Shakespeare's Beam

Follow-up to: Afflatus

Over the past two years I have undergone a paradigm shift in re my understanding of writing and the creative process. Or perhaps I have not had a shift of paradigm so much as I have gotten a paradigm: Whence creativity came from, I did not much consider in the past.


But no matter what the state of things before, my certainty is now that there is something very divine behind the creative process. It is through creation, whether of stories, paintings, gardens, or tables, that we become creators and, in so doing, become in this mortal moment co-creators with the Creator. We take what He has given us and shape it into greater things, just as He has taken the raw matter and shaped a universe out of it. If the universe and all its contents are not yet in their ultimate state, and all that is good is eternal, then we take part in the final processes of creation by further shaping the universe into a more perfect form. If the final state is to have all beauty, and Shakespeare's dramas were things of beauty, then Shakespeare was responsible for bringing forth a small part of the ultimate state of things, and a universe without his works could not have been considered to be complete.

Even so, every act that we perform which brings forth good, however small, also aids in this process. We are not simply co-creators responsible for random products but co-creators responsible for putting in this screw or that beam of the City of God.