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Click here to access articles from other past issues of the SGM Journal/Newsletter: Archives. We place a nearly complete selection of key articles from each issue of Refresh on the SGM website. Printed copies of the full Journal is available by mail. There is a suggested donation of $5 per issue (New Zealand subscribers) to help cover costs of publication and postage. Simply email our Administrator, Carole Hunt, with your name, postal address and email address and you will be added to our mailing list:
One of the greatest delights of life is our capacity for creativity.
Where does it come from? We might well reply, “Who knows?” because there are more than 60 different definitions of creativity to be found in psychological literature, suggests one writer (Taylor cited in the Wikipedia article Creativity). The simple fact is that human beings are richly endowed with abilities that generate responses and reactions to the endless situations and challenges faced in life – and also, often with nothing to generate it, we come up with, discover, unearth the most creative ideas, insights, inventions, artwork, computer programmes, in every area of life.
The simplest and most satisfying source of this creativeness is that we are imago Dei, made in the image of God and so embrace God’s burgeoning creativity as we let our creative capacities flourish.
However, many of us feel we are not creative and so limit the possibilities for ourselves. Yet, it’s amazing what we can do, make, create if we try and give ourselves the opportunity of learn. Sure, we may not be entirely satisfied with the results. Few creative people are. The New Zealand Maori weaver Kahutoi Te Kanawa, says of her work “I don’t feel like I’ve yet mastered my art. I’m capable of it, but there’s lots more room for improvement.” Indeed, there is with all of us in everything.
This issue of Refresh seeks to encourage us to step out creatively in whatever ways God is inviting us to develop. While many of the articles are by people well skilled in their fields we are using their work to illustrate the range of ways we can express ourselves, and in no way want to suggest you have to do what they do. You might want to learn how to do something presented here and that would be wonderful. But our intent is to encourage creativity to flourish as an expression of who we are and how we are as people made in god’s image – and to do it as prayer, as worship, as celebration, as participants in God’s creativity here today.
The writer of Psalm 8 contrasts the glory and wonders of the universe and asks what are human beings that God should be mindful of them. It’s easy to feel that when we look up and out and scan the wonders of Hubble photos of one galaxy after another beyond our own. And yet …, and yet “you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour” including the glorious gift of creativity in so many ways that it’s almost God-like! Chips off the old block! Sparks off the central fire of creation! No wonder the writer can say, “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1 & 9).
And it’s a sobering question, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? … God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple”, remembering that “you” is plural suggesting it’s a corporate indwelling and not simply our own individual bodies (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). Now here’s a thought: If Isaac Newton dreamed up his ideas on gravity while sitting under an apple tree what might I dream up when sitting under a giant kauri?
CREATIVITY IS ... from various sources Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts. From a scientific point of view, the products of creative thought (sometimes referred to as divergent thought) are usually considered to have both originality and appropriateness. An alternative, more everyday conception of creativity is that it is simply the act of making something new. Although intuitively a simple phenomenon, it is in fact quite complex. This mysterious phenomenon, though undeniably important and constantly visible, seems to lie tantalizingly beyond the grasp of scientific investigation.
www.Wikipedia.org - Creativity _______________________
Can't draw, can't sing, can't write, can't dance. How often have I heard people say, “I haven't got a creative bone in my body”? Yet this is simply not true. Since each of us is made in the image of God the great Creator we all carry within us the ability to create; it is a built in part of the design, not an optional extra. In order not to be creative we must determinedly work against our very nature. And, sadly, that is what so many of us do because we have forgotten who we are.
Diane Benge. Reality June/July 2004. 5 _______________________
In the beginning was creativity, and creativity was with God, and the creativity was God. All things came into being through the mystery of creativity; apart from creativity nothing would have come into being.
Paraphrase of John 1:1-2 by Gordon Kaufman: In the beginning … Creativity. Fortress Press Press. 2004. ix _______________________
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.”
