In Time, With Space... (all creative souls need space)

I was considering beginning a monthly creative life/practice review here at the blog.

But how do you begin a cohesive monthly review - or any kind of personal re-counting or reflection for such a short period of time - when it seems like your whole world has been shifting from the inside out for... over a year... maybe three... or... is it ten? There are so many layers, too many words for what can't be summed up anyway.

While I often encourage reflective reviews of our creative practice and process... there are also times when it becomes a distraction, a way of looking back so as to avoid facing the ultimate, great unknown of Now that is so abundantly available at any juncture.

Sometimes we need the anchor to re-orient or focus, but sometimes we need to remember that if we're looking back to find something we think we lost or failed to see along the way, we may be missing a living encounter with creative presence right here, right now.

Turning forty does something to you. That’s for sure. There is a threshold of sorts around this time.

What I can say... what doesn’t seem to change, despite its risk of sounding trite... is that everything that ever happened in my life, everything that is happening, and maybe even that will happen, led me here. To This moment. This perspective... ever-expanding, I hope. This dance with holding on and letting go, and forgetting all of that to just BE. Feeling all the things. ALL the things.

Conversely, even today’s rabbit hole that leads back into some old shadow is part of it... or yesterday’s trail that entices me into some new territory to explore for awhile. It’s all part of the journey of getting to be human. Some days I don’t know which it is that I find myself inhabiting... the hole or the trail. They can and do overlap, when you get right down to it.

But on a good day... a really good day... I’m not so much concerned with having an answer about what is what, what should be, or what could be, or about the direction of my perception, or how my energy is spent exploring.

I’m just present to what really, truly moves me.

One thing I have been learning, about being me, is that to even begin to know what moves me - to form a living relationship with what calls my heart and spirit into Life - I need Space.

Space to listen. Be in my own skin. Absorb the deliciousness of quiet. To unravel from patterns of survival, judging and reaction that serve no one’s best interest. To put down the tools and find respite. To peel away layers of other people’s stories and agendas, and the modern world’s residue of contradictions and prescriptions for a meaningful life.

Space to polish the lens only I see with. To be swept away by music or prayer or color becoming breath... or whatever is spinning in worlds within me that no one else can take or measure or see.

Space to be nothing more and nothing less than who and how I Am, in the Presence that moves me toward my becoming.

May we each be able to create, carve, refresh and find space in our lives - however small or large, whether physically, spiritual, mental or otherwise - for this filling up of our souls. May we find in that space what heals our tired places and moves us toward a sense of gratitude and creative vitality.