The Creative Life and the Good Life
A Letter to You
Dear friends,
Welcome to all the new subscribers! It might be time for an introduction of this Substack newsletter. If you know me in real life, I appreciate meaningful conversations. I try for no less here, knowing that every word read here is your time entrusted to me.
Lent is such a beautiful time to strip away all excess. For me that has meant discerning new practices that I hope will stay with me after the Lenten season. Here’s an example: One day my phone notifications turned so loud that I took it as a clear sign to just remove all audible notifications rather than minimize the sound. We also don’t watch a lot of television except PBS. But as we were trying to invite our children to write, read, and color more, my son asked, Why do you get to watch television at night? Good question. What is recreation for exactly? I told him the truth. I only enjoy watching television when I know I have written well, read widely, prayed, walked outside, connected with a person, and mothered to the best of my ability for that day. (This is probably why television, at least for our children, does not seem to bring them a lot of joy. My childhood was spent watching a lot of television, and I never really thought much of it until I read David Foster Wallce. See “E Unibus Pluram.”) If I haven’t, then my soul lets me know through an unsettling in my body that conveys my time would be better spent elsewhere. Recreation and “self-care” can only do so much for our true happiness.
Just prior to Lent, I had begun work on a project on Flannery O’Connor. This writing prepared me to embrace every opportunity to eliminate distraction from my primary vocation as a wife and mother and my calling as a writer and editor. O’Connor saw herself as a Thomist (someone who follows the thinking and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas), which, put simply, means that she believed our senses along with reason provide us with an accurate way of knowing and understanding reality. Distractions and social media shrink our senses and subject our reason to chaos.
This newsletter was created with one goal in mind—to show how the creative life leads to the good life. The creative life is a life that awakens our senses. We are embodied souls. Our flourishing depends on how well we immerse ourselves in reality. Whether we are fermenting or foraging, knitting a scarf or kneeling in Adoration, we are called to make our life a masterpiece, as John Paul II says in his Letter to Artists. I truly believe the creative life is indispensable to heroic virtue because creativity is about receptivity: Receiving beauty through God’s creation and co-creating with God prepares us to receive the other through true friendship. It prepares us to reach our telos, our final end, as Aristotle terms it. For Catholics, we call this, the beatific vision, where we see God face-to-face.
As a writer, editor, and friend, I hope if I can do one thing right, it is to help you to see the truth of Genesis: We are made in the image and likeness of God and meant to participate with God as co-creators, stewards of our gifts. The creative life takes discipline, magnanimity (stretching our soul to great things, as Aquinas puts it), wonder, and wisdom. Our work glorifies God in the measure that we apply a virtuous approach to our work. (Caravaggio made masterpieces but not necessarily because he was virtuous in life. We can hope his art-making eventually disposed him to a good interior and exterior life.) We become perfectionists when we stop meeting with friends or going outside for a walk or embracing leisure all for the sake of getting the job done in manner of control. We let acedia (a despair and inability to see life’s goodness) tempt and control us, on the flip side, when we discover that our time is being wasted by meet ups, groups, consumerism, or social media that perhaps give us instant gratification but never promote our flourishing. Every discerning effort in the creative life to make a masterpiece can translate into a discerning effort to make our daily life a masterpiece. I am grateful you are here as we accompany one another on this journey.
In His Light,
Jody
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PBS?