Creativity and healing.

I have just spent a week in Oxford: a city full of old colleges. In their mediaeval chapels I listen to the choristers sing motets which seem to match the architecture of the buildings. I hear the voices of the Renaissance polyphony meet and cross each other so that their different rhythms create a complex pattern and, while I listen, my eye follows the intricate criss-crossing lines of the fan vaulting of the ceiling--an example of architectural structure being turned into something decorative and beautiful.

These chapels, the music, their paintings and sculptures, were all built, written, created to the praise of God--and this motivation has continued down the centuries. Of course there was money involved: the Church and the colleges were rich. But there was also a basic belief in a creator God who was in charge of all things, including our destinies.

This God not only created the Earth, and the good things on it--the woods, the animals, us--but he also created the quality in each of us that makes us create. Where some make artistically beautiful things, others are drawn to build, to invent, to do old things in new ways, or perhaps to strive towards some vision of perfection.

In my own small way, I sing and I paint. To adapt a phrase from the Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, `When I sing I feel God's pleasure'--well sometimes I do. When it is going well, I feel in tune both with myself and with God's bigger creation. It seems that we are most creative when we are truly open at many levels of our being--and this is particularly true of the voice because the body needs to resonate freely to sing well.

But being open means that at other times when I sing or paint, I feel dark moods of despair, anger, fear--sides of myself I do not like. And here I have a choice, because I know I can offer not just my lack of talent to the creator God, but also my blackness and my vulnerability to this God who also heals.

Just as it is here in Oxford. As I listen to the strands of the music, and absorb the atmosphere of the chapel, I am able to stop, to be still and pray. I can step outside my life with its busyness, its joys and frustrations, and hold it up to this God who represents the very best that I know. Then as I step out into the street an hour later, I find I am given new faith, new inspiration, and maybe a way forward.