Journal of Sacred Work

Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
-Henri Frederic Amiel   
(Image, below, Age of Spontaneity, 2003, by Gregory Scott)

   A week devoted to improvisation and his sister, spontaneity, asks questions of courage.  Theoretically, planning reduces the chance for failure. But it has been my experience that slavish adherence to set plans can be the cause of enormous failure. Some would argue that is why America is having difficulty in Iraq. Stubborn adherence to an original plan for military success may have blocked our country from adapting more wisely to the cultural reality and deep civil strife we found after initial victories.
   Improvisation, as any performer knows, requires deep preparation as well as courage. Knowing how best to handle a medical or emotional emergency, requires that we prepare our minds and hearts…

   It can be very difficult to accept the notion that carefully laid plans may be a waste of time. In fact, planning is useful only as a way of preparing a general course of action – a way of training us to perform successfully when reality arrives.
   How much of your success as a caregiver was planned? How often have you discovered that the most important things that have happened in your life were things that occurred spontaneously. And that your success came when you responded to the unexpected with your own brand of improvisation.
   Those who commented in yesterday’s Journal provided eloquent testimony to role improvisation has played in their life experience.  In reflecting on this, I assembled these lines for your reflection.

Improvisation

 
Does the oak leaf,
severed from his mother,
improvise his flight to earth? 

Does the wind last-moment choose
to spin the leaf against the moon,
breathing hope through dying veins? 

Why did the note blown
south through the clarinet’s throat
fly north & the aimed arrow sail left? 

Every plan is a careful wish.
Every act is split-seconded. 

Who, in the narrow breath between
thought & act sees doubt,
suspends, bends instead of stiffens? 

The boulder that thinks it is fixed
may suddenly quake.

My life’s best scream may halt in my throat
joining a debris of could-have-beens crowded
behind my mouth’s gate. 

Kings imagine plans. Mother
Time frees the purple bird to
change her flight, or the white flower. 

I was thinking I wouldn’t
touch your arm. Then my
hand moved. 

I began to love you. Now I
love you again, one breath
at a time, defying the cold clouds.

-Erie Chapman