Embracing The Interplay: Create, Play, Rest – Rev. Aimee Daniels
This video features the Sunday “talk” only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
The interplay between creating, playing, and resting is a dynamic process that supports personal growth, well-being, and resilience. As we give time and attention to all three, we begin to experience greater synergy in our lives. At times it might feel hard to make time because we are surrounded by voices that dismiss anything not considered “productive” as frivolous or unnecessary. Join us this Sunday as we co-create a conversation on how to embrace these practices to your sense of personal fulfillment.
SUMMARY
In this transcript, Rev. Aimee Daniels discusses the importance of creativity, play, and rest in our lives. She begins by sharing a story about Henry David Thoreau and his experiment with simplicity and self-reliance at Walden Pond. Rev. Daniels then explores the concept of creating a new way of being in our own lives and the interplay between creativity, play, and rest. She highlights the importance of embracing our creativity and not comparing ourselves to others. She also discusses various spiritual practices that can help cultivate creativity, such as mindfulness, guided visualization, and loving-kindness meditation. Rev. Daniels emphasizes the need to schedule time for play and rest in our daily lives and encourages listeners to reflect on how their spirit is calling them to cultivate more creativity, play, and rest. The transcript concludes with a guided meditation and a prayer.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:00):
Got me…? switching me over to my own slides? We’re so fancy now. Happy Mother’s Day. I know I’m thinking about my mom today. She left us about 12 years ago, and as you get older, you realize how much your parents form you in ways you don’t even realize. So I’m just thinking about my mom today and dedicating my talk to her. So to begin with a story, and it’s about Henry David Thoreau and you probably know about his time at Walden Pond, which he called his experiment with life. And he had decided, which is kind of funny to think about this, that the pace of life had gotten too quick at that time because it was industrializing. And so he wanted to give himself a break just to embrace more simplicity. He wanted to embrace his self-reliance and he wanted to embrace some introspection. And so he goes out to Walden Pond, he builds his own cabin, which is an act of physical creativity, but he took the time really to interact with nature and to use it, to write and to express and to capture his philosophy. And he did that in a very playful way. He would really interact with nature, he would interact with the animals, and he was really holding the whole thing and really kind of a light way.
(01:39):
And so this is a great inspiration for us to think about how do we create a new way of being in our own lives? Because that was really what he was trying to do. He was trying to embrace a new way of being, a way of living differently. And we might argue that our lives are very defined by what we’re doing and what we’re accomplishing and things like that. So the invitation today is to just play a little bit. We’re going to create play and rest. We’re going to do all three of these things. So you’re going to co-Create with Me, but today we’re going to cover Guideposts six and seven from Brene’s Brown’s book. And I’ve called these The Interplay because one of the things that a lot of really creative people have said is that, and interplay is like a back and forth between things, a building of things on each other.
(02:34):
But a lot of creative people over time have actually practiced this. Beethoven was famous for taking his walks in the woods because they cleared his mind and it helped him to access his creativity to create music. Julia Cameron, who many of wrote the Artist’s Way, and when she originally wrote the book, this wasn’t included, but later she added Walking in the Woods as something or walking in nature as something that people should do every day because it really clears the channel for something else to come through. And even at Pixar, where they are arguably among the more creative people in the world creating all their beautiful cartoons and movies and things like that, they have play areas. They recognize that in heavily creative work, it makes sense to do something, to break it up and create a little lightness in the day. So this is not a new idea, it’s just one that we might not think about in our daily lives.
(03:36):
And as Rob read to you from Elizabeth Gilbert from Big Magic, which was I think her second book, everyone Knows Eat, pray, love, which sort of has the same element of creating different ways of being in your life. But what I love about this quote is that the universe plants within us jewels that really it’s our job in life to discover these jewels. They’re buried within us and we often don’t give any credence to them because there might be a voice in our head that says, Hey, it’s selfish to do this. Mike Dooley has a quote that I really liked. And he says, it’s not selfish to pursue your dreams because if we live in an abundant universe, then it’s not selfish. There’s plenty for everyone. If I pursue my dream, that doesn’t mean you can’t have yours, but we’ve been brought up with a sort of scarcity in our thinking.
