Colleen Warren [00:00:00]:

I believe as a Christian that everything is filled with meaning, that that we, God put within us kind of a need for meaning to make sense of things. We have a yearning for things to make sense. When something seemingly senseless happens, like a child dies or something, we think, why? You know, it's going to be some reason for this. You know, we want to believe that everything has meaning and purpose. And I think art can really maybe express that more than anything else.

Jim Spiegel [00:00:29]:

Welcome to the Kalos Center Podcast welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center Podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Colleen Warren. Colleen earned her BA in English education at Olivet Nazarene College, her MA and PhD and American literature at the University of Florida. Colleen has been a professor of American literature at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana for over 30 years. Much of her scholarly work has been devoted to the writings of Flannery o' Connor and Annie Dillard. Her most recent books are Re Entering Eden, Christian Meditation in Nature, and the First Verb Cultivating Christian Creativity, which was published by Wipfen Stock just last year. I've read both of these books and they are excellent.

Jim Spiegel [00:01:26]:

Colleen and her husband Jim have been married for over 40 years and they have four adult children, all of whom graduated from Taylor. One of Colleen's passions is to do her writing at what she calls her Thoreauvian Cabin, which is somewhere in a ravine in central Indiana at an undisclosed location. And in calling her cabin Thoreauvian, Colleen is referencing Henry David Thoreau. So think Walden and Nature Inspired Creative Solitude. When she's not writing or spending time with her kids, her grandchildren, Colleen enjoys doing calligraphy, drawing, watercolor painting, lifting weights, hiking, hammocking, and messing around with power tools. She tells me. She also blogs at One Woman Wandering, so you can check out some of her blogging there. So, Colleen Warren, welcome to the Kalos Center Podcast.

Colleen Warren [00:02:22]:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:24]:

So it's summertime and somehow I've managed to draw you out of your cabin there somewhere in the woods, or is it a cornfield? And how close is it to Upland?

Colleen Warren [00:02:37]:

It's actually on our property. We have 17 acres about 5 miles outside of upland, and so it's 700 steps to be exact from my back, back door. So it's really convenient for me, but it's hidden from view from anybody else. So even though it's only a half a mile from Interstate 69 and you can hear the the white noise of that from my cabin, it feels very secluded.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:00]:

So what inspired that? Besides Henry David Thoreau, I'm finding that.

Colleen Warren [00:03:04]:

I Have a greater need for solitude as I get older. And I just like having a place that I can call my own, that people have to knock on the door to get in. And so it's just a place that I've tried not to solely with grading or anything like that, but instead just keep four, you know, four things that I'm doing that are creative and particularly writing. So on my sabbaticals that I've had to work on my writing, I've done them almost exclusively out there where I've tried to, you know, just kind of have a place that I dedicate to that. And. And so that's. That's what prompted it. I had a.

Colleen Warren [00:03:38]:

Some money left over from a grant that I got, and Jim said, sure, you can use it for that. So we had it built and, you know, it's been a great addition.

Jim Spiegel [00:03:47]:

So is it electrified? Do you have lights and electricity out there?

Colleen Warren [00:03:52]:

Yeah, only because they have a very long extension cord, so we don't have. We didn't spend the money to have it, you know, actually, you know, coded for electricity. But I literally have, like three or four extension cords running from our back door to there. So if I can't do lights and coffee at the same time, for example, but I could use one or the other, so it's fun.

Jim Spiegel [00:04:13]:

That's good. Yeah. So your most recent book on cultivating Christian creativity is called the First Verb. That's the main title. What inspired you to write that?

Colleen Warren [00:04:24]:

I had felt that I had gifts in creativity, not just writing, but other things as well, and I wanted to do it. I felt I had the motivation, but I didn't. Um, I, you know, I would try to every year, you know, have a resolution. This is the year you're going to be, you know, giving vent to your creativity and allow time for it. And I just never felt, you know, followed through with it. So one year I just got man enough at myself, I guess, to say, doggone it, you know, this is going to be the time I do it. So I made a very. I did everything the opposite of what they tell you to do.

Colleen Warren [00:04:57]:

When you make goals, you're supposed to make very specific goals and, you know, you know, follow through, define them carefully. And I thought, you know, I'm going to make a really generic one that will allow me a lot of space for cheating, but yet still kind of keep the vow. So I said, do something creative every day. Something creative. So that allowed me to, you know, get by with just messing around with Pinterest, you know, getting Ideas from Pinterest, collecting things on boards or reading about it or hearing about someone else's creativity or something, anything that would inspire me to be creative. So it wasn't that I required myself to, you know, sit down and do something, you know, produce something. And with that latitude, I was really kind of able to keep that, you know, vow. There were a couple of things that I, you know, more pressingly wanted to do.

