Give Voice

The heart of Reflective Souls is to discover your voice and courageously allow it to speak. But many things keep our voice hidden deep within the caverns of our soul. Fear is one of the biggest silencers of our voice.

What actually is our voice? It is our truest self and she lives deep inside us. However, we have another less appreciated voice, the inner critical voice, that often speaks louder. This voice tells us lies and does everything it can to keep us afraid of finding our own voice. The inner critical voice tells us we have no talent and leads us to believe something bad will happen if we express our creativity. Fear keeps our creative voice silently hidden away.

The only remedy for our fear is love: perfect Love casts out all fear. Listening to the voice of God who is Love helps us to defeat our fears. We recognize God's voice because it tells us we are loved, worthy, and talented. As we listen to the Holy Spirit, who urges us to love ourselves as God loves us, we learn to love even the frightened part of ourselves. "Like a sculptor, we will have chipped away at the frozen fear to reveal the beautiful creation inside."

Allow not fear to determine your voice, allow God.

grace & peace on the written journey ~ deAnn

(this post is inspired by and includes lines from a fabulous book I'm eating up, "Creativity and Divine Surprise by Karla M. Kincannon)

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins

Reflective Souls ~ Changes To Come

Okay, I'm back from vacation now and can post just how cool our last gathering was! We had several new voices and together, the song was beautiful! I left the church feeling so inspired and blessed to have been with a group of creative women each striving to develop our "voice" through writing. Thank you!!!

Some news regarding Reflective Souls:
This gathering of women began over a year ago. Deb and I love to write and decided that we'd get together once a month to encourage each other on the creative journey. Then we got to thinking that there may other women who feel the same way! Voila - the birth of Reflective Souls! We began meeting at Panera Bread, but that was a bit noisy. So, we moved to Butera the Florist as Vince and Carolyn were mighty generous with their offer to use their space. After a little while and a few scheduling conflicts, we moved RS to a church in Dallastown, Bethlehem United Methodist. They were extremely gracious by giving us the most beautiful room in their building! As my job at LWCC morphed and I became the Creative Arts Coordinator, we decided to move RS to our building and now it's under the umbrella of my ministry. It's now an official arts community ministry of Living Word. That is exciting!

As with all things, time changes the landscape. The Inkling's publication (new editions are published every 10 weeks) has been a hit and more people, including men, are interested in writing communities at our church. With that and much prayer, we decided to change the landscape of Reflective Souls to accommodate the interest it's generating.

We will meet July 10 as the classic version of Reflective Souls. But beginning in August, our writing community will meet twice a month! We are still working on a lot of the details at this time but will post them all as they become more clear. So check back to this blog in the near future.

Certainly we are so excited to see God grow this ministry and can't wait to see how He continues to shape it in the weeks & months & years to come. Thank you for being patient as we transform into the new version. We'd appreciate your prayers for wisdom and guidance as well!

Always exciting being on the creative journey! Grace & peace ~ deAnn

June Gathering - Tonight

I'm a wee bit late in posting this, but - we do have our June Gathering tonight at 6:30 PM in the Coffee Bar. We will be sharing some neat-o news regarding Reflective Souls and how it fits into the larger picture of the Creative Arts Ministry of LWCC. Oh, and we'll be writing too! :0)

Hope to see you there ~ if you can't make it ~ check back to this blog as I'll be posting the neat-o news!

enjoy the journey, deAnn