From Reluctantly to Faithfully Creative

Spirituality for Ordinary People

Note: The personal essay below is most of this podcast episode. You may either listen or read. Your choice!

As I’ve attempted to move toward a more regular pattern of writing, I’ve decided to change the name of this Substack newsletter and also change the name and essentially re-launch my podcast. Both will now be called “Faithfully Creative.”

My aim is to stay on the same trajectory that I’ve been on—writing and speaking about creativity, imagination, faith, spirituality, theology, God. The banner of “Faithfully Creative” is broad enough to encompass all of this, but hopefully it will provide a bit of focus as well.

Before I lay out some specifics, I have a small confession, and then a bit of a personal story.

First, the confession…

As I look back on my life, a lot of the time I have been reluctantly creative. It may not seem like that to the outsider looking in. But the outsider can’t really see fully in, can they? They can’t see my hesitancy, fear, my almost-devotion to second-guessing.

I’ve been in this world long enough to know know that imposter syndrome is real and won’t ever fully go away. I also know that I do better when I lean into creativity. I am more fully alive when I engage in creative practice. I am most myself when I have regular occasions to explore something new.

This confession is reason enough to call this newsletter and associated podcast “Faithfully Creative.” The name is aspirational for me. I want to be less reluctant and more faithful toward the creative call.

I promised you a story…

I was a very shy kid and teenager. I certainly never would have wanted to be on a stage and yet when I look back I am surprised by the stages I ended up on.

My entire grade nine english class had to be in the play. Our teacher, Ms. Peterson, wrote it with some help from William Shakespeare. It was called “The Shakespearean Spell,” and it had two modern-day narrators who provided the thread that strung together scenes from various Bard plays that featured the supernatural.

We, of course, had the witches from Macbeth and Hamlet’s ghost. A Midsummer Night’s Dream provided comic relief. I can still remember my friend having to play the part of Bottom and kind of loving it, especially the scene where he got affectionate attention from Titania. I ended up having two roles from different plays. Other than my horror at having to perform in front of actual people, I was basically okay being Hamlet. I wasn’t as thrilled to play Oberon who is dubbed “king of the fairies.” I was shocked that my fellow mid-1990s teen thespians didn’t make more innapropriate jokes than they did.

After the rousing success of the grade nine play, a few of my friends got the acting bug. At least I think they did ,because in grade ten and eleven they went about pressuring the same english teacher to let us do more.

We did a read through of “The Lady’s Not for Burning” by Tom Stoppard but I can’t remember putting it on. We did end up performing scenes from “The Princess Bride.” We chose the part where the man in black bests the swordsman, the giant, and the so-called smart one. I got to play the “smart one” who lost to the man in black in the battle of wits to the death, a role played in the movie by a short bald guy. Perfect for my lanky fifteen-year-old almost 6 foot 3 frame. Still, this one was fun.

In grade eleven, we put on “As You like It.” More Shakespeare!

Anyone in the school could audition for “As You like It,” but the cast was mostly my friends. I perhaps should mention here that I never saw myself as the centre of my friend group. I was by far the most reserved out of all of them. But, I was also the only one out of all of them who sang. I’d always been in the school choir, I had sung in church, and my family sang together, The Beatles and “The Sound of Music” on long road trips most memorable.

I had sung some solos before with school choir and I hadn’t yet died on the spot, so I put my name in for the part of Amiens, the singer. He had barely any lines besides two songs. That suited me just fine. A very minor part was perfect for me.

Two people who were not part of my friend group were cast as Orlando, the lead. They would act in the role on two nights each of a four night run. At least that was the plan. A number of weeks into rehearsals and the two male leads had only shown up a handful of times. Something about hockey practices and prior commitment to the team.

Ms. Peterson (still the same teacher) came to me and asked if I would take on the role of Orlando. Every fibre of my being said no. But somehow my mouth didn’t translate what the fibre of my being was screaming. In fact, my mouth didn’t say much of anything while the gracious and ever-encouraging Ms. Peterson went on to tell me that she thought I would do an excellent job.

