August 14th - Courage To Create

Sarah's got some really good stuff today.

Here goes. 




Start Quote

Perhaps one of the reasons we fear 

excavating our authentic selves

or encountering the inner artist 

is because creativity seems too risky.

 

We hear the word

"artist"

and we associate the calling with 

dramatic, self-inflicted doom...

[Smash anyone? Marilyn Monroe?]

The number of suffering souls 

sacrificed on the altar of art by self-abasement

goes a long way toward explaining why many women,

especially with children,

hesitate to call themselves artists.

It's safer to dabble...

Creating costs too much, 

especially if you believe creating 

only comes by the crucifixion technique.

Why should this be so?...

"Write the truest sentence you know," 

Ernest Hemingway encourages the writer in you.

Paint the truest image you can render.

Wait all day with camera poised to capture 

the five-second sliver of light.

Express the rage and range of raw emotion through your dialogue.

Convey passion's power with the curve of your dancer's body

 honed through discipline and denial.

Set the angel free when you carve.

Make the heavens weep when you compose.

But in order to be true to a creative work,

the artist must journey to the center of the self. 

Past the conscious sentries in the brain,

beyond the barbed wire barricades of the heart, 

into the trenches of "truth or dare."

You can't write a true sentence 

or live authentically

if you don't trust yourself. 

You can't trust yourself without courage...

"How...do you prepare yourself,

all alone,

to enter an extraordinary state 

on an ordinary morning?"...

-Annie Dillard

By showing up.

Day in, day out.

By not judging how it's going.

If it's going at all, 

that's enough.

You can't afford to think about 

how the work will be received when you're finished.

That's not your job...

Our job, then, is just to do it. 

It can't be published, produced, performed, 

or purchased if it doesn't exist.

Consider this: 

what if the woman who wrestles with God 

but doesn't live to tell the tale 

is the one who refuses to create 

- a work of art, an authentic life? 

What if the fatal wound, 

the one from which we never recover, 

is regret?

Today...dare yourself to believe in your creativity, 

wherever it may lead you. 

Trust that where it leads is exactly where you're supposed to be. 

The word courage comes from the 

French word for the heart, coeur. 

Your authentic self knows where you're headed. 

Don't wrestle with Spirit. 

Collaborate with It. 

End Quote 

Have courage.

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Gratitude Journal

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1) Therapy. Listen to this, this is awesome.

2) The sunset was gorgeous.

3) Being heck of productive. So productive, that we pass out on the couch before dinner.

4) Being able to go to Costco by myself because my friend took the kids for an hour. So awesome.

5) Feeling and looking fabulous, just because, and documenting it.