Penny and I had tea Sunday afternoon with a friend and church member. We've joined Charlotte for occasional afternoon teas on Sundays for some 10 years now. Tea with her is always a renewing opportunity to relax with good conversation and to enjoy her lemon bundt cake and other treats.
After many years of friendship, I thought I knew Charlotte well. Until Sunday, when I discovered something new about her, although not surprising: Charlotte writes a poem every morning. She has for many years.
"Do you share them?"Penny and I asked.
"No,"she said. "They're just for me." Her poems reflect her private thoughts and feelings.
One of the many things that impresses me about Charlotte is that she's engaged in daily creativity.
My daily creative act is writing--these blog posts and other columns, sermons, short stories, and longer pieces of fiction.
You might create with words, too, or with paint and canvas, with flowers and plants, with food, with needle and thread, with musical instruments, with fabrics, with clay or stone.
However we create, we participate with God in His continuing creation. That work began at the very beginning. In Genesis 2, God tells the first humans to till and tend the garden. Working with God, they're to take part in bringing beauty and fruitfulness to God's creation.
When we exercise our creativity, even for a few minutes a day, in whatever way brings us delight, you and I are are one with God in the act of making something new. And creation is a better place for it.
Be creative, then, and be with God.
In the BCP, in the Catechism (p. 845), there's a piece that I actually put up on the wall at home. It's in reponse to the question, "What does it mean to be created in the image of God?"
ReplyDeleteThe answer is, "...to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God."
To me that says it all. Too often we forget that creating is also part of what God intends for us to do.