Day Five: Inspiration

Word of the Day: inspiration

Image of the Day: Hopscotch the Bear

Token of the Day: Tinkerbell Fairies jigsaw



inspiration
expiration
breathe in
breathe out
give life
take life away.


If we are inspired by something or someone we are moved to do or be something new, often challenging. Something inspirational is uplifting - takes our breath away (?) But we can also be inspired to do something as a response to something awful, can't we?



Who has inspired me? Brother Roger of Taize, Oscar Romero, Rosa Parks, Henri Nouwen, Jean Vanier, the Suffragettes, May Sarton, Maya Angelou...



We use the word inspirational almost flippantly. If we were truly inspired by all the art, places, music, people we claimed were inspirational the world truly would be a better place! Yesterday's Scotsman had a supplement "Recommends" with the header "Inspiring Scotland". It included photos of places readers found inspiring including the Callanish Stones, Assynt and also whole towns such as Peebles and Stow. How can they be described as inspiring?



Inspire is defined as:

Stimulation of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity

Divine guidance or influence exerted directly on the mind and soul of humanity

An agency, such as a person or work of art, that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention


I am inspired by places such as the Taize community, cathedrals, caves, landscapes, seascapes, fragile buds, butterflies... Do they lead me to action, invention, or simply a feeling? Hmmm...


My bear Hopscotch is now about 15 years old. He came from a shop that has long gone called Hopscotch in Peebles. Over the years his filling seems to have been somewhat removed, his fur is less bright and he struggles to hold up his head. I've even had to put a knot in his bowtie elastic! And that makes me think of the Velveteen Rabbit when he talks with the Skin Horse:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I hope and pray that i might be led to action by those people, places and things that inspire me. That i might feel moved, in the words of the Wild Goose song "inspired by love and anger"... John Bell wrote these words and they are very much at the core of social justice:

Inspired by love and anger, disturbed by endless pain, aware of God's own bias,we ask [him] once again: 'How long must some folk suffer? How long can few folk mind? How long dare vain self-int'restturn prayer and pity blind? 'To God, who through the prophets proclaimed a diff'rent age, we offer earth's indiff'rence, its agony and rage: 'When will the wronged be righted? When will the [kingdom] come? When will the world be gen'rous to all instead of some? 'God asks: 'Who will go for me? Who will extend my reach? And who, when few will listen, will prophesy and preach? And who, when few bid welcome, will offer all they know? And who, when few dare follow, will walk the road I show?' Amused in someone's kitchen, asleep in someone's boat, attuned to what the ancients, exposed, proclaimed and wrote, a Saviour without safety, a tradesman without tools has come to tip the balance with fishermen and fools.

How close is inspiration to insanity? Creativity to madness? Is it simply society's conventions? Our inability to accept that which we cannot explain? If i go into a trance, feel moved to do something like dance am i inspired or crazy? Does it matter?...