Category Archives: Creativity/Spirituality

Musings/thoughts/questions about creativity and spirituality

February 2009 Soul and Solace

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Let’s face it: much in twenty-first century life, at least in America, permits isolation. Big vehicles, often equipped with tinted windows, hide us—and our actions toward others—from view. Through technology we communicate when we like, as we like, if we like, and block what we wish as well. Most of us live in single dwellings, where we can lock ourselves in and everyone else out. But what if we chose to become anarchists? What if we used our very anonymity to honor our connectedness to all creation?

What if we chose to become Kindness Anarchists: committing kind acts without “being seen.” Such as—

  • allowing a car to merge in front of us onto the highway
  • creating a beautiful and inspiring YouTube video or PowerPoint for others to “happen upon”
  • adorning the landscape outside our homes for the enjoyment of those who drive or walk past.

The possibilities available to a creative Kindness Anarchist are endless. We’d love to hear what kinds of Kindness Anarchy inspire you!

“Ahh, Bach!” — Creative Guitar Playing

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“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” (William Congreve)

I mentioned in a previous blog Hawkeye’s comment that when you said “Bach” that you’ve said everything (“I think once you’ve said that, you’ve said it all.”). For me there are “Ah, Bach!” moments that occur when musicians challenge my mind and soul. The literary references in Led Zeppelin, along with the music, soar above so many songs that I hear today; The Beatles wove stories through their music; U2 speaks for social justice.  Classical music is not the only genre that inspires and moves.

So, the other day I discovered—well, actually, I was sent this link (http://www.mikerayburn.com/flv/comicallyderailed.html) to—Mike Rayburn, who bills himself as The World’s Funniest Guitar Virtuoso. His artistic presentation, Comically Derailed, showcases creativity and performance that provided me with a lift to my soul and spirit. The range of music is amazing. Check him out. “Ahh, music!!! I’m charmed.”

January 2009 Soul and Solace

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Okay, I admit it—I LOVE Christmas music. I’ve been known to play it in the middle of July, just because I required a fix. And I’ve been grieving because, several years ago, the bell tower on César Cheváz played holiday songs that I reveled in as I walked, but, after that year, I never heard them again.

This holiday season both my husband and I were searching for “pay the rent” jobs and looking toward a new year filled with large question marks. One day as we walked, the bell tower chimed the hour, and then—delight!—began to chime Christmas music. After that, we timed our walks so we would be near the tower when the music began. The throb of the music pulsed through our walking feet and the bell’s vibrations pulsed in our ears until it seemed our hearts pumped in rhythm to their insistent best. In a season of perplexity, the bells rang out beauty, clarity, and harmony.

What music nourishes you? This month, gift yourself with its listening. Find a time free of distractions, choose a comfortable position (on a squishy couch, a firm mattress, or yoga-style on the grass) and give yourself up to the music. Listen again and again, if you like. The time is well spent.

December Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality,

In this season of gift giving, try giving yourself an experience. What nourishes and restores your soul? A warm bath with candles? A good­or a trashy­book? A morning walk? The taste of hot apple cider? A chat with a friend?
 
Crazy as it sounds, schedule your “gift experience” on your calendar and hold to it in the busyness of the holidays. Then just relax into your gift and allow yourself to be in whatever state you find yourself. Afterward, you can reflect: what did I experience? how do I feel now? to what other “experience gifts” might I treat myself?

November Soul and Solace

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The Trail of Lights is going up at Zilker Park, Christmas songs ring out from our car radios, and and magazine covers boast recipes for turkey leftovers: the holiday season is here! Holidays mark the seasons of our lives; they form our souls and invite us to contemplate what we value and why. This month, consider a practice of reflective thanksgiving.

Recall a holiday from your childhood. Sit with it; allow the memory to take you into itself. How does the holiday feel? taste? sound? look? smell? Choose an art form through which to express your holiday memory.

Now recall a recent holiday. Follow the same practice described above.

Then imagine a holiday in your future. If you have children, how old are they? Where do you live? What matters to you? What dreams have come true in your life—on which ones do you still wait? Sit with your future holiday and imagine it with all your senses.

October Soul and Solace

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I read and hear a great deal about keeping up spiritual practice in our hectic lives. These past few months, however, another question has intrigued me: what spiritual practices help us wait? Waiting requires intense endurance, especially in a society addicted to busyness. Do any of the following “waiting places” resonate with your experience?

Having emailed countless job applications, you now sit at the computer, awaiting a response from some potential employer somewhere. Having stamped and mailed your “reach school” application, you visit the mailbox each day to discover whether or not they find you worthy. Your medical tests sit in a lab somewhere while you wonder whether or not you can bear what they may disclose. You are mending from an illness or injury; you wonder when life will get back to “normal.” You took a risk in a relationship and now wait, wondering how—or if—the other person will respond.

Waiting season have a timeless quality to them: we itch to DO SOMETHING when the something we are called to do is well . . . wait. Waiting is a marathon we do not run; waiting is an endurance marathon.

I hope some of the practices will supply stamina power for your waiting season.

  • Go deep. Waiting provides us space for reflection. Consider the following books as reflection aids: The Artists Way and The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Edward and Tarcher.
  • Play. If you have ever wanted to mess around with clay or write a limerick or take a walk to nowhere in particular, now is the time!
  • Serve. Waiting can leave us feeling powerless. Yet we always have the power to do the world good. Write someone a letter of encouragement . . . look the cashier in the eye and say “thanks” . . . bake a loaf of bread and give it away.
  • Find a metaphor. It helps me to imagine waiting as the transition phase of birth labor. Because I am in transition, I feel nothing but pain, yet I know that labor ends in birth. Imaging waiting as transition helps me hope—and hope helps me endure.