Colleen Warren [00:05:45]:

So basically, just wanting that urge to create and not giving vent to it and wanting to follow through with it. And when I finally was able to, then I thought, you know, I want to write about this. I want to share what I did and see if it would work for other people and, you know, do research on creativity. What. What kind of things help you to be more creative? You know, what kind of things help you stick, you know, a vow to. To be creative and that kind of stuff, and also to convince people that they were creative. Because in. Especially in talking to students, when you say, you know, how many of you feel that you are creative? I'll probably get, you know, a third of the class, maybe you'll raise your hand.

Colleen Warren [00:06:23]:

And the other is, why not? Well, because I can't draw or, you know, whatever they think of. Creativity is just kind of the fine arts kind of thing. And. But then when I expand it and, and talk about, you know, know, how many of your creative. You think you have a creativity with sports or creativity with, you know, woodworking or, you know, building a house or something, then you get more people. Oh, okay. Yeah. You know, they'll see it brought more broadly.

Colleen Warren [00:06:48]:

So I. I wanted to really try to convince people that everybody has that creativity bent.

Jim Spiegel [00:06:53]:

Good. The main title, the First Verb, what's the significance of that?

Colleen Warren [00:06:58]:

I get that from a few people when they're asking about the book. And so my first question is, well, what is the first verb of the Bible? And then you get an idea of how many people know the parts of speech, because the most common answer is in, that's a preposition.

Jim Spiegel [00:07:12]:

That's a different book. That's a different book.

Colleen Warren [00:07:14]:

Exactly. It's the first verb, you know, so then they'll go. Invariably they'll say, you know, create. I said, well, that's my point. You know, the first attribute of God that we get in the Bible is his creativity, because we get the story of him creating the world. And so there's got to be some significance in that. Of course, chronologically it makes sense, but beyond that, just to focus on God's creativity seems really important. And because we're made in his image.

Colleen Warren [00:07:41]:

I think that we are, we are gifted. All of us are gifted with creativity. And it just might be in an area that is a little atypical. You don't think of it as creativity. I use the example in my book. My sister, who I say is created with laundry. You know, some people think that's a stretch, but boy, I mean, she's good at it. She knows how to get stains out.

Colleen Warren [00:08:03]:

She. She tinkers around. She. She messes with things, she looks at things imaginatively and she's good at laundry. So why not creativity? And so, yeah, that, that's my point. That, you know, because we're made in the image of God, all of us creative, all of us should find what those areas are.

Jim Spiegel [00:08:19]:

So one natural retort, evidently you've heard, is that, well, okay, in a very generic sense, I'm creative. I, you know, the way I organize things, the way I can get stains out of clothes or whatever, but I'm not a. There's no way that I could ever be a fine artist. I don't have any kind of aptitude for that. But in your book, you challenge that. You maintain that everybody has even that, an aptitude for the fine arts. Why do you think so?

Colleen Warren [00:08:47]:

It might be wishful thinking, you know, but I really do think I. You can make some, you know, pretty good case for it. I think the main thing that keeps people from understanding that they have that aptitude is because they haven't even tried. You know, they just think maybe somebody has discouraged them early on or something. When they're kid. That happens a lot, unfortunately, you know, oh, you're painting the, the deer green, you know, it's Greer or brown, you know, or something like that, you know, and they, they just early on been told you're not creative, you're not that type, but you have skills and gifts in other areas or another, you know, reason is because they've tried a few things. I've tried to draw, you know, whatever. I'm not good at that, therefore I'm not creative.

Colleen Warren [00:09:24]:

But they haven't, look, they haven't explored enough to find what is their gift. You know, there is something out there. There's a huge range of what you know of the arts, you know, ways you can be creative. You know, from writing to drawing to theater to dance to woodworking to building. I mean, there's all. Anything where you're, you're starting with, you know, raw materials and creating something new out of that. That's, you know, we can't do it ex nilo, like God can. But, you know, anything that we can come up with something new and original is.

Colleen Warren [00:09:56]:

Is art. And I think fine arts, there's so many different areas, I mean, almost inexhaustible, that would still be considered fine arts. Weaving, you know, or basket making or whatever, you know, and cloth making and, you know, so just if they search long enough, I think they could find that area that they are gifted in.

Jim Spiegel [00:10:16]:

So let's step back to a more abstract level. How. How would you define creativity generally? What is creativity?

