Gifts

Musing…

Gift giving is a tradition around this time of year, or if it’s not a tradition for you, the gift giving frenzy may be going on around you. I’m calling it frenzy because this is a part of it -- the dash for deals, the rush to buy something or figure out what to get and how to make your budget work. There's a larger stash of gifts that shows up in our lives and this is where I’d like to sway our attention. Let’s sidestep commercialism for a bit.

Charise’s Turn:

What you are reading is a blog that has nearly run the course of a year. Each week Kate and I offer vignettes, ideas, and images to stir your creative fires. I consider this collaboration with her a gift. We have never met in person. We met a couple of years ago in a coaching course conducted by telephone. When our instructor gave us a project to lead a teleclass on a theme, I immediately thought of creativity and Kate. The dancer/coach spirit in me wanted to play with the artist/coach spirit in her to see what would happen. Our teleclass followed, then the idea for this blog. We continue to play, leapfrog, tagging on to each other’s posts, putting our inspiration on display, letting it live.

It’s the “let it live” part that speaks about what a gift really is.  It’s not enough to say you have a gift for writing, or speaking, or playing a sport, or taking photos, or working with clay, or brainstorming ideas, etc. That could be a gift that sits, or that stays wrapped, unshared.

Get Fired Up:

Be generous. Let your gift(s) live, let your creativity show up and take form for someone else to receive.

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.” – Marianne Williamson

Wonder

Musing…

In an art gallery, in line waiting to see paintings by Edward Hopper, handed a brochure about the artist, I read while shuffling forward. This is good writing, sets the stage for what is ahead. “For Hopper, real drama was found in the overlooked” *.  Just like the scene around me: people having conversations, looking out the window, checking their watches. All these moments when there’s a lull and nothing terribly exciting is happening. The stuff of everyday, which he puts on canvas, considers worthy of capturing. Nothing extraordinary except the pulse of existence.  Come again? The pulse of existence is extraordinary when we look at it.

*(National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).

Get Fired Up:

Over the course of a day, start to look at what you’ve overlooked, what you haven’t paid much attention to. Simple things -- like the cup that holds your drink, or how your companion holds his/her cup, or the pattern of light and shadow from your window.

The only goal is to look, to bring wonder alive.

The Light Breaks In

Musing…  

The diminishing of daylight as we move towards winter can be resisted by some;  it can appear as if all is dead around us.  Can you hold onto your inner light of creativity, having confidence that you are simply at rest, gathering your energies/inspirations for an upcoming spring?

Kate’s Turn:  

I LOVE this quote from Wendell Berry….”By the expenditure of hope, intelligence, and work, you think you have it fixed.  It is unfixed by rule.  Within the darkness, all is being changed, and you also will be changed…and yet,  and yet the light breaks in, heaven seizing its moments that are at once its own and yours.”

When life takes us into a 90 degree turn, perhaps an unexpected apparently dark time, we must hold fast to our inner light, and hold our angle of perception to include the dynamic shift that is taking place beneath the surface within us.  Our light, by virtue of the fact that we are alive, NEVER goes out.

Get Fired Up:  

Embrace the growing winter darkness.  Light a candle each evening to remember your inner light that leads you to new growth and expansion.  Jot down any sparks of inspiration and allow them to gestate during this dynamic dark time of rest.