Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, November 16, 2000
CommeMmij
The Southern Cross, Page 5
Everyday Graces
Pause and relax: the
M y 14-year-old son,
Jimmy, is taking an art
class as a high school elec
tive. Since early child
hood, Jimmy has shown a
talent for art, but this is
his first official art class.
Recently, he told me that
in this class he’d been goof
ing around with a scrap of
paper, and he created a
paper sculpture his teacher really
liked. She told him she’d like to
use his paper design as a model to
create a large sheet metal sculpture
to place on the schoolgrounds.
The day he created it, Jimmy
gave the paper sculpture to his
teacher. Because he hadn’t taped
the paper, or secured it in any way,
the design gradually came apart.
His teacher asked him to create
another one so she could use it as a
model for the larger sculpture. To
Jimmy’s dismay, after many at
tempts, he hasn’t been able to re
create his original design. Making
the sculpture the first time was so
easy, he never dreamed he’d have
trouble remembering the process.
As someone who’s encountered
similar problems, I gave him this
advice: “Stop trying so hard. Relax.
Don’t think about the outcome. Just
play with it, and maybe
while you’re goofing
around, the original
design will come back
to you.”
Jimmy’s experience
speaks to the mystery of
the creative process.
Creativity requires a
relaxed, open mind.
Perhaps one of the rea
sons young children are so naturally
creative is they haven’t adopted the
pressures, restrictions, and high
expectations we adults are prone to
place on ourselves. When adults tell
me they aren’t creative, I don’t
believe them. I do believe they are
either afraid of appearing stupid or
are too busy or too serious about life
to allow themselves time to play.
People who feel compelled to
have every detail of their lives
mapped out are resistant to the cre
ative process. Creativity requires
being flexible, fluid, going with the
flow. It requires scrapping one idea
when a better one comes along. It
requires a willingness to take risks.
When you’re creating something,
you may fail. You may look silly.
You may seem odd. Often, the
most creative people are the most
childlike. But even people who are
Mary Hood Hart
gateway to creativity
not naturally inclined to take risks
can be creative when they persuade
themselves they aren’t risking
much. If they believe that nothing
awful is at stake if they fail, then
they can relax, and they can create.
How many exceptional dinners
have resulted when a chef takes a
chance and combines some unique
ingredients? How many brilliant
musicians improvise? Of course, in
every one of the arts, discipline,
knowledge, and skill are essential
before the artist’s creativity is fully
realized. But some of the most
skillful, talented people fail to real
ize their creative potential simply
because they are afraid to take
risks.
The second reason people have
trouble being creative is that they
don’t give themselves enough time
to nurture creativity. Creativity
requires lots of unscheduled time
for the mind to explore possibili
ties. People who are constantly
involved in stimulating activity
don’t have the time to create. One
can’t suddenly shift from stimula
tion to the reflective state of mind
that inspires creation.
Nowadays, many people, espe
cially parents, consider boredom an
enemy, something to be avoided.
They are wrong. A certain amount
of quiet, of being still, of goofing
off, is essential to our well-being.
We live in a world full of distrac
tions. Because we’ve grown so
accustomed to them, we are always
seeking stimulation. Creativity
can’t thrive in such an atmosphere.
Boredom often leads to inspiration.
One of the tragedies of our cur
rent way of life is the lack of time
children have to just play, alone or
among themselves. Playing for the
pure joy of it, not to learn a skill,
not to learn the rules, not to learn
how to get along in a group, is
essential to the creative process.
Creativity is also a form of
prayer, a way of becoming closer to
God. Made in his image, each of us
has been gifted with the potential to
create. When immersed in the cre
ative process, we lose our profound
self-consciousness. We become
focused on something beyond the
confines of human experience, and
we transcend time and space. In so
doing, we’re given a foreshadow
ing of the eternal joy awaiting us in
His glorious presence.
Mary Hood Hart lives with her
husband and four children in
Sunset Beach, N.C.
Catholics and Tews today
Remember that the fundamental commandment of
Christianity is
By Father Michael J. Kavanaugh
R emember that the fundamental command
ment of Christianity, to love God and one’s
neighbor, proclaimed already in the Old
Testament and confirmed by Jesus is binding
upon both Christians and Jews in all human rela
tionships, without exception.
The Gospel according to Saint Matthew
(19:16-30) relates the story of the rich young
man who asks Jesus what he must do to gain
eternal life. Jesus tells him to obey the com
mandments, to love his neighbor as himself, and
to sell all that he has a give the proceeds to the
poor. The evangelist goes on to explain to us
that the rich man “went away sad, for he had
many posessions.” In citing the Decalogue (Ten
Commandments), which teaches the love of God
in Deuteronomy and the love of neighbor in
Leviticus, Jesus is repeating what he learned as a
child at a Hebrew Day School of his time. These
fundamental Judeo-Christian concepts flow to us
from their origins in ancient Judiasm. Jesus was
not formulating new laws of behaviour for the
edification of the young man; rather, he was
teaching what was already for centuries a part of
Jewish belief and practice.
The Ten Commandments are found in the
proclaimed in the
books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, two of the
five books (with Genesis, Leviticus, and
Numbers) that make up what we call the
Pentateuch and what the Jews call the Torah.
“These fundamental Judeo-Christian
concepts flow to us from their origins
in ancient Judaism. "
The Torah, along with the Nevi ’im (Prophets)
and the Ketuvim (Writings) comprise the
Hebrew Bible. “Old Testament” is a Christian
term; Jews do not refer to the Hebrew Bible
using this term, but often call it TNK, an abbre
viation for Torah, Nevi ’im and Ketuvim. The
“Golden Rule,” as loving one’s neighbor as one
self has come to be known, makes up an essen
tial part of Jewish religious self understanding.
Throughout the centuries it has been restated in
a variety of ways by great teachers of Judaism.
In the first century before Christ, Rabbi Hillel
put it this way: “What is hateful unto you, don’t
do unto your neighbor.” And in the 18th century,
the Ba’al Shem Tov taught, “Just as we love
ourselves despite the faults we know we have,
so should we love our neighbors despite the
faults we see in them.” When questioned about
Old Testament
who, exactly, we were to understand our “neigh
bor” to be, Jesus told the parable of the Good
Samaritan. As much as we might want to under
stand this and Jesus’ other parables as stories of
comfort and consolation, they are, rather, tales of
challenge and confrontation. The Good
Samaritan story confronted the self righteous
among Jesus’ listeners (and the self-righteous
today) with a lack of concern for that person
right there in front of us who is hurting. We may
be able to come up with all kinds of good rea
sons why we canot help him or her, but in doing
so we are violating the law that we love uncon
ditionally.
When, in the past, we have failed to love Jews
as we love our Christian selves, we also have
failed to live up to the standards of behaviour
that Jesus, good Jew that he was, learned from
his parents and taught as binding on all people.
Another important point is to avoid distorting
or misrepresenting biblical or post-biblical
Judaism with the object of extolling Christianity.
Father Michael J. Kavanaugh is diocesan
director of Ecumenism. This is the second
in a series of articles on Jewish-Christian
relations.