“Every Christian must be part artist. We craft lives of meaning through faith. And this means reaching out to engage those who differ while never losing appreciation for what sets us apart.”
-Father Andrew of Athos

I grew up thinking, you were either creative or you weren’t. I categorized myself as the latter since I couldn’t draw, write or produce drama. I spent most of my life detaching myself from anything that required creativity or imagination because to me that part of my brain just didn’t work.

We are the result of creation, and that means that He who fashioned us gave us the ability and the capacity to also create. We are all artists and poets, and I’ve come to learn that creativity is so much more than painting a portrait, writing a profoundly deep story or producing a moving film.

So what is creativity exactly?

Simply put, you.

It’s you.

It’s you in your daily interactions, in the way you interact with the stranger you meet, in the way you plan a trip to a new destination, the way you take on disappointments in life, the way you come up with an idea to improve your business’ efficiency or sales. It’s you in the way you carefully think out a recipe to make that perfect meal for the ones you love.

Beauty is in creativity.

Our sensitivity to beauty is but a glimpse of how man saw the world before corruption seeped into our very nature.

Understanding beauty is an important aspect when we create. Beauty is not static; it is not confined to any one person’s perception, but it is dynamic in the sense that it continues to develop. And when true beauty is fully cultivated it has the space to flourish in whatever direction it pleases.

Beauty is in the touch of love, in the healing words we can whisper to our neighbor and in how we have the ability to be woven into each other’s lives.

However, the most beautiful work of art is in the work of being made by Grace. It is in becoming the final tapestry of work yourself. In writing songs, you become the song itself, in painting a canvas you become a painting, all for the glory of the One who made you.

Creativity is our vocation.

“Being fashioned in His image means that we are also artists and poets, regardless of our vocation in life. We are artists in the way we love. We are poets in the way we pray. Everyone is an artist.”
-Jonathan Jackson

Creativity encompasses all that we as humans are able to achieve, craft and produce.

Every time we engage in anything then we are engaging in art. We are participating with the Creator Himself and we become fellow co-workers. Our responsibility as artists then is to lead others into a more profound meaning of their existence and ultimately to our collective purpose in life.

But what stops us from creating?

A threat to our creativity is our brokenness. We cannot be creative when we are wounded because we behave, act, think and feel based out of our own hurt. However, when we are in the process of healing, creativity flows freely.

Healing needs to be our companion and teacher, otherwise we roam the earth allowing our wounds to have the driver’s seat, blinding us from seeing our potential to create.

In denying that we are wounded, we deny ourselves of being human. Rather than believing that we have the capacity to become great we spend the rest of our lives thinking so low of ourselves, capping our growth.

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
-Edward de Bono

Creativity can also be threatened by cultural norms. We become entangled with cultural chains that do us harm. They tell us that we have to think in a certain way, follow certain career paths, have the same life goals, act in a certain way, and sadly enough, feel a certain way. We have becomes slaves to society.

It was people like Martin Luther King, J.R.R Tolkien, Steve Jobs who broke through cultural norms. In doing so they created beauty: they created a society welcoming all walks of life, a new world of fantasy that spoke so deeply to the human soul, and technology that echoes throughout the generations.

Friendships inspire creativity.

Friendships are a main ingredient to our creativeness. They allow us to bounce ideas off another and together produce wonder, beauty and awe. We shouldn’t live in isolation from those who encourage our creativity and imagination.

If we do, we end up living in our own cave, having no one to enrich our lives, we suffocate ourselves in our own unspoken words. We are paralyzed in our growth as we become ‘okay’ with the mundane life, with no new sense of adventure, no new flavors to taste in our mouths. We, therefore, cease to live, and in doing so we cease to create. We merely exist but are not alive.

Tolkien could not have completed his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, if it weren’t for the great encouragement he received from C. S. Lewis, and visa versa.

Like Tolkien needed Lewis, I am in need of you.

Freedom is the essence of creativity.

