creativity is Spirit at work in us ✨
exploring the relationship between creativity and divinity
I’m going through a bit of a creative blossoming. After spending the past seven or so years on an emotional and artistic rollercoaster, my creative voice is finally drowning out the cruel words of my perfectonism, anxiety, and depression.
Perfectionism says, “Your work will never be good enough.” Anxiety pummels me with fear of what others will think or of making a fatal mistake. Depression, at least for me, is the wall that perfectionism and anxiety drive me into and the inevitable crash.
I have been inconsistent with my writing habit for many reasons. Shame about who I am, a byproduct of evangelical Christianity, caused me to self-censor and silence my creative voice.
Then the pandemic completely altered my capacity for working and writing and performing any daily tasks, really. Concerns about economic resources focused my priorities on the so-called practical and not on the elements that make up a fulfilling day, year, or life.
Yet something is slowly awakening within me: an insatiable desire to write prolifically. I started this newsletter and then struggled to keep it up when grad school and life and mental health challenges became too heavy to carry.
Now I’m realizing that the only way I can hold those heavy things is by writing imperfectly about those things which make me curious and allow me to embrace the sacredness of my life.
Creativity is the force that gives meaning and purpose to my life. I sincerely believe that as a sexual and spiritual creature, my creativity comes from the same place as my sexuality and my spirituality.1 These mysterious forces overflow from my Source, pouring divine love into me. My spirituality, sexuality, and creativity demand to be shared with others—lest I drown in their cascading grace and goodness.
My connection to my creativity is an interpersonal relationship because I am filled with Spirit—the creative God which breathed over the waters of existential nothingness to create me.2
In my theological understanding, creativity is not an impersonal energy at work within me, but the energetic personality of God Godself. And if God is a community, as Trinitarians believe, we are drawn into community not only with God but in God—an experience of God experiencing God.3
Theologian and priest Matthew Fox writes beautifully about this interpenetration of divinity and humanity through creativity: “That which we give birth to from our depths is that which lives on after us. That which is inborn in us constitutes our most intimate moments—intimate with self, intimate with God the Creative Spirit, and intimate with others.”4
Surrendering to creativity is surrendering to Love. Using our creative gifts—whether professionally or recreationally—is how we participate in the work and re-creation of all things that God is accomplishing. The words and Word God used to speak the world into existence are incarnated in us and embodied through our creative acts of love.
I believe we are meant to create meaning together, and your presence here is a gift I deeply treasure. May you be inspired or in-Spirited to bring the creative longings of your heart to life.
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Author’s note: This post was written on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
While I identify as a sexual person, not everyone does. This statement is not intended as a generalization of all people. Asexuality is a real and valid orientation. Of course, not everyone identifies as a spiritual person either. Again, this is my own self-definition at play.
Cynthia L. Rigby, Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 155.
Matthew Fox, Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet (New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002), 1-5.
Fox, Creativity, 2.