creative tension

A friend here at monastery, who has worked for years in large corporations and is now kind enough to be the treasurer for our order, recently told me about planning meetings.  He and the other members of the board and various steering committees are envisioning how best to direct the growth and development of the monastery.  He said that in his last job, they talked about the gap between where the organization was, and where it wanted to be.  In that gap, he says, lies "creative tension."  This phrase immediately fascinated and energized me.  Creative tension...  Where am I right now, and where do I want to be?  What is the nature of the gap between these two states?

It seems to me that we all live in this gap all the time, though we may not always recognize it when life resists our efforts to parse it out into discrete portions.  Perhaps it is more clear when we visualize an artist, a sculptor let's say, looking at a nine foot high block of wood in front of her, holding her mallet and chisel.  She has a vision in her head, and at some point begins the rough hewing of the piece.  She likely has no idea exactly how she wants it to be, but the process is clear - shaping and carving out an expression of her experience from this big chunk of the world.

But you and I, we also live in this gap.  As I sit in a chair looking out the window on a brisk sunny morning, and think of all the things I want to do before a noon appointment.  How do I choose what to do?  How can I learn to make good predictions about how I'll feel getting certain things done and letting go of others?  Each moment I act is creating a path - choosing one way to proceed and letting go of all other imagined ones.

As I sit now at 38 years of age, what do I want to accomplish before turning 40? 45? 60?  Before I die? My life in all these different lenses is a response to the creative tension.  If I really want to write that great novel (just an example, it probably isn't in me :-) then how long can I put off starting it?  Without a goal of having done it by a certain time, it is too easy to let the time slide by with fantasies of future greatness.  If I want to have it done by the time I turn 40, I need to devote many hours to it each week.  Then I'm responding to the creative tension by taking steps.  And, as I take these steps along the way, the creative tension changes its quality, texture, and shape.  I'll need to account for progress I've made on my path, and any outside factors that have come up along the way.  It is evolving all the time.  This process is alive.

I've spent a lot of my life standing on the proverbial Threshold, wondering sometimes how best to proceed. This year of practice at the monastery is pointing me towards the Fierce Urgency of Now, seeing how fleeting and precious this life is and how good it feels to take decisive action from right where I stand.  How can I step into my life fully?  How to respond more seamlessly to this creative tension?

Bit by bit, I'm coming to see that there is no Later, there is only Now.  This moment of sitting and writing is the same moment of my whole life, of the whole unfolding of the universe.  The past is gone and only in my imagination.  The future is not here yet and is only a fantasy.  It will always be this way.  There is only this moment.

So each action is a letting go of the ideas of past and future, and an embrace of What Is, all wrapped up in one.  Learning confidence in my life comes from realizing that it will always be this way.  Everything is a chance and a risk, and brings with it the reward of the unexpected, fresh opportunities of being alive.  When I act from best intentions for myself and the world, then I have fulfilled my duty as a human being.  I have responded to the creative tension of being Chris as best I can.  All else is beyond me, as I have no control over this flowing river of life.  But, the very next moment, I need to respond again, and again.  This is the joyful duty of being a full human being.

What will you do with this one wild and precious life?  How will you enter this sweet moment that is being given to you over and over again?  Even if it seems like not a great moment (when the smoke alarm is going off, your partner is angry with you, and someone on the news is talking about Trump's chances of being president), it is still a perfect moment.  It is yours to make of it what you will.  You are an artist of life - what will you paint next? It's never a burden, though perhaps it is inevitable that we will sometimes see it like that.  It is always a gift.