On creativity, bees & flying fruit
It’s a cold, drizzly spring morning, here in the Pacific Northwest. The deck outside my window is strewn with soft white cherry-blossom petals, each one no bigger than the tip of my finger.
The old cherry tree that overhangs the deck has begun shedding its flowers, preparing the green nubs of fruit we’ll eat so greedily this summer. I can taste the tart, sticky cherry juice that will run down my chin and leave my tongue a tangy red.
This morning, though, the bees are in their glory, sipping and feeding, making honey out of nectar. Pollinating trees. Helping to make cherries.
A clump of woodland trillium blooms radiantly along the winding dirt road that is my driveway. Creamy white when they first emerged under the shade of a cedar tree, the three-petaled flowers have deepened to a blush of pink. Soon, they’ll be gone, leaving an afterglow of presence.
Overhead, a bald eagle rides the wind. Her mate flies steadily towards their nest, trailing a cedar branch in his claws. Their nearly year-old chick stands proudly on a lookout at the very top of their nesting tree. Then she spreads her grey-brown wings, and whoooshhh . . . glides out over the bay.
All of nature is exploding with spring-time creativity. A great bursting forth of sap and blossom, newly lined nests and flying feathered babies.
Even the air smells briny, fecund, vibrating with possibility.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re creative, take a look around you right now. The Source of all creativity has infused each molecule of air, each atom of water, each bird and tree and the very earth itself with enough creative energy to give birth to the whole world.
You and I are infused with that same energy. Creativity is in our DNA. Let it shake out your wings. Let it push those green shoots towards the sun.
That adolescent eagle? Last summer, she was a fledgling shivering in her parents’ nest. Today, she soars. Her flight, a conspiracy of earth and sun, tree and sea and sky. She is held. You and I are held. In a great-hearted creative embrace.
What have you always wanted to create? What are you waiting for? You can begin, right where you are.
You are the arms and hands of the Great Creator.
