I recently finished reading Parker Palmer’s The Active Life. I read it as part of my morning devotions for the better part of two weeks.  It is a fascinating book–very reflective and thought provoking. Palmer and I agree on many things, and disagree on some, but the conversation he stirs inside of me as I read him is what is most valuable.

One particular paragraph he wrote (p. 9) struck a nerve with me because I like to think of myself as a creative person. It was so interesting, I thought I’d share it with you.

Creativity . . . is driven more by inner choice than by outer demand. An act cannot be creative if it is not born of freedom. In creative action, our desire is not to ‘solve’ or ‘succeed’ or ‘survive’ but to give birth to something new; we want, for a while, to be less creaturely and more like the creator. If work reveals something of our bondage to the world, creativity reveals something of how we transcend it–and that fact gives rise to the dilemmas of creativity.

book image form amazon.com