Many of you may not know that I moved to California from the East coast the fall after I finished college. It was not a conscious move, I was taking a trip, camping with friends across the country, but when we arrived in Berkeley in 1984 I rented a painting studio... and then I found a place to live. As it was my pick-up truck we were using, my friends were not exactly thrilled with my impulsive behavior. In retrospect, I may have been unconsciously avoiding law school; consciously I was inspired to paint, and print-make and draw. Of this time in my life my resume says: "1984 to 1985. Exhibiting Fine Artist/ Waitress, Berkeley, CA. Time spent in dichotomy between total immersion in private creativity and service to and interaction with the public. Involved juggling schedules, defying socialized conceptions of acceptable occupations, and withstanding marginal economic existence." I leave this in my CV partly to reward the reader who makes it to the end with humor, and partly so that I do not sever my history with this vital link to a life devoted to creative pursuit, and an honoring of both the richness and the sacrifice this entailed. I thought of myself as an artist until about 1990 when I moved out of my last studio, but economics and other work slowly took over. There are aspects of this sense of identity that I miss deeply, as well as aspects which led me to my current career.

The notion for this service came up in a Worship's Associates meeting a few months ago - I was eagerly anticipating leaving a job I was ready to leave, had in fact just taken the risk of giving notice without being sure exactly how the bills would get paid, was working too long hours with too little sustenance being generated for me in my work there. My fantasy about leaving the job was that I would be stepping out of a certain degree of drudgery and 14 hour days feeling not my best self, constant busy-ness, a high degree of boredom, into space - I had a sense of time opening, allowing space for inspiration returning, my hunger for having creativity back in my life answered. I had visions of stained glass, drawing, and yes, writing, and something more. So, of course, I said - impulsively - I want to do a service about creativity. And a date was set. Well. Writing about creativity, while a creative pursuit, is a little different from being in the glow of the ecstasy of being freely creative. And like most lives, mine was not particularly cooperative in terms of playing out as I had envisioned.

I did leave the job I was ready to leave. It has felt transformational and liberating. And for a nanosecond the possibility of some space did open up - but whether it was my fear of setting into the abyss of nothingness required to birth something new, a creative act, or great luck and chance, or just random blind life, that time was claimed, apportioned and gobbled up before I could get intentional about being creative, before a single piece of stained glass could be soldered, before a single blank piece of drawing paper could go up on the drawing board, before a single word could be put on the page, about creativity or any other subject. I was offered a new job - a dream job, you can't say no to that or control the timing of that. Friends visited from out of town on their return loop from a trip to England, can't say no to that and who would want to? Another friend for the next weekend, coming through from Massachusetts on his way to Australia and I haven't seen him in two years, would I say no to that? What would I say no to: the emergency trip to the vet, the root canal (well, maybe!), doing the bills, the yard work, the laundry, the grocery shopping, choir, church, talking with my husband after work, my grandmother, my mother's retirement, my husband's graduation? Granted there are pursuits I give my time and energy to that I could choose not to - mostly social, like hiking, and gathering with friends for a BBQ dinner - but I love these times, and need them, and regardless, the margin of space is slim. And so the time I envisioned for being creative in the way of solitary artists - a whole quiet day with no external commitments in which I sit and contentedly look at the blank page, finger my pastels, move colors of glass next to each other and sit with them, sit with my self, and my thoughts, and the sunlight or the fog, let images flash through my mind's eye, drink a cup of tea, pet the cat, and then something emerges and I feel energized and satisfied, more alive, solid in myself, solid as myself, and replenished, more ready for an external structure and work the next day, truly satisfied - so this time has been spent instead as life filled it up. And the remaining bits grabbed here and there I have thought, and then written about creativity, rather than just being enfolded in the process. Luckily writing for me is one of those numinous, potentially inherently rewarding and deeply satisfying pursuits. A creative pursuit. The looming deadline did have a different presence than the halcyon floating I had longed for when I impulsively volunteered the topic, but otherwise, the process has been similar. So, what is that path of creativity?

The first part seems to be about preparation and commitment, more about myself than the project. I spent a fair amount of time being aware this project was present. I thought about being creative, I longed for it. In between appointments and external commitments, part of my energy re-focused periodically on my topic. I visited the library that is my house to see what good wise writers had written about it. I carried a seminal book around about it but didn't get to reading it until I absolutely had to to let myself get onto the next step. I bought a great new book and set it by the bed, and read the first chapter one night, skimmed the table of contents, then set it down. I stressed about not having enough time. I criticized myself for not making more time. I got anxious about not having anything clear or profound to say. I judged all my prior writings. You get the picture.

