renowned British historian writes, “The art of creation comes closer than any other activity, in my experience, to serving as a sovereign remedy for the ills of existence” (p. 2). Talk about sweeping claims! When we fail to take up the work of creativity, we deny our own nature, Johnson insists, for we have been made in the image of God, and he is the foremost of all Creators. “Since we are made in God’s image, there is creativity in all of us, and the only problem is how to bring it out” (p. 3). Certainly, the work of creativity requires courage and hard work. But, Johnson argues, those who devote themselves to creative activity of some kind “are more likely to be happy” (p. 4).
In order to encourage readers to take up the challenge of creative work, Johnson offers a survey of creative people from Chaucer to Disney, including the likes of Bach, Shakespeare, Austen, Twain, Eliot, and Dior as representative of the broad spectrum of creative work undertaken throughout the centuries. These are the people whose creativity has enriched our language, our experience, and our lives with immeasurable contributions of goodness and beauty. They show us the power of creative endeavor to shape culture and transform lives. By studying the work habits and productive labors of these creators, Johnson both demarcates some of the important aspects of this discipline and inspires the reader to seek some creative niche for himself.
Johnson’s studies are filled with personal and historical anecdotes detailing aspects of the work of his creators that both inform and delight. We learn that creative people are excellent observers of their surroundings. They know how to pay attention to the smallest, most ordinary details, and to find in them a world of beauty and wonder. They develop working disciplines that allow them to bring their creativity to expression. They invest their time in learning and trying out new genres and techniques. They strive for excellence, master the basic skills, explore the limits of their chosen field, work to improve their own tastes, experiment with innovation, and long to make the world a better place. Creativity becomes a way of life, infusing all their outlook, demeanor, tastes, and personal space with things that express their unique interests and concerns as the image-bearers of God. These are aspirations and practices every one of us can take up at some level, and Johnson wants to encourage us to do so: “All of us can, and most of us do, create in one way or another. We are undoubtedly the happiest when creating, however humbly and inconspicuously” (p. 1).
But we can’t all be Jane Austens or Walt Disneys or J. S. Bachs. Does creativity only matter when it comes from the hand of masters such as these? Johnson’s book is not intended to separate masters from hoi polloi, but to encourage us to appreciate them, and moreover to include us with them. His book invites us, if only indirectly, to emulate the great creators in our own spheres, according to our own interests, so that we might discover the joy and fulfillment of realizing this most foundational aspect of our being. He does not offer much in the way of practical advice, however; his purpose is to inspire, not to instruct.
Enter Michael Kimmelman and his book, The Accidental Masterpiece: The Art of Life and Vice Versa (New York: The Penguin Press, 2005). Kimmelman, chief art critic at The New York Times, wants us to discover the benefits that can come from making room in our lives for “creating,
collecting, and even just appreciating art.” He insists that learning to do so “can make living a daily masterpiece” (p. 5). His approach is very similar to that of Paul Johnson—selecting a few representatives from a variety of fields and taking a deeper look at their lives and oeuvre. The advantage of Kimmelman’s book is that he puts the work of creativity more within the reach of his readers by offering us examples of ways to bring art into our lives through such widely practiced disciplines as photography, drawing, collage-making, collecting, and just looking at art.
Creativity, Kimmelman insists, is within the reach, and essential to the well-being, of all of us. Everyone can discover some discipline, interest, or pastime to allow expression of his or her deepest beliefs and concerns. We may practice our creativity as a merely private indulgence, or we may allow it to find expression wherever we are, whatever we do. But we will be better off for it either way.
Kimmelman insists that making room for creativity in our lives can teach us how to be better observers of the world, so that we discover beauty in surprising and ordinary places. Creative work also leads us into tactile disciplines by which we may better construct and express our worldview. It brings deep satisfaction and helps us realize more of what it means to be a human being, and it bears witness to an essential and reassuring sense of the orderliness of the world, a feeling that soothes and satisfies.
While not writing as a religious believer (unlike Johnson), Kimmelman nonetheless affirms the idea that bringing art and creativity into our lives can lead to an awareness of transcendent realities: “We connect with art to share something larger and more enduring than ourselves” (p. 112). He affirms Petrarch’s view that beauty is a spiritual matter. Art reminds us that life is not all fleeting and throw-away. It has a more eternal component, which we enter and express through works of creativity.
Summarizing the work of Wayne Thiebaud, Kimmelman writes,
Thiebaud’s work is not about a perfect world. It is about the fact that the world never was and still isn’t perfect, except perhaps the little imaginary part of it to which we can briefly retreat in these paintings and thereby glimpse the way all things ought to be (p. 222).
Creative work of any kind gives us a means for envisioning, and perhaps achieving, if only in small measure, a world different from the one we experience day-in and day-out. This is true whether one’s creativity finds expression through poetry (my personal predilection), gardening, scrapbook-making, cooking, conversation, home decorating, lawn work, or any of a thousand other disciplines, and whether the practice of creativity is reserved for a home workshop or studio, or helps to enliven our work space or other public venues.
All creative activities are fragments of the creative impulse. They are all available in particular to the members of the Body of Christ as means for better realizing our redeemed humanity, bringing the goodness and beauty of God to light, and setting a view of the Kingdom before a generation tottering on the cusp of the modernist/postmodernist divide. Our individual creative endeavor may only be a fragment of what is needed to fulfill the promise of creativity for the community of faith, but all our fragments, faithfully contributed, can combine to form a Kingdom mosaic of compelling beauty.
The late Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize winner and a devout (though questioning) believer, often expressed the hope that his poetry, carried out faithfully but in such piecemeal fashion, might point the way to a better world. As a child, and as a mature man, he studied his surroundings, recorded images and memories, submitted to studying and being mentored, and worked to master the basic skills of language, always looking ahead to the day, as he writes in “Diary of a Naturalist,” “When he would compose from fragments a world perfect at last.”
There is never a time so charged with crisis that the members of the Body of Christ should not be concerned about composing a better world from whatever fragments and opportunities the Lord puts before us. The work of creativity, in all its expressions, is integral to this Kingdom calling. We must not neglect the work of creativity—the study and practice of it, as well as the encouragement and sponsorship of it.
T. M. Moore is Dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics, (available at www.lulu.com/waxedtablet). He and his wife and editor, Susie, make their home in Concord, Tennessee. Illustration: Wayne Thibaud, Cakes, 1963. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Features, Arts and Culture, Meaning and Calling, Tue 30 Jan 2007
