The Universal Call to Creativity
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Jul 12
- 4 min read
Creativity doesn’t belong only to musicians, artists, or geniuses. From a musician’s fifteen-hour creative days to a mother’s gift for gathering people, this reflection explores the many ways the human spirit answers the call to create.
The blog article follows this announcement!
Sunday, August 2 @ 3:00
Resilience & Creativity: A Concert and Conversation with Royce Martin
“Touched the depths of my soul searching. I’d want others to have the same experience.” – SMC event attendee
The Universal Call to Creativity
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” (Rick Rubin, 2023)
Any regular SMC reader or listener will recall that my mom died just over a month ago. In case you’re new to this space, let me catch you up. Mom lived the last five years of her life in a memory care facility just outside Springfield, Illinois. In several articles, I referenced an adopted family member, Father John Ossola, who lived at the same facility for every bit of the time she was there. It was not uncommon to find them eating lunch together, watching TV, or, until fairly recently, teasing one another. To make a long story short, just a month after her death, Fr. Ossola also shuffled off his mortal coil, and graduated from hospice last Friday night. Needless to say, the one-two punch of these consecutive deaths remains with me, like a backbeat to a song. It’s not necessarily in the foreground each and every minute, but when I stop and think about it, I notice its influence on the melodic flow of my days. I don’t really have enough distance from these events to create a worthwhile reflection on their deaths, or my own grief process…just yet. However, being a man of many words, I do have at least one humble observation to share.
It will come as no surprise to you that among the more common salutations offered in a sympathy card is the ubiquitous, “May she/he rest in peace.” I’ve heard and seen that phrase forever, but somehow, hearing it applied to my mom and our dear friend, it’s as if I’m hearing it for the first time. I’ve noticed a funny reaction to it. Each time, I can’t help but wince and react out loud, “Oh, I hope not!” The thought of resting in peace for eternity…doesn’t sound much like heaven to me…especially as applied to these highly social, fun, and funny people.
My mom and Fr. John Ossola at their memory care facility.
Today, as I was interviewing the acclaimed, dazzling musician Royce Martin, the meaning of my reaction to “rest in peace” came into focus for me. By the way, if you haven’t heard, this local St. Louis talent is now a national treasure as he takes his unique brand of hip-hop-jazz-bebop-ragtime music around the nation and beyond. Hopefully you can join our SMC event on August 2 from 4-6 PM (doors open at 3 for happy hour treats, cocktails, and socialization). Once again, we’ll be hosting this event at the gorgeous Hogwarts-like dining room and patio at Schroer Commons at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves.
In the midst of my hour-and-a-half conversation with Royce, at one point, he said that at times, it feels like the music he writes comes to him like a huge gift. He experiences it like an emotional surge inside his body that he’s trying to capture in his music. It also happens the other way around. A theme will occur in his mind, like the universality of the Hero’s Journey, for instance. Next thing you know, he’s trying to capture the textures of this concept in his music. When I asked him about his creative process and his work hours, I learned that it’s not unusual for this artist to spend fifteen hours or even eighteen hours in a day pursuing his passion. That’s when it occurred to me. This man has no interest in “resting in peace.” That would take away his peace! If anything, his drive is to create and channel the music he’s hearing. The creative work itself, and all it demands, provides him with deep-down satisfaction.
In preparation for this August 2 event, I’ve been reading Rollo May’s The Courage to Create (1975) and Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023). In those works, I have found myself thinking that Royce, although a genius, contains within himself something all of us share. The more I contemplate creativity and resilience, the more I see that creativity is actually a constitutive element of the human soul. To put that another way, there is a kind of universal call to creativity embedded in the human spirit. For you and me to live a happy and resilient life, that call must be answered in big ways—like Fr. Ossola building a cabin with his own hands, or constructing a religious ed class for teenagers; or in smaller ways, like the way my mom would creatively host a little party with anybody who would take a minute to laugh and connect with her.
In his First Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 13), Saint Paul famously said that in the end, only love really remains beyond the grave. Speaking with Royce, and then contemplating my mom and my other pal, John, I got to thinking that Paul’s answer was either incomplete or just not spelled out explicitly. Our restless hearts will never be able to truly experience heaven unless that most unique of our human capacities is exercised on a regular basis—our universal call to creativity. If we are made in the “image and likeness of God,” then a part of that divine similarity is in the realm of creativity. I wonder what shape that will take for you and me in that deathless place? I wonder what shape it takes in your “one wild and precious life” on this side of the dirt?
Enjoy this week's music, provided by Royce Martin, our Aug 2 SMC event guest:
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
I enjoyed your message today about creativity. As an art educator, I always taught that
Art is an Awareness -Awareness is an Art.
Creativity is a practice that can enrich all of us.