Colleen Warren [00:10:24]:

I try in the book to kind of come up with some, you know, attributes that, you know, that to me represent creativity. And when most people see that, they say innovation, something that you create that's new, that's that, you know, involves a reassemblage of the raw materials that you have or something like that that has something to say that has some kind of meaning to convey a unique way of looking at something, a perspective maybe. You know, a lot of the writers that I like, that's what to me is creative about them. Not that they can put words on a page as much, but the way. The way they see. Make you see something new in a. In a different way. I give the example of J.W.

Colleen Warren [00:11:05]:

turner, who. I like his later works because he. He started as a realist painter, but he. At the end he becomes really impressionistic. And that's the stuff I like. It's not what really gained him his fame as much, but the way he uses light and helps you see things in a whole different way by looking at the way he paints light is to me, innovation is. That's where he is the most creative because he's, you know, stepping out from, you know, what he established his reputation on really, and coming up with something new. So, you know, that's maybe not a full answer for sure.

Colleen Warren [00:11:40]:

I mean, everybody has a different idea of creativity, but usually those are. When I ask students and stuff, they'll say, yeah, something important to you, or.

Jim Spiegel [00:11:47]:

So even in the sciences, that's necessary. Some would in fact emphasize that to a significant degree, including Einstein, who maintained that the most important quality that scientists can have is imagination, right? When we think about imagination, usually we think about the creative arts, not science so much. But when you think of major paradigm shifts, say from geocentrism to heliocentrism or devising the atomic theory, or Mendel and genetics, or maybe especially relativity theory and quantum physics, these are imaginative leaps. And it takes a great imagination, takes great creativity in order to come up with new scientific paradigms. So maybe keeping that in mind, we can kind of recognize a greater unity to the disciplines than is often recognized. You talk about a theology of creativity, and in fact, the whole book really is a kind of theology of creativity. What are some of the highlights of what you regard as a biblical theology of creativity?

Colleen Warren [00:13:13]:

First of all, you know that it's based on God's own creativity and the idea of imago Deo, where we're made in his image and therefore we are creative and we're commanded to. To give vent to that, to express it. It's not like an option. And I see in the creation story all three parts of the Trinity working together to create. It's obvious God's part, you know, because he's foregrounded. His name is foregrounded in that, you know, God created. So, you know, he's parallel to us as creators, the ones that are making it happen. But when we get the.

Colleen Warren [00:13:45]:

The idea in John that. That Jesus is the word, then I think Jesus is present in the words that God speaks to make it happen, which would be maybe comparable to the media that we use in. In creativity when writing its words. Still, if in art, it might be paintbrushes or something like that, and then the Spirit is there, it says, brooding over the waters. And, you know, the most easy connection would be that it's the inspiration, that he is the inspiration. He's the ideas behind it. So all three of them working. Cohesiveness is my model for creativity that undergirds my sense of the theology of creativity.

Jim Spiegel [00:14:24]:

So let me first, I guess make an observation, maybe a question about this whole idea of inspiration, okay? Which is a mysterious thing. And it's. You don't have to be a Christian or religious or even a theist to believe that this is a real thing, inspiration. But what is it? That. That is an interesting question. When a person is inspired to write a song or to do something creative, it's a fascinating thing to think about. You know, where. Where did that line come from? And often, maybe this is usually the case.

Jim Spiegel [00:15:06]:

Creative artists will shrug their shoulders and say, I don't know. And Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones one fine day in 1965, woke up with this. This guitar riff, this. This little melody in. In his head. And it was in the middle of the night. He just hummed it into his tape recorder. And the next morning listened to it.

Jim Spiegel [00:15:30]:

Yeah, that's good. And he worked out on a guitar. It's a very simple riff. And it became Satisfaction. I can't get no Satisfaction, you know, that guitar line, Where'd that come from? And so some will, particularly in Christian subculture, will say, well, God gave me this, right? It's a. This is a gift from God. And you know what they mean. You know, if it's a bad song, you might hesitate to say, well, I don't know, maybe you were moved or inspired in a very.

Jim Spiegel [00:16:03]:

In a kind of general psychological sense. But I don't know if God gave you that song. But I guess my observation here is just to note that if it's a mystery how we come up with ideas, quote, unquote ex nihilo, it's also a mystery with regard to how God comes up with ideas. And maybe that's what we should expect if we're made in the image of God.

Colleen Warren [00:16:25]:

Yeah. You know, then you have a mindset, a certain mindset. And in a Christian worldview, that should be an idea of submission to God, that we do art, what we do, we create because we want to bring honor to God, because that's a gift given to us by God. And we always keep in mind that we would have none of this if it weren't for God. And so that submissiveness, that humility that comes from saying, this isn't me. This is like, wow, how great I am, or how talented I am, but more what God has given me and just gratitude for the gift. So that mindset is something pretty important to establish a Christian view of creativity. And then within the system, I have like three or four different qualities, I think, purposes, I guess you'd say, of art that as Christians, we should keep in mind.

