Creativity Quote

Creativity deepens as "the shock of suffering and vision breaks down, one after another, the living sensitive partitions behind which his identity is hiding." A spiritual descent begins where custom and comfortable assumptions break down, indeed, are "destroyed." Finally, creativity reaches a dark but very creative place after all "human substance is consumed": the depths of the human "cave," the "partition of the heart."

This point in the creative process takes us to Dante's steps. Here one becomes aware of his own insufficiency. Once faces the self mirrored in the darkness of her own suffering and sense of helplessness. As such, it is a moment akin to the confession of sin. It is also, like Tillich's insight, a moment for courage. One must find the courage to let go of the self and enter a mysterious but fertile place where something new and wondrous can happen. It is the place of the coram Deo. It is, indeed, the place of a mysterious but renewing Innocence.

A Wounded Innocence, Sketches for a Theology of Art by Alejandro R. Garcia-Rivera