The world is still big.

Aug 23

I was lying on my back in the woods, watching the clouds. After some time the realization, simple as it is, hit me: the world is still big. This moment, facing the sky, vanquished my anxiety and returned me to something I know and forget: There is something beneath and above all this noise. The world is not only this cacophony of chaos and disaster and busyness. How many days go by when there is just too much to consider, too much to take care of, too many dishes, too many emails, too much loss? The sky, when pondered long enough, brings back another order of immensity that puts all this too-muchness in perspective. When I stay in stillness, I feel myself a part of something much bigger. This is what can happen when I am working in my sacred space too — the sense of other intelligences, presences; other hands in the work — and the relief, the comfort, that I am not the center of whatever this is.

There is this saying: the path is already laid beneath your feet. I don’t mean pre-determination, or that it doesn’t matter which choices you make, but that the-something-you-came-into-the-world-with is still with you, waiting to open. There is something in you that cannot be taken.

I have a completely different feeling, for example, when I assume the painting I am working on has something it is wanting to become. That it is not simply a matter of me imposing my will to “make a painting”, but to become receptive to what the painting itself wants to be. The creative pattern blossoms from the feeling that life is more participatory than assertive. Everyone has heard the story of Michelangelo tapping on his sculpture as if to find what is hiding inside:

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. — Michelangelo

One doesn’t need to be Michelangelo to understand that this is why being a maker, why all creation, includes the joy of recognition. I love the image of him tapping on his sculpture. I tap on my paintings, on my words. There is a universal experience among poets, painters, cooks, musicians, gardeners and makers of all kinds — of having some “other presence” in the work. Why not assume a stance that activates imagination and receptivity, whether you are making music, words, dinner or a painting? After all, this is where the magic is. And the magic is inside you.

How do you find moments in your day where you are more receptive than assertive? Where you feel the unaccountable comfort of being small in the midst of immensity? I’d love to hear from you.