The Call to Create

Well, there you are again. This is Dick Foth. Just here to tell you another story or reflect on stories that make sense of it all. One of the ways that I retrieve stories for myself is by having conversations with people. I enjoy hearing where they come from, what they've done, how they've approached life, seeing or hearing the lenses about the lenses through which they see life. I have two friends like that with me today on this podcast, Mark Boustred and Barb Melby. Folks who have some things in common and some ways they apply those things that are very different from each other. We had this conversation about creativity and art and God, not necessarily in that order, but that's where we're going with this. I'd like you to meet my two friends. Here they are. Here I am with two dear friends, Barb Melby and Mark Boustred. Glad you could do this with me. I'm glad you could do this with me. We are talking about God, the maker, God, the creator. We are called to be creators and makers and we'll get into that just a minute. For your career, for your vocation over these past number of decades, give us a snapshot of that. Okay. I would have to say that my vocation started in one direction and then made a few bends, but I started my career in college here at CSU. I was a graphic design major and I had had some wonderful art teachers before that. I thought it was an area I just really loved. After I graduated with my degree, I spent a couple of years working in graphic design, which I enjoyed. My husband and I soon found ourselves overseas teaching. For the first time in my life, I not only was learning about young children and how they developed and what they loved, but also I was learning to teach. So that was sort of the foundation of not only raising a family of young children when we got back, but also then starting to teach. And so I've been teaching the last 30 plus years, both in early childhood education where I had classes of three and four years old, to K through 12 art classes, mostly high school art classes. I retired from that about a year ago and I would say that that long time profession of teaching early childhood preschoolers was sort of the love of my life. I enjoyed it a lot and it was probably my long term vocation. Okay. Mark, you're not a preschool teacher. No, but I do love preschool. My vocation was really, I guess, to follow in the footsteps of the great physician. I came to know Jesus in my last year at high school and got led really into medicine. So did my medical degree and then specialised in surgery was a medical missionary surgeon for a bit, then became a professor, training general surgeon, then I became a plastic surgeon and then was a professor training plastic surgeon and then ended up my time in practice, in Fort Collins of all places. Yes. This is not a Fort Collins accent. No, no. So this is South African accent and I don't know if there is an accent here, but it's that Illinois, Illinois sort of all in company heartland accent. So let me ask this question. The connection I see between the two of you, because I'm saying what would a Maxwell facial surgeon, one of your specialties, cleft palates and babies? What would someone like you have in common with Barb who's a preschool early childhood teacher and so forth? And when I, because I've known you both for some years, I'm thinking art and creativity or maybe reverse of that, because creativity is sort of the fountain head of that. Let's talk about that. When I say creativity war, what comes to mind? What do you think? You know, I think probably kind of a whole list of words, things like imagination and originality, self expression and ways to communicate ideas and seeing ideas that other people have in that creative way, maybe a bit of vulnerability, but really out of God's design and the way God created to really take the opportunities to bring beauty into situations or into the world. So to me, creativity involves almost anything that you are involved in. You can creatively and innovatively approach every vocation in life, every task throughout the day, every relationship that you have. So my mother was great at designing baby showers or parties for people or special sympathy cards or gifts for people and she wouldn't have said she was an artist, but she was certainly involved in theater and music. So in the arts, but not a painter, not a drawer, but she brought that creation into everything she did and so did my dad and so that kind of spurred that in me as well. Okay, Mark, creativity. I think of beauty and I think of the tremendous creation around us and the inspiration that one gets from nature to create and make and I think we're all a chip off the old block. We're created in the image of the ultimate and most wonderful creator. I feel he's put that within each of us and for me, it comes out in certain ways in my work as a surgeon. My passion was to restore that which was marred and twisted and deformed, be it a child who was born with a cleft lip and palate or someone who had had a terrible motor wreck and smashed up face or other parts of the body as well. Here was this wonderful grand beauty of a person that the Lord had made that had been shattered and I was able to take part in helping to restore it. I wish I could have got it as good as he got it. Never quite reached that. But I think beneath all that there's this great well spring of beauty that I believe lies within each one of us that calls out to us and I may have been very artistic in the work I was doing but I believe that many people are artistic and they don't realize it. Just on that point, if somebody were to ask me over the 70 plus years of my life almost 80 now, so full to you and artist, I'd say not really. Most start