Creative Expression….a Universal Flow

One thing I’ve noticed developing in me as my heart opens is a tremendous appreciation for creative expression….in all its many forms.  I have always enjoyed good writing, fine art work and inspiring music, but now my heart leaps when I hear a beautiful voice or stand before a wonderful splash of color on a canvas or read a mindful piece of writing!  I sense the universe expressing itself through artists, craftsman, writers, gardeners and culinary specialists and feel tremendous hope…and bliss!  The finest expressions we witness don’t simply come from “creative minds” and long hours of practice any more than a beautiful wild flower simply developed through a long series of genetic adaptations…..they come through the flute and originate in the breath of the universe…the source of all creation.  If you doubt that all is well or feel the universe has given up on us, open your heart and look around!  Use all those fine senses we’re blessed with and witness the beauty around you!

One beautiful series of paintings I recently fell in love with is titled, “Vanishing Florida” and while I appreciate the message the artist is conveying and love her work, my heart tells me there’s a more positive perspective than that expressed in the title.  As in most parts of the world, there appear to be many reasons here to be pessimistic about our future.  Despite a growing awareness of the situations we have created for ourselves, the human race in general seems to be hell-bent on slashing and burning and paving over every bit of our natural surroundings in our quest to satisfy our insatiable greed….and in the process destroying ourselves.  I love Florida for many reasons, but one of the top ones is that it’s so apparent here that nature is irrepressible!  Even as the lines of condos stretch further and further down our coast lines and more and more land is drained for new subdivisions and highways, there exists an incredible array of natural life forms all around..adapting and continuing on.  Pelicans play in the updrafts created by high rise condominiums;  Osprey build nests next to busy roadways; Egrets, Ibis, and Heron and Anhingas hang out around nearly every retention pond;  huge Barred Owls sit in oak trees watching over neighborhoods; hawks hang out on power poles watching for the movement of squirrels and snakes amongst the shrubbery of backyards; Armadillo bustle around lawns and ditches rooting for bugs; Tortoises burrow under the cover of landscaping and if a plot of ground is left alone for more than a few months, nature takes it over completely!  We humans certainly have the means altering the landscape, fouling our own nest, doing ourselves in and taking some other species with us,  but we will never really be able to suppress nature.  As George Carlin suggested in one of his last monologues,  ‘when humans have all destroyed themselves, Earth will simply shake us off like a bad case of fleas and carry on!’

The thing is, we don’t have to destroy ourselves or continue to spoil our nest!  That same Nature is in each of us…in everything! If you focus for just a moment, you can feel it!  Stop for just a few seconds and sense the aliveness in your hands, in your feet…in your whole body!…that tingling vibration that is an indicator of life in every cell!  We ARE Nature!  When we allow it to express itself freely through us, anything is possible.  Our minds have a tendency to distract us from this realization and our thoughts often create dark bogs we think we will never be able to extract ourselves from, but the nature in us is just as irrepressible as it is here in Florida!  Shake those negative thoughts off like a bad case of fleas, open your heart and experience the beauty all around you! Feel the creative powers of the universe begin to flow through you…and dance!  All is well, all is well, all is well!