Inspiration

I'm reading "Letters To A Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke every morning while I'm here at the shore.  I will continue reading it when I return home because unfortunately I see our vacation week near the ocean coming to a close very soon and I have not finished the book.  I may have to buy myself a copy to have on my shelf when I need a supportive voice, a voice who can encourage at any hour and one who truly understands the creative process.  The book is filled with gems of insight and advice related to the creative process and on being an artist.  Rilke (as a young,  established artist) is writing to a young poet who is just starting on his artistic path and looking for encouragement and words of wisdom from someone who has gone before.  The excerpt I have taken from The Third Letter reminds me that I can not only pay attention or rely my own agenda.  For as much as I know things do not happen with out effort, pursuits especially of the creative vein have their own time.  Expectations and agendas must be thrown out the window. 

Here is some inspiration that I read this morning. 

"All things consist of carrying to term and then giving birth.  To allow the completion of every impression, every germ of feeling deep within, in darkness, beyond words, in the realm of instinct unattainable by logic, to await humbly and patiently the hour of descent of a new clarity: that alone is to live one's art, in the realm of understanding as in that of creativity.

In this there is no measuring with time.  A year doesn't matter; ten years are nothing.  To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow.   It will come regardless.  But, it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent and endless.  I learn it daily, learn it with many pains for which I am grateful:  Patience is all!"

-Rainer Maria Rilke 

Letters to a Young Poet

taken from The Third Letter