#MicroPoetry|July ’19 Reflections

How do we find the motivation to help us translate our imaginings into something real and substantial in our lives and those others?
What words or metaphors can serve to shift us into the doing that sometimes is difficult to initiate when we dream?
This verse endeavours to play with two metaphors – fire/heat and water – as visual touchstones to serve as possible models to so inspire.

I have often explored creativity as something not separate or distinct from our daily being.
What might it mean if that faculty or ability was a companion or friend?
What if we explored the generative aspect of creating as a relationship that requires nurture and presence, intention and attention?
In this poetic musing, I explore ways to see the possibility of what such a relationship might look like and to what it might lead.

Leap of faith: cliché? Aspirational? Unattainable?
I think the phrase is all of those things … another is that it is a truism. It is one that contains a central idea that to create or do that which may seem impossible, requires letting go. Letting go of the ‘no,’ the sense of control and accepting ‘yes.’ If, in the end, we simply settle for impossible, that which we take for granted, from health care to the tender moments of relationships would never be the joys we experience.
What, then, needs to be released in order to begin something new?

I admit that images of space, whether locally here in our own solar system or in the deep reaches of time that the Hubble Telescope and its kin reveal, inspire me. But in the infinitude, it is easy to project our stuff out there. It is easy to think it is just a universe of resources waiting to be harnessed for our own satisfaction: some call this consumerism. Yet on a good day, when I see those images, it reminds me I am made from the stuff of stars – and should I too so shine, what do I need to do within in order to mirror what which we are?

We really do like to try to shape things, mould them, builds them and construct. It continues to impress, though not inspire me, that the largest dam ever made (Three Gorges Dam in China), literally shifted the earth’s rotation. Such brute power, I believe, can and does lead to a certain perception that we are in control and that eventually science and technology will allow us to do what once was just flight’s fancy. The challenge is that until we have our stuff together, know who we are and that to which we are Called, we get lost in changing the exterior and remain lost without a life committed to reflection and action.

Wonder – it’s often a theme in these verses. I think that is because we miss it most of the time. We are run by agenda and the ticking clock to such an extent that we rarely stop to savour with gratitude and delight the abundance of creativity and beauty in the everyday moments. It is also understandable. The distractions before us are plentiful in and of themselves. Yet in this false harvest, it is easy to mistake possibilities to be explored. This poetic musing attempts to remind us that in letting go, more might be revealed then the scant treasures that too often we horde.

The metaphor of life as a song is enticing. Imagining that song as being Creation’s and that each of us is a note that finds harmony with others is a fascinating, perhaps even provocative imagining. As I listen to the public discourse, in which us and them, right and wrong are thrown around so casually, I wonder what it might look like if we embraced harmony as a touchstone, as oppose to winning.

It is too easy to be lulled into complacency and the sense that everything is repeated rote. The mundane tempts cynicism and even apathy. But when we pause to embrace not only the singularity of our own existence, whether as individuals or collectively, but the richness around us, wonder sparks within us. That we are wonderfully made is an important reminder that nurtures curiosity and awe. These are two traits indeed worth nurturing in one another.