(04:35):
And think about some of the most creative people who have lived in our lifetime, Steve Jobs, we wouldn’t have these things that we’re addicted to if he hadn’t pursued his dream. We could say the same about a car, a car wouldn’t have existed or an airplane. We have a couple people streaming from the airplane this morning. Good morning, Donna and Darren. And we wouldn’t be able to do that if someone hadn’t had the creativity and the bravery to just say, I want to do this and I’m not going to listen to someone else’s idea of my life. I’m going to follow my own Ernest Holmes in Creative Mind and success said we should keep this in mind. The spirit makes all things out of itself. Everything comes into being without effort. I was going to say that again. Everything comes into being without effort. I dunno about anybody else, but I always think I need to effort.
(05:37):
And when we exert ourselves, we’re not in accord with the creative spirit in the way it works. And really what does Spirit do? It works through us. And the words in these quotes are what we would call spiritual qualities. Spirit expresses all these things, beauty, color, form love and power through everything that’s manifest in the universe and we partake of that nature. Think about your body. Your body is an amazing thing. We could never have invented this, right? All the different ways that it works together, but that’s actually a manifestation of the divine energy also. And I like the last part because the spirit wants to enjoy itself.
(06:25):
Chat, GPT made us a little visual of how things get created. Anybody play around with that? So this is everything coming into form. This is, and as I said, create a visual for me of everything coming into form. And I love that it put it on a book, even though we don’t think about this literally. But one of the things that we all might’ve grown up with if we grew up in the Christian Church is this idea, in the beginning was the word. I never understood what that meant. I think I get it now, but I didn’t understand what that meant for a while, like what the word. But this idea that a thought comes into mind and that all creativity comes from that thought that comes into mind. And then we might speak a word also that is creating our reality, but all creativity comes from that divine inspiration.
(07:22):
But do we listen to it, right? Do we listen to that? Brene Brown in her book shares that she never considered herself creative. And so she was doing this wholehearted living thing and she’s like, well, I’m not creative. I mean, I don’t know why all these other people are doing this. But she found a quote that changed her thinking on that from someone named William Plummer. And he describes creativity as the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. And when she read that quote, she said, well, that’s what I do in my work. I go out, I speak to people, I do research, and then I bring it together. And that’s my form of creativity. And that reminds me of the work I do in the world because I am actually creating experiences. I’m not creating artwork. That’s not a particular talent that I’ve cultivated in myself, but this idea that we can say that we’re not creative, but we’re all creating all the time we’re creating here, we co-create Sunday mornings.
(08:25):
It’s a bunch of people coming together to create the experience that we’re having. So what’s your story about your own creativity? And do you have a voice in your head that says you’re either not creative or devalues the way that you’re creative, seeing some head shake here in the room, or maybe someone told you it was frivolous to be creative. I’ve shared before I wanted to be a choreographer when I was little and my mother found my dancing frivolous. She thought it wasn’t an adult thing. And so eventually I gave that up. I still love it though. So Brene also talks a little bit about comparison and how we can block ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. And if we’re honest, we’re doing that all the time. Is this person better at this than I am? Is somebody going to think I am silly because I’m not good at this? And I have a very personal experience I’ve been going through with this comparison thing. I’m taking Spanish and my class started with seven people and we’re down to three.
(09:39):
Literally, they do not speak English to you from the moment you enter the class. It is all Spanish. But the other two people in my class, one is a lovely lady named Larissa. She’s from Russia. She speaks about five languages. The other guy is Srinath and he’s from India. And he speaks multiple languages, and they are far more courageous than I am. They just go for it. And they don’t care if they get it wrong. And I sit there and I go, hold on, let me look at my notes. So we all compare ourselves all the time, don’t we? But we don’t want to let it stop us. So Brene says, I’m not creative, doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. It’s really do we decide to use it? And when we don’t use the creativity that’s within us, however that wants to express, it could be woodworking, it could be cooking, it could be anything. But if we don’t express it, then it can create within us. An inner sense of sadness could create resentment, it could create a lot of things. But what we contribute in our life comes from our creativity. We may not be thinking about it that way, but everything we’re doing in our life comes from our creativity. And she’s kind of big on things like crafting. I say to you, anything that feels creative to you, do that. Do that.
