Creativity: What's in the Way?

This week I've been thinking a lot about creativity and maybe more importantly what gets in the way.  Creativity is something that flows forth from us humans in amazing ways.  Whether it's being struck by a new idea, trying a new recipe, dancing in our kitchens, painting or any number of other things, creativity seems to sneak in when we least expect it and sometimes it's even hard to recognize it for what it is.  For example, this morning I made chicken wild rice soup for my husband and a few friends who were out on a long bike ride.  I didn't pull out my mom's recipe because by this point it is a part of me.  That being said, the recipe only calls for onion and celery but we had a few more veggies that needed to be used up; carrots, mushrooms, turnips and potatoes so into the pot they all went and it was a huge success.  I do not say this to brag, although it was pretty awesome soup, but to illustrate how mundane creativity can seem.  A few weeks ago I would have never thought of this act of cooking as a moment of creativity.  I love to cook and often spend way too much time looking at recipes online, in magazines, on television or in cookbooks and it's how I show love to those in my life.  But today, I knew the recipe and I took a risk and it turns out that creativity found its way into my normal routine and it was delicious.

And then, I saw this:

And it was amazing and beautiful and joy-filled and it got me thinking about all that creativity is and all that gets in our way.  When I began cooking I followed the recipe to the letter, even when it was a recipe that was taught without one, and let's face it, most the best ones are.  But as I cooked more and more I began to eyeball amounts, make substitutions and completely leave the recipes out of the equation and in so doing have been opened up to creativity sneaking in.  But what was stopping this before?  Well, knowing myself as well as I do, it would be that I was afraid to get it wrong, for the recipe to not turn out right and to disappoint myself and the loved ones I was feeding.  Isn't this so often how we live our lives?  Afraid to try something or be opened up to creativity for fear of not doing it right or it being bad.   As I've begun painting, these are often the thoughts that still wander through my head and sometimes it takes a lot to push them aside, be open, trust myself and let the creative process wash over me rather than try to hold it hostage.

Now, back to the video I posted.  I was amazed at the willingness and joy of those on the street who stepped up to conduct these amazingly tallented musicians.  Some were self conscious and others let go and became a beautiful part of this creative act.  Could these musicians have conducted themselves and given a beautiful street performance?  Yes, of course they could.  But with the willingness of these bystanders to step up and dare to try something new, the music was different than it has ever been or will ever be again; taking on each of their own unique and distinct personalities and styles.  They became a part of this music and were part of creating something beautiful.  They didn't let their negative self talk and worry about doing it right stand in their way and creativity once again quietly slipped in and produced something amazing.

So my hope for myself and for any of you still with me, is that we can boldly step past the negative self talk we have been taught and have built up in our lives and allow creativity to quietly sneak in.

A Beautiful Morning for Painting

Yesterday I had my first adventure with Prayer as Creativity, ok first official adventure with prayer as creativity.  I set aside a few hours on a beautiful sunny morning to spend some time with God and to paint. 

The sun was streaming in the windows, I had a steaming cup of tea, my painting supplies and my favorite meditation partner, Max the cat.

I decided to look at the Psalm for this coming Sunday (Psalm 146) as my grounding point but the gentle breeze coming in through my window kept bringing me to Psalm 148 as well.  Both these Psalms joyfully praise God for all that God has done and created and given.

And so, I painted and after about an hour of reading, meditating and painting this is what found its way out onto the canvas...

And now today, it is time to reflect on what took place in that hour and since then.
During that hour my internal dialogue started off sounding something like "what should I paint?  Should I paint what I hear in the scripture or my deepest darkest prayer?  How do I start?  What color do I start with?  Big brush or little?  Why does an umbrella keep popping into my head?"  And so on, until finally I just told myself to shut up and started, slowly and deliberate and cautiously but I started and it took every ounce of my being to shut myself up, stop worrying if it would be good or not and just paint.  And as I painted and the minutes ticked on it got easier and even the umbrella found a place in my gem of a painting.

When I first finished it, I knew it was what I had set out to paint, I knew that it was my prayer to God but I wasn't entirely sure why.  So the more time I've spent with it and the more I listen to how I have been feeling the more I see what my prayer really was.  Lately, blame it on pregnancy hormones, changing weather or any number of other things, I have been frustrated by the cloud of negativity and doubt and general grumpiness that seems to find its way into my day.  I have been desiring the clouds to break so that I can more fully feel the joys in my life, the joys God has given me.  And this is what I painted, God's grace and love and joy and presence breaking through the clouds of negativity, doubt, pain and fear and not only breaking through these clouds but taking them over and burning them off as the sun burns off the fog in the mornings.  But what about the umbrella that so filled my thoughts?  Well, it's the world, the thing that was created to give us shelter and rest.  Not only does God break through the clouds into my life but He also breaks through the clouds that seem to blanket out world and brings us the promises that only He can bring.

