Blessed Are the Makers ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church
May 7, 2023
Today is a day of many blessings. We feel the blessing of the warm sun after what has felt like a prolonged cold and wet spell. But on a day like today, we can almost see the buds and the leaves growing as we watch, and we feel blessed by the earth. We might think we understand the science of growth, but still, there is wonder and magic in the emergence of all this life. It feels like a miracle.
Today we are blessed by the presence of artistic creativity among us. All the energy of our makers: our painters, sculptors, fabric artists, and photographers, has been brought here for us to share. It is a blessing.
This week, as people brought their pieces to the church, I had a chance to talk to some of you about the nature of creativity. We all seemed to agree that it feels like a mystery: where does it come from? There’s that question again: the magic and wonder of a creative force, emerging around us.
At a time of the year when life is bursting forth all around us, with color and growth and birdsong, the presence of a creative, animating force, a creative process, can be easier to imagine. What is this? Does it have a name?
Poets, philosophers and theologians all have different names for this force, this generative power that fosters creation, and creativity. Ralph Waldo Emerson described this force as The Oversoul, describing it in these ways: “There is deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is accessible to us…when it breaks through our intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through our will, it is virtue; when it flows through our affections, it is love.” (excerpts taken from Singing the Living Tradition, #531, The Oversoul)
I would add, when this power comes through our hands, it is creativity.
A beatitude, Emerson called this power. A blessing. The name I use for this animating, life-sustaining power is Love, pure and simple. There is a loving energy that generates life and fosters it. By Love, I don’t mean affection, or human love. I define this Love as the drive of life itself. We see this all around us in springtime; an energy, a will to live, a power so strong it can push tender shoots through pavement. And we witness this in our human lives as creativity.
We will never be able to understand the creative force by analyzing it. It defies our knowledge – not our understanding, but our knowledge. In order to understand it, we must respond to it. Creativity is a force, a power, that calls to us. It is much broader than artistic or musical or literary talent. We respond to a call to be creative when confronted with a difficult problem to solve. Think about these past few years here at church: unable to have in-person services or activities, we figured out all sorts of new ways to build community. Now that we are back together in person again, we continue to try new things: lunches together, and today, a first-ever art exhibit. That life force is strong here. We are very blessed.
It takes courage to respond to that call from the creative force of life. It’s easy sometimes to pretend to not hear it, to not feel it. It takes courage to envision something, and then try to make it. My courage failed me last summer. One of my goals for my sabbatical was to make myself a stole. I had the beginnings of a vision, and I shared it with some colleagues, who brainstormed with me, and flooded me with ideas. It became more and more elaborate, and it would have been spectacular. I got as far as creating a pattern for the stole. But in the end, my courage failed me. I knew that the suggestions and the vision had gone beyond my sewing skills. I gave it up. I still hear the call to create fabric art, but I am waiting for a combination of vision and skills to align. Only then do I think I will find the courage.
Our makers who have offered something of themselves for us to see and experience have great courage. They have to have courage at least twice! First they needed the courage to try to express their vision. I know something about that. And then, they had the courage to share their work with the rest of us. Both of those kinds of courage are vital. Without courage a piece would never be brought to life. And without the courage to offer their creation to the wider world, the creative force would be stymied, would be blocked.
The author Elizabeth Gilbert had this to say: “A creative life is any life where somebody consistently follows their curiosity more than their fear.” (from Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
To live a life in which you have the courage to be open to curiosity, to say ‘yes’ to those creative impulses, even if you’re not sure you can do it, is to be blessed. And to be able to share what you have made is a blessing to everyone else. The more we are surrounded by the evidence of the creative force, whether it is seen in the new green shoots and the tiny leaves, or in beautiful pieces of art and music, the mysterious force of creativity is allowed to open and is given more room to expand and to grow. It’s an endless cycle of blessing, given and received.
It’s a joy, today, to be here in this space surrounded by all the blessings we have been given. May we receive these blessings with love and gratitude, and may we find ways to bless the world in as many ways as we can, every day.
