My New Plan of Action for Raising Creative Children

You know when you realize that you've had a faulty assumption for some time, so you decide to change it, and then you have to figure out what your new assumption needs to be?  That is what has been going on in my head.

I used to think that creativity was something that you did when you made arts and crafts.  Then I began to realize that "creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before" (Elder Uchtdorf - Happiness, Your Heritage).  So I began to wonder how to help my children do that.  I realized that the creative drive is inherent in all of God's children (since we are created in his image) and that we do not need to try to make a creative drive - instead we need to know how to channel it towards making real beauty.

In my last post about this I said,

"I mentioned before that there is something that we need, besides skill, to be able to express the creativity that is within us. Well, I take it back. That statement doesn't make any sense. You can't express creativity. What in the world does that mean? I should go back and change my post. What I meant to say is that there is something that we need in order to be able to creatively think and to express ourselves."

Well, guess what? I was wrong about that too. I was reading in Arm the Children again, and Arthur Henry King said something that struck me. He was speaking of art and literature in the Renaissance time and he said,

"It did not occur to the artist in the Middle Ages or the early Renaissance that he was expressing himself: at the lowest level, he was placing his technique at the disposal of his patron, and at the highest level, he was placing his technique at the disposal of his church, of his religion...This is true not only of much of the greatest painting of the time, but also of the greatest writing, and it is most profoundly true of the music.

"But, since the Reinaissance, we have developed a heresy about the artist, which is one of the major heresies of the modern world because it has misled so many people ---this heresy of the artist as hero, of man as the center"

So I've been learning that creativity is not about expressing ourselves at all.  It is about expressing the truth, beauty and goodness that is already there.   It is, as far as I can tell, making connections in the truth around us in our own unique way.

Spice at the Renaissance Faire

So here is my new plan of action for raising creative children:

Surround them with the true, beautiful, real and good.

That is it.

Simple isn't it?  Here is why it will work:

1. Once they recognize truth and how it tastes - they will seek for it on their own.  Their souls will become true, beautiful and good.
2. They will be able to connect with the truth and beauty around them and will gain a desire to share it.
3. They will work at developing whatever skills they need to share the truth that they see in a way that inspires them.
4. They will be able to express these things in a true way - true creativity

That, by the way, is what a real education is.   It doesn't really matter how many books you have read, how much math you understand, how many countries you can name.  If you can learn something, find the truth in it, and change your thoughts and actions accordingly, you have a real education.  That is the stuff that greatness is made of.

Here is how I plan (as of right now) to surround them with the true, beautiful, real and good:

1. Get rid of anything not true, beautiful, real and good (been working on that lately) so that their senses are not dulled.
2. Expose them to the true, beautiful, real and good (in art, music, language, people, math, nature, science... I'll be writing a post next about how I plan to do this)
3. Exemplify the application of those truths. (I can't force the application -it has to come from within them. Otherwise I will hinder their desire and passion for it and it will not really be their own - they will not become. I know there is no need for force - that creative drive is inherent in each ofus.)

Creativity is a precious gift from God.  Just like every other precious gift, it has been hollowed in the "world" and has lost it's true meaning.  Creativity has become the chief aim in much of our education.  Unfortunately, its source, its meaning, its core has been discarded and we are left with an empty shell to fill with pointless arts and crafts.  

The devil, Screwtape, wrote to his devil-in-training nephew:

"A few centuries earlier... they still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.  But what with the weekly press and other such weapons, we have largely altered that: Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.  He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily

 "true" or "false,"

but as

"academic" or "practical,"

"outworn" or "contemporary,"

"conventional" or "ruthless."

... Don't waste your time trying to make him think that [anything] is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous ---- that is the philosophy of the future.  That's the sort of thing he cares about."

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

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More pictures from the Renaissance Faire about two weeks ago:

Looking for good "walking sticks"

Magic show

Getting ready to watch the jousting

Some pictures from a 1917 farm about a week ago:

"Freeze" game

Laundry

Blacksmith shop