Nick Benoit

I'm feeling the weight of melancholy today. I woke up with it hanging around my neck, weighing down my eyes, scattered on the floor, splashed on the walls, hazing up the air around me. It's not new. Maybe it's the curse of the creative person, or maybe it's the curse of all those who live under the fall. I don't know. But it snuck up on me. 

I stood in the bathroom staring at my face in the mirror, seeing only the scenarios playing out in my head. 

A handful of emails I've marked as unread in my inbox, all of them asking difficult questions for which I don't have the answers.  A mental list of projects and ideas and thoughts to jot down, all with little boxes absent of check-marks.  A sick wife who will single-handedly juggle two kids for most of the day.  And this sort of crushing feeling that I'm far behind in a race I didn't know I was running. 

(Sigh.)

Blink it away. Shrug it off. Hum a tune, and push it to the edges. Save it for a rainy day.

That's what I'd normally do. But today I'm looking it in the eye. I want to see it for what it is. 

I have had good days lately. Good weeks and months, really. A long stretch of good work and seeing God work. A good look at who I am, and who God is and hearing his voice. In fact, of late I have experienced an intimacy with God and a regularity of hearing his voice that is brand new territory for me. So this morning should probably come as no surprise. 

A few months ago I started drinking more water, a result of one of the silly pacts I make with myself on a regular basis. 

Wake up without hitting snooze. Ride my bike instead of driving. Eat more green things. Read more books Read a book. Seriously…any…book.

Some I follow through with, and some I don't. But I have been drinking more water. I've discovered that the strange byproduct to consuming the amount of water that I really should be, is that I'm more thirsty. (Or maybe not more thirsty, exactly, but more regularly in want of water.) 

I used to be able to go for hours—half a day even—without water and then suddenly think, "Ooh, I should probably drink something. Maybe a Coke!" Terrible, I know.

Now I can be completely lost in whatever is in front of me, but as my throat goes dry and my eyes get heavy I suddenly realize that I haven't had anything to drink in the last hour. My body knows what I need before my mind takes notice. 

Rather than acting as a preventative to thirst, drinking more has actually made me more thirsty, more desiring of what is good for me. 

Lately I have been drinking deeply of God's presence and his word and his work in my life. And I think this morning's melancholy is a case of my soul knowing what I need before my mind has taken notice. I've been drinking more, and I'm getting thirsty faster. 

Art—or at least, good art, or at least, inspired art—makes the mundane things of life fascinating. And more than anything in life, I think it's that particular ability of art that fills me with wonderment and merriment. Because suddenly, all around us the world swells to enormous proportions as each ignoble thing becomes ripe with profundity and beauty and every disregarded "it" becomes a subject worthy of meditation and contemplation and delectation.

That's magic.

And artists are the magicians because all artists can use their art to turn the mundane into magic.

But it's not really magic. No, not really. 

When I'm tasked at coming up with a creative concept for, say, Easter, I begin by looking for threads. Threads are those things that hold seemingly disjointed things together. It's the work of God helping us see the continual work of his grace through the moments, conversations, circumstances, dreams, and prayers of our lives.

Usually I start looking frantically, but I'm learning that the frantic search is never a fruitful one. Threads are found by being both proactive and perceptive, but you must fall silent and speak. You must focus your mind and also give it time to wander. 

I always start with myself. Most of my best creativity comes from what's happening inside me—the things I'm learning, the things I'm opening up to and the things I'm fighting. The work that comes from inside is usually the most honest and raw work I can do. I start looking for the threads of what God is doing in me.

But I don't stop there. I start having conversations with friends and family, trying to perceive what God is doing in them and what they see happening in the world around them.

I also look for threads in the creative team at church and among the leadership, trying to see the lines and colors of God's grace that is drawing things together in our personal lives and our church.

In all these places I'm looking for threads. I'm looking for patterns to align, for colors to emerge, for textures to suddenly "feel right" together. Oftentimes, there's a single word or verse that seems to come up again and again.

