3 – I need to get to work
Interestingly, one of the things that the ancients taught was that a reliable cure for the soul-death of sloth was “industria”—getting to work. You didn’t drive off what they called “the noonday demon” (so-called for that block of time in the middle of the day when it’s so easy to see everything in your life as futile and all you want to do is take a nap) by praying harder. You did it by putting your hand to the plough—which was and is an act of—you guessed it—love. Industria was the effort that allowed the Love that heals back into the deadened heart.
I think one of the reasons for this is that industria, rightly understood, places us back in community in the kind of humility (the very antithesis of self-regard) that makes genuine creativity possible. On a practical level, I have found that sometimes the very best things I can do for my creative gifts are really mundane: pay the bills, clean the garage, straighten my office, answer my emails, etc, etc…
Those things are communal acts of love (insofar as they are responsibilities that I hold for the sake of my family, my neighborhood, my job, etc.), and practicing them helps me approach my art in the same way. I don’t need to and shouldn’t wait for some moment of “inspiration” to write, just like I don’t (or shouldn’t) wait for some moment of inspiration to pay my bills. It is, simply, the work I need to do, and I do it diligently.
Every so often, of course, the “muse” visits us…inspiration and creative energy and clarity descend like a flash and we feel ourselves caught up in a torrent of beauty that seems to come “from somewhere else.” Those moments are wonderful. And.
AND.
…if you lead a wastrel, undisciplined existence, waiting for the muse before you put pen to paper, you will likely never do it. Or never do it consistently. And certainly you will never finish anything that glorifies God and blesses people.
Which leads me to make one final comment on “industria.” Often, I have found, the most creative things I have ever done were done not because I set out to “be creative,” but rather because I set out to serve. I had a job to do, and I wanted to do it well…and this creative enterprise was the result.
The sermons I’ve preached…the blogs and articles I’ve written…the creative initiatives I’ve undertaken…by and large these came into being because there were people to be served by them, and I was positioned to so serve.
And all the joy was in the serving. Beauty broke forth in self-emptying regard for the other…in love.
Which is basically what the Bible teaches. Everywhere.
Now…get to work 🙂
This article originally appeared here.
