# of questions about creativity=many; answers=none

“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer.  That’s the answer.”  (Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946)

1. Is everyone creative?

2. Why does it feel wrong to say no and not quite right to say yes?

3. What is the difference between creating something and making something?

4. In Hebrew only God can create; humans make and God creates.  What does this mean?

5. Does being “creative” always involve restlessness?

6. If creativity a force, where does it come from and where does it go? 

7. Why does creativity seem so far away sometimes, and so close other times?

8. Is being creative a choice? 

9. Is not being creative a choice?

10. Why are we attracted to the idea of creative genius?

11. Why would having answers to these questions feel both comforting and dissatisfying at the same time?

Joyce Carol Oates wrote: “[Emily Dickinson] was not an alcoholic, she was not abusive, she was not neurotic.  Neurotic people who go through life make better copy, and people talk about them, tell anecdotes about them.  The quiet just do their work.”

12.  Oates means this to be normalizing, comforting, challenging the idea of the tortured artist.  But Emily, were you…sane?

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Blood-Red and Black/More on Creativity

Still wondering about creativity, still immersing myself in some of the vast quantities of material out there, and am very grateful for all of the amazing work that has been and is being done to explore the connections between creativity and “madness.”  But to steal (and probably badly paraphrase) a line from “Beowulf”: “tis not very far from here and ’tis not a pleasant place.” 

Poet David Whyte has said that stifling your creativity is not a passive act; he likens it to letting the smoke build up in a chimney–the greasy, black smoke that slowly backs up into your whole house, and if you did light a match to it, it would burn your house down.  This is suffocating and paradoxical imagery–you need to allow creativity to move as a force, but some forms of its movement are life-threatening.
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Lost (and Believing in Found)

I’m in the midst of preparing for a Heartland Writing workshop on creativity that I’m giving on January 30th, and being “in the midst of” is just what it feels like.  There is so much material on creativity out there, so many points of entry into it as a “topic”–creativity as a marketable workplace asset, creativity as a skill to be taught, as a mode of behavior, as a stereotype involving either chaos, alcohol and mental illness, or bright colors, trips to Michael’s, and pieces of felt. 

The two biggest categories for me with regard to creativity are: safe and unsafe.  Is being creative safe or unsafe or both? I don’t know, and that’s why I’m doing the workshop, which is called Creativity and the Quest for Meaning.  My planning for this workshop has been stealth planning–read a little bit of this, think about a little of that; try not to feel overwhelmed.  Mostly it’s been sitting in or next to the midst of material in my head, heart and study, and closing my eyes and not thinking at all.

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“Praising Manners:” A Guide to College Classroom Etiquette for Students and Faculty

“Praising Manners”

We should ask God
To help us toward manners. Inner gifts
Do not find their way
To creatures without respect.

 –Rumi

In General

The pursuit of learning is a noble act. To learn and to teach are among the most fundamental of human activities. Who has not known the impulse to learn and the wish to inspire?

Let us remember that we make an unspoken contract every time we step into the classroom. We assume the timeless roles of teacher and learner, with all of the powerful hopes and expectations that govern these roles. We enter into a relationship whose purpose is, as Yeats described it, “the lighting of a fire.” Nothing less than this is what takes place in the classroom. When approached with the proper spirit, this work elevates and inspires all who participate in it.

And yet, how often do we experience the classrooms of our campuses as dull, fatiguing, and discouraging, sodden with the unfulfilled hopes of both teachers and students? Very often. The classroom is meant to be an arena of inspiration, creativity, and preparation. When we disregard this, we end up in the airless vacuum of confusion, resentment and stifled growth.

And yet, there is hope. Truly wonderful teaching and learning are often viewed as a kind of alchemy, a magical experience out of the reach of most lay practitioners. This is not so. The relationship between the student and the teacher is a social one, and like all social relationships, it is governed by rules of behavior. It is governed by manners. By this we do not mean merely the prevailing social customs, which can be fleeting and arbitrary, but rather the timelessly honorable manner of how we speak to and treat others. The absence of manners in the classroom distracts from the ennobling acts of teaching and learning. The presence of manners may remind us, as the poet says, of the inner gifts that await us when we practice respect and discipline. With this in mind, let us begin.

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it’s the little sins god punishes right away

A few nights ago, in these days before Christmas, I was driving through the downtown streets of the small city where I live, and I saw a woman looking into the window of a resale furniture shop. It was evening, and she was standing in a circle of light from a street lamp wearing a black coat and a long purple scarf. She was looking in the window as if she really wanted whatever was inside, leaning in towards the display with her face close to the glass. I watched her as I sat stopped at a red light, and then in my rear view mirror until I couldn’t see her anymore.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an adult look at something with such unashamed wanting. With young children, you get used to naked displays of desire. There’s never a moment when my kids don’t want something, desperately, and I don’t mean care or attention, I mean actual things. But as adults, you try to learn moderation, control. I once tried to explain to my oldest son, who is 10 and fierce with wanting, that it was “okay to want things, that everyone wants things, but most of the time, we have everything that we need.” I said this in a kindly, enlightened voice, and he, through gritted teeth, said, “But it’s never all in the same place at the same time!”

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a heart-felt holiday

A repost from December 2009. It’s worth it.

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Having neither spectacular accomplishments nor grave misfortunes to report, and, to be honest, having exhausted the vein of humorous family anecdotes over the years, I will tell you instead that we are all well and fine, and hope that you are too.

Instead of Srajek family details, which are really much the same as any other family’s day-to-day lives, I offer this story about something that happened to us this time last year, at the start of a long Midwest winter.

In our local paper there used to be a kid’s feature called “Letters to the Editor,” where school kids responded to a question from the editor, and then some responses from each school got published.  One week last December, Jacob’s answer to the question “What is the top item on your Christmas list this year?” turned up in the paper.  He wrote that since he wanted to be a carpenter when he grew up, he had “always wanted” a carpenter’s plane.

If he didn’t get that, the number two thing on the list was “lots of nice building wood,” a response that makes him sound quainter and less electronically minded than he really is, but, well, he was probably writing what he knew had the best chance of getting published (they’re never too young to play to the crowd).

About a week after his response appeared in the paper, we received a letter in the mail from a woman we did not know. She apologized if we were not the parents of Jacob Srajek, said that she had looked us up in the phone book, and she hoped her writing was not an imposition to us.  A clipping of Jacob’s letter was neatly taped to the corner of her own letter, which was printed on paper with a decorative floral border.
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why laundry is better than meditation

About seven years ago, Jack Kornfield, meditation teacher, writer and psychotherapist, wrote a book called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.  As someone who feels pressured by concepts like enlightenment and mindfulness, I was thrilled when I first saw this book. Its common-sense title gave me a secret feeling of relief. I hoped it meant that I wasn’t the only person who was deeply uncertain about the possibility of finding joy in the mundane aspects of my life. I even hoped it would say that ecstasy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, just to take the pressure off.  But, as when I came across a book in the library called, “Prayers for Dark People,” and giddily assumed it was for people like me who want legitimate space for weirdness and doubt in their faith lives, it didn’t pan out.  “The “Prayers for Dark People” turned out to be a book from the 40’s for African Americans, and Kornfield’s book is more about how ecstasy IS actually all it’s cracked up to be.  And, with the right mindset, you can find it pretty much anywhere, like the laundry room.
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