From Peterson’s “Under the Unpredictable Plant:”
Mess is the precondition of creativity. The “tohu v’bohu” of Genesis 1:2. Chaos.
Creativity is not neat. It is not orderly. When we are being creative we don’t know what is going to happen next. When we are being creative a great deal of what we do is wrong. When we are being creative we are not efficient.
An artist makes attempt after attempt at the canvas trying for the right perspective and missing badly, almost getting the right shade but not making it, realizing that this figure is an unconscious copy of a master and then rubbing it out, rejecting the imitative, returning to the beginning, refusing to quit, all the time creating.
A poet writes draft after draft of a poem, mercilessly excising cliches, feeling for the rhythm, filling the wastebasket with crumpled paper, and eventually getting words together that tell the truth and tell it truthfully.
Lover quarrel, hurt and get hurt, misunderstand and are misunderstood in their painstaking work of creating a marriage: apologize and explain, listen and wait, rush forward and pull back, desire and sacrifice as love receives its slow incarnation in flesh and spirit.
In any creative enterprise there are risks, mistakes, false starts, failures, frustrations, embarrassments, but out of this mess–when we stay with it long enough, enter it deeply enough–there slowly emerges love or beauty or peace.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons