Author: thespacebetweenus

I don't live at the end of the world but you can see it from here! The population is twenty including the livestock and my nightlife usually consists of being curled up with a good book. I love to travel, love long walks on beaches, and a good glass of wine with challenging conversation. I started this blog as a way of sharing my gratitude for my life and for myself. It's starting to evolve as I reflect on the work I do with others. Creating community is a challenge for all of us and as the world changes those growing pains have caused me to reflect on the things we all do and don't do to create community and distance between us. Navigating the space between us is our biggest challenge and our most important one. I'm a prolific reader, love to write, published all sorts of non fiction and even submitted a novel for publishing. Stand by if I can find a publisher but it looks promising. A mother of two grown boys and the wife of a game warden I have cooled my butt on every bleacher in the region and nursed everything from calf moose to wolf cubs. My life is an interesting blend of the miraculous and mundane.

Gratitude

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The things that occurred to me this lovely morning:

1. Sometimes the most wonderful things are accidents: strangers who become teachers, whispers of our intuition, spontaneous bouts of insanity, love when we aren’t expecting it.
2. In order to forgive we need to let go of expectation and give ourselves permission to move on.
3. Family is a community chosen by the universe to teach life’s most important lessons. With those building blocks we chose to rejoice, renovate, or to recycle. Wisdom is where we learn what works best in each space.
4. For those who have never met my family, I am not a surprise. For those who know them, we are as a group, usually surprising.
5. Each day has blessings, no matter what is going on. Find them, breathe them in, return them.
6. When contemplating loss I always remember my grief is proportional to their impact. May my life reflect their impact and not their absence.
7. Blue jays, sunshine, laughter are here in part because we rejoice in them. Our perception determines our reality.
8. Why is it that our default compliment to a woman is “don’t you look lovely.” They may be smart, hard working, decent, loyal, resilient and funny. As if an accident of their genes take precedence over who they are. Well women in my life I honour all that you have made yourself. And yes you are beautiful in every way.
9. There is in the world an infinite capacity for love, awe, gratitude, and joy. The more we experience and give away the more is created.
10. As much as I wish it, I can not take away another’s hurt. I can acknowledge it, bear witness, and affirm there is reality beyond it.

Nature of Creativity

A meditation on a snowy morning.

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Today went sideways when I went out to start my car in the snow and discovered my husband had taken my car keys in his jacket with him to work in his truck.  I was officially stranded a half an hour from work in the bush.  I could have been irritated and to tell you the truth that was my first response, but soon it became an opportunity for a quiet moment and something I have been ruminating on for a while, the function and purpose of creativity in my own life.

What is the function of the creative impulse: to innovate, to create new form, to express our perceptions in ways that soothe and challenge? We exercise our bodies, challenge our minds, stuff or vent our emotions, and often totally ignore our spirit. Why? Because our bodies wear our abuse. Our actions and words reflect our confusion. Our emotions can be stuffed for a time and not everyone can see. Only the Divine and ourselves can see our spirit in tatters. What if all our negligence screamed “YOU ARE SO BUSTED!” for the world to see? Because the Divine does every day. He or She whispers, chastises, and at times bellows in frustration at being ignored. We are vain essentially, maintaining the superficial and letting the workings under the hood suffer.

It occurs to me that the Divine in my life is often expressed in Creativity. Creative energy breathes life into my work, compassion and forgiveness into my relationships, love into my experience of the world, joy into my routines. Listening to the quiet voice inside me allows me to innovate, be patient, see opportunity, look past anger and greed to insecurity. But I still ignore that impulse more than any other when it speaks to the expression of me. Why does that Divine gift I speak of is more comfortable when it pertains to others?

Why does that creative energy whisper more quietly when I am the beneficiary?? Because I argue about my own potential. Others, I see what they might do if they reach beyond thier own self defined limitations. I hide behind my own. We all do. Why does the Divine have a plan for everyone but me? Its not logical. So, I guess, I am grateful today that my husband took my keys, so I have the opportunity to spend a quiet hour listening to the small joyful voice whispering, “Do you think the Divine has no plan for you?” A grandmother’s knowing smile is laughing at my insecurity as her arms wrap around me.
I am grateful too, this creative energy that allows us a knowing that, as it was is not necessarily how it must be. A knowledge that what has been done is not all there is to be done. And a certainty that world can reflect and manifest our own perceptions and our own best intentions.

I am a manifestation of what has come before and am bringing into being what must be. With grace may it reflect the best of my intentions for myself and others. The creative energy is the mind, the spirit, and the body at play. It is a Divine form of lunacy. Don’t worry for in this Divine place everything is unfolding as it should.