Colleen Warren [00:17:14]:

And one of them, the starting one, is bringing order out of chaos. You can say that when, like, when I write a book, I have ideas, they're floating all over the place, and I try to put them into order with an outline. You know, how does this fit together? What doesn't fit, what I would leave out. And as I write, you know, that gets more and more, you know, solidified and so forth. So every creative act does that. You know, you start with a lot of jumbled ideas and then work towards creating order out of that. And of course, that models exactly what God does when he creates the world. He starts with chaos and void and ends up with perfect order.

Colleen Warren [00:17:51]:

Another thing that's central to a Christian view of creativity is the idea that to make the invisible visible, I. That's where meaning comes in, which is connected to the next point that, you know, you're revealing meaning that I believe is intrinsic in the world. God abused things with meaning. We don't, we don't make up meaning. We discover it more. So those, those are two things that work in tandem. Most of the art that I have really loved is something that helps me see something I didn't see before or in a different way. And so that is what I mean by making the invisible visible.

Colleen Warren [00:18:29]:

That could be, you know, something about God. It could be something about nature that's revelatory to you. It could be just some, you know, nothing to do with God per se at all. You know, just insight or some. Something that you want to express to somebody but that they cannot see until you show them or, or talk to them or tell them about that. And so that's connected with meaning, of course, too, because I, I believe as a Christian that everything is filled with meaning. That, that we, God put within us kind of a need for meaning to make sense of things. We, we have a yearning for things to make sense.

Colleen Warren [00:19:07]:

When something seemingly senseless happens, like a child dies or something, we think, why, you know, it's going to be some reason for this. You know, we, we want to believe that everything has meaning and purpose. And I think art can really maybe express that more than anything else. And going back to the idea of imagination, because the God's world, heaven is not visible to us. The only way we can see it, quote unquote, is through our imagination. So really, you could argue that only through art can you see the spiritual realm. You know, it's what makes it most visible to us through something like that. And then another thing, and this is where I.

Colleen Warren [00:19:45]:

People start departing from me. Some of my colleagues, for example, would maybe not agree with this. I believe that art, if you're a Christian, should have some kind of moral standard that you should do things that are only honoring to God. And by that, I don't mean that you don't depict anything sinful or anything dark or that, you know, is a force against God or anything. But the. What tone or what vision we have with it is what's important because the Bible is full, you know, as anybody knows, of horrible sin. And it's sometimes very explicit. You know, sometimes it's really pretty raw.

Colleen Warren [00:20:25]:

But always the tone is disapproving. You know, it's not like we're encouraging this, you know, so that's what I mean. A Christian worldview should, if they show sin, should not be approving of it. Should not show like the good side of sin. You know, always show that this is an aberration. This is not the way we're meant to live, you know, or if something is dark and depressing, just to show that there's a redemptive possibility there, it may not happen. You know, there may not be redemption at the end. Everything, it doesn't end happily, you know, with everybody getting what they want, but that there's a spark of hope there or something that shows something beyond it, because that's just as real as the opposite.

Colleen Warren [00:21:09]:

You know, people say, oh, it's a reality to show that there's dark and, you know, there's depression. Yeah, that's true. That those are true. But it's also true that there's light and hope, you know. So I just want to give kind of equal press, I guess, to that, you know, and when I talk about moral standards, so those are some elements, I think, important.

Jim Spiegel [00:21:27]:

Yeah, that was great. So your comment there about moral standards, I'm with you on that, and I've gotten pushback on that. Particularly if you're having a dialogue with someone who's, you know, a secularist or a religious skeptic and not at all devout in their belief in God or. Or whatever, you know, to suggest that there are these moral standards they need to be abiding by or that everybody should abide by when they're. When they're writing or doing other forms of art. You know, you can really offend people with that. I mean, they find it offensive. There are three views.

Jim Spiegel [00:22:13]:

I don't know if you're familiar with this, but the three major views on this issue, the relationship between art and ethics. So one has been called aestheticism, and that is that art is immune to moral judgment. And people like John Dewey and Friedrich Nietzsche would say that it's like art is its own domain and it's untouched by any concerns regarding ethics. On the other extreme is something that has been called moralism, and that is that ethics, moral qualities, are the only value that matters when it comes to art. And Tolstoy, believe it or not, after his conversion, late later in his life, he became a pretty devout moralist, you know, and which is. That puts him in the same category at that point with, like, what we would call fundamentalists. Right. I mean, an evangelical fundamentalist is someone who says, like, all that matters is the.

