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“...being part chicken, I am stewed in fear — I drink heavy when Butcher Boy’s away and salt my shoulder when  he’s near.” — Ian McRae

One of the most beautiful experiences of my life occurred more than a decade ago when Mary Kellogg, a gifted 81-year-old poet, showed me her poetry; I was the first person in her life to see it.

She and Maria worked together to create five books of her poetry.

Maria and I fell in love with Mary’s poems. She read at every one of our open houses and sold several thousand copies of the poetry collections that we published with her.

Mary became one of our dearest friends, and we miss her.  She sold a ton of her books.

She died last year.

Today, it felt like history is repeating itself.

I feel like I’ve stumbled across yet another highly gifted poet, this time a very young one, who needs a push and some encouragement.

I can do that. Maria can see too. We’ve done it before. We love to do it.

Ian McRae, our 21-year-old sheep shearer from Brandon, Vt. today accepted an invitation I made to him two months ago when he came to shear our sheep to go to the farm and talk with me about moving forward with his poetry, which he had never shown to anyone but his father.

I sensed something extraordinary about Ian – a thoughtfulness and insights rare for his age – and began prodding him about his creativity.

He mostly ignored me or just fled.

This conversation with Ian – his day job is cutting slate at a mill in impoverished Granville, N.Y., was threatening to him, and I tread lightly (for me – Maria says it wasn’t so light).

But I kept at it.

I sensed something extraordinary inside of him that wanted to come out.

Even his sheep shearing was thoughtful. And different.

The idea of showing his work was just too scary for a young kid out of rural Vermont. I told him I started doing it when I was eight.

He just looked at me strangely.

I urged him to share his poetry and bring it into the world – I felt the creative spark burning brightly in him.

This week, he called to say he had been thinking about our conversations and wanted to come and talk about it. He brought a six-pack of beer, but I told him to take it back.

I can’t drink beer. He said he wanted to pay me something for my time.

“Diners dab fat grease; creased mouth folds

expose dulled canines with flirtatious smiles,

stab cuts sacrificial porkbeeflamb and lesser chicken.”

— Ian McRae.

Ian also brought a stack of primarily unfinished poems.

He was terrified to show them to us, but he did. We loved them; we indeed did. I had the same feeling when Mary brought me her poems — this is good, this person has it, he can make it as a poet. He has the spark.

I was ready for Ian, and so was Maria; I had the names of several poetry clubs, book store poetry nights, and virtual poetry readings for him. These, I said, were places he could find community, support, and information.

Like Mary, Ian seems so alone in his poetry; we both urged him to come out and reach out to the world with his poems.

There are friendly and supportive communities and online workshops for poets all over the Internet, which was not available to young poets before.

We will stay in touch with him and support him in every way we can; I was very excited by the poems I read, and so was Maria. I look forward to the day when I can go and see him read in a bookstore or online.

So far, he has only two finished poems. This is one of them:

Midnight:

“8 billion peoples, so many filthy peoples, let us harmonize w/earth dirt.

scrub clean our god and language and fear,

go whooping into this darkness, dancing with what’s left,

touch bareness and laugh if it still stings

scrub me some, take gas fumes, and stale smoke

and desire,

let me dance.

8 billion, my sliver still so quiet.”

I’m not sure, but this poem struck me as being about climate change, something Ian cares deeply about.

Ian was nervous and left after an hour; he left his poems with us. But he settled down; I think he was excited by what he heard; he said he was. Ian is shy and soft-spoken. I am not, alas.

I took a portrait of him as he got into his car. We came close to hugging.

He said he would make contact with a poetry group this week. He said it was frightening to come out, but he realized he had to do it.

He said our talk had planted a seed in his head; it is growing and won’t disappear.

I am so happy Ian is moving forward. I believe he is incredibly gifted, as Mary was, but was paralyzed by the fear of being no good.

Maria and I know from our lives how crucial simple encouragement can be, mainly because we never had much of it.

It is a joy to bring it to someone else; Ian already has his reliable day job.

We both talked to Ian, and he listened to us.

Maria has a gift for calming people and explaining things gently and softly. I have a knack for stirring them up. We make a good team.

At first, Ian said he wanted to wait a while before reaching out; I urged him to move quickly while he was young, living alone and writing poetry all the time.

Sharing his work with other young poets would help him find a voice, something I could never help him with.

At the beginning of this horrific week, I said I was going just to keep on doing good because it is our only weapon. I had a good week.

I told Ian one of my favorite stories from the Kabbalah, the writings of the Jewish mystics. In one story, God tells the people of the world that he has given each of them the creative spark. “The only thing you have to fear from me,” said God, is not using.”

