How can we make sense of the spiritual side of ourselves within our own creativity? And how can we connect with a fully sensory God who has made the world though an act of creation? And can anyone do this in the context of an enjoyable afternoon workshop? What would that feel like?

These are some of the questions we worked through in a recent community workshop hosted by St Michaels Church, Dumfries as part of the series devised by Simon Lidwell of Quartz Dumfries.

I was given the final session on the theme of coloured glass, having worked our way through drawing, calligraphy and textile weaving. In the final session the aim was to move somewhere beyond the verbal, representational realm into the more abstract world of shapes and colours and the quality of light itself…

Creating is an interactive process which uses all of our senses, including our sense of the spiritual which might sometimes be suppressed or channelled in over-familiar tropes. By taking part in a less familiar creative activity we can connect with parts of ourselves normally out of bounds to the safety of verbal control. I believe this can allow God into the process and we can encounter Him/Her in a direct practical way without thinking too much about it at the time.

Another way to think of this could be as active listening rather than passive awareness. The very process of deciding how to make something seems to alert us to our place in the world as co-creators with the one who has already created all things. This seeming paradox places us in the moment of our time here on earth and we are in exactly the right place to have a fuller understanding of why we exist at all. So being creative is a very profound experience and all humans should have the right to be a part of this if we are made in God’s image. And having fun is an integral part of this!

Glass can be see as the fruit of the art of fire …it is a fusion of the earth’s rocks into a new state somewhere between solid and liquid.

SAND + SODA + LIME melted at high temperatures will create this new material. Some say the ancient Egyptians perhaps discoverd this alchemy of materials in the hot desert sands…

Glass is a special state between solid and liquid, not easily categorised as a fluid. An in-between state, something of a mystery. It is an amorphous solid – it lacks the ordered molecular structure of true solids yet its irregular structure is too rigid for a liquid.* This structural disorder which also has a rigidity is what gives glass its great strength – if handled correctly!

In many ways glass is great metaphor for people who recognise a spiritual realm while at the same time living fully in a material world. We are caught in this in-between state, sometimes drawn to earth, other times towards heaven. Some call this a liminal space which suggests a passing from one state to another, but I see it as a dynamic state of balance which we carry within ourselves as people who know our true home is elsewhere. Creativity is one way of connecting with this delicate balance which can be overlooked too easily as we battle with the ordinary demands of life. That’s why everyone needs to be creatively earthed.

*New Scientist 2015