Jim Spiegel [00:23:13]:

The moral message. Right. You seems that you're arguing for you would promote the view that I would as well. It's a kind of balance view that, no, morality isn't all that matters, but it does matter. And we can apply moral standards to art forms along with Other, say, aesthetic standards. Does that sound right to you?

Colleen Warren [00:23:40]:

Yeah, it does. Yeah. I mean, you know, your comment that, you know, people who don't believe in God or who don't value that aspect of their lives would not agree with me. Well, I accept that. I know that when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about this is a standard for Christians. So the. What troubles me is when people who call themselves Christians don't seem to have any moral standards, you know, with their art, they do kind of take the first view, maybe that it's immune. You know, that's an area somehow that you don't need to apply morality.

Colleen Warren [00:24:08]:

You know, I wouldn't use that language myself, but I can have my character use it or something like that, you know, because it's fiction, you know, it's not real. So that's. That's where I would get into clashes with, you know, people on that, you know, and that's fine. You know, that's one thing that's open for discussion, you know, that they can. They can talk to me about it. And I, like I said, some of my colleagues here, I know for a fact would, you know, from having talked to them, which would not agree with me at all. So I'm probably more. Well, definitely, I'm more fundamentalist, as you said, with that here at Taylor, than in the department than any.

Colleen Warren [00:24:42]:

Probably anybody. Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:24:43]:

Yeah. Well, you'd be more in that middle ground that saying. It's both. It isn't just morality or moral standards that we use to evaluate a film or a poem or whatever, but it is important. Baris Gout. What a. It's kind of a strange name, but.

Colleen Warren [00:24:59]:

I think it changed my name.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:00]:

Yeah. His last name is G, A U, T. Barris, and he's a. Is his first name Barris? He's written on this. I think he's at Oxford or Cambridge. He's a. A British scholar and he's written some good stuff on this. And.

Jim Spiegel [00:25:17]:

And that helped me kind of just solidify my categories for thinking about this because I knew I didn't agree with a Dewey or Anitzche, and I knew I didn't agree with, you know, the later Tolstoy and, you know, contemporary fundamentalists. But moral values need to be considered and are properly applied. You know, when. When you have a film that is just, say, brutally gruesome, like these slasher films, right? Or one that's pornographic, okay. It is so substandard morally that looking at the thing as a work of art, it fails, according to Gout because the moral standard does have aesthetic implications. When, when you have morally flawed, deeply problematic artworks from a morally standpoint, that also undermines them aesthetically, he argues. And I think that's right. And that's, and that's why we are tempted to say that pornography is not even art.

Jim Spiegel [00:26:26]:

Right, I would agree.

Colleen Warren [00:26:27]:

Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:26:27]:

It might be trying to be art, but it's so problematic morally that it is so degraded that we don't even want to call it art. I would just call it very, very, very bad art because it's such a, a failure on the moral criterion. So you discuss various benefits of creativity. What, what are some of those?

Colleen Warren [00:26:53]:

I, this is one of the, the best things I think about God. He has rules, he has standards, but they always are for our good. It's never a selfish motive on his part. Like, I just, I want you to praise me because I'm, you know, full of myself, you know, or whatever. Praise helps us, you know, helps our attitude. And it just turns out to be so in creativity too. You know, people, I don't know anybody who says, oh, I hate creativity. Why do I have to be creative? You know, but if, if they did, you know, they would say, they would still know that there are huge benefits from creativity.

Colleen Warren [00:27:25]:

So the blessings that God gives us something like creativity further blesses us because of all the, the vantages that it has for us. So it's not just a rule that God has, like, I want you to be creative because I am. I command you to be creative. He knows that it benefits us to be creative. And, and what was kind of stunning to me was at how many levels, how many different ways. When I was doing my research for Reentering Eden, I found out that being in nature helps you to be more creative. And I thought, huh, interesting. You know, that got me interested.

Colleen Warren [00:28:00]:

I want to find out more about creativity, you know, so that's what rolled over into this second book. For example, going barefoot in nature, it literally brings ions into your body that, you know, help you be more balanced and have a better attitude and stuff. And the same kind of thing happens with creativity that it increases, for example, self esteem, it, it reduces depression, it helps you feel, you know, less stressed and that kind of thing. And that's why we have, you know, art therapy and that kind of stuff for people with, with strong mental problems. But it even helps physically that it helps us to think better. It does something to our brain that helps us to make connections better. You know, we, you were talking earlier about seeing things differently, like through different perspectives in science even, you know, to be able to go past paradigms and, and think, well, what if the world isn't flat, you know, and think beyond what everyone expects to be true. And that is a breakthrough, you know, and so we can make better, you know, synaptic connections in our brain because of that.

