Creative Challenges & Books To Consider
Creativity as self-competition, questioning Christianity as a white man's faith, and a few book recommendations.
My two-year old daughter really gets me.
She’s always carrying a book around, and lately she’s started carrying two books in order to thrust one book at me, and say, in the cutest, bossiest way possible, “Daddy! Read book!”
She wants to read on her own with me reading on my own next to her. If that’s not a good thing, I don’t know what is.
One of the books I’ve been re-reading lately (though not while sitting next to my daughter) is Letters to a Young Writer by Colum McCann.
As I work on my book, I find myself in need of weaponry to fight the three-headed pest that entangles me whenever I try to do something stretching, meaningful, and creative.
I’m talking about the debilitating trifecta of insecurity, distraction, and comparison.
Passages like the one below from McCann have been refreshing. They’ve helped me to stay disciplined, get creative, and run up my word count.
Substitute write/literature/writing with your specific creative labors and try out McCann’s counsel:
You don’t write in competition with anyone. There are no Olympics in literature. No gold medal, no silver, no bronze, even if the literary awards suggest that there might be. You will soon find out that the word best is not part of the true endgame vocabulary, though the word better can be accommodated. What you want to do is write better: it’s as simple as that.
Your energies should be directed entirely at your own work. The success or failure of others will not make a new sentence appear from your fingertips.
If you’re writing to beat someone else, then you’re writing with invisible ink. Watch it disappear. Instead, keep counsel with dignity. Remain humble. Keep your gaze straight…This doesn’t mean that you don’t want to be better than another writer—being better is part of your job. But be better in a better way. In a way that forces you into competition with yourself.
Though McCann is talking about writing, the application to a whole host of other endeavors is clear. So, my dear readers, press on and be better in a better way.
Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?
The kind folks at The Gospel Coalition asked me to write on this question last fall as a contribution to Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church, which releases on April 12th. More skilled and thoughtful minds have taken on this topic, but I hope my short contribution proves helpful.
Here’s a snippet:
The phenomenon of disentangling biblical Christianity from its distortions is the only way to understand one of the most miraculous developments in modern history: enslaved Africans’ widespread embrace of the religion of their oppressors. Countless enslaved Africans saw past slave owners’ malicious misreadings of Scripture to gaze on—and embrace—the Christian faith. In the very faith misused to dehumanize them, they uncovered God’s affirmation of their humanity, his call to seek equality, and his saving revelation in Christ. So they carried their lament, scars, and trauma to heaven’s throne. Patiently and prayerfully, they searched the Scriptures and disentangled the true faith from its heinous distortions.
You can read the rest, which includes some engagement with Frederick Douglass, here.
Books To Consider
In a continued effort to luxuriate in the goodness of books and free us all from the confines of “a book budget,” here are some recommendations worth a look.
Danny Senza, Caucasia (1998)
A few people reached out to let me know they had read Nella Larsen’s Passing after I mentioned it last month, so I’m including a similar but more contemporary work that also explores themes of passing and racial identity between fascinating female protagonists. Caucasia tells the story of Birdie and Cole, two multiracial sisters, as they grow up in Boston in the 1970’s when public schools were desegregated and racial violence plagued the city. It’s a pretty ambitious story with a few twists, but it holds up well and gives an important look at race during a critical era.
Praxis, The Redemptive Nonprofit: A Playbook for Leaders (2019)
Everything I’ve seen from Praxis has been stellar, a rare and healthy integration of the strategic and the spiritual. This concise book explores how leaders can “go beyond the baseline of ethics and excellence that should characterize any organization” to shaping and building their organizations/communities with the compassion and hope of the gospel for the flourishing of others. This is a potent, revolutionary little book that I pray gets a wide reading.
Jonathan Clegg and Joshua Robinson, The Club: How the English Premier League Became the Wildest, Richest, Most Disruptive Force in Sports (2018)
This one is strictly for my soccer heads. An entertaining, informative, and bewildering look at the origins of the Premier League with lots of fascinating history, leadership gaffes, and sports lore. Soccer diehards or those newer to being a fan of the beautiful game will really dig this. I’d also recommend this one as an audiobook.
Thanks for reading!
Claude