A few months ago, I send my granddaughter a Fuji Instax Mini 8 camera as a gift. I know the creative spark is strong in my daughter, and I sensed it in Robin as well.

Robin was three when she got it, and is four now. This week, Emma send me  her first photo taken with the camera, it was a portrait of Emma and Sandy, Robin’s dog.

To me, it revealed the creative spark quite clearly. The camera, along with supportive parents, lit it up. It’s my mission now to support it. Emma said Robin loved taking pictures but the film was too expensive. She said she was using up a roll every ten minutes.

Fuji film is expensive. I got excited, here, more evidence of the creative spark needing nourishment. I rushed over to Amazon and overnight two boxes of film. I told Emma it was great that Robin was plowing through the film so quickly,  it  was the best way to learn. I offered to keep buying the film whenever Robin ran out.

Robin’s first photograph.

The Creative Spark is something of faith with me, and also with Maria.  This is a great part of the glue that brought us together and defines our love. Lighting the creative spark in someone and supporting it is holy and sacred work for me.

I first read of the Creative Spark in the Kabbalah, which I read from time to time.

In the Kabbalah, the writings of the ancient and unknown mystic Hebrews,  God tells the people of the earth that he has given every human being the creative spark, the gift of imagination and creativity.

It is, he says, what makes us different from the animals, who do not possess the spark.

It is a sacred thing, he said, and the only thing people had to fear from him was not using the Creative Spark or using it for evil or greed. It is, he said a gift of softness and compassion.

The English definition dictionary defines Creative Spark as 1. having the ability or power to create.2 characterized by originality of thought or inventiveness; having or showing imagination, a creative mind. 3. designed to or tending to stimulate the imagination or invention.

We all have the Creative Spark, many people don’t know it or choose not to use it.

It is my role as a human being, as a husband, as a friend, as a grandfather to encourage the spark and nourish it wherever I can It is my central role as a grandparent, a way I can be useful to my granddaughter, even though we rarely meet.

How does one spark creativity?

It helps if there is someone to encourage you. I had great trouble with my mother, but she gave me a tremendous gift, she always loved my writing and my stories.

To be creative, one must give their mind a space to work and think. It helps me to get outside, to write down what  I see, to meditate in silence,  to take photos of the color and light in the world, to try and try and try again and never quit, to not be afraid to think small or large.

It helps to be alone, to think alone.

Emma took this photo of Robin with her camera.

In 2017, Agustin Fuentes, (Chair, Anthropology Department of Notre Dame), wrote The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional.

Fuentes wrote that an essential component of human nature is our ability to work the great trove of materials made available to us by virtue of what he called our “symbolic inheritance.”

“Our creativity,’ he wrote “is thereby an essential component of what makes us human; so, too, is our ability to work together in creative ways for creative ends, for what the author calls a “cocktail of creativity and collaboration.”

Reading his book, my mind went back to the Kabbalah and God’s belief that this was a gift to every human, and his belief we would all use it.

The Creative Spark, unleashed in me now, shapes my life.

When I see the political turmoil raging all around me and the fear and anger it causes, I think of God’s gift and my moral obligation to bring creativity to bear.

Life always intrudes on the Creative Spark, we need to make money, buy health care, save for retirement, live in a busy and distracting world.

I think of alternatives to anger, I think of the futility of fear, I think creativity – the imagination – calls me to think of alternative ways to exist and survive and thrive.

That is the Creative Spark, really. I am deeply touched watching it grow and blossom in my daughter, then in my granddaughter.  The Creative Spark is not about making someone creative – that was God’s gift.

The Creative Spark is about supporting creativity, something Maria and I have done for one another ever since we met. And for anyone else, we can help. I know I can never save people, I can only save myself. The Creative Spark saved me.

To me, creativity is about the better angels of our nature – the ones armed not with guns but with paintbrushes, notebooks, easels, laptops,  cameras, brushes, cell phone cameras, and plowshares.