Day: September 22, 2013

Maria and I had one of our episodic philosophical disagreements this morning, I woke up thinking about the Rainbow Bridge idea, our meeting our loved animals in heaven and spending all eternity romping with them. I don’t like the idea, I don’t want to meet a bunch of crazy border collies and hungry Labs in heaven and spend all eternity romping with them, it seems uncomfortable for me and selfish as well. I hope they go and live their own happy lives, as they deserve.

I believe ideas live, evolve and change, I am not one of those people who think it is somehow hypocritical to change our minds. I change my mind about a hundred times a day. Every smart person I have ever known is eager to change their minds, not reluctant. I don’t want to live in a “left” or “right” world. But Red has shaken me up on this, I wouldn’t mind meeting him in the afterlife and continuing our journey together. Since I am much older than Maria, I expect to die first and I said I wouldn’t mind if it she collected Red’s ashes – I want to be cremated – and scattered them with mine. There is also the idea, I said, of putting Red in a coffin with me like the Pharoah’s did so we could travel to the Underworld together and I would have my dog with me.

Maria, lying in bed reading a novel, jeered at this. “You are not a Pharoah,” she said, “not even close,” and, she huffed, “I am not killing Red when you did and putting him in a coffin with you, forget about it.” She suggested this was a selfish idea, and although stung, I could see her point. Still, I said, I think Red (he was lying in bed at this point, his head on my shoulder) might want to come. Besides, I said, I sort of like the Pharoah analogy, it could work for me.

In any case, I see it’s an idea that is not going to fly. Maria is not impressed much by men in general or by me in particular. I like what our friend Mary Kellogg said when I told her Maria and I had become a thing: “oh good, dear,” she said sweetly, “she will keep you in your place.”

How true. And my place will not be in a gold coffin with toys and trinkets and dogs when I did. I’ll probably get tossed into the Dahlia garden if I’m lucky, maybe out in the pasture with the donkeys.  The big news for me is that as much as I have loved my other dogs, I didn’t want them to join me in the afterlife, if there is one. Until now. I do want Red to come.  I think I would like Red to come along, I think he would want do. I’m not sure about this Rainbow Bridge thing, maybe we could arrange to meet somewhere else, like our path on the woods, or maybe the Pig Barn at Bedlam Farm.

Creativity is not, for me, an elitist expression of art, not something that hangs in museums or on the walls of  literary people, or is the province of Manhattan intellectuals in their canyons and caves. For me, creativity is an ideology, a human sacrament, a ritual of personal expression, affirmation and dignity.

Creativity is our voice to the world, our announcement that we are human beings of value, our thoughts and ideas and creations and imagination deserves to live out in the world and be seen and heard.

When people tell me they love animals more than people and think animals are superior to people, I understand but feel a shadow, because creativity is the gift of every human being, and of no animal on the earth. It is what every great thinker and human being believes is most precious and sacred in the human soul – the drive to sing a song or write one, read a book or write one, create a poem, a painting, ski down a mountain, run five miles, make a mini-garden or a bigger one. No dog or cat or raccoon is endowed with this gift, and this is an altar I have come to kneel before, to pray to and bow my head.

I hear about Washington and I do not see a left and a right in perpetual conflict but a profound failure of creativity, creative people have fled our civic life. All that is left is dispiriting argument and conflict, there are no creative solutions or ideas to issues and ideas.  Fear and anger, the two forces that seem to dominate our culture, are not creative, they are killers of creativity.

Again and again, in my own life, my life with Maria, in my life as an author, in my photography, in the Open Groups of Bedlam Farm on Facebook, in my classes and friendships, in the love of ideas and blogs, I have seen the power of creativity unleashed. People are transformed, their spirits liberated, their creative spark ignited, they find their voice, they understand their lives, they change their lives, they are uplifted, they are healed. Blogs, until recently the awkward creations of computer geeks, have become a creative force and expression of the individual, an inspiring answer to the angry din foisted upon us by the corporate idea of information and politics and ideas. Creativity no longer lives in art galleries and bookstores, it is loose upon the land, ours for the taking.

There are so many ways to be creative, and nothing is more satisfying than to see the light in people’s eyes when they realize that creativity is inside of each of us, it is not the province of the few, but the gift of the many.

In my personal life, creativity has brought me love and connection, creativity is what drew Maria and I to one another, it is what keeps our love burning brightly and growing. Creativity has saved Maria as well as me, brought her shining into the world. More than anything else, this is what we know about one another. I have learned, too, that my life with animals is another gift of creativity. If animals cannot be creative in the way human beings can, then we can, at least, be creative in our love and care for them, and in our stories and photographs of them.

Isn’t this what politics was supposed to do? And religion? And writing? And technology? If those institutions and forces can no longer lead or uplift us, if they promote argument and fear, they creativity is my own personal movement, my ideology, my sacrament, my healing. This is where the hero journey has taken me, is the way I have uplifted myself, begun to give rebirth to myself, understood the truth about my self, allowed my tired and sometimes battered soul to find love, dignity, peace of mind and the glowing wonder of truth.

It was creativity, not pills, that ultimate freed me from a life of anger and fear and brought me to a better place. Every Sunday, this my worship.