Toni Stone
Wonder Works Studio
401 Buck Hollow Road
Fairfax, VT 05454
September 30, 1996
TRUE CREATIVITY IS LIKE WATER CLAIMING NO FORM OF ITS OWN
someone tells a tale that in a Japanese story a well-respected archery teacher sets out for a mountaintop to find the greatest ARCHER in the world. he is astonished to discover this accomplished master does not even use a bow or arrow. yet, when the master aims his empty arms, formed to shoot into the sky, and releases an invisible arrow, a bird falls to earth.
this is an exercise of true creativity. one does not ostensibly accrue credit for being the source of what happened. my teacher said to me, “you can cause anything to happen as long as you don’t have to be acknowledged for it.” soon after this message. i began to see evidence of what he was pointing to…i had declared that something would be established. what i had in mind, was organizing a seminar coming to town, but a woman who thought little of me did the job i meant to have done. it occurred just as i said it would, but not the way i thought it would. After a brief bang to the ego, i was able to see. i was able to relax. how easy it is, to get a job done, if you don’t need credit.
many jobs are available. few desire them. underneath circumstances there are layers of effort, intention and action. results do not always point to the source. sometimes, who gets thanked, did little or nothing.
Thanksgiving is the feast leading us into the gathering dark of Autumn harvest and Winter. There are few names i ever heard, of exactly who was at that first feast, No one knows for sure whose idea it was. after it occurred, it was forgotten a long time. Then Abraham Lincoln pointed and said let’s make this a holiday. he, was not at the first Thanksgiving.
Sarah Hale of Philadelphia penned a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863 asking, “….to have a day of annual Thanksgiving made into a national, fixed….festival.” Her request for a legal holiday found Lincoln cooperative. On October 3, 1863, Lincoln proclaimed a nationwide Thanksgiving Day for the last Thursday of November in gratitude for, “a year filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” Sarah Hale’s name is not popularly associated with Thanksgiving! i had never even heard of her.
after Lincoln’s assassination Thanksgiving was proclaimed with his official name tied to it. it took with it names and signatures of hundreds who had kept the feast alive. these names were just as unacknowledged as the four English women and two teenage girls who, it is said, did the cooking for ninety Native Americans and fifty new settlers during that difficult first winter at Cape Cod Bay.
PAGE 1 OF 2
true creativity is like this, one may never see an effort be acknowledged within one lifetime. one may never see an outcome that has her name on it. can one work for an outcome energetically and devotedly without any hope of credit? results come from standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. results continue to come from unknown others who have gone before us.
last year, in Autumn we gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving outdoors. with many modern conveniences inside the house, we opted to convene under the sky to cook, heat and warm up at fires, to sit at pine tables next to berry bushes, to carve eating utensils from fallen twigs instead of metal or plastic. we did this to remember things were not always as convenient, as we have them. we did this to increase our gratitude. we sat close to keep warm. with red faces and frosty breath our gratitude for a finely prepared meal, was newly appreciated. we were thankful that we did not have to eat like this often! we were grateful for those that named Thanksgiving, living it with no modern convenience.
we received hot bowls with vigor, and happiness. they warmed our hands, as well as our hearts. we were happy for who mashed the potatoes, who baked the corn, who mulled cider, who baked the pies. the women who adorned the tables and put favors at each place were appreciated. the singers were applauded, setters, cleaners, servers, everyone walked quickly in cold brisk air. when the sun shined on us it was the best gift, very distinct, from sun watched from a heated room.
over two hundred years later, a Vermont backyard hosts the same gratitudes of many who have been blessed. our names will smudge out over trillions of other names gone before, all the grateful for decades, centuries, millenniums who have set aside time, to be thankful.
no one will remember our names, we kept gratitude alive in a backyard awhile. are we willing to work for an ideal and not have our names remembered?
are we willing to regenerate thankfulness without ego reward? can we submit to gratitude? can we feel it?
PAGE 2 OF 2
