Life is *not* a marathon... or a sprint

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.”

— Parker Palmer

On a hike in Montreat, NC with two of my best friends on my wedding day. 

I've never been very good about being casual, especially in regards to hobbies. It came as a shock to some that having never run a mile outside of gym class, I just decided one day to run a marathon (or 3). While some would say, "Hey, I'd like to be more active... take up running... maybe a few times a week...I'll see if I like it." Instead, here's sample conversation between me and my Self--

Me: *reads marathon advertisement on a Starbucks bulletin board* I wonder if I can run 26 miles in a single 4 hour period...

Self: That sounds hard.

Me: Maybe it would help me lose weight...

Self: Not this again.

Me: I guess there's only one way to find out.  *signs up for Flying Pig Marathon in 6 months*

Self: *sigh*

To be honest, I do not know what my inner voice was thinking in that moment. I wasn't listening to find out. This "conversation" was, in reality, a monologue. The force pushing me through those long weeks of training, running through every city I lived in (or traveled to) in my twenties, was not my inner voice. Heck, I didn't even like running. (I still don't.) I remember when I auditioned for graduate schools, I was training for a race. The schedule had me running a long run on the day of my audition at the Yale School of Music. I did the audition and then ran 17 miles on a treadmill in the hotel. I was disappointed I didn't get in the full 20 the program had prescribed. Looking back on the pavement-pounding part of my life, I can still relate to that desire to be headed toward some finish line somewhere. Even now, finish lines regularly speak louder to me than my inner voice. It never occurred to me that this was a problem.

A few weeks back, we here at Lumina Arts Incubator began the deep dive into The Artist's Way, a book by Julia Cameron about creativity and spirituality. A group of artists and I meet on Tuesday nights for 12 weeks, and discuss big questions about creativity, inspiration, faith, and anything else that comes up. The weekly meetings give me energy that lasts for days on end. These ladies (this time it's all women!) are amazingly vulnerable about their process. They share intimate things about their artistic practice, their pasts, their dreams for their future, all prompted by the reading and writing we do throughout the week on our own. 3 weeks ago we were complete strangers, and now I believe we are friends. I'm lucky that my first time leading this group is with folks who really want to share and grow together around these topics. This is the part I love.

Maybe you can sense that there is a "but" coming.

Anyone who has ever been through "The Artist's Way" knows how strenuous the weekly requirements of the program can be.  Everyone in the group is required to do them, including the facilitator. The Morning Pages, which Cameron calls "the bedrock tool of creative recovery", involve writing a 3-page (long-hand!) stream of consciousness journal entry EVERY MORNING. In addition, we are each required to take ourselves on an "Artist's Date" each week, and complete other "tasks" in your journal, which vary week to week. This has shockingly felt like drudgery. It took me a minute (i.e. a couple of weeks...) to figure out why.

Inner work has no finish line. 

You may have heard people say "Life is a marathon, not a sprint." I would definitely have to disagree. What I remember most about marathoning was the exhaustion. I wish there was another word for it, because exhaustion doesn't seem to cut it. After racing, I remember feeling that someone had taken the entire storage of energy deep down in every muscle and depleted it. Sure, you learn how to pace yourself to last the whole race, and certainly the discipline of pushing through fatigue and pain. These are certainly valuable lessons, but not a metaphor for life, in my opinion. (If this is how tired we will be at the end of our lives, then I think we are doing something wrong!)

Life is a hike and the map your inner voice.

Sometimes you're walking uphill in the rain. Sometimes you come to a clearing, sit down and have a picnic. You aren't ever quite sure if the peak you reach after a long climb will be the highest one, so you savor every pinnacle and rest in every valley. There is no finish line, because it is not a race. There are many different trails, each with their own set of hikers, and it will be tempting to follow others out of fear of trusting your own map. Your map isn't something you create yourself. It is given to you. You'll need a community of others to help you read your map, but not everyone you meet along the trail will send you down the right path. Luckily, your map also holds the key to who can be trusted for this sacred task. Still, you may find the way illegible for while, requiring you to sleep under the same tree for many, many nights. Back tracking may be necessary. If you're tired you sit down. If you're bursting with energy you run a sub-8-minute-mile. The way is long and varied and full of turns and terrains. 