(11:12):
I want you to consider something else for a minute. Your entire life is co-creation. We teach here that I, in the spirit, I in it as Ernest Holmes calls spirit or God are working together. Literally this stuff that we are one with is manifesting through us. So we are, we can think of it as, Hey, I’m the doer, but really we’re partaking of this nature. And that’s where creation comes from. So we’re always co-creating in our relationships, whether that’s with our partner, our spouse, our friends, our family. Think about that. You get a vibe as a family. This is how we’re together as a family. This is what our family looks like.
(12:05):
It really is. And really anything you give your energy to in your life is co-creation. Co-creating at work. You have teammates. Everything is co-creation. So I really want to invite you as you think about creating to think about co-creating. That’s really what you’re doing a lot of the time. And that feels a little less intimidating to me. It doesn’t have to be something sourced from within me. It’s like I can draw from something bigger than me. So we’re going to co-create right now. I want everyone to take your phone out and we are going to make a little word cloud together. So if you just take out your phone, and this is online, you open this up and it’s going to ask you to type a word of what you do to express your creativity. And I am going to click over so we can see the word cloud. Hopefully this works. Oh, you still, oh shoot. Okay. Okay. There it is again. Can you see that? Sorry about that.
(13:18):
If you just put your camera, it’ll come up. Okay? If you just scan it with your camera, it’ll come up. You can see so far we have cook, pray, dance online. Friends, we want to hear from you too. Scan the code. Help us create our word cloud. Ooh, we got a big dance going on there. Aesthetic journaling, songwriting, love. I love how big the word dance is. It just makes me happy. Look at all of this. Share mindfulness, resources, music design, sing and play. Guitar. Love making design. We got a lot of dance and music up there. Painting, writing, cooking. I spelled it wrong. Jokes. I love that. Look at all the ways that people are expressing their creative cooking presentation, making the home beautiful, enjoying nature. Reorganize, sewing. Think we got another writing, write, writing, workout. Music playlists. Vision boards. A lot of good stuff out there. So we just, oh, we got someone else scanning here. We just co-created something together. Isn’t that fun? Okay, we actually have to move along, but maybe we’ll pop back to our vision board later. Oh, being with Cityside, thanks, whoever said that. Floral arranging, I’d like to know who that is.
(15:13):
Get that cooking’s getting bigger cooking and meal planning. Parenting. Love that. Meditating. The words get bigger if more than one person says the same thing. Yeah. Okay, we got to go back to the talk here. Otherwise we’ll be playing here all morning, which we wouldn’t mind, but okay, let me go back to my presenter view.
(15:45):
And there’s a lot of things that you can do to express your creativity as we just saw, right? Here’s a picture from Cityside, that’s Christmas. Connie designed the room and we had a bunch of people who, but I think that’s Christmas was that Christmas, our music team, people paint. We saw all these things online, but there’s a lot of things you can do to express your creativity. So I just want you to turn to your neighbor and say what? And if you’re online, type it in the chat. What’s one thing you want to do to express your creativity more? We’ll just take a minute. Okay? Sorry. We’ve got to move along, but you can talk more after. Service us. So the next thing Brene Brown talks to us about is play
(17:21):
And this spirit of play. Think about the innocence of children playing. You can see them out there. They’re just play is just about enjoyment. It’s doing something for no reason. Lest you think it’s frivolous. A lot of spiritual teachers have talked about play. Probably one of the most famous ones was Shakti and her work was or is creative visualization. And she really encourages people to embrace their inner child through play and creativity, which she says are vital for spiritual and personal growth. But even think of the Dalai Lama, he’s a very playful, funny, silly guy. He’s very playful. So it’s not like the spiritual path has to be so serious. Play is also an important part of it. Brene talks about the seven properties of play. And these come from a book by Dr. Stewart Brown called from play, how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. So play is purposeless. You’re not doing it for any reason other than just to have fun, right? It’s voluntary. No one’s making you play.