So with this first painting, I got out of my own way and painted a deep prayer to God for renewal and joy without even realizing it.  It's really an amazing and strange experience to get out of your own way and tap into something unknown, unrealized and unspoken and bring it to life.  This makes me eager to continue down this road of prayer and creativity.

Prayer and Creativity

Today officially begins my last class as a Luther Seminary Student!  It's all very exciting and yet feels completely unreal since I still have about five months left of internship.  Oh well, I will take what I can get!  What might be more exciting than the fact that this is my last class is that this is also my first independent study, it focuses on prayer as creativity and I am being guided through it by Trey Everet out of the Micah Institute in Crookston.

Over the next nine weeks, I will be exploring three different areas of creativity: painting, sculpture and movement of some kind (possibly just walking/hiking and possibly belly dancing...only time will tell).  I am planning on spending three weeks exploring each of these areas of creativity and figure out how they fit in with prayer and meditation.  I'll be honest, this is super exciting and yet I feel completely unprepared for what this will look like and mean for my prayer life; maybe it will work and maybe it won't. 

These first three weeks I'm focusing on painting and with a little guidance from Trey we decided on a basic "formula" to start with.  This "formula" is simple, it's ancient and let's hope it works.  It starts with Scripture (possibly a Psalm), followed by some meditation, painting my prayer to God and then reflecting on the process.  Seems pretty simple right?

The biggest struggle for this adventure is getting out of my own way.  I have never painted before, nor have I ever really sculpted and I have a slight tendency to want to make everything perfect or do things the right way, as I'm sure most of us can relate to.  But, throughout this process, the whole goal is to get out of my own way, to move beyond the mind and key into body and emotion and those other aspects of self that we so often push aside.  The goal is a kind of effortless attention to that which is inside of me and letting it flow out and onto paper.  This is one of the most exciting challenges I've faced in a long time and I know that some days will be easier than others but I am excited to enter into a new spiritual practice, learn more about prayer and figure out how to share it with others.  And most of all I'm comforted that there's really no wrong way to do this.

Without a Voice

I have recently fallen prey to allergies.  On Monday I began to notice some extra stuffiness and a little tickle in my throat.  On Thursday I began to notice that my voice was a little rough.  And on Saturday I noticed that I had no voice what so ever.  Of course this happens on a week when my supervising pastor is out of town and it's my responsiblity to not only preach but lead the whole service.  So I began to brainstorm what a service might look like if I couldn't talk.  It turns out it doesn't look all that different.  I knew I could ask someone to chant and find people to read and whatnot but I did try to limit the times I'd be talking for extended times, i.e. the sermon and the prayers.  So the sermon got scrapped and I decided to let the people do the talking with Lectio Devina and I typed up the prayers on the power point and let them read them. 

It was awesome!  Or at least it was for me and I hope it was for them.

They are, of course, the frozen chosen and although they didn't share their thoughts with the larger congregation after Lectio, they did seem to be having good conversation in small groups and many told me they appreciated the exercise and had lots to think about. 

But more importantly, I had time to listen and this was the biggest gift I could have received.  Since I still didn't have much of a voice, it forced me to stop, slow down and listen to the people.  I heard the little old lady behind me sing the Kyrie with gusto but incredibly out of tune and off beat.  I heard the children excited to bring offering forward.  I heard the people of the church profess their faith and lift their prayers to God.  It was amazing!

So I encourage you all, whether with voice or without, to stop and listen to the people around you.  Hear how they sound, the inflection in their voices, their joy and excitement or sorrow and pain and take note of it.  At times I find myself more focused on what comes next in the service or worrying about my sermon that I forget to actually hear the people and their beautiful voices being lifted up to God.  Despite the struggles of the day and the scrambling to get ready, it was an amazing day full of blessings.

Mother's Day

Today, after worship I was wished a happy mother's day by countless people.  Now I know that I'm new but I'm pretty sure they know that I'm not a mother.  In fact, I was even given a flower like the rest of the mothers in attendance.  At first I was taken aback, not sure if I should correct people, thank them or just let it go, chocking it up to old age and forgetfulness (after all some of them probably thought I was Pastor Melodi even though I'm pretty clearly not).  But as the cheerful Mother's Day greetings kept rolling in I found myself thanking them and feeling uplifted.

