Presbyterians love the words Holy Spirit. We love the idea of it. We love to invoke the concept. We don't often try to nail down exactly what it is or what's in its job description. And in some way, I am very glad of that. We also like the concept of human imagination. And though we are perhaps more brave in our invocation of the term and concept and more apt to assign it certain tasks, we hesitate to nail it down either. And we cringe at the idea of defining the boundaries for the two, or where they may overlap.
The discomfort level rises among my more secular friends in trying to determine where humanity ends and divinity begins, particularly in the cretive process. And if there is a major difference between my more spiritual and more secular friends, it is who gets the blame when it all goes to hell (divine concept) and who gets the credit when the artist really nails it. Many pastors I know struggle to remember to let themselves get out of the way in the creative process and to remember they can take very little credit for good sermons and try not to shoulder too much blame for the bad ones.
Saw a fascinating TED Talk from the recent author of Eat, Pray, Love. She struggles with the same ideas in her creative process, although the concepts and vocabulary are new to her. Without the same ideas about how God or the Holy Spirit intervene in her work, she stumbles, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes beautifully to capture the essence of inspiration, blame, responsibility and reverance in ways that express her own experience and hope for others. I think it's worth watching to gain a perspective of one person's search for the relationship between the human and the divine in the creative process.
The discomfort level rises among my more secular friends in trying to determine where humanity ends and divinity begins, particularly in the cretive process. And if there is a major difference between my more spiritual and more secular friends, it is who gets the blame when it all goes to hell (divine concept) and who gets the credit when the artist really nails it. Many pastors I know struggle to remember to let themselves get out of the way in the creative process and to remember they can take very little credit for good sermons and try not to shoulder too much blame for the bad ones.
Saw a fascinating TED Talk from the recent author of Eat, Pray, Love. She struggles with the same ideas in her creative process, although the concepts and vocabulary are new to her. Without the same ideas about how God or the Holy Spirit intervene in her work, she stumbles, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes beautifully to capture the essence of inspiration, blame, responsibility and reverance in ways that express her own experience and hope for others. I think it's worth watching to gain a perspective of one person's search for the relationship between the human and the divine in the creative process.
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