"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Heartfelt good wishes, dear friends!
Creation ... Creator ... Creativity. We are all born into Creation to become co-creators with the Great Architect of all Life. Moment by moment, creativity flows through us, inviting us to create and re-create our own lives into Love being expressed. Silence is like a river that keeps our "creative juices" flowing. At each new dawn throughout eternity, the world is made new. And so it is with us; how we choose to live, think, and act becomes the blueprint of our own creation. Wherever we are, whatever our age and circumstance ... creation continues.
From the tension of the dark empty depths an idea began to emerge. It was that space between not knowing and knowing, that tension between losing and finding, that blank page between silence and song, that emptiness that creates the need to create, to try, to imagine, to solve.
Creative people tend to see life's problems as opportunities to exercise their creativity, to explore something new, to build character, to grow spiritually, and to develop self-knowledge. Love, creativity, and gentleness are closely linked. People who are creative and open to life are more able to learn to love others and themselves. Once we learn the art of turning problems into opportunities, there is no more distinction between self-love and the love of others.
Creativity is the urge to wholeness, the urge to individuation or to the becoming of what one truly is. And in that becoming we bring the cosmos into form.
There are creative seeds buried in people, no matter how oppressed they have been, and you can find these seeds in their stories. With the recent extreme rains here, seeds of plants that have been dormant for centuries are sprouting. They have somehow kept themselves alive for all that time. This same potential is always alive inside people.
A mature creative life, which has discovered its source, finds it is linked to everything. Creation actually requires too little from us, and there is not much in our culture that teaches us to pay attention to the things that require less. These things give birth to the unpredictable surprises that inspire a larger and deeper soul connection with creative life. With the soul well tended, even when all is lost, our creation lives larger than its physical limits. The best that any of us can do with the heaven and hell that surrounds us is to become willing participants in the unfolding of our soul's life. Any creative act emerging from this tending becomes one with the elements of the Mystery.
Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us. To create means to relate. The root meaning of the word art is "to fit together" and we all do this every day. Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating, whether it is to make a loaf of bread or a life.
Let us sing to the Creator of the cosmos,
to the divine power of love!
When we look at the wondrous display
of the heavens,
at the Earth with its infinite
variety of life,
Who are we that You love us, that You
rejoice in our being;
that You trust us to care for creation
in all its splendor,
inviting us to become co-creators
with You?
Let us celebrate the mystery of life!
Let us commit our lives to
the Divine Plan!
To live creatively is
to live from the soul,
to shape our circumstances out of our
deepest desires instead of
conforming our dreams to
the circumstances in which we live.
Once we experience the joy,
the power of creating our own lives,
we find that creating in other arenas
comes naturally,
an outflow of abundant energy
that comes with being true
to our essence.
Creative work, like love, is not an exclusive gift bestowed on only a chosen few...A sea of love, an inexhaustible wellspring of creativity, bubbles behind the consciousness of each one of us. All creative work, that which is life-giving, that is done in its own name and for its own sake is divine in nature. Through it, people elevate themselves and fill their own hearts and the hearts of those around them
with Love.
When we get out of the way, the wild and creative force which flows through us all will rush into the inlet, the space we have vacated within our everyday selves.
The very thoughts that allow us to hurt another limit our ability to express the will of creation through ourselves. At the same time, each time we love another, we have just loved ourselves. Each time we create time for another, strive to understand another, we have just done each of these things for ourselves. When we disapprove of the actions, choices or beliefs of others, we witness through them those portions of ourselves that ask for a greater healing.
We can make a difference when we draw on our courage and creativity to stand up for our beliefs. Our small actions carry a cumulative power that can shift the planet onto a more positive course. We only need to tap our innate creativity and connect with expression not only through a particular medium like paint or clay or words; the other medium we all have to express our creativity is our lives.
As human beings, we're innately creative, capable of great love, and creatures of community. When we draw on our natural gifts and act together, we have enormous power to ease suffering and invent new possibilities for a better world.