from Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet by Matthew Fox
When we consider creativity we are considering the most elemental and innermost and deeply spiritual aspects of our beings. The great mystic Meister Eckhart asks: "What is it that remains?" And his answer is: "That which is inborn in me remains." That which we give birth to from our depths is that which lives on after us. That which is inborn in us constitutes our most intimate moments-intimate with self, intimate with God the Creative Spirit and intimate with others. To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community.
This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy. Imagination brings about not just intimacy but a big intimacy, a sense of union with the cosmos, a sense of belonging and being at home, of our knowing we have not only a right to be here but a task to do as well while we are here. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard says that "great dreamers possess intimacy with the world." The artist in us and among us shares intimacy, returns one's intimacy to the world, nourishing the community with one's inner experience. This process of intimacy shared feels a lot like a sacred experience.
An example of what I mean can be found in a letter the psychologist Carl Rogers wrote about his work to theologian Paul Tillich. Rogers was very 'secular' in his outlook until very near the end of his life, yet in this letter he confesses as follows: "I feel as though I am somehow in tune with the forces of the universe or that forces are operating through me in regard to this helping relationship." And his creativity as a therapist elicited awe from him: "I stand by with awe at the emergence of a self, a person, as I see a birth process in which I have had an important and facilitating part struggling to be himself, yet deathly afraid of being himself." I do not believe that Carl Rogers at work is that different from any of us in our work and relationships. In our creativity, however it is expressed, we can all feel "in tune with the forces of the universe" and the result of our work often urges us to "stand by with awe." Indeed, we must feel these things if we are to carry on with integrity.
Matthew Fox is the featured speaker for Shalem's Fifth Gerald May Seminar in April 2010