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Meetings at the Shore
Reid State Park, Georgetwon Island, Maine
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Through spiritual practice, you open yourself to a spaciousness in which there is a large place for playfulness. This playfulness is not play in the sense of frivolity or silliness or having fun, or even recreation, like playing a sport or card game. This playfulness is subtle humor, an appreciation of the simplicity of movement, of just being alive and doing what you are doing in the moment and whom you are with - the whole situation you are in. This playfulness is part of engaging your life as art, or artfully. One senses some relief from the lessening of self-reflection and self-consciousness, and, sometimes, the sense of self will dissolve altogether. Regardless, in the spaciousness, even that self can be experienced as part of the playfulness, the self being art, too.
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Keep praying. Stay alert. Remain thankful.
*Colossians 4.2
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March 12, 2015 -
One day, I thought, "Wow! I wrote that and put it out there in the public, and anyone can read it. Maybe I need to go delete that." I didn't. That was a good day, the day I said, "No, I wrote it, and whatever the cost to my reputation, the truth is more important than my reputation." You know, the artist - including anyone living life as art - embodies truth, and the artist is the servant of truth first, not the public, not anyone. So, to be an artist, I think means you've got to be courageous, you've got to be dissident. Maybe to most persons you have to be seen as being a little crazy. Possibly, if we were all a little more like that, the world would be a more joyful, loving place for us all.
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To live a spiritual life is to create your life consciously moment-by-moment, day-after-day, and year-after-year. You want to live and die consciously and artfully. Consciously means you stay awake. If you fall asleep, you wake back up. Wakefulness is essential to be one with the work: your life. So, your life, which is your art, transcends you.
There is a sense in which you cannot say your life is your art. You surrender to the work, which feels like something given to you: a grace. You sense a calling that seems to come to you, not from you. And you have no idea what the art will look like. That is the way of spiritual artistry, or living a contemplative life.
So, enjoy! Why not? Joy, not getting it right or wrong, not what others will think about your life, is essential to creating your life. If you are joyful, your life will bring joy to others.
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To be playful is needed in creating life as art. Recently, where I live, a friend led a calligraphy workshop. We got to the large piece of paper where we would kneel over it and make strokes with a large brush - we had been working with smaller pieces of paper and brushes. My friend showed us how to work with the larger brush, letting it flow across the paper and creating different strokes at different places on the paper. She demonstrated allowing chi - life energy - to flow from us onto the paper. I could see the freedom with which she let the brush glide across the paper in a playful way.
I volunteered to be the first to follow her in this new adventure. I knelt over the paper, a leg on each side, held the brush in my right hand, dropped the mind, and started swinging the brush, letting it move like a breeze over the paper. The brush was lifting and falling back onto the paper, creating different designs. Others, standing and looking, saw this; they laughed, and it was a fun few moments for me, too.
That is freedom. That is the nature of life when thought does not interfere. Life, moving through us, is wiser than what we think. Trusting Life, we can be playful and humorous. We feel permission to lighten up. Humor is a sign of true spiritual life. Laughing is a sign of a playful spirit. Spirit likes to play. The nature of energy is to dance.
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So, our opening scripture from the Christian Bible. "To pray" indicates communion with Life, not just saying words like prayers. "Be alert" means, as noted above, wakefulness, not going to sleep. We do not let distractions divert us from our life work. How sad if we die never having lived, just, so to speak, having passed the time here. Recently, I heard a woman tell another woman how she was busy. The other replied, "That's good. It helps the time pass." No, we want to cherish time, not just stay busy, so it will seem to move by quickly. "Be thankful" - gratitude results from enjoying intimacy with your actions, others, and yourself. In this intimacy, your life becomes a celebration. You become Life celebrating Itself.
Edgar Allen Poe is credited with saying, "I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched." That is it! Let your life touch your heart, and let your heart touch your life. Then, your life is not an object, your life is you, and you are your life. Everything becomes intimacy-in-action. To live this way, you live gratefully and gladfully.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and notation of title and place of the photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
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