Love Thursday: On creativity

Yesterday, I was reading (for the hundredth time?) one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver, a poem called Wild Geese that I turn to often when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed or heartbroken or like I could never give enough to deserve all I have been given. Art in all forms sometimes feels to me a luxury, an indulgence. To spend my time covered in wallpaper paste or laying in the dirt with my camera feels like a silly endeavor.

I know it’s a funny thought to have considering how art has absolutely shaped my life. From the first Tom Robbins book I read, which made me so hungry to live a life extraordinary, or finding Alex Grey, who lead me to my best friend, or Mary Oliver, whose poetry often stops me cold, asks me rearrange my head. But what I do feels so far away from that, from great art that actually affects peoples lives.

But as I’ve allowed myself the indulgence, as I’ve opened my chest up wider and let my tiny inner artist peek out, what I’ve realized is that it doesn’t need to change lives to be worthwhile. It has intrinsic value because the creative process changes my life, forces me to pay attention, to act purposefully, to see instead of look, to find my voice, my place in the family of things.

And so I will love the process, I will love it when it is silly, and when I stumble upon something profound. I will love it when it is messy, when it rips open scars and when it sings with unexpected beauty.

Happy Love Thursday everyone!

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Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver published by Atlantic Monthly Press© Mary Oliver