Getting Creative With Creativity

I had the opportunity to participate in the BYU Women's Conference this week with a sharing station on Family Work.  There were nearly 100 of these booths on various subjects filling a gymnasium.  So many inspiring ideas from great women.  I felt privileged to be a part of it. 

I especially loved being there with Abby and my sister, Carolyn, who both helped me in the booth. (I never did get a picture with Carolyn!)

I ran into so many old friends I haven't seen in years, met new friends, and got to spend time with some of my very favorites:

 When I was asked to participate, I was given the assignment of

"Creative ways for involving children in household activities." 

I thought to myself: "Please, No.  I'm not creative!"  At least I don't feel creative.  I like to copy other people's ideas.  The really good ones.  That's generally how I operate.  In fact, this past year, I've been especially perplexed by my lack of creativity-  wondering what TO the world I have to offer that is uniquely me.  That's probably why I was asked to do this booth.  It forced me to take a look at something so fundamental and routine in our house and transform it from abstract to concrete (i.e. pull it out of my head and present it visually for all to see.)  In the process, I learned that perhaps I really have created something that is uniquely mine.  A combination of elements I've pulled from other people, other sources and re-worked, re-shaped, re-vised, added to, to create a system that works in our home. 

Wow.  Can it be?  Can I really consider myself among the "creative" of the world?

Theoretically, I know that somehow every single one of us is creative by nature.  After all, is not God The Grand Creator?  And are we not all Children of that creative God?

I suppose I've always thought creativity had to mean coming up with an innovative idea from absolute scratch:  like the telephone.  Or creating something visually expressive.  Artists, scientists, inventors and writers are creative.  Painters, poets, composers and dancers, too.  I have a smidgeon of that type of talent, presently lying dormant.  But I read something recently that gave me a new perspective on creativity.  In Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham Maslow says:

"One woman, uneducated, poor, a full-time housewife and mother, did none of these conventionally creative things and yet was a marvellous cook, mother, wife and home-maker.  With little money, her home was somehow always beautiful.  She was a perfect hostess.  Her meals were banquets.  Her taste...was impeccable.  She was in all these areas original, novel, ingenious, unexpected, inventive.  I just had to call her creative.  I learned from her and others like her that a first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting, and that, generally, cooking or parenthood or making a home could be creative while poetry need not be; it could be uncreative. "

I am not that woman.  But do you see how he expands the definition to include, for instance, beauty?  Despite being poor, he says, "her home was somehow always beautiful."  It wasn't any one particular thing she had created, it was a feeling.  I love to think of creativity from this perspective.  To think that

I don't have to come up with an ingenious new product or paint a pastoral scene on canvas.  I can be creative emotionally. 

Maslow continues with such an example: 

"Another was a psychiatrist, a "pure" clinician who never wrote anything or created any theories or researches but who delighted in his everyday job of helping people to create themselves.  This man approaced each patient as if he were the only one in the world... Each patient was a unique human being and therefore a completely new problem to be understood and solved in a completely novel way.  His great success even with very difficult cases validated his "creative" way of doing things."

Isn't that precisely what parenthood is all about?  Parents are creative- not only in the sense of giving life to their children, but in all they do to shape their characater; to help their children create themselves. 

Activities, processes and even attitudes are creative. Relationships can be creative.

Anything we bring to life is an act of creativity.  Even a state of being. 

I realized that while our Family Work system at home is just a conglomoration of half a dozen ideas from other people and a few of my own- it is the way I put them together and the perspective with which I approach it which can be unique and creative.  But more importantly, because of it, I can literally create a feeling of order and harmony in our home.   I am creative when I succeed in bringing a feeling of peace, love and happiness into our home through a myriad of other ways I try to approach life and parenting.  Believe me, I am not nearly as successful as I would like to be!  But those feelings, more than any sculpture, painting, gadget or system, are what I desire most to create. 

I am creative, folks!  And so are you!  No more going around declaring that we just aren't creative.  Humbug!  We are!  Every single one of us!  Think about it.  And delight in it. 

Because this just might be your contribution to the world! 

 

 

All Work and No Play

Makes this Jill a very dull girl.

And an even duller Mommy.

