Where Does the Poetry Come From?

What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

Consider the word “image.” It suggests a picture, an illustration or drawing, a photograph, an idea. But it doesn’t suggest the reality of a thing – only the representation of the reality.

Today, in the hypermedia, 24-hours news cycle world we live in, we hear “image” and we think “reputation.” But is our reputation the same the reality of our self? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

“Image” has a physical connotation. But, in the sense described in Genesis 2, where “God made man in his image, male and female he made them,” the idea of image is more profound, and more complex, than mere physical appearance or similarity.

One aspect of the complexity of the image we bear is the creative impulse. Made in God’s image, we image-bearers are creators as well.

In A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Made to Live, author Emily Freeman explores this creative impulse. She notes the apostle Paul’s explanation in the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, that we are a masterpiece, or workmanship, made to do good things. And she notes that the Greek word translated as “masterpiece” is poeima, the same word that gives “poem.”

“What happens when God writes poetry?” she asks.

“We do,” she answers. “We happen.”

And she goes on. “We are walking poetry, the kind that moves, the kind who has hands and feet, the kind with mind and will and emotion. We are what happens when God expresses himself.”

This is the same idea behind my book, Poetry at Work. I wasn’t as direct as Freeman is; she’s speaking largely to Christians and I am speaking to a broader audience. The idea of my book is that poetry is inherent in the work we do. What I don’t say in the book is that the work we do is done in the creative image of God, whether we believe in God’s existence or not.

A colleague at work, going through kind of a bad patch, read Poetry at Work. “I had no idea,” he told me, “how much this would help me make sense of it all. Something much bigger than work is at play here.”

I make the implication at several points in the book, but it is my heart’s desire for readers of Poetry at Work to ask the question, if poetry is inherent in the work we do, then where does it come from?

Over at The High Calling today, Laura Boggess is beginning the February book discussion on A Million Little Ways. Her post introducing the book will be live at 2 p.m. Central time.

Image by Tony Melena via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Matt Appling’s "Life After Art”

Important things can often come in small packages.

Physically, Matt Appling’s Life After Art is a small book – 142 pages. Thematically, its size belies the important message it contains.

We are made in the image of God. And because we are made in the image of God, we are designed to be creators.

For some reason, most of us left that creative spirit behind about the time we left 6^th grade. We out grew it, encouraged by peers, parents, adolescence. Creativity, like art and music (and even writing), didn’t fit our ideas of “useful” or paying occupations. The further we drifted from childhood, the more those days of joyful creativity were left behind.

Appling is not arguing that we should all become artists. Instead, he says we should “peel away” the layers of paint lacquered on our creative spirits, and discover, or rediscover, what God intended us to be. Or, to use the present tense, to find what God intends us to be.

Creators.

Drawing upon his experiences as an art teacher for schoolchildren, his own childhood and life, and his understanding of the creative urge and what happens to it, Appling concisely walks us through where we were, where we are, and where we could be. His case is compelling.

“Today,” he says, “most things we consumer are cheap, unimportant, and disposable. The things we create have an exceptionally short shelf life and a rapidly approaching expiration date. We consumer, we repeat. Consume, repeat.

“We accept this, and lower our expectations.”

What we create says much about the people who do the creating. Our creativity, or lack of it, reflects the deprivation of our souls.

If we peel away the paint and find our creative spirit again, what it is that we are to create?

Appling has an answer for that, too.

Beauty.

Beauty that expresses the spirit of God.

It could be in art, music, writing or any of a hundred other creative endeavors. But we have the capability to create beauty.

If you doubt that, then perhaps you should sit in Appling’s art class, brush in hand (and it’s a brush, not a hammer, so don’t pound the paint on the paper), and listen to him explain why rules and confinements are important, that it’s not about painting with a disregard for the lines but using the lines to master and direct the creativity within you.

Life After Art is thought-provoking and desire-provoking. We recognize what Appling says as true because the creator image within us responds to it as true, and responds powerfully. It’s an important book, every page filled with what we have forgotten, what we need to know, and what we need to do.

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Matt blogs at The Church of No People.