I've found that the threads I most often end up working with are those that are being sewn so deep that they haven't yet been processed. In conversation they're rarely the first thing mentioned, they're the last. And they're almost always preceded by a pause—there's an intake of air, a narrowing of eyebrows, and a far-off look. And then threads come out of our mouths in fits and spurts, with retraced steps and bad vocabulary. Because the best threads aren't obvious, and they aren't practiced, so we have to beat around the bush a little before we can get at them. 

Hunting for threads is one of the many things I've learned through my exploration of creativity, and it's one of the greatest because it means that I'm learning a new way to listen to God.

(Photo courtesy of kpwerker on flickr.)

Christmas and Easter come every year. They're tenacious like that. (At least Christmas has the good manners to arrive at precisely the same time each December. Easter, on the other hand, sneakily slides around from week to week, making it difficult to pin down.)

As the leader of the creative team of our church, these annual holidays are times of both anxiety and excitement. They provide annual opportunities for us to tell the greatest stories of our faith and to push into new creative territory as we challenge the boundaries of our storytelling. But the holidays also carry with them the challenge of continuously needing to find new and captivating ways to tell a story that almost everyone in our western culture has already heard...and many have already dismissed. 

In truth, the story is not really mine to tell. The Spirit tells these stories. I have to trust that. 

As much work as I may do, as innovative as my methods may be, this story is made real, and it's made transformational by the quiet whisper of the Spirit in the soul of each person. 

Still, God gives me both the opportunity and capacity to partner with his Spirit in telling his story.

I take that very seriously.

Creativity is, for me, very serious business. Fun business, but serious business. 

And so, year after year, holiday season after holiday season, I must innovate. But I've learned more and more to hear and to trust the voice of God in my creativity. 

Lately I've been wondering how that comes about, and I've found that the process is not easily traced. It's hard for me to perceive—much less describe—the way the Spirit whispers ideas to my mind and swells them in my heart.  But I've come to the conclusion that I'm always looking for threads. 

Threads are those things that, well, they thread life together. 

Life is a series of fragments, scraps of fabric. Every interaction, every conversation, every experience a different pattern, color, and texture. But through all of it, God is working and speaking. He's highlighting words and moments. 

We hear the same words repeated in a conversation with two friends weeks apart.  We learn the same lessons three and four times over in different ways—through a situation, through a sermon, through our devotions.  We feel a subtle shift in our hearts. 

These are threads. It's as if someone is taking a needle and thread and drawing them through the fraying edges of all of these scraps of life and suddenly making sense out of them, making them work in harmony, closing the gaps and seaming them together.

So each time another holiday comes rolling/looming on the calendar, I start looking for threads. 

An interesting article reflecting on the apparent stagnation of culture—art, architecture, fashion, design—amidst the constant innovation of the technology sector in the last twenty years. 

Before Finnden was born I knew I wanted to create something for his room. Something special. Something no other kid in the world would have. Something that, years from now, he could look back on and say, “My dad made that for me. He loved me before he knew me.”

For Finn I created two prints that hang in his room, geometric ABC’s and 123’s. Many nights before he goes to bed he insists on stopping at the framed ABC’s on his wall and hearing us sing the tune as he points to each letter. There’s nothing so gratifying in the world as that.

Since we’re expecting another little one in February, I wanted to create something equally as personal and special for her space as well.

(As a second child, I can attest to the fact that most second-born children generally get considerably less...um...excitement surrounding them. Now understand, I know it didn’t mean that I was less wanted or loved, but...well...the newness wears off. The second one isn’t the first. First birthdays. First steps. First teeth. It’s all been seen before. Snapshots alone are proof of that. For every one picture of me ages birth through about six there are fifteen of my older brother before the age of one, drooling, sleeping, and generally being a bump on a log. But it was all so new.)

All that to say, I wanted to create something for the new baby.

I’ve had a very cool, gnarled branch I’d happened upon (for free) that’s been sitting in my garage awaiting inspiration for a few months. Add to that the fact that Karen and I are a bit enamored with owls lately, and I had the impetus for a project.

(Yes, I know owls are trendy right now. I don’t care.)

