Lord, I’ve had seasons, years I mean, where music was front and center. And it flowed, it poured forth, in lyric and melody, songs, lots and lots of songs. And I have had much briefer seasons, often when I was out of work sick, when poetry came. Poem after poem, and the joy in that, in the midst of not feeling well, this explosion of poetic creativity, only to go silent again once I got well and the pace of daily life resumed. I’ve had seasons of writing prose, creative nonfiction, essays, stories for children, all kinds of prose, and again, some door shuts and all is quiet. Now I have enjoyed twelve years, it will be twelve this summer, of a visual photographic life, and I believe it has lasted so long precisely because it is part of my livelihood now, so I have reasons to keep going, and permission. Permission from myself, from those closest to me, from Pete. Permission to spend the time to hone the craft part, and to spend the time for the “right place, right time” part. I haven’t had the chance to allot that sort of time to writing for a long time. Ditto music. Something had to give, for photography to take its place. So I guess I want to know if it is possible for me to have both, to do both, to write and photograph, to write music (more than I do now, driving to work, in snatches) and photography. I don’t want to lose photography, lose my visual sensitivity. How can I have both? Won’t I have to give up one or the other?
That question is like asking Me if you will lost My Voice, the tangible sense of My Presence, because you love a person on earth, or even an animal. There is room in you for both. You’ve thought not, and been taught not, but you don’t have to choose between loving Me and loving them. You don’t have to choose loving Me only vicariously through loving them. Yes, I have called you–all of you–to love each other, but I also called you first to love Me. So it is with what you call your writer-self, your musician-self, your artist-self, your photographer-self, and yes, your business-owner-self. You have needed integration in order to live the expansion I planned for you.
You have thought your spiritual and your creative sides were like cousins, and that both were related only distantly to what you call your business-self. But you are not schizophrenic. You are not separate identities or even separate roles. You are yourself–complex, multifaceted, and finally shining in all directions.
We talked recently about the Four Directions, about you walking counter-clockwise on the Wheel. Let’s think of the Four Directions in another way.
Your East is your visual self. All you see and how you respond to all you see, the light.
Your West is your audial self, all you hear within. Music and story flow from your West, a deeply creative space in you.
Your South is your loving self, all your relationships lived out–including those with animals both domestic and wild.
Your North is your thinking self, your academic side, your mathematical and yes your organized self, how you organize or prioritize data. Your business sense comes from here.
I Am in you in all of these directions. I Am both Center and the very form that unites them. They are a Cross. They are also at their fullest expression a Circle. They are a Peace Shield. No more tugging or fighting within you. That pulls the wheel off balance, out of round.
You shall both see–and express–and hear–and express.
Feel and touch–and express. Think and synthesize–and express. It is bigger than you though.
It is not that I Am giving you a Shield.
It is that you, yourself, your life expressed, you ARE a Peace Shield. Have I not told you this before?
Uhh, I am not sure. I think so. I don’t remember.
Remember. Remember everything you need to remember. The Red Fox has come, from what you call east, wearing gunfire, to free the west, the gray/black fox, the hearer of you. For all you have heard from Me here, as story and song and writing, you will hear even more. And this twinning, sight with sound will be fully joined with Heart and Mind, and all united and spinning, like your world spins, and in spinning circles, like your earth circles, sustained by Me and held in balance and beauty by Me as well. Blue is for sky and for water. Blue overarches the keen, sharp peaks of your ind and undergirds the soft gentle growing and sharing, the touching and being touched, the giving and receiving green of your south. These are your colors.
You know now that black is really not black per se, it has all the other colors, sometimes with coppers and golds, as a kitty’s fur. Sometimes it has shimmering purples and iridescent greens like Blackbird’s feathers. The deepest ocean creatures still carry light within themselves as bioluminescence. So you carry My light deep within you.
This is your True Purpose, this integration, these multiple expressions. This way of hearing and seeing, and what you hear and what you see, all True. I have spoken over you as you slept. Now you are awake. Now it is time to arise. Don’t be anxious any more over anyone else’s anxiety, don’t be burdened for their concerns. If fighting stallions were to charge over the dunes, Fox would hear and see and feel them coming. She would know to either go deep within her den of safety–which is another way to say, come here to Me–or she would move to another spot, another vantage point, and wait there–which is another way to say, live Peace out in your world. Carry the Calm I have gifted you with.
You have gifted me with Calm? But…but…but what about my pinball brain?
You know now to remember the Shield. Yes, you spin, beautifully so. You take many strands and spin and weave a whole. That work flows best from an inner calm of assurance.
Lord, I am picturing a shield, with arrows going north/south and east/west. They look like a compass.
Yes, you live True North–and also True South and True East and True West.
Yours is a Shield of Peace, a Shield of Purpose, a Shield of Love and a Shield of Light. Sleep easy. You are, as you say sometimes, both guided and guarded. You can rest.