Finding Creativity In Silence...

Maybe being back in a school environment, among kids who seem to be constantly plugged into music, their phones, the drama of teenage life, that prompted this post.  I’m sometimes not sure what drives a certain topic to the forefront when I fully expected to write about something else, but I learned a long time ago to listen to that inner voice.

It sometimes gets drowned out by all the other noise.

I’m not even sure if this post would have been possible to write until now... when the rest of my family is fast asleep, the clock is getting closer to striking midnight and I have moved beyond the panic of everything that needs to get done before I get on a plane Saturday morning.

There is very little noise in my world right now other than the tapping of my fingers as they race across the keyboard, trying to keep up with my scattered thoughts, and the faint sounds of the plows out clearing driveways now that the latest snowfall is done.  All is calm, all is quiet.

How often do we allow ourselves to just listen to nothing anymore?

Moments of stillness and silence are sometimes very needed when the world rushes around us at a dizzying speed.  Sometimes, instead of finding a fanfare of ideas or rushing about in a firework burst of activity, we need to just listen for the little whispers of our innermost soul... and for that, it must usually be quiet.

Don’t be afraid of the silences in your life... they are the rests and pauses in the song.

INHALE:  Some people fear silence more than others.  My grandmother kept a police scanner in her bedroom after my grandfather died so that she could not only hear what was going on in her little community, but there were other voices to fill the void after his cheerful whistling about the house was silenced.  Nick often keeps the TV on in the background while he gets work done and both my girls love having music blaring in their rooms, listening to playlists that seldom sync with each other.  I absolutely LOVE moments when I can hear nothing but the world around me or the sound of my own breathing.  Today was a reminder of how much I need to have that quiet reflection time to keep myself in balance.

EXHALE:  This will be harder for some of you than others.  Find a quiet spot and just sit to listen and think for at least 15 minutes.  Pay attention to the random thoughts that pop into your head, but try to turn off the “to do” lists.  Listen to the sound of your own breathing.  If you find it hard to have your hands empty, you can pick up needles to stitch or knit, doodle something or twiddle your thumbs... but just listen to the silence which is full of other sounds.  How comfortable are you with the quiet?  What thoughts or ideas scurry through your head most often?  What inner truths about your life right now have you been trying to keep from hearing?  This is what quiet contemplation can be all about.  Turn down the other noise and turn up the quiet... it might just spark something unexpected!

When Someone Else Can Say It Better..

I’ve been struggling with how to post the scattered thoughts I’ve had all week as I struggle to find little ways of being Creative while getting back into a regular routine.  To complicate matters, I also gave up drinking Pepsi a week ago and the headaches were pretty bad at first.  I still find myself missing my Dad at odd times or wondering how to work in some time for creativity at the end of the day when I need to exercise and pack lunches.  Sometimes, it feels as if I am starting over from scratch every day...

Then a beautiful entry on my sister’s blog reminds me that each of us wrestles with that on any creative journey.

Her gift with words sometimes takes my breath away!  Then I remember to just take the next breath... and repeat... again and again and again.

INHALE: How often does trying to be perfect get in your way of doing anything at all?  How hard are you on yourself when you create anything?  How often to you stop before you get very far and think about starting all over again?  Maybe it is time to stop trying to be perfect and just concentrate on being.

EXHALE:  Instead of trying to do it all ourselves, we can learn from and lean on the wisdom of others.  When you feel flustered or frazzled, remember that you are not alone.  When you feel like giving up, go looking for words of comfort or inspiration from others.  I found these gems tonight and plan to scribe them into my sketchbook!

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.”

-Alan Alda

“Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.”

-Edwin Land

“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Life is "trying things to see if they work."

-Ray Bradbury

A Shout Out to Incredible Creativity..

There are times when you discover something so beautiful and powerful that you just have to share it with others.  My mom was at a workshop this weekend led by Jan Richardson.  Her website and her blog offer a look into how she writes about her faith or creates powerful, beautiful images.  She has the most incredible way of putting complex issues and ideas into words, living out her beliefs  as well as inspiring others to explore and giving them ideas to try.  As a preparation for Advent, she encouraged groups of people to explore while making images that fit each of the topics out of torn paper.

