Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 231

Here’s another daily meditation from my recent book of devotions ‘Sunrise Sunset’ (HarperCollins/Harper San Francisco). Feel free to use/adapt it. These appear regularly on our mail-list.

I have called Bezalel… and I have filled him with the Divine Spirit… to devise artistic designs. Exodus 31:1-4.

Artistic creativity is a view of the world, of the arts, of human emotions, which sees beneath the surface, or rearranges components of these into novel or beautiful forms. Truly creative people can get in touch with the ‘pre-civilized’ self, the world of the child. Freud believed the artist was able to reach into the ‘preconscious’, to examine his/her own psychic processes and then transform these elemental forces into the world of art. Art provides a path from fantasy to reality. Many creative people, particularly in painting and music, have preserved a childlike ability to have contact with the whole self, with the unconscious, the very deep parts of the personality that most of us lose touch with as we grow up and get ‘civilized’.

Illness can be creative. Schumann was liable to dramatic mood changes and this is reflected in the varying level of his output. He did all his composing when ‘high’ and nothing when ‘down’. Freud and Jung went through prolonged depression over a period of years, soldiered on, producing very little, but out of this dark time produced some of their greatest work.

Thank you Lord, for both the order of created things, and the joy of creativity. You are continually creative, and we are invited to share in your creative purpose. You stimulate in us gifts of creative vision and inventive skill. Amen.

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher