Finding the Courage to Create
Sat, Feb 2009 10:30 | Permalink
Ok so the economy is bad and we don’t know if we have enough money to last another month. The world is in flux. And during times of great upheaval, new art forms are birthed that lead the way as artists encounter the holy, vision explodes within them and they find the courage to create. As it was at the beginning, the Creator, the Master Artist, exploded with vision and created the heavens and the earth in all its bizarre wonders. God found the courage to create despite knowing the outcome. And we artists and writers can lead the way into what can be IF we find the courage to create.
I’ve been so challenged to step into a more creative zone in my life that I find myself letting go of what I have accomplished in the past in order to make room for the future; and letting go of the fears released by mass media dooms-dayers in order to focus on living fully and joyfully today. Yet, in the in-between space, a swirling chaos of anxiety clouds my ability to receive the next vision for the next story, the next poem, the next book.
Ah! God to my rescue! While working at my computer in a library last week, I looked up from the keyboard to see Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create, staring me in the face. Compelled by my yearning spirit, I reached up, grabbed the book and started to read.
The opening to his book is just as powerful today as it was in 1975 when it was published.
“We are living in a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born. We cannot doubt this as we look about us to see the radical changes in sexual mores, in marriage styles, in family structures, in education, religion, technology and almost every other aspect of modern life. And behind it all is the threat of the atom bomb, which recedes into the distance but never disappears. To live with sensitivity in this age of limbo indeed requires courage.
A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings – namely, how to influence our evolution through our own awareness. We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future into a society more equitable and humane.
We are called upon to do something new, to confront a no man’s land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us. This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness. To live into that future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize.”
Rollo May goes on to define courage as not the absence of despair; it is, rather the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. Breaking through and finding the courage to create despite the anxiety and despair brings joy – the joy of total immersion in the creative process
Creative Courage:
Creativity occurs in an act of encounter with the Holy Spirit bursting new ways of seeing and understanding and imagining what could be.
We have a vision, or a moment of intense illumination and we give birth to it. The painter does not seize a tree…the tree seizes the painter who give birth to something through that tree. And out of the encounter is born the work of art.
And yet there is a tension between the encounter and ideal vision – and the expected outcome.
The degree of intensity is called passion. When you feel this intensity it is time to create. Every artist and writer lives for this moment of passionate flow for this passion is giving birth to the art form that is destined to be created. There is no such thing as passionless art.
Dare to be different:
You need an encounter with the Holy Spirit to conceive the work of art. Otherwise, you run on mere talent and practice well-worn techniques; sacrificing art for mass appeal.
“We worship technique-talent- as a way of evading the anxiety of the direct encounter,” Rollo May points out.
Kierkegaard understood this so well! “The present writer…” he wrote about himself, “can easily foresee his fate in an age when passion has been obliterated in favor of learning, in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can be easily perused during the afternoon nap.”
I write for publication but my works seem a little out of the box, confrontational, prosaic. My books are not best sellers. They appeal more to the deep thinkers while most contemporary Christian writers tend towards writing fast reads. What do you write? Who are you writing for?
Will you dare to disclose a reality that was not there before? Will I? Great truths can be told in fiction. Poetry’s razor edge slices deeper still.
Can you be both confrontive and compassionate, call people to account and lift them up to a higher vision of who they could be and how valued they are in the world? Can you pull out of your imagination a work of art that causes the viewer’s spirit to soar? Will you dare to create something that will drive us all upward and onward?
Here is what I feel rumbling around in my spirit and I leave it with you, too: Forget the former things. Behold, it is time to find the courage to create – to encounter the Creator and enter into new vision, dwell in fresh passion, do art for art’s sake.
I’ve been so challenged to step into a more creative zone in my life that I find myself letting go of what I have accomplished in the past in order to make room for the future; and letting go of the fears released by mass media dooms-dayers in order to focus on living fully and joyfully today. Yet, in the in-between space, a swirling chaos of anxiety clouds my ability to receive the next vision for the next story, the next poem, the next book.
Ah! God to my rescue! While working at my computer in a library last week, I looked up from the keyboard to see Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create, staring me in the face. Compelled by my yearning spirit, I reached up, grabbed the book and started to read.
The opening to his book is just as powerful today as it was in 1975 when it was published.
“We are living in a time when one age is dying and the new age is not yet born. We cannot doubt this as we look about us to see the radical changes in sexual mores, in marriage styles, in family structures, in education, religion, technology and almost every other aspect of modern life. And behind it all is the threat of the atom bomb, which recedes into the distance but never disappears. To live with sensitivity in this age of limbo indeed requires courage.
A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings – namely, how to influence our evolution through our own awareness. We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future into a society more equitable and humane.
We are called upon to do something new, to confront a no man’s land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us. This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness. To live into that future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize.”