September Soul and Solace

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A taste of autumn is in the air—it’s a great time to be outside! What transitions do you experience as you walk outside? Evenings racing up on afternoons earlier every day? School buses replacing tour buses? Apples replacing watermelon? Working up to a sweat instead of starting out with one?

September’s Soul & Solace invites you to express a transition in creation through poetry: NO NOT FEAR—YOU CAN DO THIS! Choose a transition that intrigues you or start with one of the suggestions above. If you can, go out and sit with the transition and allow it to bless you. Then create a diamante poem (from If You’re Trying the Teach Kids How to Write, You’ve Gotta Have This Book! By Marjorie Frank).

Line 1: Name the initial experience (for instance, tour bus)

Line 2: Name two adjectives that describe the experience (sleek, sparkling)

Line 3: Name three participles (-ing verbs) that describe the experience (blaring, racing, soaring)

Line 4: Name two nouns for the first experience (travel, highways) and two that describe the experience it transitions into (travel, byways)

Line 5: Name three participles (-ing verbs) that describe the second experience (yelling, waving, yielding)

Line 6: Name two adjectives that describe the second experience (homey, yellow)

Line 7: Name the transition experience (school bus)

You now have a gem of a poem!

tour bus

sleek, sparkling

blaring, racing, soaring

travel highways travel byways

yelling, waving, yielding

homey, yellow

school bus

You can even play with words the can serve as two parts of speech, as with “travel” in this poem: it is written as a noun, and can also be read as a verb.

August Soul and Solace

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It’s there—right beside Austin’s Long Center in a park filled with gentle curves. I nearly passed it by, but then I stopped and studied the pattern of white and red bricks: could it be what I thought it was? Yes, the city of Austin had built a labyrinth into its newest park, near the Barton Springs Road side. This one’s not the only labyrinth in Austin, however. You can find them both outside and inside several area churches. In fact, labyrinths are increasingly popular across the country: in hospital courtyards, in city parks, at retreat centers, and in prisons.

A labyrinth is a walking maze, but it is impossible to get lost within its circle. The labyrinth path takes the walker on a circuitous route toward the center, where its traveler can then sit or stand. When ready, the walker retraces his or her steps out of the maze.

So what’s the big deal about labyrinths? Studies show that walking a labyrinth reduces stress. I find it to be more than that: for me, labyrinth walking is prayer. As my feet move along its path, I feel the solidity of God’s creation bearing me up, and the natural rhythm of my gait joins the music of the universe. The path is deceptive: when it appears that I am almost to the center, the path suddenly turns back on itself and heads me in the other direction. How often have I experienced that! The labyrinth’s hairpin bends slow me down and challenge me to find my center of balance. The labyrinth grounds me—literally. When I walk the labyrinth with another person, the path draws us so near that one of us must pause and allow the other to move forward. How often in daily living do we speed along, isolated in our horse-powered tins cans, passing other tins cans without any real consciousness of their occupants? On a labyrinth I make room for the other and the other does the same for me. At last, the labyrinth welcomes me into its center, into its very heart, and lets me simply be. On a hot summer morning I can sit and feel the stone’s refreshing chill or, on a winter’s day, I can stand at the center, watching my breath go up like a prayer before me. When I am ready, I am lead, gently but firmly, outward to its entrance. It feels like being birthed.

The labyrinth is grace-filled. It accepts my walking feet no matter what I am wearing. It blesses my steps whether I take its path slowly and contemplatively or whether I dance along it, laughing as I go. I can come to it alone or in the company of others. It is always there; if I haven’t the time or inclination one day, it patiently awaits my feet the next. How does that sound to you?

Sometime during the coming month, find a labyrinth near you and gift yourself by walking it. Don’t feel you have to come with any kind of “attitude” other than to stay on the path, to pause at the center, and return as you entered.

July Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality,

I knew it would be there­. I’d seen the photo on their website and I held in my hand a glossy brochure with its reproduction on the cover. In fact, I’d come to see it. But when I stepped into the room where it was displayed, the crowd separated like a curtain drawing back. It stared at me with a frankness and a simplicity that stopped my heart and welded my feet to the floor. Van Gogh’s painting, The Bedroom, one of many Impressionist masterpieces on display at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, appears simple on first impression, but it packs a punch. I couldn’t tear myself away. The reproductions just could not carry the power of the original. The painting drew me in and held me fast: studying me as I studied it. The painting transformed me.

We carry images in our heads of art museums being hushed-up places where only people with art degrees or mink stoles can feel welcome, but today museums provide recording devices that describe the artworks and the artists. Some even provide programs for children.

Sometime in the next month visit an art exhibit. It could be a display in a public building or even a downtown outdoor mural. Stand before the painting, letting it have its way with you. Don’t agonize over whether you’ve “got it right.” Just let it be what it is with you. Then respond to the artwork in some way: write about it or sketch it or describe it to a friend, or create something wholly new inspired by it.

June Soul and Solace

Creativity/Spirituality,

The film Pretty Woman, though certainly a Cinderella story with attitude, is also a film about blessing. Watch the film, noting the times characters bless one another and the result of their blessing. The Blessing is typically understood as something a parent bestows on a child. Pretty Woman reminds me that we do not have to be biological parents to offer others a blessing. A blessing can take many forms: it can be a comment made in passing, a message in a greeting card, a gift that shows thought was given to the recipient, or a simple touch (in Pretty Woman an older man lays his hand on Richard Gere and offers words of blessing).

Practice blessing giving during the month of June. What do you experience in doing the practice? What do you sense the practice means to those you bless? Do you think it is important for humans to bless one another? Why or why not?