I think some of us who grew up in church internalized this idea that life (and specifically a life of faith) is all about that finish line. (Scriptures like Hebrews 12:1 and 1 Corinthians 9:24 come to mind.) This, combined with the individualistic and success-driven culture here in America, makes for an interesting journey through perfectionism and idolatry. I grew up thinking that listening to God's voice was the opposite of listening to my own. I am ashamed to admit that with great self-righteousness, I've completely disregarded the whisper of my inner voice in service to a voice I thought was God's.

Through the Artist's Way, I'm seeing that the more listening I do to this inner voice God gave me, the more I sense God speaking to me.

Don't get my wrong, God's voice is very different than mine. It contradicts, challenges, and urges me down unexpected trails. That is very uncomfortable at times. The act of listening and searching-- in spite of the sometimes painful and paradoxical drudgery of inner work-- that's where the connection, the healing, and the guidance occurs. We need others to help us decipher the beautiful intricacies of our maps. Thank God we do...otherwise this journey would be pretty lonely.

This week I'm thankful for my fellow hikers, who courageously share their journey as artists with me, people I've just happened to have met as we climb this ridge together. Who are those people in your life?

a far-off, half-forgotten country

Music

By Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother's piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I've never understood
Why this is so

Bur there's an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

"Music" by Anne Porter from Living Things: Collected Poems. © Steerforth Press, 2006. 

Why I'm here: Thoughts on Being Back at Juilliard

The Stairs at Juilliard (photo cred designage.files.wordpress.com

Yesterday began my 10-day stay in NYC for Lincoln Center Education's Summer Forum. I'm here as a participant in Teaching Artist training, a dream I've had for many years come true. In case you're wondering, a teaching artist is "a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills, curiosities and habits of mind of an educator, who can effectively engage a wide range of people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts."

Every since I learned what teaching artistry was, I felt called to the work. I always identified first as an artist, but I also longed to "engage a wide range of people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts," like a teacher. This impulse to share my craft with people always seemed to be tapping me on the shoulder on the tail of each creative impulse.  I liked interacting with the audience just as much as I did performing, and for me that has had many iterations--from teaching college music courses to speaking from the stage at concerts to being a guest in the public school classroom-- yet I've always wanted to stretch my skills. And so this summer, I finally get a chance to focus in, here with the folks who I believe do it best.

Yesterday morning's session began with a welcome and keynote by the Excecutive VP of Lincoln Center Education, Community Engagement, and International, Russell Granet. He had quite a lot of inspiring things to share, but the thing I found myself thinking at the end of a wonderful first day, was the question he asked all of us: "Why are you here?" 

Now, if you've read the paragraphs above you might think you know the answer to this question for me (indeed I thought I knew it myself), but after ruminating, I have a more complex answer.  I am here to deepen my teaching artist practice, for sure, but coming back to NYC, coming back to Juilliard, to open myself up again to inspiration, to be vulnerable enough for growth, that something that hasn't always seemed possible. 

There aren't very many places in the world where the architecture truly captures the spirit of a place, like it does at Juilliard. Upon entering you're met immediately with a seemingly impenetrable staircase. This last hurdle, a treacherously steep uneven Tetris game gone awry, reminded me poignantly everyday what hard work was to get there. (It never occurred to me to take the elevator!) Like so many students there, I felt like an imposter. I'd somehow snuck in under the radar and my main goal was to make sure no one found out I was a fake. I approached the whole experience with trepidation and fear. This fear, which turned into despair, poisoned every aspect of my life during those years--starving myself down to a size 2, compulsive exercise, regularly pulling all nighters studying and practicing, unhealthy relationships. I believe this was not triggered by one specific person or experience, but a conglomeration of all my years of perfectionism reaching fever pitch in a city who's perfection triggers never sleep. Looking back on it now, I'm amazed I managed as well as I did in that state. 

I've been back on campus numerous times since those days, but somehow being here in my old classrooms for an extended period of time for this workshop, perhaps because I'm happier, healthier, and more joyful than ever--it redeems those rough years for me. It might seem odd to say it, but today I found myself remembering the master classes that took place in the room we were in, and now almost for the first time, being able to process and learn the lessons that those teachers were trying to share all those years ago.

They had fallen on deaf ears before, because when you are that scared of failure, learning is not possible. 

I'm indescribably grateful for these opportunities--to have studied here and to be back. My journey wasn't easy, but it was meaningful. And I wouldn't be where I am today without that experience.

So.....

I am here to relish learning and music-making in these hallowed halls like I was never able to before. 

I'm here to share my story so that someone else who may feel this way won't feel alone. 

