Creativity
Excerpt-Matthew Fox-Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality
Potter, poet, and philosopher M. C. Richards warns us of the power and omnipresence of creativity within us all: “We have to realize that a creative being lives within ourselves, whether we like it or not, and that we must get out of its way, for it will give us no peace until we do.”
—SNC 104
The working definition of a human being, according to anthropologists today, is a bi-ped who makes things. They are certain they have found one of our ancestors when they find a two-legged one with artifacts nearby.
I propose that when all is said and done, our true nature is our creativity. Psychologist Rollo May concurs when he says: “The creative process must be explored not as the product of sickness, but as representing the highest degree of emotional health, as the expression of the normal people in the act of actualizing themselves.”
When the Bible declares that we are made in the image and likeness of the Creator, it is affirming that creativity is at our core just as it lies at the core of the Creator of all things. Not only the Bible but other traditions also celebrate our nearness to the creative powers of Divinity. The Sufi mystic Hafiz declares:
All the talents of God are within you.
How could this be otherwise
When your soul
Derived from His genes!
An ancient Mesoamerican poet tells us that God dwells in the heart of the artist and the artist draws God out of his or her heart when the artist is at work.
We are creators at our very core. Only creating can make us happy, for in creating we tap into the deepest powers of self and universe and the Divine Self. We become co-creators, that is, we create with the other forces of society, universe, and the Godself when we commit to creativity…. We are makers and fabricators, we are free, we are active, we are interesting, we are interested and curious, we are part of the vast creative universe, we are energetic and alive, we are creators and co-creators.
Scholars of evolutionary history are telling us that today biological evolution is being overwhelmed by cultural evolution. The human species, which evolves by culture more than by slow-moving biological change, is overwhelming the planet. All the more reason to examine that element that makes human culture so amazingly rich and fast-moving: human creativity.
—CR 28–29
Our Creative Ancestors
Scientist Brian Swimme uses the following story to remind us of how ancient and how necessary for survival is our creativity. When our ancestors discovered fire back in the savannahs of Africa over 65,000 years ago, they set out on a great journey. When they arrived at the place we now call Eurasia, the ice age broke out. There they were, fresh from the heat of Africa, forced to live in caves for ten thousand years. Did they give up? Did they fall into masochism and say, “Woe is we!”? They got to work. They put their imaginations to work. They learned how to prepare hides, sew warm outfits, hunt animals for food and clothing, and how to tell tales around the campfire and entertain themselves. In short, this is where our creativity came to birth.
I draw two important lessons from this story. First is how strong our ancestors were. There are few adaptations that we are being asked to make today that are as profound as the adaptation from the heat of the African savannahs to the ice age. A second lesson I conclude is the realization of how basic our creativity is to our survival. Creativity and imagination are not frosting on a cake: They are integral to our sustainability. They are survival mechanisms. They are the essence of who we are. They constitute our deepest empowerment.
—CR 31
Our Creative Essence
Psychologist Otto Rank saw creativity as so basic to the essence of our humanness that he, in effect, substituted the human creative impulse or the drive for production for Freud’s emphasis on sexuality and reproduction …