Relationship with Creative Spirit

Noticing what's emerging as we move into a new season of growth...

Octopus's Garden in the Tulips this Weekend

Spring always feels filled with creative energy to me. Even amid the ups and downs of sunny warm days followed by frost warnings and dips in temperature, I feel a warming and greening energy all around me. It feels like everything is engaged in an act of creation.

After long winters of dormancy, trees produce new tender leaves, bulbs that have laid deep in the cold earth burst forth with greens and blooms, and seeds begin to sprout. In the past few weeks I’ve wandered my yard, noting and celebrating the new arrivals. The past week has included an abundance of helicopter seeds on the maples, new clusters of leaves on the tips of the oak saplings, bright green leaves on sweet gum saplings, and new tulip shaped leaves on the tulip poplar.

Tulip Poplar Leaves, Oak Leaf Clusters, Sweet Gum Leaves

The tree I visit each day has branches too high for me to observe leaves and buds but looking up I notice the texture on the branches changing slightly; this Sunday morning I found a small cluster of baby leaves that had fallen in the space between the roots. It felt like both a gift and an announcement, the start of transformation. In the garden bed, the daffodil bulbs were first to bloom this year, followed by dozens of red tulips. Now, the red tulips are curled and drying out; the white tulips are just opening and shine with newness in the morning dew.

The first shoots of arugula appear in our vegetable bed along with a few sunflowers. The sunflowers look crowded when I anticipate their future size but I have a hunch the squirrels will do some thinning for me, enjoying the tender green shoots, so, for now I just notice and celebrate.

Chronicling My Courtship with Creativity

At the end of March I heard the poet and author, Ross Gay, speak at the Virginia Festival of the Book. If you aren’t familiar with Ross Gay’s work, his On Being Podcast interview with Krista Tippet “Tending Joy and Practicing Delight” is a great place to start. I also recommend his books, The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy. Through his essays, Ross Gay shares how he tends joy in his life through the practice of delight.

His stories focus on seeking and naming moments of delight in everyday life. Listening to him read, I was reminded how we can all shift our lens to find moments of delight in the everyday. Describing these is a form of savoring them, a way of sharing and expanding that delight to those around us as Ross Gay does through his writing.

As a writing teacher, Ross Gay describes questions he asks his students. He might begin a discussion asking what they have noticed that is beautiful in the past few days. Or, what have they come to realize they love recently. His deep poet’s voice draws out the last word as he asks, “What do you love?” He then describes how most people answer by telling him what they like and he corrects, “no, what do you love?” It’s a much more vulnerable question, and, one that invites connection through sharing our answers and listening to the answers of others. Talking about what we love is a concrete practice that supports the ways “we survive by knowing and staying connected to each other,” as Gay describes.

He takes this further, saying

But I'm going to wager that a bigger question is what, in fact, I love. Gathering around what I love might, in fact, be…the process by which we imagine the lives that we want. -Ross Gay

I’m loving the invitations to observe creation in nature right now: the abundance of new growth, first leaves emerging from the soil, and buds breaking open into blooms.

I feel grateful for the chance to share some of what I love around the creative energy of spring. I hope it invites your own sharing too:

What do you love right now?

What noticing inspires you and makes you want to share it?

Do any of my observations of trees and plants inspire your own noticing of creative energy stirring in your environment this spring?

Inspiration from Stories

Last week I read the Sea Glass Trilogy by Melanie Leavey. The books include Skelly, Wind Singer, and Soul of the Sea. Her books feature young people who are able to interact with members of the faery kingdom in a variety of ways. In the books, we learn these faery spirits are particularly drawn to creative people. It’s a reciprocal relationship; the faery world needs the energy of heart-centered creative work to sustain them. And the faieries keep magic alive and elements in balance in the natural world.

In the first book, Skelly, the title character, describes the relationship this way:

“The faery folk have always been drawn to the creative types. The wee ones love music and art, it attracts them like bees to flowers. And when they come, they bring their bit of magic with them. So, for instance, the more a musician plays, the more magic there is for him, or her, to tap into. And not just him, you see. Because the magic feeds on itself and so when he composes a tune and plays it for other folk, then they get the gift of the magic as well and so it goes….”

“And it’s the same as when folk go, say, to an art gallery or a museum, or even a wee gift shop and look at cards and woven things and boxes of tiny biscuits. If they look at something that really touches their soul, like gives them that certain feeling of it being made just for them, it’s because they’ve taken in the magic and so it stays with them and they carry it away as they go about their day.”

Skelly: Book One of the Sea Glass Trilogy by Melanie Leavey

How have you experienced this connection and energy around creating, enjoying or sharing creative works through stories, poems, music, or performance?

Thank you for reading and being a part of creative community through this newsletter.

With a grateful heart,

Kathryn

Sharing this piece helps me connect around creativity and expand this conversation.

P.S. For those who were part of my kickstarter campaign, octopus stickers and prints have shipped and the tiny octopuses are beginning their travels to new homes this week. The larger ones will follow soon after.