Creativity
June's Soul Session
Hi I’m Debbie, a spiritual director, writer and mother based in Glasgow. I offer stories, ponderings and gentle invitations to share a moment with your soul. I host a monthly Sunday Soul Session in my home. This is a time for quiet reflection, playful creativity and warm conversation, and my Substack started as an overflow of that event. I regularly share my Soul Session themes here, and this month our theme is Creativity.
Well hello friends,
This is your monthly(ish) invitation to take a pause and ponder with me. So prepare yourself an iced beverage or a classic cuppa, grab your journal and join me for some Creativity meanderings and prompts. My Soul Session themes are always approached as Wells: practices and postures which lead us to the deeper parts of ourselves. This is an opportunity to pause and pay attention to ourselves and our lives as we consider creativity.
Pause
What have you made recently? When we think of creativity, we can often jump to words and pictures, and maybe you have played with ink or paint recently. But perhaps you prepared a perfect snack, or a fancy feast? Maybe you’ve developed a new system to organise something or maybe you’ve made a mess? A creation this weekend that I was particularly proud of was a back garden obstacle course including plant pots, cat carriers, folding chairs and a rock.
Some Ponderings
What is creativity? It is not only drawing and writing. It’s problem solving, developing spreadsheets, it’s how you decorate and organise your space. It’s a skill we can develop and it’s also a process. Creativity is something we can tap into and something we already have. We struggled to define our creative endeavours at the Soul Session: what makes an act creative? Cooking can be both dull routine, or a colourful, satisfying process. The intention and presence that we bring is significant.
In her book ‘If Women Rose Rooted’ Sharon Blackie interviews Lucy Pearce who says that creativity is:
“about using human energy to shape things into form, to revision the world.”
- Lucy Pearce
I love the potential evoked in this definition. But I also love this simplicity:
“Creativity is making stuff out of other stuff”
- Damon McLeese1
We know that creativity is regenerative, that it’s good for our mental and emotional wellbeing. I value and try to nurture my kids’ creativity, even when it seems to involve a constant mess. But I neglect my own creative practice: why is it so hard to take space for this when I know it feeds me? I wonder what gets in the way of your creative expression? What would it be like to nurture our creativity? Or to bring presence to the everyday work of our hands?
I bump up against a familiar resistance here, we’ve met before when reflecting on play. It can be hard to choose to tune into my own needs, to do things for myself when there are always always other demands on my attention.
Like play, creativity can feel self-indulgent and unnecessary or it becomes a pressure of another thing I must do. It’s always worth peeling back the resistance, noticing what it has to tell us. Underneath I find the familiar challenge to care for myself, to protect time and space just for me.
We see children inhabiting their creativity easily. Every day I am shown doodles, duplo sculptures, masterpieces involving too much sellotape. Adults are busy with life’s tasks and duties, but we’re also less comfortable with risks, with giving things a try. In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert notes the way that perfectionism gets in the way of our creativity. She states:
Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.
- Elizabeth Gilbert
We can be paralysed by the belief that there’s only one ideal version or outcome, so we don’t even start. How would it be to play? To let go of expectations, outcomes and performance? How would it be to allow the process to be enough?
A Few Prompts
Respond to these however you want: journal or doodle or play:
Creativity turns up in all sorts of guises - where is she already hiding in your life? How does it feel when you find you’re in her company?
What prevents you from engaging with creativity? Approach these stories you tell yourself with gentle curiosity.
Try out freewriting: write continuously for 5 minutes without worrying about the topic or it making sense or being ‘correct’.
Take a colouring in page and colour over it, ignore the lines and play.2
A Practice
Hosting Soul Sessions gives me an opportunity and excuse to follow my own curiosity, to ask questions and hear the wisdom of others. The Creativity discussion in my house a couple of weeks ago has stayed with me. It has gently nudged me from time to time. I hear the invitation to pay attention, to turn this lens of creativity on to my actual life. I want to be present and capture these fleeting moments, but so often I lack the structure or discipline.
So my practice for the summer months ahead is to creatively capture my own mundane, miraculous days. I’ve adopted ‘Little Stories of Your Life’ by Laura Pashby as a companion.
“Telling the little stories of our lives is about cherishing what truly matters to us, making memories, capturing life creatively, and finding out what makes us who we are”
- Laura Pashby
What ‘Little Story’ can you notice and capture today? What ordinary moment can you lean into: writing it down in glorious detail, or capturing in a photo or picture?
Considering creativity has reminded me of the need to be intentional, it has reminded me that the process nourishes me too. I’ve remembered that I see the world differently when I’m looking for patterns and connections and trying to capture my perspective. My aim is to take time each Sunday to notice, choose, and create a record of one everyday moment. And now I’ve said it aloud to you, I’ll actually need to do it.
May you catch opportunities for play and creativity and may they nurture you.
With love,
Debbie
From Damon McLeese’s Ted Talk Reclaiming your Creativity at Any Age, worth a listen for his Grafitti Grannies and a reminder of the power of everyday creativity.
There was some resistance to this at our Sunday Soul Session. It just felt too wrong apparently.
I so love this! Creativity, to me, is a fundamental part of our being: when we let it into the light we flourish in our whole being, not just the parts involved in creating. There’s something about honouring our intrinsic nature in that…And I definitely connect play and creativity, and value it so deeply. A pathway to freedom and life, even if there’s no tangible end-product!
Brilliant post xxx
So thought provoking and encouraging Debbie. Thank you.
Michele