I was out for a long walk this morning after dropping my daughter off at school.
The air smelled sweet from the rain that has been falling for the better part of the last forty-eight hours. The air was cold with a heavy humidity to it, never thought that humidity could exist in cold air, but it did. The sky, gray-white, overcast, thick clouds blanketing the horizon.
I have taken this same walk twice before. I call it my urban sprawl walk. It is a walk that takes me through a couple of different neighborhoods, small biz districts where I can stop at the post office, bank and the drug store. I like that. The walk ends on a long busy stretch of road, (noise) that leads back to my neighborhood.
I have a “thing” (thing is a poor choice of word as it is more like an obsession) about the creative benefits of taking a walk to clear the mind. It’s meditation and exercise at the same time. One activity with multiple outcomes. Not a bad way to increase productivity and turn over thoughts in your mind.
For years I have taken walks as I did today. This morning's walk was an odd thing for me. Usually my walks are in the woods where I can feel all Henry-David-Thoreau-like and get a sense of a connection to the divine. (Thoreau nor the Divine show up on busy roadways, it's just not safe.)
Walking on sidewalks, inhaling bus fumes while trying to block out the noise of…well everything. I miss the woods, but the urban sprawl is new, different and unexplored on foot. For years I drove to the woods for moments of quiet, never learning the landscape that I was driving on. Change brings creativity. That is why I was out walking in the first place. To think about creating something new; project, thought, idea. I get this feeling inside of me that I need to have a creative release to give quiet back to my mind.
Walking in silence when the world is erupting is an act of surrender. Quietness brings out answers to the seeking questions that I have been asking myself.
There is only one giant problem; I have no way of recording these thoughts in my head because I am out walking in all this noise.
Odd isn’t it – people have creative important epiphanies when they are nowhere close to being able to write them down (some magical curse from the Muse of creativity). Whatever fragmented thoughts make it all the way home must have been the finest ones. The Muse must send out the leftover mini-epiphanies to somebody else pondering in the streets, actually, most likely the woods. (Do you think people get these experiences when golfing??)
The reason for this specific walk: over the past couple of months I have been taking a class on spiritual journaling. Truthfully, I have not been journaling on my spiritual pursuits. I have been journaling, just not while asking God to speak to me through pen and paper.
Nonetheless, this class stays present in my mind, just sitting there begging me to write it out (not down, but out as in a release).
Faith & Creativity ~ this is one constant, recurring, ever-present thought that I should write about.
I need to figure out how to write down my story of faith and creativity and the effect it has guided my life.
By the time most of you have read this post I will have had my first conversation/meeting to bring this subject to life.
Is creating something enough to build your spiritual faith on?
Yes…
It is not the starting or ending point - it is the realization of the experience.
