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After being hurt, it is natural and indeed necessary that we draw back inside the shell. No-one can force us to emerge and risk growth. Indeed, the probability is that under pressure the retreat will go deeper and the shell only become harder and tougher to crack. Once we recognize how control and self-protection rob life of all vitality and rhythm, we will find ourselves slowly advancing towards the threshold of risk and trust once more. Because life is so short and its invitations so thrilling, it is such a waste to become absent from life. The memory of the birth of new life through the wall of a shell has always remained for me an image of transformation. When the new life had found its form within that sealed darkness, the dream of light awakened it. In an absolute risk for the unknown and the unseen light outside, the chick broke its only shelter, destroyed its nourishing protection, to stand naked and tiny in a foreign world. And sure enough, within a short time, it becomes a joyous and excited participant in the possibilities of its new life. Although there are no guarantees in the kingdom of risk, nature shows us, time and again, that it is precisely at that moment of greatest risk, the moment when everything could be lost, that the greatest change happens. A new life opens out into a new world that could not have even been dreamed before this. It is difficult to find the courage and vision at the points of deepest wounding to believe that new risk can take us into new life. But there is no alternative. When we remain sealed away inside the shell, we are no longer able to hear our own life. Even the voices that really care for us sound like severed echo. We will grow only more deeply lost, unable to hear even the whispers of the heart.

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Beauty triumphs over the suffering inherent in life.

NIETZSCHE

WHEN WE DECIDE TO EXPLORE OUR LIVES THROUGH CREATIVE expression, it is often surprising to discover that the things that almost destroyed us are the very things that want to talk to us. It could be years later; time makes no difference in the inner sanctum of this encounter. The wound has left its imprint. And yet after all this time the dark providence of the suffering wants to somehow illuminate our lives so that we can now discover the unseen gift that it bequeathed. The labour and discipline of creativity refines our blemished seeing, and gradually an unexpected gift comes to light. Because creativity demands patience, skill, expectation, desire and openness, it leads us to another place where we learn to see in the dark. Nothing is said directly in a creative work; it is obliquely suggested. Perhaps creative expression is a way of telling something indirectly that we could never tell out straight.

Beauty is not all brightness. In the shadowlands of pain and despair we find slow, dark beauty. The primeval conversation between darkness and beauty is not audible to the human ear and the threshold where they engage each other is not visible to the eye. Yet at the deepest core they seem to be at work with each other. The guiding intuition of our exploration suggests that beauty is never one-dimensional or one-sided. This is why even in awful circumstances we can still meet beauty. A simple instance of this is fire. Though it may be causing huge destruction, in itself, as dance and shape and colour of flame, fire can be beautiful. In human confusion and brokenness there is often a slow beauty present and at work.