Creativity and the Power of Story in Our Lives

May 31st - Creativity and the Power of Story in Our Lives, with Jane Kirkpatrick. Series: Created to Create A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Ephesians 3:20.

Ever feel like your life is a jumble of moments that don’t quite make sense together? This Sunday we’re exploring how your own stories, even the hard ones, can become a thread of meaning, healing, and surprising creativity. You don’t have to be “religious” or a writer to show up. Just curious, or maybe a little tired and in need of hope.

Join us online or in person this Sunday. You’re warmly welcome, just as you are.

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At First Presbyterian, you will meet people at many different places theologically and spiritually. And we love it that way. We want to be a place where our diversity brings us together and where conversation takes us all deeper in our understanding of God.

We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

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Keywords:

Creativity, spirituality, storytelling, human experience, Pulitzer Prize, human heart, cultural transfer, coping saw, mental health, homesteading, faith, writing journey, historical research, national awards, healing through stories., presbyterian, church, online worship, bend, oregon

Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Sharon Edwards, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Whitney Higdon: 0:39

Welcome to worship at First Presbyterian Church in Bend, Oregon. My name is Whitney, and we are so grateful you joined us. We are a community shaped by what we call spacious Christianity, a faith wide enough for difference, honest enough for questions, and kind enough for the full truth of our lives. Here, doubts are not disqualifiers, questions are not threats, they're invitations into deeper faith and more authentic connection. Your story matters, and together we seek God with holy curiosity. So, today, wherever you're coming

from, know this: 1:12

you are welcome, and your presence is a not certainty, a journey, not a join us. gift.

Steven: 1:17

Imagine a community where faith is

Unknown: 6:21

in our pain, our blue, our beautiful, our hard, our messy, our ugly, our struggles, and our joys, God is with us God accompanying us God alongside us God amid us God among us God beside us God by us, God including us, God near us, God bless us, God upon us, God as companion to us, God side by side us, God in the thick of us, in the thick of our humanity, in the middle of this weary world, God is with

Musicians: 7:38

us

Unknown: 7:39

in the gift and in the muck and mire of real life we are called to be present to be in the flesh with one another accompanying others alongside others amid others beside others by others, for others, including others, near others, a companion to others, side by side with others, in the thick of others, God with us, us with others, God with the world in the thick of the beautiful and the messy, a weary world rejoices.

