The intersection between letting go and holding on is where fear and love meet.  No of us want to waste time on earth. We all fear missing our moment.    And should.  Yet fearing it does not mean getting what we are after.  Fear is not enough.  This is where inspiration begins.

Dying to oneself.  It’s not an unfamiliar idea.  It’s common in most eastern religions.  But do we literally forgo our identity?  Our uniqueness?  Even our calling?  Or is dying to ourselves actively rejecting false versions of our self, ones we started to believe were ours to inherit? That is the right question and the one we will explore in today’s blog.

The creative gets the great joy of co-parenting, but that is not quite accurate.  We are mere portals, conduits.  Though we partake in the birth and love the thing created, we are not the thing.  And the thing is not ours.  Not entirely.  We are co-parents, and that is made possible only by the favor of God.

This fire inside is the light of our humanity - not outward, circumstantial things, or even cultural things. What connects us is ultimately much more subtle, more profound than that. It is the very spirit that makes us alive. Our createdness.

Reserved for fire.  Ready to burn.  Good for nothing but burning.  Some things literally have no other function left.  BUT starting a fire is a function. And one we need! So gather your dead branches, pruned off - lifeless and useless. Let the heat of the flame release that oxygen and give them life again.

Never forget the fiercest of fires starts with the smallest of sparks. Though we have learned to manipulate that spark, we still can’t always control the fire it births. Wild fires still rage. And fire remains free. Though we can, most times, start and stop it, fire is wild and bold. Where’s your spark?

For certain words to take root we have to first ready the soil. Faith is the till that readies the soil. That breaks up the hard ground of hurt, experience, and doubt. Faith leaves the soil open, ready. From that posture we are able to listen. To really listen. These are holy intersections. Take note of them. Divine time crashing in on chronological time. Two time zones colliding. Are you ready?

Our souls are like seedbeds.  Our ability to listen, to really hear words, is directly tied to the condition of our seedbed.  Is your soil tilled?  Ready.  Open?  Soft?  Are we willing and able to let the seed of the words take root?  To find a home in the loosened soil of our hearts? Today we will talk about this miracle of hearing, and perhaps the greater miracle of listening. Are you ready to listen?

Some of us are indecisive.  Creative people usually are.  But there is a legitimate amount of necessary waiting and seeing in the creative process.  Act - will.  Watch - wait.  This is the tension. Don’t skip the watching and waiting! It is necessary to the creative process and for your creative Seed to develop into the life-giving plant it can become.

You are on the fence about a particular creative venture. It seems unattainable, almost impossible. Yet cutting it out of your heart seems like a terrible idea too…isn’t this dream a gift to be shared? Sometimes our creative visions can’t be reckoned with, they just need to be done. Take the small steps in front of you and Start! HERE.

There is one yoke that perfectly fits the human heart. Only one. Of course, we have many loves but only one “yes” can reign supreme. We must, as conscientious people, then, examine our primary love over and over again and root out both what is most powerfully meaningful to us AND what is most deeply significant in our lives.

Eventually you must have rightly ordered priorities or you will fizzle. Prune. Remove. Or you will have too much “extra” weight (like climbing a mountain with unnecessary weights on your back). Letting go is not hard when it means losing the weight. The relief is proportional to how far up the mountain we are on the journey. The good news is that you are not climbing alone.

There is one underlying reality that is keeping you from moving in the direction of your vision: you have said yes to too many things that are not your vision.  This is no one else’s fault but your own.  You must own it.  Admit your deep fear of disappointing others and admit and explore what do you love.  Say yes to what you love and your “no’s” will come more easily.

Growth is and must remain a mystery.  But it is not optional. We must grow. And our creations must grow. But our attempts to do this on our own end in peril. We can not, ultimately, make something grow.  What, then, is our role in empowering our creative endeavors to thrive? The dangers and pitfalls of forcing success are obvious, but perhaps less obvious is how to actually get out of our way to let success unfold naturally.

Let go! Let go of the way things are. Or were. Or almost were. Quit trying to make the world revolve around your plans. Let go of all else.  Open your hands for something much, much better.
It won’t make sense.  Will this even pan out?  Will this turn into what we are hoping?  A vision worth having is gift, it does not belong to us.  It belongs to another realm.  Let’s visit there now!

Change hurts. There are no guarantees. But Something tells us to go. And that Voice is the beginning of something new. When we focus our eyes ahead into a distance we can not yet see. But keep walking. Not by what is seen. But by what will be seen.

Sometimes we simply have no clue what to do.  Indecision, or let’s call it non-decision, compared to decisiveness, seems like weakness. Failure to lead or act.  But even the most decisive person gets decision fatigue.  Perhaps there is another way, the way of contemplation, for those who have the courage to say “not yet” and live with tension…on purpose.

To what extent can creative pursuits become self-sustaining economic vehicles…enough to live on…to feed our families? This is something artists unavoidably struggle to make sense of.  We must at once get past but also embrace the romantic but unfair stereotype that all artists suffer (and must) financially. 

Be it an idea, a creative project, a hope, once you get this new “child,” it needs to make its appearance in the world.  We have the responsiblity to try. But our tendency, after a birth, is to over-think and over-protect our infant idea.  We don’t want anyone’s dirty hands on our precious baby.  But at some point that baby has to grow up! At some point, we have to allow others into our idea or project.

To get from one phase of life to another we have to pass through a transition zone (what we like to call “the valley”).  No one wants to go through a valley, it is dark, ominous, hard to navigate, and generally has little to be desired. But the more disciplined traveller knows what is found there is worth those risks.