Colleen Warren [00:29:05]:

Or, you know, just literally, it, it, it helps us to be healthier, you know, it helps us to resist disease. It, it boosts our immune system. I don't know how that does that. I don't know at all. But it's, it's true. It's, you know, makes people healthier. So from the health level to the mental level to the emotional level and of course, spiritual, you know, I think definitely are can, you know, help you get closer to God. It has with me, I'm sure that you, you know, in the songs that you've written and stuff like that, you have, you have felt God's presence and you feel closer to God through the things that you've produced.

Colleen Warren [00:29:40]:

And in this book I have a chapter where I talk about kind of my resistance almost to wanting to do a Christian book, a religious book, because I felt like that was kind of a default, you know, like that's what a Christian professor does. They write something Christian. You know, for example, when I wrote my book on Dillard, I was talking about her idea of language shaped by her belief system, which she had, and looking at Christ as the Word and very clear theological implications there. But I didn't want to make it Christian. I didn't want to make it a theological book. So I purposely kind of downplayed that and just kind of worked. I don't know how you could do that. Right.

Colleen Warren [00:30:21]:

How can you downplay the theology when you're talking about Christ is the Word? But I did. And so the person that picked it up finally, you know, decided to publish it, did so with a caveat that I bulk up the theology, which to me was, was, you know, God slapping me in the face and saying, okay, you know, you're, you're not wanting to do that, but I'm telling you that's what you need. You need to be bold. So it was a, a eye opener to me that, that it can. That creativity should involve all of us and that. That you can grow spiritually through that and you could learn things about yourself and where you're, you know, going the wrong direction and what God wants from you and, and how he infuses everything. And don't, don't be afraid to talk about that. And that made a big difference to me.

Colleen Warren [00:31:06]:

And I think it really impacted the fact that my next two books were explicitly Christian. And I, I had less problem by that, you know, because God taught me through the process of creating something about my relationship with him.

Jim Spiegel [00:31:19]:

Well, yeah, let me encourage you in that you're a good theologian. I mean, we're all, we're all theologians. You know, you haven't been formally trained as others have, but if you, well, you're a human being in this world and you're thinking about God, you have, you have beliefs about God, you're doing theology. So we shouldn't be bashful about it, particularly those of us who are trained scholars and are devout Christians. We should be willing to do this now with a certain. Yeah, with a certain sobriety, you know, as we share our ideas regarding God and the. How a Christian worldview should impact what we're doing here or there. Yeah, we should be, we should be very careful, but we need to do it all the same.

Jim Spiegel [00:32:09]:

And I think you do it very well. Both of those books are very enlightening from a theological standpoint. Who would you say are some of your artistic heroes, especially writers, but maybe some other creative artists as well?

Colleen Warren [00:32:29]:

Well, you know, I, when you first, when I first thought about that question, I was thinking who are my favorite writers? You know, which I think is. It's kind of Mikey Rose. And I see myself modeling somewhat after them. I like some of the things they, they do and I want to do a similar thing. So throw, you know, who you mentioned earlier is one of those who doesn't come across as somebody who's really that innovative or has done anything that unique. And he probably isn't, but he has a beautiful way with language. You know, there's some lines that I can't get out of my head that I just. That kind of direct my life.

Colleen Warren [00:33:03]:

And they're, they're Throvian. And he has a, an ability to see the spiritual side of nature in a way that, that few other people can. And so that he's one of them. And a lot of my writing does like the Reentering Eden does deal with the, you know, the spiritual side of nature. Related to that is Andy Dillard, who you also mentioned. I love how she has almost single handedly reinvented create nonfiction with emphasis on the creative part more than the nonfiction, but how she can take something like almost a book review, a book report of a book she's read and in depth talk about that and then alongside that, talk about scientific details. Using scientific terminology. And then, you know, add the humor and personal experience and that roundabout way that I talked about earlier where you think, what is she saying? What is she doing? She's getting way off track.

Colleen Warren [00:33:57]:

But then, you know, she can zip you back into it and think, ah, you make those connections, all boom. All of a sudden, just kind of explode in your face and makes sense, you know, And. And you have to change your idea that, you know, she doesn't know what she's doing. She's scatterbrained. And that all these little pieces come together. A lot of my. The impressionist are my favorite artists. Renoir and Monet and so forth.

Colleen Warren [00:34:20]:

You know, looking at some, you know, taking a pond lily or something like that and breaking it into points of light or diffusing it and making you see it differently. Or Van Gogh with his swirls, you know, the air currents that he sees in the sky, things like that. Or in the writing world. I talked about Dillard. But, you know, someone who. Just a beautiful turn of language. Someone like Eudor Welty, who spring your neck of the woods. Catherine Porter, who is loved because she has all these details that work together.