Somehow, at the end of our conversation, I was the new lead, and with no understudy that I can remember. I would go on all four nights. I think I enjoyed it. Mostly, I remember being terrified.

In grade 12, with all this acting experience under my belt, I was determined to be in the high school musical. Our school hadn’t done a full production musical in a few years, but there was finally going to be one. I had seen my older sisters be in them and for me they were on par with professional theatre.

I was hoping for something really good like our family favourite, “The Sound of Music.” And then the word came that we’d be doing “Grease.” There were screams of delight mostly from the soprano section of choir. I was horrified. I hated that musical. I rationalized that I had some moral qualms about it, but I think I was really masking my fear.

I could see myself as a good Captain von Trapp—refined, serious, basically having to just stand there most of the time while Maria and the kids did all the dancing. Sure, there was a bit of a romantic part, and then a little bit of child-like joy toward the end, but he wasn’t the real lead, and it was all very controlled, subtle. There was nothing subtle about being a greaser. That wasn’t me at all.

I decided, though, that “I would always regret it” if I wasn’t in the musical in my grade 12 year. So I auditioned, hoping to get a small role just so I could always remember the experience of being in the high school musical. They got everyone to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” rather than something from “Grease.” That was good, except maybe it wasn’t, because I could sing the “Wizard of Oz” song no problem and actually sound good.

It never really occurred to me that I could turn down a role once offered. So, that was it. I was the lead again, but this time it was Danny Zuko. I had to grow my hair long for the role throughout the year, and I actually ended up letting it grow even longer after I graduated. In my first few years of University I had shoulder-length hair. I have friends who still comment on the time when I had long hair. Well, it was starring in Grease that started it all.

I do remember having a ton of fun in “Grease.” I remember being pretty good too by the last of the five-night run in front of the hundreds that packed the school gym for each show. The drama teacher came to me on closing night and told me that he “really believed it” in the final song. That was high praise from him.

When I look back on different parts and stages of my life, I see certain through-lines. Lately, I’ve been noticing the ones that are about creativity. I’ve also noticed an initial reluctance or resistance when it came to creative expression. Acting in plays in high school is a good example of this.

The same English teacher that got me into acting for those few precious high school years also tried to encourage me to do more creative writing. I remember writing a piece for her class where we had to describe a house and then look out a window and describe what you saw. Her feedback was so positive, but I wasn’t interested in creative writing at all.

I barely recognized that Ms. Peterson was trying to help me. I’m ashamed to say that it was easier to make fun of her a little bit behind her back for being “super artsy.” I guess I’m kind of one of those “artsy” people now! I probably was then too but didn’t really realize it.

Mostly, I thought English class was lame. I ended up not doing more creative writing than was required of me in class and instead focussed on math and computer science. I think I was drawn to those classes partly because I was good at them, and also because I was very black and white in my thinking. I wanted there to be straightforward answers to problems. Perhaps this is, in a strange way, what drew me to church because, at least as it was presented to me as a teen, Christianity provided clear answers to life.

As a pastor, and just as a human, I feel quite differently about things now. I know that life is nothing like finding a solution to a math problem.

Ms. Peterson saw something in me that I didn’t recognize and I have barely ever given any credit. She persisted with me. In my grade 12 year she invited me to consider trying for valedictorian. In our school, valedictorian didn’t go to the person with the highest grades. My grades were good, but they weren’t the best in the school. No, for us, teachers invited students to try out. You wrote a speech and would deliver it to a small panel of teachers who would choose someone to be valedictorian. Then one or more of the teachers would help the selected student to polish their speech in time for the graduation ceremony.

I was horrified by all of this. I had overcome some of my fears of being on stage from being in plays and the musical, but at least in those cases I was acting, pretending to be someone else, delivering lines written by someone else. Being valedictorian meant it would be just me… all alone… saying my own words that I had written. I couldn’t do that. Ms. Peterson didn’t push me on this and someone else gave the year-end speech.