(18:42):
It’s inherently attractive because it’s fun, right? We want to play. We like to play. We might lose track of time when we’re playing. And this next one cracks me up. Diminished. I don’t know if I have diminished self-consciousness when I play. I might be self-conscious when I play, but when you play with kids, do they care if they look good? They could not care less. It’s got improvisational potential and it’s also you want to keep playing. So he says it’s continuation of desire. And there’s a lot of studies that say that laughter strengthens your immune system. It affects your mood, it diminishes pain, and it protects you from stress. So we’re going to play a silly game right now, and I need a couple assistance. And if you’re online, you might want to go get a spoon. That’s what we’re going to be using in the room. Robin, hunter, would you give everyone a spoon? We’re going to play a silly game right now just to demonstrate laughter and play. Okay? So does anyone know how to play the spoon game? Okay, so here’s what you’re going to do. When you get your spoon, you’re going to blow in it, and then you’re going to stick it to your nose and see how long it’ll stay. I think my nose is too shiny here right now.
(20:09):
This is a great game to play with kids. Oh, look, we got some good people here. It’s silly, right? But doesn’t it make you laugh just to do something silly? Like putting a spoon on your nose? We got some very good spoon spooners in the room here. Okay? It’s silly, but I needed something to demonstrate why we play. And just like creativity, there’s a lot of ways to play, right? I know one of my favorites, rich, and I love to do karaoke, but you might do board games with your family. Pickle balls, the rage right now. There’s a lot of things that you can do to play. So let’s just take a couple shares from the floor if we have a couple brave volunteers who want to come up and share, what do you do to play? Anybody got anything?
(21:12):
Oh, Connie likes to swing. Awesome. Anybody else? What do you like to do to play? Not a lot of play happening here. I think we got an opportunity for improvement. Oh, you karaoke and board gaming. Okay, maybe we got a karaoke night coming up here at Cityside. I do have a machine, by the way, just FYI. But there’s a lot of things we can do to play, and it’s important for us to take the time to do that, to really bring that into our life, just to have some fun. I know Covid, that was one of the things about Covid that was nice when Rich’s kids were home. We would play hearts a lot or we would play board games or other things like that. And it was just fun and it just gave you something to do and you laugh and you have a good time.
(22:03):
So play is important for us. And then rest. I think rest is one of the most undervalued things in our culture today. I have friends who sleep five or six hours a night and they’re really proud of it. And I look at ’em and I say, I don’t think that’s very good for your health. They say seven to eight hours a night. Michael was in the medical field, he can tell you. But it’s important for your physical health, but it’s also important for your mental health. It’s really important to prevent dementia, to help with cognition, all these other things. It’s very, very important. It’s important for emotional wellbeing. You ever notice if you’re tired, you’re just not in a good mood, you can’t bring your best self.
(22:54):
And it’s important for longevity. And there’s lots of statistics about this sleep being one thing, but there’s a lot of other ways that you can rest that don’t involve sleeping. And so let’s talk about some spiritual practices that you can do to cultivate a sense of rest. Tik, Nat Han talked about mindfulness and rest, that we literally rest in the mindfulness of the present moment. Eckhart Toll says the same thing. We’re at rest when we’re in the present moment, when we’re not worried about the past, not thinking about the future. Matthew Fox, who I think was or is a unity minister, he talks about the Sabbath, like just setting aside time to rest, setting aside time where you are not working. And then there are meditations that you can use. I’m going to explain what a few are that you can try at home. And we’re going to actually end with a short meditation where we incorporate a few things.
(23:58):
So the first one is a body scan meditation. And you can do this laying down or you can do this sitting up with your eyes closed. But it’s literally to just simply check in with your body and just notice if you have any tension or discomfort. Just notice what’s happening with you. I always found yoga was good for checking in with the body. Just you’re with yourself if you’re in your practice in yoga. The second one is breath awareness. This is super powerful. You can do this in meetings too, by the way. You can do this in a meeting. If you notice you’re getting stressed or whatever, just simply do some breathing. No one’s going to notice unless you really do like the UJA breath. They’re not going to notice. But just breathing in and just hold your breath for a second and then breathe out.
