Poetry Thursday: "God at the Creativity Retreat"

Yesterday a student came to my office to ask, "Do you have any art supplies?"  That made me inordinately happy.  Of course I have art supplies!  She only wanted scissors.  But I was happy to be seen as a source of creative ingredients.

My office has many art supplies, and I often think I'd be happy if I had no other duties but to lead creative projects.  But that's not what I'm called to do right now.  And much of my work requires creativity, even if it's not the scissors and markers variety.

The encounter also took me back to the Create in Me retreat, and this morning, I dug up a poem that I wrote at one of them.  It was a year we studied the first creation story in Genesis, the one without the snake and the forbidden fruit and the entrance of sin into the world.

No, this was the first creation story, where God declares everything very good.  And this poem emerged during the retreat:


God at the Creativity Retreat


God comes to our creativity retreat
and notices the smallness of scale
and scope. God creates several new
species while some of us paint icons
and others make miniatures.

God doesn’t understand
the instant rejection of creations.
God spends part of each
day leaning into our ears to whisper,
“It is good.”

God vaguely recalls creating calories,
but doesn’t understand all the fuss
over them. After a long
day of workshops and craft sessions,
God finishes eating all the cake icing,
while some of us look away.

We drive down the mountain
hoping for inspiration to claim
the coming year. With spirits softened
we see all the possibilities
and proclaim them very good.