Clips from "The Soul Tells a Story"

While on our recent backpacking trip, I finished reading an excellent book by Vinita Hampton Wright, called The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life. For a Christian writer--published or not--who yearns to speak important things well in words, this is a helpful book both in terms of personal enrichment and in terms of approaching the craft of writing.

So for today's post, I'll share some quotes I enjoyed, interspersed with photos of God's floral creativity, as observed by me and relatives on our backpacking trip in the northern Cascades. Enjoy!
"Your willingness to grapple with questions will unnerve people who banned serious questions from their life years ago.... Artists and Old Testament prophets are alike in this; they often see what others can't or won't see, and once they see, they can't keep quiet about it. And people who need the security of the status quo will simply come unhinged in response."

"Creative work will demonstrate to you again and again that the world is bigger and deeper than you perceive, that God has many ways of speaking to your soul, and that the soul itself possesses much wisdom that you simply hadn't noticed before."

"Good life is costly. If you are guided by awareness of and responsiveness to your spiritual calling, you will make sacrifices, and sometimes those sacrifices will involve the creative gifts you love so much. When that happens, all you can do is leave the situation in hands of your Creator, who will hold all of it--the giftedness, the glory, the sacrifices, the losses. Ultimately we must trust these things to God's care and let them go."

"Every time you create something, you are re-creating something that God created, and you are re-creating it in such a way that for certain people it will seem like the very first time they discovered rhythm or kindness or that particular shade of yellow. Our creativity rebirths the world in all of its detail again and again. As artists we name the world and help other people recognize the grace, wisdom and wonder that have been present all along."

"The worst thing about fears is that they slam doors all over the place. They slam doors between you and other people, and they slam doors inside you, in the interior self that has so many lovely places to explore. Creativity might just take you straight to your fears. It might be a helpful exercise to pick a fear and explore it through your art. You never know--your creativity might be a safe place in which you can face your fear."

"When you choose to participate in creativity by trusting the process and allowing the flow to do what it will, you are making a crucial step as a creator and as a person. It's very healthy to accept that you're not in control of most things. You're not in control of other family members, of the weather, of that project at work, of the way a community program plays out. You're not in control, and you were never meant to be. You were meant to be a participant, that's all."

"There are four types of people in the world: those who like you for the right reason, those who like you for the wrong reasons, those who dislike you for the right reasons, and those who dislike you for the wrong reasons. The only people whose opinions should really matter to you are those in the third group: those who dislike you for the right reasons. So you should pay attention to when people find problems in your work. You need to hear the truth that will help the process along, and sometimes that truth will hurt. Sometimes it will come from people who don't have any personal investment in you, but that's not the point. If they speak the truth, then you should pay attention."

"Embrace your personality. Study it, love it, exploit it to the fullest. Find the angles that are specifically yours, and work from them. There are stories only you can tell, because they are intrinsically tied to who you are and who you have been. Keep working on the flaws, the weaknesses, the neuroses. But do it with love. You are just a person, after all, in need of help, in need of a friendly place to live. You are probably already your own worst enemy; it's time to learn how to be your own best friend. No one else can do the job any better."

"Creative people learn to savor whatever befalls them. Sometimes we wallow in wonder, sometimes we wallow in sorrow or confusion. But we learn to notice the finer details, even while those details wound or confuse us. When you approach experience in this way, you do become less of a victim and more of a creator. You gain some power when you choose to partake of any experience more wholeheartedly. You are not merely a person to whom things happen; you are a person who takes hold of whatever happens. That's a huge difference."

"An artist has to become super-sensitive to life in order to notice what others miss and to develop what others may ignore or consider unimportant. The longer you work at your creative gifts, the m ore sensitive you become. Of course this means that you're more sensitive to everything. Not only can you identify multiple textures in that stone wall, but you can identify multiple conflicts in the life of a friend. You notice sadness or anger in the eyes of passing strangers. Increased sensitivity will nourish your art, but it will wear on you at times. You may cry more easily or be more prone to obsess over some horrible event in the news."

"Spiritual growth guarantees imbalance of all sorts. One day you'll have faith, the next you'll feel covered in doubt. One day you will see God, the next day you'll doubt that God exists. This is called pilgrimage. It's also called growth. People who do not experience ups and downs and who do not struggle with life on a regular basis are not balanced; they are more likely stagnant."

"I keep going back to a saying I heard years ago in church: God doesn't call you to be successful, only faithful. I think this is a perfect saying for every creative person to hold dear. You're called simply to do the work. You give your time and energy to the work. You can't worry about the outcome or how much money you'll make. You can't worry about other people's opinions of the work. What's important is your conviction to engage in the work."