Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time

It takes a community, this creative life, this risk of rejection, disappointment, failure as we give of our time and our energy and our work in generosity, without demanding affirmation or reward. Believing that creativity is first and foremost a gift to be given, not a commodity to be traded.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. ~ George Bernard Shaw

from Becoming Myself by Stasi Eldredge

The artist is someone who is full of questions, who cries them out in great angst, who discovers rainbow answers in the darkness, and then rushes to canvas or paper. ~ Madeleine L’Engle

“An artist has many things to overcome before he or she can even consider the risk of bringing work to the world. You must first get past all the distractions that would keep you from the work—both the distractions of mere survival and those of empty amusements.”

from Garden Maker by Christie Purifoy

Who am I if I continue to deny this part of myself? This need to create, to make, to express. If I save the bookshop but lose myself in the process, what will I have left?

“That is lovely, and I do appreciate it. But when it comes to creativity, comparison will not serve you well. It spawns competition, which can end in only pride or pessimism, both of which have no place in an artist’s world.”

But while imagination can sometimes pay the bills, I’ve realized we must stop asking it to. The convenient deus ex machina resolution to my own financial crisis bothered me for a few months, but in the end, it turned out the money from The Starlight Folio wasn’t needed to make this