1094. Part 2: Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never been seen. ~Robert Bresson

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet
sculptor or photographer or musician or dancer
and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale
’til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
~Edited and adapted quote by
Ralph Waldo Emerson

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How many of you liked to color when you were a child at least until someone said “you shouldn’t color outside the lines?” Or liked to build things that others knocked down for the fun of it? Or loved to twirl and dance around until someone laughed at you? Or beat out sounds on a little drum or hand made flute until someone implored you to quit making that awful racket? There are so many ways that unthinkingly people stifle the creative urge in us when we are young, and then we tuck the urges away until one day we have the courage to pick up that pen or that brush or that musical instrument or those ballet shoes or that camera or whatever to express that our creativity that has laid dormant within us. Wanna know why that urge is there and why it keeps coming to the surface? Scripture tells us that we are made in the image of God, the Creator of all that is. So that need within us is an inextricable part of who we are and it’s there to serve a sacred purpose. Now before you say, “Oh I’m just not creative.” Yes, you are! You have to be because you are part of the Creator of everything. Everybody is creative in some way. Look at all the ways in which Yahweh created. Some of you may be an imaginative cook, or homemaker, or gardener, or teacher, or statesmen, or preacher, or seamstress, etc. Not every one is designed to make music or write poetry or dance the light fandango. There are thousands of ways to be creative and all of them are valid and come from our inherent ability to be creative. Creativity is not a competition. And no one, simply no one, has the right to criticize or discourage us from fulfilling what we have been anointed to do. In fact, in my way of thinking, it’s sacrilege to try to do so. And it is also not for anyone else to judge the quality or the reason or the necessity of what we create. It’s a God-given right and mandate for all that He has made serves a purpose. So I offer the following things to think on:

1) To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong. ~Joseph Chilton Pearce
2) Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. ~Scott Adams
3) All creative outlets require courage. ~Anne Tucker
4) The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. ~Dieter F. Uchtdorf
5) What creativity offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit. ~John Updike
6) Creativity is not a thing; it is a way. ~Elbert Hubbard
7) Creativity is the struggle to understand. ~Terri Guillemets
8) Life beats down and crushes the soul and creative outlets remind one that he/she has one. ~Stella Adler
9) Creativity is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. ~Theodore Dreiser

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So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ~Genesis 1:27  ✝

**Images via Pinterest; collages by Natalie

667. There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground… ~Sara Teasdale

Plink, plink, plinkity-plunk,
Plink, plink, plinkity-plink,
Ting, ting, ting,
Drip, drip, drip,
Ping, ping, ping,
I’ve put myself completely
in the keeping of another rainy day.
Plop, plop, ploppity-plop.
~Natalie Scarberry

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Rain Music

On a drenched earth-drum
Beats anew the falling rain;
First a whispered thrum,
Then a louder strain.
Slender, silvery drumsticks,
On an ancient drum.
Beat the mellow melodies
Bidding life to come.
Chords of earth awakening,
Notes of coming spring
Rise and fall triumphant
Over each and everything.
For God, the Great Musician
Taps out all such transitions.
~Edited and adapted lines
from a poem
by Joseph Seamon Cotter

Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth. ~Hosea 6:3

**Image via Pinterest

568. Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness. ~Julia Cameron

gray, dismal, gloomy-cloudy
brown, beige, falling-leaves
fog, mist, rain-water
muted, chilly, windy-autumn…
Where or where to start the day’s post?
Looking out at the world this morning,
I see all these things and more,
and so now it’s just how to begin?

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The writer has a volume of words, the artist a palette of paints, the musician a range of notes, and all three have a desire to create images that find a home in the human heart. They also have a passion to satisfy longings in their souls with what they create. So the wordsmith employs rhymes, punctuation, syntax and so on. The musician’s realm is concerned with chords, notes, instruments, etcetera. For the artist, it’s easels, canvases, paints and the list goes on. We are all made in the image of our Creator, and therefore we too must create. Okay, okay, before you say but I’m not any of these things, let me just add that these are only 3 outlets for creativity. Gardeners create growing spaces, builders construct homes, teachers inspire learning, homemakers raise children, and on and on it goes. Finally let me quote a definition of creativity that I came across recently: “Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and in some way valuable is created (such as an idea, a joke, a literary work, painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention etc). The range of scholarly interest in creativity includes a multitude of definitions and approaches involving several disciplines; psychology, cognitive science, education, philosophy (particularly philosophy of science), technology, theology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, songwriting and economics, taking in the relationship between creativity and general intelligence, mental and neurological processes associated with creativity, the relationships between personality type and creative ability and between creativity and mental health, the potential for fostering creativity through education and training, especially as augmented by technology, and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching processes.” So it is that you, all of you, were born to create. Explore your options, find your talents, embrace them, cultivate them, expand them, share them!!! They are sacred gifts with a holy and powerful purpose.

Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath. ~Hebrews 6:17   ✝

** Mixed Media Image via Pinterest

529. Music expresses that which cannot remain silent and that which cannot be put into words. ~Victor Hugo

If I were not a physicist,
I would probably be a musician.
I often think in music.
I live my daydreams in music.
I see my life in terms of music.
I get most of my joy
 in life out of music.
~Albert Einstein

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My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. ~Psalm 57:7   ✝

328. Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

We are mosaics–
pieces of light,
love,
history,
stars–
glued together
with
magic
and music
and words.
~Anita Krizzan

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Wordsmiths we are, we who pen our thoughts and feelings upon the page, scribes who search the depths of our hearts to share the terrors in our “dark nights of the soul” and the heights of ecstasy in our glad times and victories for if we touch such things in others, we connect in our vulnerable sameness, grief is halved and joys doubled. The artist who paints upon a canvas or sketches on paper does the same with the images he/she creates as does the musician who marks notes upon a staff. The creative urge is deeply rooted in the human soul, and our yearning to bring what’s inside to the surface is a way of getting to know God, our Creator, for we are, after all, made in His image.

This is what God the Lord says–the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it… Isaiah 42:5  ✝

Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you save, you heal, you restore, and you reveal Your Father’s heart to us! You have captured me with grace and I’m caught in Your infinite embrace!