When we are open to the present moment and respond to it, surprising things can happen because openness is a key to creativity. It makes sense that it is so. If God always initiates the creative process, we must be open to receiving the initiative. If we want to accept an initiative, we can do so by being alert to the need of the moment and responding to it as best we can. The literature of creativity is full of stories of insight achieved after letting go of the search for insight and waiting. We must wait for our inner wisdom to make the connection for us, trusting that we do indeed ‘know more that we understand,’ as Alfred Adler said. This process entails acknowledging and accepting our limitations, letting go of conscious attempts to solve the problem, and doing something else while waiting for the answer to be given to us. If we are to be creative, we must learn to do our work as best we can and then let go of it and simply wait for God to do God’s part of the work. This part of the creative process keeps us humble, rooted in humus, the earth out of which we are made and of which we remain a part. It keeps us rooted in the reality of our creaturelines. In this creative waiting we are taught patience, and we grow in compassion for all other creatures who wait with us for the new creation to be fulfilled…….Christian Koontz

we just can’t let go….to sit and wait for what is sacred, beyond the eyes, and still show up for the work requires us to feel worthy…..exploring our tension invites us into ourselves…may we surrender in our limits, so that we may open, so that we may listen…

The spiritual teacher Krishnamurti maintained that there was no path to truth. Creative work is always about accessing some piece of the truth, and so at some point it always requires that we leave the path, the well-worn patterns of activity and inquiry that make us feel safe. For many of us, for those of us who know how to work hard, be productive, and keep to a schedule, this can be the most difficult part of the process- finding and entering empty time. Schedule some empty time. Put it in your calendar. When you come to your scheduled empty time, sit still. Find the silence, and let all movement come from the impulse that arises when you let your attention be present. Empty time is a necessary time of transition from doing to being, from acting exclusively with our will, often in response to others’ needs and the world’s schedule, to opening to the creative process, which has a different kind of rhythm, a flow that is not exclusively within our control, a movement that will take us to unexpected places. What is brought by the other, the Thou, the sacred and forever creative life force, is the opportunity to touch something larger than me, to be carried by a flow to unpredictable expressions of some truth or beauty I did not know before I began. This is how our spirituality is not separate from our creativity…..Oriah Mountain Dreamer

roiling with the struggle of well-being

We have this life. We live it day by day. It passes quickly. Sometimes not quickly enough- we get despondent, sullen, downcast. Those are good words. In those slow moments something might appear- a chance to fall through our blistering fast-paced lives to the other side, where we can turn around and view ourselves, take a curious interest. Underneath everything we long to know ourselves. We wouldn’t know it though by the way we act- chugging down another whiskey, not listening to our daughter at breakfast, going sixty in a twenty zone. Reaching to get away; longing to come home. In writing, in sitting, in slow walking, a flash, a moment appears when we fall through and what we are fighting, running from, struggling with becomes open, luminous- or, even better, not a problem, just what it is. Look for those small openings……Natalie Goldberg