“What’s the fear?” she asked.
I paused. “I guess I just feel like creativity is part of who I am. And when I don’t have time to create, I feel out of whack. How can I be a good dad when I feel out of whack? But how will I have time to create when we have another kid?”
Therapy is for honesty, right? For processing out-of-whack-ness? What is “whack” anyway? Whatever it is, I guess I’m making circles around it. That’s why I’m out of it.
“Well, you’re right,” she said. “Things are going to get even crazier after your second child is born. But do you really think God is going to take away this part of who you are, this way that you relate to yourself, to the world?”
Creativity has long been fundamental for my mental and emotional health. If I can’t find time to write, my wife often senses my irritability and tells me to get in front of the blank page. Even if I write one lousy sentence, it feels good, right, necessary.
Creativity, I feel, is like lowering an empty vessel into the deep well of the soul. It is a journey into the depths of ourselves to discover that which is life-giving, that which might be worth sharing through the process of slowly bringing the vessel of water back to the surface. It’s no wonder I feel “off” when I struggle to find the time to create.
This inward then outward movement is also why creativity, for me, has been synonymous with prayer: It can be one of the most honest dialogues with life itself, with one’s own heart, with God. This interior journey often leads to encountering a truth that remained hidden before, one we would not have found had we not dared lower the empty vessel. We’re all creatives, I believe, divinely designed to plunge the depths of Spirit within and name what we have found. So that it might quench the thirst of others.
Making Our Souls
What I’m learning in this busy phase of life, though, as my wife and I await the birth of our second child, is that creativity also involves the making of the well. My conversation with my therapist made me wonder if this chaotic phase of life might be one of conscious soulful preparation, even if the words on the page are scarce. A conversation with Murray Bodo, OFM, for Franciscan Media’s new Off the Page podcast, echoed these same themes.
“What have you learned about God or yourself through creativity?” I asked Father Murray, who has been publishing poetry for over six decades.
“My life, your life, is a prayer,” he said. “It’s becoming a prayer. A life lived sincerely with a longing for God is a prayer. Sometimes you have the time to pray more deeply—to write or dance or sing or whatever it is. Other times, there isn’t as much time. But you’re still in the game.”
Father Murray then bridged the creative journey itself to the making of one’s own soul. God gifts each of us a soul, but then the process of deepening our soul is a lifelong partnership with God. Father Murray continued, “John Keats was writing to his brother once and said that life on earth is a ‘vale of soul-making.’” Father Murray paused, “We’re learning to make our souls.”
I’m reminded of how often I judge my progress through the lens of production. I’m not a mystic—I’m too dualistic. I judge my creative output on the lack of water in my vessel when maybe I’ve been improving the well all along: through discipline, daily hard work, and striving to love my family well, through preparing for our little one to come. It’s all creativity. It’s all prayer.
There I go, trying to write like a mystic again.
Living Waters
There is a beautiful storyline in the third season of the Gospels-inspired hit show The Chosen where Simon—burdened with anger over Jesus’ healing of strangers while the apostles are left wanting—finds a certain solace in pouring that emotion into manual labor: helping a Roman centurion, Gaius, fix a cistern outside of the synagogue, the main water supply for the city. The disciples think Simon has gone off his rocker.
They think he’s out of whack. But while Simon works on the well, he is also working on his own soul. In fixing what needed to be fixed, he is doing the same with his own heart. And this spiritual formation is happening alongside his growing friendship with Gaius, not Jesus, which seems to be how God works.
St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Create within yourself a place where God might dwell.” I will likely always need to find time to write, but maybe Francis’ words direct us toward the ultimate form of creativity: soul-making.
Maybe sometimes it feels like we’re not doing what we’re made to do. Maybe we feel like we don’t have the time. Maybe we’re overwhelmed. But God’s growth in us is mysterious. And God’s expansion within our own souls sometimes requires some excavating, some good old-fashioned manual labor. That way, we can dig a well for the living waters to flow.
Prayer
Digging Deep
God, creative living does not always look as I think it should look.
Life can sometimes feel “off,” like a desperate search for water
while the mouth gets more and more dry.
Please partner with me as I dig the well.
In the vale, let me participate with you in soul-making.
Amen.
