My Creative Process

Here goes:

1. Begin with “You are loved, whether you produce anything today or not.”
   Your offering is already acceptable. You have brought yourself to this day.
2. Surround yourself with the things you enjoy, people you love and the things you love to do.
3. Begin.
4. If it flows, continue.
5. If not, set it aside and begin again.
6. Toil while it makes sense. Set it aside when it sags.
7. Revise another day.

On the next day, begin with…

“You are loved, whether you produce anything today or not.”

This, most of all, because the fear of failing to produce acceptable fruit keeps our hands in our pockets and our hearts under wraps. The world needs our hearts and our hands. Love opens both.

Begin.

***

What’s your creative process?

Expectant

How brave the mother cardinal,

perched atop the feeder,

not feeding, but performing,

not performing, but calling.

With words I do not know, but a voice I dearly do.

I am here! I have a message for you! Come!

She calls out and waits, calls out and waits,

for the answering call

in a pitch and rhythm and expression she already knows,

but doesn’t.

“I hear you. Wait there. I am coming.”

How does she know there will be an answer?

How does she know how to call, what to say, to whom she calls?

Yet, without fear or hesitation,

Her voice rings out again and again,

into the silence.

She has more faith than I, this mother cardinal.

More boldness, more courage.

Instinctive – there is no thought at all to this display!

And yet, do not I have this instinct born also in me?

This desire to call out,

in a pitch all my own,

with a tone and a voice and a message uniquely mine

and then to listen,

for a voice I do not know,

and yet do.

On-going

“Come”

Oh, how much heaviness there is in that word: come. Grudgingly, we drag ourselves over into the compliant pile. Hauling our stuff with us. We wipe our brow, let out a sigh and, just as we are poised to rest on our laurels God says,

“Follow me”

What an invitation: follow me. But I just sat down. What about my bags! My pillow. My clothes, my toothbrush, my computer, my iPhone, my…

“Leave that”

Here, we travel light.