It’s raining outside.

It seems like the world is crying.

Darkness, evil, hatred, anger, vitriol.

I look around and don’t know what to do.  Prayer, yes.  But action too! How do I help?  What do I do?  How to mend, heal, help?

Stream of consciousness flowing and all I know to do, all I can do is create.

When I’m sad I paint.  When I’m happy I dance.  When I yearn, I act.  When I am joyful, sorrowful, angry, I sing.  Forms of expression that teach, guide, and show the world, my friends, my family,  feeling, emotion, and hope.

What the World needs now is love.  What the World needs now are creative thinkers.  We who think outside the norm, outside the box.  We are needed!  You are needed!  Express with your creativity.  Write your words.  Paint your canvas.  Dance your dance and sing your song.

Then….

Share it with me.  Share it with your friends.  Share with strangers and even with your enemies.  Use your beautiful mind to spread hope.  Hope of a World where we are ALL safe in our beliefs, in our cultures, and can lay our children to sleep without having to explain such terror.

Light your creativity like a fire that catches, overwhelming hatred, evil, bigotry, racism.

The main thing, dear ones, is to light it against FEAR.  Fear is the originator.  Fear is the root.  Fear is the driver of hate and anger. Fear crawls at us on scuttling legs in the night and settles in our hearts. It tells us terrible stories and chuckles with cold satisfaction when we believe it.  We can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist but we do not have to live in its shadow or its green grip.  How to conquer Fear?

I’m convinced more than ever that the World needs more artists because what we’re doing isn’t working. More creators.  More craftsman.  More dancers.  More singers.  More actors.  More builders.  More inventors.  More writers. More thinkers. More ideas.  And then we need action on those ideas…

Ideas come from creativity. Problem-solving. Resourcefulness.

The first person to plant a seed was creative.  The first person to milk a cow?  Creative.  The first person to tell a story.  The first person to take some dirt and paint a picture.  The first person to build a ship, a house, a cradle.  The first person to write with ink.

These people that came before were solving a problem using creativity in the HOPE that it would change their world for the better.

So, the World needs your creative world-changing spirit and then what we need is hope-in-action.  Actions of love. Actions of helpfulness, of truth, of beauty, of kindness, of goodness, of honor.  We need actions of courage, of honesty.  Actions of justice, actions of resolve, of defiance and of determination.   We can’t change a heart through hatred or violence.  We can change hearts through love, peace, joy, faithfulness, goodness, honesty.  We can wage war against the growing tide of fear that is embroiling our World.

I will not let fear define me.  I will seek out and I will wrap myself in Peace.  I will smile at my fellow man.  I will keep painting and dancing and singing.  I will plant flowers.   Because today is the day and we have no other.  Fear wants to creep and capture but today I will look at the rain as beauty and restoration,  not sadness.

love,

Bethany

 

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