Creativity

and Christianity.
I was thinking about creativity and Christianity the other day and these were some thoughts I kicked around:
Why is it that creativity seems so darn important to humans? Why were we made to express? To color, to pretend, to make up? What is it about us that needs -- and wants -- creativity? And, how much should creativity be a part of our work in Christianity? How much should it be a part of our lives in community? Should we, for example, be just as concerned about meeting the artistic needs of the civilization as we are about meeting their dietary needs? I'm not sure. And yet, we were created in the image of a creator. This implies we are -- at least at some level -- made to create.

Would it be ridiculous or soothing, for instance, to offer a coloring sheet and crayons along with a bowl of minestrone to a man who walks through a soup line? How about passing out that same sheet and primary-colored crayons to a congregation as part of a sermon? Or gather around the woman who's been teaching the preschool Sunday school class for the past 3 decades and hear her read a story. Any story. Does it have to be a "Bible story"? I don't think so. God is found in a plethora of places -- most of them unexpected. At least that's my opinion.

In the play Wit by Margaret Edson, the main character, Vivian Bearing, PhD is a feisty, rude, highly intelligent scholar who has been transformed by experimental drugs she's taken to kill the cancer in her body. The drugs have literally destroyed her physical and communicative capacities. Towards the end of the play (when she can do little but lie on the bed and moan) Vivian receives a rare visitor. A former professor, E.M. Ashford, DPhil, stopped by to visit Vivian in her university office and was, instead, directed to the hospital. E.M. Ashford, DPhil, has recently bought "The Runaway Bunny" for her great-grandchild and, having little else to offer, curls up with Vivian and reads her the book. It takes all of 3 minutes to finish the book, but nothing else in the production affects me as much as that moment when creativity is so freely and gently shared. E.M. Ashford, DPhil leaves with the epitaph Shakespeare wrote for his most famous character, Hamlet: "And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." (Cue me to start weeping). It is the most touching moment of the play. At the end of life -- when there is nothing else -- two humans can comfort in another's creative work. Is this moment not a representation of Emmanuel: "God with us"?

The traditional Christmas song Little Drummer Boy explores this theme of creativity connected to Christ even more specifically. A little boy stands among wealthy worshipers who've come to Jesus with "their finest gifts". The little boy, who connected to Jesus because he is "a poor boy, too", can only offer the King of kings a simple song beat out on a drum. He plays his drum -- plays his "best" in fact -- for the baby Jesus and it is at this offering that Emmanuel smiles.

Now, the fact that I revel in this completely non-realistic story (no newborn babe would smile as an 8-year-old bangs on a loud drum) may only be because I, myself, am an artist and think creativity should be important. I hope not. I, instead, have hope that God has gifted us with various ways to communicate and that by using our creativity to share, to love, to encourage and inspire, we are simultaneously pleasing and bringing Emmanuel. Inside that exchange of colors, stories, sounds, images, movements etc. is the Kingdom of God.