Creativity, Art and Failure
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Neil Gaiman, who is a writer and creator of many things, gave a commencement speech that was later published as a book. In it, he urges:
I hope you’ll make mistakes. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re out there doing something.…Make interesting, amazing, glorious, fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.
I hear something in Mr. Gaiman’s words that inspires me to a new kind of courage, to new ways of being brave. If our congregations are going to be relevant, I think we have to lead the way toward creative engagement with the world. And we have to lead without—or at least, in spite of—the fear of failure. Perhaps we can learn some of this by reconnecting with the muses, playful and dangerous partners that they are.
Art and spirit are close kin, the only two realms in which people talk openly about inspiration—about being claimed by the beauty of a thing or an idea or a cause. For centuries, if you wanted to see art you would head to a cathedral, temple, or mosque. You might walk through gardens made to resemble paradise on earth or be bathed in light filtering through stories told in glass. For millennia, people understood art to be a gateway to spirit and spirit to be at work in art.
Only in the past few centuries, as industry and capital have begun to determine what is of value, has art been demoted to an avocation, a hobby.
When I was planning a project we called Cabaret Church, we used a quote by Lee Ustinich as our motto: “Art is spirituality in drag.” It may have made people laugh, but I hope it made them think as well. Art and spirituality are deeply connected, and I think we have much to gain by reclaiming not just a connection to art, but a sense of ourselves as artists and the work of ministry as art.
I have to say that my understanding of ministry was shaped by serving a congregation full of artists. We had actors, sculptors, fabric artists, painters, poets, and glass artists. I can’t think of anyone in that congregation who doesn’t make art. Even the chair of their Endowment Trustees plays the banjo and sings at the coffee house.
One Sunday after the service I was talking to a few board members, and I spontaneously asked, “So, when I say minister, what image comes to mind?” Their list was unsurprising, “He’s tall and thin, in his mid-fifties, has gray hair and a beard, wears black, and he is very serious.”
Next I asked, “What about when I say artist? What do you imagine then?” “Oh, she’s young! She has blue hair and tattoos and wears colorful, funky clothes and she is lively and unique and FUN!”
As I observed these long-time leaders of my congregation, it wasn’t the answers they gave, but rather the way they gave them that caught my attention. They spoke with joy and enthusiasm, with heart! “Now you’re going to dye your hair blue, aren’t you?” And I said, “Maybe.” And the chair of the Board said, “Good!” Something began to shift and we began to claim art as part of our mission, and it began to change us.
When I said at a planning meeting, “I really should probably teach a class on UU history….” they were savvy enough to ask, “Hmm…. Is that your ‘serious-minister-all-in-black’ showing up? What do you want to teach?” I answered, “Well, there is this poetry class I’ve taught a couple of times.…” and they said, “THAT! Teach that!” So I did.
Nine women signed up for the class. Four of them were already leaders in the congregation. Two came because they wanted to get to know people better. A mom and daughter decided to take the class together. The ninth woman was new. She’d been on our mailing list because she’d once attended a documentary film we’d shown. That very week her therapist encouraged her to start a writing practice and she saw our poetry class in the newsletter and spontaneously signed up. As we introduced ourselves, she mentioned that she attended a local evangelical mega-church.
The next week the assignment was: “Write a poem that tells a very short story.” When it came time to share, the newcomer blurted out, “I’m really terrified to read this. I’ve been terrified all day. Can I please go first?” We agreed and she introduced her poem by telling us that she was in counseling because her marriage was abusive, and she was wrestling with what to do. She then read the most honest and painfully beautiful poem telling a story of power and control that, while deeply personal, was also a story anyone who had known abuse would find familiar.
In that moment, the class became more than a bunch of people who wanted to experiment with writing poetry. We were claimed by a mission, the most fundamental mission of art: truth-telling. From that moment on, none of us could share a single poem that pretended to be something it was not. We bonded into a community that could tell and hear truth.
More than that, the Unitarian Universalists in the class gained—seemingly instantaneously—the ability to interpret and accept words spoken in a language of faith that they themselves had rejected. No one felt the need to correct her when she said, “God bless you” or to dismiss her when she said, “Praise the Lord.” The mission of truth-telling was too important.
About halfway through the class, she found the courage to move into a local shelter. It was hard for her to be there, and she kept writing poems and we kept listening, without judgment, without correction. Her poems told her story and we learned the terrifying truth of the danger she was in. We heard how the leaders of her church told her to go home, to have faith, and to pray. She couldn’t tell them what she’d told us: that she’d locked his guns in the trunk of her car because she was afraid he would kill her while she slept. We held her and heard her truth and shared a profound artful and spiritual community.
She didn’t become Unitarian Universalist, and like many women in her position she struggled, returned home, left again. Her road to freedom and safety will likely continue to be bumpy, but her willingness to be honest made it possible for all of us to set aside the façade of perfectionism and connect around our common, flawed, humanity.
Together, we witnessed two things: the value of her life, each life, no matter how far from perfect and the power of art in spiritual community to affirm that value and beauty. In this small circle of truth-tellers she could see herself—flaws and all—through our eyes, and ultimately, through our belief that eternal, all-embracing Love would never, ever let her go. She didn’t become a Unitarian Universalist, but she knows we’re here. She knows there is a religious community that doesn’t believe she is being punished, doesn’t blame her for the abuse, and will not abandon her for being human.
Art is healing. Making good art is more than paint on canvas or a moving melody line or beautiful turn of phrase. Making good art is opening our hearts—our whole beings—to the emotion, inspiration, pain, and courage of being alive. Making good art demands that we let go and allow ourselves to be claimed by something bigger than our egos, something bigger than our fear. Making good art means being willing to face the inevitable messes and mistakes and be brave. When we do this, we sometimes succeed in ways we could never have imagined.
Excerpted from Sean Parker Dennison’s essay “Mission Impossible: Why Failure is Not an Option, delivered to Ministerial Conference at Berry Street in 2015. You can read the complete essay here.
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