A Living, Rushing Wind: On Creativity

Even in California, it's springtime. Birds are singing from the depths of their quick-beating, tiny bird hearts.

I'm re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, and I'm discovering reality again. Why do I, a creative person, produce so little? Why isn't all of my free time given to writing diligently, like I ought to do? It's because I often choose to consume rather than to create.

Every day, every moment, I have to choose between consumption and creativity. I rarely choose creativity. In this materialistic world, it's really, really easy to waste your life consuming things instead of creating them.

When a person creates they are giving life, adding cosmos/truth/beauty to the world. When a person consumes they are using up resources--killing and destroying--ushering in a state of chaos. Cooking, reading, writing, loving, praying, worshiping--these create. Shopping, eating, Facebook, watching The Office, hating--these consume.

 Facebook and shopping are not evil, but they take away from the world. I am a consumer of life. Most of my existence has been spent taking.

Perhaps it's a question of balance. Consuming is all right, some forms of it are all right, if most of my life is spent creating. 

I think creativity is a way--a quite natural and simple way--to give to the world. The problem is that creativity is often difficult, exhausting, and frustrating, while consumption is easy and entertaining.

But, I would be a life-giver.

Creating is life giving, and holy, because it is an aspect of God's own Self. God benevolently gives. He lives. He creates life. If we are to reflect his nature, we too must create generously. Creation is an act of worship because to create is to imitate God's nature, and what is more worshipful than living in imitation of the One you adore?

It is much, much easier to consume when I come home tired at the end of a long day. To create I must be ready and attentive. It's hard to push past all of the noise and movement until I reach that still place, the still point, where creativity comes like a rushing wind.


Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

In search of some water that isn't so smeary

One of the worst things about living with 7 women in a cramped house is never having space to reflect. Even when I have room in my schedule for being time, which is not very often, I must war against the forces of chaos in my own home. There is no place in my home where I can hide from the world. Living in the midst of so many people is a little like living in a bus terminal. It isn't a place to dwell, but rather an in-between-place. It's a shooting-off point for going or coming, never for being. I love all the women I live with, but, there are really, very, many of them. This means that contemplative time becomes media time. Instead of reading or writing or merely sitting in silence, I watch Gilmore Girls or crack jokes about our Landlord and The Poolboy . I enjoy these things, but when they are over, and I take myself to bed, I find that I am missing something. I'm missing peace. In order to find peace and rhythm and balance in the midst of a hectic life, I need time to be. I used to run away to coffee shops for this, because it is possible to shut out the world if you don't know the world by name and it isn't asking you to have in-depth conversations about racism or tell you a funny anecdote from its day.
I want peace. I can do the busy, crazy, hectic, frantic chaos that is daily life only if I stop in-between-times to be and to create cosmos for myself. So I'm taking this moment, the few brief minutes between class and work, to stop and reflect on my internal state. I feel crowded. Not merely hedged in on every side by living partners, but also crowded with things, with noise, with bustle. I think I'd like to spend some time on top of a mountain, just for the sake of sitting in open air and silence--not surrounded by possessions, not distracted by disorder, just given the chance to be.
It's Lent, and I'm hardly aware of it because the chaos that is around me is entering my soul. I can't hear the voice of God over the screechings of audible and visible clutter. I often wonder what it would be like to live with all of my possessions on my back. Like a fairy tale character, my kerchief tied to a stick, holding within it every thing on this earth I call mine. It sounds so sweet and free sometimes, to live this way. I would often like to have no blanket but the stars, no pillow but the earth, no lullaby but the dance of the planets. I've been thinking so much about eternity and the weight of the world. I don't believe the body is bad, as Plato does, but the body is so prone to gathering things about itself, things that weigh it down and prevent it from glimpsing what is meant foremost to be seen.
Lent, when I remember it's Lent because someone offers me a cookie--reminds me of the cumbersome nature of possessions. Giving up "pleasure foods" in some ways isn't even hard, because I'm still surrounded by so much real, natural, healthy food. Abundance is with us still. I think it's the abundance that bothers me, that hinders my being, because it's of the wrong sort. It isn't the abundance of charity, of peace, or of beauty; it's the abundance of worthless items crowding the vision of my heart, body, and brain.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.

"You're glumping the pond where the Humming-Fish hummed!
No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed.
So I'm sending them off. Oh, their future is dreary.
They'll walk on their fins and get woefully weary
in search of some water that isn't so smeary."

Trinkets make me feel loved.

I feel SO loved today. Why? Because I'm eating spaghetti and chocolate layer cake for lunch made by my roommate Kaitlin; because I'm wearing earrings and bangles from my friend Katelyn in India; because I will eat Jamaican food for dinner tonight sent from my home by my mama; because I have rainbow ribbon ballet flats that used to belong to my friend Emily; because I have pretty pink Gerber daisies on the coffee table beside me from my roommate Melissa; because I'm using for a bookmark a postcard from my friend Amber in New Mexico; because I hugged a lot of Kindergartners today. I love stuff. Judge me if you need to. I love having pretty things around me that remind me of the dear ones far away. And, let me tell you, 98% of all the dear ones there are, are far away. It's the saddest thing. But it makes me feel better to drink from the little white teapot that served as a centerpiece at my friend Jenn's wedding in Idaho; or to wear the cameo that was my bridesmaid gift from Bethany who's living in Istanbul. I am not denying my materialism. I should probably sell all I have and give it to the poor and seek treasure in heaven. But, the point is, that being surrounded by aesthetically pleasing, visual reminders of friendship is really important to me.

That's why I've got so much stuff. That's why when I'm homesick for a place it's the trees I miss most. It's raining today.