That one teacher encouraged me to be in the school plays (she succeeded on this one!), nudged me in the direction of creative writing (which I thought was completely stupid at the time), and invited me to be a speaker (which I flat out refused out of fear). As an adult, I ended up speaking on a weekly basis as a pastor, and the year I turned forty I wrote and published my first novel. Three more plus a novella followed over the next nine years.

But no, I don’t have plans to take up acting!

Mostly, I tell this story from my teens to illustrate a larger pattern that has sometimes shown up for me. One where I was initially reluctant to engage in creative practice.

But now I am becoming more attentive to the possibilities, enjoyment, and fullness of life that opens up when I push past reluctance and embrace my own creativity. So, I am focussing on being faithfully creative. Here’s what I mean by that term…

First, what do I mean by faithful?

At its most basic level, I mean regular, consistent. Being faithfully creative means habitually engaging in creative activity.

Faithful also means more than just putting in time. Being faithful to something or someone is more than just showing up. There is heart to faithfulness. I am faithful to my wife and faithful to my daughter and that kind of faithfulness is more than just being there. I wonder about what it means to be faithful in this way to creativity. Perhaps this kind of faithfulness means “staying true” to the creative vocation. And by vocation I don’t mean a profession. Vocation means calling and I believe that creativity is built in to our calling to be human, but more on that to come as we go, I’m sure.

When the word faithful is used, it also has spiritual or religious connotations. This is intentional. In addition to being an author and podcaster, I’m a Presbyterian pastor. I’m deeply interested in the intersection of faith and creativity.

Creative work in my experience requires trust, which is essentially another word for faith. This may be trust in God, in a higher power, or somehow trusting in the creative work itself to guide, or for God to somehow be at work in or through the creative work. We might explore this idea more as we go as well.

What do I mean by creative?

I thought about providing you a whole bunch of definitions of creativity from authors and artists, but you can search for those yourself if you really want to. Instead, I’ll just say these few things:

* Creativity has something to do with newness or innovation.

* Creativity is about making. It is about craft and not mass-production manufacturing.

* Creativity has something to do with imagination.

So what are we talking about when we say “Faithfully Creative?”

Being faithfully creative can mean staying true to creative acts. This might mean something as simple as showing up daily to write, or turning up in a studio to paint or to record music. Faithfulness is about developing a habit, which also allows for the development of craft, of refined technique, which further opens up greater possibilities for creativity.

Jazz might be one of the best examples of this. Hours and hours of practice enables the mastering of the craft so that in the moment beautiful improvisation can take place. The musician imagines how they could sound, they practice, they experiment, and that opens up new imaginative possibilities, new playgrounds of sound. The same is true of essentially any creative endeavour.

Being faithfully creative can also be about staying true to creativity, to prioritizing it. Beyond simply showing up for acts of creativity, faithfulness as “staying true” is about following the creative path. Being faithfully creative is about following where creative impulses and the commitment to craft lead.

In putting these words together, I am interested in a kind of grounding for creative expression in faith. I bring some theological assumptions to this. Three big ones…

* God is faithful. Most of the time, when we think of faithfulness, we are thinking about our own faithfulness. But, fundamentally, God is faithful. God is dependable. God is there for us. God “stays true.”

* God is Creative. This should be a no brainer except that, a lot of the time, even those who believe in God behave as if God just created things a long time ago and then just let it all spin. In other words, we tend to think God WAS creative rather than God IS creative.

* Human Beings are created in the image of a Creative God, so creativity is central to being human.

Faithful creativity for me has something to do with God being faithful and with my own faith being lived out through acts of creativity. Increasingly, for me, this has been writing. But writing is obviously by no means the only thing for everyone. There are a myriad of forms: art, gardening, music making, parenting, travel planning, counselling, and on and on.

None of this is a straight line. There is a meandering creative journey. This doesn’t mean that we can ordain everything creative and everything faithful. But I would rather err on the side of affirming creativity rather than shutting it down. We have likely had too many people thinking “I’m not creative.” I was one of them. I honestly thought I was not particularly creative because I limited my idea of creativity to drawing ability, and when I attempt to even draw stick people they are almost undecipherable.

