More on Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion*

December 4

In this chapter Cameron helps us face our internal blocks to creativity.

She challenges us to name fear and consider how it might be working against our creativity, to accept that enthusiasm (not discipline) is what sustains an artist, to ponder the value of creative U-turns, and finally how to blast through the blocks!

One of this week’s tasks was to read our morning pages for the first time—up to 210 8.5 x 11 pages of freestyle writing! We each approached this task a little differently but a common theme emerged from our discussion. Generally our response to reading the pages was acceptance and understanding even compassion for the writer. We saw ourselves in a new light.

It all came together at that moment—reviewing the tangled and sometimes sharp emotions in those morning pages did allow us to recover a sense of compassion.

A great deal of good has come from those morning pages for our group. I think we are all a bit surprised that we have been able to keep it up. (One in particular—you know who you are.) As with all writing the words don’t always flow.  However the morning pages give us permission to write whatever comes to mind so that our minds are free to think, question, and focus on life’s more significant gifts and dreams.

We started our meeting by reading several quotations by Fred Rogers. His simple words often express much more than is obvious in the first reading. For example:

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

Next up: Recovering a Sense of Self Protection….

*There was some confusion, in Jo’s absence, around which week to cover in the blog so this is the second blog about compassion. Oh well!  We will be glad to have her back! Leslie Holling

Connect: The Artist’s Way