Walking Through Warm Mud Barefoot

Walking Through Warm Mud Barefoot

Balancing From the Left Side of the Brain

Depending on the day I will be writing the articles expounding on fostering creativity in our children, in ourselves, in our world, in our spirituality, in our problem solving abilities, and I could go on and on.  Our creative side is half of the brain that God has given us.  We need to acknowledge it and foster it and use it.  This will help us to balance ourselves and our lives.

We have two sides of our brain. The right side which is visual, perceptual, and simultaneous and the left side which is verbal, analytical and sequential.   To pursue one side of the brain and not the other is not using and/or ignoring all that God has given us.

Children today are bombarded with all kinds of hi-tech stuff that encourage fast thumbs, zombie stares and a generation that is mostly connecting with each other through facebook and texting. 

We are not fostering permission to be creative, to think creatively. 

 One of the first things I try to teach people is to come to a project as a five-year-olds with joy and no rules.  The journey itself will teach the rules, one step at a time. The journey is where I find the joy. 

 When was the last time your children went out into their yards pulled everything together, made up a game and just played for the afternoon?   Just piled a mound of stuff together and called it a mountain.  Built an imaginary planet and populated it with wild and crazy beings?

We are losing the ability to use our imagination.  We do not encourage ourselves or our children to have a creative outlet in anything.  Our whole lives and our children’s days are full of “have to’s”.

We all need a space set aside in our homes and our lives where we can cut, paste, mold, paint, mess, glue, pound, put together, take apart.  Do we have these spaces?  Do we have a space set aside for day dreams and rainbows to grow and expand?  Do we give ourselves and our children permission to just be on the journey of creating something?  (Coloring books and stickers are not my idea of being creative.)

I like to call the creative journey the thin place where one can touch God.  Time evaporates and is lost. There is no space except where you are.  You could be writing a story, building a village with paper, tape and scissors, or painting a picture.  You could be learning to use a needle to sew two things together or 50 buttons on a coat.  (You know, making the coat of many buttons).  You could be weaving bright colored yarn together to create something very small like a bracelet or very big like a blanket.    

Creativity should be as important as math, history, biology, because it is created by us who were created by God in God’s image.  Think about it.

Peace