When we are perplexed by hints of splendor, we enter into a union with the ultimate Creator. This breaks our soul’s chains and awakens us to the immortal longing that resides in our heart and the soft whisper that cries out ‘be free and create’.

Be free my friend.

Be free and create.

Others around you are in need of your beauty and creativity.

“Whoever wants to become a Christian, must first become a poet.”
-Elder Porphyrios

(Photo by Manish Ray)

Fragments of the tangible material, gently held in the beauty of the communal, stitched into the mystery of the Ethereal.

This is the anatomy of living; the inner workings of who we are.

We are more than dust and bones.

We are the imago dei, the image of the Divine.

But often life makes dry bones of us; we live as divided humans, one foot in the secular, another in the sacred. We fight to resist the intersect, and our lives become an internal struggle. We exist but are not alive.

Yet, to these dry bones He cries,

Live

Live

Live

For mere dry bones cannot bear the glory of God.

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
– St Iraneus

Collectively Pursuing Wholeness

To be fully alive is to live in awe of the exquisite oneness that all of life is sacred. It is to thrive in the wonder of existence and tread knowing we walk on sacred grounds. It is to reject the notion that anything pertaining to “God” is more “spiritual” than romance, money, art, or any aspect of human life. We are made of material: “the matter from which a thing is or can be made, being of a physical or worldly nature.” Yet we are often stricken by guilt over our desire for the material, as if that desire defiles our godliness. With heads bowed in shame, we wrongly call for a division between all that is material and all that is godly. And in all this we disregard the truth that sacredness lies within the material. It is disguised within the everyday pedestrian life; it is in our houses, at our dinner tables, in our daily work, and in life’s adventures and travel pursuits.

Unashamedly Enjoying Beauty

To be fully alive is to live radically for the beauty in each other and in our own heart. It is embracing the sacredness of pulling off our masks to let our own stories swirl and unravel, allowing them to mingle with the stories of others – stories worth telling, stories worth pursuing. We are made for a communal life: “participated in, shared, or used in common by members of a group or community.” We are persons made for communion, made to struggle daily to show up and cultivate connection with each other. In our communion we are united by the brokenness that makes us one, so that in communion we say ‘yes’ to authenticity and vulnerability. There is sacredness in mindfully practicing hospitality of the heart, of inviting others into a safe, warm space where they can discover their true value and worth. Within the communal we celebrate one another, as lanterns that, only together, will brilliantly outshine the darkness.

Purposely Becoming Like Him

In the torn fragments of the communal and material, the thread that binds these pieces of clay together is the ethereal: “extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world; heavenly, spiritual.” We are a weak and fragile jar of clay, but still He chooses to set His treasure in this moldable vessel. We desire to respond to this call to live as His earthen vessel by seeking the treasure God has hidden for us in the day, to have eyes that see and ears that hear. We desire the eyes of faith that perceive the face of God in a stranger’s kindness, in the abused and the abuser. We desire the ears of faith that hear the voice of God in the sound of falling snow and the flutter of a bird’s wings.

Wrapped in our tale, we journey on into the inner universe of our heart. It is only there do we journey out of time and out of place, into eternity. Into the tale of its unfathomable depths, its caverns of dragons and lions, its secret locked doors, and its uneven rough paths to the entrance of our inner temple, the entrance to Love. Here is where Christ the King comes to take His rest, walking within, dwelling in and placing His Kingdom there. The inner kingdom present within is at the same time the Kingdom of the age to come. The place where we experience the love of God, which heals our every affliction, heals blind eyes to truly see the gates of heaven everywhere. To know His love is to know His face. To be fully alive is to live coram deo, before the face of God. In the communal and in the material, all faces are His.

We behold His face to become like Him.

This is the anatomy of living.

