Friends,
It’s been a slow, dry season for me to get free to write. It happens. The bulk of the year has been tied into teaching seven week modules on prophecy, creativity and deliverance. We are building in our local church for things now and to come. The joy has been to teach with two or three on the latter two. Last weekend we hosted Streams Creative House members and Tabernacle Diadem. Its purpose was to foster a beautiful space within and without to explore with God. The word beauty is now firmly implanted in my spirit as a vital attribute of God. More necessary today in such a graceless age. I spoke at the Creative Process and the Power of Words workshop. I thought I’d share the text with you in hopes your spirit would feel the movement.
Imagine yourself sitting as Adam with Creator God on the Seventh Day. It was a time set aside to just rest, look and reflect an all the wonder of the previous seven days including the wonder of a personal lack of a belly button and who really is this person God made to help me? Not only are you a child in all this wonder but you emotionally reflect the sense of a child with a trust in a Father beside you. In my mind you would be brimming with questions – the how and whys of plants and photosynthesis, atmosphere and the mist that covers the ground at specified times and what about the behavior of animals, birds and fishes. Taking in the sheer volume of raw material –all this pristine beauty is part of the awe. You know every iota of this creation reflects some portion of the One beside you. You have a lifetime to scratch this itch of discovery.
Creative process requires a reception of an open heart toward a God who is closer than your skin. The flow of all this creation and more, is never seen through your eyes alone. We share these sacred moments with God because he is just that interested in our response. He’s a Father growing sons. We need this give and take glow of our partnering. Later, people will come to this light spoken or written. The quality of your light is dependent upon proximity. In a tribe, we share this light for our survival. Sometimes our collective nights are a bit too long.
The poet David wrote, “How precious are your thoughts God. How vast is the sum of them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” The root word for thoughts is to pasture – to feed. The picture here is Father the shepherd feeding you food for chewing on, for meditation - His thoughts.
Creative process is where we see underlying principles and we turn them into poetry. We consider the raw materials of Genesis: sound, light, movement, essence, life, atmosphere and even time and the encompassing state of eternity. We then stir in a meditative walk or sitting with Holy Spirit, add a heathy portion of our own sweat, tears, ecstatic moments, our life experience of any one area, spread it out with pen or keyboard. Bake in the heat of rephrasing and until the fire is lit within or… you share the first draft with spouse or friend to see if they smile or cry.
Creative process is noticing or re-awaking to see; or fighting to the ground the demon voice that says you can’t or don’t have a creative eye or thought. Your mind is bloody battle ground, heal it with small moments of recognition daily that you notice the people, situations and stuff that God sends your way. Write them down as discipline for six months. Hebrews 5:14 promise of discernment is one reward. Better yet, is to make a journal of your joys. Small things in your daily path that mean something only to you. Try that for a season. New neural pathways can be formed for bad thinking, even aiding healing your trauma, if you change the focus toward the wonderland. Write about it. David the warrior poet king did.
The most horrible poverty is to say we have no gains, no wisdom, no earned authority, no up to date revelation concerning God that made us smile. The slaves among the people coming out of Egypt into an experience of transition could only think of a few vegetables longed for, the sons like Caleb contemplated mountains in their future lit by a supernatural fire by night.
We need a child wonder fueled inventory of resources. Inventory that starts with dreams, visions and garden variety imagination. That drives the desire to play with words, to write, create something. In recapturing play, we must embrace there may be no overarching goal in mind just noodling around with a phrase or observance. Jesus looked at the widow with her two coins and exclaimed extravagance at her faith acting on such a resource. A redeemed sinner women grabs her resource of precious perfume and with frightening intimacy anoints the Christ of God causing those who only shook his hands to be indignant. That’s raw physical poetry and, it was written down. Talk about power, we still speak of her today. Both women shared a spark of imagination added to their resources mixed with faith to write on the pages of our own imagination.
Resources. Before there was writing, there was the role of the raconteur - the storyteller in the tribe. Much of the Bible was written later from stories, holy resources, honed like wave smoothed stones over time. I have listed to Native American story telling with drum accompaniment. I heard the tale but I felt the flow of history under my feet. As people we were created to be washed in creative sound.
I have encounters with the Spirit in my history. So do you. The process of careful noticing the details of your God moments and recording them is important. Here’s one. Along a path by a river in Montana, I walked nearly daily for 11 years in conversation with Father. I returned to that spot to visit some years later. I parked at the cabin we used to live in, crossed the highway and the old silver bridge to the Gallatin River and my old trail, through field and old fences. The feel was the same but the spiritual atmosphere shifted. God suddenly speaks, “Lead creation in worship.” The lengthening shadows lorded over by cliffs in the background, wind and the shifting of clouds, swirling of autumnal grasses and the splash and babble of river song and my voice together. “Rise up! Rise up! Praise the one who set this all in motion! There is none like Him!” I found my place with God on this seventh day again. I found an important nuance in life as a son, relating to the land on a higher level.
Like you, I enjoy the big moments with God. We need them. But I’m a fool for the small things, the nuances that are my grains of sand thoughts, gathered, sifted and noted on paper, napkins or the magic of phone cameras. There’s the Indian family at the airport gate and the care they showed for one another that still warms my heart when it doesn’t beat so well. Behind a hut in Palissa Uganda, the dark night with stars so vibrant you’d swear they were just a few miles overhead. I am listening to young people tell snake stories. We all laugh at the myths they believe, like the snake that coils and springs up so fast you can never out run it.
A summer childhood memory of a green lawn, sunlight so bright you’d think you’d passed from this world and my mom engaging a butterfly that wouldn’t leave its perch on newspaper she was reading. The conversation went on and on. This is the woman that filled the lives of my brother and me with natural history and art museums, good music and reading Horton Hears a Who. “A person’s a person no matter how small.” I have a big backpack of resources.
There’s the squirrel that ran up my back while on my knees praying beside a river. God has interesting ways of saying he sees you.
My grandfather who crafted a built-in dresser for our home, working in a garage with the seemingly meager means of a Skilsaw and hand tools. He let this eleven-year-old help. Twenty years later I made art furniture for galleries. God is in the details of the generations. Write it down.
We write because there are sun rises and sunsets that are notable. Our small band of lambs come alive at days end, acting childlike or frisky and leaping like dogs. This moves me. I am aware lately that the animals that occupy or pass our land have secret lives. If I get up early, I catch these moments, like the morning a line of lambs walked in step in the dewed grass behind a mated pair of pheasants - the pied pipers of the dawn that day. Millie the cat went nose to nose with a doe a few weeks ago. What passes between these two? Is it an acknowledgement that God put the gift of peace here?
We are awash in holy moments. “Give me a scribe”, the kings of old said. The King of Kings is looking for the poets of the moment to write it down. Who knows but by noticing we may catch the next burning bush or like Jeremiah we hear the question, “What do you see?”
There is power in your response.
Blessings,
Rob Mazza
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