What If We Gave Creativity a Seat at the Conversation?
Recently, my colleagues and I led a youth meeting where we brainstormed ideas for the next season.
Knowing that our group includes quite a few creative people, I suggested creating a space where they could express themselves without interrupting or competing with the conversation. They could choose to communicate their ideas and impressions in ways other than talking—through drawing, writing, painting, or whatever creative form felt natural to them.
The result surprised and encouraged me.
More ideas emerged, and some of the drawings expressed impressions that might otherwise have remained unnoticed or unacknowledged. Creativity gave people another language through which to participate.
That experience stayed with me.
Later that same night, after waking up, I did something I rarely do: I had a conversation with a new friend whose creative flow often takes the form of poetry.
Earlier that day, another friend had sent me an inspirational poster. It touched on a prayer request I had that morning and felt like a gentle reminder of God's faithful provision—a provision I have experienced many times over several decades.
In response, I wrote a poem in the form of a prayer and sent it to my new friend. He responded by sending me a poem he had written a couple of weeks earlier. His poem was about a different subject, but it described a question-and-answer struggle he had been wrestling with at the time. So I responded with another poem. I decided to share it here:
I am who I am
I am loving.
I am kind.
I am patient.
And I am not blind.
© 2026 All Rights Reserved.
In a way, something beautiful happened through that creative exchange. We had an authentic conversation without having a conventional conversation. One creative response became a seed for another, and those seeds continued to produce new thoughts, questions, and expressions.
Our exchange also touched on something many of us struggle with: the difficulty of being authentic in a world that can sometimes encourage a nonchalant or relativistic approach to life's challenges and questions.
We felt safe sharing our poems with one another because we were both operating within the same creative flow. There was room to express opinions, struggles, questions, and hope without fear of being criticised or judged for being vulnerable.
And perhaps that is one of the gifts of creativity.
It can create space for authenticity.
Not everyone finds it easy to say what they think or feel in a conversation. Sometimes a drawing can say something words cannot. Sometimes a poem can express a question we don't yet know how to ask. Sometimes painting, writing, music, or another creative expression gives us enough distance to be honest about what is happening inside us.
That is why I would like to create such a space here on the Creative Helping Hands website—a safe place for creative sharing. A place where something that touches your heart can become the beginning of a new creative response.
What has touched your heart?
Has today's topic, a poem, an image, a story, or some other creative expression on the Creative Helping Hands website—or somewhere else—touched something in you?
What is your creative response?
You might write something, draw, paint, create a poem, or respond in another way that feels authentic to you. You are welcome to share your creative response in the comments section of this blog post or send me a private message. Let us start a new creative conversation that might plant some new seeds. Perhaps your creative response will become a seed for someone else's.
And perhaps, together, we can discover what happens when we give creativity a seat at the conversation.
Comments