Renewal: Choosing Sustainability

Musing….

Renewing a library book, a subscription, a vow, is about continuing, making new for another period of time. It's about sustainability. Farmers intentionally allow a piece of land to lie fallow, protecting it from the frenzy, the eventual depletion of productivity. Progressive corporations build in “naps” for their employees, recognizing that this period of rest is, in fact, a time of consolidation of ideas that contributes to innovative production. This period of quiet is a vital, necessary step in the long-range plan of increasing output and preventing burnout. In the cycle of the seasons, nature offers this renewal period during the winter season.  We sometimes call it the “dead of winter”, but in fact, the hidden forces are  teeming with life.  Meister Eckhart, a 13^th century mystic, said “I need to be silent for a while; worlds are forming in my heart.” 

Kate's Turn:

What a challenge it is to be as quiet and still as a snowfall on a winter’s night!  My mind wants to keep working a problem; my body wants to just keep trying something different in hopes of a breakthrough or resolution.  Sometimes it takes more effort to be still and quiet than to just keep circling in the same old pattern.

I’ve been getting antsy to get some paintings done…not because I have ideas bursting forth, but because I’m uncomfortable with an elongated period of “unproductiveness”. Silence takes me deeper, to my creative light within me, so that the images that begin to emerge are from my own spirit of creative expression, and not just something I made myself do. 

Get Fired Up:

How can you cultivate your faith in your emerging creative expression, to trust the “worlds that are forming" in your heart?

What are some choices you can make towards renewal of your creativity?     

How do you invite quiet and silence to nurture and call you more deeply to your center as you weather the winter bend of the creative cycle?   

Ssshshshsh……breathe and allow the quiet of winter, the silence of renewal to do its magic.

Renewal: Rounding it Out

Musing…

Renewal is a part of the cycle of creativity, and it best fits at this juncture of the calendar year.  Time pulls us forward, but we also inhabit cycles such as the return of seasons.  Jean Giono says, “ Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends – arrow, road, man's life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable – sun, world, God.”  We invite you to consider the roundness of your creative leaning, where your endeavors lean and curve and rest on a bend that is always connected to a center where you sit with your muse.

Charise’s Turn:

Speaking of seasons, it’s winter where I am and the first snowstorm of the year has knocked our power out.  There‘s the quiet of lack of electricity while the house is getting colder hour by hour. My source of warmth is at the hearth where the wood that burns is from the oak that had to be cut down last spring.  What's apparent is that what had to be destroyed is now taking new life as fire and source of much needed heat. Renewal of energy. The heat allows me to write these words here; as if there is a harmony between thoughts, words, wood, flames; the natural world and human. As if? Hmmm…

Get Fired Up:

What energy is available to you toward your creativity?

How is your daily life sustenance for where you want to go in future days?  

How can you pull the energy of future days, the future pull, to your day today?