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MUNDANE WORKS OF ART SURROUND US
4-26-09
Psychologist Abraham Maslow reminds us that a first
rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
One of his more interesting research projects was studying the
creativity level of people doing mundane work. "Mundane" in this case
means people doing boring work, or repetitive labor like an assembly
line job, or job activities that seldom change, like a street sweeper.
It also means people doing any job not usually associated with
creativity.
He wrote, "A fair proportion of my subjects were not productive… nor did
they have great talent or genius, nor were they poets, composers,
inventors, artists or creative intellectuals."
For example, he observed a woman who was uneducated and poor and yet
brought unconventional creativity to her roles as a homemaker and
mother. Although she had very little money to work with, her home was
always beautiful, meals were banquets and her taste was impeccable. She
was in all these areas original, novel, ingenious and inventive. How
could he not classify her as "creative?"
It reminded me of an essay in a book titled "Home" by the brilliant
photographer, Stephen Greenfield. He was kind enough to let me read a
chapter about a little black lady named Queenie who was so proud of her
little home that she often swept the long walkway to it. The walkway was
not brick, gravel, concrete or asphalt. It was just plain dirt. I can
never forget his picture of her standing straight and proud in front of
her little home with that broom. The coupling of his photography with
his words about Queenie moved my very soul. Queenie's paintbrush was a
broom.
My "second mama," Thelma Shoemake, lived next door to us when I was a
pre-school child. Her husband died, leaving a widow and four children.
The men in the community made up enough money to build "Mama Shoe," as I
affectionately called her, a two-room house and my parents allowed it to
be placed on our property (yes, even people in a poor community did that
kind of thing in those days). With a well for water and an outhouse, I
remember her home as attractive and clean. More importantly, I remember
the love, counseling and attention she lavished on her four children as
well as me, my sister and brother. Yes, she was an artist with the
paintbrush of love and gave the world four gifted works of art in her
children.
My own mother was a painter, poet and novelist who kept a fresh plate of
cornbread and a big pitcher of sweet tea on the kitchen counter at all
times. All the kids in the neighborhood came whenever they wished for
tea, cornbread and love. Her heart was too big to limit her love to her
own three children. She had to mother a village.
When I think of her as an artist, in my own mind I see her paintings but
I also always see the cornbread and tea. I see her hugging three little
boys whose mother had died. I see her leaving the house at 3:00 in the
morning to hold the hand of a neighbor who was dying and calling for
her. She was a graduate of the Jesus School of Art.
I'm with Maslow. Any of us can make our lives and work sparkle like a
painting in a museum. There are no unimportant jobs. There really are no
mundane workers. There are just too many eyes that cannot see the
miracles in the mundane.
Speaking of Jesus, I heard a preacher say, "The age of miracles is
gone." No sir. When we see an old British cobbler cobbling forty years
to the glory of God, see a Queenie sweeping her pathway, A Mama Shoe
raising four children on little more than love and oxygen, and Mama Nora
making fresh tea and baking fresh cornbread for the children, we are
seeing Jesus and his miracle workers laying hands on the mundane.
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