I did was on the back of an offering envelope during a boring message in church. I was raised in church. I could have a whole portfolio of airplanes and ships and trains and all of that kind of stuff. Only in recent days, and I mentioned this earlier in her chatting, only in recent days, have I come to understand because I enjoy story, that there's a certain sense in which I think probably I paint with words. You know, I don't consider myself a Rembrandt that Dutch guy or David Zee, the Italian guy or Wyeth, the New England guy or Constable or any of these other names that we can call up from the art world. But I think that's it. For me, that was a little bit of little bit of a revelation because you'd think after all these decades, I would have picked up on that earlier. But that, just that idea of what is creativity, what is art under the impromata under the heading of God the Maker, God the Creator. You both just really a few days ago introduced me to an author and a book. And you have that there, Barb. It's called art and faith, a theology of making. And it's by a Japanese man, Makato Fujimura, I think I've been saying that correctly. And it's the books deeper than this brain, okay? So it's one of those, I remember being with Dallas Willard one time who's written a bunch of stuff, philosophy, professor, and you know, the divine conspiracy. And I told him, Dallas, I don't like your books. And he said, why? I said, because I have to read every page three time. Well, that's how it is with this book. But the, but the essence of this book is captured in this phrase. I'm going to say it, and then I'd like you to respond to it, that God was an artist, the artist, before he was the lecturer. Just respond to that if you don't mind. I think part of that that I love is that he goes on to say that God did not create out of need. He didn't need us. He didn't need the world really. He didn't need Adam. He didn't need names for the animals. He didn't need any of that. So there was no, and there were no really ulterior motives to his creation. He loved us. He was out of beauty, out of joy, out of all those kind of parts in our society that sometimes we just sort of dismiss as being, oh, that's kind of nice, but not the needed things, not the useful things. And yet God created us out of that. He made us co-creators to make things that were beautiful and that were brought joy and that brought a positive environment into our lives. And certainly our world today could use a lot of that. People who are committed to being a force for beauty and for positive and for joy and for enlightening people's lives instead of just criticizing them. So artists before lecture? You know what I love about the incredible creation is God's extravagance. You know who would have, you know, for flowers to perpetuate themselves? Who would have created such a beautiful way? He could have just made boring old brown seeds, you know, that would fuse and be pollinated and that's it. But I think it shows us something of the incredible generous extravagance of God. He's a God of abundance. He delights in beauty. And I think that each one of us has known, you know, those times when we have a numerous moment where we watch an incredible sunset or we look at an incredibly beautiful flower and something calls deep within. And I think within that beauty there's a tremendous secret to us learning to walk with Jesus and his father. We're surrounded by so much that is sad. We have imploding in our world every day, you know, all these images of sadness and that are hard and yet God shines above all that. And somehow if we can see his beauty and his creativity and sink some deep tap roots into that, I think it will result in that deep, deep joy that wells up from within that Jesus spoke about. And I do think too that as we make and as we create, as we take those sub-creative roles in our lives and we actually experience those things that we do experience him in a new way. We meet him in those places and we deepen our faith and our walk with God. And it's in a way that I think a lot of people as they grow to be adults don't take, either they don't realize if that's a possibility out there or that this type of activity or this type of thinking will actually bring, you know, grow your faith will actually bring you closer to God. It's sort of a foreign idea to us. And especially so perhaps in a Western culture because we're so the word he uses as utilitarian that is if it's not useful, like can I eat that? Well, some flowers you can eat, you know, some of them. But that's not the point, is it? It's interesting as you were talking here about beauty. You both brought that up that when you see something that's exceptionally beautiful, Ruth always says about sunsets here. Look how God put those colors next to each other that ordinarily we wouldn't, but he does it. They're blended or however, I'm in this book. Fujimura talks about creating whites out of oyster shells and layering whites because there are so many shade of white. And I'm reading this thing. I said, you got to be kidding me. But in fact, it's true. But it's interesting that when you see something that's as beautiful as this or a sunset or whatever a moment, you often don't have words. You go, oh, and the phrase we use for that, it took my breath away. If you don't have breath, you don't have words. I mean, it's that kind of expression. So something oftentimes in our culture that's not useful, if you can't sell it, you know, we talk about the starving artist. Well, just because they painted that picture of those flowers, you know, some people might buy that, but you can't make a living off that, right? I mean, that's the heart of it. But with what he's saying here and what you both have