Creative Freedom

A Sermon by Jim Ward

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday July 23, 2006

Hello,

My name is Jim Ward. I've been a member for just over a year, and a lot of you know me, but a lot of you don't. I facilitate the Creative Spirituality covenant group. I'm also involved with the Thespians and a couple of other covenant groups as well. Sometimes I teach the children's Sunday school. I work as a graphic artist and editor for the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, and sometimes I make up flyers and graphics for the church.

When I was asked to come up with a talk for a summer service, I asked Erica Martin to coordinate and provide music. To my great gratitude and relief, she agreed. She asked me what I had in mind and I told her she could have complete creative freedom. Creative Freedom. The words stuck in my mind, and of such stuff are the titles of summer sermons made.

Creative Freedom - it sounds like it’s about how to tap into the artist within and produce a great work of art. Or maybe it's about the kinds of conditions that artists need to reach a creative state. Perhaps I should talk about the theoretical concepts that underlie esoteric creative endeavors.

No. Nothing so ethereal. This comes from the core of my reality.

When I was seven, my father died in a car accident, leaving my mother with three children and pregnant with another. My mother was completely unprepared for the loss of my father, and she was devastated for a long time. After the birth of my brother, with my two sisters and me to support, she watched those from our family who could help slowly back away, leaving her to find her way alone. Drained of hope, my mother could see only limited possibilities available to her. Soon, we were homeless, drifting from town to town as migrant workers, always looking for just enough work for gas and food to take us to the next town. There was some stability. We might remain in one locale for as long as six months, but sometimes we would stay in a place for less than a week. I attended 27 different schools before I started high school. Many were the days when we didn't know when we would eat again, and many were the nights when we wondered where we would sleep. I've slept on more concrete picnic tables than I can count. My brother Terry recently told me I had it good – he got the concrete bench. I was malnourished and emaciated. I told people I was a picky eater and that's why I was so thin. Over the years, I watched my mother struggle for hope, for some idea that could spark a better day for us. We weren't poor – we weren't anything. We were invisible. From the time I was eight, I helped out at home, and by 12 I was out working as much as I was in school. Things really didn't change for my family until I got old enough and joined the navy.

So you might be thinking – what about public assistance, welfare, social security, churches, neighbors or relief organizations? My mother saw none of these as possible help to her. Help you can't see might as well not exist. Her mind was fixed on finding ways to get money for food, for rent, and for gas. When you are focused on the necessities, on survival, it is hard to have new ideas, or even old and obvious ideas. The freedom to think new thoughts is based on having the time and resources to be creative. This is Creative Freedom.

At this point, I know that some of you are thinking, "Ah, Maslow's hierarchy of needs." For those unfamiliar with this, Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who put forth the idea that people have to meet survival needs such as food, clothing and shelter, before being able to address less urgent needs such as belonging and self actualization. His theory is much broader than I've described. But the trouble with knowing it is that it lets you put people in a neat intellectual box and move on with your life. We had never heard of Maslow. We were just hungry.

I joined the navy for six years. At first, I just sent money home, but after about six months, I provided my family with a home where I was stationed. I watched my sisters and brother start becoming involved with normal teenage concerns. My mother got a job as a motel manager and started talking about saving money for the first time in my life. By the time my brother Terry was in high school, he was wearing the same clothes as other kids his age, and he had all the things that any teen needs to thrive in school socially, intellectually, and physically. He was living a different life than I did at his age.

Having more resources freed my mother to think about other things for the first time in many years. She was out of practice, so her thinking didn't extend much farther than finally getting new clothes and new furniture, but for the first time, she could.

To most people, creativity involves making art, or music, or dance. And it does mean those things, but it also means any endeavor that generates new ideas. Doctors, researchers, and engineers use creative thinking as much as painters, sculptors, composers and dancers do. Any time you are coming up with and applying new ideas in your life, you are engaging in creative thinking. Creative thinking is the tool by which people transform themselves and their lives for the better. Creativity is life itself.