Can you tell that my Mom had fun playing?

I love looking at the textures and colours that she mixed as well as the unexpected shapes and images that form when you just give yourself over to something creative.

Being given the chance to play and explore is such a gift in itself.

How can you carve out a bit of time amid the chaos of this season to be Creative?  The time will be well spent.

INHALE:  When life gets busy or emotional, we have a tendency to hide, to make excuses, to avoid putting our own needs on the “to do” list, I think that we actually make things worse.  Just as our bodies cannot go forever without rest, our spirits need Creative moments to restore them and keep them in balance.  We need to Inhale our Creativity on a daily basis during busy seasons as well as quiet ones.

EXHALE:  Almost everyone has a calendar or planning book where they keep track of their major appointments and events.  Open yours and block off 2 half hour sessions sometime in the next week where you can be creative.  Now find 3 fifteen minute blocks to look through magazines, fondle supplies, shop for ingredients or sort creative spaces.  Shorter times can be just as valuable when we work them in.  Aren’t you worth it?

Creative Retreating...

I am getting excited!  Despite the forecast calling for a bit of snow overnight, I am mostly packed for the cross stitch retreat up at Camp Wildwood this weekend.  I can’t wait to sneak off with my Mom for a weekend of roughing it and also getting away from it all.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. My laptop is staying behind but the camera is coming.

You see, for most of my cross stitch designing career, this is the weekend that I get to go away and NOT be a designer.  Ok... you can’t really shut that off, but I get to go stitch OTHER people’s designs, hang with stitchers who really know me or just PLAY to invent a one of a kind ornament for the exchange.  I can nap if I want to, go for a walk if I want to, journal and sketch or just sit and stitch for ages with some of the nicest people on this planet in a beautiful main lodge while someone else cooks all my meals.

Can you see why I am getting excited?

No phone

No kids

No husband

No laundry

No computer

Ahhhhhhh!

I’ve packed WAY more projects than I will have time to get to and I always get a bit cold because I pull my mattress down onto the floor. At 6’5” in my bare feet, WAY too much of me hangs over the edge on their bunk beds!

Wheee! 24 hours from now, I will be away from it all for the weekend.  I can’t wait!

INHALE:  Retreats are great if you can find one to attend.  It can be hard to put yourself first and leave other responsibilities behind, but we usually come back from such a retreat feeling SO recharged and reinspired. Don’t be afraid to be a little selfish now and then.  If you always put yourself last and do for others, you forget to take care of the person in whose skin you actually live!  Love yourself enough to make time for yourself!

EXHALE:  Maybe you can’t take part in a retreat, but you can still block time off for yourself. Open a blank page in your book and write down something you’d love to do if you had each of the following time segments available.  Now pick ONE of them that you would MOST like to do and schedule it into your calendar sometime in the next 2 weeks. Go ahead... you deserve it!

If I had an extra 30 minutes to myself, I would:

If I had an extra hour to myself, I would:

If I had an extra 3 hours to myself, I would:

If I had an extra morning to myself, I would:

If I had an extra day to myself, I would:

If I had an extra weekend to myself, I would:

Playing and Enjoying Mindless Creativity...

I booked off today.  After teaching for 2 days and getting a call to substitute teach for tomorrow and Friday, I decided last night that I needed a day to catch up on laundry, cooking, sketching and the piles on my desk.  A few weeks ago, we bought 10 lbs. of beets and tucked them in our cold storage area down in the basement.  Nick and I love beets, but 10 lbs. is a LOT of beets, especially since both of my girls are rather iffy about them.  There were also bits and pieces of other veggies in the fridge to use up, so once the girls got home and started in on homework, I decided to make a huge pot of veggie soup and process the beets.

My cookbooks all explained how much easier beets were to peel once they’d been cooked or steamed.  “The peels will just slide off!” they promised. Remembering earlier attempts to make borscht a few years ago where my hands were stained pink for weeks from peeling piles of beets, I was ready to try another technique.

Along the way, as I stood at my sink rubbing the peel off cooked beets and staring into a huge pot of blood red water, I started getting crazy, creative ideas, especially when Erin wandered by and said “Cool! Didn’t they used to dye things red with beets?”

