Creativity

by Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Righteous work is our love of God and of our neighbors being made manifest! Creative work is a special expression, "a more excellent way" (1 Cor. 12:31), of showing that love. Creative expression can also represent the celebration of our gratitude to God for our gifts and talents.

When by wise self-management we are creative, then we mortals taste what Pascal called "the dignity of causality," the capacity to cause that which had not existed in quite that way before! Something pertaining to truth and beauty occurs that would not have happened quite that way without us! Thus as "agents unto" ourselves we use the power that is in us to do good, but also to do it well, whether our creativity involves the use of our voice, our hands, our muscles, or our conceptual powers.

True creativity, as it reflects our capacity to see or to produce something in a new way, represents a restructuring that carries our individual imprint and uniqueness. Such can be equally true of the inventor and the painter, of the pianist as well as the poet.

Thus creativity involves both a process and a result. It springs out of our seeing possibilities that we have not seen before and out of seeing connections between patches of truth and beauty and responding to them in ways we have not done before. Feelings that lead to poetry, mental imagery that leads to painting, and pondering that gives birth to prose are but examples.

Creativity, therefore, is not simply innovation but organization. Clearly self-discipline is required as part and parcel of that self-discovery which is paralleled by the discovery of the universes, vast and small, of which we are a part.

Gospel gladness can give us a precious perspective about all these things and can spur us on to share that beauty which God helps us to create. It is a process that should not trouble itself overmuch, initially, with questions of originality and utility but, rather, with quality and excellence.

Artistic and creative expressions that occur in conformity with reality and with the sublime and eternal truths help to deliver on that marvelous promise that "men are that they might have joy" (2 Ne. 2:25) and help us to "have [life] more abundantly" (John 10:10) by showing us "a more excellent way" (1 Cor. 12:31)

A creative Frank Lloyd Wright observed, "In much of our preparation we don

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