Yourself

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful:  What you discover will be Yourself.” — Alan Alda

This quote is on a plaque I received as a gift from my friend Lori Comly, when I got my Bachelor’s in Journalism in 1988.  It has hung in every place I’ve ever lived and is one of my guiding principles in life.  It reminds me:  that it is normal — good even — to feel like I don’t quite know what I’m doing.

It reminds me — that hard work is necessary to have a break-through and that a break-through is necessary to get a result.

It reminds me — that others occupy this space known as The Creative even when we can’t see them on the bench next to us.

Yesterday was my first Sunday at my new call, Grace at the beach.  I prepared in my usual manner which means that I got to the end result in a most public way.

There were a few glitches:  my microphone kept falling off my ear.  It was distracting.  My new congregation was good-natured about it and helped me recover when I got lost.

It was trickier than usual for me to get comfortable in this new place.  Everything was different.  Bigger.  More spread-out.  I’ll need to find my focal point in order to help bring forth new life here.

The Mussler family spent nearly the entire weekend tearing apart and painting my new office.  It is soothing now, the colors of the ocean.  I was humbled by their tenacity and commitment;  on Sunday morning, the two children-painters were my acolytes, lighting the candles and giving me communion.

The Creative, I have learned is not just a place, it is a place in which the entire ground is a moving sidewalk.  What is becoming continuously unfolds.

The Good News is that it seems like there are quite a few people here who understand that and who are willing to meet me in this wilderness where everything is new, where the paint is fresh, and the ticking of the clock sounds like the ocean hitting the shore.