“I never met a color I didn’t like.”
~Dale Chihuly

Our recent Thanksgiving get-a-way to Seattle has me thinking about art and artists. In the scope of two days we visited both the Seattle Art Museum and the Chilhuly Garden and Glass exhibit. At the first, I spent the majority of time in the room filled with the works of the First Peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Baskets, carvings in stone and wood, and fabric art filled the space with image and color. And then there were the masks. Faces of human and creature carved to tell the story of a people rich with connection to the land and sea that surrounded them. I walked away thinking that my life is a little less rich for having not come from a culture which tells its story with masks.

At the Chihuly museum I was astounded over and over again with the immensity of glass sculptures. Towering trees. Floating chandeliers. Enormous bowls that could hold a small child. Boats filled with brilliant glass balls. Outside in the actual garden the live plants mirrored the glass pods, stalks and flowering trees. And everywhere an explosion of color!

Leaving these two very different expressions of creativity, I have been reflecting on the human need to create. It is someplace deep in our DNA. It is the place from which we and all Creation erupted. It is one of the ways in which we embody the movement of our Creator in our living, in our world. Creativity in this sense is our birthright. Picking up a knife and bringing a face out of a piece of wood. The interplay of fire and breath to blow a piece of glass into being. Paint on a canvas. Music coaxed from an instrument. Words on a page. All bring an expression of life into the world.

Many times I have heard an artist speak of their work as something they “must do”. Many times I have also been in the presence of folks who continue to turn their backs, knowingly or unknowingly, on this inner urge to create. Most of the time this leads to frustration, sadness, depression, even a kind of death. It is, after all, a denial of what it means to be this embodied expression of all we were meant to be. This Life.

This pull toward creating need not just be in what we often think of as ‘the arts’. Each and everyone of us has some inner nudge toward creativity. I watch in wonder at the parents I know who create safe and powerful nests for their children. Which one of us has not been impacted by the creative pulse of a teacher? Even those things we take for granted….highways, houses, bridges, boats, cars, airplanes, grocery bags, thermometers…..all sprang from a creative idea of someone.

Earlier in our time in Washington we had come upon a glass blower in his studio. He was helping a woman, a novice, create a small vase. His quiet yet forceful words guided her in safety and form. Watching the long rod which held the molten glass go into the fire and out again, I wondered at who was the first person to ever discover this magical act that led to the creation of glass. Later seeing the works of Dale Chihuly I was completely astounded that anything so amazing could come from this seemingly simple, fiery yet fragile process.

What is the fiery process that is calling your name? What is waiting for you to breath life into its emerging form? How are you listening to the Creator’s whisper that begs you to tell your story!
The winter days are approaching. Days that beckon us to go inward and inside. Days that were made for creating. How will you respond?