We are born naturally artful. The ability to make, design, and find beauty is baked into us before we emit our first yowl, lie in a crib fascinated by a shadow, or take a first step. If we are encouraged, or at least not discouraged, to follow our creative instincts, a yowl can develop into a song, the pattern of a shadow can lead us to draw, and our steps can lead into a dance.
Unfortunately, many of us as children received a different set of messages, such as “You can’t carry a tune,” “You have no artistic talent,” or “You’re clumsy.” We might have believed them, but they were never true. Gather a group of adults together and ask the question, “When did you stop …?” and you may be saddened by what you hear. The inner creative Light that encourages our play often starts dimming by third grade, if not earlier.
In other parts of the world, it would be unimaginable to tell a child that she couldn’t sing—it would be like telling her she couldn’t breathe. When I attended a conference of corporate executives in India, I was amazed at their willingness to share songs in a large circle of participants. With my American business buddies, singing freely to each other in a group would have been unimaginable.
The good news? We can recover as adults what we never really lost: our creative spirit, ability to play, and the possibility of singing, dancing, making art, or doing whatever we feel most called to do. (Creative expression can extend into any aspect of our lives.) Sure, we may never solo at the Metropolitan Opera, but our lives will be brighter as we express our spirits.
Creative expression as a spiritual path
Storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade writes that spiritual practice has two great roads: creative expression and contemplation or meditation.
In the Lorian community, we embrace both. Creative expression is a path that embraces our wholeness.
This past August, the Gaian Community hosted the 6th annual Artisan Walk. The offerings were as unique as the contributors—showcasing painting, jewelry, found objects, sewn creations, poetry, and photographs. The artisans (and I was proud to be one of them) described how Incarnational Spirituality influenced their practices. Then, in October, the conversations continued through an online “Creativity and Artistic Expression” salon.
Moving beyond my story of who gets to make art
During the Artisan Walk, I shared my “coming of age” story about discovering, in my sixties, how the message that I could not create visual art was outdated and wrong. I had lived since age ten, third grade, with the belief that I had no talent to make visual art. I knew that the “real artists” in grade school were the ones whose art hung on the walls; mine never did. Rather than risk mediocrity or failure, I focused on academics, where I displayed some talent. Then, in my career, I focused on teaching leaders, allowing “achieving and accomplishing” to override “play and wonder.”
Until, one day, my soul objected. Full stop.
My father had been an amateur artist and had filled his retirement days painting watercolors. After he died, I received a message to keep his box of art supplies “just in case.” Years later, as I was nearing seventy, the Muse guiding my creative efforts dared me to step away from the story of my non-visual artistry and take a beginning watercolor class. “Use those supplies or let go of them,” she insisted one winter night in an uncharacteristically pushy way.
I signed up to take a class at the local senior center, and as I did, the icicles holding my frozen, self-limiting narrative about art started crashing to the ground. Creating my first watercolor, mesmerized by the cobalt blue paint spreading across my paper, I knew I had lost the right to say, “I am not an artist.”
I chronicle my story of meeting the Muse and traveling into the land of art and creative expression in my just-released memoir Meeting the Muse After Midlife: A Journey to Meaning, Creativity, and Joy.
A quest for joy and meaning in our later years
My path emerged out of a quest in my fifties to discover what would bring heart and meaning to the second half of my life.
“Retirement” wasn’t it. Retirement was about leaving—a job or career, yet as I entered my sixties, I felt more engaged with life than ever. The other stories I was being offered about the years ahead sounded either overly optimistic (like “you, too, can climb Kilimanjaro if you want to”), deluded (as in “you don’t have to age”), or depressing (“as in you’re going to deteriorate until you die.”) None of these spoke to my soul or provided a spiritual perspective that could carry me through years of possible physical decline. I needed a narrative that could offer hope without sugarcoating the losses and challenges of aging.
I discovered that hope through a path of creative expression. The imagination never dies, nor does our capacity to see the world with wonder. By viewing the world through the lens of beauty, wonder, and artfulness, I found a way to stay out of despair, even when the world felt dark, and I was uncertain about the future.
I tested this idea last summer when I lost seven friends, including my sister and sister-in-law. I meditated, prayed, and retreated to my art studio with each loss. Playing with paint and collage, I found a sanctuary space big enough to hold my sorrow and reconnect me with my generativity.
When I sang or vocalized, I could let my feelings be there. I could wail, mourn, rage, or make silly animal songs. As vibrations filled my body, I found joy and remembered that I was not alone.
An incarnational process
Each of us has our own forms of creative expression and mine have come through singing, sounding, dancing, improvising, painting, and noticing nature. Through my artful experiments, I invite Spirit, or energy, to manifest through me; I become a collaborative partner. To create, I must stay anchored in my body and tuned into my senses, yet open to intuition and the subtle guidance that might be there for me.
Part of the hunger that drew me to creative expression was a desire for Beauty—to make my life about more than succeeding professionally and constantly striving to achieve. Once I changed direction and started noticing more, Beauty opened her doors to me. The more I looked, the more she revealed herself in the most ordinary aspects of life.
I found Her in places least expected - in my mother’s wrinkles of the elderly, in the faces of the marginalized, in a discarded roll of chicken wire, in a spiral heap of cow dung baking in the sun. The more I open to the Beauty around me - the more I find.
Light into Darkness
For me, Love lives at the core of my work. When I love what I am creating, I am filled—no matter what the output looks or sounds like. My creations, in turn, love me back, or at least so it seems. My love for and with the world expands.
The world is dark with war, terrorism, climate change, and crazy politics—we hardly need reminders. We do need ways and practices to keep us reaching toward the light or, as David recently wrote, “to be the Light.” My brain latches oh-too-easily on what is wrong in the world or my life—usually, these things are very tangible. It takes an intention or an act of will to open and allow the Light to come through me, no matter what is happening around me.
When I create, I find that Light and a way of transforming the darkness, at least within me.
Artistic expression gives me a way to stand in a world that can be dark while still bending toward the Light.