A Little Thing

I'm sitting by a woman, and we start talking about creativity and how God uses our creativity.

She tells me she's been baking. 

She enrolled in a cake decorating class with her family in order to make "occasion cakes" for children and teens who don't have anyone to make a cake for them.  For birthdays or graduations, local shelters and juvenile detention centers alert my friend about any cake needs. 

She'll bake and decorate a cake and then deliver it to a teenage who never once had somebody make a cake for them.  Never once had this teen been celebrated with something so simple as a birthday cake. 

I start to imagine all the recipients of my friend's cakes.  I see the looks on their faces as the beautiful birthday cakes arrive with their names on them.  I start to imagine how--for this one moment--they feel something start to bubble up inside.  Maybe, just maybe, I'm loved.  Maybe, just maybe, somebody sees me and cares. 

It's a little thing: a birthday cake decorated for someone who never had one before. 

Living with flair means using creativity to bless someone who needs it. 

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What can you make for someone who needs a blessing?   

What You Will Think About Today

The "father of air conditioning," Willis Haviland Carrier, claims he had a flash of genius while waiting for a train.  He began thinking about temperature and humidity, and within moments he had a scientific method to chill the air.

Back then, you couldn't distract yourself from thinking so easily.  

I remember Carrier all day as I walk around in the kind of blazing heat that makes it hard to breathe.  I thank God for what I take for granted:  air conditioning, ice, refrigeration, cold water from a fountain. Some one began thinking and something wonderful happened:

Invention.

I tell my students that invention is the hardest stage of writing.  They simply can't come up with an idea.  They can't begin creative acts--making something from nothing--because they don't know how to begin thinking.

Well.  Let's just sit for a bit, as if we were waiting for a train on a foggy night with absolutely nothing to distract us.  Let's just sit here and think. 

It all began while a man waited for a train, thinking.

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Journal:  Do I schedule thinking time into my day?

On the Cheap

Who would have thought that living with flair could be. . . cheap!  I used to think that budgets and coupons and delayed gratification (blah, blah, blah) meant limitation.  But it actually offers me a different kind of freedom.  I'm free not to buy.  Imagine! 

Just today, my daughter and I made homemade hazelnut frappuccino drinks because you can make anything good with a blender, ice, and something sweet.  You put out some ingredients on the counter, start pouring things into the blender, and you ask--wide-eyed and smiling--"What can we make with this?" 

It was better than Starbucks.  I mean it.

Earlier, I took the advice of my world-traveling neighbor that you don't need to buy expensive craft kits or distractions for your children when you travel in the minivan.

"You just need one thing," she says.  This is the woman who drove her children from Pennsylvania to Washington in her minivan last summer.  "And it will cost you less than five dollars."

"What?"  I'm taking notes.

"Pipe cleaners!"  She tells me that if you hand a child a bunch of pipe cleaners, they can make whole villages of imaginary animals and flowers.  "There's no mess on the floor, either."

I'm going to buckle them into their seats, hand them some pipe cleaners, and simply ask, "What can we make with this?"  

I like living on the cheap.  It's never felt more creative.

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Journal:  How do you live on the cheap?

Come See This!

At Fitness Group, the children huddle around me and tug on my sleeve because they have things to show me.

One boy has drawn a dragon out of chalk that spans the length of 3 cars.  He drags me over to his drawing, insisting that I observe the scales, the teeth, the wings, the claws.  With precise detail, he explains his work.  "You have to see this!" he cries and points to the "primary set of claws."    

Others alert the parents to ducks that have landed in the far corner of the parking lot.  "Watch me chase them!" I hear.  Still another displays a kite in the shape of an owl.  "Come see this!" she calls out.

Others jump rope and tell me I have to watch them. 

I consider how beautiful this insistence to come see this! is.

It won't always be this way.

At some point, they'll stop showing themselves--and their discoveries--off.  They'll become self-conscious and internal, hidden away and private.  The world becomes a critical judge, and they'll hide. They'll become embarrassed and worried about the crowd.

They'll produce things that deserve our attention, but we won't know about them because they won't dare tell anyone.

