"Artists love without reservation. They give their hearts completely and leave nothing on the table. They are naked and unashamed. They leave no room for pretension. And because they have given all of themselves, they live without regret.
But not without struggle. This path is not an escape from life's wounds and disappointment. To live from our souls is to pursue our greatest passions and expose ourselves to our greatest pain. We cannot live to create and be surprised that we have traveled through failure. We cannot live a life of passion and not know sorrow. To pursue a dream is to invite a nightmare! To live a life of love is to know betrayal and loss. The soul is both fragile and resilient. The artisan soul embraces the essential nature of both vulnerability and efficacy. All creativity emerges from struggle. All art is born out of the pain of labor. The artisan soul must be both tender and tough." - Erwin McManus, The Artisan Soul (p. 35)
We were built to live from our souls, to live in such a way that we connect our deepest passions with how we are wired. Buried in us is a longing to find what we were created for and spend our lives pursuing that passion. But it is a harsh reality that in our pursuit of our passion we must be as ready to accept failure as we are success. We assume that if we are wired for something and passionate about it that the road to achieving it will be smooth. But to pursue our passion generally means we must reject conformity, safety, and security. It means we leave the road well travelled and embrace the messy, rocky, narrow road often avoided.
But this road toward creativity, imagination, and curiosity, although messy and rocky, is the road that leads to how we were created. It all must begin with our understanding of being created in the image of a creative God. We were formed in the likeness of a creator.
We were created, therefore, we are meant to create.
Creativity is deeply connected with who we are, and the temptation is to suppress that creativity so we don't expose ourselves to being wounded. But, vulnerability and creativity can not be divorced. They are interconnected, and we cannot express creativity without opening up our souls for all to see. Creativity. Vulnerability. Pain. Authenticity. Dreams. Passions. All of these come together in one family as we pursue what we were made to do.