Weaving The Dream

It is daylily season.  

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I have inherited close to fifty   different daylilies from my father as a result of the sale of my childhood home last fall.  He divided all his lilies so I had one of each kind, including and especially the ones he bred himself.

Daylilies are not really lilies.  They are hemerocallis from the Greek hemera (day) and kalos (beautiful).  Now, in mid-July, most of them are in bloom.  And my husband is entertained by my daily walks among these generous blossoms since I talk to them as I walk, complimenting each type on its beauty while I also remove the previous day’s dead blossoms. 

Even though many of the types put out numerous buds so that it seems they are in bloom for weeks, in fact each bloom only lasts one day.  All that effort, all that energy, poured into each bud, only for it to have one glorious day of bloom and color.  One glorious day to attract hummingbird and butterfly and bee for pollination and propagation. 

Last week, my husband, Bob, and I were in Austin, Texas for the wedding of his brother, Ted.  While out with his brother and siblings at a local nursery to buy a palm tree for the bridal couple’s wedding gift, Bob’s brother asked about an agave plant that had died in his front yard.   The nursery man in his sunglasses and cowboy hat nodded and asked, “Did it bloom?”  When the answer was yes, the nursery man told us that agave plants grow slowly, some for 15 years or more, gathering the nutrients they need to put forth blooms.  Then, once they bloom, usually with one blossom, and set seed, they die. Years of growth all to produce one tall bloom.

These plants remind me of the sand paintings done by the Navajo that are painstakingly created for ceremonial purposes and then destroyed at the end of the ceremony.  According to one source, the Navajo word for these sandpaintings means “the place where the gods come and go.”

Where the gods come and go.  Like the daylilies and the agave, the sandpaintings remind us that the Divine often resides in the act of creation as much, if not more so, than in the creation itself.  It is in the secret growth beneath the dark of soil and winter, in the determined reaching for the spring sun, and then the sudden glorious burst into summer bloom, that the mystery and celebration of Life, of creation is found.  The end result – the painting, the bloom, the plant are only temporary and make room for further creation.

We can get so focused on the end result – on the book, the play, the art exhibit, or the performance, that we often forget to give mindfulness, commitment, and value to the act of creating.  And in doing so, we can shut ourselves off from the transcendence of creation, from the experience of the Divine.

So when your published book seems light years away, when your stage performance is over before you know it, when the perfection of your creation is fleeting and then gone – remember the daylily and the agave. Give yourself to the moment of creation, where the gods come and go.

Summertime, like Sundays, used to be a time of rest and relaxation. Of renewal and restoration. Of recharging batteries drained by the demands of the year.

Not anymore.  We don’t know what it means to relax anymore.  We have to take classes on relaxation so we can learn how to stop our endless, and sometimes meaningless, motion.  So we can learn how to breath deeply from our bellies instead of only the upper third of our lungs.  So we can learn how to unclench our muscles and our stomachs and our jaws.

Our advanced technologies bring us so many advantages, but they also sabotage every effort to unwind, to get away, to get quiet.  They sabotage us because we let them.  We feel compelled to stay tuned in, turned on and accessible—afraid we will miss something important, earth-shattering, life-changing.

It is that accessibility that is life-changing, however.  When we fail to give ourselves time away or alone without distraction or interruption, without any intent or purpose other than to have none, we fail to nurture our souls.  And we definitely fail to nurture our creativity.

One of the hardest things for artists, writers, and other creatives is the ability to get away from our creativity.  So many of us work in studios in our homes where our work constantly calls to us.  Others have such limited time for creativity because of demands of work and family that each free moment becomes a challenge to fill it with our creative work.

Yet empty moments and time out of the studio are necessary to refill the well of our creativity.  It is in the silence and stillness that our spiritual and creative batteries are recharged, that our creative well is refilled. 

Summer is a good time to slowly sip the sweet refreshment of silence and stillness.  To sit on your patio to watch the birds dip and weave their ways through tree and bush. To float on your back in the water and watch clouds drift by. To stare up at the moon while she bathes you in light.

Be still.  Be silent. Your body, mind and spirit will thank you.  And so will your creative muse.

How will you give your creativity a summer moment?