Mary Lou Cook _______________________
Sometimes it just happens … anywhere … anytime! You may be busy at some menial task (e.g. mowing the lawn or washing-up), or driving the car, on the golf course, in the shower, or just relaxing or sleeping and … into your head will come a thought, a bright idea that you immediately recognise as a possible solution to the problem you have been wrestling with for the past few days or weeks. A large number of world-changing ideas and inventions have seemingly begun as 'flashes of genius' in creative minds at the most unexpected times!
Alan Williams. Creativity, Invention & Innovation. Allen & Unwin, Sydney. 1999. 81. _______________________
“Everything Leonardo Da Vinci touched turned to eternal beauty”, legendary art critic Bernard Berenson offered as a poetic view of Leonardo's accomplishments. Implicit in his words is a fundamental truth about the Maestro: his gifts and his works were manifestations of an unusually pure connection to the Divine. Leonardo's gifts emerged from this Source.
Michael Gelf. Da Vinci Decoded. Delacorte Press 2004. 29 _______________________
What the country needs are a few labour-making inventions.
Arnold Glasow _______________________
Technology … the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.
Mark Frisch _______________________
The extravagant generosity of love that directs God's creativity offers us a share in the same artistry. We have been fashioned for artful living, for works that are good because in a profusion of colours, textures, shapes and sounds they recast the boundaries of our habitation according to the patterns of Kingdom life. (Ephesians 2:10).
John Mogabgab. Weavings March/April 2002. 3
CREATIVITY AND SPIRITUALITY by Susannah Connolly
Creativity and Spirituality, what an amazing duo, an incredibly hard task master (depending on how you look at it), what an inspiring tasty mouthful.
But what is this creativity? For me it has been a surprising journey in getting back to my old self. Yep I know that was supposed to die at Baptism, well I tried that twice and God kept enlightening my dull brain that the essential me was actually what was needed. So many people say “I'm not creative”. This is so blatantly wrong, look at the dinner tables every night, look at what people wear everyday, look at the hair styles of teenagers, look at wrinkles on faces, oh they are so beautiful! Look at how you use words and more.
The part of me the church seemed to say was wrong was actually the part God created in the first place. Creatively I have found myself doing, being and using all the things I loved as a child in the life I now live.
I call it Creative Therapy: because I draw on, invite out of myself, God and others the deep inner beauty, pain, and experiences they've had and seek how best to see healing take place. I listen for the words from people's souls that have not been voiced before and encourage the song tapping on the heart to be sung. I rely on those sacred moments where God and person are seeing together the path ahead. In this seeing, creativity and spirituality consummate a union and growth is begun. Sometimes I'm there for the birth and sometimes not. But just like in the life of mothers, the need to be able to tell their story of birth so the directee/person.
Creativity has given me the knowing that I can trust myself, God and some others. That I am not wrong, maybe different, but not wrong. Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “to live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong”. This is so for others as well, our culture has deftly crippled our spontaneity. In the Philippine slums where I lived for four years I learnt that there was no need for shyness, everybody got up and 'had a go'. Their creativity was contagious, or was it their freedom? The poor did not have the facades, the shallow coverings I had, the fear of being wrong. They taught me unconditional acceptance of each other and self. It's taken a while to experience that here though. However, I can now stand in front of 100s and take funerals, retreats, teach and have a ball. When I'm relaxed and expectant of God and my self and others' creativity exudes out of my soul so fast I can't catch it.
Creativity in Spiritual Direction is the union of a person's soul with God, their spirituality is joined with creativity and flood gates open. Imagine a story being told and inviting that person to walk with you out side to see if the land, the garden, the sky will speak to them of their situation, just like Jesus' parables. Creation is standing waiting in pregnant expectation. Creation is waiting to show off its beauty and wisdom, and its warnings. We need to learn to listen, to have all our senses open, cleansed and receptive, and then we will be able to trust that idea, that image, that thought about how to do something. Creativity is trusting yourself, trusting your unique way of being in this world, of being to take a chance and step out, to speak out, and to reach out in a way only you can do.
