Cultivating a Maker’s Life is a column that explores creative living expressed in a whole life. Generous, creative living is not something that is confined to a studio or workspace. It is conceived in the garden, gestates on hiking trails, nurtured in cinnamon-scented ovens, and matures at family dinner conversations. Come with me while we explore all the stages of making and living.
“Spring up, O well!—Sing to it!”
Numbers 21:17, ESV
No real adventure lives in Ohio.” My daughter wasn’t exactly complaining. It was more like resigned, melancholic observation.
“I must disagree, although I understand your sentiment. I no longer think that great adventures only live in Scotland or Middle Earth.”
She didn’t particularly like my answer but still accepted it because she thinks I possess a degree of wisdom that has come along with the silver streaks in my hair. Like her mother before her, my daughter is looking for dragons and elves and fairy lands to run her feet and fingers through. Unfortunately, no elf walks this Ohio ground nor fairy fills its glens. Let me just say how delighted I am that she, at fifteen years old, still longs for dragons.
Once upon a time, I did have sympathetic feelings to those of my daughter. I was raised just at the foothills of the North Georgia mountains on a hilly plot of earth. My freshman year of college was spent at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, which nestled into the Appalachians. But then I transferred to Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. I remember actually feeling claustrophobic from the amount of corn in the Midwest. The flat, unbroken horizon nearly broke my will to enter that scholastic establishment. When Barritt and I were first married, we moved to a very tiny town in Western New York. While the place was beautiful, not all of the people spoke kindness in a dialect that my strong Southern personality understood. A few years later, when we moved to Ohio, I cringed at the thought of returning to the Midwest. Indiana had felt like the least adventurous place I had ever lived. All I knew of Ohio until that point was the western half—which is very like unto its neighbor.
But as it turns out, Northeastern Ohio is nothing like Indiana or Iowa or even Western Ohio at all. Our backyard is the Cuyahoga River Valley and Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and for a lover of woodlands and rocks and rushing waters and wildlife, this is perhaps the most beautiful place in the world. Breathtaking sunrise mists off the river and sparkling, frosty fall mornings and swarms of glittering dragonflies have all worked to enchant me in this land.
I am increasingly convinced the only reason no one has heard tales of the ancient Ohioan fairies is because I, or perhaps my daughter, haven’t written them. Yet.
Even more importantly, I recognize that while I haven’t always loved the places I’ve lived, that had more to do with my heart than my location or environment. Unlike Peter Jackson’s Gandalf, I no longer believe that adventure only lives “out there.” I believe adventure is in the way we shop for groceries, view the clouds, plant the seeds, cook the meals. It actually does “live in our books.” Perhaps my home and I have nurtured each other—this place has watered my heart with merriment, and my heart has grown merry in the midst of Northeast Ohio.
I think there’s good evidence for this way of seeing the world hidden in the truth of the Word. God plants His people in the Promised Land and gives them beautiful bequests that they may learn to love Him. But they only love their inheritance if their hearts are filled with joy in worshipping their Creator. Jesus proclaims, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of their heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38 ESV)
I recently made a batch of inkwells with words inscribed on them like “inspiration” and “wisdom.” The contents of those bottles—the potential lyrics, poetry, prose, and etchings—are just waiting to be released. A sharp nib, drawing out the liquid and carefully dispensing it across the page, might unleash an entire world! Those bottles might hold words written to gladden hearts and give valor. They open doors to intoxicating, merry worlds.
In the English Standard Version of the Bible, the word “merry” appears fifteen times. In all but two of those references, it is attached closely to drunkenness, often resulting in gross immoral sin or murder. I labeled one of my inkwells with the word “courage,” and I love that image. Ink is real “liquid courage.” Ask any writer, and they will tell you—writing honest, heartfelt words is among the hardest things a human can do. Unlike the colloquialism, this “courage in a bottle” isn’t a libation that will numb us to reason and give us hearts that are merry with recklessness. Rather, this liquid will pour out words that embolden us, making us feel and think all the more. These words reveal our flaws and help us to act bravely in spite of them. Sometimes, it’s a vicious, beautiful circle—we must summon courage to write words that will make us brave. But that practice of drawing ink acts so often like catharsis—freeing and healing and leaving a wellspring of merriment.
Isaiah tells us that one day,
“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day; ‘Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the peoples, proclaim that His name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for He has done gloriously, let this be made known in all the earth.” (Isaiah 12:3-5 ESV)
I definitely don’t think my little inkwells are “wells of salvation,” but I dip my pen into that well and draw out all manner of good, beautiful, joyful things, and I am often drunk on the merriment words give. Out of that courage—out of that inkwell—flow rivers, splashing and delighting, inspiring and washing and teeming with life.
Perhaps there aren’t any native Ohioan dragon species. But in the Ohioan human hearts and minds live as much potential for creating magic and mystery as any that lived in ancient mystic lands, and indeed more! For those long-forgotten scribes are resting, and their quills and nibs are silent. Mine are still scratching pages. I am here to see, feel, live, breathe, and imagine, and my Creator calls me to create, to “be glad and rejoice forever in that which [He] create[s]”. (Isaiah 65:18 ESV)
That sounds like an adventure I’m ready for.
Editor’s note: The ESV translation of the Bible does not capitalize pronouns referring to God; these have been added by Cultivating’s editors.
The featured image, “Old Pen of a Different Time,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Second-generation homeschooling mom of five wee snickbuzzards, Jordan Durbin is a maker of humble pottery, fine artist, calligrapher, gardener, pickle maker, baker of all things gluten-inclusive and butter-laden, violinist, vocalist, rabbit raiser, wife of one good man, lover of her blessed Redeemer. She has a Bachelor’s degree in fine art from Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana. She is an avid coffee drinker, reader, and published children’s book author and illustrator. She aspires to proclaim the resurrection with every moment of her life.
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