I am way behind on the "documenting and reporting on places and travel" that I had intended when I started this blog. But some mysterious force keeps pulling me in and down to some previously unknowable place -- even as I look out, with amazement, at this magnificent world.
When we embarked on this journey, I had a deep hunger for time for healing, time for prayer for people and this world in need of healing, and time to create. And each day, I am seeing the very close, even intimate connection between these three.
In "The Artist's Way", Julia Cameron says; "Art may be the finest form of prayer....In the art of creation, the Creator reveals himself to us, and we too are revealed to ourselves as something of the divine...The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union."
In her iconic poem "Summer Day", Mary Oliver suggests that even the act of taking note, of marvelling at this fascinating world, is a form of prayer: " I do not know exactly what a prayer is/But I do know how to pay attention/How to fall down in the grass/How to kneel in the grass/How to be idle and blessed/Tell me, what else should I have done?/Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
I am deeply moved by these comments, and by the experience of finally starting to create; and am hoping the act of doing so may serve as my prayer and offering for the world.
So here's to finding time to take note of this beautiful world, to falling down in the grass, to being idle and blessed, to being fully present in this wild and precious life, and seeing the spark of the divine in it, and in all of creation.