Creativity in Spiritual Direction is like incarnation, it's like bringing myself back from the cultural, family, societal church teachings that teach us how not to live fully in grace, incarnationally being Jesus and seeing Jesus incarnate in everything and everyone. The film 'Ray” speaks here: “unchain my heart, unchain my heart”. Creativity is saying yes to yourself, to your true self. It's taken a while to realize I now do all that I loved as a child but got destructively challenged through teasing, taunting, and abuse of all kinds. I now use the dance I so wanted to do, the art I thought I couldn't be as good as others at, or that what I did was not what the teacher wanted. I use movement, metaphor, horses, music, and whatever the person brings with them. I know and trust that within that, will be a whole new world of echoes of their past and hints at how to open the inner sanctuary of each glorious heart.
Creativity has enabled me to truly delight in people and in myself. I was called delightful once by my first Spiritual Director. I went home on cloud nine, dancing and skipping, I was totally blown away that she would experience me that way.
Creative therapy has helped me recognize my inner self and how to discern my next move. Shakti Gawain says, “Every time you don't follow your inner guidance you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of Spiritual Deadness”. This is true for me now, it wasn't before as I'd taken on what others said was okay. If they said, that type of dance move was not acceptable, and then I didn't do it. However, now I do it and quietly rumble inside with laughter.
Creative Spiritual Direction allows me to work deeply with myself, God and others walking a pathway toward holy wholeness. For me this means not being totally healed, but still a broken vessel humbly aware of my abilities, and my limitations and moving in and out of these. Creativity is a path of self discovery, in one of my eight week groups we moved from much pain and anger, tears and frustration into much laughter and joy, being able to inspire one another with our art, our selves! Somehow the process was the healer; the end result was not so much the target.
The last blessing of creatively working with people is that I am inspired, taught, challenged, and learn to listen more and more to others and myself along the journey. We can be triggered by so many different things, we hear a song and remember a long-lost love, feel a sense of grief or longing, we need to listen to that. We see a cloud that looks like a teddy bear, what is it saying, I need to feel loved, I need a cuddle. We feel prickly, what is poking us right now, we can draw it, dance it, move it, speak about it, write a poem, read a book, pick up a teddy and hug it, go to the Zoo and ponder the Lion and so much more.
It's important for me to remember that creativity never ever stays the same: today it's in this form, and tomorrow it may be entirely different. John Powell encouraged me years ago in writing that he may change from one day to the next as he's experienced so much new stuff. Creativity is like that, it is a journey deep inside oneself, at times a formidable journey not to be travelled alone, and at times the solitude is the freedom needed.
Creativity is owning ourselves, owning our shadow, our beauty. This is hard work at times, and we need to be able to look after ourselves. Just like beginning Spiritual Direction or counselling life can take on a chaotic stance. We need to trust our own co-creation/participation in the process.
I'd like to finish with this from David Whyte: “The way we tell our stories has a lot to do with the way we see ourselves in the world, with our identity. Perhaps one of the greatest blocks I see to new possibilities is our inability to tell our stories with the MAGNIFICENCE they deserve, in other words our inability to grant magnificence to our own lives.”
CREATIVITY AND SPIRITUALITY has enabled me to begin this journey afresh with a deep, deep knowing. Bless you!
