Category: Creativity

The Power of “Remember Them” – They Continue to Live and Become “Known”

In memory and in honor of the unknown soldiers of Alpha Company, many who became known due to the efforts of Phil Woodall. An excerpt from his first letter, so many years ago:

Dear Jean,
East 47 has an answer – the letter to Alpha Company is a poem. It is attached for you. I placed it at the base of panel 47 because on rows five and six are three Alpha Company members: Lt. Gary Scott, Lt. Frank Rodriquez, and PFC Manuel Ruiz – all killed March 29, 1968 in a paddy around Hue. The dates are documented in the book “Dear America,” excerpted from a letter that I wrote my Dad on April 5, 1968; the day after Martin Luther King was slain.

Continue reading “The Power of “Remember Them” – They Continue to Live and Become “Known”” →

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Turning to Prepare for the Journey into the Unknown

Every day, every year circles around the silent turning of cycles and rhythms.

This is no longer the hopeful two week sprint cycling back to the known. This is a challenging expedition into unchartered terrain.

I continue to downshift. Yesterday as the new “Stay At Home” order went into effect, I realized the need to adjust my “life retraction” schedule. Do I still need an alarm to wake me up at 5 AM? I decided no. I’ll honor my body’s inner clock and my need for rest.

When I was experiencing upheavals and uncertainty while my mother was under hospice care in 2015-2017, I discovered some tips for a household retraction (in the book, Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson) and saw how her advice also applied to a life retraction during that time. The “life retraction” advice seems helpful now.

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Sitting here now, the image of the open hand with bird came to mind as the words “giving and receiving” arrived in my awareness.

What do you see: giving or receiving?

The first question, “What do you see: giving or receiving?”
I thought of the open hand, the bird’s wings. It seems to be giving, but then I realized on a second glance it could also be receiving. The first glance sees “giving,” and the second glance sees “receiving.” Time seems to make the difference in what I see. The photo may capture one aspect, but the other is there too. What’s important to recognize is the exchange—the dynamic movement. It is both, giving and receiving, the unceasing exchange of energy.

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Separating the Wheat of Life from the Chaff — some wisdom from Helen Luke’s essay, “The Odyssey”:
“Why do you speak of a winnowing fan,” said Odysseus, “when you must know very well that this is a beautiful oar with which I cleave the great waters of the wine-dark seas around us?” …

“You are right, I am not ignorant of the oar… I was not pretending by using the words ‘winnowing fan’…I ask you now only to think of the meaning of that image.”
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Gifts that Keep Giving

I just cycled back to Phil Constineau’s pilgrimage to Angkor Wat. I bought The Art of Pilgrimage when it was just published in 1998.  Only recently I recognized the deeper connections: Angkor Wat was the center of Phil’s book, and the spark that would light his travelers lamp was a book from Phil’s dad.

This book quietly illuminates the full circuit of a living gift.  It keeps giving and the reach continues to expand.

Discovering the Hidden Beauty of the World

Phil received the book about Angkor Wat on his eleventh birthday.  It wasn’t a gift he had asked for, but the bronze-tinted book depicted sculptures of the long forgotten world of the Khmers that transported the eleven-year old beyond known boundaries. Continue reading “Gifts that Keep Giving” →

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Recognizing the Vastness That Has the Potential to Transform Us

“The rewards are infinite when we keep looking.”

As soon as I read that sentence by Mark Nepo, I thought of my friend walking the shore of Boneyard Beach immersed in his creative process.

Nepo’s words are in the chapter “Going with the Stream” from his book “Drinking From the River of Light.” The chapter begins with an epigraph by Yogananda:

Never give up, then surrender

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Recognize Creative Tension as a Source of Creative Energy

Once again, I found myself stuck in the foggy gap. I’ve been focused on defining my vision for this second half of life (not a bad thing) but there’s a lot of unknown in this new life. I got fixated on the fog of uncertainty, but today I caught a glimpse of what was in front of me:  the reality of creative tension. Once again, the fog lifts (and I do recognize this is a pattern).

What is creative tension?

I’ve been approaching creative tension as the obstacle, which is a big mistake. It can actually be the force to move me forward. Peter Senge dives into the topic in his book, The Fifth Discipline:

The juxtaposition of vision (what we want) and a clear picture of current reality (where we are relative to what we want) generates what we call “creative tension”: a force to bring them together, caused by the natural tendency of tension to seek resolution.

The gap is the creative tension

Senge continues later in the book: The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there was no gap, there would be no need for any action to move toward the vision… Continue reading “Recognize Creative Tension as a Source of Creative Energy” →

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Life’s Reflection at 47E – the Interconnectedness of One Veteran’s Action to Remember Them

I visited 47E at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Labor Day. It’s been over two decades since my last visit. The photo is my attempt to capture the light, life’s reflections and the promise of RESURGAM, which is a vast interconnectedness that keeps weaving through time.

As for words, remembering Phil Woodall is important. His name is not on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. He’s the Vietnam veteran who drew my attention to 47E with two written words: Alpha Company.

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Sitting Under Such Enormous Space

Stars above Mount Kilimanjaro

From “Learning to Walk in the Dark” by Barbara Brown Taylor:
“How long since we have done this?” Ed asks in my ear.
How long since we have left our house, which we know so well, to climb a hill and sit next to each other in the dark with nothing to do but wait for the moon to rise? How long since we have sat quietly under such enormous space?
“Twenty years,” I say.
“Why is that?” he says.
He and I both know why, but the answer makes me so sad that I cannot say it out loud. We have been busy. For twenty years.
Busy? The word loses all meaning under the canopy of this sky.

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“…be surprised to find beauty in unexpected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger.” – From “Beauty” by John O’Donohue
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“We lose track of time and of place, we move into a timeless time and a placeless space when we are in a creative state. Afterward, we know we have tasted something worth remembering, something that will last. And often we have a special gift to bestow on others because of the journey we have undergone in our creative work.” —From the book “Creativity” by Matthew Fox.

Ten years ago—July 28, 2009—a fierce thunderstorm raged outside. The lightening was so intense, I decided to unplug all electronic devices and read a book. Unexpectedly, the image of a soldier dressed in combat fatigues flashed in my imagination as vividly as the lightning outside.

Soldier dressed in combat fatigues

Continue reading “Why I Wrote about Standing in No Man’s Land during the WWI Christmas Truce” →

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“Creativity is not a noun or even a verb—it is a place, a space, a gathering, a union, a where—wherein the Divine powers of creativity and the human power of imagination join forces. Where the two come together is where beauty and grace happen and, indeed, explode.”

Matthew Fox, from his book, “Creativity”

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