BY JEAN P. KELLY

A SINGER-SONGWRITER I know recently shared the backstory of her “overnight success,” a first-ever professional recording skyrocketing to number 20 on Billboard’s Christian chart. “I honestly think I blacked out for two hours while I wrote the song,” she said, adding that surely a Divine force guided the notes on the guitar and the lyrics to go with them plucked from a collective imagination. Her co-writer, she believes, was God.

While that declaration might seem “woo-woo,” for some, I am convinced this creative of deep faith was a channel for God’s ongoing creation of her and others. Why? Just before composing a heartfelt anthem, my friend, a long-time Christian church worship leader, attended a meeting with other queer believers in the congregation. To each other they vented anger, hurt, frustration, but also their abiding love of Christ and desire to live it fully. “Everyone got really vulnerable,” she explained, “It was beautiful. We decided we have something to offer as queer people to the church.

Any desire to create—whether writing songs, making crafts, trying a new recipe, or gardening, comes from a divine source. Creativity is God’s gift to us. That is the thesis of a 30-year bestselling book titled The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (TAW), by Julia Cameron.

When I began the early chapters of the book’s 12-week program, I was confident as a life-long creative that I had nothing to “recover.” But after a few weeks of obedience to the book’s suggested spiritual practices—daily journaling, mini-pilgrimages, meditative walking, and prayer writing, I began to see my creative impulses differently, less as self-indulgent “hobbies” and more as nudges from God toward my own divinity. Then I noticed something else: I was harboring pain about a failed creative project, falling prey to cultural myths about creativity that squash the artist inside each of us.

Any desire to create—whether writing songs, making crafts, trying a new recipe, or gardening, comes from a divine source.
Creativity is God’s gift to us.

Chapters 8 and 9, “Recovering a Sense of Strength” and “Recovering a Sense of Compassion,” respectively, broke me open and allowed me to see in failure the seeds of hope. My first book—a magnum opus of very personal dimensions—never found an audience, prompting me to swear off authorship indefinitely. Until, that is, I followed prompts in these chapters to physically destroy my work in order to construct something new: a papier-mâché pig like one made in third grade and winning an art prize.

Yes, I shredded my own words, destroying an entire paperback edition. Wallowing in anger, resentment, self-flagellation, and blame, I made sure to reserve the title page and my typeset byline for prominent placement on the pig. Dunking these pulpy bandages into homemade flour-water paste, then slathering them onto a balloon recovered a childish delight: all my life, I’ve relished the physical messiness of art. This time I worked quickly, in a fervor, so not consciously aware of how my suffering diminished gradually as the glue and paper dried. While my childhood pig was painted bright with pink tempera, I decided this porker would live raw, showing warts and all. To my eyes, this crème-color creation with drawn-on eyes and a wry smile, a construction arising from destruction, was beautiful.

According author Julia Cameron, losses are often gains in disguise, what she calls “creative U-turns” understood only in retrospect. “Forgive yourself. For all failures of nerve, timing, and initiative. Devise a personal list of affirmations to help you do better in the future.”

A few days later, I did do better as a writer thanks to that cathartic art project. As experienced by my song-writing friend, healing words emerged from my imagination virtually unbidden. Alongside my Creator, I channeled this prayer for all of us, who are both divine creations and divinely inspired creators.

O, Great Creator,
accept my gratitude for the love always making and remaking your creation, including me.

Grant me the grace of discernment so my role as your co-creator glorifies not my ego but only you.

As you nurture my gifts in prayer and praise, show me how best to model and motivate others to create as a form of worship: without fear, without guilt, and with love.

Thank you for the childlike joy when creating, when growing, when sharing, and when feeling perfectly present, which I recognize as your presence.

Help me direct free-wheeling, abundant, and messy creative impulses with patience and appreciation of process over product.

Grant me the grace of detachment from detractors who do not share my enthusiasm, do not understand my work, do not accept my sincerity of faith due to their own pain. Help me love them creatively.

Accept my gratitude for a lifetime of creating—writing, artmaking, digital creation, and collaboration—and for supporters of these vocations as my true purpose. Thank you for the confidence to be my true self as created by you. When discouraged, help me trust the mystery of life’s continuous unfolding, learning, and re-creation.

Grant me wisdom, generosity, and opportunity to share both my victories and challenges so they amplify the creator in all of us and lead others to you as the source of all creation.

Finally, I offer all that I am, all that I do, and all that I create on the altar for sanctification in your love.
Amen.