well, then he has his parameters, and his creativity is unleashed and can run wild. Give yourself some parameters if the open range seems too vast, but don’t lock yourself in the chicken coop and refuse to come out.
I admit that I didn’t often read the poetry in The New Yorker until recently. I always read the cartoons. Well, I did read Sharon Olds’s and Mary Oliver’s poetry, which generally sets a spark or rocks a musical nerve. Once I saw their work there, I realized I had better take a closer look. Some hidden gems and inspiration may be lurking inside. You can never be sure where you will find creative inspiration, so keep your receptors open. It may hit you while you are dreaming, driving, or taking out the trash. Something or someone may be that ember that you can’t ignore. The idea, already in our subconscious, comes flying to the surface and we recognize it as it appears. A connection is made and our brain cells jump to attention, our fingers twitch, and a stirring down deep begins.
Don’t forget to write down ideas and inspirations, sing them, or dance them. Do something to act on them because they seem to disappear as fast as they arrive. I have scraps of paper and note cards in my car, by my bed, and tucked into books and journals and everywhere. Some of them have just a word or a line written on them. I never know how or when they will inspire me, but eventually they always do. We can have amazingly vivid dreams and remember them in the first few groggy moments of our waking, only to find all memory of them gone in the next seconds. Record it somehow. The information is significant. You might not know why immediately, so just let it be.
There are even workshops given in several places across the country that address accessing your creativity if you need an extra boost. Try one if you want. It would probably be great fun. My friend Wendy (remember, from the airport bus and the hammers?) is a photojournalist who teaches a class called “Learning to See.” She encourages her students to think differently about the process of making pictures. She reassures them that the technical information about photography can be learned, but each one of them will see and photograph the world differently. Wendy infuses them with the notion that their vision and perspective is truly unique. She gives her class the assignment of photographing a roll of toilet paper. Finding beauty in the mundane is creativity at its best. She encourages them (and me) to be curious and ask questions, especially “What if . . .?” and “Why not ...?” Here is one of my favorite quotes she gives to her class. It is by the late designer Tibor Kalman:
The perfect state of creative bliss is having power (you are 50) and knowing nothing (you are 9).
I actually think we are more powerful and know everything at age nine because we tend to be so much more open to the possibilities in the world, but I understand what he is saying. I fall somewhere in between nine and fifty on the time line, but I have learned to learn again by just allowing. It is so fun to feel nine years old again. Try it.
Tap into your creative energy. Ask, “What if . . .?” of a problem or just let yourself explore colors and textures and shapes in the world.
Peonies, their scent and craggy pinkness, always remind me of my grandmother, and that makes me smile and get motivated, for she was an artist. Visits to her house in the very early spring meant big earthenware bowls full of paperwhites in the living room, their dynamic aroma greeting you eagerly as you entered the front hall.
Dodo (a nickname her brother had given her that stuck from childhood) had extensive flower gardens and worked in them every day in the summer. Fresh flowers filled the house. Ironically, my grandmother had no sense of smell. She lost it as a result of illness when she was young, yet she loved beautiful things around her and what she remembered as beautiful-smelling things. Today, even a single peony in a mason jar on my desk settles me into a creative space.
■ FAITH ■
Faith is not the same as believing. Faith is knowing and not knowing at the same time. Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore captured the essence of true faith when he wrote, “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.” Faith is the fine line between sheer terror and a sigh of relief. Faith is a knowingness, a connection to and acceptance of the idea that we need to show up every day and say, “I am here and I am ready.” The not knowing is the wondrous pilgrimages and all of the passionate questions. It is the understanding that the world does not revolve around us but that we are just one tiny part of the glorious whole. I would not presume to tell you what or whom to believe in—that is your job to discover. Faith, like prayer, is a dialogue. It emanates from journeys and inquiries.
Finding faith isn’t something to be sanctimonious about, just like being a vegetarian doesn’t make you a better person. Just as soon as you start feeling a little bit smug and think you have done all the work and have faith all figured out, I promise you something will happen to rattle you to the core. You will be spiritually slammed into next week and knocked off your feet. If there are any rules to the game, that is rule number one. Faith is a constant and fluid challenge. The universe will never cease in testing our faith. It is part of the package, part of the plan. The harder we struggle against that, the more tests we are likely to encounter, or at least the harder they may appear to us. Finding your faith will make it just a bit more peaceful. Faith gives us more ingredients for our big ol’ humble pie—awe and acceptance.
At the beginning of her lovely book, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott talks about her experience of finding faith:
My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew.
You will be held up and supported on your journey, sometimes in ways that might not make sense at the time. Tests of faith and courage provide us with strength for the next go-round of challenges. Roadblocks and traumas will also appear in every physical and emotional way, shape, or form. Faith asks that you whisper into the still, dark night, “Okay, I am listening. I’m pretty afraid, but I am listening.”
The initiation of movement is the leap of faith, the stepping into the fire, clutching onto an armful of fear that wonders if you might drown—enough fear to be aware—but a transcendence of that fear allows you to take the steps. We are momentarily alone and vulnerable spiritually, and this is a great challenge, but we must take this courageous flight in order to make a space for grace and transformation. It is when we must key in to our faith, not necessarily our beliefs but the essence of true faith, a knowing and at the same time not knowing. Initiation is spiritual thrill seeking in all its glory, an emotional risk taking. St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century theologian, writes beautifully about such experiences in high contemplation:
I entered into unknowing,
yet when I saw myself there,
without knowing where I was,
I understood great things;
I will not say what I felt
For I remained in unknowing
Transcending all know ledge
Faith is what gets us through and pushes us to the other side of the hard parts. Faith is electric and holds amazing energy if we choose to explore it. Try being the bird and sing into the darkness.
■ CONNECTION ■
Energy connects us to people and places and the universe. Connections can bring us peace and strength. Connections can reassure us that we belong somehow and somewhere. We become aware of our links to and part in the grandly textured physical and spiritual landscape. I imagine this may be one of the motivations for the surge in the number of people exploring alternative energy work like Reiki, polarity, cranial sacral, and other practices. We wonder how we fit in to the bigger picture and