(24:47):
But just bringing your awareness to your breath, it calms your nervous system and it just helps you to get into that present moment. Guided visualization is another way that you can rest. And there’s a zillion apps out there right now where you can find guided visualization, but picturing yourself in a peaceful place, going to a peaceful place. Some people like to meditate about their happy place, whatever that is. But really bringing yourself into a different state. Mindfulness meditation, which is really observing your thoughts without judgment and just letting them go. Loving kindness. Meditation also called meta, which Han taught a lot about. And Pema chore to me is one of the best current teachers of meta meditation. But just this idea that you’re extending love to yourself first, and then you extend it to the people around you and you extend it to the world.
(25:54):
And it helps you to not only extend your compassion, but also to feel your connectedness to other people. Progressive relaxation. We’re going to do this right now just for a second. You could do this in a meeting, but you might want to do it carefully. So when we do progressive relaxation, what you do is you tighten your body and then you release it. Okay? So everyone do it with me right now. Just tighten your body for a second and then release it. You notice any release of the stress, especially good if you tend to like I do, just tighten the shoulders and stuff. It’s really, really good. And finally, being out in nature, it’s so important. It’s so good for you to just be out wherever you can get outside. Just get outside and do something. But you have to schedule this in.
(26:52):
This is not how we think about managing our lives. We think about what we need to do, but we don’t think of a date with ourself, whether it’s an artist date for our creativity as Julia Cameron would say, or whether it’s just like, wow, I’m going to schedule a nap today, or I’m going to go do something that’s going to be fun for me today. We don’t think about scheduling it. And my encouragement to you is to do something to build these things in. If they’re important to you, put ’em on your calendar. Anything, we make a habit, we do. And if we don’t make a habit, we don’t do it. And so bring it into your daily practice. So this interplay, creativity, play and rest. And what I want to invite you to do this week is just be in this question, how is my spirit calling me to cultivate more creativity, play and rest in my life? What does my spirit want more of? And am I listening? Am I listening to what my spirit wants more of? I just invite you to do that. We’re going to go into a meditation now just for a few minutes and close in prayer. So I just invite you to close your eyes. We’re going to practice rest right now. Just close your eyes and just bring your awareness inside of your body. What’s going on in your body right now?
(28:23):
Is there anything that feels tight? Any area where you’re feeling discomfort? And just breathe into that and just send some light there. Send some healing energy there, and ask your spirit to release whatever it is that you might be holding onto.
(28:55):
And let’s just take a few deep breaths together. We’re going to breathe in for four. Hold for four, and breathe out for four. So breathing in, 2, 3, 4. Hold 2, 3, 4, and breathe out. 2, 3, 4. And let’s just do that one more time. Breathing in, 2, 3, 4, hold 2, 3, 4, and breathe out. 2, 3, 4. Just let your breath return to normal now, and you might want to put your hands on your heart right now and just ask your spirit, what does my spirit want more of for me? Is it play? Is it rest? Is it creativity? What is my spirit calling me forward to? Embrace? We’re just going to sit with it for a short time.
(30:56):
We just take all these thoughts, all these ideas, all these feelings that Spirit is bringing forward for us, and we bring these into our prayer. Just ask your spirit to help you create more of whatever it is calling you to while I speak my word for us. So in this moment, I just know the presence and power of spirit. I know that this presence and power is creative. It contains all possibilities. It is full of play and fun and creativity, that it is the energy of life itself. And I know that I am one with all this energy, all this possibility, all this creativity and play and fun and all the other qualities of spirit that are seeking to express through me. And I know this for each person who is hearing my words, that the thoughts of the divine coming into their awareness are one with the spirit that is creating them, that they are one with the possibility, the creativity, the play, the fun, the flow, the rest, all the possibility of spirit, all the qualities of spirit.
(32:13):
And so from this place of oneness, I just speak my word for each of us knowing that our beingness is transformed by the power of this word, that we consciously embrace a new way of being in the world that is easier, that is lighter, that is more playful and fun, and that just feels more balanced within us than any voice that tells us that is frivolous, is quieted. And we simply listen to what Spirit is saying to us. And we honor that knowing that we live in abundant universe and all is possible. I say yes to all of this, just knowing that the spirit that creates the idea manifests the idea, and it is simply ours to allow it to be so. And I’m so grateful to know this prayer is already fulfilled and with so much gratitude, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.