My Own Take on the Artist Prayer from The Artist Way by J. Cameron

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I am working through the Artist Way by Julia Cameron. I wanted to share my experience of working through the course as an atheist. Right now I am finishing Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity and I again chose a task I had some discomfort with: the rewrite of the Artist Prayer from the back of the book. Again, I reflected on what I understood the basic ideas behind the words in the original prayer to be and translated it into a language that described that understanding. In the process, I gave it a more secular rendering. Perhaps others will find this helpful.

The Artist Way Week 4 Task 6: Write your own Artist Prayer

To my creative self:
I am here with creativity in mind
so that I may be of greater service to you
I see myself as an instrument
I open myself to your creativity
I surrender my old ideas
I trust in you to lead me
I trust that it is safe to follow you
I know that creativity is a large part of me
I want to unfold my life according to a
plan of creativity, not my low self worth
I want to believe it is not too late and that
I am not too small or flawed to be healed—
Through my own pursuit of creativity—
and made whole
Help me love myself and others
To nurture others unfolding as well as my own
To encourage others growth as well as my own
and understand my own and other creatives’ fears
Help me see that I am not alone
That I am loved and lovable
I am ready to create as a fulfillment of who I am.

Reference: The Artist's Way; Cameron, Julia; Copyright 1992; Penguin Putnam, New York, NY

Secular Rewrite of Basic Principles (from Artist's Way by J. Cameron)

I am working through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron this winter. This is my third attempt within the last 20 years to finish the course. I have a partner this year who is working through the course at the same time, which I am excited about and hope means I'll finish. But this year I also feel the need to "rewrite" some of the book to match my own personal preferences. I am an atheist and, although Cameron invites us to substitute whatever word or phrase has meaning to us for the word "God" in her book, I had difficult doing this. I found that I needed to do more than just replace a word. Some statements and descriptions of the process of the Artist Way weren't clear to me. Cameron refers often to supernatural forces and processes. I do not believe in the supernatural. This became most clear to me when I began to re-read the Basic Principles (from the introduction) as one of my Week 2 tasks. I found myself wincing at all the references to "forces," etc. But I thought the basic concept behind the principles was a good one and I wanted to make use of the construct. So I decided to rewrite them. As I worked, I realized that I didn't really know what some of the original phrases meant, so it was hard to translate them. But I gave it my best shot, using phrases and words that fit my own world view. I did not succeed completely. Some of the statements still make me squirm after rewriting, but that's OK. I think that is just me continuing to process what I need and believe. So I wouldn't call these rules "atheistic." The closest might be "Secular."

One principle, Number 7, worked well for me just doing what Cameron suggested: Substituting "Good Orderly Direction" for the word "God." I also found that three of the principles needed no rewrite: they were secular as is and fairly clear. These are numbers 1, 6, and 9. Ironically, number 9, although I didn't feel the need to rewrite it, is one of the principles that I trip over each time I read it. Number 9 scares me because I feel that if I'm just creative all the time, I will loose what I have now in my life. Perhaps I'll write more about that later. Meanwhile, maybe some of you who are atheist (or not specifically religious) and are working at discovering your "Creative self" will find these rewritten rules useful.

Basic Principles Rewritten with a Secular Cast

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative flow infusing all of life--including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creative flow within us.
4. We are, ourselves, creations of evolution. And we, in turn, continue that creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is human nature's gift. Using our creativity is our gift back to the world.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to Good Orderly Direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to our creative flow, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from our nature. As we consider our dreams, we see ourselves more clearly and move toward our creative flow.

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Reference: The Artist's Way, Cameron, Julia, Copyright 1992, Penguin Putnam, New York, NY

Eight-Week Europe Solo Travel 2011: Reflections on Time Travel, Traveler Angst, and What One's Protagonist Might Do

Friday, June 10, 2011, Bayeux, France

Working from the journal I kept while traveling alone In Europe has reminded me how the journey shaped my writing and my views of my novel protagonist. I went to Europe to gather insight into what it might be like for my protagonist, Aihne Fontaine, to go to a foreign country and to travel 800 years into the past. Although I couldn't literally travel back in time, I would be walking through some very old parts of Europe, which I hoped would transform me back, even just in my head. And I was right: I found I shared not only Aihne's perspective as a traveler in a foreign land, but I felt I knew what it might be like to be a time traveler like her--sometimes while sitting in front of a 5000-year-old dolmen or standing inside a centuries-old church. Aihne is a Harvard student, time traveler, and lover of everything 12th-century France, Aihne is independent, intelligent and a serious academic. Like Aihne, I viewed my travel experience as academic at root (although, as you may know from previous blog entries, I strayed off my research path to see the wonders around me).