Rollo May goes on to define courage as not the absence of despair; it is, rather the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. Breaking through and finding the courage to create despite the anxiety and despair brings joy – the joy of total immersion in the creative process
Creative Courage:
Creativity occurs in an act of encounter with the Holy Spirit bursting new ways of seeing and understanding and imagining what could be.
We have a vision, or a moment of intense illumination and we give birth to it. The painter does not seize a tree…the tree seizes the painter who give birth to something through that tree. And out of the encounter is born the work of art.
And yet there is a tension between the encounter and ideal vision – and the expected outcome.
The degree of intensity is called passion. When you feel this intensity it is time to create. Every artist and writer lives for this moment of passionate flow for this passion is giving birth to the art form that is destined to be created. There is no such thing as passionless art.
Dare to be different:
You need an encounter with the Holy Spirit to conceive the work of art. Otherwise, you run on mere talent and practice well-worn techniques; sacrificing art for mass appeal.
“We worship technique-talent- as a way of evading the anxiety of the direct encounter,” Rollo May points out.
Kierkegaard understood this so well! “The present writer…” he wrote about himself, “can easily foresee his fate in an age when passion has been obliterated in favor of learning, in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can be easily perused during the afternoon nap.”
I write for publication but my works seem a little out of the box, confrontational, prosaic. My books are not best sellers. They appeal more to the deep thinkers while most contemporary Christian writers tend towards writing fast reads. What do you write? Who are you writing for?
Will you dare to disclose a reality that was not there before? Will I? Great truths can be told in fiction. Poetry’s razor edge slices deeper still.
Can you be both confrontive and compassionate, call people to account and lift them up to a higher vision of who they could be and how valued they are in the world? Can you pull out of your imagination a work of art that causes the viewer’s spirit to soar? Will you dare to create something that will drive us all upward and onward?
Here is what I feel rumbling around in my spirit and I leave it with you, too: Forget the former things. Behold, it is time to find the courage to create – to encounter the Creator and enter into new vision, dwell in fresh passion, do art for art’s sake.
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Get ready to write your book in 2009!
Fri, Feb 2009 09:54 | Permalink
It’s 2009 – have you started that book you were always wanting to write? Life is short- go for it! In case you need a little inspiration check out this list of authors that I have helped mentor along until they published. Some approached me tentatively, with a whisper of an idea that evolved into a shout in paperback. If you are interested in having me mentor you along your writing project, feel free to contact me at juliascribes@yahoo.com.
Authors I mentored in 2008 as they wrote their books and published or are pending publication (all are available or will be available on Amazon):
Sue Rashotte - Heaven’s Heartbeat, non-fiction inspirational by Canadian author and theologian (Guardian Books, 2008)
Jane Smith - Henley and the Hendersons, series of children’s fiction (Tate Publishing, 2009)
Mary Trask - Written in Stone, non-fiction inspirational (Destiny Image, 2009)
Jill Austin - Flying Lessons, non-fiction, prophetic (Charisma House, 2009)
Rony Reyes - The Apocalyptic Anointing, non-fiction, apostolic book (Emeth Press, 2008)
Authors I am currently mentoring and I have no doubt that they will find conventional publishers for their books in progress:
Tom Steward - Night Soliloquy, beautifully written, non-fiction book about a father, who is a psychotherapist, grappling with his faith in light of his son’s mental illness (in process)
John Kristensen - Moving to the Kingdom: Commissioned to the Supernatural, Canadian Elim Church pastor’s non-fiction, apostolic book (in process)
Francesca Hafner – An untitled, non-fiction women’s book about friendships and healing the obstacles to deeper relationships in the church (in process)
Judy Franklin – An untitled, non-fiction inspirational about how to enter into visions of heaven (in process)
Authors I mentored in 2008 as they wrote their books and published or are pending publication (all are available or will be available on Amazon):
Sue Rashotte - Heaven’s Heartbeat, non-fiction inspirational by Canadian author and theologian (Guardian Books, 2008)
Jane Smith - Henley and the Hendersons, series of children’s fiction (Tate Publishing, 2009)
Mary Trask - Written in Stone, non-fiction inspirational (Destiny Image, 2009)
Jill Austin - Flying Lessons, non-fiction, prophetic (Charisma House, 2009)
Rony Reyes - The Apocalyptic Anointing, non-fiction, apostolic book (Emeth Press, 2008)
Authors I am currently mentoring and I have no doubt that they will find conventional publishers for their books in progress:
Tom Steward - Night Soliloquy, beautifully written, non-fiction book about a father, who is a psychotherapist, grappling with his faith in light of his son’s mental illness (in process)
John Kristensen - Moving to the Kingdom: Commissioned to the Supernatural, Canadian Elim Church pastor’s non-fiction, apostolic book (in process)
Francesca Hafner – An untitled, non-fiction women’s book about friendships and healing the obstacles to deeper relationships in the church (in process)
Judy Franklin – An untitled, non-fiction inspirational about how to enter into visions of heaven (in process)