Now, I've always thought that the way we view "mothers" is entirely too limited.  In today's society, that is so broken and mangled, there is often pain and sorrow surrounding mother's day for more reasons than I even care to count.  We must acknowledge this pain but we must also uplift all those women who "mother" us.  It is not some vague celebration of all women, it's more exclusive than that but it's also not so inclusive that it is restricted to the biological function of giving birth.  It is the personal celebration of those women in our lives who have cared for us, uplifted us, loved us and taught us how to live; all the while remembering that those same women are human and sometimes fall short.

All this got me wondering - When does a woman become a mother?    Is it when she gets pregnant the first time?  When she gives birth?  Or is it something else entirely?  Is it when she first gives voice to her desire to have children?  Is it a feeling or emotion that is indescribably?  Or is it something that just happens one day when you find yourself caring deeply for the well-being of someone else?

I don't have any answers to this, but one thing is for sure, today I felt like a mother and I felt the joy and excitement of being with all those I love and care for both at church and at home. 

Death, Growth or Life?

It's been a while since I've posted anything and let's face it things were crazy for a while between the end of the semester, the wedding, packing, moving, unpacking...you know all those great things that come with having tons of new life events all happening at once.  And since then, well I've been busy be-ing and settling into this new life. 

Three weeks ago I started my internship in Kittson County, MN which is the most North Westernly corner of the state.  This internship is unique as it is made of up 3 different parishes cooperating together which gives me a grand total of 3 pastors and 5 churches to work with, not to mention Frank's church's which both seem to claim me as well.  Despite all the differences I already have and am yet to encounter there seems to be one overarching theme they all have in common; death.  I'm not talking funerals, although those happen quite a bit.  I'm talking about the common held belief that they are all part of dying congregations.  Considering this area has seen drastic decline not only in church membership but in overall population over the past few decades this is a fair assessment.  Some of the towns in the area have simply ceased to be with only a handfull of houses and an old grain elevator sitting along the railroad tracks to remind us that hundreds of people once lived there.  It's a cold hard fact that some, if not many of these communities and churches will silently slip off our maps without much notice.  This fact does not worry me nearly as much  as the fact that these churches identify themselves in such a way.

So often I've heard that if a church isn't growing it's dying or at least has one foot in that direction.  Why is it that we are so fixated on growth.  Yes, growth is great and amazing but in a place that has fewer and fewer people every year is it really the goal?  I've only been at these churches for a few weeks and have barely brushed the surface of their depth and breadth and yet I've already gotten the feeling that they are in the same boat as many other churches across the country; in survival mode and wondering why it is they haven't seen a new face in their doors for a long long time.  I'd like to point out that this has nothing to do with hospitality but is very much a numbers game and the numbers are simply not in their favor.

With all these things working against them and with death staring them in the face, how do we encourage them to live?  How do we shift their focus from that of death to life?  How do we help them to see themselves as a vibrant, faithful community full of the life of Christ?  They may be dying but that doesn't mean they have to go quietly.  It doesn't mean they have to simply slip away with no legacy.  It doesn't mean there is no hope or that it's ok to simply give up and sustain.  How do we help them, and ourselves for that matter, to stop worrying about growth, embrace death and live?

The End

With this week comes the end of my 10 week experiment to eat as sustainably as possible.  There were times it was difficult and my cravings for bananas or off season produce won out, but overall I think I did pretty well.  I bought as much as I could that was organic and now that the farmer's markets are open I get to buy local as well.  It was certainly a hit on my finances as the organic section is a bit more expensive than the regular corporately grown section.  That being said though, I enjoyed my food more.  It just tasted better.  Seriously, organic sweet potatoes are the best things I've EVER eaten! 

When I entered into this experiment I did it because we were asked to as part of a class but I also chose this because of the readings I'd done about all the chemicals in our food.  I didn't want them in my body and I'd rather support farmer's who don't put them in the ground and in our water.  It was a very personal choice to try and be the best steward I could be of the Earth.  This was a decision of the mind and I didn't expect a bodily response and yet that is what sticks out to me the most at the end of these 10 weeks.  I still think about the planet and the chemicals and all that stuff but what I see and hold onto tightly is the change I've experienced within my body.  I have always had digestive troubles and took them to be a way of life.  Yet, as I sit here, 10 weeks after eating primarily organic foods, I feel amazing with very few of those troubles I've had for years.  I have more energy and more endurance throughout the day.  It is certainly true, that what we eat fuels our bodies and apparently cutting out many of those chemicals has allowed my body to heal in a lot of ways.  I'm not saying this is miraculous or that I was healed of some disease but I do feel better and feel as though my body is more in sync with itself than it's ever been before.  It's been an interesting 10 weeks and I'm not sure I can go back to what I ate before.