Some of you know my background, others of you don’t. I grew up in a house saturated with Science and Math. My Papaw did his undergrad in physics and got a Masters in mathematics. My mom taught chemistry and physics at the high school level, and now teaches science at ASES. My dad taught Earth and Space science until transitioning out of teaching and moving into school administration. And my little sister just a few years ago was complaining, and I mean vehemently complaining, that she wasn’t going to be able to use her math elective to take Calc III since she had already tested out of Calc I and II through her AP scores in high school.
I hesitate to say that creativity wasn’t encouraged in our house, because if I ever expressed an interest in joining choir or getting involved in school plays I was always encouraged and supported in doing that. But the worldview that I was brought up in didn’t give much room for personal interpretation and individual creative expression. This worldview was more comfortable with facts and figures, with linear steps in equations, and with finding a single correct answer.
I remember once trying to tell my mother why I liked reading poetry. I was taking a class with my velcro-grandpa on Preaching Values in Great Literature, and through that class I was developing a deep love for the wordsmithing of poets.
“Momma, don’t you just think it’s beautiful? I mean, I am presented with a static set of words, but because I am constantly changing and my circumstances change, every time I come to this poem I read it in new ways! There’s something new to glean every time!”
She considered that for a moment before shaking her head and laughing. It became obvious to both of us that we differ in our love for poetry. Interpretation was something foreign and uncomfortable for one of us, while for the other there was beauty and freedom.
Many people, like my mom, prefer solutions to sonnets. Give mom an equation and she knows that no matter the lengths of intellectual effort that it takes to get there, there are always steps to follow and tests to be made and a “correct” result to get. This idea that a “correct” answer can actually be multiple answers for a single question is something almost nightmarish.
On another occasion, my mom was telling me about some new classroom standards that were being put in place for an upcoming school year. She was lamenting over the amount of emphasis being placed on "creativity" in the classroom. I was really confused at the time, because, though our upbringing wasn’t wildly creative, my parents had always supported me when I wanted to do things that were creative.
So I said, “Well, Mom, being creative is an important part of learning.” She looked me so seriously and said, “I have thirty high school sophomores and a store room full of chemicals. The last thing I want from them is creativity.” ... Touché!
This gives a snapshot into this mindset of my upbringing. There is a single correct answer, and there is a very specific time and a place for creativity. It wasn’t until I started my undergrad career at Milligan that I began to realize that creativity wasn’t just found in the Fine Arts. Creativity, I began to learn through taking Milligan's Humanities courses, was a part of being human. Each human is gifted with creative capacity, and time and again in history people have fostered that spark of creative potential into full force flames. I was also beginning to realize just how diverse creative expression could manifest. People throughout history have developed hundreds of ways to express themselves creatively. Now, as an undergrad student, I was scratching the surface of my own creative capacity in the way of writing.
When I started seminary, however, I heard my mother’s voice again. I was surrounded by a room full of rookie theologians. I imagined the last thing that was wanted from us was creativity! It’s only been within the past few years or so that I’ve begun to rekindle the idea that a part of being human is to be creative. But that sense has grown and evolved.
I think it seems to be fairly common, at least in my experience with people, that we believe “creativity” is for some people, but not all. I’ve heard so many people say, “Oh I’m not creative at all” and what they mean is they can’t draw or play an instrument. We limit what it means to be creative, and I truly believe that limits what it means to be human.
Recently I found my way back to New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. Merton talks a lot in this book about the contemplative life, but he situates that conversation in a broader conversation of what it means to be human. What it means to truly be yourself.
For Merton, each individual tries to contain within their being two selves. One self is what we project to the world. It’s the mask that we adopt. It's the judgemental statements we make about ourselves, and eventually come to believe and create our self image on. And this is a False Self. It is this Self that clamors for the attention and affections of others and of the world. In essence, this False Self becomes that which God never intended it to be.
Our living under this False Self can often feel like a creative act. We make ourselves into whatever image we desire to be, and we carve our masks to fit the mold. We judge the statements we make about ourselves to be objective fact. Then we create our own image of ourselves and ascribe value to that image. But this isn't the creativity I believe we were made to have.
According to Merton, what it means to truly be saved is to truly become ourselves. To put aside our False Selves and reclaim our True Self, the Self that God created, the thought of God that is uttered in us, the Image in which we were made.
This seems to lead to the systematic way of operating that I was brought up in. There's a "correct" answer for us to arrive at, a linear set of steps to follow. What I am beginning to realize, however, is that reclaiming my True Self isn’t this act of moving through a set of steps in an equation that will eventually lead me to the single right answer of who I am or who I should be.
Reclaiming my True Self is not a giving up of creativity, but living into it more fully.
While we have a beautiful way of expressing creativity in the Arts, I don’t believe that’s the limit of creativity. I have come to believe that at least part of what it means to be human is to join with God in God’s own creative act of making our Selves. In short, I believe we partner with God in a creative act of becoming. Becoming who we truly are. Becoming who we were made to be. Becoming in some small way a part of the body of Christ.
If you grew up or are still living in the same kind of worldview that I grew up in, you’ll know that this can seem to be a terrifying prospect. The idea of “creatively becoming” is so full of ambiguity, and that is rarely a comforting presence in our lives.
So often we would prefer that our sanctification and spiritual growth would come in linear steps. We want a step-by-step set of instructions that get us from start to end, with the guarantee that the end is "correct." But joining with God in creatively becoming isn’t like that. It’s a process. A journey. An "unknowing" of our falsely created selves and a discovering of Truth in Selfhood.
So perhaps the greatest comfort we can find in the ambiguity of this “becoming” is to grow to rest in the knowledge that we are in process. That means that we must set aside the statements we make about ourselves and learn to observe aspects of our Selfhood non-judgmentally. We must allow ourselves to be works in process, and give ourselves the grace that comes with that allowance. In grace, we can rest. In rest, we can grow.