What surprised me during my own travel experience was the wide gap between the person I identified as me in the mirror and the person the culture I was visiting reflected back at me as I meandered into their train stations, hotels, or cafes. I knew at once Aihne must feel the same after landing in the indifferent city of Poitiers, France in 1136. But I must take my communication muddles and multiply them by ten to get close to how hard it must be to go back in time almost a millennium. Aihne and I both sought to be understood and to understand. I took the opportunity when I could to connect with Aihne and her experience, even in the middle of my own social discomfort. I tried to catch her perspective by walking cobbled streets or sitting on a bench in a cathedral. Then back in my tiny hotel room, I would write furiously in my notebook to reach further into her head and get it all down. At times the connection wasn't strong. Sometimes it was interrupted by my own angst, but eventually I got through.

Journal Excerpt, Friday morning, June 10, 2011, Breakfast Room, Hotel Churchill, Bayeux, France:
Not awake. Australian show off! He could answer our matron de in French and she was pleased. Oh, wait. He is not the Australian. He is the Brit from the first night who encouraged me to find the WiFi connection, and I eventually did. This coffee is old. Perhaps la matron de can bring me a fresh pot.... Yes. I asked. I hate to be a problem, but the coffee was so good yesterday. Ellen, this is not a 4-star restaurant, you know. But the coffee was bad and I know they make good coffee... Dave wouldn't have done it, but Dave isn't here! :) Okay. Got coffee. Thanked the woman for it. Now I have some time to write, so...

Aihne walking through the medieval hall—

The interior of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux. More beautiful than the exterior to my cursory view from my last night there.

I got a chill. I wanted to run out of the Bayeux cathedral last night. I had seen so many stone walls. I felt I didn't belong here. Unlike the Mont Saint-Michel, which invites the tourist trade, this cathedral is still very private. No entry fee, but votive candles everywhere. I did not feel comfortable making an offering there—mine would not be a religious one, but spiritual, as in celebrating the seeking and finding. Outside, the church is so old and grim. The city is preserving it as an historical site. I wondered why.  Then I walked inside. The windows were gorgeous. Such starkness and beauty all in one place. Perpetual sorrows—

The grim, weathered outside of Bayeux Cathedral.

Churches wouldn't be Aihne's primary research, but she is quite interested in abbeys, particularly the Abbey at Fontevraud. So the images: the gloom, the high transepts and the hollow echoes that become glorious chant from the choir at other times. It all goes to the same thing: the cloistered life, religious or not. Living away from the large community in a smaller one where contemplation is not only encouraged but one of the few activities open to a woman of high birth who had been retired by society. But I get ahead of myself. That is the next chapter of my journey. At Saumur, I will see the Abbey de Fontevraud.

Paintings on a wall of the gallery at the Bayeux Cathedral.

Time traveling. I can understand how disjoint it must be. You don't speak the language exactly, at least in Aihne's case. She has studied linguistic remnants of the language and knows how it probably sounded based on modern romance and Germanic languages. She will refine it as she goes. Get by on her wits. I understand not knowing if your message is getting through. Are you going to get what you asked for—what you thought you asked for? Or something entirely different? Of course, unlike Aihne, I'm a tourist. There is a courtesy extended to strangers who come to visit a country. We are (mostly) forgiven our ignorance. Time travelers walk among the people incognito. I am looking at present-day ruins of medieval sites instead of living in them as new structures along with medieval contemporaries like Aihne is. And Aihne is going back to a time and place in which strangers posed much more likely threats than in western civilization today.

By Anonymous - "Eve spinning", folio 8r, detail from the Hunterian Psalter, Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 229 (U.3.2)  Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Aihne must be thinking, "Will people regard me as other and run me out of town? Will they trust me or suspect me? So what if they suspect me? Will they act on the suspicion?" That would be problematic. You'd have to smooth things over, faking it. That would be the only way to do it. Constantly smiling when you are talking. Pretending to be helpless or very much like it. (In some ways Aihne and I are both helpless.) Play up the helplessness in some cases. In others, be tougher, stronger, even magical. With men, I suppose, always demur, but calculate carefully so that you do not play it too far. With women, show yourself to be more inept than they, but a hard worker and eager to learn. Puts them on a higher footing than you and they will trust more. Act in trust—prove your trustfulness by doing what you said or indicated you would.

So ends the journal entry from that Friday morning before I set off on my 5 1/2-hour journey from Bayeux to Saumur and encountered adventures that pushed me further into the unknown realms of space and time travel.