Let’s have an expansive view of creative work and not one that is bound by the categories of only professional “creatives.” E.g. photographers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers, etc. If you think you are not really a creative person, I respectfully disagree. You are creative because you were made in the image of a creative God.

To wrap this all up, let me pull on another thread from my own story…

I started a podcast in 2017 which became the Spirituality for Ordinary People Podcast. I had self-published my first novel by then and it had been out for almost a year. I had also put out two short non-fiction books that were loosely based on sermons: Let God Be God, and Let God Be Present.

I loved listening to podcasts, and about a year earlier I had been challenged to try using Facebook’s new “Live” feature, which I did. Every once in a while, someone still tells me that they really loved my Coffee and Psalms daily devotional that I did live on Facebook in 2016. Doing that daily Facebook live gave me confidence to try out starting my own podcast, which I thought would be a great way to promote my non-fiction books.

It turned out that my podcast didn’t really do much to promote the books, but I LOVED podcasting. It was interesting to me that my original motivation to start a podcast about Christian spirituality came from kind of negative mindset where I judged particular forms of spirituality as weird. I called the podcast Spirituality for Ordinary People because I didn’t like what I then considered fringe ideas. I wanted to do a podcast that was straightforward, something for just “regular people” that was accessible and wasn’t too “out there.”

I discovered a few things along the way:

1) In the end there are no ordinary people. Everybody is their own person, everyone is quirky.

2) The breadth of practice within the Christian Tradition is astounding and it is ALL helpful. Originally, I believed there seven core practices to focus on: Reading the Bible, Prayer, Corporate Worship, Community, Service, Giving, Sabbath. In some ways these might still be helpful categories, but they are categories not practices, and something like the category of “prayer” is pretty massive. I learned about Examen, Centring Prayer, Praying the Hours, Prayer Walking, Pilgrimage, Labyrinths, and more. Something else that I didn’t anticipate was learning about the Enneagram, something that when I first saw it decades ago, I thought perhaps it was something from a Satanic cult. Ummm - no. It has turned out to be one of the most helpful tools in understanding myself. I also learned a lot about breathing, meditation, mental health, and psychology.

3) While I enjoyed learning about the broad landscape of the Christian Spiritual tradition, I just didn’t have the drive to continue a podcast on this topic. What I really loved, more than the subject itself, were the conversations I was having with the many creative people, often authors, who were guests on the podcast. I also loved making something. I loved the creativity involved in putting the podcast together.

As I look back, the Spirituality for Ordinary People Podcast started to wind down when I took a job as the coordinator of the New Worshipping Communities project for The Presbyterian Church in Canada. I learned so much about starting new ministries through this work that I did half-time for three years. While doing this job and still being a pastor in a local church half-time, I didn’t really have the time to keep the podcast going like I had previously. It had been an almost every week podcast for over 100 episodes. But the big thing was that I was getting the opportunity to meet and speak with a different set of creative people. I got to have conversations with and support people who were attempting to start new communities of faith.

In both of these spheres, hosting a podcast on spirituality and leading a church-starting network in my denomination, I witnessed incredible creativity and also stalwart faithfulness. I might describe what I observed among writers, musicians, theologians, pastors, and others as creative faithfulness. They were finding creative ways to live out their faith, and to lead others in doing the same. So great!

For much of my adult life I have placed the emphasis on “being faithful.” I asked questions like “what is God calling me to do?” I had some core things to commit to like Church, Bible Study, Prayer, Community. I became fascinated by new (or new to me) ways to live out those core commitments.

In my church-starting work I would speak about how churches need to take risks and adopt a broader ecclesial imagination. We often used language of “innovation.” It was really all about embracing creativity while remaining faithful, or being creative in faithfulness.

Lately I have felt a nudge to centre creativity itself, and for me, particularly, that means writing. I feel invited to be faithful in showing up to the page to write. Not to be too semantic about it, but, I feel called to be faithfully creative rather than creatively faithful.

In the end, though, I don’t really want to split hairs. Let’s just do it all and see where it leads!

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