Creative Affirmations

These are taken from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron (I'm doing the 12 week course via book to begin 2016).

1. I am a channel for God's creativity, and my work comes to good.
2. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
3. As I create and listen, I will be led.
4. Creativity is the creator's will for me.
5. My creativity heals myself and others.
6. I am allowed to nurture my artist.
7. Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
8. Through the use of my creativity, I serve God.
9. My creativity always leads me to truth and love.
10. My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
11. There is a divine plan of goodness for me.
12. There is a divine plan of goodness for my work.
13. As I listen to the creator within, I am led.
14. As I listen to my creativity I am led to my creator.
15. I am willing to create.
16. I am willing to learn to let myself create.
17. I am willing to let God create through me.
18. I am willing to be of service through my creativity.
19. I am willing to experience my creative energy.
20. I am willing to use my creative talents.

Symphonic Musings: Bartók and Banov and Giants and Walls

There is no photo to accompany thoughts (gasp!) ... But a great deal of musing (plenty of which I won't share simply for ease of thumb typing on my BlackBerry!).

Symphony.
Sumphonia.
Music.
Ministry.

This is the chain of words that comes to mind. There are awakenings in these words and also great resistance.

Last night I found myself in the delightful atmosphere of music (much thanks to a friend who appreciates the same) and found myself enamored with Bartók. I think one of my professors mentioned him as a favorite along with Debussy, and at the time I didn't easily distinguish between many composers, so it slipped far off my radar. Funny how after a quarter of a century it can come flooding back. Béla Bartók ... I even know his first name! As both a pianist and composer, it's no wonder my professor liked him (she was a pianist, violinist, and conductor and loved to conduct the more expressive pieces - and the piece tonight was certainly that).

Tonight at the symphony (well, it still feels like tonight!) I wanted to be invisibly in the midst of those musicians ... But not playing. I wanted to be lying on my back in a meadow, sensing breezes and butterflies and fragrant clover, staring at the sky or my own imaginations scrolling by, swallowed up by sound. A few times, I closed my eyes, but couldn't lose myself too far in a reverie because I didn't want anyone to think I was sleeping!

All this came on the heels of getting weepy as I passed by the pianos in the music store a couple of days ago.

Again, it makes me wonder if God is up to something. These little intersections of musical emotion are not new. I keep bumping up against these bits of abstract glimpses and feelings. Yet there is a great resistance within me.

I just remembered how Georgian Banov said he saw a sleeping giant within me. Ironic ... I think he is also Hungarian like my "new friend" Béla. His music also easily impassioned like breathing, just in a whole different genre ... Praise and worship.

So how does one go about gracefully wakening a sleeping giant? I don't think it's an embrace easily enjoyed.

I probably need to pull out my "I Project" again and continue capturing/remembering/accepting those significant moments. Even now as I am remembering, tears are coming as I recall the great parade of people who have been a voice into these things already. It's awfully humbling. And I think, "Who am I to resist?"

But it's not as much willful resistance as it is fear, I think. And fear started with doubt. Doubt started with trust ... Trust misplaced. All along, I could have trusted my heart.

Last night I was reminded of how G would kick me under the table if it appeared to him that I was enjoying a conversation too much. And I remember being at many a table with amazing ministers, men and women of God who were inspiring and deep thinkers and enjoyers of life, and the signal would come to disengage.

But I also wonder now if the motivation for that signal was insecurity or intimidation? I remember in 2004 before the grand unveiling and crumbling, G said he thought he might be ready to accept my gifts and talents without being intimidated or afraid he'd lose the spotlight. Maybe that's part of the picture throughout!

Intimidation so easily turns around and intimidates. And me? Because I so easily trusted, I so easily accepted. I wrestled but believed it was for my own good. And I ultimately imprisoned myself with invisible walls.

It's time for them to come down. (I almost didn't write that because the thought scares me ... But I feel like I need to say it. GOSH does it ever scare me! I'm fighting myself to delete it even now. Yet I'm leaving this moment here. Evidently it's important.)
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Looking Up

Looking up ... Side by side.  It would be so easy to write about looking up and gaining height and momentum in life, but this photo is more significant than surface principles to me.

My daughter has looked up to an older dancer in her studio as long as we have attended.  The last two years, she has worked with my daughter on solos.  And to watch the young lady dance is to feel as if one has just witnessed a secret being unveiled for the first time ... exquisite!

