Creative Rest

There is a square of light that lands on the kitchen table at lunch time. I sit there most days, feeling the warmth on my face through the glass, even as the cold persists outside. There is no forest nearby to wander in and wonder at here where we live. Instead there is the whistle of a train, a sprawling graveyard across a busy thoroughfare, and ugly dogs behind chainlink. Rising above these details of my life, this neighborhood, the city, this land; is the sky. A sky taking up the majority of the visual real estate, dwarfing the buildings and roads, the rows of houses and parking lots. The infinite, right at our fingertips, all the time.

Normally a daily journaler, it’s been almost a year since I’ve stopped writing. I’ve strung a few sentences together here and there, but for the most part the desire to create has left me. I’ve decided to officially label this stage a “creative sabbatical,” in which I allow myself to put the pen down and rest, observe, listen.

I write to you today not to impart some version of my own wisdom, but mainly to talk myself through it all, to write the things I need to hear. And today, I really need to hear that I am enough, and that my Higher Power is here with me, all the time.

I’ve often thought about what happens to us when our outside layers are stripped away. If you peel off those roles and attributes that define you (say: mother, daughter, writer, adventurer) what is left? And that’s where I’m at, circling back to my reflection in the mountain and wondering, who is this soul? What is this life? Embracing the Great Hunger that has gnawed at my insides since childhood. For now, the only way to do that is to sit still and let the scales fall.

I turn up the volume when Mr. Otis Redding sings,

Look like nothin's gonna change
Everything, still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, yes

We oughtn’t torture ourselves over what we have yet to do or haven’t done or failed at. We’ve got to celebrate ourselves for who we are; wonderfully and beautifully made, like each flower in the field, each grain of sand on the beach, each snowflake from the sky. I breathe from the sacred air that is always with us, stretching out into the universe above this small place and open my hands, all the time.