June 21, 2017 – When art must wait

“This painting will hold down the fort in my studio while I’m away.”

We are getting ready to go on vacation and I’m in full-on get-ready mode.  The list of things to do today is long and if I let myself think about it too much, I can get almost stopped in my tracks by the overwhelm.  I still don’t have a good carry-on bag.  My recent trips I’ve taken the one my dad almost never uses.  But he’s on this trip, so I need one of my own!  I’ve yet not packed one thing, and I still have a couple pairs of new shorts and a skirt to hem (they are always too long)  And we leave tomorrow! What makes it even more challenging is, as a feminine oriented being, my environment “talks to me” – big time!  The dishes tell me to put them away, the laundry to fold it, the piles in my studio to sort through.  Even if it’s not absolutely necessary to be done before going away, I’m still compelled to tend to it.  I just now stopped writing to dig through a box in the garage for my travel journal from 1984 to see if I could find the name of the restaurant my brother and I ate at with our boyfriend/girlfriend when we were in Dubrovnik 33 years ago – because he’s there and sent me a text message asking me if I remembered.  I’m hopeless at avoiding distractions!

Though I have still plenty to tend to, I have been actually really busy-efficient this past week – I have gotten so much done.  Yesterday as I was buzzing back and forth to the car, I was thinking about this mode, this pre-vacation mode and how efficiency experts revere it.  They say we should strive to always be as effective as we are right before we go away.  I found myself second guessing that wisdom.  Yes, stuff needs to get done too in life.  But do I really, really want to be as on-task, on-purpose as I am this past week – all the time?  It feels so good to be clear that I really, really don’t!  Here’s why.

I’m a different person in this mode.  In the PAX world, we call it being in “man-mode.”  Actively doing one thing after another prevents me from perceiving in a more nuanced, tuned in way.  I don’t notice beauty as I pass by, I can’t feel people’s feelings, I have less patience – my values even shift.  I find myself not caring about what goes in which recycle bin so much.  (Those of you who know how I am about trash know this is a big deal!)  And it’s almost impossible to think about sitting down to paint.  It’s nearly impossible to think about writing.  It’s been so hard to make myself sit down to write that I’m up against my deadline today.

There is a cost to being in this mode.  The capacities that feel the most precious to me fall by the wayside.  I suggest that if we never get out of this mode, our lives would lack beauty and wonder.  We’d have fewer paintings, songs and poems to inspire us.  No one would be holding the bigger picture or the deeper story.  And there would be a whole lot more grouchiness!

Last week I heard an interview of the members of the band Con Brio.  The lead singer Ziek McCarter said something that caught my ear and has stayed with me.  He said that when they write their songs they are focused on “getting the message out.”  The interviewer, Michael Krasney, asked him why the message is important.  He said:  “It’s what inspires, it’s what motivates, it’s what gives us hope, gives us a sense of purpose in what we are doing on this beautiful Earth.”  If these were my words, they would sound to me almost like platitudes, but spoken by a younger man, a passionate creative spirit who makes music that is intentionally enlivening and uplifting – music that nevertheless comes through difficult experiences, these words sound prophetic.  Creativity like this doesn’t happen in pre-vacation mode.

Teachers in my life have inspired me to adopt a philosophy of “yes, and” rather than “either or.”  I’m not saying that pre-vacation mode is a bad thing – it is actually fun to rock – to get stuff done.  Like everything under heaven there is a season.  So, in the spirit of this day, of my day, I’m going to sign off and get back to my list of to-do’s, knowing that I will be in on-vacation mode very soon.

That thought has me take a breath and find myself in a sweet state of expectancy.  Last week Sister Mary asked me what I most hope for in these 10 days.  What came to me is that I hope we have experiences that we could never have imagined – those travel surprises that feel like little miracles, along with special times with my loved ones in out-of-the-ordinary places, beauty that will jump out to greet me, because I (hopefully) will be ready for it!  My in-progress painting will be here to greet me when I come back home.

I wish for you (those of you in the northern half of our planet) to have the time and space to enjoy these long days of summer –

Love,

Cara