Creating as Gift and Gratitude

A few short thoughts and an anniversary giveaway

Robert Delaunay, Windows Open Simultaneously (First Part, Third Motif), 1912. Oil on canvas. Tate Modern. Public Domain.

Our breath is visible in the air right now, but we have started seeds in the house.

Little green boxes of bronze fennel, cherry tomatoes, sages, dill, horehound, and hyssop line the western wall of our dining room, and already they delight with their faint perfume and emerging shapes.

In this room, we rarely eat. Instead, we mix colors or set up a train depot. The old dishes are still in the corner, waiting to be used, but the dining table is stained with paint, and I rather like it.

The shutters are open in here today, providing passage for the southern sun to warm the starts a little more, encourage them to grow on a little more until spring. Lucy, our best good girl, sleeps in the oblong block of yellow light most of the morning, shifting her arthritic legs to match the path of the warmth until it disappears over the oaks.

Recently I have come to a greater awareness of what a gift it is to do a creative thing, whether that thing is making a meal, planning the garden, or making an impromptu paper bat (my son asked, so let's give this a shot!). It is an even greater gift to attempt to write in the midst of life, when so much of life sometimes seems so much more important than writing. Illness, stressors, needs swirl around; a small voice whispers, how does writing compare to that?

I imagine that you have an art, too, that waits for you somewhere in the house, just beyond the dishes and your briefcase ready to be carried to work and the beautiful people jumping into your line of vision. Or maybe your art is the dishes, and your work, and the beautiful people in your life. I know this is true for me; these things are not in competition, but rather, always enhance one another’s brilliance.

Lately, the actual act of writing has become an act of gratitude, and I have wanted to carve time for this. Any creativity I possess comes from the supreme Creator, in Whose image I am created. This is not an egotistical nod to “my great abilities.” Rather, it is an acknowledgement of my supreme dependence upon the One from Whom all blessings (all goodness, all life) flow. I am dependent upon Him for everything: my sustenance, my very breath, my hope in Life, who I am and wish to be, for in Him I “live and move and have my being” (Acts 17:28). I ask for this sustenance, this stuff of life, every day, mostly through prayers unspoken.

And for the asking and for the receiving, I give thanks, which I find most often I express through journaling and writing.

In Olivier Clément’s wonderful, Three Prayers, he has this to say about “Give us this day, our daily bread” from the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13):

What we are asking from God is that we might receive, on this day, every kind of bread, every form of sustenance, as if it were the Eucharist; that is, communion in his Body and in his Presence … The daily task of believers is to discern and set free these sparks of the Presence, that they might again return to the original fire, not by abandoning matter but by transfiguring it.¹

“Enable us,” he continues, “to discern in beings, in things and in everyday situations the face and the word of the coming Christ.”

This is what I journaled after reading Clément’s passage: “God grant me the grace, wisdom, and ability to discern “the face and word of the coming Christ” in all that I do everyday, in all my art (both public and personal). May it “set free these sparks” of You.

And thank you, too, for the bread of this day you’ve given me, for giving me the chance to try to put it all into words. It is, indeed, communion with You, for You are everywhere present and filling all things.”

I hope you are able to give thanks today for whatever your art is, for whatever your day holds, for whatever you find on your dining room table or warming in the sunshine.

***

This February marks one year I have been sharing pieces through my newsletter more regularly. To say thanks and celebrate a year of learning new skills and trying new things, I’d like to gift a signed, mailed copy of my book, A Long Walk with Mary: A Personal Search for the Mother of God, to a reader. (Due to international shipping costs, or if the winner prefers, I will gift an e-book or audiobook instead).

You do not need to be a paid subscriber for this!! I’ll draw a name from all my newsletter subscribers on March 1 and email the recipient.

In the meantime, as always, thank you for reading.

1. Olivier Clément, Three Prayers: The Lord’s Prayer, O Heavenly King, The Prayer of Saint Ephrem, trans. Michael Breck, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000), 28-29.