Where Do I Find Myself Most Happy?

"Paths are made by walking."
  --Antonio Machado

Many, and particularly those who don't feel they have a creative bent, avoid considering their artistic side as a source of inner gladness. Our achievement and outcome-based society rarely applauds the process as highly as the product in terms of the satisfaction it renders; but to clasp artistic creativity as a spiritual practice means doing exactly that. The act of creating IS the way of exploring the image of God that graces our humanness and helps us commune with a specific aspect of His joy
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"Art-making is somehow all at once a journey, a communication, a modality, a healing, and a prayer," says Betsy Beckman in Awakening the Creative Spirit. The beauty of it is, none of these attributes of art-making depend on the expertise of the artist nor on the quality of what is produced.

But for art to mediate anything sacred to us, we must make a place for it to have full access to our undivided attention.  Lana has done just that, and tells us about the artist's retreat she has right in her own backyard:


"My cottage was built for me by my husband so I had a place to be able to leave my project on the work bench instead of having to clear everything from the dinning room table every night and store my supplies in the garage.

 

 I make jewelry, scrapbook, paint, do floral arrangements, make soap and candles, paint birdhouses and ceramics in the cottage. I also keep my some of my candy and cake decorating supplies out there when I'm not using them. My sewing, quilting and embroidery supplies are out there but I have been keeping my Bernina in the house.

I cleared a corner a couple of years ago for my daughter to have her own work area. She is into Perler beads and does intricate designs.
Having the cottage for my crafty creativity is a huge blessing for me. I have my office for writing and computer creativity but that is heavily impacted by running the household from the same office. My cottage is purely creative.

It's like a personal retreat and even though it's just behind the house in the back yard getting out there is both very easy and very difficult at the same time. All I have to do is walk out the back door, through the rose garden and there I am. But making the time to stop everything else and get out there.... well that's much more difficult."

 

Even if a full-scale cottage is not a possibility for you, might there be a place where you can be creatively attentive, communing with God as creator to Creator?  For some, this communing can be the first appreciable step toward attending to God in an otherwise dry, sad season.

 

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. --Psalm 90:17