Colleen Warren [00:34:52]:

To Or EE Cummings. Poetry. I teach that in class, and I tell students, this poem you cannot even read. It's not readable. You couldn't do a poetry reading and say this poem. It doesn't seem to make any sense. It seems random. It seems like he's just playing with you.

Colleen Warren [00:35:11]:

But it's so intentional. Every little element of it, you know, works together. You know how many times he uses the word. You know, how he capitalizes it or doesn't capitalize it. A perfect example is someone who is. Is full of meaning, but yet make. But doesn't give it to you. I don't like someone like Hawthorne, for example, who says, did you catch that? I called that character faith.

Colleen Warren [00:35:30]:

That's important. You know, like. Yeah, I got that. You know. You know, and it tells you how to interpret it. You know, like you're too stupid to figure it out. Um, I like the ones that make you work for their meaning. And some.

Colleen Warren [00:35:45]:

Some kids don't. You know, some students say, oh, come on, just say it. You know, don't. Don't mean to look for it. It's not like an Easter egg hunt, but to me it is. You know, that's what I like about it. So those are my. My heroes, the ones that.

Colleen Warren [00:35:55]:

That have a lot of meaning there for you to find. But you find it.

Jim Spiegel [00:35:59]:

I think one of the. One of the vices Of a lot of evangelical art is that there's kind of this compulsion to spell everything out.

Colleen Warren [00:36:10]:

And to make the moral really explicit, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:36:15]:

Whereas I think, yeah, it's prophet Isaiah that refers to God saying he's talking to God. He says, surely you are a God who hides himself might be in Isaiah 45. It's in there that. And we see this theme over and over again that of course, God's works are marvelously displayed in all of creation. But there's also a subtlety there where we have to do all sorts of interpretive work, whether we're talking about history. Well, the Bible is very forbidding collection of texts that has been frustrating, exasperating, tantalizing minds for centuries. It's hard to understand in many ways. It takes work and that is true of creation.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:08]:

You know, that God's, let's say, book of nature. It takes so much scientific expertise to get to the. Well, we're not to the bottom of it, but to get it just as far as we have.

Colleen Warren [00:37:22]:

Get to the design. Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:23]:

So yes, kind of emulating God with our own creativity. We should. Yeah. Make people work for. Doesn't mean that we should be so elusive and abstruse that nobody can make any sense of it. There is a kind of balance there. But I know what you mean with regard to Dillard. Montaigne is my all time favorite essayist, maybe my all time favorite writer.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:52]:

And a recent one is John Updike. I think he's probably more well known for his what Rabbit Run, Rabbit Runs. But his essays are tremendous. And I'd. I'd say he's at least as good as Andy Dillard, Just profoundly insightful. And he can really. And Dillard's like this really sneak up on you. You know, you think.

Jim Spiegel [00:38:19]:

You think this detour was just sort of kind of a creative display of, you know, some research they've done and here or there on this or that, and then it'll all come home in some flourish. And it's a profound insight about human nature or something. Updike's the same way as Dillard. So if you haven't read much of him, check it out.

Colleen Warren [00:38:41]:

I read mostly fiction, not as nonfiction. Yeah. So that's interesting. I kind of make that case that that's what Jesus does in his parables in the book that I'm just, you know, finished working on that. You know, I used to be told that he gives these parables that. To make us a complex idea. Very simple and clear. You Know, that's what a lot of people think his parables did.

Colleen Warren [00:39:02]:

But as I get older, I realize this just the opposite. You know, he wanted to make them more obscure. Now, what is that? You know, why would God do that? Why would Jesus want to be difficult to understand? And it's, I think, at the root of what you were just saying because he needs to have people look for it. You know, that's how he separates the sheep from the goats. You know, those that really want to know will pursue him like his disciples and said, okay, God, Jesus, we didn't understand a bit of that. Explain to us what you meant by that parable. And so he goes through and he will explain it point by point, you know, the parable of the sower or whatever. But he needs them to make the effort.

Colleen Warren [00:39:40]:

He doesn't want it to come just so simply that everybody, you know, understands it. He has no way of knowing who are the truly sincere ones unless he makes it a little bit harder for them to understand. They need to seek it.

Jim Spiegel [00:39:53]:

Yeah, parables. Jesus's parables are fascinating in that way. There is a certain level of basic understanding even a kid can grasp. And then there are layers that, you know, can tantalize you for a lifetime. And there's a riddle quality about. About a lot of. A lot of his teachings. And it did exasperate the disciples, all the figurative language, everything.

Colleen Warren [00:40:16]:

Figurative? Yeah, even literally, you know.