References:
David Whyte poetry Art and Creativity course with the Learning Connexion-Wellington. Menweb Expressive Therapies course-AUT
In the beginning was God, thought and word, And then a wondrous thing occurred: God made the light, separated dark It seemed of creation to be the spark; With waters spaced and sky between And soon some dry land could be seen. What fun as God shaped plain and mountain With here and there a sprinkling fountain! Then vegetation, trees and fruit, Some coloured flowers and tiny shoot, Next sun appeared with moon and stars Revealed the beauty made so far. See basins where the sea could foam As wisely You prepared a home For myriads of living things: All kinds of fish and birds with wings … Soon creeping things for the world's food chain, Then animals became the main Focus of this fresh new earth As you brought diff'rent kinds to birth,. New, fresh ideas creative springing, Each to its niche new vibrance bringing, Filling all this fertile land And spreading out on ev'ry hand. To crown it, ere this spree should cease, You then brought forth Your masterpiece, So fearf'lly, wonderfully made, With integrated skill displayed You made first man and then his mate, In close affection to relate. You told them garden they should tend, Of caring nurture set the trend. You looked at all, pronounced it good Yes, very good, as well it should Be at this stage. You'd made your best So on the Sabbath day took rest.
SOUNDING THE SONG: CREATIVITY AND MUSIC by John Franklin
“THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out…”
In God's Grandeur, poet Gerard Manley Hopkins celebrates the inextinguishable creativity of the Spirit of God. God's grandeur does flame out in blazing rhododendrons, from the night sky, and through the smiles of those who love us. And God's grandeur also sounds out. Have you listened to the overture scripted in Genesis 1 where creation sings its birth song? Have you stopped to hear “the trees of the forest sing for joy” (Ps. 96:12)? What “new song” is in you that is waiting to be sung, not to a recording engineer, but to the Lord (Psalms 33, 40, 96, 98, 144, 149)?
God's grandeur sounds out, in and through all that is, and we, as co-creators have our parts to play and sing. In Genesis 35 Bezalel and Oholiab are filled with inspiration, with the Spirit of God to create beauty in precious metals, in wood, and in fabrics. The same creative Spirit inspires the creation and sounding of music. Its grandeur may be its simplicity and delicacy or its body-vibrating magnificence.
With spontaneous music and dancing, David the Psalm-singer brought the Ark into Jerusalem (and got into trouble with his wife who thought his body-vibrating was a bit much! 2 Sam. 6:14-16). Then, with the establishment of the temple, music was an essential part of Israel's liturgies. The early Christians sang; Paul encouraging them to “Sing hymns and Psalms and spiritual songs to the Lord” which presumes that they knew words and music (Col. 3:16). J.S. Bach dedicated all he wrote to the glory of God and claimed that "Music's only purpose should be for the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit." And with some humour, that giant of 20th century theology, Karl Barth, is reported to have said, "When the angels are around the throne of God, they sing their praises to the music of Bach. But when they are en famille, they play Mozart. And God, listening, is well-pleased,” - as God is with The Newsboys, Falling Up, Evermore and you.
So how does it happen? How do I (for one) make words and make music? Numbers 21:16-17 is a clue. It tells how the Lord told Moses to gather the people. Needing water, they sing, “Spring up, O well.”
The image of 'springing up' explains what happens for me. When I am called on to pray in public, when I sit to write, when I am prompted to make music, I pause, I go within, I wait for the spring to bubble, and when I sense the 'springing up', I am ready. What follows is often a surprise to me. And it is a delight as I sense the Spirit within me giving voice.
The song I am known for is:
Jesus, I sing your praise with the birds of the dawn, with the stars of the night…
It came on a dismal, grey day. Somewhat despondent, I heard myself say, “In the face of all that is dreary, there is a song here.” I paused, I went within, I waited for a spring to bubble, and when I sensed the 'springing up', I went to the piano keyboard and words and music were just waiting to be written down. I am sure that my experience is not uncommon. I am sure that creating beauty in the sounds of words and music, we are participating in the creativity of God, the Holy Trinity.
As Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three points in a circle of equal self giving and receiving; as they are three focus points in a dynamic of love, creative energy and power; could we say that the Trinity is a circle of song, a trio of extraordinary sound, and the source of all that vibrates and resonates a universe into harmony?
Come, Creator Spirit, bubble within us and teach us the song. May our words be as song; may our song be as prayer; may our music gladden the human spirit and find you “well-pleased.”
Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night”, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. …
How weighty are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them - they are more than the sand; I come to the end - I am still with you.
THE POWER OF IMAGINATION TO EVOKE ALTERNATIVE WORLDS by Len Hjalmarson
In recent years we, in the western church, have been enamored with words. As a writer, I understand that passion. As a lover, I am intimately acquainted with their limits.
The direction of my soul when I am in love is toward knowledge. Artists are lovers, in love with the world, in love with a particular means of expressing their attachment. Art is a particular way of knowing, and imagination is the link to artistic expression to incarnation.
And incarnation, we know, is the path to God's future. On this day in the history of the world, and on this day in God's story, we are like those awakening from a long sleep. We have taken the red pill, and we are discovering how deep the rabbit hole goes. We are seeing how deeply immersed and accommodated we have become to a narrow set of values, anchored solidly in a limited Enlightenment epistemology, a particular way of knowing the world. Parker Palmer1 and others are helping us discern the violence of that method, and we are discovering that while science illuminated one set of truths, it lost another. Holy imagination is helping us to rediscover our heart, and in the process, we might also reclaim the church as an alternative culture. Rodney Clapp writes,
Reclaiming Christianity as culture enables us to move from decontextualized propositions to traditioned, storied, inhabitable truths; from absolute certainty to humble confidence; from austere mathematical purity to the rich if less predictable world of relational trust; from control of the data to respect of the other in all its created variety; from individualist knowing to communal knowing and being known; and from once-for-all rational justification to the ongoing pilgrimage of testimony.2
What journey could be more important in this hour? The journey to renewed hearts won't be made by those who are immersed in propositions. Walter Ong writes, “Written words are residue…When an often told story is not actually being told, all that exists of it is the potential in certain human beings to tell it.”3 The Hebrew word for “word,” dabar means both word and event. Only what unites mind and heart, word and spirit, is incarnational. What is born of the Spirit in the Holy imagination may then take flesh.4
Sadly, artists and poets have not been welcome in the western church. Artists and poets reach for an unseen world, they grasp at transcendence. Moreover, “Poets remove the veil and give language to what people are experiencing. The poet listens to the rhythms and meanings occurring beneath the surface." 5
What we see today in the west, according to Walter Brueggemann, is largely a religion of immanence. With the Christendom compact, what had been a missional movement became a civil and settled religion. Civil religion is about immanence, the economics of affluence and the politics of oppression. 6
When Israel moved from a theocracy to a monarchy then God and the temple become a part of the royal landscape, with the sovereignty of God subordinated to the purpose of the king. From this point forward God is "on call" and access to him is controlled by the royal court. Royal reality overpowers the dimension of hope and the place of imagination. When a nation (or a church) establishes a comfortable and static rule, the last thing they want is people with new ideas to shake things up. And in terms of the economics of affluence, you don't want people delaying gratification in favor of some future hope, you want them seeking pleasure in the eternal now.
The result of all that pleasure is that, “in place of passion comes satiation.” Brueggemann argues that one of the reasons we lose passion and imagination is precisely due to our success at achieving comfort and security. He states that, “Passion as the capacity and readiness to care and suffer, to die and to feel, is the enemy of imperial reality.”7 TS Eliot links sacrifice and knowledge in The Dry Salvages,
But to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint-- No occupation either, but something given And taken, in a lifetime's death in love, Ardour and selflessness and self surrender...
It would be easy to assume a dichotomy between word and Spirit for the Holy imagination, but it would be a serious error. I am fascinated that the second story of the creation of humanity displays Adam as the first poet. We observe God's invitation to Adam to name the animals. Imagination is at the heart of knowing, and humankind is a language-maker, invoking new worlds of meaning, a sacramental task. In the act of creation we make visible what was only implied; we connect matter with spirit. Imagination is God's power in us, part of the imago Dei, and it has the power to unite heart and mind and so move us forward into God's future.
