change must be

I remember it with both joy and melancholy.

I was finally preparing to leave. Everything was just about packed up. The house was already taking on that empty feeling. It was getting down to the wire, just days before saying goodbye to this place that I dearly loved but felt I had to leave.

I don’t know what made me look out just then.

I went deliberately to the window, and gazed out, the field stretching away to the west. And there she was, so close I could almost have touched her.

The fox stood still outside my window. There was a profound aura of peace and magic about this elusive, beautiful animal. I knew she was there on purpose. I knew we were connected somehow. Then, as if satisfied that her work was done, she disappeared.

I lived there for fifteen years, and never saw a fox before that day.

I was simultaneously calmed and distressed by the fox’s visit. I couldn’t help but wonder why the fox came to me. Was this reassurance about the path upon which I was about to embark? Or was this a warning?

It hurts to recall this moment. Stepping back into this particular past always does. Much pain and sadness surrounds the memory.

And yet, there is such beauty and peace and sense of connection in the memory, too. Even joy.

Like so much, I carry the fox in my heart.

Change must be. The fox knows, and she goes with me.

lessons

I am ever and always becoming.

I may reach a plateau and coast for awhile, but apparently this is just the universe’s way of giving me a little breather. Then, the next lesson starts.

Except it’s not a new lesson, even though it feels fresh every time it starts. No, it is the same lesson I keep having to learn over and over again. The universe is absolutely persistent that I get this, once and for all, exactly right. It must be a pretty important lesson, eh?

And, why, pray tell, am I so resistant to it? Why do I flunk over and over again? And why does the universe not just kick me out of school?

The thing is, I actually know the answers to most of my own questions about this now. So apparently I have actually made progress in the curriculum. Maybe I’m not actually flunking anymore, I’m just getting C’s.

Why not finally go for it? Why not do all the homework and try for an A? Be an honor student? Be ready to graduate?

Yikes, what happens then?

Well, no fear, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned – the universe does have my back. And it’s all – every single bit of it – about love. I can trust that.

I am safe, if challenged, in the loving arms of the universe that is the absolute champion of critical thinking, innovation, embracing the arts, practical experience, fearless exploration, and radical education reform.

Confidence. I am good enough. I am smart enough. I can stop judging myself. I can do this without thinking. All I have to do is bring all of me to the party.

Okay. Pencils are sharpened. New notebooks in the backpack. No need for new text books, hehe, I’ve got them all.

Here we go again. 

overcoming creative resistance

I have a difficult relationship with creativity.

Creativity seems to be absolutely essential to my wellbeing, to making me all of me. I feel an almost constant and fierce desire for creative efforts.

And yet, I confront my own incredible resistance to it. The resistance wins, more often than not.

Sometimes, I think of the problem as a matter of being able to allow creativity. That, say, conditions must be just right for my creativity to emerge and flourish.

I think that maybe I need daylight hours in which to do my creative work. Or I need a particular environment that is somehow unavailable to me. Or I don’t have the right materials. Or I’m not skilled enough. Or the planets are not in alignment. Or the Muse is absent. Or. Or. Or.

Kind of sounds like excuses, eh?

And then I think that it’s not really a matter of engineering conditions to allow creativity. The problem is really a matter of eliciting creativity – calling it forth.

This involves setting the intention to do my creative work, committing to it, and forcing myself to carry through despite conditions.

I managed to prove to myself that this is possible. And fruitful.

Still, such commitment takes both courage and self-compassion.

I am not whole if I am not creative. If my creativity is suppressed, part of me is missing – a pretty important part.

I have looked long and painfully at the reasons my creative soul hides. I have learned a few things.

The world is a pretty scary place for that corner of my soul.

She is not at all convinced of her own absolute legitimacy and worthiness. She has no assurance whatever that she is loved and wanted and safe. And she just knows it’s totally not okay to get messy.

It is a matter of compassionately taking her hand and showing her it’s okay to come out. Indeed, showing her that the world is not whole without her.

It gets better with practice.

Intention, commitment, action.

answers

 

I was searching.

I was exhausted and frayed and a little frantic.

I thought if I could just get moving, I could move toward some kind of answer, something to mollify at any rate, a little peace.

I was already cold and tired. I could not bear the thought of more cold.

I pulled on my coat anyway. I practically fled, pulling on my gloves as I went.

I charged, desperate for answers. I kept walking and walking, through my fatigue, searching, frenetic.

Nothing was working. Everything was dysfunctional.

No answers.

So I asked.

As I barrelled along in the cold, I spoke out loud.

I can’t see them, but I know they are there, somehow.

They are there. Aren’t they?

I walked and I cried and I argued and I pled for help, and finally I sang.

It was the chant I learned oh so many years ago. I sang the chant as I rushed through the messy, snowed-up sidewalks. I could just begin to sense the edges of peace.

And then, suddenly, there it was.

The one voice in all this universe from whom I needed to hear right then.

And the dam loosed, not answers, but the warmth and the peace to find them.

Everything is a mystery, and nothing is a mystery.