Category: First thoughts

As usual, May has had a lot of holy days.  In Norway, many of the public holidays are based on Christian religious holy days, such as Christmas, Easter and Ascension.  This year with Easter being early in April, May became a series of long weekends.

The 1st of May is Labour Day in many countries in Europe, including Norway.  This year it came on a Saturday.  As a teacher I didn’t get any extra day off, but the stores were closed and it felt like we had two Sundays in a row.

Ascension Day always comes on a Thursday and is a Christian holy day.  It is the 40th day of Easter and commemorates the Ascension of Jesus.  This year the schools were also closed on the following Friday, so we had both the 13th and the 14th off work.  On the 14th stores, of course, were open, but many people had the day off work.

The Norwegian Constitution was signed in 1814 and is always celebrated on the 17th of May, regardless of which day of the week it comes on.  This year it came on a Monday.  Stores are always closed and there are parades and parties in every school area.  In larger towns and cities there can be more than one parade in a day.

This then gave us teachers the 13th to the 17th off school, in other words a five-day weekend.  Lovely.

But that wasn’t the end of the Norwegian public holidays for May.  Whit Sunday (the 7th Sunday after Easter) is also an important holy day and the Monday after it is always a public holiday.  This gave us two long weekends in a row, though the second one was only three days.

It doesn’t often happen that a Norwegian public holiday and a Canadian public holiday come on the same day, but this year the 24th of May was a holiday in both countries.

So, so far there have been four extra days when stores and work places have been closed in May.

Now, as a Bahá’í, I also have several holy days in May, days which I am encouraged to take free from work.  The first one is the 2nd of May, the day that marks Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from the Gardens of Ridvan in Baghdad and the start of a long journey to Constantinople.  This year my local Bahá’í community celebrated the day by visiting a Bahá’í who has multiple sclerosis.

On the 23rd of May we celebrate the first event in Bahá’í history, Mulla Husayn’s meeting with the Bab in the city of Shiraz.  The Bab announced that he was the herald of a new messenger from God. We celebrated this historic occasion by hosting an Art Day, where participants made drawings or paintings, made delicious food (and ate it too), or made digital recordings of prayers in Norwegian.

On the 29th of May we remember the death of Bahá’u’lláh.  He passed away in the middle of the night in 1892 in Akka, Israel.  He was 75 years old.

This year I was lucky and didn’t have to try to take all these Bahá’í holy days off work as they are all on the weekends. But many years, I have to make the decision if I can take the time off work.

Well, let’s make a summary of the holy days and the other free days.  Norwegian holy days include Ascension (13th) and Whit Sunday (23rd), Norwegian public holidays include Labour Day (1st), Constitution Day (17th), and Whit Monday (24th).  Baha’i holy days include the 12th Day of Ridvan (2nd), the Declaration of the Bab (23rd) and the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh (29th). That makes 7 special days out of 31.  Note that the 23rd was both a Christian and a Bahá’í holy day. Not bad, for having extra free time.

I usually make use of these extra days off work to get going in my garden, enjoying the spring sunshine and warmth and getting into gear for the summer.  However this year the weather was disappointing.  To be honest, it was cold, with snow coming both on the 3rd and the 10th of the month!! Gardening has gone slowly, though the lawn has been cut once.  When the sun does decide to shine, it warms up quite quickly and one day last week we actually ate dinner outside in the sunshine (and didn’t freeze).

I hope you that read this have also had an interesting May month.

What is creativity?

I’d like to start with a quote from the Virtues Project.

“Creativity is the power of imagination.  We are open to inspiration, which ignites our originality.  With creativity, we are resourceful and intuitive.  We solve problems in new and surprising ways… Discovering our own special talents is a gift to the world, whether making a meal, playing a sport, or creating a craft.”

For me, creativity is usually making things out of cloth, thread or yarn.  At the moment I have a loom set up with a long warp for making rag rugs.  As I weave in old shirts that have been cut up, or remnants from cloth from sewing projects, or bedding or curtains that have been ripped into strips, memories come back from the years that have so quickly gone by.

Today I also had someone from my first year in Norway contact me via Facebook.  Again memories came back, sitting at a loom, weaving Norwegian patterns and learning how to speak Norwegian.  Now almost thirty years have gone by since that first school year in Norway and my contact with the crafts of Norway.

While I sit at the loom, my mind has time to remember the past, but there is also the leap into the future.  Thus I decided (while sitting at the loom) that a blog was what I need to create next.  Though I have always been better at weaving, sewing, knitting or crocheting than at working with words, words have always been an important part of my life.  Usually it has been reading what others have written.  Now it is time to start writing more myself.

In order to develop creativity within ourselves we have to do things which give our minds time to think.  For me that is sitting at a loom, driving a car to work and back, or pulling weeds out of one of my many flower beds.  Once the mind has been inspired the next step is to do something active, e.g. starting a blog and sharing my ideas with others.

To be creative, one mustn’t be hampered by what other people think is right, what is fashionable, or the “in” thing to be doing.  Someone who is creative is often ahead of the rest of the people around them, seeing new ways to do things and breaking away from tradition.

One of the characteristics of being human is that we have imagination.  The imagination makes use of color, sound, taste, movement, smells and texture.  When creating something we can make use of some of these characteristics, or all of them.  When weaving I am primarily interested in color and texture.  When making a meal, I am interested in color, taste, smell and texture. The imagination leads us to explore new ways of doing things.

Where does the power of imagination come from?  Humanity is just one of the creatures in this world created by what we call “God”.  God created humanity in the image of Himself, and one of the characteristics that God has given us, is the ability to understand the world around us in a completely different way that most of the creatures we share this planet with.  With this understanding we can improve the world around us, if we choose.  One way I like to improve things is by making beautiful hand-made things.  I get enjoyment out of the making of them and I hope others get enjoyment out of either using them or seeing them.

So, what is creativity?  Creativity is using my mind and the imagination that God has given me to do things slightly different from everyone else.  Creativity is discovering our own talents and using them.  Creativity is one of the signs of God in this world.

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