The  Graveyard  At  Midnight
Rev Ian Fellows

Article Created on 7th February 2012 at 01:05 via Saint Andrew's

What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

It's probably not that we look like God (or he looks like us). 

Is it to do with souls and spirits?  No, I don't know either.  Nor is the Bible especially forthcoming, and at the point where God happily creates us in his image (even knowing what must lie ahead), we only know one thing about him.

He's creative.

So it wouldn't be a complete surprise to find that some element of being made in God's image is that we too are creative.

I can generally string words together to make a sermon.  I used to have an interesting line in what you might call poetry, if only the word poetry didn't sound quite so, well, poetic.  I used to make a noise with a tuba.  There are 16 blue-washed canvasses in my kitchen, waiting for... well, I don't know what.  And I don't mind trhowing lots of ingredients into a pan and smelling some sort of pasta sploosh come out the other end.

But my favourite medium for creativity has to be... snow.  White, fresh, beautiful.

So when work was done during the last fall of snow, I popped outside and availed myself of the frosty stuff lying around the rectory like a crisp carpet of fresh dung (see what I mean about the poetry?).  And the end result...

...well, it's not a snowman.  Too obvious.  It's not even a snow-woman (I made one of those the other year, and she turned my churchwarden's head).  No, it's a snowy sculpture of an Easter Island head, all angular and imposing and faintly reminiscent of Matt Smith.

And it stands (or stood, if the snow has melted) outside the church door, so I'm rather hoping no passer-by wonders whether I've put up some form of idol. 

But what's important is just how much fun it was out there around midnight, working with two hands and the snow, the air thick with fog and surrounded by gravestones.  I heartily recommend it.  A short interval of un-self-conscious creativity, and never mind if what you create is Turner-winning or merely self-pleasing.  God seems to have enjoyed creating, and so do we.  If nothing else is hard-wired into us, creativity is, from the diddliest doodle to the ceiling of the sixteenth chapel.  So go mad.  Fill your boots.  Build, bake, cook, make, sew, stitch, sculpt, pot, write, paint, dance, compose, conduct, sing, play, insert your own verb here...

Just do it, lose yourself and find yourself again in the creative throes of whatever it is.

And next year, I feel a set of Russian matryoshka dolls coming on.  Roll on the next snow...