Mother of pearl

I read this from The Artist's Way at Work, Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan:

"Creative blocks are anything that we use to lessen our anxieties, our ability to stay in the 'empty bowl.' These behaviors keep us from effectively using our energies...

"To be able to create, we must be willing to learn how to quiet our minds, feel our emotions, and stay in the vacuum so the ideas can well up from our deepest place of knowing."

This has got to be the bedrock of all the lessons I needed to learn this year. To be able to silence the mind that says, "Play some Pet Society for a while..." "You're hungry, go get something to eat!" "Wouldn't a choco-filled doughnut be scrumptious at this time?" when the only thing I know I need to be doing is writing.

I need to learn to stay with the anxiety of unknowing or whatever and from there, to sit down and write or memorize lines. It's tough, but it's as real as my skin. It's always easier to tune out when faced with the empty bowl. Ah, there's a phrase: cop out.

The ego does not want this. The ego wants to take control, and if we let it, we lose control.

I think that's why years ago, when Ate Imee was teaching me to write, she said, "Think of a problem--a problem in society--that you want to address. One that personally affects you. One that you want to say something about." When I do this all sorts of feelings, often uncomfortable, come up. I shouldn't be afraid of these feelings. They're me. It's what Bill Hybels called a "holy discontent," a passion that should be stoked, not quenched.

Then, finally, I know just to shut up and sit down and write and ride my mind. I can't go, "That's too unpleasant. I feel sad thinking about that. Maybe I'll get a bar of chocolate." I can't create that way. I'll only get lazy.

Who said we can't create out of disharmony? Who said it won't be painful? Even God created order out of chaos, everything out of nothing. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. God didn't go traipsing off somewhere else more pleasant. Instead, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.

Then God said, "Let there be light." God didn't tune out. He tuned in. From Him we artists must take our cue.

Pearls are formed when an irritant, say a small shrimp, enters the soft tissue inside a mollusk such as an oyster. The oyster then coats this irritant, often a parasite, with a substance called nacre. This becomes the "mother of pearl." Over time, this hardens and we get a round, iridescent gemstone that is the pearl.

Mother of pearl. What a telling phrase. So, too, that our Motherland is called the Pearl of the Orient Seas. Do we need to wonder why it is when the irritant enters into the vulnerable insides of the oyster and not bumped off by its hard shell that the pearls are formed?

Life is full of intruders. Our tough exteriors can bump them off. Artists do something else. They allow life to reach into their vulnerable souls--that soft part in them where their personal nacre is--and from there, create their art.