The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Faith (Week 12)
Our final week (plus a video from me!🫣)
Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. We’re in Week 12 (last week!) of The Artist’s Way, a community exploration of the intersection of creativity and recovery.
You know the drill: each week, we read a new chapter of The Artist’s Way and do our best to write our Morning Pages and schedule an Artist’s Date. On Tuesdays, I share my reflections on that week’s theme and on Fridays, we gather to share our experiences in the weekly thread.
FINAL CALL: An opportunity for you
Before wrapping up The Artist’s Way, I wanted to give you - the members of this community who’ve been chatting with me in comments, Notes and our virtual gatherings - a chance to share a little of what The Artist’s Way has meant for you. I’m planning to do a roundup post next week, and would love to include your perspectives, as well as a link to your newsletter or another creative project. I’ve made a short google form to capture your stories. Please share your experiences by this Friday, June 13th.
The Artist’s Way Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith
I can’t believe it’s time to write my final post on The Artist’s Way. We started this process way back in March, and now we’re concluding with a short chapter on faith, mystery and trust. I enjoyed this chapter. We’ve covered a lot of ground over the last few months, and it felt right to conclude with faith. Though I don’t consider myself to be religious, faith feels like an essential ingredient in my creative life.
A few weeks ago, I shared a short video on my evolving views on faith:
I spoke about Bad Faith, an essay I wrote about leaving the Catholic faith. I’m proud of that essay. But as often happens with my writing, as soon as it was published, I felt my views begin to shift and evolve. Then the Pope died and I happened to be in Rome on the day he was buried. And, I began to engage with broader cultural conversations1 about the value of religious belief. Suffice to say that my views on faith are continuing to evolve, and I’m grateful that this chapter gave me an opportunity to consider these questions as they apply to my creative work.
“Life is meant to be an Artist’s Date”
Chapter 12 is both the conclusion of the book and the beginning of something new. Cameron writes about how “creativity - like human life itself - begins in darkness”. It requires a gestation period that is often “interior, murky and completely necessary”. She compares ideas to stalactites and stalagmites, new structures which form in drips and drops in the dark inner cave of consciousness. She writes about it poetically:
“Let them grow in darkness and mystery. Let them form on the roof of our consciousness. Let them hit the page in droplets. Trusting this slow and seemingly random drip, we will be startled one day by the flash of “Oh! That’s it!”
Cameron believes that we were born to create. She encourages us to cultivate forms of creativity that do not directly serve our career goals. Household tasks like sewing, gardening, or cooking can help us to unstick ourselves from difficult creative conundrums. While our brain is focused on a small, focused task, our creative muscles can relax. This is one of my favourite ways to unstick myself when my writing feels stiff or stagnant, and I’m glad that it was included in the book.
“Escape velocity requires the sword of steely intention and shield of self-determination”
Chapter 12 includes a long section on escape velocity. It’s never made clear exactly what we’re supposed to be escaping, but I presume it’s the people and circumstances that squelch our creativity. In my experience, creativity is less about escaping things and more about pushing the boundaries of life to make more room for exploration. It’s about bringing a creative mindset to our lives, not just our creative projects. It’s about tinkering with the spices in your favourite soups or dressing with a little more flair. It’s about drawing on the steamy bathroom mirror with your finger tip, even if it’s going to make it more difficult to clean. It’s about allowing your body to express the full breadth of its creative intention, and following those instincts wherever they might lead you.
Cameron warns that when your career starts to take off, many people will self-sabotage. To mitigate this risk, Cameron also encourages us to keep our creative plans to ourselves. “The first rule of magic is self-containment. You must hold your intention within yourself, stoking it with power. Only then will you be able to manifest what you desire”. I see the value in this advice though it also strikes me as deeply lonely. Part of the joy of creative work is sharing it with people. I understand the importance of choosing those people wisely, but I don’t want to keep my dreams to myself. I want them to live in the world, alongside me and the people I love.
Other thoughts & reflections from Chapter Twelve:
“All too often, we try to push, pull, outline and control our ideas instead of letting them grow organically. The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” I do this all the time but I’m not convinced that it’s entirely bad. Creativity often grows from limitations, and providing myself with some structure often makes my creative work possible. Surely I’m not the only one?!
Tasks:
Write down any resistance, angers and fears you have about going on from here. I’ve already started exploring this in my Morning Pages!
Take a look at your current areas of procrastination. What are the payoffs in your waiting? Locate the hidden fears. (I’d love to do this task on a recurring basis. We all have distractions that creep into our lives and secretly gobble up our time. I’d like to make a habit of keeping an eye on the things that are coming between me and my creative work.)
Revisit the Core Negative Beliefs from Week 1. Cameron encourages us to laugh and note our progress. That feels a little optimistic to me, but I’ll give it a try 🙃
Mend any mending.
Repot any plants that need repotting.
List five people you can talk to about your dreams and with whom you feel supported to dream and then plan. This contradicts the rest of the chapter slightly, but I’m still excited to give it a try. I’m always looking for ways to make creativity less lonely, and this seems like an excellent place to start.
Best of luck with The Artist’s Way in our final week!
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I included some links to conversations about faith/religion/culture in my original Substack note, but just in case you’re curious I wanted to add them here too:
This conversation between Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat. Douthat just wrote a book called “Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious” which obviously, I don’t agree and probably won’t read the book, but he thinks about these things in interesting ways.
Conclave which apparently doesn’t reflect the real thing at all, but I enjoyed it (especially the ending!)
This conversation about Pope Francis’s legacy.
Critics at Large on the intersection of Catholicism and culture (feat Pope Jude Law)
Season 2 of Fleabag - I read somewhere that Phoebe Waller-Bridge kept an iPhone note of her ideas for Season 2 and when she looked back on them, she saw that the vast majority had something to do with religion. She could have made a show about anything, but this is the subject she chose.
Also, the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion isn’t as clear cut as you might think.
Clare, how much I've enjoyed this experience with you! You have led it with grace, honesty, deep engagement and beautiful facilitation of our community and I am grateful for the deepest experience I've had yet with The Artist Way, despite first encountering it and working through it over 30 years ago for the first time. This is the first time I did it in community and it was so enriching, thanks to how you've inspired and engaged us. I will certainly fill out the survey today.
I too enjoyed this chapter, I think my favorite of all, with its focus on trust, mystery and faith. Like you, I found the "escape velocity" didn't really come across clearly or speak to me. And as for surrendering control--sometimes I need to do that, when I get too attached to a certain outcome for my creative work ('I must publish a novel or I will die unhappy and unfulfilled', is not an unusual thought for me over the years, but it stings less than it used to! Such enormous pressure I have put on myself. But today, older and wiser, I am far more accepting of my beautiful life just as it is, and all its blessings, at sixty-five. I am a creative person, creative writer, and I will always have that as my identity but it not the defining one, especially when i define its success in market or capitalistic terms).
But in other ways, having a structure to one's writing life, a routine, is essential, or has been so for me. Also, writing within constraints, as Jeannine Ouellette has taught me in Writing in the Dark, has led to some of my strongest creative writing yet.
That ice cream cone looked divine, and I enjoyed your video when i first saw it on Notes.