Creating Vicariously

     Outside my window I hear hammering...I hear a goat baby cry for its mama (and a faint reply cry in the distance). I hear all 4 dogs bark as a gravel truck passes down the road.
     I hear my garage door go up and my lawnmower start, and in short order I catch a glimpse of someone pulling a wagon full of wood to the barn (because I haven't had time to shop for a mule or a used ATV).

      As for me, I am stuck inside, forced behind a desk to get some overdue paperwork completed. Nothing gets created till the numbers add up and, well, we all know how I feel about numbers. (Can't live without 'em/forced to deal with them.) Still and so, out of kindness to my CPA I sort through the box of receipts and stapled together credit card statements. By dark it will make sense to me at least; by tomorrow I'll pour over it with her.
    But let us be perfectly clear...Much as I love the cat who has positioned himself strategically in the middle of all this, I WANT to be outside. Every fiber of my being longs to be outside working on the projects with the guys and stopping to hug on critters. When they stop for lunch, I suit up...go hug the critters...get jumped by baby goats... surround myself in a sea of huge white dogs who circle around, no doubt sensing mommy's having a stressful day.  Ten minutes of of this much needed "fix" and I return to my forced confinement of all paperwork, all day long. I've procrastinated long enough.

       By end of day I look as if I've slept on my head. I step outside to say goodbye to the workers and am pleasantly surprised to discover they have finished one of several projects we had budgeted for spring: this one being my first ever "raised bed planter boxes" in which I intend to start my first ever herb garden this year.
     While I did not get to help in the creativity of the build itself, it was my idea to start them...I knew just where to place them and how they should look...I had sketched it all out on notebook paper 3 days before and am pleased with how much better they look than my stick drawing. A lovely addition to my goat fencing, plus conveniently located for kitchen purposes, the whole project trims out the place nicely while adding a certain functionality to the entire cookbook equation.
     While not my favorite way to spend a day, my number crunching has everything to do with whether I CAN create another and another project...and so I resign myself to the task and chain myself to the desk.
     So in short, the creativity of this day was lived vicariously...I could see creativity going on...I could hear it...I envisioned it. But I did not get to hammer on this one.
     Still and so, something got created! Something manifested from a thought to a thing, which is my favorite thing to do in life, and for this reason, we shall call it a good day!

The Part I Like the Best

         The beginning. The visualizing…Those first stages of a dream you’ve had first in your mind, then on paper, for weeks, months…maybe even years. From thought, to written word (and sketches), to spoken word as you start bringing that dream into focus, reaching out for those who might help…I’m a lover of the process. Creativity is an energy to behold, and an even greater one to have taking hold of you.

My latest-- a barn, designed to one day serve dual functions, first as shelter for my babies…a bit down the road, to convert its loft into meeting if not living space. (A few more books to create first. Soon and very soon. Priority is shelter before winter and more babies on the land. Priority, always the babies.)

            It brings back memories of the church I now live in. From start to finish, (not counting the years long before when I began dreaming of one day writing from a place so sacred). My church took three years. From the time I spotted it, to the time I figured out who to talk to about it, to the time I found crews who could disassemble, while finding a separate team to reassemble on the other end. There was land to secure, contractors to hire…codes to adhere to. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a dear friend shortly out of high school, who, three years into her marriage, found herself pregnant with a second child, while she, her husband and her first baby, tripped over one another while living in a trailer. I asked “Did you plan it this way?” to which she replied, “Lord, Karlen, if women thought these things all the way through, we’d be extinct.”

            Hardly a comparison, but I had similar thoughts about birthing my church. I wouldn’t take anything for what my 20-something/30-something self did with my wild-eyed dream. But had someone said, “This will take 3 years and you’ll find yourself facing this, and this and this…” I would have likely been too scared to have done it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. (And for sure, creating is.)

            So the barn’s off and running. I drag my laptop out to write…Snap a shot that can no way capture the essence of moments like these as the bones of the dream starts to form. I recall my early church days, driving for an hour just to sit under timbers no further than these…wanting not only to watch the manifestation unfold, but wanting to breathe it in through every phase. For my church, I was changing her tune…Shifting her purpose, but never once did I think about shifting her soul…To the contrary, one of the main reasons I wanted to renovate a church was for the loving childhood memories of visiting and worshipping in little country churches even smaller than her…Small, sweet congregations of 25 – 30…struggling to keep a roof repaired or the heat bill paid. Oh the stories their timbers could tell…The energies their walls would absorb…I refer to these as the thin places…those spots where we go to renew, where the veil between heaven and earth is a tad more opaque, allowing  you a glimpse into what heaven must really be. I wanted those bones preserved. I wanted to breathe new life into her and her, new life into me. I wanted her to know that despite her falling down look, someone still wanted her; she would be beautiful again, though perhaps in her next incarnation, for different kind of spiritual uplifting.

            As with churches, so with barns…So with anything we give a portion of our life’s energies in exchange for, pouring our passion and our love into the vision…There’s something sweet about moments like these. As the old church tune aptly put it…“There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place…”