Creativity is Messy

Knowing what is right is like deep water in the heart; a wise person draws from the well within.
Proverbs 20:5 (The Message)

"Creativity is not neat. It is not orderly. When we are being creative we don't know what is going to happen next. When we are being creative a great deal of what we do is wrong ... .

An artist makes attempt after attempt at the canvas trying for the right perspective and missing badly, almost getting the right shade but not making it. ... Lovers quarrel, hurt and get hurt, misunderstand and are misunderstood in their painstaking work of creating a marriage ... .

In any creative enterprise there are risks, mistakes, ... but out of this mess -- when we stay with it long enough, enter it deeply enough -- there slowly emerges love or beauty or peace."

Under the Unpredictable Plant


"Creativity is Messy", God's Message for Each Day by Eugene H. Peterson (Countryman Press).