Creative

The need to create runs through our veins, our lifeblood courses with creativity. My children know this, they work under the constant drive to create.

Snow sculptures dot the yard like frozen sentinels. Crayoned drawings of stick-figures, lean and lanky, stand precariously on a green-line horizon, guarded over by the ever-present spikey yellow sun. Children paint with their fingers, spend hours gluing every-day objects on construction paper, draw tirelessly on concrete with fat orange chalk.

They draw on the backs of used copier paper, they draw through reams of printer paper. They model with clay, with salt dough, with their mashed potatoes. When deprived of paper they each, as toddlers, chose forbidden canvasses on which to create…the wall behind the chair, the back of a door, the insides of kitchen cabinets.

They create pictures and patterns with wooden train tracks, with blocks, with breakfast cereal. They make music with whatever is available, instruments intended for that purpose or created from the lids of pots and pans, the jingle of metal rings from canning lids. They sing loudly the songs that come to mind at the moment.

They write story after story, illustrated and bound with stapled construction paper (sometimes read from right to left). Their creations are jolly and askew, they are passionate and unbridled, they are garish and delicate and sometimes heart-rending in their honest beauty. They are the heartfelt expression of an ongoing celebration of life.


Why does this celebration of creative passion slow to a trickle, die out? What do we do to our children (to ourselves) to dry this flow, to desiccate the lifeblood of creativity? Why do we cease to be driven to create?

Do we stop valuing it?

Do we expect to grow out of it?

Are we too busy for it?

Are we too prideful to risk it?

Do we cease to see the beauty of the world, and therefore stop mirroring it?

My prayer today is that I, as a parent, as a child of a Creative Creator, remember that creative passion and have the courage to tap into it every day. My prayer is that I find ways to encourage my children to continue to follow their creative passions as they grow, that they continue to be unafraid to praise God with whatever media strikes their fancy. My prayer is to remember that the creation of any form of art…painting, music, the written word, the act of placing a beautiful purple weed plucked from the grass into an empty glass jar…. is about the process of crying out joyfully to the world, the act of echoing the beauty of it all with the creative nature inherent in each of us….created in the image of the ultimate Creator.

Need some inspiration today?

Discovering the one thing you may have forgotten about you
Create Your Own Storybook (Youngest is working on hers in the photos above)
Recipes for craft clay
Bob Ross teaches how to paint a sky….
Create beautiful paper sculptures…just print out and fold!
Poetry at High Calling Blogs
Frame and display your child’s artwork (or your own!)

4 thoughts on “Creative

  • February 22, 2010 at 7:13 pm
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    This is a wonderful post! Perhaps the fear that what we create is not as good as others keeps us from continuing (I might would fall into this category). Perhaps even the medium changes – my husband is in construction and always is creating – decks, remodeling rooms, building houses, painting. Just a few thoughts as I was reading. Look forward to checking out your links and sharing with my children.

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  • February 22, 2010 at 8:10 pm
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    I think you’re right…my biggest block to creativity is fear that it won’t measure up. And the medium does change…you’re so right! Building, sewing, cooking, decorating…they are all creative outlets. In a very special way, so is raising your kids! Hmmm, maybe fodder for another post? Thanks!

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  • February 22, 2010 at 9:37 pm
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    i love this. Thanks for sharing, the creativity of kids is truly wonderful.

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  • February 23, 2010 at 6:41 pm
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    When I need to toss something other than a smelly bit of garbage, I need to do it quickly and discretely for fear that my little man will snag said item and make it into something! We have so many toilet paper rolls turned to swords and string bits strung together for animal snares that I really have to watch my step.

    Isn’t it amazing to see their genius flow along those creative streams when we give them the tools (clay, paper, scissors, paint, wood scraps, nails, hammers, dough, and even ‘taters) and freedom to form from their imaginations?!

    Love it.

    Reply

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