CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: INSPIRED by the "FIVE YEARS" Episode

Friday

INSPIRED by the "FIVE YEARS" Episode

Did you watch it? What did you think? I've been among other things inspired to project a bit forward in time and...to remember. Here are some prompts for our individual and collection creative image-in-nations:

1. Writing expansively from this true moment now... For Your Journal/Discussion/Creative Writing: Your life, just ONE year in the future. Your family's, your community's, our nation's? 5 minutes each.

2. Journal/Discussion/Creative Writing: What might life be like FIVE years in the future? 10 minutes. (Go for TEN years? Imagine TWENTY?)

3. Some rainy days when my brothers and I were children, Mum would declare, "It's pajama day!" and three little kids would play hookie at home, in pajamas all day with our mother. After a full morning inside with three energetic children (some might say, hyperactive kids), Mum, would come into the living room bearing raingear and declare, "It's go outside and splash in the puddles day!" Mum's motives may have been mixed...and we had such a wonderful time!

For your Journal/Discussion: Tell of a happy surprise from your childhood.

4. There are some people, former senator Barbara Jordan, for example, it doesn't matter what your state of belief or un-belief is. You listen to them speaking and you "get religion," in a way, because they are so sensible yet passionate in their efforts for the human (humane) rights of all people.

For your Journal/Discussion: Tell about someone from your past or who inspires you today because of their knowledge/commitment/compassion. Ten minutes.

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.