Celebrating what is

Life is good.

I have been enjoying it quite a lot lately.

And I feel the need to point this out (mostly to myself) because I have spent so much of the past not enjoying life. Beyond a handful of months there have been very few extended periods where I have appreciated life—embracing what is going on in and around me with open arms and spirit.

It is hard to put into words the joy that comes over me when I realise how… dare I say it… happy and grateful… I am with my life.

Recent days have not been without their stresses and strains. Between full-time study, paid work, volunteer work and starting to try my hand at a few short writing pieces, life is very full; but beautiful. I am living at a busier pace than I have in nearly ten years. Sometimes I misjudge my energy and my body can’t keep up with the motivation that I feel, but I am constantly learning and reminding myself of the gift of that problem.

All those years of dreading life and struggling to see the joyous gifts and moments in my days. All those years of fighting and struggling against my wants and the realities I found myself in. All those years of being numbed by the combination of pain and hopelessness and affects of medications.

I am learning to celebrate.

In her book Cold Tangerines, Shauna Niequist says that “When what you see in front of you is so far outside if what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration.” (p.178) This is a truth that I’ve taken my whole adult life to learn, and I’ll probably need to keep learning it until the day I die. I can only hope I get better at it!

Despite never having dreamed of being where I currently am, for better or worse, I am learning to celebrate—the light streaming in to the lovely little house I share with two friends, the joy of making food for others, the accomplishment of another piece of writing being submitted and/or published, random late night adventures in the city with new friends. Most of all, I am learning to celebrate my creativity and myself.

It is hard work to dedicate myself to study again. However the freedom and joys I have been finding in exploring my own creativity with more abandon than ever before has been the best reward. This is the power of art. Another reason why Shauna’s book has been so significant over these past weeks. She says that “art slips past our brains straight into our bellies. It weaves itself into our thoughts and feelings and the open spaces in our souls, and it allows us to live more and say more and feel more.”  (p. 227)

This I know: at the risk of maybe experiencing depressive lows again, I will celebrate. I will attempt to make art and bake and love the people in my life and find energy in celebrating what is, instead of wishing about what should have been.

I'm Alison and I'm a recovering creative

I came home from an Artist’s Way meeting last night on an incredible high. I felt at home. I felt I was exactly where God wanted me. I felt alive.

I have missed community. I have missed connecting on that deeper level with others in an intentional way. A group of women, sitting together in a living room, sipping wine, sharing stories, laughing and listening to each other.

I woke up this morning and slammed straight into a wall of self-loathing and a head full of ‘you’re a pathetic human who can’t get your shit together’ trains of thought.

Ouch.

But I’m pretty sure they are related.

I have spent much of my life running from my creativity or just denying it even exists. I wrote prolifically as a child and well into my teens. I wrote stories and poetry, journalled almost everyday from thirteen to eighteen and sporadically through my twenties. But as I grew older the writing got darker and more hopeless. I think I really stopped writing because it required me to engage and acknowledge what I was feeling or struggling with emotionally and mentally. And even though I saw counsellors, psychologists and doctors throughout my twenties I, for various reasons, worked on my recovery and mental health at arms length. Writing was too painful, and I suspect, would have required harder work than I thought possible.

But I began to change that story a while ago when, in the midst of a breakdown, I chose to acknowledge my creativity and see it as a means to recovery. I eventually quit my job in order to explore what it would look like to be a ‘writer’ for a living. And in recent months I have made serious attempts to engage with my creativity in intentional ways- including joining a group to work through The Artist’s Way together and reading various other books on creativity.

Through this intentional work though, deep emotions and thought processes that I have been hiding from and that remain unresolved, have reared their ugly heads time and again. Every time I make progress in embracing my gifts and moving forward with the work I feel called to do, the enemies of self-doubt, perfectionism and self-sabotage march in fast.

So this morning as soon as I’d finished my morning cup of tea and bowl of cereal, I found myself lying curled up on the couch feeling rather sorry for myself and wondering how on earth to get up again. But my kind housemate made me a cup of tea and told me to get up and write something, anything, anyway.

And so here we are.

Being creative is scary. Living the life we were given well is scary. Having to live with the reality of my emotions and moods and the general chaos of our existence is hard work. But I’m learning that if I want a meaningful and free life then choosing to be creative, and in the process embracing that reality, is the only way.

