I Am Practical And That Is A Different Thing

You made a bracket last week that did not exist before.

Somebody had a problem, you looked at it, and there was no part in any shop that would do it, so you cut something and bent something and drilled two holes and now there is an object in the world that solves a thing.

Nobody would call that creative. You would not. If somebody said it at a table you would look uncomfortable and change the subject.

And here is the thing I want to lay out plainly, because I think it is a definition problem rather than a fact about you.

You have decided that creative means art.

Painting, mostly. Or writing, or music, or something a person does in a room with the intention of it being looked at. And by that definition, no, you are not creative, and neither are most of the people who have ever made anything.

But look at what you did with the bracket.

Nothing like it existed. You held a problem in your head, turned it over, saw a shape that was not in front of you, and then brought that shape into the world with your hands out of raw material.

That is the whole of what making is. Every part of it. There is no additional ingredient in a painting that was missing from your bracket.

The difference is that the bracket had a use, and somewhere along the way you decided that usefulness disqualifies a thing from being creative, which is a strange rule that nobody ever wrote down.

Diversities of operations

Paul is writing to a church that has managed to build a hierarchy out of gifts, which is a very human thing to do, and he takes it apart with a phrase.

And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. (1 Corinthians 12:6, King James Version)

Diversities of operations.

Operations. The word means workings, things being done, activity of different kinds. And the sentence puts every one of them under the same source without ranking any of it.

He does not say there are creative gifts and then some practical ones underneath. He says the operations differ and the God working them is the same God.

You are working under the same hand as anybody who paints, and 1 Corinthians 12:6 refuses to sort operations into higher and lower kinds. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line written into a church squabble about rank and lays it on a man with a bracket in his hand.

And notice the last clause. Which worketh all in all. Not some in some. All of it, in all of them.

You have your own operation running under that same worketh, and it is already settled in the written word that the sorting was never authorized. His Spirit is the one who says that over a man who has been putting himself in the lower category since he was about fifteen.

Useful is not disqualifying

Now let me press on the rule itself, because it has been doing real damage quietly.

The rule is: if a thing has a use, it is not creative.

Under that rule, the bracket is out. So is the shelf, the fix, the workaround, the thing you made for your daughter's bike that nobody sells. All of them out, on the grounds that they worked.

You are working under the same hand as anybody who paints, and 1 Corinthians 12:6 puts every operation under one worker. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes down a ranking nobody was ever authorized to build.

And under that same rule, almost every made thing in human history is out. Cathedrals were roofs. Psalms were sung in services. A cabinet holds things. The whole tradition of making, in every culture, is people bringing useful things into being with more care than the use required.

The rule is wrong. And it has cost you a category you belong in.

And this: whether a thing is beautiful is not a measure of whether it was made, and neither is whether anybody looked at it. A bracket in a dark cupboard was still made.

You are not outside anything, and heaven has never once ruled that usefulness cancels a work of hands. 1 Corinthians 12:6 keeps every operation under the same source, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes down a hierarchy nobody built on purpose.

And here is the second half. Do not fix this by taking up painting. That is the wrong correction, because it accepts the rule and just tries to qualify under it.

You have permission to stay exactly the kind of maker you are, and this is yours: the diversity in that verse was the point rather than the problem. It is written in 1 Corinthians 12:6 that the same God worketh all in all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who will not let one kind of working outrank another.

Twenty minutes, and it must solve nothing

So here is the ask, and there is one strict condition, and the condition is where the whole thing happens.

Tonight, make one thing in twenty minutes that solves nothing.

Not a bracket. Not a fix. Not a thing the house needs and not a thing anybody has mentioned. Take material and make an object that has no use whatsoever.

You have permission to work with no function to aim at, and it is already settled in 1 Corinthians 12:6 that the same God worketh all in all. The Spirit of God is the one who is at a table where nothing is being solved.

That will be genuinely difficult for you, and it should be. Your hands have spent forty years aiming at a function, and without a function to aim at they will not know what they are for.

Make a shape. Make a thing that is a nice weight in the hand. Make a joint for no reason and do not attach it to anything.

You have an operation of your own that no ranking ever applied to, and 1 Corinthians 12:6 puts every kind of working under the same hand. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a useless object inside that same sentence.

It will come out badly, because there is no correct outcome to hit, and your whole method depends on there being one.

Leave it as it is, and put it somewhere you will see it, and do not attach it to anything later to give it a job.

You are covered while your hands work with no function to aim at, and 1 Corinthians 12:6 is the ground under that. The written word puts every kind of working under one hand, and the Spirit of God is present at a table where a man is making something that does nothing.