Vineyards are lovely, but if you’ve ever looked down at their soil, well, it’s rough … literally. But dry, bumpy, silt-clay soil somehow gives life to complex wine. These wines develop their character because they are faced with the agricultural challenge of grappling with difficult soil. Rocky, sandy, clay-filled soil and steep hillsides somehow produce quality grapes. Why?
The poor soil forces the roots of the vine to work harder. They ramify, or split off into branches, to get nutrients. This branching off regulates how much water gets the grapes. When a vine can easily access water, its roots no longer need to branch off, causing it to absorb too much water and produce characterless grapes. It’s like eating a giant tasteless strawberry from the grocery store compared to a tiny succulent strawberry picked from the field. The harder the vine works, the better it tastes.
Our creative lives are nourished in the soil of our labor and inspiration. While inspiration seems elusive: Where does it come from? What kinds of people receive it? Inspiration also grows out of discipline. Discipline prepares us to receive ideas through what we read, see, and listen. It’s not without labor. Creativity that labors through rough and rocky soil, on the margins of ease and perfection, produces work for a clever audience. This audience will wait for something with character and complexity.
Our mistakes, weaknesses, suffering, and vulnerabilities are all parts that make us less than perfect, forcing the roots of our work to struggle with hope. Through habits and work, we grow roots that branch, network, and find their way to beauty. In the midst of that struggle and suffering, beauty invites us out of discouragement and renews the calling to create.
In Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Writer,” a young girl (the speaker’s daughter) begins her career as a writer. It’s easy to identify with the young girl. Her whole soul is invested in the struggle and work of being a thoughtful creative—someone who wants to express truth and beauty. Most of the poem focuses on observing someone undergoing this struggle of learning and working through the process of creating. This often slow and hidden process is worth observing of course because it’s a process not unlike vine roots navigating rocky soil and trying to take shape.
But no one else can create what you can because of the fact that your creativity has been shaped by your life. Our life and circumstances set limits to what we know and can create. (My friend has lived in various places around the world, and I’ve always lived in the same state. We both have very different journeys and stories.) But these limits are also the source of our uniqueness. There is plenty for me to see and know from this vantage point, but I need to be perceptive and know how to convey my story well. Just as farmers, after all their labor, hold onto hope that their fields will yield crops, we can have hope that our labor in the vineyard will bear fruit.
Questions
1. What shapes your creativity?
2. What are you called to create?
Reading
I just finished Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt. It might be one of my favorite (academic-style) books on art. She helps us understand our vision from a theological perspective and what’s at stake in how we see. She teaches us how to engage with art in a way that is transformative and meaningful. We are all immersed in a visual culture, and this book helps us understand what’s at stake and how culture (and ourselves) can be transformed when our vision is redeemed.
Keep reading and creating,
Jody
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I’ve felt called to create a few things … I’m just waiting to see for which project God will make room in my life. I’d love to work on a Catholic Virtue Curricula, write Catholic children’s books, and rewrite Greg McKeown’s Essentialism for people of faith.