Reaching up into the cupboard, I found a rather old dishcloth I’d knitted about 6 months ago.  (I knit a LOT of these on car trips!)

I decided to throw it into the pot to soak as I scrubbed the peels off the beets.

When I was almost done with the beets, I decided to peek at the cloth.  What a colour change!

Dumping all that colour down the sink was “Creepy Cool” according to the girls because it looked like blood!  Can you tell they are SO ready for Hallowe’en?

Of course, without a setting agent, the dye didn’t really stay long in the dishcloth.  I decided to toss it out with the scraps rather than put it in the wash and risk turning socks or underwear pink.

With all the beets processed into freezer bags or made into beet salad, it was time to relax for a while and enjoy someone else’s Creativity.

I used to fill in doodle posters like these all the time as a kid.  I bought one a few years ago and rediscovered it today while tidying my office.  There is something incredibly soothing about colouring in a few shapes at a time and watching the colours play with each other as the design begins to come to life.  I still have a LOT of white space to fill, but it was FUN... and that’s what this adventure has been all about... finding more ways to add fun and creativity to each day.

INHALE:  The Amish take delight in treating every task as important and worthy of doing to the best of your ability.  By playing and being a bit off the wall, the job of peeling and chopping up 10 lbs of beets became less tedious and more of an adventure.  I don’t think I will ever find a way to make chores like dusting feel Creative (though I’ve been known to doodle things in the dust when it gets really thick!) but for today, the challenge of looking for Creativity worked, then I got to take great delight in enjoying someone ELSE’s creation. All I had to do was colour in the shapes!

EXHALE:  When was the last time you bought a colouring book, doodle poster or printed out a mandala to colour?  Try to find one that makes your fingers itch to play with a new box of crayons or package of markers and keep it handy so that the next time you are talking on the phone, helping a child with homework, relaxing before bed or even watching television, you can colour in the next page or section of your project and have something Creative to show for your time instead of wondering where the hours went.

Battling with Boa... or Knowing When KNOT to Continue...

I have to laugh now and make this into a horrible pun.  Last night at midnight, there was nothing funny about wool wrangling. The yarn known as BOA to be exact.  It’s not wool and never will be. Think of it as a long string of pretty colours that looks ever so much like eyelashes.

After showing off my half completed scarf that absolutely dazzled non-knitters, the time came to change to the next 2 balls of yarn and complete the scarf.  The only problem was that the second ball of Boa did not lie placidly and cooperatively in my knitting bag. It did not blend beautifully and play nice with the other yarn... it turn into an evil tangle.

“Fine!” I thought to myself.  After a day of worrying about a friend and dealing with the oxymoron of Church politics, I was sure that Creativity was telling me to turn this into a wonderful blog entry about patience and persistence....  that when life got tangled, you were supposed to just take your time and try to sort things out.

So when my yarn began to do THIS around 9 pm and The Amazing Race came on, I wasn’t too nervous, I just began to try to sort through the tangle.

By 10 :15, I was making a bit of progress after the yarn decided to do THIS, but my  husband gave up and headed to bed.  The house grew still after I turned the TV off to sit alone with my thoughts.  I love the sound of a quiet house when my family is sleeping upstairs.  It reminds me of MANY nights I spent working from 9 pm to 1 am when the kids were young on designing and graphics because that was the only time I could work on the computer uninterrupted.

I did think a lot about life and how things can snarl up or get complicated to quickly.  I thought about how sometimes everything goes so smoothly and other times it become this incredible, impassible tangle that we begin to dread dealing with.  I had all kinds of lovely meditations planned as I sat there trying to unknot my yarn that kept snarling into clumps like THIS.

The problem with me is that I tend to get a wee bit.... hmm... STUBBORN, FIXATED and OBSESSIVE are probably the kindest words that I can think of.  You see, I’d basically decided that this would make such a wonderful blog entry as soon as I had a nice, neat, tangle-free ball of boa to show you.

The yarn had other plans... devious plans that increased in their complexity as the clock drew closer to midnight...

