The Creative Marriage (part 2)
Collaboration in marriage doesn't just end with creating works of art. Our creative co-operation encompass all of life. I know some may think, "this is easy for you two...you're artists." But let's take a minute to think about the one big truth about our human nature. It is in our divine nature to create. As we all were/are created in the image of God, the One who displayed first this characteristic (Gen 1:1), every human has this same capacity and desire to create.
"The very image of God is the template that God uses to create male and female. It is the divine nature, then, that determines the contours of human nature...If God is first presented to us as a maker, and if we are made to bear his image, then we too are makers. So, the first thing that we learn about humankind is that men and women have the capacity to create, to make. In this sense the contemporary claim that we are all “creatives” is correct. The marvelous fact of our humanity is that we have agency—capacities that include, but are not limited to, thinking, imagining, forming, shaping, starting, finishing, reforming, editing, estimating, intuiting, plotting, scheming, designing. " (Cameron J Anderson; Making: An Introduction)
Knowing this truth, every marriage/relationship has the ability to creatively collaborate in many different aspects. Its really just a mater of...getting creative...
What does this look like? In our marriage creativity spills into the kitchen. We combine our (sometimes limited) knowledge and experience to have fun creating new and exciting recipes that satisfy our taste buds. Charith ventures more towards baking. Her scones pretty much won over my heart way early on. And I pride myself on pasta, always seeking to come up with different, flavorful combinations of ingredients. We also collaborate on gardening, landscaping, decorating our home, cleaning and various other projects such as designing other peoples homes, curating art shows, art workshops and the list goes on and on...
The beauty of having such a willingness to collaborate is also having the willingness to allow room for failure. YES! In collaboration, creative or otherwise, failure will happen! Working together is not always easy to do. But it is in this space that we have the opportunity to practice showing grace, gratitude, patience, support, encouragement and selflessness. In working together we many times begin with the thought, "hey, this may not work out." When we succeed we celebrate and we fail we literally just smile and shrug our shoulders. Collaboration only becomes stressful when we allow our egos to infiltrate our work. My hope is that one can begin to see how collaboration in marriage is essential AND essentially one in the same.