From the beginning, tho, had the intention of doing it differently. I wanted to write in a different way - a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I actually did not have enough time to do what I usually do when I write, which is to read voluminous amounts from all my favorite writers and thinkers and poets and then synthesize down and down, circling the topic, layering words and ideas and images, and organize it based on my own idiosyncratic sense of what is essential and out emerges some dense but usually fairly interesting and sometimes moving piece. Sort of the writing by oil painting approach. Instead, my intention for today was to write a piece that allowed a more visceral, shared experience of creativity, which allowed me to make a connection between me, and you, and you and creativity, to create an opportunity for inspiration that might lead to more creative engagement for us, between us, among us. Perhaps more like a water color, a medium that has always eluded me, than an oil. This is at once something less heroic than my typical message - about which my grandmother has dryly said, "yes, you really ask a lot of people" - and more heroic in the impact it might make. I am seeking a deeply personal quality, and a more immediate engagement. A personal response. Perhaps this is a recognition that creativity is not just about things, but is about a quality of meaningful intimacy.

The work of creativity is real. It takes depth of feeling, labor, commitment, focus, sweat, thinking, worrying. It takes a preoccupation with the topic or the task at hand. It takes perseverance and withstanding seemingly fruitless hours, time spent unsure of the return. It takes accepting that I may have nothing specific yet to say, but trusting, hoping, that something meaningful, new, will emerge. Then after staying up on the computer til midnight after working a full day, I, not a morning person, wake up five the next day, the sun is out, the birds really are singing, and before I have to get ready for work there are words in my head in a certain order, with a structure laid out, a really simple, well duh structure.

And it is relieving to realize that my experience illustrates what the good wise writer, Rollo May, had asserted about the creative process in his classic treatise The Courage to Create: he said, in essence, that creativity is a spiritual process; the creative act requires a deep engagement between the creator and the creation, a process which looks like periods of blind labor and intense focus, relieved by periods of rest and gestating relaxation, and it is usually following one of these relaxation times when the creation occurs, the birth of something new, something which is whole in terms of form and content and intention. The courage he refers to has to do with the necessity of facing the anxiety of the nothingness that is real, the abyss, before the new thing arises. May also talks about morality, and the role of creativity in the survival, no the thriving, of our civilization.

A choice confronts us. Shall we, as we feel our foundations shaking, withdraw in anxiety and panic? Frightened by the loss of our familiar mooring places, shall we become paralyzed and cover our inaction with apathy? If we do those things, we will have surrendered our chance to participate in the forming of the future. We will have forfeited the distinctive characteristic of human beings - namely, to influence our evolution through our own awareness. We will have capitulated to the blind juggernaut of history and lost the chance to mold the future in a society more equitable and humane. Or shall we seize the courage necessary to preserve our sensitivity, awareness and responsibility in the face of radical change? Shall we consciously participate, on however small a scale, on the forming of a new society? I hope our choice will be the latter& .we are called upon to do something new& this is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness. To live into the future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize...

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is rather the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair... If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. A chief characteristic of this courage is it requires a centeredness within our own being, without which we would find ourselves to be in a vacuum. The "emptiness" within corresponds to an apathy without; and apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice. That is why we must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.

Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage our fidelity becomes conformism... In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. An assertion of the self, a commitment, is essential if the self is to have any reality. This is the distinction between human beings and the rest of nature. The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth, no commitment is necessary... But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day. These decisions require courage. This is why Paul Tillich speaks of courage as being ontological - it is essential to our being.

I wonder about my commitment to devote the brief time I do have to writing a sermon, a message, rather than making stained glass or drawing. Kierkegaard insisted that "Not to dare is to lose oneself". We often think in a limited way about creativity, that it is having artistic talent, scientific genius or entrepreneurial savvy, but what if creativity were about this passionate spiritual stance May describes: being about the very essence of who we are, about taking risk, daring, truly being alive, about sacred living. We each live, and choose the manner in which we live. I feel deeply committed to this community. I want to live a life consistently engaged in meaning-making, in spiritual connection with myself, and in connection with you, these others I have serendipitously found, on my path. The risk of connection is perhaps one of the biggest risks of all for us humans.

