Find your Creative Voice: How to Move into Your Creative Practice (or How do I get started?)

photo credit: Svetlana Pochatun

The following series is excerpts from my book "Your Creative Peace: How to find your creative voice while communing with God" written in 2013

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 Unit 1:

How to Move

Deeply into

Your Creative Voice

What to expect from this book:

We will:

-explore God’s creativity

-explore the beauty of creativity

-explore creativity as an act of worship

-PINPOINT your creative journey

-INTEGRATE YOUR CREATIVITY AND SPIRITUAL JOURNEY MORE DEEPLY

This is my hope for you. That as you journey through these next 5 weeks, you will have a sense of how GOD has gifted you with a creativity that is uniquely yours.  Maybe you ALREADY have a sense of where you thrive creatively.  This may be an opportunity to incorporate this section of your life into your spiritual practice. This may be a time to try a new creative medium.  Whatever place you find yourself, remember during this point in time you will journey through this course as YOU NEED TO. 

Suggestions on how to use this course:

-At the beginning of each week a creative prompt is given along with a bible verse.  You may choose to use either of these as the jumping off point for your creative expression that week.

-You can choose to read the sessions as preparation before you begin work in the creative medium you choose.

-At the end of each day's session, you will find questions to deepen your creative and spiritual practice.  Journal space has been provided for you to log your thoughts.  You might also choose one of these questions as a prompt for your creativity.

-A final suggestion on how to utilize these sessions in your creative practice is to keep an art journal and create drawings, scrapbook pages and mixed media pieces or photography as a means to express the work God is doing in your creative life.

Vision for the Course:

This course is geared towards:

-those who are ready to start finding their creative voice

-those who have a creative outlet already or have an idea of an avenue they would like to explore creatively.

-those who can commit some time (this course is structured to complete in 5 weeks) to exploring more deeply their creative processes as an act of worship/spiritual connection

Examples of what I mean by creative outlets:

Drawing, Painting, Mosaics, Sewing, Cooking, Clay, Photography, Decorating, Jewelry making, Baking, Scrapbooking, Writing, Music, Poetry, Knit/crochet, Needlepoint, Yoga, Teaching, Gardening, Singing, Songwriting, Homemaking, Teaching Sunday School

Ready to Begin? 

GOD AS CREATOR

Week 1 Creative Prompt: Declare Freedom

Verse for the week:  “You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body.  You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.”  Psalm 139:15

Day 1

 Recently, I read through the best selling book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren.  He touched upon something that I find sits in a very deep place for me: being successful and fulfilling your life’s purpose are not the same thing.  Have you noticed that in your own life?  Do success and fulfillment go hand in hand?  I think it depends on how you define success and whether or not you have figured out what areas in your life leave you feeling fulfilled.  

For many years I had not answered these questions for my life.  I was just living.  Were the bills paid?  Are my kids healthy?  Am I fighting with my husband?  I did not have any real sense of purpose.  Definitely I did not think it mattered to GOD what I was doing with my time other than making sure I lived a moral life.  I would have been content to live this way but…GOD in His mercy for me (AND FOR YOU) allowed the events in my life to shift in such a way that I had to TAKE NOTICE.

One of the things I found in my life is that I seemed to not be able to connect with God anymore.  I felt like life had beaten me to a pulp.  I was discouraged, disillusioned, distracted… feeling hopeless.  My prayers felt empty.  The words on the pages of my Bible waxed cold in my ears and on my heart.  The disappointments and discouragements felt too great to overcome.  I found that I was living in a shadow relationship with GOD.  He was there but I had no desire to connect, no entry to connect, no vehicle to connect.    What I did not know was that God was making a change in my life and I would start to find a language to express fulfillment on a deeper level.

 

 Spiritual:

1.                   How do you define success?  Has it changed over the years? How so?  What changes would you like to make in your life in order to redefine success?

2.                   Are success and fulfillment two sides of the same coin or are they one and the same?  Explain.

3.                   Do you feel like you are fulfilling your life’s purpose? What one step do you need to take in order to get on track?  How do you see creativity playing a role in those changes?

Creative:

1.                   The theme for this week is Declare Freedom as in letting go of how others would have you define your success, your fulfillment.  Begin to think of how you would represent this declaration in a creative way. 

LOOKING FOR OTHER LESSONS FEATURING DIFFERENT ARTISTS? 

 

Directed line drawings

 

Playlist for my art lessons on YouTube

Day 3 - Forget What You Know - 30 Days of Yoga

I took an inventory of my year this morning.  I have been kicking around the idea of getting intentional about honing my craft as an entrepreneur.  I started owning my own business accidentally about 8 years ago.  We lived in a town where there was no work.  I started creating arts and craft and got on the craft fair circuit.  I established some wholesale customers.  I took on some marketing clients.  I was somehow making a way bit by bit.  

But the dream was to go back to a typical 9-5 job.  Because all of the headache of owning your own business just did not seem worth it to me.  The payout was way too small.  Each year I would go into it looking for something that I like to do - these past few years it has been teaching - but I would always have a little something going as a side gig.  And each year something would happen - a lay off, a job relocation, troubling workplace situations - would find me back in the place of having to hustle once again.

As I began to chart these last eight years, I realize some ideas worked surprisingly well.  And, truth be told, actually would create the income I make as a teacher without the stress of the job and my hours would be a bit more flexible.  What I actually did begin with an intention, a business plan, and 100% of my energy?  What if I not only pumped myself up to bet on myself, but I was methodical about trusting myself?  

I decided that there is no reason not to try.  Because teaching will always be there. But this calm and calculated flow is here right now.

 

 

Find my Creativity Classes on Udemy

Day 2 - Stretch & Soothe - 30 Days of Yoga

Over the course of my life, I have had to recreate my life work.  I have taught yoga. art, hula hooping, drum circles.  All of these opportunities came based on my openness to try new things and willingness to figure things out and just 'fake it until I make it.'  

As I move into my fifties, I find that all this adapting has made me feel a bit scattered.  I am pretty good at a ton of things.  I always wanted to be a craftsman of sorts.  I want to pick one thing and really dive deep into it.  Being a military wife has not really lent itself to that type of focus.  As my husband moves and makes choices based on his career, I have had to align and adjust.  

Maybe that is why over the years I have grown more appreciative to what a yoga practice can offer.  Perfection is not attainable.  Each day you come to the mat and you met your body and, by extension, you meet yourself.  I find that I can't run away from my secret longings on the mat.  My practice has always had a spiritual component to it.  And because of this, I can ignore the practice for long periods of time, complaining about my time commitments.  The reality though is that if I don't have time to be quiet and alone with my thoughts for 30 minutes, I am too busy.

Writing is pretty much the same way for me.  I will take long breaks from coming to the page.  But when I finally sit down again, one of two things happen.  Either my thoughts are like a runaway train and I can't house them on the page fast enough or I feel a clog in the system and I have to just begin with a prompt of some sort.  

My life this year has not been as I have planned.  That is funny to type.  No year has really been how I have planned.  But this year I have a nod of 'oh I see' with the recognition.  I hear a whisper to go back through each year and parse out what worked.  And the things I am seeing are quite surprising.  Some unexpected things are coming to the forefront.  And it makes me smile.  Working ALL THINGS together for my good.  Yes, GOD does.

 

Find my Creativity Classes on Udemy