We now know that human transformation does not happen through didacticism or through excessive certitude, but through the playful entertainment of another scripting of reality that may subvert the old given text and its interpretation and lead to the embrace of an alternative text and its redescription of reality.8
These are desperate times. We need artists who are prophetic and poetic. We no longer have the luxury of assuming that the old models or established leaders have the capacity to lead us forward. The prophetic task is to criticize the dominant consciousness. We must think seriously and creatively in two worlds simultaneously. Symbols that promise life but breed death are exposed as frauds and alternate symbols are offered.9 The poetic task is to evoke an alternative future among a people who are so satiated that they have lost the capacity to imagine a new world.
In The Sky is Falling Alan Roxburgh notes that the imagination of poets is not expressed in a modern manner. Poets "are not so much advice-givers as image and metaphor framers… What churches need are not more entrepreneurial leaders with wonderful plans for their congregation's life, but poets with the imagination and gifting to cultivate environments within which people might again understand how their traditional narratives apply to them today.”10
Artists redefine the symbolic world of people so that people begin to see the kingdom of God at work in their everyday lives.11 I close this article with the words of Peter Senge in Presence. Senge writes that a new way forward will emerge from building three integrated capacities: “a new capacity for observing that no longer fragments the observer from what is observed; a new capacity for stillness that no longer fragments who we really are from what's emerging; a new capacity for creating alternative realities that no longer fragments the wisdom of the head, heart and hand; a new capacity for cooperation that harnesses the intelligence and spirit of all people at all levels.”12
1. In particular his work, To Know as We are Known, and A Hidden Wholeness (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 2. A Peculiar People (Downer's Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1996) 186. 3. Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (London: Routledge, 1982) 11. 4. One of the most profound discourses on the Trinity as a creative paradigm was penned by Miss Dorothy Sayers: The Mind of the Maker. 5. Alan Roxburgh, The Sky is Falling (Eagle, ID: ACI Publications, 205) 164. 6. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Forterss Press, 1997) 30. 7. Ibid. 35. 8. Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knowx Press, 1997) 29. 9. John Frye. Online http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.blogspot.com/. 10. Ibid. 166. 11. John Frye, Op Cit. 12. Senge, Scharmer, Jaworkski, Flowers: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (New York: Society for Organizational Learning, 2005).
Melinda Stevenson interviews John Ferguson, sulptor
Where did you come from
John?
CREATING WITH BREAD by Marcelle Pilkinton
“Oh no not again!”
Out of the oven came another heavy, yeasty loaf, destined for the birds if they dared touch it. That was nearly 40 years ago. I had just read the book “Hidden Art” by Edith Schaeffer. Her challenge inspired me to be creative in every situation and to fulfil God's image of creativity in us. In Genesis, after each creative activity God saw it was good. Being made in the image of God we too take pleasure in making things. In order to keep my creativity alive when the boys were little, and my husband Ross was travelling frequently, I set myself the goal of learning to make good bread. I became the library's most enthusiastic borrower of bread books. In one of these I stumbled across the secret of using vitamin C* which ferments dough quickly and thoroughly. With that clue along with thorough kneading, I was soon able to turn out light bread every time.
Once I had cracked this code, bread and bun variations were endless - pita bread, croissants, mixed grain and traditional shapes by the score. It was an activity our four boys could enjoy as well because unlike other baking, lots of handling is not a problem, in fact it improves the bread.
I became fascinated with the science and history of bread making. The use of wild yeast spores was practised, though not scientifically understood, by the Egyptians around 4000 B.C. In the tomb of Pharaoh Rameses II, is portrayed the interesting story in pictures of an Egyptian bakery - two men are leaning on staffs kneading dough with their feet!
Yeast is a single celled fungus organism which multiplies when it has optimum conditions of warmth, moisture, time and food - it converts grain starch into sugar. It gives off carbon dioxide and alcohol. The carbon dioxide becomes trapped in a web of moist flour gluten strands and pushes up the dough, while the alcohol evaporates in the cooking process.
