Creativity Quotes

“Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times:

"What do we do with chaos?

Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“We are not consumers. For most of humanity’s existence, we were makers, not consumers: we made our clothes, shelter, and education, we hunted and gathered our food.

We are not addicts. “I propose that most addictions come from our surrendering our real powers, that is, our powers of creativity.” We are not passive couch potatoes either. “It is not the essence of humans to be passive. We are players. We are actors on many stages…. We are curious, we are yearning to wonder, we are longing to be amazed… to be excited, to be enthusiastic, to be expressive. In short to be alive.” We are also not cogs in a machine. To be so would be to give up our personal freedoms so as to not upset The Machine, whatever that machine is. Creativity keeps us creating the life we wish to live and advancing humanity’s purpose as well.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This is true whether we understand our creativity to be begetting and nourishing our children, making music, doing theater, gardening, writing, teaching, running a business, painting, constructing houses, or sharing the healing arts of medicine and therapy.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“where does creativity come from?

Creativity comes from the Universe itself.

“There is music and poetry in the Universe itself — surely we hear it on planet earth.” And Creativity comes from our joys and sorrows, our deep-hearted experiences. It also comes “from and in the heart of God. All our spiritual traditions the world over agree that creativity follows through the human heart and that it flows from the Divine Heart.”

Creativity is seen as a spiritual, inwardly-driven activity, directly influenced by a Higher Power, or God. That is the ultimate in inspiration for me: to know I have “permission” to be creative and to be a creator too.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Creativity as Divine intimacy flows through us and is bigger than we are, urging us to go to the edge and grow larger. And our growth in turn delights God. “God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge,” says Eckhart.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Is any place more intimate than the place where we create? Where we co-create with the Spirit of God and the Spirit of largesse that inspires our souls where we love? Where we make love? Where we love others through serving them with our labor? Where we love our children? Where we paint our truth? Where we dance our dance? Where we speak our words? Where we work? Where we utter our poetry? The”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“The “our” is so big, so immense when we do these things. The “our” includes the hydrogen atoms of our bodies that are fourteen billion years old; the carbon and other atoms in us that are five billion years old; the food we have eaten and the drink we have drunk that give us the energy to work; the ideas that have penetrated our minds and impregnated our imaginations; the language we learned to speak so many years ago; the beauty and the pain we have absorbed through our days on earth.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“An example of what I mean can be found in a letter the psychologist Carl Rogers wrote about his work to theologian Paul Tillich. Rogers was very “secular” in his outlook until very near the end of his life, yet in this letter he confesses as follows: “I feel as though”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“They trigger creativity, because they make us so vulnerable and open our heart to become its large self. Buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy says that when your heart breaks, the universe can pour through. That is how it is. When the universe pours through, so, too, does the creativity of the universe. How many comedians are funny in spite of and because of deep tragedies in their life, which have opened their souls up to the ultimate paradoxes of living? Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life’s sorrows with grace. Humor, too, seems built into the fabric of the universe, so filled with paradox and surprise and uncanny combinations.”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“For the vast majority of our time on earth, our species did not buy its food or its clothing or its shelter or its education or its medical healing. We chased down our food, skinned rabbits and deer and buffalo for clothing, found caves and built shelters of buffalo hides attached to tree trunks, and carved limbs and even buffalo bones, and sought out plants that heal. Our elders told the important stories around camp-fires, healers studied plants for their powers and chanted to the heavens for theirs. In short, for 98 percent of our existence as hunter-gatherers, we did not consume. We created. Ten thousand years ago, in a creative discovery that has proven to be a mixed blessing indeed, we started to plant things. We no longer imitated the prairie in the way it seeded itself patiently each year: We hurried the process along and chose to do our own planting. We called this “agriculture.” Agriculture was not a moment of “pure progress” for humankind. It looked like a good deal—we could choose our diets no matter what the game were doing in our neighborhoods; we could stay home more and wander less; we could even have some people do the seeding and growing while others gathered in villages and then cities and were fed by the growers. But we paid a great price for this. Wes”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“Scientists now tell us that evolution has been supplanted on this planet by culture. Human culture moves at so rapid a pace that it has far outrun and outstripped the natural processes of change and adaptation. This”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity

“God the Creative Spirit, and intimate with others. To speak of creativity is to speak of profound intimacy. It is also to speak of our connecting to the Divine in us and of our bringing the Divine back to the community. This”
― Matthew Fox, Creativity