This year’s Torrey Conference dived deep into the idea of childlike faith with the help of several speakers. Chris Davidson, a professor of English here at Biola University, will be hosting one of the nine breakout sessions on Wednesday, discussing how faith and creativity impact one another.
BECOMING A CREATIVE
Davidson is a creative himself, especially enjoying poetry. His love for this art form came about in high school when his teacher showed the class a poem and asked them to choose a line to use as the first line of their own poem. While the poem may not have been Davidson’s best work, it opened his eyes to the beauty of this written craft.
“I got to do some wordplay and some off-kilter rhyming and some processing of what I was going through,” Davidson said. “In short, I got to play. Trying to figure out how one phrase might lead to the next, how one line could lead to the line that follows it – it was all so thrilling. I understood for the first time how language can be both a medium and a tool you can use to shape that medium.”
Davidson now has several published poems, many of which came to fruition because of a promise he made to friends who share a passion for poetry. He exchanges work with them daily for a month, two or three months a year, regardless of its quality.
“I always end up with a few poems from these exchanges that surprise me, surprise being one of the great joys of creative practice,” Davidson said.
As a professor, Davidson’s job as an educator frequently overlaps with his work as a creative. He strongly believes that he must practice what he teaches which is encouragement to continue to create. Through the readings he assigns to his students, Davidson often finds a renewed interest in the subject. Things are never the same in a Davidson course as he also tries to change assignments to “keep things fresh” and provide students with the opportunity to work together.
“All this contributes to my own creative practice,” Davidson said. “I also learn so much from my students, perhaps more than they learn from me. They make choices that don’t occur to me. It’s humbling, and it refreshes my sense of creative possibility.”
A CHILD AT PLAY
In the midst of his professorial duties and staying in a creative head space, Davidson prepared for his Torrey Conference breakout session: “Serious as a Child at Play: What Faith and Creativity Have in Common.” After reading that this year’s theme would be childlike, Davidson immediately thought of the line “serious child at play.” The concept originates from Friedrich Nietzsche but came to Davidson through poet Stephen Yenser who wrote a piece about a father watching his child at the beach, emphasizing that life at its best is to be a serious child at play.
“When a child is safe and loved, that child can engage with the good creation in the single-mindedness of a child at play,” Davidson explained. “GK Chesterton also compares God himself to a child – in his endless creativity and interest in people.”
To maintain a childlike faith in his own life, Davidson surrounds himself with people who live in attention and presence and finds opportunities to learn how “strange, wondrous, various and staggering” the world is. And just like any creative practice, maintaining a schedule helps Davidson’s faith. He prioritizes showing up at church, at his men’s breakfast, at his monthly meetings with his spiritual director and with friends who love him.
“These structures remind me I’m participating in a great and mysterious process of reconciliation, a process that is certainly not without play,” Davidson said.
As students experience the rest of this year’s Torrey Conference over the next two days, Davidson hopes that they will understand that creativity is an act of attention and presence “to the world God called good and with the people God loves.”
