Creativity and the heart

Have been thinking a lot about the power of the creative path.    Why is it that some of us cannot leave it behind?  What keeps all those amazing juices flowing inside?  I think it may have something to do with living and breathing, surviving even... We go beneath the territory of the brain and all its brilliance and artifice, and we sink into some deep - even physical -  truth about ourselves, a truth we can't necessarily articulate. When we are in the presence of good art, whether it is a Bach fugue, a Matisse painting, even a line of Shakespeare, a ballad sung by our incomparable Wesla Whitfield, we hear the profound voice of the heart, and we are slowed down in the witnessing of it, as it moves over us gently.  We are held in a moment in time.  In the presence of such truth, we cease to make plans, review our past, worry about our health or future; we simply remain present with the gift.

I keep trying to make things with my hands:  knitted pieces, beautiful food, colorful wrapped gifts, beaded necklaces, photographs ..... because in the doing I am entirely present, in touch with my heart.  I was talking recently with a friend about my work in hospice and the profound meaning it carries, and he said that when working with the dying you cannot be anything but real -- that "real" which emanates from your heart.  The roles and agendas you have been clinging to are no longer relevant.  And so, too, in creating art,  you find the opportunity to stay in touch with that authentic core of who you are, because anything less will not yield the kind of beauty (truth) you want to offer the world.

Art and death ... Beads and knitting, cooking and making music and holding a sick person's hand .... all ask us to return to what is true in us.  I can't think of a better way to live.