In our consumer culture, January has become a month for organizing. But at ERUUF, our theme for January is “Creativity,” and creativity is anything but organized—it’s often an act of great messiness and chaos. When we create, the categories get mixed and lines blur; odd and wonderful things happen and something completely new is sometimes the result.
In Genesis the Hebrew Bible begins, “In the beginning all was without form and void…and God said, “let there be light,” and there was light…” And then God made the heavens and the earth and filled the earth with plants, animals, and people. Creativity is the basis of all life; creativity is the basis of our particular life the story says.
Houston Smith writes, “All of us dwell on the brink of the infinite ocean of life’s creative power. We all carry it within us; supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted and cannot be destroyed. But it is hidden deep, which is what makes life a problem. The infinite is down in the darkest, profoundest vault of our being, in the forgotten well-house, the deep cistern. What if we could discover it again and draw from it unceasingly?” (The Religions of the World)
What would it be like to stop searching for philosophic answers and just make something? Pick up some bits from your garage and play with them until they fall into an arrangement that just feels right and enjoy it as a temporary sculpture? Use up that stash of old yarn by knitting some 5x7 squares that ERUUF’s Clickers could sew into an afghan? Pick up a child’s tray of watercolors and some paper from the Scrap Exchange, and watch how the color spreads across a blank page? Dig a garden bed and transplant some seedlings, or plant a pot of herbs? Share stories or do some improv theater games with friends, and draw something more out of each other than you’d ever imagined?
This month we’ll be exploring creativity in services, in small groups, and on-line over at the Facebook ERUUF Practices Group.
