Activity, Creativity

Any small action creates momentum. Creativity builds more passion. We sometimes encourage our tired children to move because each movement builds momentum. The heart starts pumping blood faster, the brain wakes up and starts firing in more areas. If the snow is in the right condition and you roll a small snowball along it builds up into a massive snowman shape that lasts longer than any small snowball would. It has to have a start though and sometimes just starting is the hard part.

   I feel like it’s the same with creativity. Hearing or seeing someone’s passion can make me feel more inspired about my life’s passions. There are many types of creativity and all can be inspiring. If your enthusiasm is aglow for a totally different activity than mine, the joy is catching and is like a shot of fertilizer for my own growth and it might help me come at it from a new inspiring angle.

   Creativity just spawns more creativity. One baker with a passion for sourdough can make another baker get inspired about making galettes or croissants. Someone’s lamb rib rack meal served in joy can make another feel like it’s possible to put together a beef roast meal with equal happiness.

   We aren’t all the same in our tastes and languages for a reason but what we can do is notice other’s creative passion and love that part of them. We can feed it by sharing some of what makes us happy. If you give me a house plant cutting, I’ll happily get you a bucket of raspberries from my garden and as we show our gratitude for others gifts, it inspires us to do an even better job of what we love.

The Canadian Watercolour Society (CSPWC) has chosen 25 fresh paintings by Canadian artists to be added to the royal collection of King Charles. A few of the artists are ones I knew from a watercolour symposium in Regina. Seeing them as people in their unique dress and manner and then adding that to the singular way they paint makes it interesting to imagine their paintings hanging near each other in a gallery or wherever the royal collection is displayed. I heard them talk about each other in an admiring way as they taught their respective classes and they tried elements from the others’ painting styles.

   As fellow travellers in life, one creative person might be irritated by another’s perceived imperfection in an area they’d never let slip, but they can each be recognized for their gifts in another area where they excel. I might need to give an example here, I hope I don’t harm anyone’s character and will try to only show up my own failings.

   My random method of housekeeping might bother a lady who delights in keeping her house really neat. ( I have a hard time inviting the ladies over who keep everything neat.) It’s weird that I can relax with some mess because I love visual beauty and am bothered by spaces in decor or colour that don’t jive but i am perfectly okay with a blanket on the floor and the dog lying on it. I am sometimes even okay with someone’s jacket on the floor with the dog lying on it. I am also relaxed with leaving my sinks full of dishes and flour on the counter while I paint a painting at the window. I know i’ll clean up the kitchen yet. At the present moment, I want to capture the way the sun is slicing across the snow and defining the purplish blue shadows along the drive edge and in every dog print that punches through the white. Even the drips running down my watercolour page might be messy to a detailed realistic artist while an abstract painter would be happy with their randomness.

   A carpenter might marvel at the way a rancher lives. A rancher might wonder about the way someone’s hobby cattle look. A grain farmer might be astonished at an organic farmer who leaves weeds in his crops. Our passions and interests steer our brain in different areas but we can all learn something from each other. The important thing is that we’re building on good foundations without labels or ladders but are able to seek some common ground by appreciating each other.

   C. S. Lewis says all friendships stem from seeing something in others that we wish we had and wanting to learn from others. I am intrigued by how much I learn from my children. How can I be learning from them when I’m teaching them? They are from my own bloodline (and my husband’s) but each of them fascinate me by the character they show. My little boy manages to keep track of his one pocketknife for years although he cannot find his winter gloves when it’s time to go to school. He whips that knife out of his pocket or out its bedroom storage whenever something needs opening or cutting or twisting. I can’t figure out how he manages to be such a good inventor and a fixer yet be messy in his schedule or even so nonchalant about competitive sports. As soon as he sees me carrying a drill through the house and putting a bit in it, he shows up behind me wondering what i’m doing.

   I learn so much from each of my daughters when I take time to visit and listen. They have excellent intuition at times when I’m lacking. There are whole groups of friends around me with their many viewpoints that I benefit from. There are the little children who come for art  class and I see glimpses of their thinking pattern come out in their artwork and I fall in love with them. How can there be so many precious people all around us to love? I am so glad for the passions other people have and that they share it.

   I want the joys of other people to coat me on all sides like the moss grows up a tree in rainforest. If you haven’t been to a rainforest, they make one feel like they are in an ancient cathedral with whispers from a long ago past. I’m thinking of one called Biotopo in Guatemala. I could paint it easier than i can describe it, but the high humidity and the shade encourage the growth of moss along the tall trees and then orchids of many varieties get implanted in the moss and they hang down amid the luscious foliage. As you walk along the paths along the feet of these trees and look up, somehow everything is silenced and the world is safe. There is also a chance you’ll see the long bright feathers of exotic birds and you’ll hear a monkey call. Each action in growth that a rainforest makes influences more growth. Even when a large creative tree dies, they provide nutrients for years to their surroundings. To make some rainforests even more amazing, you can sense or even see that you are walking on growth over a once glorious Mayan kingdom that is now taken over by wild nature but it forms the shapes of land. There are always people at work uncovering those old stories and discovering more artwork in architecture.

   I also think I see growth momentum building like this in a small village. If one business pursues and succeeds in a creative endeavour, it inspires others businesses to change and adapt. Perhaps they add onto what they’re already doing or they make it even better. Maybe I only paint watercolour but i see the colours in someone’s pottery glaze and I immediately want to put that composition of colour in a sunset sky painting. Do not hide your good passions for then they are selfish but feed them and let them feed others. C. S. Lewis would also say to not let your gifts or loves get distorted but to truly invest in them for a higher cause. If a passion gets corrupted into a selfish thing, it can become the devil and destroy rather than build.

   Some days the passion will fade. The baker will tire of the endless washing of dishes and the tight schedule of dough. The painter will sit at the studio table and not be able to paint. The writer will have nothing to say.

   When I turn my back on the fading of my passion and decide to push through the blocking wall, to pursue creativity and woo it back to me, I always find it again. Some days I need others to inspire me again. Some days, I just need to play. I splatter a wet page with paint and watch for shapes to appear and trace around the odd shapes granulating paint makes all on its own. The fire is stoked anew and coals spark with flame. Falling in love comes easy but making good choices and choosing the love is when work has to be put in and duty pursued.

   Perhaps there will be failures in those creative block days and no one will be inspired by the painting or the writing and the bread I experimented with won’t be edible. But the miracle is in choosing perseverance. Something in me will always be livened by others actions and good energy even if the end product is not a masterpiece. We aren’t creating works of art, we are creating works of survival and seeking that flash from a heavenly land.

  God’s signature on each soul is unique. It partly gets formed by environment and the genes we naturally inherit but there is some unique spark in each of us that I know He loves. Why does He love us? Why does He create us each so differently? That is the mystery. The answer is the fire that drives us.

   “I don’t know who I am or who I’m going to be and I need to figure that out.” Those are the words from a teen I met. Her story is just beginning and she’s already been through a lot of difficult things. Other teens in her exact environment have been defeated and broken but I love that she has a fire to learn and I hope I get to watch her.

    We are all seeking and learning. Let us not stop the quiet momentum. Rest if you must, but never stop. For all our action, we shall find the Answer one day.

C.S.Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

   “If He (God) had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you –the reader of this.”