It was not long before I found rich and intriguing bread stories and images in the Bible. It would seem that the Israelites did not make leavened bread until they lived in Egypt. When Abraham asked Sarah to make fast food for their angel visitors it included bread in the form of thin, round loaves. Today, desert dwellers and nomadic peoples make similar flat breads on heated stones. We know that in the Exodus the Egyptians had ovens as the frogs hid in them during the plague of frogs. How nasty! It was the custom of the Israelites to eat leavened bread, but on the night of the Passover there was no time for the bread to rise - so they ate unleavened bread.
Note that yeast and leaven are used interchangeably in the Bible depending on the translation. Until the production of commercial yeast in recent times, bread makers saved a portion from the previous days baking and stored it in flour. This was the leaven for the next baking. Traditional sourdough bread and Maori rewena bread is made using this method.
My favourite parable is Matthew 13:33, the parable of the leaven. “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
Jesus must have often watched his mother make bread. The leaven was mixed and kneaded into a large amount of flour, making a heavy lump of dough. In time it became soft and pliable and when cooked, an appetising nutritious staple food for the family. This is a wonderful parable of the Kingdom of Heaven working silently, slowly, powerfully to transform the world.
On the other hand, Jesus also warns against the insidious leaven of the Pharisees, spreading corruption in the world.
In Revelation the relative values of barley and wheat are given - “A quart of wheat for a day's wages and three quarts of barley for a day's wages (6:6). Barley bread was poor man's bread, not because it was less nutritious but because it was not possible to get such a good rise (greater volume) using barley flour, as with wheat flour. Wheat bread was the porterhouse steak of the bread world. So it is remarkable that at the miraculous feeding of the 5000 in John 6:9 that Jesus used barley loaves. Maybe there is an apologetic note in Andrew's statement, “There is a lad here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what is that among so many?" Is he hinting that the quality is not up to much as well as the quantity? In any event, it is typical of the Lord's graciousness that he identifies with the food of the lowly.
Ross says I am a fallen woman as we now have a bread-maker! But I have not lost the wonder of bread, bread-making and the eternal lessons it has taught me.
* These days Surebake and other yeast blends contain dough improvers including vitamin C, so it is not necessary to add vitamin C separately.
REEL JOURNEYS: A CREATIVE EXPERIMENT WITH RETREAT AND FILM by Warren Deason
It started with a phone call, “What do you think of the idea of having a seven-day silent film retreat?” Now here was a piece of creative lateral thinking. My friend and I had run several film retreat days where those interested would gather, watch a film, take some time to reflect and then share the fruit of our reflection. The idea was to take this a step further. Using the seven-day silent retreat model, we would show films for the first five evenings and invite participants to use their responses as the raw material for reflection and spiritual direction. Would this work? We had heard of groups using film as the basis of theological discussion but would those who would normally participate in a week-long silent retreat feel the films would intrude upon their silence or would provide an unnecessary distraction?
We decided to test the market and advertised in the SGM 2004 programme. There were sufficient responses and enrolments to encourage us to go ahead.
Now what films? We decided to choose from a range of genre and ended up with The Colour of Paradise (an Iranian film, made by a Muslim director), Molokai (A film about the life and ministry of Father Damien who ran the leprosy colony on the Island of Molokai), Wings of Desire (a German language, award-winning film directed by Wim Wenders, Travelling Birds (a documentary following the migration of several bird species filmed over three years and seven continents) and The Station Agent (a man afflicted with dwarfism retreats to a station agent's cottage in New Jersey only to find unexpected community and friendship).
We had intended to follow each film with a short discussion session and collect immediate reactions. We were surprised to find that there was a profound silence following the screening of our first film, a silence with a sacredness that we could not intrude upon. Subsequent films produced the same response, so the post-film dialogue was scrapped. We lightened each session a little by preceding the main film with some selections from Leunig Animated, a whimsical collection of brief claymation films written by cartoonist Michael Leunig. Though a little diversionary, they had their own impact.
