Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Creative Every Day 2009

Reality is permeated, indeed flooded, with divine creativity, nourishment, and care.
-Marcus J. Borg, Conflict, Holiness, and Politics

I've started participating in a thing called Creative Every Day. There is a button on my sidebar, if you are interested. It seems as if everyone approaches this project differently, which is part of why it is such a rich idea. There are a lot of talented artists out there who are participating, and visiting their websites and blogs is inspiring. I'm going to record some of my creativity here.

Yesterday, being creative included cooking something that I've never made before. I used a basic recipe to start with, and improvised from there. That was creative for me, and nurturing to my family. I also cleaned our house. It feels so good to do the cleaning, as well as to see the finished product (though it doesn't last!), and I believe it paves the way for creative endeavors by clearing space mentally. I feel proud, and I enjoy being here even more when the house smells and looks clean. It's good exercise, too!

Those two things may not seem creative to the onlooker, but to me, they are significant. Before Katie was diagnosed with cancer, I had begun renting & watching DVDs of the old Julia Child cooking shows; I was also reading her autobiography and her cookbooks. When Katie got sick, cooking and "domestic affairs" went out of the window. There was so much work to do to keep her body going, through the ravages of chemo and the illness itself, that there was no energy left over to be creative, nor time (nor focus) to apply to it. I guess you could call the way I designed Katie's medication schedules creative, but that's about it. I couldn't even concentrate enough to knit. There were many days when it was difficult to eat, not to mention cook.

After we came home from living at Ronald McDonald House and Children's Hospital, we did a lot of barbecuing and preparing easy meals. Once Katie's final diagnosis came in, the meals began to arrive, made for us by our church community; that was a HUGE gift. After Katie's passing, I just did not care about eating, but having a growing, teenage boy & a husband to feed made it necessary to cook, so I did it. It took a long time for it to become enjoyable or creative. Being able to cook with a little zest in my heart, and cleaning our house myself, are two signs that I'm living through this hell of loss; I am coping, on some levels.

I also: --made some changes in wording and added a couple of additional photos to the sidebar of the blog
--called a friend (who, by the way, has a brand-new blog) to brainstorm about making a video together.

That's my first Creative Every Day!

5 comments:

Busy Bee Suz said...

Everybody has their own creative outlets....be it, sewing, painting, arts, etc....cooking that can be very creative. It is a chore, but trying different things makes it more of an "art" than a chore.
Lord, I hope housework means I am creative too...I do enough of it. :)
glad you are joining in this...looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
I love this post. Yes, you are getting through the hell and seeing the light....well, today anyway. :)
hugs,
suz

Me said...

I will have to check out that site! I could use a little more creativity these days!

I wanted you to see this site. Comforting Families. One of my dearest friends in IN started this organization when her youngest became sick with a cancer related auto immune disorder. Her organizations is growing and it's pretty amazing. Her little one has now been thrown another challenge with pediatric MS. Just heart breaking. I never even knew MS affected children.

pysanki.blogspot.com said...

I haven't visited the site yet, but believe that creativity can be very therapeutic. I never thought of cleaning as creative, but can see how it would qualify. One of my big goals is to complete at least one creative project every month. They're cluttering my craft space and creating guilt. It's amazing how liberating and wonderful feeling it is to complete one such project. :)

Diane Walker said...

You'll laugh -- my creativity today (other than writing another poem) was to learn enough HTML to add a border around my pictures on the poetry blog -- and choose the border color!

Thanks for sending a pointer to this site -- it's a great idea. Now (for the service day before inauguration Tuesday) we all need to figure out how to get more creative about serving our communities... I'm still working on that one.

Leah said...

My heart goes out to you in regards to your loss, karen. Your daughter is absolutely beautiful and I can't imagine how much you must miss her.

I'm glad you are taking time to bring more creativity into your life. I know it can be healing for a lot of people and I hope that it helps you in your journey! xoxo