I'm here to absorb every ounce of teaching artist training I can get, because this work opens me to a special kind of joy that both the world and I sorely need. 

Have you thought about why you're here? (Wherever that may be.) Are you able to be vulnerable enough to learn? Courageous enough to see yourself honestly? Joyful enough to repurpose your pain into growth? I hope so. 

Why the Arts Matter: Compassion

It's not a competition, it's a doorway. -Mary Oliver

The arts are a rare form of pure compassion. And by that I mean the old Latin meaning "to suffer with." They have a unique power to simultaneously connect us deeply with both ourselves and others. What else does that? Compassion does not mean to deny yourself... but to turn inward--to explore identify and experience, to express the depths of who we are, and turn even our pain into something beautiful and useful--being present to someone else. Compassion and art both start within and pivot outward. Even if no one reads your poem or hears your music, the tangibility of it outside of yourself suffers with you. And if others are lucky enough to hear it-- you, your creative act, and your audience become a triad reverberating with understanding and joy, even in great loss or heart break. This kind of compassion makes us human. It quite literally turns our sorrow into joy or magically multiplies our joy with which we began.

The reason I stuttered in the interview from my earlier post, was because I had forgotten. Music for me had stopped being compassion and had become a type of self-centered, fear-based, slavery. I had become a cruel taskmaster pushing myself towards my own arbitrary goals. I had only looked outward. Creativity that stems from people-pleasing is not sustainable. Art requires vulnerability--scary, uncomfortable, vulnerability. Seek ye first approval and you miss out on all the joy and compassion.

Here are some tips for making art an act of compassion and avoiding burnout:

1. Tend to your spirit more than you tend to your technique. As a Christian, for me this means spending quiet time in prayer, journaling, and seeking to understand scripture. No matter your religious practice, find time each day to listen. It is easy to lose touch with how you really feel when the voices of the world are loud. Once you realize how you feel, you may find you need help processing or healing wounds. You may need to seek a professional counselor. Invest in your spirit more than you do your craft, as it is difficult to feel compassion for yourself and others if you are angry, hurt, or even tired. Ask yourself: where does my inspiration and joy come from?

2. Play. Don't just practice or slave away at creating a product. Set aside time to explore. If you find yourself unable to "play" in your own art form, take up another one for fun. Approach whatever you make while you're playing with curiosity and wonder, not judgement.

3. Pour yourself out in service of others. This for me is the quickest and easiest way for me to see how much the arts matter in my world. While the compassion of art sings through even if no one sees or hears your creation, the act of sharing it will go beyond yourself and the joy will spread. Where can you serve those who are less fortunate? Which dark corner of the world can you make brighter and more beautiful by sharing your work?  

4. Join our community here at Lumina Arts Incubator. I found my way out of burnout and fear by joining artists in community, serving others and unleashing joy. For those in the Wilmington, DE area, we have an Artists Way Creative Cluster coming up soon (read more here) and also a peace camp for the children of Wilmington who are eager to meet you. No matter where you live, like us on Facebook for encouraging words and more info about some exciting opportunities for artists of all disciplines coming soon. Join our mailing list here.

You are not alone in your pursuit of excellence. We are all walking through a doorway that is this process, as Mary Oliver reminds us.

The journey is never over, as I seek to remember why the arts matter in a time like this. It feels restorative and energizing to put down the perfectionism and pick up compassion. And shockingly, as I live into this frame of mind, I feel that my playing has improved a lot. When we each sing our own life song, the unique gift that makes us who we are, a deep and selfless compassion undoubtedly pours out with ease. I believe this makes the world, with all it's cacophony, an exquisitely beautiful place.

Here goes!

"And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings." Meister Eckhart

In the spirit of a true perfectionist, (Type A is my spirit animal) I have written and rewritten this post ad nauseum. #trueconfessions

And then, gift-wrapped from above (or through random internet reading), Meister Eckhart's words found me. I like this idea of beginnings being magical instead of scary.

I'd like to introduce--  

Lumina Arts Incubator: Artists for Joy.

My name is Merideth and I'm a professional oboist, living in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. I'm passionate about unleashing joy through music. You can read more about me here. 

Lumina Arts Incubator is about seeking a greater purpose by serving others with one's gifts. Read more here.  

Check out this blog weekly for a multi-part series entitled: 

Why the arts matter at a time like this

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you.

Why do you think the arts matter?