Train stations, Tulips and Transformation

Since moving to the Netherlands eight months ago, I’ve spent a lot of time using public transportation. Each day, I am constantly impressed with the beauty of the Dutch train stations. Someone, decades ago, created a functional space with beauty in mind. Carefully patterned arches of woodwork rise over me as I wait for the Metro in Leidschenveen. Chandeliers grace a walkway in Amsterdam Centraal, and a vast glass honeycomb lets the daylight in over Den Haag Centraal. While my husband carefully plots our travel, I admire the craftsmanship of long-ago architects and workmen.

Remarkable architecture of this kind is not the lone property of the Netherlands. When I google “beautiful train stations,” a long collection of photos from around the globe appear from places such as Moscow, New York, India and Argentina. Worldwide, people work to create beautiful spaces in which to live and move. This desire and ability stems from our divine heritage as children of God.

The creative impulse could not have a better example than the unbelievable Dutch tulip gardens of Keukenhof. Here, for a few weeks every year, tulip growers share mind-blowing flower gardens of every conceivable shape and color. Spikey, alien-looking blooms sit across from blossoms fat with petals. Tall graceful plants are growing in beds of shorter, fragrant hyacinths. Nearby tulip fields display long swaths of color so brilliant that the overcast sky reflects them. Every year the displays are different, new flowers are created and named, and garden beds, eye-watering in complexity, are designed, planted and nurtured to full beauty for thousands of visitors to savour.

The message of Keukenhof is the power of the creative impulse, bound together by a common passion and purpose. Hundreds of years ago, tulip growers started developing new tulip varieties, and what we see in today’s gardens are a result of that exploration. This is not simply a commercial venture, though its financial success allows tulip workers to do what they love. This is actually about the reality of our creative inheritance from our Father in Heaven.

As His children, we learn and long to create beauty in part because God has put beauty all around us. Greek philosophers noted that nature is full of “the golden mean,” proportional relationships that the ancients put to good use in creating timeless Greco-Roman architecture. Animals and people are proportional and beautiful. Trees and plants exude divine elegance. Rivers, mountains and deserts all have a mesmerizing strength about them. So, like our Heavenly Parents, we try our hand at creating—painting, penmanship or pottery, working to make something beautiful ourselves.

Sometimes, in our fast-paced, practical world, we deny the importance, or even the presence of this inner longing. My beloved husband will be the first to tell you that he isn’t creative. Yet every year he looks forward with great anticipation to growing his garden, planning with great care what plants he will nurture. At church, he finds satisfaction in singing in the choir, joining his strong bass voice with others in an effort to create a beautiful, unified sound. Best of all, he is a master at organizing our household, replacing disorder with structure and efficiency. As he has responded to these creative impulses, he has experienced growth and satisfaction, and has blessed our family and others.

Of course, our best example of artistry is that of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Under the direction of His Father, He ordered this beautiful world from chaos, and filled it with magnificent variety and opportunities in which we could grow. More importantly, though, He creates optimism over fear, goodness in the face of evil, wholeness out of brokenness. His “good news” is that we, His followers, can become created anew—transformed—and can leave our sad, fearful, angry selves, becoming beings of faith, peace and joy. This isn’t pretend or imaginary. He invites us to “come and see,” what He has to offer, and choose to join Him in His creative effort of loving and helping, laughing and mourning with others, and learning to see and serve each other. The miracle is that as we refine and share our God-given gifts, we ourselves are refined.

So, be creative! Arrange that vase of flowers and set it on the table. Sit at that table and read about the life of Christ. Dry a tear, send a letter, create order out of mess, forgive, develop a skill, smile. Transform the world. Today.

Kristin Fry is currently joyfully living in Holland with her husband as they serve as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.