Musicians: 9:05

A good morning. I've been asked to chat with you about creativity through the lens of spirituality and that of a writer, and share a little bit about how God has intervened in that journey. I'd add the lens of a storyteller, because that's what I think I do, but that's what you do too, because stories are the most powerful way we have of organizing human experience. When William Faulkner accepted the Pulitzer Prize in 1954 he said that the only stories with a writer's blood and sweat and tears were stories of the human heart in conflict with itself. Willa Cather, who also won the Pulitzer, says the stories that engage writers, and I would add readers, are based on the experiences that we had before 15. One of my favorite stories comes after the Israelites have wandered for 40 years and have crossed into the Promised Land. Their leaders make them sit down and go over all the stories about. God had done in their lives, they did this. I believe, because they not only knew that stories told or written are the way we transfer culture from one generation to another. It's why we repeat stories at weddings and reunions and funerals, but I think those leaders also understood that until we find the meaning in the stories of our lives that were destined to wander in a wilderness, even though we're in a promised land. Stories come in all shapes and sizes, even coping saws can be a story. How the saw is used to fit tight things into places, like a cabinet into a corner. But what gives this coping saw its name is the blade, it's very strong, but also very flexible. If it was too strong, it would splinter what you're trying to fit, and if it's too flexible, it will leave gaps. In order to cope, one needs both strength and flexibility. My husband told me that story, and I thought that was one of the most creative things for a carpenter to share with a mental health person based on the lives I mostly write stories based on the lives of actual historical women, and people will bring me story ideas about their great grandmother or their father, and these are wonderful stories of remarkable people, and I tell them you should write that story. If that story calls my name. I know that I learned something about myself that I otherwise wouldn't learn, but I wouldn't learn what you would learn, because you are the keeper of that story. Every book I've written, I thought was about this person or that person, but when I'm finished, I sit back and say, oh, that's why I was supposed to write this story. This is the comfort for me. People ask if I always wanted to be a writer, and I did not. I wrote wretched little poems when I was younger. Words fascinated me. Maybe I wanted to be a poet. And then, in the third grade, I wrote a play for George Washington's birthday, and I cajoled my little classmates into memorizing lines. Afterwards, my teacher took me into the teacher's room, the inner sanctum, and told me,"You have a gift, it's a thread to follow your whole life. Unfortunately, she didn't tell me what the gift was, maybe bossing my classmates around. When I was 16, I won a statewide contest with the subject, "What Jesus means to me. The contest was sponsored by the Methodist in Wisconsin. This was before my Catholic, agnostic, atheist, Buddhist, evangelical, Lutheran, and Presbyterian phases. Spiritual exploration has been an important part of my life. I actually didn't see any connection to writing that essay as a part of that journey, more that the subject matter is what earned me that prize. Teachers would kindly compliment me about my writing, but they also suggested that I was a good listener and could walk beside troubled classmates with compassion. I wrote an advice column in our school newspaper as part of, and then as part of the requirements of the to go to the University of Wisconsin, freshmen required to take two semesters of composition writing. I was bumped out after the first term, and told that they had nothing more to offer. Still not thinking writing was my forte, I became involved in counseling instead, eventually earning a master's degree in clinical social work. That degree brought me west, following my sister's family. I worked in central Oregon, the reservation, developing programs for families who had children with disabilities. I met and married my husband, Jerry, and became the director of the Deschutes County Mental Health Program. Here, I learned that words have power, because I'd write to legislators and state personnel about policy concerns, and they would call me and say,"No one ever explained it like that. We need to address the issue. How can we help? Then, during my time as an administrator, I applied for a month-long seminar titled Maintaining Creativity Within the Bureaucracy. It was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the University of Maryland. I was one of 15 people chosen nationwide, and what I learned there was that I wasn't particularly creative in the arts, which is what I always associated creativity with, but that creativity revealed itself in my ability to see the strengths in others to make spaces for their creativity to blossom, and as a result create unique and compassionate solutions to problems affecting the mental health system. Then my life took a major turn. My husband had always wanted to homestead to find property that had a year-round stream, a longer growing season than Central Oregon had, and was remote, his 21 year old son had died, and I think he was driven to blend his creativity as a builder, engineer, innovative problem solver by attempting to live fully, maybe off the grid. I'd read stories of frontier women, but I didn't want to be one. Still in the nickel ads between. Use washing machines and trucks for sale. We found 160 acres of remote acreage with rattlesnakes, 12 foot tall sagebrush rocks, and the promise of a spring on the lower John Day River. Think Condon Country. I thought we'd just hunt and fish and camp there. I couldn't imagine living what would be seven miles from our mailbox than 11 miles from a paved road, the reptile road twisted 800 feet above the river with no guard rails. It was unrealistic. He had health problems, and we couldn't manage the five acres we had in Tumillo. The last thing I said to him before I left for a women's retreat was,"We are not moving to the land, and he agreed, yet everything that happened that weekend in Seaside, under the umbrella of faith, said to me, "Go to the land, step out on a cloud of faith, and believe you won't fall through. I've often wondered about the voice of that inner voice of God, or the whisper of the Holy Spirit. I've come to accept that if it's something I want, that inner voice that says, "Eat that chocolate, chocolate is good for you. That chances are that isn't the voice of God. But if that presence says something that is the exact opposite of what I imagined I wanted, perhaps that is the Holy Spirit intervening in my life. This was how that voice affected me, a total turnaround. When I got back, I told Jerry he was delighted, of course, and I wrote up an ad to sell the house, but because I was still wary about what I'd, you know, what I really felt and what I'd really heard, I told Jerry, if we get a cash offer, I'll know it was a thread we should follow. This was 1982 during that recession, and this is where Ephesians 320 moved into my days. It's a verse that speaks of the power of the Spirit to work within us for more than we could ask or imagine. The first people who looked at the property were from Illinois. They made us a cash offer and more. They asked us to stay on the house, excuse me, for two more years, rent free, until they retired, giving us time to get permits and begin our adventure. I was still concerned about what I would do there. My gift, as I saw it, was managing people, counseling. This home study would be Jerry's world. In asking for guidance in the anxiety I had, that still small voice spoke once again, saying "write once again, the farthest thing from my mind. But trusting, I took a class at COCC, which was taught by Bob Welch. He was actually the editor of the sports edition of the Bulletin at the time. He's gone on to write many books, and we've taught writing classes together. He's a wonderful writer, a great human being, and a man of faith. One day, he asked me to stay after class and said he didn't know why I was so anxious. You have a gift, I think you could sell some of these essays, and I did, writing for a variety of magazines and newspapers, like Private Pilot and The Oregonian sports afield and Christian women today, before we ever moved, perhaps I could make a little money to help our homestead experience. I thought homesteading, it turns out, is very expensive. The phone line we had to dig seven miles had to be done twice. We had to build roads, and it took days to harness the spring, we were hemorrhaging money. I'd taken out my purse when we moved. We'd sold everything and put it into the property. My prayers then came from desperation. This is not unlike the arc of a story, where one begins excited with the idea of the novel I'm writing, and halfway through, I'm sure I've made a huge mistake, and no one will give up cleaning their toilets to read what I've written. And finally, I learned to live with what it is, and maybe it isn't too bad, but we don't know that when we start out. Within days of my desperation, wondering if I'd misunderstood that still small voice, I received a letter from a former colleague asking if I could help set up an early childhood program on the reservation. I'd always wanted to work again with the indigenous community, but it was a two and a half hour commute. What began as a year long one day commitment turned into a three day and 17 year commitment that was an extraordinary experience. I got to deliver a baby there. My counseling skills found a place, and every day I learned that the way I saw the world wasn't the only way to see it. As soon as we got electricity at the homestead, I began writing to family and friends to reassure them that we were alive and well and hadn't killed each other. One of our friends wrote back and said that when they got my letters, they didn't read them right away, but waited until after supper, when they'd turn off the TV and read them out loud, because they were like a chapter in a book. Maybe I could write a book about our experiences, I thought. Not a how-to book, but a story about following your heart, stepping out of that cloud of faith, believing that you wouldn't fall through. I wrote a proposal. Such a story sent it off, and six months later Word Publishing offered to buy it and gave me an advance. Homestead came out the day before I turned 45 It's still in print, so that's it. I thought I went to the land and wrote, but there was this story on the reservation about Jane and Joseph Shear on the Deschutes River. It wouldn't let me go. I couldn't write the story because it would have to be fiction, because there wasn't enough documentation. It wasn't my family, and I couldn't write about indigenous people when I wasn't one. I had a dozen excuses until Jerry said, "If you think it's a great story, you should just write it down, and if people don't like your version they can write their own. Well, when would I do this? I thought I was commuting, we were homesteading, and I was staying at the reservation three days a week. We were clearing sagebrush and planting crops, but between four and seven in the morning I decided all I'd been doing was sleeping, so I made the commitment to set the alarm for four and be at the computer by 5am and write for two hours. The next day we went to a historical society meeting and I sat next to a man who asked me what I did. I'm a writer, I said, the first time I'd ever made that claim. When he asked what I was working on, I told him I was writing the story of Jane and Joseph Shearer and their life with the Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute people. I had not yet written one sentence, but I had done the hardest work, because I made the commitment, and he said, "You should meet my cousin, she owns the property, their homestead, their original homestead was on, and I'm sure she'd let you walk there, and she did. The 18th century lyricist Von Gerta says that what matters is the commitment to that thread. What people don't realize is that once you make a commitment to something, providence moves and things begin to happen that you otherwise never could have imagined. Every book since, all 43 of them, has had a moment that I call divine research, where I'm gifted with an ancestor story, or a document, or an insight I never could have come upon my own, but that enriches the telling of the story by following that writing thread. I've been able to travel around the world, telling stories, teaching writing, helping people from one generation to step into ours to teach us and touch us with their lives. Their stories have earned some national awards, and my monthly Story Sparks newsletter readers tell me those words offer solace, inspiration, a word that means the act of breathing in, taking something in for the long haul, strength to the road ahead. Even my dog has a column now to encourage their days, but that original story about the Shears Bridge, a sweetness to the soul, is really about living well with their neighbors, and it went on to win a national award, and it set my writing career in motion. I've been writing these stories now for 35 years, all of them by proposal, convincing a publisher that this is a great story, but then never being sure that I can write it, I keep having to step out into that cloud of faith. Through this writing journey, I've learned how writing heals and how stories walk beside others. The Hebrew meaning of parable is toss along beside like a pebble. The Greek word for comfort means to come along beside stories do that we know from Baylor University, working with traumatized children, that traditional counseling, like I was trained to do, isn't nearly as effective as music, movement, art, and story written or told. The act of writing we now know increases the T cells that are the cells that work against cancer cells and enhanced immune system. And a healer at Warm Springs told me that before going into a healing session, she asked the ill person three questions. The answers telling her how far from health the person has fallen. The