I felt that Ian’s creative spark. Don’t waste it, I said.

Ian has already found a place to read his poetry as I write this. He told me he had found an open mic poetry night in Burlington, Vt.

He was looking for others. How great.

Now he can come out as a poet and share his excellent work with the world. Good for him.

I feel the creative spark very strongly in Ian. It wants to come out.

I think it already has.

A few months ago, I send my granddaughter a Fuji Instax Mini 8 camera as a gift. I know the creative spark is strong in my daughter, and I sensed it in Robin as well.

Robin was three when she got it, and is four now. This week, Emma send me  her first photo taken with the camera, it was a portrait of Emma and Sandy, Robin’s dog.

To me, it revealed the creative spark quite clearly. The camera, along with supportive parents, lit it up. It’s my mission now to support it. Emma said Robin loved taking pictures but the film was too expensive. She said she was using up a roll every ten minutes.

Fuji film is expensive. I got excited, here, more evidence of the creative spark needing nourishment. I rushed over to Amazon and overnight two boxes of film. I told Emma it was great that Robin was plowing through the film so quickly,  it  was the best way to learn. I offered to keep buying the film whenever Robin ran out.

Robin’s first photograph.

The Creative Spark is something of faith with me, and also with Maria.  This is a great part of the glue that brought us together and defines our love. Lighting the creative spark in someone and supporting it is holy and sacred work for me.

I first read of the Creative Spark in the Kabbalah, which I read from time to time.

In the Kabbalah, the writings of the ancient and unknown mystic Hebrews,  God tells the people of the earth that he has given every human being the creative spark, the gift of imagination and creativity.

It is, he says, what makes us different from the animals, who do not possess the spark.

It is a sacred thing, he said, and the only thing people had to fear from him was not using the Creative Spark or using it for evil or greed. It is, he said a gift of softness and compassion.

The English definition dictionary defines Creative Spark as 1. having the ability or power to create.2 characterized by originality of thought or inventiveness; having or showing imagination, a creative mind. 3. designed to or tending to stimulate the imagination or invention.

We all have the Creative Spark, many people don’t know it or choose not to use it.

It is my role as a human being, as a husband, as a friend, as a grandfather to encourage the spark and nourish it wherever I can It is my central role as a grandparent, a way I can be useful to my granddaughter, even though we rarely meet.

How does one spark creativity?

It helps if there is someone to encourage you. I had great trouble with my mother, but she gave me a tremendous gift, she always loved my writing and my stories.

To be creative, one must give their mind a space to work and think. It helps me to get outside, to write down what  I see, to meditate in silence,  to take photos of the color and light in the world, to try and try and try again and never quit, to not be afraid to think small or large.

It helps to be alone, to think alone.

Emma took this photo of Robin with her camera.

In 2017, Agustin Fuentes, (Chair, Anthropology Department of Notre Dame), wrote The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional.

Fuentes wrote that an essential component of human nature is our ability to work the great trove of materials made available to us by virtue of what he called our “symbolic inheritance.”

“Our creativity,’ he wrote “is thereby an essential component of what makes us human; so, too, is our ability to work together in creative ways for creative ends, for what the author calls a “cocktail of creativity and collaboration.”

Reading his book, my mind went back to the Kabbalah and God’s belief that this was a gift to every human, and his belief we would all use it.

The Creative Spark, unleashed in me now, shapes my life.

When I see the political turmoil raging all around me and the fear and anger it causes, I think of God’s gift and my moral obligation to bring creativity to bear.

Life always intrudes on the Creative Spark, we need to make money, buy health care, save for retirement, live in a busy and distracting world.

I think of alternatives to anger, I think of the futility of fear, I think creativity – the imagination – calls me to think of alternative ways to exist and survive and thrive.

That is the Creative Spark, really. I am deeply touched watching it grow and blossom in my daughter, then in my granddaughter.  The Creative Spark is not about making someone creative – that was God’s gift.

The Creative Spark is about supporting creativity, something Maria and I have done for one another ever since we met. And for anyone else, we can help. I know I can never save people, I can only save myself. The Creative Spark saved me.

To me, creativity is about the better angels of our nature – the ones armed not with guns but with paintbrushes, notebooks, easels, laptops,  cameras, brushes, cell phone cameras, and plowshares.

I’ve known Tim for several years, and I admire him greatly and consider him a friend. He is one of the most determinedly creative people I know, even though a series of grinding health difficulties.

