Creating. It’s A Gift.

It started with a book suggestion from Karen.

I read the book, skimming some parts and really soaking up and resonating with others. It was one of those books I have to let sit and simmer for awhile. The kind that take some time to process and takes even longer to implement into my life.

Since then I have read this post by Jeremy Larson. This quote struck me the most:

The feeling of wanting to create something so big, that your imagination scarcely has enough space to hold it. These are the ideas to frighten and excite me the most…I felt that it may take me the next 17 years to create it; not knowing if there will ever even be an audience. I don’t know if I even care at this point.

And just tonite I read this post by Keri Smith. This quote struck me the most:

Lately I feel like withdrawing a bit as I have become tired with the “look at me” feel of the internet. How can one share their work with the world and at the same time not feel the need to promote it and in turn receive praise and admiration?

Reading these blog posts tossed me back to re-read and re-wrestle with the quotes I had written down while reading “The Gift.”

Let me share with you some of my favorites:

Create things which you will not “publish,” things which you will not show people. Write secretly so you can be free to say whatever you want. It means abandoning your careerism, giving up as hopeless, abandoning the possiblity of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world and just settling in to the muck {READ – IMPERFECTion} of your own mind – a resolution to just do it for yourself, just writing what yourself is saying.

So long as the gift is not withheld, the creative spirit will remain a stranger to the economics of scarcity. It is the talent which is not in use that is lost or atrophies and to bestow one of our creations is the surest way to invoke the next. Giving the first creation away makes the second one possible.

We are sojourners with our gifts, not their owners. Even our creations do not belong to us.

Spiritually you can’t be much more poorer than (when you’re) gifted. You KNOW it doesn’t come from yourself.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of prison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up. - May Sarton

What are we to do as artists, as creative people who come from a creative God?

Our dilemma as I see it, and quite frankly I think it’s a human dilemma because I believe all have the capacity to be artistic in some form:

We want to make something big, bigger than ourselves even.

We want to create, but are paralyzed by others’ feedback or lack-there-of, paralyzed by our fear that the creative well will dry up, paralyzed by wondering if our creations will have economic value and return on the investment.

And yet, if we don’t use the gifts we’ve been given we dry up, we wither up, we give up.

When creating, what is the balance between pride and humility? Between giving and getting? Between empowering others and enslaving them?

I love this quote from “The Gift”:

The artist who hopes to market work that is the realization of his gifts cannon begin in the market. He must create for himself that gift-sphere in which the work is made and only when he knows the work to be the faithful realization of his gift should he turn to see if it has currency in that other economy.

When you’re questioning the value of your creations first, you’ve gotten it all backwards. First we create, we create, we create. Perhaps we will never make it past that part. For others, sadly enough, they will never even make it to that part. But it is, if we are to be honest, where God would have us to begin. First He created. We are made in His image. It is in us, this desire to create. It’s a gift, from Him, to be used, to be good stewards of, to certainly not waste, pawn or gamble.

Sometimes all we need is the freedom to realize it doesn’t matter the value society will give our creation or the time it will take us to create it, what matters is that we are doing it. Living it. Using the gift.

We may be surprised where it will take us. We may be surprised at its endless flow. We may even be surprised at who needs it. But none of these things can be figured out first. They are by-products of the actual creating itself.

How are you using your gift?