There are creative seeds buried in people, no matter how oppressed they have been, and you can find these seeds in their stories. With the recent extreme rains here, seeds of plants that have been dormant for centuries are sprouting. They have somehow kept themselves alive for all that time. This same potential is always alive inside people.
A mature creative life, which has discovered its source, finds it is linked to everything. Creation actually requires too little from us, and there is not much in our culture that teaches us to pay attention to the things that require less. These things give birth to the unpredictable surprises that inspire a larger and deeper soul connection with creative life. With the soul well tended, even when all is lost, our creation lives larger than its physical limits. The best that any of us can do with the heaven and hell that surrounds us is to become willing participants in the unfolding of our soul's life. Any creative act emerging from this tending becomes one with the elements of the Mystery.
God requires us to be oriented from moment to moment to what is in the timeless, and not to be stuck with our thoughts and fantasies of blaming and self-pity and the belief that the past is responsible for our present problems. What is needed is to understand life in the dimension of the timeless, where everything becomes meaningful and self-revealing.
In the realm of timelessness we discover God. If we have ever become aware of the moment when we understood something, we must have realized the extratemporal nature of the event. Extemporaneous means outside of time. Indeed, the gift of making extemporaneous comments hinges on our receptivity to inspired wisdom, reaching our consciousness from the realm of the timeless.
Spiritual self-esteem is gained from knowing that our work is a contribution and a blessing. Then we perform for the love of God with no thought of personal recognition... When our motivatlon for work is valid, the work will be spontaneous and creative.