Another Special Announcement
Announcing: A new addition to our name!
I experience a miniscule moment each day as I write when I’m poised at the cusp of nothingness. There are no words; I’m clueless as to why I’m writing or for whom or what I hope to say. My head rings with silence. The sensation is so scary I used to
fight it, instead strong-arming onto the page some easy agenda or retreating behind so-called “writers’ block.” My busy, ambitious ego was happy to take over.
These days, though, I know better. That empty instant bears an uncanny resemblance to a moment in my Centering Prayer practice, when I catch myself thinking, then steer myself back to my intention. In both instances, I arrive at an internal fork in the road. I can careen down the path my discursive mind adores, or I can choose… What? Something else, something mysterious, an unfamiliar stretch of woods both frightening and wondrous. A space more vast and permission-giving than the confines of my mind. Emptiness. Possibility. The unknown.
If creativity could be broken down into its elemental components, this tiniest instant is its atom. In that second, in every second of a creative endeavor or a meditation, we’re offered a choice: Take the usual route or veer away, consenting instead to humility, or discovery, or whatever might come. We can turn from our assumed selfhood to a vaster being, from a solitary endeavor into an unfathomable, co-creative conversation. It’s a minute leap into newness. It’s a way of choosing life.
Contemplation is, at its heart, creative. Creativity is, at its core, contemplative.
And this, my friends, is what Eye of the Heart is all about! It’s taken the core team a bit to put our finger on this pulse—creative, contemplative processes are rarely straightforward—but now that we’ve identified it, we’re adding a tagline to our name: Center for Creative Contemplation. We’re thrilled; it’s spot-on.
Of course we knew from the start that creativity and contemplation were central to our mission. But we conceived of them as separate, complementary impulses. As artists and art-lovers, we cherish alternative ways of welcoming the Spirit’s movement in our work and lives. We wanted to expand and inclusify how seekers think about transformational practice.
But then I stumbled on the phrase “creative contemplation” in the writings of Beatrice Bruteau, a teacher of Christian mysticism and a pioneer in the integration of science, spirituality, and philosophy. Contemplation to Bruteau is seeing with the eye of the heart while also manifesting that vision in life. Contemplation and action don’t sit on opposite sides of the see-saw. We don’t rise from the meditation cushion, charged by a moral mandate to balance our inward time with outward efforts to change the world. No. Contemplation’s creative nature is a profound type of action, born of great mystery, containing a life-force all its own.
That infinitesimal moment when we place ourselves in relationship with mystery is a seed. Our work, both within and without, is to help it grow. Action without its creative contemplative root is like rearranging the chairs on a sinking ship. Action with this creative contemplative root continually surprises and renews us with compassion, reconciliation, and beauty.
Eye of the Heart is a work in progress. Thank heavens! We’re grateful you’re alongside us on this grand adventure.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