(OK... most of you would have gone to bed or played Farmville by now, but I did share that I can be a wee bit stubborn, right?)

Finally, as the clock struck midnight, I used some very colourful words and decided to salvage what I could of my yarn mess.

Tiny boa balls....

Tying them into one ball, knowing I can hide the knots in the scarf or keep them to the side and darn in the ends as I get to them, I took one last picture and headed off to bed just before 12:30 am.

What did I learn?  Next time, be quicker to pick up the scissors... or if Boa is on sale for less than a dollar, buy a third ball just in case one becomes uncooperative.  Let the cat have the one that refuses to play nice!

INHALE:  So often, we fall into the trap of wanting everything to go a certain way.  We get an idea in our mind of how something should unfold and leap merrily out into that adventure, even when Life, timing, circumstances or the Universe try to gently tell us that maybe we aren’t thinking things through.  Learn when to follow a vision and when you should adapt your great plan to get to bed at a reasonable hour!

EXHALE:  Inspired by my yarn disaster, this exhale is FUN.  Open your sketchbook or take out a blank page of paper. You might want to put a paper underneath to keep everything safe! Closing your eyes, scribble all over that paper in big, swirly, loopy tangles.  When you think you’ve made plenty of lines, open your eyes and check to see if you stayed on the paper.  Take out some of your favourite colours (or some of the ones you’ve been challenging yourself with) and color in any of the shapes in the tangle that catch your fancy.  You can try to see if you find any shapes in your scribbles or just enjoy colouring at random.  Think of me and the yarn as you color.

Retreat Day and a Walking Meditation...

It was one of those glorious, sunny fall days where the air is crisp, the colours brilliant and the sunshine just warm enough that you almost forget Winter will be  here in a few months.

Today was our women’s retreat up at a charming country church on the outskirts of town, just far enough to feel as if you got away from it all, but close enough that the day comes without a long drive home.

Part of the afternoon’s workshop was to go out along the Sugar Bush trail behind the church for 40 minutes on a walking meditation inspired by the book A Walk Between Heaven and Earth .  Blank notebooks in hand, everyone set out to jot inspirations down.  Inspired to continue yesterday’s exhalation, I took my camera along with me.

Here is my walking meditation...

• A stump invites me to stop and stare.  It looks like a tiny tree troll, inviting me to stop and pause to listed to the faint roar of cars, distant crunches of footsteps on the path, the sounds of my own breathing... so why this restless urge to move on?

• A tiny owl’s face peeks at me from the patterns on a tree’s bark.  Would I have seen that before I started looking?

• Shadow trunks stand dark against fall’s glory, cascading greens, golds, oranges and reds.  Dark trunks thrusting upwards stand apart, yet branches intertwine.

• The texture of burrs catch my eyes...bane or beauty?

 

• Soft moss grows over rough bark... new life growing out of the old.

• Hidden caverns pecked into bark or twisted into wood over time.

• One tree slopes while others stand tall.  What caused it to bend?  In the end, this tree too reaches up towards the sky.

• Colours abound as seasons turn.  This is part of our familiar dance, but how can we keep from taking it for granted.  How do we keep from overlooking the wonder around us?

• Standing, looking up at the towering trees, I who am so tall feel small, lost in awe and wonder.  No words, no sketches, no photos will ever truly match the beauty I have just seen with my soul.

• Time to head back.  My head has been busy rather than peaceful, but my heart feels light.  Just for fun, I scuff my feet in the fallen leaves and I am suddenly a child again.

INHALE:  Today was an intense reminder of how much we need those retreats from our business, the breaks from our hectic schedules and the chance to put ourselves first.  To gather with other friends in fellowship is always a gift.  To have someone else cook a meal and take care of the dishes so that you can give yourself some time “apart” is a true blessing.  We should all find ways of doing this more often.

EXHALE:  Take a notebook and something to write with on your next walk.  When you see something that catches your eye, take a moment or two to jot down a few words, a thought or an impression then move on.  You can bring a camera along as well, but the fact remains that using our words to capture a moment in time can be a powerful thing.  Don’t worry about the grammar or sentence structure... just let the words flow.