It’s funny how I saw things as a child. Church was boring and suffocating and adults were immature and silly at times. But thankfully, as an adult, I see things much clearer now. Yes, religion can be stifling and adults can be totally stultifying!
Children, on the other hand, are spontaneous and refreshing, and naturally creative; they possess an ability to imagine, to see a world without limitations and to model exactly what they see, thus making them extremely teachable and volatile. Oh, how wonderful it would be to maintain, to foster, to nourish this mindset! For it is the perfect environment for miracles to take place. Our hearts and minds are open to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we become so stressed and frustrated on controlling our outcomes in life and determining how these results or experiences should look only to incur more stress. Though a healthy dose of stress is good, most of it if it is stored in the body, is not. Since we started these issues for the year 2012, we have been showing how to cultivate a healthy environment or condition for God’s Holy Spirit to move freely in our lives. If we are stressed and “bent out of shape,” then, we will struggle to hear and experience God’s supernatural power in our lives. We need the Sabbath to recharge, to refocus (Sabbath issue). We need to relax and rest in Him so we rhythmically breathe in and with Him (Breath issue). He is Ruach- breath of life that gives us the power to live LIVE! FULL COLOR!
When I was a child I remembered when we went from black and white TV to COLOR. Wow! As a kid, everything came alive when we got our first color TV! When we look at the Holy Spirit’s influence in our lives and around us, can we say Wow?!I know when I pause to listen to nature to hear the birds singing or watch a perfectly red cardinal enjoy a bird bath, a wow rises within me. Or when I sit outside on a hot summer’s night, I am amazed to hear a chorus of crickets singing with a complete orchestra of the sounds of summer cicadas filling the night. What a breath taking view to look up at the stars and see them as if I were a child again, beholding its wonder and creativity. To think that all of this universe around me was crafted with God’s words, His holy words we read in the Bible wows me!
Quite naturally, then, we began this issue on Creativity here: the word of God, the Ruach HaKodesh (The Holy Breath or Spirit). Beginning with the Creative force, the word of God, Rabbi Gavriel encourages us to see and study the word of God not in part but as a whole, to see not just scripture but the Bible as a whole. Interestingly, when I studied creative drama as an educational tool, one of its benefits was the ability to help the participant to make sense of his or her world, to attain a global view of life. Likewise, the Holy Spirit enables us to attain a similar experience when we study the word of God from the Old Testament to the New Testament, so that we see not in part but in whole. The Holy Spirit’s influence is the One who helps us make sense of our world in light of the word of God. Thus, if the universe is crafted with God’s Holy word, is it any surprise that we can experience God’s healing power from it? Or even its foods, like a papaya? Or plants, like the lavender? How kind of the Creator to give us scents that can aid us in healing and creatively stimulate us. Isn’t it also amazing how He created our brain with two sides: left and right, but they work together.
With that thought, I encourage you not to see the articles in this issue piecemeal but to see them as a whole in order to experience the freshness of the Holy Breath! Sometimes as adults, we can get stuck in a rut. The air becomes stale, but with God’s Holy Spirit there is freshness, like a breeze blowing on a hot, humid sunny day. Let us come with the openness and wonderment of a child and read each issue with a delight.
I thank each columnist for their hard work. I would like to also specially thank Carolyn Graham for sharing her personal story of healing. Carolyn had lost everything in her life due to lime disease, but through creative techniques of mind-body medicine she was healed. Brenda Stockdale, director of Mind-Body Medicine and Radiotherapy Clinics and Advanced Medicine in Georgia and author of You can Beat the Odds also visits us again in an audio interview, sharing amazing findings about the impact of creativity on the brain in helping us solve problems and even to bring about healing. If I may use this metaphor of a journey from Dr. Darlene Graves, one of our guest columnists, do think of this issue on Healing through Creativity as a spiritual journey you are embarking on to become more “like our loving Creator”.
, Editor
