Calling All Artists: A manifesto for the forgotten artists, the hidden writers and the wannabe poets

This is a call for all those who say “I’m not an artist” with a flutter of doubt in their bellies, a twinge of remorse on their lips, a longing in their hearts.

This is a call for all the writers who have gotten so busy with kids and career, paying the bills and handing in assignments that they haven’t written a story in years. For the poets who write on their lunch breaks because it’s the only way they know how to connect to God when life seems to be so dark. For those who can barely remember a time of creativity before the blackness of depression blotted it out.

This is a call for all of us who were terrified of art class, terrified to try and fail. For all of us who labeled ourselves “I’m not good at art” or “I can’t do it”. For those of us who can’t draw beyond a stick figure but who love to play with words until a sentence rings true, the clearest of beauties.

This is a call for those who have squirreled away their writing in journals, their sketches in notebooks, their paintings under their beds. For those who have never dared to show their work to anyone.

This is a call for the sculptors and the painters, the doodlers and the sketchers. For those who can’t keep their minds on the speaker unless their pen is on the paper.

This is a call for the mamas and the engineers, the salesmen and the papas, the teachers and the mechanics, the office workers and the students, the owners and the renters, who used to write stories, who used to paint pictures, who used to invent songs. For all the kids with the big imaginations who grew up, who got practical and realistic, who got a job, a career, a debt and forgot. For those who forgot the rush of delight in creating something beautiful, something from your soul, something just for you, or to give away.

This is a call for those of us who grew up, who got busy, who forgot.

This is a call to creativity.

A call to cast off the negations you spoke over your own life, the can’ts, shouldn’ts, couldn’ts. A call to say you are an artist. To say “I am a writer” or a poet, or a painter, or a sculptor. To say it with your shoulders back, your chin up, looking the world in the eye. This is a call to pick up the pencil, to start scratching the soil and to fertilize the seed within you. Because there is a field here, a big, open, expansive field in the sunshine where all kinds of seeds can be planted, where all of our sprouts can grow up together into an abundant crop. Your seed is welcome in this field. We can pull out the weeds around each other, make way for the healing rains and let the wind of His Spirit ruffle our branches. As our roots plunge down deeper and our stems get stronger, we’ll start to bear fruit. And we’ll fill a feasting table with the fruits of our creativity, right in the middle of this field, a heavy-laden table for others to sit down and partake of the bounty. 

Photo credits: Creative Team Night @hillsonggermany via Nine Köpfer @ Enka Photos