Note: The personal essay below is most of this podcast episode. You may either listen or read. Your choice!

As I’ve attempted to move toward a more regular pattern of writing, I’ve decided to change the name of this Substack newsletter and also change the name and essentially re-launch my podcast. Both will now be called “Faithfully Creative.”

My aim is to stay on the same trajectory that I’ve been on—writing and speaking about creativity, imagination, faith, spirituality, theology, God. The banner of “Faithfully Creative” is broad enough to encompass all of this, but hopefully it will provide a bit of focus as well.

Before I lay out some specifics, I have a small confession, and then a bit of a personal story.

First, the confession…

As I look back on my life, a lot of the time I have been reluctantly creative. It may not seem like that to the outsider looking in. But the outsider can’t really see fully in, can they? They can’t see my hesitancy, fear, my almost-devotion to second-guessing.

I’ve been in this world long enough to know know that imposter syndrome is real and won’t ever fully go away. I also know that I do better when I lean into creativity. I am more fully alive when I engage in creative practice. I am most myself when I have regular occasions to explore something new.

This confession is reason enough to call this newsletter and associated podcast “Faithfully Creative.” The name is aspirational for me. I want to be less reluctant and more faithful toward the creative call.

I promised you a story…

I was a very shy kid and teenager. I certainly never would have wanted to be on a stage and yet when I look back I am surprised by the stages I ended up on.

My entire grade nine english class had to be in the play. Our teacher, Ms. Peterson, wrote it with some help from William Shakespeare. It was called “The Shakespearean Spell,” and it had two modern-day narrators who provided the thread that strung together scenes from various Bard plays that featured the supernatural.

We, of course, had the witches from Macbeth and Hamlet’s ghost. A Midsummer Night’s Dream provided comic relief. I can still remember my friend having to play the part of Bottom and kind of loving it, especially the scene where he got affectionate attention from Titania. I ended up having two roles from different plays. Other than my horror at having to perform in front of actual people, I was basically okay being Hamlet. I wasn’t as thrilled to play Oberon who is dubbed “king of the fairies.” I was shocked that my fellow mid-1990s teen thespians didn’t make more innapropriate jokes than they did.

After the rousing success of the grade nine play, a few of my friends got the acting bug. At least I think they did ,because in grade ten and eleven they went about pressuring the same english teacher to let us do more.

We did a read through of “The Lady’s Not for Burning” by Tom Stoppard but I can’t remember putting it on. We did end up performing scenes from “The Princess Bride.” We chose the part where the man in black bests the swordsman, the giant, and the so-called smart one. I got to play the “smart one” who lost to the man in black in the battle of wits to the death, a role played in the movie by a short bald guy. Perfect for my lanky fifteen-year-old almost 6 foot 3 frame. Still, this one was fun.

In grade eleven, we put on “As You like It.” More Shakespeare!

Anyone in the school could audition for “As You like It,” but the cast was mostly my friends. I perhaps should mention here that I never saw myself as the centre of my friend group. I was by far the most reserved out of all of them. But, I was also the only one out of all of them who sang. I’d always been in the school choir, I had sung in church, and my family sang together, The Beatles and “The Sound of Music” on long road trips most memorable.

I had sung some solos before with school choir and I hadn’t yet died on the spot, so I put my name in for the part of Amiens, the singer. He had barely any lines besides two songs. That suited me just fine. A very minor part was perfect for me.

Two people who were not part of my friend group were cast as Orlando, the lead. They would act in the role on two nights each of a four night run. At least that was the plan. A number of weeks into rehearsals and the two male leads had only shown up a handful of times. Something about hockey practices and prior commitment to the team.

Ms. Peterson (still the same teacher) came to me and asked if I would take on the role of Orlando. Every fibre of my being said no. But somehow my mouth didn’t translate what the fibre of my being was screaming. In fact, my mouth didn’t say much of anything while the gracious and ever-encouraging Ms. Peterson went on to tell me that she thought I would do an excellent job.

Somehow, at the end of our conversation, I was the new lead, and with no understudy that I can remember. I would go on all four nights. I think I enjoyed it. Mostly, I remember being terrified.

In grade 12, with all this acting experience under my belt, I was determined to be in the high school musical. Our school hadn’t done a full production musical in a few years, but there was finally going to be one. I had seen my older sisters be in them and for me they were on par with professional theatre.

I was hoping for something really good like our family favourite, “The Sound of Music.” And then the word came that we’d be doing “Grease.” There were screams of delight mostly from the soprano section of choir. I was horrified. I hated that musical. I rationalized that I had some moral qualms about it, but I think I was really masking my fear.

I could see myself as a good Captain von Trapp—refined, serious, basically having to just stand there most of the time while Maria and the kids did all the dancing. Sure, there was a bit of a romantic part, and then a little bit of child-like joy toward the end, but he wasn’t the real lead, and it was all very controlled, subtle. There was nothing subtle about being a greaser. That wasn’t me at all.

I decided, though, that “I would always regret it” if I wasn’t in the musical in my grade 12 year. So I auditioned, hoping to get a small role just so I could always remember the experience of being in the high school musical. They got everyone to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” rather than something from “Grease.” That was good, except maybe it wasn’t, because I could sing the “Wizard of Oz” song no problem and actually sound good.

It never really occurred to me that I could turn down a role once offered. So, that was it. I was the lead again, but this time it was Danny Zuko. I had to grow my hair long for the role throughout the year, and I actually ended up letting it grow even longer after I graduated. In my first few years of University I had shoulder-length hair. I have friends who still comment on the time when I had long hair. Well, it was starring in Grease that started it all.

I do remember having a ton of fun in “Grease.” I remember being pretty good too by the last of the five-night run in front of the hundreds that packed the school gym for each show. The drama teacher came to me on closing night and told me that he “really believed it” in the final song. That was high praise from him.

When I look back on different parts and stages of my life, I see certain through-lines. Lately, I’ve been noticing the ones that are about creativity. I’ve also noticed an initial reluctance or resistance when it came to creative expression. Acting in plays in high school is a good example of this.

The same English teacher that got me into acting for those few precious high school years also tried to encourage me to do more creative writing. I remember writing a piece for her class where we had to describe a house and then look out a window and describe what you saw. Her feedback was so positive, but I wasn’t interested in creative writing at all.

I barely recognized that Ms. Peterson was trying to help me. I’m ashamed to say that it was easier to make fun of her a little bit behind her back for being “super artsy.” I guess I’m kind of one of those “artsy” people now! I probably was then too but didn’t really realize it.

Mostly, I thought English class was lame. I ended up not doing more creative writing than was required of me in class and instead focussed on math and computer science. I think I was drawn to those classes partly because I was good at them, and also because I was very black and white in my thinking. I wanted there to be straightforward answers to problems. Perhaps this is, in a strange way, what drew me to church because, at least as it was presented to me as a teen, Christianity provided clear answers to life.

As a pastor, and just as a human, I feel quite differently about things now. I know that life is nothing like finding a solution to a math problem.

Ms. Peterson saw something in me that I didn’t recognize and I have barely ever given any credit. She persisted with me. In my grade 12 year she invited me to consider trying for valedictorian. In our school, valedictorian didn’t go to the person with the highest grades. My grades were good, but they weren’t the best in the school. No, for us, teachers invited students to try out. You wrote a speech and would deliver it to a small panel of teachers who would choose someone to be valedictorian. Then one or more of the teachers would help the selected student to polish their speech in time for the graduation ceremony.

I was horrified by all of this. I had overcome some of my fears of being on stage from being in plays and the musical, but at least in those cases I was acting, pretending to be someone else, delivering l...