Creativity and the Latter-day Saint

By Crawford Gates

One of the great blessings we Latter-day Saints enjoy is the Holy Ghost. Joseph Smith affirmed that this gift is one of the unique features of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. But what does this gift do for us? How does it make us different?

I would like to suggest that one of the ways the Holy Spirit helps us is by making us more creative.

What is creativity? How can it help us? For the homemaker: How can it make me a better wife and mother? For the brother: How can it make me a better holder of the priesthood? For the student: How can it make me more successful in my studies? For the person who is building a home, or cultivating a garden, or taking part in any of a thousand other activities: How can creativity improve these activities and make them more meaningful or more beautiful?

I would like to relate several experiences that have helped me understand and use creativity, thus enriching my own life. I invite you to examine your own life and discover how you can live more fully and creatively.

Priceless Gift of the Spirit

The first story is from our Church history. You may recall that during the period of the translation of the Book of Mormon, Oliver Cowdery desired to translate. The Prophet Joseph asked the Lord whether this would be permissible, and the Lord advised against it. But Oliver was persistent, and the Lord finally gave him permission to translate.

We do not know exactly how he tried to translate, but we do know the result of his effort, as recorded in section 9 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Through the Prophet Joseph, the Lord outlined why Oliver was unsuccessful in translating:

“You took no thought save it was to ask me. (And the Lord indicated this was not right.)

“But … you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me it it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.

“But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings.” (D&C 9:7–9.)

That message suggests one way we can increase our creativity: by putting forth our best efforts and then having those efforts confirmed by inspiration. Inspiration complements our creative efforts. This inspiration comes through the gift of the Holy Spirit to each of us—not only to the prophets, but to each Latter-day Saint who has this priceless gift.

Becoming a “Famous” Composer

The second story is a personal one. Shortly after I was baptized at age eight, I started taking piano lessons. I had completed my first year of lessons when the Depression had its full impact on our family and we could not afford the lessons any longer. But I continued to practice the piano.

Not only did I practice the pieces in my piano book; I also began to make up my own little songs. It took me a month or two to improvise my first little piece of music. I was elated with this; in fact I took the trouble to write it down. I called my creation “Opus 1, No. 1.”

My mother thought it was nice and said, “Why don’t you play it for your teacher at school?” Well, my classroom teacher at school didn’t know very much about music, so she said, “Why don’t you play it for the class?” All of a sudden I became very famous in the third grade as a composer of a piano piece.

As a result of the recognition I decided to write another piece. So I improvised for a few days and wrote down my second piece. After four years, I had written down about ten pieces, all for the piano.

A Startling Discovery

Then, when I was twelve, I made a startling discovery. Looking back through one of my old piano lesson books, I discovered that my “Opus 1, No. 1” wasn’t really mine after all, It was page 25 of the book. I had subconsciously absorbed this piece and thought it to be my own work.

I was devastated. I thought my career as a composer was going to end in fraud. There was one thing unique in my version—I had changed it to a different key. But even that isn’t very difficult. I began to wonder where the other nine pieces had come from.

For an hour or so I went through all my music books, I found that my “No. 2” had a little piece of “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” in it, and “No. 3” had a little bit of another piece. But none of the last nine was actually taken totally from another source, as “No. 1” was. As I had practiced my skill, I had become more original, more creative.

The Genius of the Creation

Originality of expression is part of creativity, It is part of the genius of the Creation that each one of us is different from the next one—that the Lord didn’t make two leaves exactly the same way, or two of anything. Even identical twins have some significant differences between them. Each of us is a little universe all of our own; we’re unique. One of the tasks of this life is to find that uniqueness within us and to express it—creatively. If we do that, then in some way our contribution to the world, to the Church, to the community, to our families, and to everyone else, will be unique and original.

“Don’t Be Inferior”

Now the third story, if I might skip another four years. At age sixteen, I began trying to decide what kind of career I would pursue. Two of my friends had fathers who were university professors—one of them, a physicist. I thought maybe I wanted to become a physicist or a research bacteriologist.

I was active in music, but I didn’t want to become a musician because I had noticed that very few musicians made much money. However, after prayerfully investigating a number of professions, I came to a conviction within my heart—a burning within my bosom that—after all, I was to make my contribution to the world as a musician.

When I had made that decision, I told my father and my mother. My father, who was a businessman, had little sympathy for music as a career. But when I told him I wanted to go into music, he said, “All right, son, but don’t be a second-rater.”

Those words have rung in my ears many times since then, and they have encouraged me to try to go one step higher in my creative endeavors.

Several years later, I enrolled at a college near my home that had a good music school, My first year, I entered a music composition contest and won first prize. Part of the award was that my composition would be played by the the Stockton California Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, however, my composition was written for a larger orchestra than the Stockton Symphony Orchestra.

I wanted so badly for my composition to be performed that I transferred to a university that had a large symphony orchestra with over 100 pieces. The first day after I had arrived there, I went to the office of the director of the symphony orchestra and asked him if the college symphony orchestra would play my piece. He said, “Leave it here; I’m busy right now, but come back next week.”

When I returned the following week, he said, “Well, it isn’t too bad. We rehearse on Monday nights. Next Monday I will let the orchestra play through it.”

Then he asked me an unexpected question: “Would you like to conduct it?” Now, if he had said, “Can you conduct it?” I would have had to answer differently, but he said, “Would you like to conduct it?” Well, who wouldn’t like to conduct a 100-piece orchestra playing his own piece?

I went home and the whole next week I checked the orchestral parts over to make sure they would really sound right. I had imagined my piece, but I had never heard it played.

All day Monday I fidgeted through my classes. I couldn’t eat my lunch. That night I sat in the front row of the auditorium and waited while the symphony orchestra rehearsed.

Finally the conductor turned around and said, “Do you have your music with you? Well, pass it out.” He introduced me to the orchestra and said, “I’m going to let him conduct.”

I waved the baton very shakily, and the music stumbled along. Players don’t like to play from handwritten music manuscript, and my manuscript was horrible. The orchestra droned and grunted along. It was a frightful experience.

Then something happened. Suddenly everything seemed to work well during the last few minutes of the piece. Instead of saying, or looking like, “How can we bear this?” the orchestra players seemed to be saying, “Not bad! Not bad!”

During the last few moments I felt as if I was raised about a meter or two off the podium—I conducted sort of instinctively, feeling that “This is why I’m alive! This is my contribution to the world!” I felt that “men are that they might have joy” was no longer just a statement in the Book of Mormon (2 Ne. 2:25), but a reality for me at that very moment.

At the end they started to applaud, and the conductor came running down the aisle, saying, “Well, the first part was quite terrible but the last part wasn’t so bad!”

One Reason God Exists

On the way home that night I kept hearing that wonderful big sound of the ending, and I forgot the terror of the first part. I thought, this is how the Lord must have felt when he said that “it was good,” (See Gen. 1:4.) What a remarkable understatement the Lord made about his own work. And one reason God exists is to have joy, and what does he have joy in? In the creative act—in the act of creating a galaxy or in creating a human soul.

Brothers and sisters, translate this story into your own lives. Creativity comes from our own individual selves—from that part of us which makes us different. When we become more creative in our families, in school, at work, or at play, our lives become more joyful.

The Holy Spirit can help us find that which is truly unique within us, and it can help us use this uniqueness in creatively serving those around us. May we use our unique gifts to make this world a better place. Then we will know in part the joy of our Father in Heaven.

Adapted from an address delivered at a Brigham Young University Education Week.

Photography by Marty Mayo