I have lock-jaw.   It's been nearly two weeks now- two weeks of not being able to bite down, not being able to chew without a lot of pain.  It's a great way to feel miserable.  Unless you just finished reading The Hiding Place like I did.  I'll take TMJ over Ravensbruck any day, thank you very much.

I've had lock-jaw twice before: When I got engaged (the first time... ) And during that year after the twins were born.

What does that tell me?? Hmm.....

All I know is that while I bulldozed around the house today trying to catch up on the usual business in an unusual state, the following played in my mind like a broken record:

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy....All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy....All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy!...."


And then, what d'ya know, Craig flew in from out of town and starts rattling on about an article he read on the plane. Just guess the title of the article:

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF

PLAY!

"I think you need this." He said, with a big grin on his face. 

Oh boy, oh boy do I need it.

Listen to this-- from the article:

"Dr. Stuart Brown...conducted a study on murderers [and] discovered that 'the absence of play in their childhood was as important as any other single factor' that distinguished the murderers from normal people."

Hurrh?

It also says this:

"Our bodies know it. Our brains know it. Now science has proven it: Adults and kids both need stupid pointless fun."

Stupid.

That's not exactly what I had in mind.

But Hey! Whatever it takes!

Got any ides for some STUPID pointless fun??


=)

Impatient for Impatiens

Once upon a time, we moved.  For the tenth time.  I didn't want to move.  I was weary of moving. But it needed to happen.  It always seemed that just as we were settling into a home, just as I felt it was safe to start a garden....or plant some flowers.... our world would turn upside down and there we'd go again. 

I've come to see flower beds and gardens as the great sign of stability.  Every flower bed or pot I've planted over the years was an act of faith-  faith that perhaps, maybe, we were home at last.  But over and over again, I would leave behind the beginnings of those beds and half-grown planters, never once being able to see them fully realized. 

I dream of overflowing impatiens.   I love their sweet little petals and late summer colors, and the way they fill in a spot with August loveliness.  To me, they sing "home." 

Every time I move, almost the minute we've unpacked, I begin scouting out the yard- searching for the perfect spot for my irresistable bouquet.  Only once have I actually planted them- for so long pregnant or nursing or toting little ones, moving in, moving out, settling in, settling out.  Even then, they failed to thrive...and then we moved.  It just never happened the way I envisioned.  A perpetually unfulfilled dream.

I was feeling it keenly when we moved to Virginia.  It was late July.  Too late for planting.   [sigh...]  I soothed myself with the thought that this was to be our last move for a very very long time.  The day would come...soon. 

 My Mom had flown into town to help out with the unpacking, when, one afternoon she spotted a little flower poking out of the soil in the front yard.  Just one. 

"Oh!"  She said.  "It looks like you have a little impatiens here!" 

"What?" I crouched down and took a look.  Sure enough.  There was one little pink impatiens plant randomly growing in our front yard. 



I smiled. 

Before the summer was out, two more little plants popped up.  I was pretty sure God was winking at me. 

The next spring I planted pansies, but it was just to pass the time and fill the space until I could adorn it with impatiens.  All the while, I schemed and dreamed of my bursting beds.  Summer came, and busy-ness along with it. Visits to and from family occupied our days.  The week I had mentally calendared for planting my impatiens arrived and we found ourselves making a last minute decision to visit family sites in Pittsburgh with Creighton's parents.  I didn't say it out loud (because who makes a decision like that based on a prior commitment to plant flowers?? ), but I worried that this trip might thwart me once again.  It would be too late to plant when we got back. 

I let it go.  Again.

Our trip was so good.  A once in a lifetime visit that we'll remember forever.  I drove home satisfied that the loss of my flowers was worth the gain. 

We arrived home after dark, bleary-eyed from a long drive, and tumbled into bed. 

The next morning, I woke up and was in the kitchen when I noticed smatterings of pink and purple flashing through the window.  I peered out and could not believe my eyes.  Whisking myself out the side door, this is what I beheld:

 

A complete and utter miracle. 

Only God could have produced something so wondrously beautiful in a matter of days.  And in proportions exceeding even my own dreams and expectations!  I had to catch my breath, I was so overcome with inexpressible delight. 

"How on Earth?!!!" I marveled, aghast.

  

"For You."  heaven whispered.