And we began to sing, "Why should I feel discouraged? Why do the shadows fall? "And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment, and then her face began to melt and contort like his, and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up — lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. She held him next to her, draped over and against her like a child while they sang. And it pierced me. I can't image anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it's because music is about as physical as it gets: your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We're walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn't get to any other way.
To live creatively is to live from the soul, to shape our circumstances out of our deepest desires instead of conforming our dreams to the circumstances in which we live. Once we experience the joy, the power of creating our own lives, we find that creating in other arenas comes naturally, an outflow of abundant energy that comes with being true to our essence.
When I sit at my computer, before I start, I say my prayers, open up, and strike a match to light the candle. To me, this is the sound of space becoming sacred. Creating a sacred space is the first step and, in many ways, the most important step in opening ourselves to the creative process. This is the gift we give to ourselves so that the multitude of gifts we are born to share have their own birthing space. Sacred space marks ours commitment and symbolizes our readiness to serve and be served by the Source itself.
Sacred space is the playground of the soul. To create a sacred space, we start from nothing. We define its parameters, clear it of accoutrements, and bless the emptiness. Then we bring to the space only that which leads us into harmony with our own center, fortifies us, reflects our intention, reminds us of the reason we are there. Our sacred space is defined in such a way that everything in it becomes a metaphor for the journey out of the secular realm and into the spiritual, when we disengage from the limits of time and temporal concerns.
