Pull Out the Crayons

Last night I started a 4-week learning lab on creativity with ReIMAGINE. Creativity is one of the 7 vows that we take together to live out the teachings of Jesus. We believe that living artfully helps us to live out God's unfolding story in our cultural time and place, and that when we exercise creativity we are reflecting the Creator.

The particular team who put the creativity learning lab together decided to roll with creativity as "child-like wonder, creativity, and faith". So we are doing kid things. For example, during our lab time last night dozens of grown-ups could be found sprawled out on the sidewalks and in Dolores Park doing "rubbings" where you place your paper over objects of different textures, then "rub" the crayon over it so you get that shape on your paper.

We are all keeping a daily journal for the duration of the learning lab-- but not an ordinary grown up journal. It is a "doodle pad" (mine has a happy turtle on the cover) and we have agreed to use only crayons in our journaling. I happened to have a mega-box of crayons in my closet, so I enthusiastically got them out and dove right into crayon journaling this morning.

Crayons don't flow like a nice Bic rollerball pen does. Crayons are chunky and imprecise and wrapped in paper that you have to keep peeling off. But on the other hand, they smell like childhood, and I have 64 colors to choose from with names like "spring green" and "mulberry". Bics come in red, black, and blue. Period.

Jesus said "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Will journaling with crayons help me live my life more like Jesus? That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, I did catch myself sticking my tongue out in child-like concentration a couple of times.