Ways of Seeing: The Connections between Creativity & Spirituality

Art and religion, creativity and spirituality, often these are either pitted against each other or live in a sort of uneasy relationship--particularly through history religions have not been good to to the arts and the arts have sometimes had to be sort of controlled or felt they were controlled by by religions. 

 

But I don't think it has to be that way. The fact is that human beings are essentially in our very core, our essence, creative. We are spiritual and and we are relational and those three things all dwell within us in a united, cohesive, interconnected way. They're not separate things. They are different rooms we might go into at different times to do different things. In fact I think it's the same sort of core internal processor inside of us as human beings that enable those three things-- that enable us to be creative and spiritual and relational.

 

Just think about it: in relationships it's really important that we learn to listen. The

same is true in spirituality and creativity. Compassion, empathy, intuition, learning to engage and receive information in ways that aren't just our logical rational sides of ourselves, as important as that may be, are important for relationship, for creativity, and for spirituality. So is

aspiration and and hope and having an intention about what we do and and who we are.

 

So all three of those things are actually woven together and it makes this tension between creativity and spirituality, religion and art, unnecessary and kind of sad, frankly. 

 

I want to share a couple of other things about this this interplay of both religion and art. We can speak of it in this way: that they're actually completed in in relationship, in community.  So for example I want you to just think about it for a moment--when an artist imagines and intuits and senses an inspiration to do or to make something that doesn't just live inside of them. They make something, they create music, they write poems, they make a movie, they sculpt, they paint, they dance, whatever the creative expression may be they they do that.

And it's not just for the expression of their own inspiration for their own satisfaction, although that's certainly incredibly important, but it is so that other people can somehow experience something of what the artist experienced and and take part in it. We offer those things as

creative people so that others can can taste somehow and and then what happens inside of others is a whole new experience takes place and and in effect something new connected to that original creativity that we've received from other creative people--something new connected to that gets created in us and what's beautiful is when that can be shared back so art is created but

then completed in community.

And the same is true really of religious experiences. Think of of religious founders or religious leaders that people learn to trust and follow and learn from. They don't just have internal

spiritual experiences that they sit with and keep to themselves. They find ways to share that. That can be shared in the form of teaching certainly, and story, books, poems, music, art. The great religious founders created whole traditions of religious ceremony and ritual and symbolism which are art forms. They functioned very much as artists and that's so that other people can share in a very living and vibrant way those spiritual experiences and so that we can have

 

So in our very essence as creative spiritual relational beings we do these things so that we can share them and complete them together with one another. A piece of art, and a religion so to speak, is not complete until other people have a chance to share that and then those other people add to it because of what happens in inside of them, again tuning into those things with the same core processors of who we are as human beings which is that intuitive creative imaginative, empathetic, compassionate self that really is who we are in our in our essence. 

 

So I like to think of it this way: that in some ways religious founders, religious leaders, are like creative spiritual people or spiritual creatives and artists are like creative spirituals, so we both have that interplay of spirituality and creativity at work. The great world religions I think are actually chronologically, in long development, great works of of art and I think art, great art, is very much akin to an offering of a of a religious insight or a spiritual insight. I prefer the terms spiritual and and creative versus art and and religion, but I think you know you know what I'm talking about.

 

So what this means for us as human beings in terms of coming into the fullness of who we are as people and and really the fullness of our essence as human beings--it means that we're most

fully alive when we can integrate artistic and spiritual wisdom into our lives in relationship with other people. When we can integrate spiritual and creative wisdom in community with other human beings that's when we really can grow in the fullness of who we are as human beings.

 

And I look around at the world today I'm sure you do as well, no matter where you look, no matter which country's headlines you look at, we could use more people who are coming into the fullness of their artistic, creative, spiritual, relational and communal selves. 

 

May there be many more people like that in the world discovering the fullness of who they are.