Your Creativity is a Sacred Life Force
Imagine living in a world where we were taught to honor creativity. You don’t have to be a professional artist to be creative. Honoring our creativity allows God to work through us. Imagine if our “work” was to nurture our creative spirit.
“When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.” – Psalm 104:30-31.
Lucille Clifton’s mother, a poet, taught her daughter to nurture her creative spirit. So, Clifton began writing poems.
Clifton dabbled in other art forms, winning a scholarship in 1953 to Howard University where she majored in drama.
But her spirit wasn’t in it. She left Howard in 1955, her intuition clear as her true creative calling grew louder.
She returned to poetry, her writings becoming as important as the air she breathed. Inspired by her work, her friend Ishamel Reed shared Clifton’s poems with Langston Hughes.
In 1970 Hughes published her poems in “The Poetry of the Negro,” which became an influential anthology for Black poets.
Throughout her career Clifton wrote poetry that was politically timely and unapologetically Black. Her work served as a Black intergenerational archive, a platform for truth-telling and love letters to Black matriarchs.
Some of her poems were also spiritual, incorporating symbols and imagery from the Bible through the lens of the Black experience.
God is the ultimate creator, so our creativity is a sacred life force we can nurture. Honoring our creativity allows God to work through us.
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