Sabbath Devotional :: Creative Periods of the Soul

*The Creation of Light by Gustave Dore (1866)*

Do any of you ever have a weird ache of spiritual homesickness that reminds you that you are actually from (and hopefully returning to) a better place? Or that your place of true belonging is somewhere much much better than this? I have felt this again lately, and it is characterized by two opposing thoughts. First, I am grateful for the inspiration that out there somewhere are celestial relationships and communities that are infinitely better than this hot mess we are currently wallowing in. Second, I can feel some despair that we seem to be moving so very slowly toward those relationships and communities. Usually I sit with this a little bit and then have a good cry.

Then I phone a friend. Neal Maxwell. One of my all-time favorite conference talks is Elder Maxwell’s Notwithstanding My Weakness from October 1976. I found it a decade or so ago, and am so grateful that I did. I love listening to it, I love his gentle voice, and his unassuming delivery, and I love that he just moves like a machine — packing so much into ten brief minutes. It is a masterclass on how to share personal testimony and experiences while demonstrating a beautiful scriptural fluency.

But it also helps me to feel seen. I often feel overwhelmed at the disconnect between what I want my spiritual existence to be and what it is in real time. Sometimes I also feel frustrated at the imperfections that I see in others. This talk is such a generous response to that overwhelm. It gently answers the panicked question of every committed disciple as we face the gap between God’s expectations and our abilities: “Who then can be saved?” (Mark 10:26).

There is no question that belonging to a church trying to meet Christ’s high standards creates some of this overwhelm. Elder Maxwell offers an explanation for this: “There is no way the Church can honestly describe where we must yet go, and what we must yet do, without creating an immense sense of distance. Following celestial road signs while in telestial traffic jams is not easy, especially when we are not just moving next door or even across town.”

This is further complicated when we culturally layer all sorts of things onto that move. Things must be packed perfectly, labeled well, and handled according to a master plan. Everyone must be constantly cheerful on the journey. We must lift with our knees and not our backs. Nobody can complain about moving pianos, books or food storage. If priceless things get broken, damaged or lost, we feel obligated to pretend we don’t care and just “let go.” It’s easy to find ourselves asking “Why are we moving again?”

Often I have handled that overwhelm inappropriately. I have either let deep engagement burden me to excess, or I have been “over anxious and thus under engaged.” Neither of these really help me if I want to keep moving forward. As I have tried to pace myself to stay with the challenge of endurance of discipleship, this talk has given me an important way to measure my effort without weighing me down – the idea of creative periods.

Elder Maxwell just mentioned in passing the idea that God used seven creative periods when creating us and the earth. But that idea spoke to me, and ultimately became an important spiritual framework. Now I think about my own progression in terms of “creative periods.” Just as the world in all its glory was created methodically and over time, we are too. We don’t have to be perfect all at once. Dividing up my life into “creative periods” allows me to pace myself, it gives me permission to meet the moment, and perhaps most importantly it has proven to be a wonderful way to see the hand of God in my life. I can look backward and see how, in retrospect, the Lord was helping me to craft very specific skills, character traits, or relationships during distinct periods. And they have built on each other, just as the creative periods of the earth did. You can’t have plants until you have land, light and water. So why did I spend my 20’s anxious that I wasn’t growing “plants”?

This also helps me look forward with hope and anticipation to what is next. As distinct periods of my life come to an end, even if they were times of difficulty and hardship, I can carefully put healthy boundaries around them and view them with some distance. Every time I move on to a new spiritual growth period, I give myself permission to trust that I have learned what I needed to and that through the Atonement I am forgiven for the mistakes I made in the process of meeting life’s challenges. Then I take what I have gained into the next burst of creativity and growth.

Mostly, I love the way that this framework reminds me that true spiritual growth really is a creative endeavor. We are partners with the Lord in the process of soul building and our outcomes should be a reflection of the diversity of our experiences, opportunities and spiritual gifts. It should be about creating beauty. So much of the inherent joy in this process can disappear when, instead of creating our own masterpieces, we painfully try to copy someone else’s. Thinking about my life in spiritually creative periods allows me to find new rich sources of inspiration that align with my current phase, it helps me to see the whole world as a gift to support this endeavor.

So, I am ever appreciative to Elder Maxwell. Because now when those feelings of homesickness and glimpses of a better world catch me unawares and make me feel sad and inadequate, the longing they produce makes me less anxious. I remind myself that perhaps this is just the Lord calling me to start my next creative period. Maybe it is time to work with Him to explore new possibilities for my soul and try on new kinds of sacrifice and growth. The discomfort has become a blessing.

“For behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth…but be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy.” Isaiah 65:17-18