Reimagining success

Our goal in the New Year is not to live worry-free or stress-free. 

In our quest for peace, let’s make sure that we aren’t short changed into thinking that we can achieve for ourselves lives that have no cares. A care-less life is a careless proposition. Rather a careful life rests assured in the knowledge that Eternity is on its side. 

Living a care-full life is great, especially when we are careful to fill it with everything good, beautiful, and true. But who really is able to do these things?

Refocusing our desires

The most (best?) we can resolve to do in the New Year is to learn how to give thanks in every situation. The capacity to give thanks is not so much a testimony about how we feel about our lives, whether it’s good or bad or ugly. Rather, as creatives, the capacity to give thanks speaks to the object of our lives, the focus and ultimate hope of our deepest desires. And who is worthy of such adoration?

The one who is completely good and beautiful and true is worthy of worship. No human is worthy or able to be all these things since no one is perfect although there is ultimate creative potential in every person irrespective of class, caste, creed, gender, or anything else. But the ultimate Beauty of Perfection belongs to the Creator alone who creates all things to work together for good especially for those who through the immeasurable gift of Love are able and willing to step into that place of openness to receive Love. In transactional terms creativity as sharing the ultimate Beauty of Perfection is to exchange our limited self-sufficiency for the unlimited creativity of the Creator. The expression of human love through our creative works must follow the impression of Creator Love in our hearts and minds. Only then are we in a place to fulfill our creative obligation to build a better world.

thoughts on creative agility and imagination

Creative agility therefore is all about how we as creatives can offer perspective and direction through our creations (artworks and processes) in ways that radically alter how people feel, think, and respond to the environment. The radically agile creative is able to transform the imagination and soul of participants, from experiencing fear to embracing hope, from trembling in the shadow of death to rejoicing in the hope of Life.

The ability to transform is not a technique to be learned; it is a primordial disposition of the artist who is continually experiencing a renewed mind and heart and imagination through the dedicated practice of learning how to give thanks in every situation.

The artist therefore can lift the soul of others only when the artist’s own self is first lifted up into seeing the things of heaven on earth. Imagination begins with the artist making things of Heaven appear on Earth. Transporting these earthly renditions true to their heavenly form is the artist’s imagination at its best.

Creative agility is evident when people engage these forms and themselves in turn are transported in their imaginations to taste and see the heavenly form of artistic renditions.