We also provided a list of questions to help participants reflect upon their viewing experience. Though all the questions might not be applicable to any one film, we felt that they would be a useful starting point. We asked such questions as, “What feelings did the films evoke in you?” “How does the film's narrative/story connect with your story?” “What moments or actions of grace do you discern?” “How does this film connect with other experiences you are having on the retreat?” (For the full list of questions see the Winter 2006 edition of Refresh p43).
Most directees used these as the basis of their direction sessions and it showed that these films were making an impact and raising all sorts of valuable insights that were deepening their sense of God's activity on the retreat.
In the late afternoon we would meet for Eucharist and a short reflection would be given using the content of the previous night's film as a theme. Often this would have an uncanny link with the reading from the daily lectionary.
To our knowledge none of the retreatants found the films intruded upon their silence. Most responses were positive about the role the films played in their overall journey during the week. Not all films appealed equally to everyone; one especially was quite demanding and its pace, “slow-burning” as someone said, was a difficulty for some. However others found its demands stimulating.
Overall we judged the event a success, enough to warrant a repeat session this year (2006).
We were a little more confident this time around and decided that our format required little, if any, change. We determined that we would use a similar selection process for our five films and our list was: March of the Penguins (Oscar winning documentary on the breeding cycle of the Emperor Penguin), The Legend of Bagger Vance, (a 2000 Robert Redford film, using a golf match as a metaphor for personal struggle and triumph), Les Miserables (the 1998 screen version of the Victor Hugo novel - there have been at least 17 others), Touching the Void, (a gruelling retelling of the true story of two British climbers, one of whom had to cut the rope linking him to his friend, in order to ensure his own survival - a powerful story of survival and the power of the human spirit), and As it is in Heaven (a Swedish film telling of a famous conductor who, suffering from extreme exhaustion and heart disease, revisits the village of his childhood and takes on the job of a cantor in the local Lutheran church). This year, our diversionary films preceding the main screening included Leunig Animated, a Charlie Chaplin piece and one of the Nooma films.
We offered the same reflection questions but found that this time the films provided more of backdrop for most retreatants rather than the main focus. Overall the films were received positively.
Some film theorists write of the importance of viewing context when screening a film. This was borne out by our experience. Retreats are settings where, generally speaking, people come with an openness of heart and spirit ready to consider anything on the retreat as a potential God-encounter. This invites a reverence toward a film no less than might be evoked by the magnificent wilderness setting in which the retreat took place. With such openness, a deeper meeting might be expected.
Selection of films can be an issue. How careful, for example, should one be about content? We were assuming a mature audience, probably with quite a high tolerance threshold. However, we tried to be as careful as we could, realising that there was little to be achieved by setting out to deliberately shock or disturb. On the other hand we did not want to settle for saccharine. Theoretically there would be few topics that would be a priori out of bounds; the question would be as to how the subject was handled. Was it dealt with in an exploitive manner, a deliberately sensationalising treatment or was it dealt with realistically, yet thoughtfully and carefully, wanting to raise genuine and provocative questions?
You would need to be aware of your own context and the values, attitudes and maturity of your viewers if you decided to run such a retreat.
Lists of films are available such lists as 100 spiritually significant films can be found on the world-wide-web. However, it should not be assumed that because a film has an explicitly “religious” or “spiritual” subject or deals with a biblical character or even the life of Jesus that it will be a good or useful film for a retreat. Be imaginative and open in your selection. Again it should be emphasised that the setting does matter. Many films that might not evoke much reflection when viewed with friends in your lounge, may well be received quite differently in a retreat setting. Context can matter as much as text when finding meaning.
This was a creative experiment, one which we feel has broadened and deepened our own understanding of the varied contexts in which profound meetings with God may take place.
QUINTET OF PRAYER by Kathy Hughes &nb |
