On Generative Work

A new series on vocation, art, and middle age

I’ve been using the word “generative” a lot lately as I think about calling, vocation, and this middle act of the story of life. It crops up in conversations that open rather than close off possibilities; in deep moments of connection; in quiet times of reading just for the joy of it. The generative moment descends like fire, then butterfly-flits away, and I find myself remembering my younger self, but now, the notes play in another key. I’m finding the need to make more room for moments of descent and ascent. But this got me thinking, naturally, about words — and then about words and creativity, and about this middleness, too.

For something to be generative, it must generate — it must reproduce. Generative conversations are fruitful. Generative works spurs on another person’s work. Generative teaching and preaching not only distills information but enacts through its form that which it teaches or preaches; generative work actually perpetuates itself. Generative work, then, begets.

“Beget”, of course, connotes all those long lists of bible names we cannot pronounce. But the reality of the son or daughter who has been begotten is a long gestation, all of which unfolds in secret, until (in biological birth) the day in which a parent meets a son or daughter who is both fully like the parent and fully other.¹ To be begotten is to be a recipient to a legacy and story much longer than you. It is, in its most pure sense, to be knit in secrecy, to be born of love, to be safe, and yet in this world, also born into the possibility of pain.

In the making — whether of people, places, or things — all hope appears to be oriented toward the future. But the perseverance of the middle, the ups and downs shaped and whittled by pain, loss, and misplaced expectations, is the stuff that makes something (or someone generative).

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Which brings me to another word — generations. For if to be begotten means to be born into generative possibility, it is only on the sturdy back of generations: it is only from the people and places that have created a bedrock on which any one of us can stand. But there comes a time when we move to the back row because it is time for another generation to take the lead. And so to be born into generative possibility means both seeing backwards as much as seeing forward; it also means that as we approach the second act of life, we more acutely see the loss inherent in legacy. It is a quiet sort of pain that (like birth) also has purpose.

These words have implications for middle age of course, but also deep implications for creative work.

Bret Lott in his book Letters & Life writes of the Old Testament temple artisan, Bezalel: “All this craftsmanship, all this artistry, all this creativity, accomplished by hands blessed by God to accomplish this creation; indeed, Bezalel and the other artists were blessed to be a blessing in order to create for God what was at that time the center of his glory.”² Lott goes on to remind the reader that the temple artisans wouldn’t be able to carry or even see the artifacts they’d made, given God’s law concerning the absolute holy otherness of his glory which meant only the High Priest would be able to enter the Holy of Holies, and only on the Day of Atonement. The artists created and then released.

For Bezalel and other artisans, there must have been both a great sense of being called and seen by Yahweh, being welcomed into a generative making that was intensely personal, and also there, too, an attending loss: the sort of flame-descending, butterfly-flitting nature of making art in God’s world. For though they would make it, they would not enjoy it forever. Art, too, was a sacrifice of first fruits.

I suppose what I am trying to circle around in all this is this: for any good work in the world that is ultimately productive — by which I mean, generative, fertile, and points to its source in goodness, truth and beauty — it (and its creator) must both maintain a relative smallness and tolerate a good amount of both difference and necessarily, of loss.

The artist and maker must attend to the everydayness of making, while always knowing art (and life itself) is offering. The wrestling, the holding in tension, cannot fully ever belong to the artist.

For any good work in the world that is ultimately productive … it (and its creator) must both maintain a relative smallness and tolerate a good amount of both difference and necessarily, of loss.

This good work that is ultimately productive needn’t be the artist’s canvas, or a musical chorus; it may be as simple as the embodied practices of art-making we find in the human story: making a meal, the washing up, the holding of hands, the reading of a book — what Kathleen Norris called “quotidian mysteries.”

I take great courage that the secret places of my making — whether that was in the unseen years of the early motherhood, in our current raising of teenagers as they become young adults, or my reading, thinking, ideating, and writing in private and in public — are named and seen by God. It is a specific seeing, not a generic look; it is the naming of desires decades ago that find their breadcrumbs just now dropped.

The flame-descending moments of inspiration are worthy and good, but they are not the thing in itself to chase, the shiny new object of my latest affections.

The harder, slower rhythm of generative work happens as one reckons with attending loss, finds one’s small place in it, and chronicles the sparks as gifts of grace so that one’s whole life is poured out in extravagant abundance — blessed to be a blessing.

This small thing is no small thing.

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This begins a new weekly series on creativity and a generative life, based off my reading.

I appreciate you subscribing and sharing.

For more of my work, check out The Willowbrae Institute, my books (Finding Holy in the Suburbs and A Spacious Life) and The Cartographers Podcast.

1. Guy Garvey’s line (from Elbow) from “Weightless” gets the feeling of this so right: “Hey/ You look like me, / So we / We look like him”. While the song is likely about Garvey’s father’s death, I think there’s a place for it to be both about death and about birth.

2. Bret Lott, Letters & Life, 36.