License to Create

Quiet morning. The bird choir is practicing. From a distance I hear the clunking sounds of a big truck climbing the hill near my house. There is a chicken laying an egg somewhere far away and a rooster makes himself known. The birds continue their conversation. Whether they are talking about their daily bread or singing hymns to Creation, I do not know. But I am free to imagine so I allow myself to be moved by the imagination of the world.

You and I are as much part of this imagination as these winged creatures who bless our days with their songs. We are magnificent beings with our upright spines, eyelashes, fingers and toes, an estimated 86 billion neurons that form 100 trillion connections in our brains, which gives us the capacity to think, to dream, to design, to make music, to write stories, to seek meaning … Our bodies home to the breath of life, a direct transmission from the divine imagination itself, we are constantly summoned by the larger creative genius to take part in this great art experiment called “life”.

It is both our right and responsibility to bloom into our wholeness, fullness.
The acorn longs to be an oak tree, and so do we long to fulfill our destiny.

Our ancestors weren’t studying, contemplating and philosophising on creativity, they were simply being and embodying it day by day. Living is a creative (and simultaneously destructive) act as it requires a constant transmission, transformation and exchange of energy that reciprocally animates different life forms. Sunlight becomes food for plants, who produce oxygen, which becomes our breath. Matter decomposes into soil which feeds everybody. Clay becomes house, clay becomes pottery, clay becomes art. Wool becomes thread, wool becomes sweater, wool becomes rug. Tree becomes fruit, tree becomes medicine, tree becomes firewood. Fire becomes food, fire becomes glass, fire becomes prayer. Hand becomes painting, language becomes poetry, love becomes healing.

We, the (in)voluntary participants of an infinite, circuitous and steadfast cycle of creation and destruction, birth and death, coming into form and going out of form, are the colorful threads in the intricate design of life’s tapestry.

Lee Mingwei’s 'Our Labyrinth' performance project at Tate Modern

I have been blessed in this life by a secret providence bestowing upon me not only inspiration but also permission to create as if my life depended on it. I did not need any other permission, nor any approval to be a laborer of imagination; not from a school, not from a teacher, not from any institution. The creative act itself is the true master to unlock the mysteries of life.

It was during my pilgrimage on the Camino¹ when I had a soul encounter with the creative spirit. I had just turned 35 and I was mending from a severe burnout. One rainy morning I took a break at one of the refugios on my path. As it happened, I sat at the same table with two pilgrims from Sweden, one of whom held a Tarot deck in her hands. After some chitchat, I plucked up the courage to ask her for a reading. She kindly agreed and offered me a Tarot reading right there and then. There was nothing unusual or extraordinary about this reading, not until after it was finished. As she collected and shuffled the cards, she suddenly spoke like an oracle and announced that I would be writing a book in 10 years which would inspire the women of my country. In her mind’s eye she could see me signing books at the age of 45.

I don’t exactly remember how I reacted back then. In retrospect, I know that it was not short of a miracle. Had I not received this prophecy - such clear instructions from a mysteries source -, would I have ever dared to write a 485-page book titled Women are Medicine?

I doubt it.

Life issues our license to create and divine providence moves to make things happen. We cannot make things happen on our own, I am pretty sure of that. But we can be embodied participants in the world’s imagination². She will whisper to our ear, sometimes through the wind, sometimes through the grief burning our flesh, and sometimes through another pilgrim that crosses our path. And it is upto each of us whether or not to follow the unique instructions we have been given to fulfill our destiny, as sovereign agents of life’s artistry.

The good news is that each creative act is a chance to weave the seemingly random and loose ends of many threads that run through our lives. Each word, brush stroke, musical note, gesture, stitch could become a ritual to wrap imagination gently around the harsh realities of the earth school. The deeper truths of our earthly pilgrimage are revealed as we fabulate our way beyond our limitations.

We are free to make art of our lives, as Rilke reminds us:

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth —
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeakable center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

— Rilke, The Book of Hours 1, 17
Translation by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

May we always remember that we each hold a licence to create, issued by the One who brought us here.

“We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control”³

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1. The Camino de Santiago or the Way of St. James in English, is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain (from Wikipedia).

2. This sentence is by Karmit Even-zur who is an artist, facilitator and cultural curator whose practice revolves around the dynamic interactions between humans and the non-human world.

3. Excerpt from Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall.