Painting Treasures …

I’ve just finished addressing, stamping, and writing personalized notes in over 60 Christmas cards. I so love this small tradition of sending mailed letters once a year that still exists – it has such a different feel than communicating through tech. I love to see peoples handwriting. I love to imagine them sitting down and writing their cards. I love the folks who send cards even though we haven’t seen or heard from each other in years. I love opening the mailbox and being greeted with mail other than flyers or bills.

I hand painted each of the cards this year… (thanks to much help from my trusted teacher …YouTube)

I got a C- in art every year in elementary school… it was so predictable, that is became the running joke. Both art and P.E.

And so, is not surprising I grew up thinking most of my life that I wasn’t very creative. Even though I danced and was a synchronized swimmer, everything was choreographed to the minute detail, like the look of the face or the placement of a finger. I thought that creativity looked a certain way, and I, according to my own categorizations, didn’t fit in that box. (Ha! The irony of a creative “box”).

But I’m learning lately that I am creative. That I do approach the world in creative ways. That I am living a creative life, whether I define it that way or not.

Are you considering becoming a creative person? Too late, you already are one.  To even call somebody “a creative person” is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species … 

If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers.  Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem solvers, embellishers… 

We have the senses for it, we have the curiosity for it, we have the opposable thumbs for it, we have the rhythm for it, we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it. 
- Elizabeth Gilbert— “Big Magic”

And as I sat for days on end painting at our kitchen table, kids hovering and fending for themselves while I madly splattered colour on every surface within range, it was fascinating to watch what thoughts and feelings arose within me…

Fear. Joy. Anxiety. Doubt. Peacefulness. Pride. Perfectionism. Delight. It all showed up. And I observed and felt and noticed it all as I was working in quiet and stillness, sliding paint across the paper, handwriting each card, practicing the up and down rhythm of calligraphy.

A much different way of being … output, stillness, rather than my usual almost constant input of information.

Serendipitously my current bathroom book (yes I have a bathroom book, doesn’t everyone?) … is “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’ve read it before, and was about to add it to our donate bin, but thought I’d skim through it once more before I passed it on.

Well … as I consider showing up with my creativity, my authenticity, of acknowledging and moving past fear and doubt and the narratives that have now grown old, but who still like to be invited to the party, in this space and in my life … this book is very timely…

Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything. So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.

- Elizabeth Gilbert - 

So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
- Elizabeth Gilbert 

Now I’m not sure my treasure is necessarily watercolour YouTube tutorials, and I’m not remotely interested in attempting to define or name those exact treasures, except to say that I’m beginning to see them and feel them … and a lot of that has to do with what and elder/teacher of mine, Quanita Roberson names as “getting myself fully in the room.”

“ I know when I can get myself fully present, fully in the room, I can bring everybody with me. This is what it means to be connected. When I am in spirit, when my soul is fully present, my soul speaks directly to yours and commands you to show you, you don’t even have a choice because we are connected…”
- Quanita Roberson 

Perhaps these cards … the handwritten notes in each one… the multiple times I expressed gratefulness for reconnection with folks this past year, showing up here in this space, is my practice of getting myself, my spirit, fully present … a reminder of what’s possible when fear is no longer a warning, but an invitation.

The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to discover those jewels––that's creative living.
- Elizabeth Gilbert 

Now … off to scrape and clean the paint splatters off the kitchen table …

Until Next Time …

-N