Jim Spiegel [00:40:22]:

The Pharisee Nicodemus, you know, is confused by the you must be born again rebirth metaphor. And it's. We so reference that, and it's so familiar, we forget it's a metaphor. And it's not just a metaphor. It's a bizarre metaphor. It really is.

Colleen Warren [00:40:40]:

Yeah, it is. Yes. Can't climb back into your mother's womb. You know, it's like he takes it so literally, so.

Jim Spiegel [00:40:46]:

But. And it's easy to look down on him when we probably would have had the same response, you know, that Jesus was so original with all of his teachings and so many of his metaphors. So how does your work as a teacher of college students impact your creative life? Is it a help, a hindrance, or both? And do you gain inspiration for writing ideas from your student?

Colleen Warren [00:41:11]:

One pragmatic way is really helpful that I'm a professor because I get sabbaticals. I get, you know, I'm in an organization that expects. That wants me to produce things, you know, wants to meet a push my creativity and write and that kind of thing. It's not, you know, publish or parish here. Or anything, but they need to put an emphasis on that. And that spurs me on. But obviously it takes time away if you have. If I were a full time writer, I would have more time to write, but I don't know if I have that many ideas that I could fill every day with writing anyway.

Colleen Warren [00:41:42]:

You know, people say I don't have time, but you probably just don't make the time. You know, you have it, you're just using it on other things. So the last two books I wrote were written almost entirely on my free time, you know, from, from work. I didn't need a sabbatical, in other words, to, to start him or necessarily even to finish him. It was just a blessing that I had that extra time. So it's good in that way. As far as getting inspiration. My students, not so much.

Colleen Warren [00:42:07]:

But this next, the books I've working on. Most recently I have gotten a lot of feedback because it's the first one I've written. It's kind of a textbook, it's kind of geared that way. It's. It's about Jesus is the word and the implications that it has for writers. So I've been using it in my writing class with freshmen and you know, you have handouts in the appendix and things like that that are more exploring what does that mean for Christ to be the word. And so they've given me really good, excellent feedback on, you know, that wasn't clear to me. That wasn't a great example because that's how I read it.

Colleen Warren [00:42:39]:

And you read it this way and seeing that there's a big difference between how I as an old lady or look at something and how they as young people look at that same character, you know, that I'm trying to create that I, I think I'm making to say the things that I want them to agree with and they're like, no, I didn't, I didn't get that at all. You know, so it helps me. I don't resist it or I don't resent it at all. I don't feel like it's working against my creativity. I think it's, you know, arranged in such a way that allows me to be more, more creative. You know, it encourages me, have be to be surrounded by people who value writing the way I do and, and want to, you know, be writers also.

Jim Spiegel [00:43:18]:

So that's good.

Colleen Warren [00:43:19]:

Works well.

Jim Spiegel [00:43:20]:

I want to conclude with a question that I always ask our guests, and that is, what do you conceive to be the ultimate meaning of life and how Is your work a manifestation of your view on the purpose of life? So there you go. There's a big one.

Colleen Warren [00:43:34]:

Oh, gee, that's such a small little question. I don't know why you asked that. I do not even pretend to know the secret of life, but to me, I mean, you. You always resort to the catechism to love God and enjoy him forever, you know, and I do think there's. There's real truth in that. I try to make everything I do be honoring to God because He is the number one factor in my life. And so whether it's my parenting, my grandparenting, you know, what I say in my books, what I tell my students, how I teach, all of that, I try to, you know, wrap around the principles of, you know, what. What is God? What's God's best for our lives? What does he want from us? How can I convey that to other people? How can I share the good news of Christ? And, you know, thing where you're talking about what inspires God's creativity, I'm thinking, especially if I had his omissions, to know that it was going to be a colossal failure, you know, that the creating people was really a dumb move, you know, if.

Colleen Warren [00:44:37]:

Why didn't you do that? Because, like, 90% of us are going to go away from you, you know, why didn't you do that? You knew that. But yet somehow it was worth. Worth it for the risk, you know, I don't know. You know, I have no way of explaining that. If, If I figure that I can't understand God's reason for making us, then I can't understand our reason for being here, except to think it's to honor God, you know, to. To give purpose to his original plan, to have fellowship with Him.

Jim Spiegel [00:45:02]:

So good. Yeah, a lot of mystery there, for sure.

Colleen Warren [00:45:05]:

Oh, yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:45:06]:

And that's precisely one of the things that prompts us to create, right? To kind of explore these mysteries. Well, I've really appreciated this time with you. Thank you so much.

Colleen Warren [00:45:17]:

Yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:45:18]:

Thank you for listening to the Kalos center podcast. We gave you our thoughts. Now let us know what you think. Email us at Podcastalos Center.