Spirituality and Creativity

I delivered this short talk at the Unitarian Society of Hartford on Sunday, August 12, 2018.  The theme of the service was creativity and spirituality.

How many of you liked to color with crayons when you were a kid?  How about painting?  Building things with Tinkertoys?  Legos?

When you were doing that, did you get so immersed that sometimes you would lose track of time?

I colored with crayons and I made up imaginary worlds and I loved everything about doing it:  the colors, the feeling of the crayon on the paper, the path to a dream world. 

But eventually I stopped coloring with crayons.  The last time I did that, I must have been in my early 20s, and I looked at what I made, and I thought, “What’s the point?  This is silly.”

When you grow up in a result oriented culture, you put away the crayons unless you can make something worthwhile.

So I put away the crayons.

I went to college, then graduate school, then law school. 

Then I had a job and a family.  The only time I touched crayons or art supplies was when I was taking them out or putting them away for my daughters.

So maybe it was by putting away my children’s crayons that I was forced to think about my younger self who colored with crayons. 

And I realized that the part of me that enjoyed coloring with crayons WANTED OUT.

I had no idea where to start. 

I was intimidated by the possibilities and the likelihood of my success at any of them. 

So what did I do? 

I spun my psychic wheels for a few years, and the idea festered.   

Then I heard about The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  This book has 12 chapters, each of which is designed to identify--and silence-- the inner critic and bring out the part of you that still wants to color with crayons.

Along with a group of other Unitarian Society of Hartford congregants, I made my way through that book chapter by chapter.

We learned that the enemy is the censor that keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks such as: 

“You call that writing?  What a joke.”

“If you haven’t done it by now you never will.” 

“Why are you going to do something you’re terrible at?” 

“It’s too late.”

The book helped me silence that inner censor, shove that negativity away and just play without judging the intrinsic value of what I produced. 

My friend Meg told me yesterday that she actually bought a rubber chicken with which to strike her inner critic.

Paraphrasing Julia Cameron: Because once you let go of the negatives, and stop worrying about the quality of your work as compared to that of great artists, you begin to open the doorway to creativity. 

You will tap into different parts of your brain. 

You create pathways in your consciousness through which the creative force can operate. 

Once you agree to clear these pathways, your creativity emerges. 

Call it God, universe, mind, source…Call it, like the poet Dylan Thomas, the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.  And it is a force. 

Or, in our fine Unitarian tradition, call it the Oversoul. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson described it:  “Within [us] is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty to which every part and parcel is equally related; the eternal ONE,” --Essay, “The Oversoul.”

When that power “breathes through [our] intellect it is genius; when it breathes through [our] will it is virtue; when it flows through [our] affection, it is love,” he continued.  Emerson didn’t say this, but I would add, “When it flows through our soul, it is art.”

So in a way, our Unitarian traditions, to which I turned as the Catholicism of my childhood morphed into something broader and deeper, helped me grasp and live the concept of opening myself up to the gorgeous and awe-inspiring power of the universe.

As Julia Cameron says, it doesn’t matter what you call it but how you use it. 

You have to be open minded and the universe will make itself available.

And in that regard, in case the concept of the oversoul is a little too much for you, I’d like to describe this miracle on a physiological, rather than a spiritual basis by telling you about the man in this photo.  He’s a client of the Chrysalis Center, a nonprofit social services agency in Hartford where I teach quilting once a week.  He’s hand-weaving a rug, and he told me the other day that until he took up this tactile, repetitive pastime, he was taking seven psychotropic drugs.  Now, he said, he’s taking none, and has become self-regulating.  He attributes that change to the act of weaving.

In fact, the New York Times also describes other psychological benefits for tapping into creativity, reporting on July 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/sunday-review/creativity-midlife-crisis-cure.html  that Americans are experiencing creativity as an outlet for combating anxiety and depression.

In my case, I explored the fiber arts, because sewing was an art form that was open to me as a kid.  Who remembers learning to sew in homemaking class?  I got into art quilting.  By rediscovering the tactile joy of working with fabrics, I found a direct path to transcendence.

This is how the creation of art works for me.  I get lost in the act of creation and that process is a merging with transcendence, even an act of prayer.

I see art as a way to praise the natural beauty of the universe, from the sand ripples on the beach at low tide to the bright orange of a group of jack o’ lantern mushrooms growing against a tree.

When I see that kind of beauty now, I give myself the permission to recreate it.  And in so doing, my art becomes an act of praise.  Praise for the colors, the patterns, and yes, even the holiness of creation.

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”—Henry James