Creativity and My Neighbor | Reborn and Other Versifications

12 Aug

Creativity, My Neighbor, and the Origin

Albert Fonner Blog 0 0

In the Star Wars universe, the Jedi had mastered what they referred to as “The Force,” that semi-conscious energy that surrounds, penetrates, and connects all things in the universe. The website www.starstuffs.com, Interconnection page, illustrates that the various world’s wisdoms have at their root the belief in the unity of all things in the universe and the common quest to achieve unity with our origin.¹ Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us that it is through the knowledge of God as our origin that we are able to be in a right relationship with our origin, with our neighbor, and with ourselves.²

In Matthew 22, a pharisee asked Jesus which command was the greatest. Jesus answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt 22:37 – 39, KJV). Here, in Jesus’s words, we find validation for the concept of unity with our origin. It is through my knowledge of, and love for, God as my origin that I are able to be in right relation with my neighbor and love him or her as myself. The creative act is one way that I can demonstrate such love.

At its highest level, creativity is a holistic attribute that brings me into unity with God as my origin. Through the creative act, I demonstrate the love I have for my neighbor, and I honor God whose image I see in my neighbor. I do this when I create something that brings joy or comfort to my neighbor. I do this when I lift my neighbor up out of whatever poverty, situation, or depression they are in. As Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt 25:40, KJV). That is the power of creativity.

A. E. Fonner