This question about creativity is more than relevant to us individually, and to our community as Unitarian Universalists. I was talking with another UUP member this past week, and the question came up: what are we doing here that matters? The age-old dialogue between being and doing, between worship and social justice, played out - I am, of course, an introvert and she, more an extravert - but still it is fruitful to ask ourselves, what are we doing by creating this community? What is your role in it? Are we doing something by creating a place to be in a certain way? Is doing something more required to address our deeper purpose. Yes, and yes.

Ours is a culture supporting manic behavior. We tend to avoid being alone, or being quiet, or being reflective. We seem to be afraid of what May calls the "constructive use of solitude" and its potential for enrichment from the unconscious and expansion of consciousness. We get reinforced - with approval, raises, admiration, acclaim - for DOING, more and more and more. We are surrounded by noise and distraction, TVs are everywhere, or radio or computers or music or alcohol or constant conversation or thrilling activities. We want the jolt of enlivenment, the ecstasy, without the anxiety of the abyss, so we consume, buy, do, to excess, at the expense of BEING, reflecting, engaging, expressing. There is an epidemic in the diagnoses of Bipolar disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder - problems with attention, focus, presence, tolerating and managing our overwhelming feelings, having strong judgment, making good decisions, being aware of our thoughts and feelings and reactions. And this is treated with an epidemic of medications, an external intervention for an externalized, objectified world. Well, we're an extraverted culture, and that is the metaphor that is found true by many. And I am not, definitely not, meaning to say that psychiatric diagnoses and medications are simply metaphor. But manic defense is not necessarily mania. And as a cultural reality there is value and meaning in stepping back and looking at the symbolic substance of this reality. And so asking, opening up an abyss of nothingness, what if this were not so, or not the only so. What if we were a culture that believed in and trusted the creative encounter, in being as a precursor to doing, a yes, yes. In which anxiety was thought to be inevitable, as inevitable as breathing, in, out, in, out, anxiety, creativity. May's point is that artists are those who are able to hold the anxiety and create order out of chaos, that creativity is spiritual, and as such is not most vital as an isolated act, but as a series, a lifetime of intentionality and creativity. That this is what the world requires. Creative living is an imperative. And we are all a part of it, one way or another, we cannot avoid it: May insists that "thinking and self-creating are inseparable".

So what would it be to live with creativity as my daily guiding principle, as my way of being?

• I might keep in mind that the quality of the encounter is the essential aspect of how I bring myself to any situation.
• I might tolerate anxiety and conflict and devote my energy to bringing something new to light.
• I might live with intentionality, a conscious commitment to life.
• I might have intense periods of focus, and relieve myself with necessary regular relaxation and rest.

So, are you curious about what it would be like for you? Do you consider yourself a creative person? Intentionality sounds like such a burden. A huge commitment. Aren't I doing enough already? But if living this way is about living most fully from and with ourselves, isn't there something alluring about the idea, the possibility of it? What if that sense of exhaustion we feel tracking and controlling the details of our daily lives, responsibilities, chores, is partly due to the energy required to keep us focused on the narrow band of existence and push away, hold a bay, broader, slower, deeper, more open experience. And what about the reservoir of possible energy available to us through the release of creative expression and passion? Remember how good creativity feels, how vital, how joyous? Listen to your inner argument against doing less. Wonder what an example of quiet rest, contemplation, comfort with yourself, time in solitude, can do for self, your children, the others in your life. Don't you secretly, or not so secretly, want to write a novel? Or paint? Or build a house? Or have a child? Or plant a garden? To what do you bring your fire of commitment? What is that urge for you? The good new book I bought (of which I only read the first chapter and the table of contents), called the Creativity Book emphasizes the notion of the "everyday creative person", and asks you to fill in the blank of this sentence: "ever since I can remember I have wanted to_____________________". It suggests you create small space for a simple daily ritual, holding the answer to this question in your heart, while drinking tea and sitting doing nothing else. It emphasizes how to connect with yourself, to bring creativity into your life, and thus to enrich your world by risking and expressing yourself.

So now I'll give you a taste of that, silent time to sit - which we get so rarely. This is my gift to you, which may feel like agony or respite. May this be the seed of a start on an intention of creativity. I will close the time of silence with a short reading.