said, that's not the point. It's the artistry, whether it's music or painting or you talked about a plumber when we were chatting before, about wanting to get the pipes symmetrical so they look at it. It takes us beyond rational thinking. It's a moment, isn't it? It's that anyway, I'm rattling on. Just talk to me or each other a little bit more just about pieces perhaps brought up in the book that stimulated your thinking in a different way or reaffirmed something you already felt. I wanted to pick up on that point you made that a plumber can be an artist, because I think that many folk say, well, I'm not an artist, you know, I can't draw, I can't paint. That's me. But you are an artist in words, Dick. You tell the most beautiful stories that, and you weave words in such a way that you draw us into the story and you teach us about God and about life in that way. And perhaps that's one of the most significant contributions of art is that good art speaks of God ultimately. He's the one who imbues us with creativity. And so good art in a way will trust all back to the creator. You know, when you stand before a beautiful painting of this artist Fujimuro, it's got so many layers and depths. And while you're looking at that, your imagination starts to run. And when you think about it, how do we rarely hear from God or talk to God? It's through our intuition and our imagination. And good art is the most tremendous way to open up the channels for the Holy Spirit to speak to us because it starts to quiet the noise of our lives. And you know, you mentioned, you know, we live in a utilitarian pragmatic era where if it hasn't got a use and you can't sell it, make a profit it's not worth it. And we're all the poorer for that. And don't you think too that within that, like you were alluding to, it takes, it takes not only time to really see those things, but it takes slowing down and listening. And it's something we don't, even we don't value that enough to put it into our day, to put it into our life. So sometimes it's getting out to the mountains that really helps people who live in Colorado to take the time to not only glance at the sky and at the sunset, but really look at it and looking at what it wherever it is, the flowers, the landscape, other people just taking the time to admire another person and their strengths and having that opportunity to revel in God's creation slowly. And I think in his book, he refers to sitting in an art gallery, he's sometimes he assists it there for 15 or 20 minutes before he even begins to see this piece of art. And I thought we don't know if that's like these days, we don't know what that's like as far as even just enjoying people. We just want to kind of rush through. So you think me taking one of my grandchildren through the Louvre and Parris that great in an hour and a half probably wasn't the right thing. Well, and I'm sorry to say that's the way I saw it last time I was there. So we got to go see the Eiffel Tower. We can't be stuck here with the Madonna or whatever it is. That idea that in the slowing down because he talks about the slow art, the slow art, right, that it takes. And again, whatever it is, whether it's you know, I consider my wife's apple pie a piece of art for a moment. I need to slow that baby down. But when I watch Ruth quilt, we were talking about this the other night that she used to quilt more by patterns because there are traditional patterns for quilting. But then when she made something for her grandchildren and they picked the pattern and they picked the color or the settings, you know, somebody's a football person, somebody's a flower person. There's something about that. And again, it's hard for me to think about art apart from painting or sculpting or music. And I shouldn't, I mean, I shouldn't worry about that. But I do need to see, you know, we're sitting on the porch of a lovely home here. And you know, how those beams are or how the lighting is in the afternoon or all of those pieces have to do with the creativity of man that's an expression of this God who is the maker and we get to co-create with him. Even if it comes down to the way you've put your flowers out next to a bowl of candy or, you know, with the way you lay a table or the way you kind of put together a garden, those kinds of things really cause, you know, cause us to experience maybe very brief experiences of joy or enjoyment of those things. I have a few things that I enjoy looking at in my home that remind me of my family, remind me of my grandparents or remind me of my mother. And that brief amount of joy I shouldn't diminish. I shouldn't say, well, that really doesn't matter. Those are things that are crucial to who we are if it was God saying that to us. So I'm going to, I'm going to put you on the spot here, Mark, because one of the key points in Fujimura's book is this thing called kintsugi, you know, the only Japanese I know is Aragato and Sayonara, you know, pretty much and I'm not even saying that correctly. Talk to us about what kintsugi is. Kintsugi is ancient Japanese craft for one to the better word. I think it arose around about the 14th or 15th century in Japan when a valued tea vessel, a tea cup, a tea pot broke. And it had been so valued that they didn't want to throw away the pieces. Let me just stop here for just a moment. In that culture, the tea ceremony, is it or what do they call them? Tea master? I mean, this was a huge thing, right? Tea ceremony is a very important term, you know, almost like an epicenter of the culture. But within the tea ceremony is embedded many critical values and behaviors, I think, in Japanese culture. Okay, so you broke a tea pot? So they wouldn't want to throw it away and so they started repairing these and one thing I