A Critical Friends Group, or CFG, is a professional learning community consisting of approximately 8-12 educators who come together voluntarily at least once a month for about 2 hours. Group members are committed to improving their practice through collaborative learning. These groups focus on collaboration and what it means to have a true conversation. There are several protocols that are used, all with the goal of creating a safe space for conversation.
There were a few key points in this chapter which resonated for me when I first read it 6 years ago, and these points still resonate for me today. Wheatley writes:
"We have to be ready to move into the very uncomfortable place of uncertainty. We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion: cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new. Of course it's scary to give up what we know."
And then this beautiful phrase - this phrase takes my breath away:
"but the abyss is where newness lives."
Ms. Wheatley goes on to say:
"great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing. If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly. We rediscover we're creative."
Ms. Wheatley, are you talking to me?
Creativity starts with confusion! This brings to my mind the ultimate of all creative processes - Creation Itself - B'reisheet. There was tohu va'vohu (chaos) before there was anything. Ruach hashem merachefet al p'nei ha mayim. God's energy was hovering and vibrating over the water. That energy has to be there in order to create. I don't know much about physics (apologies to Sam Cooke) and surely my family and all who know me can attest to this - but it makes so much sense. Chaos, confusion, random movement - is the precursor to true creation.
It is a truism in all sectors of thought. Margaret Wheatley nails it when she writes "going into the abyss." A piece of art, a conversation, a book, a religion, a literal universe, all came into being as a result of confusion, chaos, or uncertainty.
So we need to embrace the confusion if we wish to fully immerse ourselves in the creative process. Willing to be disturbed is not the same thing as willing to be afraid. The only certainty is that there will be uncertainty. The main thing, to quote the great Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, is to not be afraid at all.