“you carry your snare everywhere and spread your nets in all places. You allege that you never invite others to sin. You did not indeed by your words, but you have done so by our dress and your department… When you have made another sin in his heart how can you be innocent? Tell me, whom does the world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink the poison or those who administer the fatal portion? You have prepared the abominable cup, you have given the death dealing drink, and you are more criminal than those who poison the body; you murder not the body but the soul. And it is not to enemies you do this nor are you urged on by any imaginary necessity, nor provoked by injury, but of foolish vanity and pride.”
St John Chrysostom

Distressed by this perilous power, possessed by us, the carriers of the XX chromosome. A strategic power we oft deny, secretly delighting in its effects.

Because the truth is, we notice a man’s affection, we notice when we are the object of any mans attention. We are not blind, hard-hearted machines that are immune to any form of charm or attraction. A sweet-talking man is a sweet-talking man, as Antarctica summer’s are cold.

And this power I observe upon the consumption of attention and words of affirmation. This power that devours the lustful thoughts of man, intertwined with my deep longing to be the object of man’s affection. This power, a sexual upper hand, knowing that a move in this direction, or a certain look, will hold him captive; reeling the subject around my finger. A power all too often used to seduce and manipulate.

Because no matter where you look, there it is, leaving an undeniable impression; the sultry expression on youthful faces, the come-get-me eyes, the flirtatious words and the promiscuous dress code.

And don’t we all desire to be found appealing? At the surface it is the perfect “subtle” manner to receive that mans’ attention, but at its core, it is the thirst for the alluring power of control.

Though this power be strong, it is hollow, obliterating Truth, and holds the captivators captive.

We only ever hear of men, how supposedly, men hurt, cheat and lie. How men are lustful beings, unable to control their desires. But oft I find that it is we, we who possess this XX chromosome, who are unable to control; we are the merciless perpetrators, with men as our prey.

Because with this power comes control, the control of having him at my feet.

So I take mine to Him. I open His word and as a mirror I see a portrait of my flaunting and enticing behaviour.

She “captures him with her eyelashes, luring him with just a look”

Proverbs 6:25

The words tug and snag and I pull. She is I. I read on and the picture comes into focus and sharpens.

“And behold, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. She is boisterous and rebellious, her feet do not remain at home; She is now in the streets, now in the squares, and lurks by every corner. So she seizes him and kisses him and with a brazen face she (speaks) to him . . .”

Proverbs 7:10-13.

What will be the grand result of my actions? Will I take the world by storm or will I be dashed to pieces on the rocks of deception?

“Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; For she has cast down many wounded, And all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to hell, Descending to the chambers of death.”
Proverbs 7:25-27

With power comes a choice. Under the influence of a woman, cities have crumbled (Joshua 2-6), and kings have caved (Mark 6).

When we travel to the start the truth is laid bare.

“The man called his wife’s name Eve [life giver], because she would be the mother of all the living.”

Genesis 3:20

A woman was created not by accident or chance but with purpose: born to be a helper. A name, an identity, a declaration is given. To be an echo of Christ instead of echoing the world. To encourage and uplift men like many women have done before us.

Feminine beauty was never about radiating sensuality but radiating an aroma of the stunning beauty of Christ, a breath of fresh air…of life.

“So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.”

Romans 14:19.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, “If our hearts are right with God—if we’re walking in purity and humility before Him—the fruit will be a modest external appearance.”

With great power, comes great responsibility. We can reach out to others, spread truth, and encourage the lives around us. This means we have great power. And along with that great power, we are also given the great responsibility to use it wisely.

May we never allow our outward beauty to diminish the beauty He is weaving within our soul.

May we run with hoarse throats, exhausted lungs, and full hearts proclaiming the glorious loveliness of Jesus Christ and not with banners of our own loveliness.

So draw if we must, but let us draw others shamelessly to Beauty Himself.

“How beautiful are the arms, which have embraced Christ-the eyes which have gazed upon Christ, the lips which have spoken with Christ, the feet which have followed Christ. How beautiful are the hands which have worked the works of Christ, the feet which are treading in His footsteps have gone about doing good, the lips which have spread abroad His Name, the lives which have been counted for Him.”
Christina Rosetti

Co-written with Sandra.