guess led to another and they started repairing them more and more beautifully, eventually using lacquer with gold in it. So when you looked at a broken tea cup where the shattered piece was, there'd be a filament of gold and then sometimes they would incorporate pieces from another broken vessel and put them together in such a way that you ended up with a tea vessel that was more beautiful than the original one. And I think this is a wonderful illustration of what God does with us because we're all broken, you know, in many ways. And God takes us, our shattered pieces and welds them together. He doesn't remove the scars, you know, when Jesus appeared after the ascension, he still had his scars and the scars will be there for us to see an eternity. And often he'll take that which was most broken in us and turn it into something which is most beautiful. And how often have you read stories of someone who's greatest disaster and fall ended up becoming the way in which they had a tremendous ministry? Now and not only more beautiful, but more valuable. Yes. Yes, because the Kinsouvi bowls now that were fixed, you know, decades and centuries ago are so valuable because of those, the where the broken pieces had been put back together again. And I also love the fact that some families, because they didn't know, a Kinsouvi master to put these back together would hold on to these pieces for decades generations where they kept the pieces and just held them and held on to them. And I thought sometimes God calls us to just hold our broken pieces for a while. I mean, it's not like he comes in automatically and just fixes everything up. It's the gold in there. It puts the gold in there. But the fact that after the gold is put in and that it's not only more beautiful for the people, but you know, who see it, but more valuable, I think says a lot about our worth. So, so we go through traumatic things and we say, well, that, you know, life will never be the same because of that. Well, that's true, but the question is, does it have to be different bad? Or, you know, on a scale of bad to good as we evaluate it, you know, how is it? I mean, it's, we're at your home here, Mark, and we're not that far from your work area. We're just a few years ago. You were doing your thing with remote controlled airplanes and helicopter blade came up rotor and went through your glasses, took out your left eye and you're sort of an example, not sort of, you are an example of something that could have been the end of your world in a lot of ways. But wasn't, can you just give us a, just a quick view on that? Yes, I guess, I guess in that sense, I'm a living kinsouki. I could pop it out and show you when I spoke to like that. Because that takes the gold out. That's not been doing that. Yes, I think, you know, where we all know that passage so well in Romans 8 that God turns what is bad for good in our lives. And that's truly been the case for me. I lost an eye. It cut short my surgical vocation, if you like. I did go back to work for five or six years afterwards. But I ended up stopping a little earlier. But the process of dealing with the difficulty and the sadness and everything involved around that accident and the consequences really made me lean much closer into Jesus. And his presence through everything was just incredible. And he's not an awful lot of bad edges off me. Unfortunately, there's still a lot more that have to be dealt with. We can talk about that later. Give me a go. But you're honestly, as I sit down now, I can say that I wouldn't be without the injury because of what God has taught me, and he's grown me through it. Now, you ought to ask my wife whether what I'm saying is true. But and I think that's an encouragement to, really to anyone out there listening to this. If you have had some terrible disaster happen to you, know that God will turn that around for good in ways that will astonish you. And he's not just the original creator. He continues to make us and create us. I mean, he's turning us into the image of Jesus and ultimately that's the best self we can be when we're modeled after Jesus. And he'll use whatever disaster comes to us, whatever, you know, broken drop of the tea cup happens. He'll put us together in a better way than we were before. I love that picture and that promise as we pray today that he continues to create because it means his creative powers and juices and imagination are going into answering our prayers. It's not just to check off the list thing for him. Oh, yeah, well, I'll do this, I'll do that, but no, you can't have this. But he really is still creating. And so to pray even creatively for what he might do has been really a new thing in my life in the last several years of just understanding how much he's still actively creating because it's who he is, he cannot not create. He cannot not create. Go negative as a positive, I love that. How does creativity help you to talk with God? Yeah, I think in that part of it in that way, thinking outside the box when I ask him to do things. When I think even in the Psalms, David said he created me a clean heart. He wasn't just looking for a quick seven day fast or a new book to read, but he was asking God to create that in him. And sometimes we need, when we're sick, sometimes we need healthy cells to be created, sometimes we need a sound mind to be created when that's not what we have. And I just think that there is a lot about God we don't tap into because we don't expect him to be creating still. Just as we wrap this, Barbara, you had a phrase that you used just a few minutes ago about, I'll paraphrase it in a culture that in some ways or in a lot of ways around the world, not just in our own nation, but we live in a time where destruction or