He lives at the Mansion, and every day, rain or shine, he can be found motoring down Main Street, to visit the book store or pick up things the other residents need. Only a snowstorm stops him.

Tim is a voracious reader, he is working on a book, he makes sculptures out of clay, works on puzzles, sketches, and he draws and paints.

I supply his creative needs – books, brushes, clay, drawing paper and pencils, computer parts. Tim is easy-going, genial. He lost his leg more than a year ago, although he is always in pain, I have never heard him complain.

When I  buy a gift certificate for him from Battenkill Books, he rushes down to the store on his motorized wheelchair and places an order. He reads every word of every book.

He has read most of my books, she shows me his writing, and we often talk about writing and publishing. He hopes to have current work published.

In recent weeks, Tim and Zinnia have bonded in a special way. “What a great dog,” he shouts from the front porch when he sees her, and she responds by bounding over to him and licking his prosthesis and his hand.

Tim comes to every event I participate in at the Mansion – every reading, every Meditation Workshop, every Bingo game (I stopped doing Bingo for a while.)

Every time I meet Tim, we go over his creative projects, he is always busy, always trying something new. Tim is brave, even heroic, he faces life with pride and dignity, and the Creative Spark is always burning brightly inside of him.

I am very happy to be his friend and a supporter of his creativity.

The ability of the human being to want more, to expand or change their lives, to be better, to create things is, to me, one of the things that often suggests the existence of a God.  Where else could this drive come from?

No dog or cat or chicken can decide to choose a better life, or choose to change his or her life. Only human beings can imagine that.

Why did Gandhi set out to free India?  Or Martin Luther King march through the South? Why did Mother Teresa wash the feet of lepers? Or Michelangelo stare at his chapel for years?

Why did Picasso or Van Gogh have to make art?  Or Gabriel Garcia Marquez write such wonderful books? Why did Jesus Christ choose to fight for the needy when it was so dangerous and lonely?

For that matter, and I am not comparing myself to any of those people above, why am I so drawn to working with the elderly at the Mansion or the refugee children at Bishop Maginn. I can’t say I know for sure, but I believe it is the Creative Spark described in the Kabbalah.

I’ve struggled with the idea of God, but the Creative Spark is the divine for me, I think, in a way that is God for me. Creativity – my writing and photography – is faith for me, perhaps that is why I dislike being told what to write. It isn’t that I am right, it’s that I am free.

This spark takes me out of myself and into the wider world in a powerful way.

What I saw in Maria – I remember it so vividly – was this spark, this yearning to come out of herself and fulfill her destiny. I also saw her bravery and determination in taking so many risks to pursue it. She was absolutely determined, as was I, to fill her life with meaning.

No other animal has this powerful desire to step outside of themselves and create a better world or capture the light and the color and meaning of life.

It is their imaginations that made human beings so exceptional, and it is their failure to imagine that make them so dangerous and self-destructive. This is why museums exist – they are the Temples and Churches and Mosques of creativity.

When people abandon the Creative Spark or let others persuade them to abandon it, says Joseph Campbell, then they lead a substitute life. Or, as T.S. Eliot suggested, they can become hollow men (and women.) I know what that feels like, it is so  easy to become frightened or disillusioned.

God said in the Kabbalah that he gave the Creative Spark only to human beings, and he warned people that the only thing they had to fear from him was failing to use or honor it.

Donkeys are happy to be fed and safe.  The can’t imagine more, so they don’t want more. Maria and I both wanted more out of our lives, and we have fought every day for that.

I sensed this drive in Maria when we first met, and this was one of the reasons I fell in love with her. She said I was the first person in her life to tell her creativity was sacred, important, wonderful. She sure doesn’t need to be told that now.

Last night, I saw her sitting in the living room embroidering another President Trump quote for the Tiny Pricks Project, the artistic resistance online, artists from all over the country choose their favorite quotes from the president in fabric and posting them on the Internet.

The site is seeking to make a creative and artistic record of the Trump era. They call it the “Material Record” of Trump’s Presidency.” Last night, she was embroidering one of his most famous recent quotes, this one to the President of Ukraine: “I would like you to do us a favor, though...”

The President doesn’t seem to pay much attention to artists, I’ve never seen him tweet against them, but I think he would do well to take them more seriously. Throughout history, art has turned intensely political and quite powerful.

Maria has already stitched six quotes on the site, and she has done a strong response to them. It’s right up her alley, a non-violent, non-argumentative creative statement of her beliefs.

I have always believed the Creative Spark is in all of us, and sometimes, as a teacher, I am lucky enough to light it in others. Mostly, it is what drives me and gives my life both love and purpose.

 

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