In her book A Million Little Ways, Emily P. Freeman says:

“Christ is in you and wants to come out through you in a million little ways- through your strength and also your weakness, your abilities and also your lack.

I call it art, someone else calls it rubbish.

So what?

Call it what you will. God calls us his poem. And the job of the poem is to inspire. To sing. To express the full spectrum of human experience- both the bright hope that comes with victory and the profound loss that accompanies defeat.

We must make art, even in our weakness. If we don’t, we are denying ourselves, in turn, we will deny everyone else ourselves as well.” (page 168)

I want to be brave. I want to choose to be creative. I want to choose to pay attention to this life I’m living.

So I got up and wrote this blog post.

Paying attention #2

A few weeks back I wrote about paying attention. I described a new phase I am in, a new way of seeing that I am trying to instill in myself. This quote from Frederick Buechner sums up beautifully what I have experiencing and living these last few months...

pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells within.... Literature, painting, music - the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things..... If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him in what is happening around us and inside of us. If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in. From 'Art' in Whistling in the Dark by Frederick Buechner (pg 15-17)

Each day I seek to pay attention to the world around me in creative ways; to see things in new frames. I see beauty and mystery and chaos and pain. I see brokenness and transformation. And yet when the injustices, the politics, the immensity of non-grace might overwhelm me, when I begin to find within myself the same chaos and brokenness, I look to find the glimpses of mystery and grace. I look to find the holy in the commonplace.
I revel in the rich complexity of words in an Emily Dickinson poem. I marvel in the power of a single photograph to capture an entire story. I take the time to sit with a friend and speak of truthfulness and love and hope. I find therapy in the preparation of a wholesome meal.

This new way of seeing has been particularly helpful as I have begun work in communications with a church-based NGO who is seeking to alleviate injustice, transform communities and engage the Church in this mandate. I am trying everyday to see people with my imagination, to see their stories as well as their faces. I am conscious that how I communicate - whether it be through words or photos or design - should speak of truth and grace. I want to allow people to see the world in new frames, to 'see' people from places unknown with imagination.

I long to be creative and to witness creativity as a way of entering in to the mystery of being, the holiness of our world and the God who created all these things.

inspiration & mystery

My beautiful and creative friend Katie wrote on her blog yesterday:

It seems that this is how things always go: I want to write and be creative every day but then… life happens; It seems as though there is always something [else] to do, someone to see, errands to be run. Yet, in defiance of these patterns of late, I am resolved to write a blog post every day for this week at least.
Happily Katie

I feel the same way a lot of the time. I am currently in the most creative space I've been for many years, I'm finding inspiration in so many things everyday.... and yet I don't follow through with a lot of the thoughts that pop into my head. And I've been challenged lately that if I want to be a serious writer (and one day maybe even get paid for it!) then I have to do what my piano teacher always told me: practice, practice, practice!

So I'm going to set myself the same challenge and write something on my blog everyday for the next week. Here it goes.....


I have been reading Brian McLaren's brilliant book 'A Generous Orthodoxy' lately. Every chapter contains something beautiful and profound for me, so I am pacing myself to one or two chapters a day. Sometime last week I came across the following quote, and have been reflecting on it ever since:

"To address the issue of a truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets that speak against a prose world." Walter Brueggemann quoted in Brian McLaren's 'A Generous Orthodoxy'

McLaren believes, as do I, that in many parts of the Christian community today the 'Truth' is not alive in the vibrant and dynamic way that it should be. Our call is to speak against this. How then can I be a poet in a prose world?

The most profound way I understand is to be open to the mysterious, paradoxical, messiness of our faith and belief; to acknowledge we misunderstand and don't begin to understand so much. This is the faith I want to seek to live today...

McLaren quotes a Catholic chaplain as saying this:

[when one] attempts to convey something of God's holy otherness he tries one earthly simile after another. In the end he discards them all as inadequate and says apparently wild and senseless things meant to startle the heart into feeling what lies beyond the reaches of the brain. Something of the kind takes place here: 'Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has for prepared for those who love him.' (1 Cor. 2:9) These realities beyond understanding can be brought closer only by the overthrow of everything naturally comprehensible. Flung into a world of new logic, we are forced to make a genuine effort to understand. A Generous Orthodoxy, 153-54.

May we all experience God's holy otherness in new, mysterious and profound ways, that we might be drawn closer to Him.