conflict tends to be, those are the operative terms. And how can we as followers of Jesus, citizens in the kingdom of God, speak into that or bring into that this creativity so that we don't just end up being sour pushes and critics and all that. I think one of the things in his book that spoke the most to me was he, like you said, he talks about this idea of creating a theology of usefulness where what we value is what is most of useful. And then also this idea of fixing that we move into this place where everything that we do needs to be fixing something or we need to be fixed or other people need to be fixed. And I think that many times that's not only our go to as people, but now as we have social media, we have lots of new stations, as we have lots of opportunities for people to express ideas, that's what we hear about. This is how I think we should fix this situation. This is how we're going to correct this. This is what's wrong with this. This is how I want to consume this or use this. We move into that consumer role. And I think for me, it was backing up and not only recognizing how often I do that throughout the day, but also that I can intentionally set myself on a different path if I renew my mind. If I really put that before me, what my desire is is to bring good and to bring encouragement to people, not to tear them down, to bring into a situation even just some positive suggestions. I see a lot of people talking in negative ways about what's wrong with things, but then they rarely often don't propose anything that will help. So it's a big task right now, I think, because there's so many areas of our life that need fixing. And I think that's where artists of all kinds really can help. I think in a sense, artists are the prophets of our society at any time. They often have a more contemplative lifestyle. They're more used to sitting quietly and thinking about the work that they're doing and spending hours and hours on it. And I think in the process, they learn to quieten the noise of the modern world we live in. Let's face it, we're constantly barrage by noise. And we can't hear God in that. If we want to hear God, we need to slow down. We need to spend some time in contemplative prayer and solitude and the artists do that a lot. And we can learn a lot from them. He stimulates our imagination. When it comes to even helping someone who is going through grief and how can we bring some joy to them even in that moment. Even the woman at the grocery store who's checking us out that doesn't look very happy that day or some of those things are very brief and very small and then some of them take months and months of contemplation and sitting alone and really thinking through. So I think just opening yourself up to the possibility and and using your imagination and your everyday world, the calling that you have, how can I bring some creativity, some art into my world right now today. And I don't have to go out and sign up for a sculpture class or go back to college or do anything like that. It's fun to do those things. I think it is great to do these things where we have never done them before. Because it does make us realize that yes, that's a possibility. Picking up on that imagination thing that you said is really, how do we know God or hear God? It's really through our imagination and intuition. And Dick, when you tell one of your wonderful stories, you know, we're all sitting there being drawn in to the story and our imaginations are working. And it's through our imaginations and our intuition that the Holy Spirit speaks to us. So I think all of us should develop the art that God has put within us, the creativity, because we all have it. You know, as we said, even the plumber who may say, well, I'm not an artist, but the way they may put lay all their pipes beautifully and symmetrically, I mean, that is art. And in the process of doing that, I think we are touching on bits of God's character that is far more profound than we realized. If in fact the artist, God is artist before lecturer, if in fact his spirit is that creative urge, when we have eyes to see things in a different way, which is really what artists do, right? They see things in a different way. When that happens, that engages the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one that is in us because of who Jesus was and because of how all this works together. And that gives us the track to run on and the urge to see things in different ways. So thank you for being two folks who I know see things in pretty different ways than I do. And I'm just, you know, whether you're, whether you're in fact sculpting someone or sculpting someone's face or whether you're trying to keep up with the creativity of three and four year olds because they don't know they're not artists. They don't. They're not artists yet. It's just been tremendously enhancing to how I understand some things. Thank you for introducing me to the book and to that man. And we'll just see how this goes going forward. Thanks for being with me. Thanks. Thank you. So that's it for today. It's been grand to be with you. And especially with our friends, Mark and Barb, I just find myself so stimulated by those kinds of conversations. And when I think of the first verb in scripture being created in the beginning, God created, that's that old Hebrew word that means to create something out of nothing. And boy, I'm counting on that. I bring a lot of nothing sometimes. So I think that'll work. Well, you know, something that would help me greatly is if you'd be kind enough to write a review of stories to make sense of it all, it'll help us move the ball down the field, I think. And I'd just be grateful. So on whatever platform you're listening on, thanks for going for it.