My favorite part of this year’s NYS Homeschool Convention was listing to Andrew Peterson’s two talks on “The Place of Imagination in God’s Kingdom”. I was so inspired by his perspective and points, I promised to share some of my notes with you.
From my Journal, June 4th, 2010
Creation is an act of communion with our Creator…One of the ways we bear God’s image is how we create. The opportunity to put something in the world that wasn’t there yesterday – is a gift, and a way we mirror God’s image.
We are entering a great mystery when we create – brushing up against Creator God.
Art gives us a way to understand great truths…Life may be best understood as a story.
Art reminds us that we are not alone…our stories intersect and we are comforted. The Holy Spirit uses stories and songs to lie down with us in our grief.
A healthy imagination waters the garden of hope….We can’t see the end of the story – we must not despair. Don’t lose the ability to imagine that things could be better. Feed the imagination to water hope.
Beauty is a sign of Gods affection – artists are heralds of that affection.
What do you create each day? A home that welcomes all who enter? An outfit that modestly and pleasingly announces, “God made me an individual!”? A few lines of poetry or prose that hold a memory or lesson learned? A meal that nourishes both body and eye? Take pride in what you create each day – it is a way we can point others to our wonderfully creative God!
Books Andrew Peterson quoted from or recommended:
“Dear Theo” – autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh
“Walking on Water” – Madeline L’Engle
“On Faerie stories” – the Theology of Creativity – J.R.R. Tolkien
“Jesus Story Book Bible” – Sally Loyd Jones
And Andrew’s own fiction series for children, The Wingfeather Saga”
I have always felt a deep longing to create things. The needlework and crafts I have done over the years have brought me great joy. I too look on this as coming from God, the great Creator.
Jeremy mentioned some of Andrew Peterson's thoughts at the campsite the other day and I was hoping you'd blog some about it.
I have an author friend who wrote a book on the role of creativity in a Christian's life and one of the things I identified so much with was the idea that people always say they “aren't creative” because they tend to pigeon hole creativity as pertaining to crafts, painting, traditional art, etc. and disregarding gardening, or music, or writing, or decorating, cooking… etc. so they undervalue things that they COULD be creating.