A goose couple visits at our pond each Spring to make a nest and create a family. This year, we have six goslings.  In their first week of life they learned to swim. They are our only visitors this Spring and yet they never fail to inspire us. In silence and observation, we learn something about the connection of creativity to spirituality. It's as if they are offering us a retreat.

Our programs have included photography, painting, gardening, cooking, poetry, knitting, crochet, collage and music. In celebration of creativity, we connect it to spirituality online and someday, together again here at Cranaleith.

Julia Cameron connected creativity to spirituality when she wrote, 

"The creative process is a process of surrender, not control". Linked to St. Paul's musings about faith being "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrew 11:1, we are permitted, when we look at the blank page, the empty canvas, the ball of yarn or the dormant piano, to surrender to uncertainty. We will explore, make mistakes, doubt, fail, revise and continue. Here is where creativity meets the spiritual. Because in surrender, there is faith. In creative expression, there is a result. We have followed a deeper instinct, a guide we trust. We swim."

We pick up crayons, crochet needles, recipes and shovels with the same intention: we create in partnership with the Spirit. The tools may be different, but the process is the same. Often, in creative expedition, we find meditation, a sense of calm, a prayer.

We invite you to join us in our program offerings. You will be with us, a part of our community, like the geese, even when they learn to fly and someday return.

Cranaleith Staff