“And while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this:  A creative life is an amplified life.  It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.  Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.”   –Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

The creative life.  Who dares live it?
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I’ll tell you one thing:  if you’re a creative soul, but too afraid to create or find excuses for not creating or frozen in terror at the thought of how your creations might be received, I give you Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.  It’s a magical read.  This is not a how-to on writing or any other form of creativity, but rather her own philosophy of the creative life, that is, a way to re-set the mind and heart for the whole enterprise of creativity, whatever form it takes.

Elizabeth Gilbert believes that “the central question upon which all creative living hinges” is this: “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

It’s all about courage.

And letting go of outcomes. . . .

To read more, click here 🙂

Wei Chen. That was her name.  I had almost forgotten her, and how she was the reason my youthful conservative theology began to crack open in uncomfortable and unseemly ways.  It started with Wei Chen, my college friend from Hong Kong.  This was back in the Seventies at a time before social media and cell phones, when friends-in-person were everything—like rare and delicate flowers. To lose one tore at the heart in fragile and significant ways.  But that is what happened between me and Wei Chen: a tearing, a loss, a betrayal.
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Living in the dorm, far from home, Wei Chen and I met at our first dorm meeting, two green freshmen in need of mutual support.  My fascination with international students and her need for an American cohort seemed enough to get our friendship going.  Wei’s sweet, shy radiance and profound intelligence attracted me.  And her sheer bravery.  I mean,  really brave—coming all the way from Hong Kong, and all alone!  She was tiny in stature, with a shiny mop of chin-length black hair, wire-framed glasses and a heavy leg brace.  Her severe limp was something that we never spoke of, but it was obvious that she had out-maneuvered the demon of self-consciousness, yet another thing I admired about Wei Chen.

So we chummed around on campus, sharing all the trials and woes that wide-eyed terrified freshman experience on a strange campus—and in Wei’s case, a strange country.  She had her mother send me beautiful gifts that featured reds—a delicately painted fan and a bamboo plate with a  mountain landscape in colors of bright red and quiet browns.  All was going swimmingly until that day the devil rode on my shoulder. . . .

To read on, click here 🙂

Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us.  Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed. ― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

For the past five years I lived entirely in the warm equatorial sun of coastal Ecuador, a constant summer, absent of seasons, of winter, of falling leaves and snow encrusted trees.   It was lovely and summery and succulent to the skin.  But my tea was unhappy. Thoroughly discontented.  Iced tea was popular, yes, but tea gets tired of being pummeled by hulking, utilitarian ice cubes and guzzled down in sweaty glasses that leave rings on the table.  Tea longs for winter.  In cold weather, tea feels happy inside delicate china cups, sipped and savored, as if the meaning of its life is fulfilled; for  it knows that it is warm and comforting, a simple balm of tranquility to the drinker’s otherwise fretful day.

I recently returned to North America, to a cool New Mexico autumn, with only a few items–sadly not a teapot among them. Even before getting a stick of furniture for our apartment, I bought a teapot–first things first–and began brewing.  My tea thanked me effusively. . . .

To read the rest of this post click here . . . 🙂

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TREES ARE EVERYTHING  I long to be:  deep, tall, gorgeous, hospitable, and unapologetically assertive as they stretch upward in hungry yearning for the sky.  Trees are like souls, fat souls, lively souls, and like us, they change.  They just can’t stay the same.  No one ever wrote in the school year book of a tree “Never change,” for that would be the silliest idea for a tree (and for people, too).  For trees are all about change and growth and loss and rebirth.  But they don’t mind—they really don’t.  In fact, trees are monuments to gratitude and worthy of recognition at Thanksgiving. That’s because trees are wise and grateful even in late autumn when their leaves fall off, yes, even while they are shivering and naked and vulnerable and quite lacking in leafy frills and fruit.  They may prefer to be  green or vermilion or yellow-gold or studded with ripe, red berries–who wouldn’t?–but still, they appreciate what the emptiness reveals. . . .  To continue reading this post, click here. 🙂

Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me.

—Etty Hillesum, July 1942

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jew, an intellectual and writer, who died in Auschwitz. All of the quotes below are taken from An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

Dear Etty,

I return to you, again and again, especially when humanity collapses into fear after the atrocities of terrorism.  Like now.  Paris. Lebanon. Syria. Tel Aviv.  The young faces of victims. Grief, fear, trembling, bleak presentiments. You, of all people, understand.

Mortal fear in every fibre. Complete collapse. Lack of self-confidence. Aversion. Panic.

—Etty Hillesum, November 10, 1941

During times like these, it is as if the very Soul of the world stretches out across the universe in cosmic mourning.  We share in the shock, the brutal searing of goodness; it feels like a frigid, howling wind that penetrates what few layers of protection we have managed to put on.

And finally: ought we not, from time to time, open ourselves up to cosmic sadness?

—Etty Hillesum, March 21, 1942

 

You know about “cosmic sadness,” don’t you?  You know intimately about Terror, dear Etty, and about the great fear that penetrates our souls in times like these. But you were, unlike me who sits in safety, at the very center of that Great Evil. And yet, against all odds, you blossomed. Auschwitz may have claimed your body, but nothing could touch the beauty of your soul as witnessed in your diaries—that intimate portrait of an expanding soul.  For that, I am grateful. You, like your young counterpart Anne Frank, who penned her own diary only a few blocks away from you in the beleaguered city of Amsterdam, are part of that Great Feeling that gives me faith in life again. And beauty, especially beauty. Like the birth of things, of children, plants, opening buds. . . .

 
To read the entire post  “After The Terror . . .” and see more photos of Etty Hillesum, click here.