Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

Today's topic, using your creativity for good, not for evil. This topic came to my mind when I was

watching a conversation between Brunee Brown and Oprah, two good sources,

if ever there were. And Bray said something that you may know, but I had never heard it before.

She said, unused creativity is not benign. And I was like, huh? And then Oprah repeated it and took it in. And they both apparently know exactly what to do with that.

But I didn't. I went away thinking, it sounds really true and quite profound,

but I don't exactly know what it means.

So I began paying attention to this.

And I know, I've talked before about how one of the things people have told us to do with COVID

is now is a perfect time to bring out your creativity, write that book of poems, you know,

draw that children's book you've been planning forever, learn to play the kazoo, whatever.

And then there's this kind of, I'm too stressed to be creative. Like, I'm locked up in my house, I don't

have a job, and you want me to, what, take up finger painting? Like, what is your gig here? And I was,

so I was kind of caught between, do we encourage a lot of creativity, or do we just help people get

by? And creativity is a kind of luxury. Did you

know the word school actually originally meant something you do in your free time? It was something

that the leisure classes did. The wealthy could afford to just sit and learn things. You know,

they didn't have crops to plant and cows to milk and whatever. they could just sit around and like learn math.

So school now has become something you must do, must do.

But originally it was creativity.

It was learning for its own sake, for the fun of it.

And it's strange how culturally we seem to do that.

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