Seasons Greetings

"It’s important in all practice to realize that you’re the one that’s creating the ground for it to happen. Not that you are it, or that your ego identifies with it, but that you can take responsibility for having created the fertile ground for this thing to happen. You know, the correct theatrical lights and costumes and feeding it with the right energy so that the magic happens. I think that’s important, to take credit for it. It adds confidence and strength to the practice." --Richard Gere, "Everything's About the Heart", Tricycle

I am thinking a lot lately about creative energy. Everything begins with a thought, with rumination, with a series of weights and measures before any action ever takes place. The mind vacillates between the devil it knows and the devil it don't before it can take that very tentative, or very bold leap of faith. This can take days, or many years, this process of wonder, and even though it seems like non-action, it is an important precursor to taking a first step. (It was such a comfort to understand that the four years I put off getting braces wasn't a waste of time, but simply incubation, preparing for what was to come.)

What I like about the quote above is that though it might feel that such leaps of faith are impulsive or unprotected, they are actually coming from a very powerful place. The creative seeds are planted within good soil--soil that has lain fallow and is well rested, ready for an idea, a photograph, a painting, a poem--even a baby, to take root. You created the garden, the fallow earth, as well as the gardener, the sun, the rain and the fertilizer. The weed whacker too.

Everyone I know is either pregnant, or just had a baby. Everyone I know is breaking ground into an entirely new way of creating, whether its with words, images or with their bodies. I think about the age I am and for the first time I do not feel old. I feel like I am in the prime of my expression, and I am surrounded by those who are also in their prime. This is no accident. It makes me feel connected, that we all chose each other for this very reason, and that everything is as it should be.

For so long it has deeply pained me to feel that I missed the boat and was somehow left behind on the shore of life, being unpartnered without children, and in their stead I have braces that make me feel even more like an anachronism. If I am to tell the truth, this is still a visceral pain, one that I am struggling with, even though I can clearly see so much that was beautifully birthed as a direct result of the braces. (Including this blog.)

Spring and renewal are palpably present. The air is warm. The sun beckons from every unshaded window. And I know, even if it is only in the rumination state, that is only a matter of time before the full flush of summer comes, with its sweet, ripened fruit.