Creating

Last night Shelly and I settled in after a long day on the couch watching Ironman. We love these kind of movies, superheroes and super villains. We similarly settled in to watch Thor or Avengers. Ironman, though, has a special place in my heart. Yes, he's cool, has great toys and is quick with a comeback, arrogant in a way you would hate in real life, but is just lovable on screen. But, what I really love about him, is he is a creator. Some would say inventor, but he more than that. From the cave in his origin story he creates an opportunity for freedom, with old weapon parts, crafting his first suit. Later we see him refining, surrounded by the robot helpers, he also created and JARVIS an AI, which he also created. In the second movie, he appears from the back of his plane with a plate of gourmet food and when Pepper asks if he made that, he asks where she thought he had been the last three hours. This makes so much since to me. He is a creator.

I love creating. I don't have the seemly endless resources or genius for creating fictional technologies Tony Stark does, but I feel that spark.

A blank page and a fresh black pen is an endless opportunity to tell a story. There are no limitations. A short story about a mechanic who refuses to work on the one car that means the most to him. A novel able four girls who get powers from a discovered artifact. A vampire story, where the vampires are monsters who would rip the arms off of anyone who would suggest they might sparkle. From the simplest of tools, these people and places spring to life.

I wipe down the counter and turn on the oven to prepare my workspace. I set up my iPad and read through the steps to create a pasta dish I have never made before. I gather the vegetables and the spice. I remove the fat from the chicken and cube it, trying to imagine the size that would fit nicely into the mouth of an eater. I put water on the back burner, salt it until it tastes like the sea. These things are nothing apart, but as you combine them and heat them, add and extract flavor, you create not just a meal, but an experience.

I flip the Trukk over so it sits on the untainted boarding planks and engine block, I am looking at the primed, paper white, undercarriage of the hand sized vehicle. I pull out paints of white and black, a steel color and brown. I imagine how the underside of an actual vehicle would look and I try to simulate that. The parts the deepest in I just used black on, so it looks like there is more beyond them. I paint piece to look like hardened aluminum and pitted steel. I paint some of them, as if they have been painted and others with just spots of oil leaking through the joints. I want to bring from this lump of plastic the feeling it is real somewhere, that if you had a small enough wrench you could change the drive shaft.

My wife bakes, scrapbooks, crotchets and quilts. My Dad likes to draw and write stories. My mom creates costumes and games for the preschool she works for. My kids pretty much all have scrapbooks, some write stories or create games. I can not imagine what it would be like to not create, to not creatively combine things to make something new, to not want to construct an experience.

One of the basic questions children will ask when you talk to them about God, is why did he create us? When I think about the joy the can be derived from creating a simple story, or a meal, or even making plastic look like metal, I don't have any such question. He's a creator. The creator.