“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realized, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
Have you ever yearned to be an artist? I certainly have. I can remember back in early elementary school marveling at the creations of my artistic classmates. Their work always took center stage on parents’ night. My stick figure drawings and wonky clay pots seemed less inspiring. For years I dreamed of being a dancer, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. My adolescent poetry was depressing. At this point, I’m sure you see the dilemma.
Art was an end result with narrow definitions to me. I was completely focused on the creation and not the creative process, much less the creator. It is the creative process that changes the creator, encouraging them to imagine something unimaginable. We all are, even without effort, creative beings. Our body’s cells break down as new cells emerge. New thoughts and ideas invade our conscious minds, and our subconscious creates our dreams, an alternate landscape of experiences and feelings.
I no longer seek to be artistic. I am content now to allow creativity to beckon me further and further into the sacred space of imagination. Here, some ideas are hard to capture, while others are visible in the words of my journal or the scraps of fabric stitched together in my quilts. I do not worry about those elusive creative thoughts, fluttering just beyond my grasp, I simply follow them like fireflies in the dark thankful for where they will lead me.
~Lisa Kiel
This is so powerful in the way it releases us from the weight of production and allows us to enjoy the creative process itself – letting go of any burden of results. The healing and life force comes from the process itself. Amazing! Thanks for sharing’
I spent so long trying to turn my art into a profit that I just hated my art because it became demanding. On top of that I never thought it was good enough to really sell and I get defeated by my own thoughts.
As soon as I let it go that I had to make a profit off my art and that I loved my own art no matter what others liked, I started to enjoy my art more. Letting the burden go let me be comfortable with my own art internally.
Once again, Beautiful analogy Lisa. The fireflies are the best. I like following fireflies without having to think of selling the product to justify the journey. The Journey is captured in each stitch of your quilts, each split second of your composing what has been brought to light by the fireflies. So poetic!
We have to care of our fireflies.