Saturday, July 10, 2010

Inspiration

What INSPIRES us? What is there that might give us a “kick start” to live life to the fullest?

Last Spring the New York Botanical Garden had a wonderful exhibit on Emily Dickinson, the 18th century poet. Throughout the blossoming gardens were excerpts from her poems. At the entrance to the Children’s Garden was this thought:

Be inspired. Inspired: to fill with enlivening emotion; to stimulate to action; to motivate; to breathe life into.

What fills us with “enlivening emotion”? What stimulates us to action? What motivates us? What breathes life into us? And what do we do with this inspiration? How do we take action? How does this “breath of life” manifest itself in our works, our relationships?

I get inspiration from some very familiar sources and some that are a bit atypical.

NATURE - especially my walks in the Botanical Garden, Central Park, the Bronx Zoo, and vacation trips (the Pacific Coast, the German Alps, Florence, and Death Valley, to name a few).

BOOKS - and not just spiritual books or poems, although I am big on Henri Nouwen and Anthony De Mello. I’ve discovered that even novels sometimes provide the words or phrase that set my heart spinning and my imagination soaring.

TV and MOVIES - Star Trek has some very “spiritual” episodes that have clarified real life mysteries for me in a real way and helped to deepen my faith.

PEOPLE - Throughout my life I have been blessed to know good, ordinary, and extraordinary people who have inspired me. Some older, some my age, and some much, much younger.
Inspiration has enabled me to write poetry, to paint, to design programs and projects in my work, to start a blog, to look at my relationships in a new way. The list goes on and on. And changes from year to year. As it does in each of our lives.

What INSPIRES you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good! When life seems to have drained out and everything dies out as dead, a new rainfall revives the life cycle. As I can see in you, you are just recycling. How nice!
Love, Angel