#62 Participating in Creation
There is something mystical and magical and deeply satisfying about participating in the process of creation. Where before there had been nothing--maybe just a vision of possibility--through our own efforts now there is something real.
Just recently my husband and I realized that we were present to both a desire in our community for child-friendly service work and some very concrete needs of a struggling extended family. After checking with the family and finding a date, I made a proposal to the community-and there has been enough enthusiastic response that the idea has become a reality. Something exists where nothing had been before. I'm still kind of amazed. I feel like a magician who has waved a wand and successfully produced a rabbit out of thin air.
We are dying to be creators. The eight to eleven year olds I spend the mornings with at a summer conference are wild to make stuff. They will happily spend hours with the simplest of materials, making things that have never been made before-just for the sheer joy of exercising their creativity. The girls at our neighborhood Catholic school, where a friend and I have started a homemade "Simple Gifts" club, want to learn everything-to sew and knit and crochet and embroider and make dolls and doll clothes. (If we had the capacity, I'm sure they would love to learn to saw and drill and hammer and make wooden knick-knacks and toys as well.)
It can be an enormous pleasure to shop for beautiful fabric, or richly colored and textured yarn, or the best cooking ingredients, or fine quality paints to create with. But buying too much of the process can sabotage our creativity. Gluing little foam or metallic shapes or pretty papers to precut forms, or cutting slices off a cookie dough roll to put in the oven, just isn't as satisfying-somebody else has already done too much of the work. I prefer the presto-change-o something-from-nothing projects: making patchwork quilts from fabric scraps, paper beads and butterflies from old calendars and magazine pictures, cushion covers from discarded neckties, candy from orange and grapefruit peels, flexible little people from colored telephone wire, snuggly bunnies from odd socks, bouncy balls from found rubber bands.
I wonder sometimes about all the people I know who identify as artists and would love to spend more time doing art. I don't think it's because we're more creative than we used to be. I think it's because we have fewer outlets. Where we used to create, we are now expected to consume. Games that my family played with pencils, paper and imagination are now sold in boxes. We buy ready-made clothes and dinners and toys and furniture and art work and birthday parties and entertainment-all of which used to provide opportunities for creativity.
Our initiative and power are sapped. Somehow we have to believe more fully in our ability-in our right-to create. Every time we choose to act on that ability and that right, we choose against passivity and for participating in the creation of our future.
Just recently my husband and I realized that we were present to both a desire in our community for child-friendly service work and some very concrete needs of a struggling extended family. After checking with the family and finding a date, I made a proposal to the community-and there has been enough enthusiastic response that the idea has become a reality. Something exists where nothing had been before. I'm still kind of amazed. I feel like a magician who has waved a wand and successfully produced a rabbit out of thin air.
We are dying to be creators. The eight to eleven year olds I spend the mornings with at a summer conference are wild to make stuff. They will happily spend hours with the simplest of materials, making things that have never been made before-just for the sheer joy of exercising their creativity. The girls at our neighborhood Catholic school, where a friend and I have started a homemade "Simple Gifts" club, want to learn everything-to sew and knit and crochet and embroider and make dolls and doll clothes. (If we had the capacity, I'm sure they would love to learn to saw and drill and hammer and make wooden knick-knacks and toys as well.)
It can be an enormous pleasure to shop for beautiful fabric, or richly colored and textured yarn, or the best cooking ingredients, or fine quality paints to create with. But buying too much of the process can sabotage our creativity. Gluing little foam or metallic shapes or pretty papers to precut forms, or cutting slices off a cookie dough roll to put in the oven, just isn't as satisfying-somebody else has already done too much of the work. I prefer the presto-change-o something-from-nothing projects: making patchwork quilts from fabric scraps, paper beads and butterflies from old calendars and magazine pictures, cushion covers from discarded neckties, candy from orange and grapefruit peels, flexible little people from colored telephone wire, snuggly bunnies from odd socks, bouncy balls from found rubber bands.
I wonder sometimes about all the people I know who identify as artists and would love to spend more time doing art. I don't think it's because we're more creative than we used to be. I think it's because we have fewer outlets. Where we used to create, we are now expected to consume. Games that my family played with pencils, paper and imagination are now sold in boxes. We buy ready-made clothes and dinners and toys and furniture and art work and birthday parties and entertainment-all of which used to provide opportunities for creativity.
Our initiative and power are sapped. Somehow we have to believe more fully in our ability-in our right-to create. Every time we choose to act on that ability and that right, we choose against passivity and for participating in the creation of our future.
posted by Pamela Haines | 1:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home