Friday, January 11, 2013

Creativity: Recognizing where you are as sacred space

Set aside time to become engaged

I've been thinking about a writer's sense of place - an awareness that where we are is important.  I tend to believe that wherever I am, it's boring and insignificant, and if I could just get somewhere else, I could write.

Ken Lamberton wrote an amazing book about being a naturalist while in prison.  He was a teacher who fell in love with a student, and - well, you can guess what happened next.  It's a heart-breaking story, and you can find out more about it here:

 Okay, so what's the point?  How does a convicted child molester relate to sacred space?

No matter how screwed up your life is, no matter how limited your options are, you can still observe, create, redeem and restore.  Corrie Ten Boom was in a Nazi concentration camp; Ken Lamberton was in a state prison.  Creativity and sacred space depends, in part, on you - the meal becomes a feast because of what you bring to the table.

Ken Lamberton included a wonderful quote from Richard Nelson in his book, Wilderness and Razorwire, and I wanted to share it with you:

"I wonder," Richard Nelson writes, "what it would mean if each person, at some point in his life, set aside some time to become thoroughly engaged with a part of the home community: a backyard, a woodlot, a pond, a stretch of river, a hillside, a farm, a park, a creek, a county, a butte, a marsh, a length of seacoast, a ridge, an estuary, a cactus forest, an island.  How would it affect the way each person views herself or himself in relationship to the natural surroundings, or to the earth as a whole?"

Nelson, Richard.  Quoted by Ken Lamberton,  Wilderness and Razorwire:  A Naturalist's Observations from Prison, pp. 144-145.  San Francisco:  Mercury House, 2000.

Become alive, become aware, become engaged 

with the place you live.  It won't just affect how you view yourself.  It will change how you see everything - including your writing.



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