Thoughts from a week at Willow, part 1

"[This] can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again,' and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.

It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun, and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy


"Creativity is a moment when we see, not redundancy, but opportunity."

--Nancy Beach, Willow Arts Conference

I feel that most of us are too "old" to see God in the moment. Most of us are too caught up in the minutia of life and the tasks at hand, to notice what a child would notice. I go for a walk and I want to get where I'm going. My daughter goes for a walk and it is the opportunity to point to every street sign, flower, dog... etc.

I often walk to this little restaurant several blocks from my house. I have passed this building countless times and never noticed it. It is actually a pretty neat building. A couple of weeks ago, I was out walking and for some reason, I noticed it. I walked up to it... I noticed the texture of the wood. I looked at the nails that held it together. I noticed the tin pealing off the roof. I really thought it was beautiful.

Nothing profound here, but maybe there is something to getting so caught in the repetition of our life that we miss out on all that is around us. Maybe one of the keys to creativity is breaking out of routine every once in a while to see things in a fresh way. This is one of the reasons I like photography. I try to force my self to see things in a different way that I normally would see them.

But doing new things takes effort. It takes some risk. I guess the question is, "Is it worth it?"