So when I heard that my little one had been paired with her mentor for an upcoming recital performance, I knew it would be meaningful to her.  What I wasn't prepared for was moments like this!  In tandem, full split leaps, in sync with the one she admires.  WOW!

I am so thankful my daughter has people to look up to who pursue excellence.  She is certainly matching their stride!

Blooming

Bloom where you are planted ... that's what they say.  I think "they" are right.  But the key is being planted.

For many years, I have not been completely planted.  I've had the hope of being planted, but one can only flourish in small ways while hope is held at bay.  Proverbs was right ... "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12)

All this rightness is something I've missed for quite some time.  I kept thinking I could catch up, make up, adjust, connect, somehow get right again when my world was right again. But I kept losing my footing along the way, limping in a sometimes-lovely limbo.  But loveliness was a bit of a mirage.

So, I'm planting myself.  I think my dwindling roots had been loose and ready for quite some time.  But hope does not easily let go.  So when the time came, though the pain of change was sharp and hard and reverberating, drawing from rich soil has brought new life.  It's been two months and deep places are reviving from the inside and beginning to spread.  And now?  I'm finally feeling right, too.

Blooming is not without its challenges.  But it is infinitely better than lying dormant.  I think again of Proverbs 13:12 ... Blooming is longing!  And my longings are beginning to find fulfillment.  There is a sense of awe in the air, and I don't want to miss another moment to breathe it in.

So here I am ... before my beautiful Creator ... amazed by the beauty growing from what I thought I had neglected to the point of destruction.  It would have been enough just to breathe, but now I am blooming.

Toeholds and Saplings

Toeholds and saplings ... small but determined holdings.

Sunday I felt a toehold in my soul and it was the sunshine of my day.  Then Sunday night it seemed as if all was demolished.  Like the day in the Secret Garden when we felled these trees and cleaned the branches.  Before you knew it, the slender branches and trunks were lying in piles.  The "destruction" was quick ... but it was a good thing.

They had been taken from areas where they were intruding, laid to the ground, stripped and sectioned ... ready to be used.  These beautiful and bare branches just hours before reaching to the sky but draining the soil where the grew wild were now the building blocks of restoration and design.

They were put up, taken down, reworked, redesigned, and after all the prototypes were built and torn down, found their place in the project as the centerpiece of serenity adorned with art.

Tonight that sunshine moment started to peek through again.  That toehold in my soul which was the first glimmer after months wasn't extinguished long.  And even if it was torn down in repeated swaths of broken hearts around me, it is an opportunity to prepare the fallen ... to clean and make beautifully bare these new building blocks life created from the things that were growing where they were never meant to grow.

It's like beauty from ashes.  Maybe my life will be a picture of this ... and end up in the centerpiece of a clever, efficient design bearing the artwork of many hands and bringing serenity to the future.

Turning Entanglement To Art

Sometimes life is bland and flat ... other times it's a tangled mess ... it can be a party ... or it can be the residue from others that is left for me to clean up.  It can look like nothing or an intricate maze.  What makes life beautiful? Perspective.

Maybe my life is all tangled.
Maybe the bright splashes are to be celebrated instead of figured out.
Maybe daily life is a slab of ordinary underneath everything.
But it could be that if I look closer, maybe it's art.

I'm considering adopting a new motto:  Never untangle ... find the beauty.

Immi's Hands

I've seen these hands from afar ... creating music, expressing joy, punctuating emotion on a stage or a video blog.  But the first time I saw these hands up close, they eclipsed the expected handshake and embraced me with a warm hug accompanied by a double-cheeked kiss.  That day, I watched the same hands serve others cups of soup and wrangle tools that broke ground in the walled kitchen garden.  Throughout the week, I watched these hands work and welcome day after day ... Gentle, strong, elegant and expressive ... just like her.

The humanity behind Imogen Heap's hands marked me.  Seeing her humble service, personal inspirations, intimate affections, and joyful explorations made her feel much more like a real life person (which, of course, she is).  And maybe more astonishingly, made me feel more like a friend than a fan.

So when Imogen began to play after hours at the celebration party in her home, it was more than "just" music.  It was far more than a moment to savor in the presence of someone famous and amazing.  It was life unfolding unscripted, resting and cradled ... all of us together ... all of us basking in the wash of words and moments and music shared earlier ... all of us with these meditative tones to brush through our souls.  The beauty of simply being with one another was profoundly woven in melody.

I now see how people can so easily call her "Immi" ... and it now seems so formal to call her anything else.  Immi's hands ... yet another inspiration.