I know because I teach college seniors.  Dragon drawings will stay hidden in notebooks.  Nobody admits to chasing ducks or wanting to fly an owl kite.

I wish we all did. 

Living with flair means we build communities where it's right and good to cry out, "Come see this!"  We build communities where we invite others to show us what they've made, where they tell us what they're thinking, and where we watch and listen intently.  That's why I love Saturday Morning Pancakes and Creative Projects Night Out with the Ladies (what we did for my birthday in autumn).

In these spaces, we celebrate one another and rediscover that child within that once drew dragons, chased ducks across a parking lot, and told everyone about it.  Come see this! 

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Journal:  What have you made or been doing that you can tell others about?

What You've Been Given

It's officially winter here. 

Snow swirls up and settles, finally, on the land.  

But it's the worst kind of snow because there's not enough to do anything with it.

But the neighborhood children, despite the lack of significant snow accumulation, still coax sleds down hills all afternoon.  And they still make snowmen no matter how little they are given.  In one child's front yard, I stop and notice she's made a mama and a baby snowman, in miniature.

Miniature Snowman

Lord, help me take what I've been given today and turn it into a beautiful thing. 

Living with flair means I make something out of whatever I'm given.   

What You Have to Set Free

Pine Cone Maturity / esu.edu

Walking to my classroom today, I passed a cluster of pines.  Beneath their branches, a perfect circle of pine cones posed like ornaments shaken from a Christmas tree. 

I stopped to consider what it might mean that a tree would drop all of its pine cones.  It seemed like loss; I felt longing in my heart. 

I know that the cone is just the protective cover for hundreds of seeds housed within it.  Once a year, a pine tree drops its pine cones to the forest floor.  If you pick one up, you can gently shake it to release tiny seeds--black dots in thin paper--that might not have yet flown free. 

Normally, the pine cone stays on the branch, opens up when the weather is dry, and lets the wind disseminate all her seeds.  Then, she'll drop to the forest floor.  The whole process takes about a year. 

Something about opening up, releasing those seeds, and then dropping to the ground like that made me wonder about the gifts we disperse, the creative acts we protect and then finally circulate, and the offspring or relationships we let loose.  It's all part of the process--shaking our pine cones free--emancipating things that we need to release and no longer control.  A pine tree forest's survival depends upon the ability to protect a seed and then send it out.  The remnant of that cone on the forest floor is proof that it let something go. 

If I were a pine tree, I'd want thousands of cones beneath my feet.  I'd gaze upon the cones to remind myself of what I released into the world and didn't keep for myself.  And I know there's something we lose with every release.  There will always be that vessel in our hearts--that tiny cone--to remember what we wanted to hold onto but knew we had to set free. 

What's Worth Keeping?

Yesterday, my oldest daughter had to choose one object from home that best represents her to share with her class.  The teacher wrote:  "Find one thing that best describes who you are."


She said she'd choose one of three things:  her Bible, her journal, or a photo of her cats.  She values God, her writing, and her family members (OK, they are cats, but still). 

I'm cleaning my bedroom and I pass over various things I've collected over the years:  jewelry, clothing, books, candles.  Was there anything precious in the whole lot?  Was there anything I could say best represented me--the way my daughter could find the essential core of her identity in 3 objects? 

Cleaning day suddenly becomes so much easier.  I don't need so many things.  I can pare down to essentials--the things that represent me and what our family values.  If it doesn't fit into that essential core, I can recycle it or give it away. 

I'm seeing toys and trinkets differently.  I start to visualize what it means to give my children objects that can begin to represent their core identity.  God, creativity, relationships.  Can it be that simple?  Suddenly, cleaning never felt so pure, so right.  Suddenly the toy aisle and clothing section of stores don't have the same pull.  Sure, I can buy things as diversions to fill up the days (as I often want to do for myself), but when it comes right down to it, what lasts (and what we want to keep) we can't even hold in our hands. 

Parenting--and living with flair-- might be broken down into these three things:  God, creativity, and relationships.  Does every room I'm cleaning help foster these three things?  If not, I'm rearranging the space and purging the objects within it to make room for flair.