Peace Piece

Creativity and War

Dear hearts.
War. Peace. Creativity. Love.
I’m thinking so much now about all these things
And how they are connected.

Is the war distracting you from your work?
Do you open your file and before long hop lanes to Instacram?
Are you wondering how you can help?
Feeling responsible for getting it right?
How much time you should spend parsing your take?
How much of your very valuable attention you should spend on learning history?

These are all important questions.
And I hope naming them maybe helps you
Hear which ones you might be asking
So quietly you almost can’t hear them.
And I really do believe in loving the question.
But sometimes
When there are too many questions
It can be hard to love them all.

A few things that might help.
Art - I’m going to use that word here instead of creativity.
Because art is the result of creativity.
Creativity is the process of making art.
And sometimes of making other things.
Like crocheted toilet paper covers.

But art is the best of humanity.
The creative flame well used.
War is the creative spirit gone awry.

I remember being young and hearing
Make love not war.
It seemed so obvious.
Simple.
As life’s complexities revealed themselves to me
Like most adults I came to believe
Make love not war
Is oversimplified.
Sure. Obviously.
But lately I’m thinking
But also it’s not.

We have the choice every day.
In our relationships, finances, work.
In how we treat ourselves.
In our creativity.

And yes, there are forces greater than us.
That super sucks.
If you are a control enthusiast especially.
And what creative isn’t.
You play G-d every day.
But there are world players who want to control all the things.
The resources.

But.
There is one resource they cannot control.
Your attention.
Your consciousness.
Your spirit.
Your creativity.
Your art.
Unless you let them.
And the way you donlt let them
Is you understand you are connected to source.
That’s the energy.
The energy doesn’t come from conflict.
Conflict seems to create energy.
It peaks the meter.
But really it uses energy.

You connect to source.
And then you use that power.
Re-source it.

And can they make it hard
To do the work you want to do?
Yes.
They can make it even almost impossible.
Health care, housing, etc.
Yes.
Obstacles to the time and focus to connect.

But our job is to connect.
And use that energy
That resource to
Make love.
Not war.

And of course this is challenging.
Because creativity is fraught with conflict.
You fight your own tendency to be lazy, greedy, self obsessed.
Or your impatience, self loathing, attention deficiency.
On and on.
But we can learn to stop the fight.
To step aside.
And let ourselves through.
Self knowledge.
Compassion.
Resourcefulness.

We can stop treating our work as a war.
That’s an old model.
And it fans the flame of war culture.
This doesn’t mean being casual about it.
Not at all.
It means treating your work as a sacred endeavor.
To make something sacred
You sacrifice for it.
Sometimes in big ways.
I didn’t have children.
Sometimes in smaller ways.
You don’t get to go to the party.

“Practicing art, no matter how well or how badly, is a way to make your soul grow.”
Kurt Vonnegut

And the reason you make work sacred
Is you know it is a matter of spirit.
Soul.
You do the work out of love.
And to save your own soul.
It’s a kind of self love.
And an offering to the world.
Making art
Means making peace with yourself.

And does that mean you should ignore
The world stage?
Of course not.
It’s right here.
And right now.

But pour your questions
Pour your hopes and dreams
Your anger
Your grief
Your compassion
Your desire
Pour it all into the work.

Then go study some world history.
Meditate.
Fill up.
And get ready to pour again tomorrow.

Infinitely yours,
Beth