I’m not the best at hand-sewing, but with a little patience and the determination not to quit, I came up with something I hope she will treasure for a long time. And something that will remind her that she was loved long before we laid eyes on her.

(Her arrival will be sometime this week. Pretty excited about that.)

My son is by no means immune to logic...at least no more than the next two-and-a-half-year-old. If he can stop squirming long enough to listen, he's often able to comprehend the whys and why-nots of a given situation.

"No, Finn, I don't want you to poke the dog in the eye. Yes, I know you think it's funny, but would you want her to poke you in the eye? No? Then you probably shouldn't do it."

He gets it. But again, the key is getting him to sit still long enough to listen to logic. If he can't or won't listen, things go downhill fast. 

Lately, his greatest joy has been kicking around a soccer ball in the front yard. He runs after it, squealing and giggling. He lines it up just right. He announces, "I kick it." And then he proceeds to do just that. Then the running and squealing and giggling begin again.

Just the other day I asked him if he wanted to go out front and kick the soccer ball. Before I had even finished asking the question he was at the front door, twisting the doorknob with both little hands, saying, "Go kick. Go kick!" But before we could go outside I needed him to put on his shoes. Logical, right? Well, this is one of those examples where logic fails because he's just not hearing it. The conversation went something like this:

Finn: Go kick! Me: Yup, we're going to go play with the ball, but first I need you to get your shoes and... Finn: Go kick! Me: I know, and we will, but... Finn: (with concern) Kick? Me: Mm-hmm, but... Finn: (growing desperate) Please? Me: Yeah, buddy, we will but your shoes... Finn: (the tears are filling his eyes) Please go play? Me: Yeah, just put on...

And then it's over. He's beside himself. It's not really a tantrum. He's not demanding his way. But suddenly he believes that what he's been promised will not happen, that the thing he's pleading for is going ignored. It's absolute, crushing, and pitiful disappointment. 

The logic was sound. The answer was there. He just couldn't listen.

But this "not listening thing" is not just the territory of two-year olds. We do the same thing, and often we do it with God. There have been many times when I have made my questions known to God, when I have pleaded, when I have demanded justice, or answers, or clarity. And then I have just kept on pleading and demanding and the like. I haven't stopped to take a breath, much less listen.  Then I conclude that God doesn't have an answer for me or that he hasn't been listening when, really, I'm the one who hasn't been listening.

Habakkuk shows us another way. He does his fair share of questioning and pleading and demanding justice, but then he stops and he listens. He asks his questions, and then he waits; he waits intently and with purpose. 

I will stand at my watch    and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me,    and what answer I am to give to this complaint. Habakkuk 2:1

We all lament the pace of our lives. Despite our best efforts to slow down it seems we often crowd so much into our lives that we cannot settle, we cannot enjoy, we cannot slow, and we certainly cannot stop. 

Whenever my son, Finnden, is trying to pretend he is not getting sleepy he overcompensates by rushing from one thing to the next. He turns into a bit of a maniac, bouncing about endlessly, shifting from one leg to the the other, shouting for no discernible reason, and generally being terribly disobedient. Sometimes I feel like that manic child.

But today I was fascinated to watch Finnden playing with his wooden train set. I helped him lay a track that coursed through the barren wheat-field of our living room carpet, and as soon as I connected the last piece I was ready to set a battery-operated train engine on it, press the button, and watch it go a few rounds. 

But not Finn. 

Finnden wanted to push the train. Forget the buttons or the speed. He wanted to slowly connect other cars to the engine and fill them with their cargo. He wanted to painstakingly push the lumbering train around the track, head lying low the ground, watching every slow turn of the engine's wheels from eye level. 

When he came to the windmill he wanted to spin it. When he came to the mountain, he slowly chugged up its slope and down the other. When he came to the crossing, he pressed buttons and listened to the noises and opened and closed the gates again and again.

I watched in amazement as it took him a full half hour before his little "choo-choo" had made it all the way around the little track. Such concentration, such deliberation, such wonder and enjoyment. 

Certainly, we all need to get better at learning the things we should shoulder and the things we should refuse. But if we've mastered the word "no" and have not learned to slacken our pace a little…well...