To me, this means that Creative Freedom is also Life Freedom, freedom to live life more abundantly.

There are books about how to unblock creativity. "The Artist's Way," by Julia Cameron is a pretty good one. It details a particular path to help the mind re-engage in creative thinking. The things people do to unblock their lives, including psychotherapy and addiction recovery 12 step programs are also creative because they bring active participation in new ideas.

Besides something that we each strive for in our own lives, Creative Freedom is a gift that we often give each other. Volunteering to help with child care during the service allows mom and dad to not worry about the little ones while the engage their minds and spirits in discussion during adult religious education, the forum, and the service. Helping a single parent have time to shop or just take a break allows them to recharge and think things through a little more clearly, and it helps the family live a better life. Providing money for the Capital Campaign allows the ministers to focus on attending to the spiritual and other needs of the church rather than worrying about the money. Bringing a box of food to someone who really needs it, providing funds for the Change for Change offering, joining the Befrienders – each thing you do to help someone else is never a little thing. You are giving life to people.

I can't help but think – what would someone do if they didn't have to worry so much about survival?  What could someone do if they had a real opportunity? I have a friend who is an artist, and I won't name that person, because their story is their own. But I will tell you that for many years they could only dream of making art. Paying the bills, tending to the needs of others just didn't allow it. Later in their life, the situation changed, and they got the resources they needed. Such wonderful works this person does – and I wonder what we would be missing if they didn't finally get the freedom to be creative. I wonder what we are missing now from others who have the talent and the drive, but not the situation needed to create.

The list of things that hold people in bondage and away from freedom to do creative things in their lives is pretty long and pretty ugly. It includes large evils such as discrimination, bigotry, imprisonment, civil rights violations, torture and terror. It also includes smaller nasties such as household drudgery, wage slavery, depression, illness and fear. I'm glad we have the Social Justice Committee, the ACLU, and Amnesty International, as well as our political affiliations, to help create change in these large evils. Everything we do helps. And I'm glad that we help each other as individuals with the smaller nasties.

Sometimes, people sacrifice creative work for the sake of some other lesser priority. In 1938, Brenda Ueland wrote a book called "If You Want to Write" that I recently acquired here at our bookstore. In this book she has a chapter titled "Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect it For Their Writing." She wrote, "in fact, this is why the lives of most women are vaguely unsatisfactory. They are always doing secondary and menial things...But inwardly women know that something is wrong." Her point - creativity is worth making time for, because the process of making creative work adds so much to your life.

There are those who believe that great art must come from great suffering, and without that suffering there would be no passion, and hence, no great art. And some great works are steeped in despair. But I submit to you that you and everyone you know has suffered enough in their lives already to create the greatest arts possible. But personally, I believe differently. I think that great art comes from great joy, great love, and great hope. Every instinct I have about creativity, and actually, every book I've read about it, points to playfulness, inspiration and joy as being the wellsprings of creative thought. Hope for the future provides the energy to seek new ideas.

The least creative action anyone takes occurs when their energy is so low that they can see only one choice. Depression, despair and suicide is the least creative path. Giving people your presence, your time, your listening, and your energy helps lift them up enough to see other choices and this is a true gift of creative freedom.

How does my story end? Well, my sister Kim married my best friend in the navy and they have three children. She's a legal secretary and loves her job. My mother lives nearby them in Phoenix. She has a new boyfriend named Aljandro. My sister Sherry married a friend of Kim's husband, also in the navy, and they have two children. Sherry is half-way through an accounting degree and is attending college full time. My brother Terry married a girl from the town we were born in – Chickasha, and they have five children. Terry is a regional sales manager for a newspaper group in Illinois.

And I, I have found this wonderful new group of friends and a new spiritual home. I have these amazing opportunities to be creative, to speak, to teach, to interact, and to have joy.

I thank you for these amazing gifts.