By Rachel marie kang

There’s always a quest—some grandiose need to save the world. And there is always a hero, and the hero is brave and usually has no choice but to bear the burden they were (as fate would have it) born with. And there is this one and only truth that will never change for the hero, no matter the setting, no matter the story. And that is that the hero never goes alone—they never fight alone, and they never win alone.

This hero, who we know to be the protagonist of countless books and movies, is also you. You, the human and the hero learning to link arms with the ones you love, the ones you lead with. 

We need community and, deeper still, we need creative community. We need to be reminded that our hearts, our art, all pine to point toward a greater purpose. We need to be reminded that we are welcome as we are, that we are welcome for all we are, all blood and bone and burdens and brokenness. We need to be reminded that we are wanted for who we are, not what we do or produce or can prove.

One thing I hear often from writers, artists, and people who long to create is that they worry there is already someone out there in the world writing what they want to write, making what they want to make.

But creativity is commonplace; it is a shared characteristic that runs through our lives. There isn’t a faction of chosen individuals who are the only ones meant and made to carry this thing out. Our contributions are a melding of many voices in many mediums.

We can create and not compete.
We make alongside of friends.
We can tell the same stories in different ways.
We can tell different stories and want the same things.

In our writing and in our making, in all creative contributions, we are on that grandiose quest to save the world—you and the friends you have and hold in the flesh. It is the whole cowardly team of you with all your failures and your flaws, all your worries and all your weaknesses.

This is fellowship, that in the fight of life you find friends to walk beside you. To cheer you on and challenge you. To see you, know you, and need you too. Like Samwise Gamgee, walking with his friend Frodo Baggins to the top of Mount Doom in Mordor. Tired, tried, and tempted, Frodo tells Sam that he can’t do it; he won’t make it as the ring of power weighs on his soul.

“I can’t carry it for you,” Sam says. “But I can carry you!”

This is fellowship — that we might carry, and be carried, in our creativity.

—

This essay is an adaptation from Let There Be Art by Rachel Marie Kang.

Rachel Marie Kang

Rachel Marie Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. She is founder of The Fallow House and author of Let There Be Art: The Pleasure and Purpose of Unleashing the Creativity within You. A graduate with a degree in English, Rachel’s writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and (in)courage. She lives and writes in North Carolina with her husband and two children.