questions: 23:55

when was the last time you danced, when was the last time you sang, and when was the last time you told your story? For me, I think of creativity that we all have as an ability to blend spirit ideas or actions into new ones, to see the world in different ways, ways that make us all richer, often helping us find that thread to follow. It's what teachers do, parents do, plumbers do, electricians do, artists, engineers, inventors. It's what we all do as we write the stories of our lives, the stories that other people read first. I'll close with a poem from William Stafford that to me is a synopsis of the creative life, titled The Way It Is. There's a thread you follow, it goes among things that change, but it doesn't change. People wonder what you are pursuing. It's hard for others to see, but while you hold it, you can't get lost. Tragedies happen, people get hurt or die. You suffer and grow old. Nothing you do can stay. Time is unfolding. You never let go of the thread. I wish for you to find that creative thread in your life. It's there, and trust that if it takes you on to a cloud of faith, you not only won't fall through, but God will grant you more than all you could ask for or imagine, leading you to an extraordinary life. Thank you for listening.

Unknown: 28:44

I hope you pay attention to the creativity in your own life, and I would just ask that God would bless all of our efforts, that we would find a way to trust truly in the Holy Spirit, and to listen to the voice that can help us write the stories. This worship broadcast is only possible because of your generous support. We need your support in sharing a spacious Christianity, a faith that welcomes questions, embraces difference, and makes room for everyone. Please consider making a financial gift today. You can give online at Bend fp.org or by using the QR code on your screen. Thank you for worshiping with us. It's a gift to have you here. Until next time, may God bless you.