Creativity Is Healing

06/23/2023

More content to come soon!

02/08/2023

BORN AGAIN

I want to be born again,
but I want to be born exactly
as I was, almost between things,
as I was in this life,
and as I want to be in the next:

Mary Teresa O’Sullivan,
nine months gone, carrying me
back to Yorkshire, her pains sharp
in Waterford,
sharper in Dublin,
the hard rolling bench of the ferry
almost my midwife.

I want to be born again,
in exactly the self-same life,
but fully aware this time,
from the inside out,
of my life to come

and to stand this time
as a beautiful un-worrying witness,
living beyond the need
for this or that;
looking with anticipation
to meeting everyone again,

the central memory always with me
of a ship making its way
through lifting water,
taking me on to a new life

the songs of the wind,
the songs of my mother,
my father’s disbelieving,
expectant face
at the ward-room window,
seeing me brought and held
to the light for the first time,

the sense of everything to come,
the sense of letting go
of everything I have held too tightly,

every single blessing, every accompanying
friend and every beckoning
horizon about to reappear again,
and always, always, the crowding,
merciful voice of the sea at my birth.
.

Adapted from
‘Born Again’
In PILGRIM
Poems by David Whyte
February 2023
..

Help Along the Road.
Photo © David Whyte
Inishboffin, Connemara.
July 2015

I caught the gaze of my mother this morning looking out at me from the little frame that sits at the corner of my desk, and imagined her and my father, poor as church mice, making their way back from Ireland in her ninth month, having visited my grandfather in Waterford who was not so well. So many elements have to conspire to birth even the most ordinary life, in even the most ordinary place, and it is that life of course, that can then bring everything around it alive too in such an extraordinary way. A spur to live, at least a little in the way we were born, 'as a beautiful unworrying witness'. DW

06/29/2021

06/27/2021

CLOSE

is what we almost always are: close to happiness, close to another, close to leaving, close to tears, close to God, close to losing faith, close to being done, close to saying something, or close to success, and even, with the greatest sense of satisfaction, close to giving the whole thing up.

Our human essence lies not in arrival, but in being almost there, we are creatures who are on the way, our journey a series of impending anticipated arrivals. We live by unconsciously measuring the inverse distances of our proximity: an intimacy calibrated by the vulnerability we feel in giving up our sense of separation.

To go beyond our normal identities and become closer than close is to lose our sense of self in temporary joy, a form of arrival that only opens us to deeper forms of intimacy that blur our fixed, controlling, surface identity.

To consciously become close is a courageous form of unilateral disarmament, a chancing of our arm and our love, a willingness to hazard our affections and an unconscious declaration that we might be equal to the inevitable loss that the vulnerability of being close will bring.

Human beings do not find their essence through fulfillment or eventual arrival but staying close to the way they like to travel, to the way they hold the conversation between the ground on which they stand and the horizon to which they go. We are in effect, always, close; always close to the ultimate secret: that we are more real in our simple wish to find a way than any destination we could reach: the step between not understanding that and understanding that, is as close as we get to happiness.

…

‘CLOSE’
From CONSOLATIONS:
The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
Revised Edition : 2021 © David Whyte

…

Walking Together
Photo © David Whyte
The Flaggy Shore
County Clare

06/20/2021

“Worship at the altar of your being supported. After all, you are the receiver of too many generosities to count.”

Excerpt from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com)

06/12/2021

They conclude that music is a powerful tool that can bring individuals together, promote empathy and communication, and heal social divisions. They say that a better scientific understanding of how music provides brain-to-brain social connections helps highlight that music isn’t mere entertainment, but instead is a core feature of human existence with important social implications.

A new study reveals what goes on in the brain when a person embarks on a musical collaboration project.

06/08/2021

The lovely words of Toko-pa Turner.

“You, who would normally bear it alone: yours is a necessary yielding. Your asking is the invitation that may keep us bound in place and memory together. Yours are the first threads of a village in the making.

Reaching out can be enormously difficult for a heart that has been wounded in the act. But it helps to remember that reaching out is actually an offering of generosity, the invitation which allows the other to contribute their gifts into our shortfall. It is an act of recognition of the other’s necessity which, to an ecosystem, is the joining process itself.”

Excerpt from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com)

03/27/2021

"To show one's face is a part of having the courage to show who one is. And coming to terms with your own face takes a lifetime. Just think how, when you were twelve or sixteen, you wished you looked different. And that's true for everyone; even the most perfect, beautiful boy or girl is dissatisfied. So why is that? It can't just be that you don't look like the model on the magazine cover. It's something else. You haven't yet accepted your fate, who you are. As you get older that relationship between your face and who you are matures. They blend together more. Your true self shows more." - James Hillman, The Sun Magazine (July/2012)

Photo by Joey L. (www.joeyl.com)

03/20/2021

“On this day, the Vernal Equinox, we are in perfect balance between light and dark. Let us pray loving attention to the fragile sprouts of inner beauty that have survived the long dark of hibernation, despite all odds, to push up through the soil into the light. Let us honour the faith it has taken to believe in the invisible, upper world, where soon we will blossom into sprawling gardens overflowing with fruit. Let us hold our painful hearts with gentle hands today. Let us express our gratitude to the light that can only be found in the dark. Let us ask our vulnerability to shine radiantly with knowing that we are unfolding right on time.”

by Toko-pa Turner (toko-pa.com)

Photo of gorse bush sprouting on Anderson Hill

03/14/2021

The opening blessing from Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner (belongingbook.com)

01/20/2021

"While the New Age movement has awakened many to the power of creative intention, it has simultaneously pathologized the so-called ‘negative emotions’ and stricken them from our social palette of acceptability. We live under a kind of hegemony of positivity which emphasizes happiness over sadness, pleasure over pain, gain over loss, and the creative over the destructive. But what if the ‘negative’ emotions have something essential to communicate, and the real problem is the misguided attitude that they make us less evolved, and need fixing?

Just as fire can transform food from its raw form into something digestible, our darknesses are radical transformers. Instead of airbrushing our personalities, we should practice at exaggerating our blemishes, leaning into our stagnancy, wounding, and discomforts. If we really want to evolve, we have to learn how to be more expressly where we are." - Toko-pa Turner, Belonging (belongingbook.com)

Artwork by Molly Costello Art & Design

12/29/2020

"What if nostalgia is not a fruitless dwelling on those irretrievable moments of the past, as we are taught, but an attempt by sweetness to reach you again?
What if nostalgia is really located in the present, like a scent or ambience which is gathering around you should you avail yourself to it.
As anyone who has been heartbroken knows, there comes a time when, long after loss has been well-lived with, a small melody of love always returns. And to your surprise, you may recognise the tone of that love as the very same love you believed you lost.
It's then that you know that your love was always your love. And if you let yourself be unguarded to it, nostalgia may find its way back into the generosity of your presence." - Toko-pa Turner (toko-pa.com)
Artwork by Diana Sudyka