CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: Into Every Life Some Rain Must Fall...Then What?

Monday

Into Every Life Some Rain Must Fall...Then What?

For your journal, discussion or retreating this week:

Tell about a significant challenge in your work or personal life. Tell about what you learned or are still learning and the changes set in motion because you haven't always gotten what you thought you wanted. (More for your journal/discussion along with a creativity exercise at the end of this post.)

I like to take familiar songs, even songs I've written, and use them for deeper reflection. The movie, "Sister Act" offered some fine, playful examples--Serious Play is a theme of this blog, after all. Teaching courses in art and spirituality, as well as leadership and team development, I've discovered how powerful music can be, as an instrument for helping to connect with the beauty, sacredness, and creativity all around and within us (to enhance reflection and creative problem solving). Here's one of my songs that can be a love song or...and...a song of contemplation. It's also an example of a journal entry that turned into something more.

IN THE SOFTNESS OF A KISS

Words and Music by D.M. Solis
with French translations by
Patricia Francoise Pelletier

Dan's chaque vie la plui
doit tomber...

Into every life
some rain must fall.
There are days
my back's against the wall.
Through the darkest times
you stand by me,
faithful as the waves
that kiss the sea...

Chorus:
I can hear it in your (a) voice
I can feel it in a touch
in the softness of a kiss I know
you love me so much.
It's all you do and say
and all you help me feel.
In the softness of a kiss I know
your love for me is real.

C'est vrai...mercie, mon Dieu
je sais ce qui est vrai...C'est vrai.
It's real...
I thank God I know
what's for real...
Your love for me is real.

We can hide from hurt
we've felt before.
Or Love can help a heart
choose so much more.
If it weren't for you
I'd never know
the faithfulness a true love
comes to show...

Chorus.

More for your journal...

1. As you reflect on a difficult time in your life or on problems you've been solving at work (from the introductory prompt above), discovering "teachable moments" and "lessons learned," you may unearth the seeds of a poem, song, or story that will be helpful to others. Don't forget to write them down.

2. Name something or someone in your life or observation that has been "faithful as the waves that kiss the sea." Tell about that.

3. Tell about a time when you felt like your back was against a wall. What were the circumstances? What happened? How did (or will) you get beyond that situation? What did you learn? What are you still learning?

4. "We can hide from hurt we've felt before, or love can make a heart choose so much more...." Tell about this choice in the past in your life. What are you choosing these days? Why?

Finally, an Exercise of Gifting:

Jot down a few notes about expressions of love or images of beauty you perceive throughout a week or month. Make a collage, poem, digital photo-story, even a song about them. Share this with an elder or a child.

With great love from
Diane

These images were collected from my recent artist's retreat at Lake Arrowhead Resort and Spa and an artist's field trip to Lake Gregory. This one was taken of me. The child in the photo reminds me of my brothers when we were that age and of fishing outings with my father. I love this picture.

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.