Joining in With God’s Creativity

A few thoughts about Creativity and Worship

Steven Pressfield, in The War of Art, spends time speaking about the Muse. You come to the page, or the canvas, or whatever it is for you, every day and pray. Pressfield says his prayer aloud, reading each day the invocation of the Muse from Homer’s Odyssey. If you haven’t read The War of Art, you can read about Pressfield’s process here.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

You don’t know if the Muse will show up, but she does, a not so small miracle of the creative process. Many artists sense that, when creating, the art arrives simultaneously from deep within themselves and from somewhere powerful outside of themselves. The Muse visits, whispering the in the artist’s or writer’s ear, or simply showing up on the page among the words, mysteriously present all along, unseen before revealing herself in the art itself.

Could the finished work of art be also already present before the artist even begins? Michaelangelo famously said "The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material." Art-making can feel like a work of uncovering. A writer senses a story beyond themselves that is then discovered in the process of writing.

The writer, the artist, is always on the verge of something. I would imagine a comedian’s process is much the same. They observe, they write, they try something out. They know there is something funny there if they could discover, uncover, or unlock it. They feel on the verge.

Writers take language apart. They learn sentence construction. Painters learn brush techniques. But beyond skill, we need the Muse to show up, and show up she does. She is there before the writing begins, guides the draft, reveals herself in revision, and mysteriously stirs in the reader when the prose is just right. But there are no guarantees with her. The artist can master technique but cannot control the Spirit. The revelation of anything divine is on heaven’s terms. Any help from above in the creative process is not conjured, but gift.

When I speak of divinity, I am always talking about the triune God. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Is the Muse the same as the Holy Spirit? That is the kind of question some religious folks want to answer, I suppose. Could be. Regardless of who The Muse really is (will the real Muse please stand up!), I believe that it is the Holy Spirit who speaks in Scripture who also whispered in Homer’s ear, and Jane Austen’s, and Steven Pressfield’s, and mine, and yours!

How can human creativity not be connected with this God who is so wondrously and diversely creative? I mean, what kind of God creates giraffes? I’m sure there is some evolutionary process that can explain why giraffes are as they are, but contemplating such things feels equivalent to only ever analyzing Shakespeare and never standing in awe at the language or never wondering about the genius of the one who could write both Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Even though God is at work well before we show up for our own creative work, show up we must. Even though God could force the issue with us, could compel us to do the work, God doesn’t operate that way. God seems to wait for us to make a move, and yet it’s not as if God is waiting to see if we will get our act together, or if we will acknowledge the Spirit.

It is more that God is wild and wonderful out there in the world and also right next to us in our lives, waiting for us to be in the posture of receptivity. Art-making is like a container that God is waiting to enter. I would never advocate putting the divine in a box. But I think I might advocate box-making each day to see if any framework we put forth is one in which God might play for a while.

We cannot see the Muse, but we can see Giraffes and Pine trees and the Grand Canyon. Those things are not God, nor are they part of God, but as part of creation, they do show us something of God, the creator. And somehow in our own creative acts we come alongside the ever-creating God. Help is given to the artist it seems from far outside. Transcendent help, sometimes even transcendence taking over. And that far-outside-ness is somehow also deep within, closer than anything. Transcendence and immanence at once.

The divine is only ever fleetingly accessible, yet creativity and its cousin (the wonder we might hold as we notice some created work whether by human or divine hand) seem to draw us somehow nearer. When we create or when we stand in wonder or appreciation, our receptivity meter goes up. It’s as if God notices us as we do our noticing, or perhaps it is that as we move through the creative process, the Muse inserts herself into it.

Perhaps the Spirit cannot help it. She sees some play going on and joins in because it was always originally her game. She made it up, she made the rules, and we, when we come to page or canvas or garden bed to plant some seeds, are only just catching on. It wasn’t that we needed to start the thing off so that God would show up for us. No, it was God who started it all along. Our showing up is just us getting another game token and hitting the start button for the continuation of our part in God’s grand creativity.

This is also, incidentally, what worship is like. There is a worship of God happening all the time. All creation joins with the host of heaven in praising God. Sometimes we gather together as human beings to worship God. We show up for praise and prayer, putting human language to the ongoing praise of heaven and earth. Our showing up is a big deal but we aren’t conjuring the Spirit. No, we are joining in what is already going on.

Sometimes in our gathered corporate worship we feel the presence of God, and then sometimes it all kind of falls flat. Creative work is like this too, or maybe that is just all of life. Sometimes we don’t quite feel what we’d hoped to feel, or understand what we’d hoped to understand, or experience what we’d hoped to experience. But, we keep faith and we show up to hope once more.

If it’s been a while either in a worship service or in some creative pursuit, we might spin our wheels a bit. Sometimes we feel dead stuck. We hope for help. Sometimes we plead for it. We need to be reminded that, yes, the Holy Spirit will show up, or more accurately, that God is with us whether we “feel it” or not.

We need reminders, prompts to begin, to get going, to pay attention, to tune in. Sometimes it’s as if we need a “Previously On” button for our creative lives to remind us that the Spirit has been here before, and will continue being here.

Perhaps this post could be that reminder for you, that prompt to move from “previously on” to hitting the play button on your life, or on that creative project that has stalled. Grab that game token and join again in the endless play of our ever-creative God.