Dear Reader,
Over the last month, I’ve been staying with my parents in Colorado. Part of this time I’ve been carrying on with my remote job and part of the time I’ve just been enjoying (sort of) the holidays and closing out the year with my partner. While definitely a break from my other life in France and Belgium, a long family visit is never what I often mistake it for: vacation.
This specific visit has involved elder care for a parent with Parkinson’s. To show up with intentional presence for a front row experience of declining executive order reasoning and steadily spiralling dementia is the opposite of vacation. It’s also not the right energy, it turns out, to drum up motivation to write a Best of 2023 kind of blog article.
Over the last few years, one of my best friend’s, my dad, has been replaced with an unbalanced echo of the person who raised me and the person I’ve loved getting to know as an adult.
Over the last few weeks, there has not been a single day when I do not whisper words of gratitude for the grief therapy I invested in this last year. Oh, yes, I’m definitely getting my money’s worth.
Significant pieces of my relationship with my dad have washed out with the inevitable tide of a relentless neurodegenerative disease only to be replaced by an incoming tide of shadows and echos, large thuds of a grown man hitting the ground at unexpected moments as he loses his balance. Like most ambiguous loss, I lack words for what’s happening on a heart level.
One of the important questions that came up in grief therapy was, What have you learned from your dad? I’ll come back to this in a moment.
Creating space for thresholds
I’m currently reading John O’Donohue’s book To Bless the Space Between Us. It was mentioned in the what’s three books you would recommend section of a recent Ezra Klein Show interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous. The book is an effort to retrieve the lost art of blessing. It is a collection of blessings in poetic form and essays on blessing. O’Donohue beautifully employs language to reach into the territory of change that is inevitable in life.
When communities and individuals come to crossroads in life, a blessing can be a ritual that protects, encourages and provides guidance in moments when change is on the horizon. Or, as I sometimes feel, change knocks me out like a dodgeball I failed to dodge. Regardless, in such moments a blessing can be the thing that helps tune into your spirit instead of checking out completely.
A threshold has opened in front of my sister, mom, dad and me. We are losing him, and in the weeks I’ve been here, this decline has presented with a steeper grade. Literally and figurative, more heavy lifting is needed. In this light, To Bless the Space Between Us has been an encouragement setting an example of how to use the art of blessing to reframe situation.
A blessing for the creative spirit
So today, in the sprit of The Iteration Project, I thought I’d have a go at writing a blessing for the creative spirit in 2024. Maybe you need to refresh how you’re approaching a certain project or maybe you need to let some projects go. Regardless, the spirit doing the creating can often use a blessing.
I feel ill-equipped to write a blessing. It’s been a long month. I’m emotionally exhausted in ways I haven’t been for a long time. But I also believe such moments might be perfect for practicing the art of blessing.
Blessing, as it happens, is an art my dad dabbles in. It’s on the list of things I learned and am learning from him that I want to carry on. A blessing might help me connect with the part of my heart and spirit and soul that long deeply to connect with other hearts, that part of my heart that longs to find ways to usher the divine into the daily by engaging in a creative practice.
That sounds big, but that’s what O’Donohue says that a blessing can offer, pathways of presence through change.
Blessing the Creative Spirit in 2024
May you take time to set up workspaces that inspire you.
May you feel the ennui, then get to work.
Don’t wait for inspiration. Be curious and serious about your own process.
Listen, read, watch, think, converse. Find what feeds you in this season.
May you be brave enough to do diligently what you have to do (a day job?) so you can do diligently what you want to do (probably make art that isn’t super marketable).
May you honour your longing but not drown in it.
May you hold space for thresholds and cross over in big and small ways into the unknown.
Honour the ecosystems supporting your work, even your day jobs, even the strangers.
May you regularly find time to let your mind and heart sink deep into your making and still surface intact enough to move the wet laundry to the dryer, make a grocery list, make a dinner, do a workout, engage in a bit of small talk.
When you need community, may you find those who feed you and avoid those who don’t.
Dance. Dancing always helps.
Go see live music.
May you see projects to completion. May you know when to keep going. May you know when to call it quits.
When you need solitude, may you prioritize it. Five minutes is more than enough time to shut a door and open a window or simply step outside.
May you never give up when you lose the plot. Just keep going. You’ll find it again.
Break bread. Lose interest. Take breaks. Take naps. Have a snack. Go for a walk.
When you’re out on that walk, may you not run through your endless list, but rather contemplate a thread in the tapestry you’re weaving.
May that thread lead you back to the work that you’ll never truly finish.
May you not let weeks go by without opening the door to your study, sitting down, slowing your breath and reaching for your work.
Visit the ocean. Take time to walk in tidal zones. Inspect tide pools.
When you greet the ocean, may it awaken you to how it echoes your heart’s own expanse.
With love,
L’Abri