On the creative spirit
maybe it's time to listen to my intuition
Could it be that she is clearing the clouds from my energy field like she says? Maybe. Or is it that I’ve made some decisions recently for my life that finally feel aligned with my soul? Possibly. What if what I’m feeling is my own creative spirit stirring deep inside?
It’s 6:00 am and I’m awake with the birdsong. Swirls is at the bottom of the bed breathing deeply. The sunlamp is on full blast, and I can hear my spouse Janyce emptying the dishwasher, silverware dropping into place in the drawers, coffee pot gurgling.
“Honey, you don’t have to do everything,” I say, as she walks by the bedroom.
“It was only four people,” she says. “I just want to get it done.”
More silver clanks around in the bottom of the copper sink. Swirls gets up to stretch and turns around a few times before settling back down in a tight round ball, her head facing out the window.
This is the moment in the morning, on the last day of a holiday weekend, where I feel that urge to get up and get moving, get into action. Instead, I pick up my cellphone lying beside me on the bed. A friend of mine is celebrating her birthday weekend. She usually sends me pictures in real time in text, but I haven’t heard from her at all. Another friend is having surgery tomorrow. We volley a few texts back and forth to set our anxiety at ease. She is getting herself mentally prepared, so I leave her to her morning without distraction.
On Saturday, I walked into a struggling plant nursery in town. It had just a few tables left displaying 4-inch pots of annuals. I remember when I would visit this same nursery on previous Memorial Day weekends and fill the car with as many perennials as I could stuff into the back seat. I almost left once I saw the paltry floral offerings. At least on first glance. But something was keeping me there. I decided to wander a bit and trust my intuition. Here’s the thing about creativity, sometimes it helps when you give yourself a smaller container to work in. Fewer choices, more constraints. Turns out there was just enough variety on those tables to fill my three empty container pots for our back patio.
I spent the two weekend days outside in my garden, setting the table, chopping herbs in the kitchen with Janyce, sculpting my new found plants. Making things beautiful.
“It was a great dinner, and a really nice time. And your hummer is now at the feeder,” says Janyce shouting from the kitchen.
I have a friend who is doing some energy work on me from a distance. I don’t claim to know how she does this exactly. But I am feeling a bit better lately. Not quite so burnt out. “Could it be that she is clearing the clouds from my energy field like she says? Maybe. Or is it that I’ve made some decisions recently for my life that finally feel aligned with my soul? Possibly. What if what I’m feeling is my own creative spirit stirring deep inside?”
“We’ll call Jim over for breakfast and give him some of this leftover strawberry rhubarb crumble and then we’ll all go for a walk,” I think to myself. I feel like being in the woods this morning even as the sky is clouding over. Something peculiar has been happening to me on these woods walks lately. There’s this single birch tree that I feel compelled to touch each time I pass. It’s a slender tree, leaning out a bit into the path and the only one of its kind standing beside groups of stately pines and leafy maples. One single, graceful, white presence. I often pause there for a bit and crane my neck to look up the long trunk to where the leaves finally reach the sky, my cheek pressed against its bark. I know nothing when it comes to birch trees, but I was feeling a bit foolish about my behavior. So I looked it up on the internet.
“Birches, including silver birch (Betula pendula) and downy birch (Betula pubescens) are the most common native trees in Scotland, are a vital part of the Caledonian Forest, both as pioneer species in the pinewoods and through forming extensive stands of their own.”
Anyone who knows me well could tell you about my inexplicable lifetime fascination with everything Celtic —especially Scotland. “Of course, this is a native tree to Scotland,” I thought. I read on about their specific symbolism.
“As the birch is a pioneer species this gives it a symbol of rebirth, new beginnings and growth. It's a sacred tree within the mythology of the Celts and is thought to have very protective influences.”
None of this is a coincidence to me.
The artist Suleika Jaouad had a vision of a jellyfish come to her in her dreams. She didn’t question it, she just started painting it. And then thinking about it. And reading about it. She let the symbolism of it imbue her creative process. She trusted her own intuition.
“I forgot to tell you about Lynne’s email,” I say to Janyce. It’s now late morning after breakfast and we’re walking side-by-side on the rail trail. My ex-husband Jim is walking many paces in front of us with Swirly on her long leash.
“Tell me,” says Janyce.
“Well, she said that she had an image keep coming to her during the healing. She wrote:
“Then I cleared a cloud surrounding your head, and saw an image of a calm starry night sky. It felt like the calm after a storm. It felt like relief.”
“I’ve been thinking about that comment all weekend,” I say. “And at one point, after dinner yesterday, while we were sitting on the patio as the sun was going down, I took a look back through the glass slider into our dark dining room and the tea light candles were still glowing in the holder above the table— suspended pricks of light like tiny stars in a dark sky.”
“I saw that, too.” says Janyce.
“I don’t think that is just a coincidence,” I say.
“I think you are right,” she says.