SUBCREATION
When you make something–a meal, a garden, a story, a song–you're not just being creative. You're being human in the deepest sense. Tolkien called it subcreation: we make because we are made in the image of a Maker.
This means your imaginative work isn't a distraction from your spiritual life. It is your spiritual life (or part of it anyway!). The question isn't whether you'll subcreate — you already are. The question is whether you'll do it consciously, as an act of participation in what God is making.
So where do we start? And how can God develop us in doing it better? This season takes a practical approach to the question: how can we cultivate our ability to join God in bringing beauty, truth, and goodness into the world?
Artist Features
Highlighting artists whose work interacts with Subcreation at large.
Lately on the Podcasts…
Podcast Episodes, Articles, and More
What would it mean to live a life where you were truly present? Content that explores how to be present to our lives, the people around us, and the material world itself! We consider questions like, "What if Christians viewed even our humdrum tasks as gifts from God to mobilize the world immediately around us to the glory of God?" and "What does stillness mean — and what doesn’t it mean?"
Series Highlight
CULTIVATING A NARNIAN HEART SERIES
This four-part series by Karissa Riffel explores how we can fulfill our calling as Christians by cultivating “Narnian” hearts that sow the kingdom on earth, growing “little Edens.”
Part 1: “The Planting of Toffee Trees”
Part 2: “Take of My Fruit for Others”
Anselm Voices
Gianna Soderstrom's "The Kitchen of Transfiguration"
Anselm Member and Arts Guild Assistant Director unpacks the gift that comes through faithfulness in everyday obedience to the small, unseen actions given to us by God. Read Now→
Anthony esolen’s “An Encounter with the Ordinary”
How does leaving a tenured professorship at Providence College for a small liberal arts college in New Hampshire, apply to the Anselm Society? Read Anselm Fellow Dr. Esolen’s motivations and see for yourself! Read Now →
amY lEE’S “WHO DOES WHAT IN THE ANSELM SOCIETY ART COMMUNITY?”
Amy Lee unpacks Dr. John Skillen’s exploration of four “parties” that helped art to thrive during the Italian Renaissance: communities, patrons, advisors, and artists. While the Anselm community is culturally and contextually different from the Italian Renaissance in many ways, she argues that it seems to have grown into a similarly interconnected ecosystem that encompasses its own version of the four parties.
Read Now →
Hans Boersma’s “how to look for heaven in earth”
The world around us deserves our awe and wonder, but we can make the error of believing the good things of this world are the best we can have - we can idolize the creation and forget the Creator. On the other hand, if we believe that because this world is secondary to the next then all of our earthly endeavors are meaningless, we can be indifferent to God's works. Is there a third way? Listen now →