Hey {{First Name | there}},

What if the Source I'm trying to connect to is actually sourcing me?

I grew up with a version of this idea. The calling and the equipping. God strengthens those he sends. But in the tradition I learned it in — reading between the lines of what was taught, what was condoned, what was shamed — calling was credible to the degree you suffered. Your capacity for hardship was a marker of holiness. The path forward was duty primarily, not delight.

So what is one to do when they feel a sense of calling, but the path ahead looks like delight and freedom?

QUESTION EVERYTHING. DOUBT EVERYTHING. ASSUME YOU ARE DELUSIONAL.

I can say now, with my whole self, that I feel closer to God than at any other point in my life. A direct connection. Open line. Creator God. Unconditional love God. Just God. Access without the veil of dogma that obscures and contorts the real thing (even if I can only grasp a tiny fraction at a time).

But getting here required going through something I couldn't explain, and didn’t trust, for years.

Several years ago, in the middle of pleading with God for guidance, I received a vision. Me, going through a black hole. And I thought: this either symbolizes death — the end of connection, entering the abyss — or it is a portal into an expansive universe I don't have a map for yet.

Full of uncertainty, I decided to take the plunge.

What followed wasn't immediate clarity. I had laid down my theology, but the skepticism I'd built toward religion kept me at arm's length from God too. I didn't know what I could trust anymore. And when creative ideas arrived, that familiar feeling: the nudge, the knowing, what I'd always called the Holy Spirit, I didn't know what to do with it. I couldn't tell what was sourcing it. I wasn't sure I wanted to follow it.

It's certainly not emptiness on the other side. But it took years to even begin to orient to what it is.

What eventually led me here wasn't theology. It was practice. Creative practice as the thing that held me while I figured out what I believed.

And yet the old pattern didn't disappear just because my theology did.

Here’s how it plays out now:

I set an intention. An idea follows. I feel it — the gut alignment, the sense of oh, this could actually work, this is amazing, this could be really good. And then, almost immediately: I must be crazy. I must be delusional. There's no way I can trust this.

Like wanting something clearly is itself evidence that I'm untrustworthy.

I have spent years shrinking to stay legible. Not consciously. But in the small, habitual ways — getting ahead of my own enjoyment before anyone could judge it, undercutting my ideas before they had a chance to land, making myself easier to follow. Not too much. Not too fast. Not too far ahead.

I have fought my own ideas because I was afraid of feeling all over the place. That I was somehow untrustworthy because of my greatest strength and joy: my creativity.

So I'd shrink. Stay legible.

But the shrinking was never really about what other people would think. When I got honest about it (really honest) it was a theological problem. A permission problem. A question I had been circling for years without being able to name it directly:

Because co-creating with God — is that heretical?

Everything I was conditioned to believe says yes.

And yet, and yet.

It feels like light. Like hope. Like the opposite of darkness.

And, it turns out, I trust it.

I’ve found there’s another way of understanding this — one that exists within many traditions, including the one I was raised in, even if it was convoluted for me overtime. It’s that the divine didn't make you and step back. That if consciousness, creativity, love are what God is — then finding the divine in yourself isn't pride. It isn't self-elevation.

It's recognition. You're not reaching for something external and hoping it reaches back. You're coming home to what was never actually separate.

Your divinity isn't you claiming to be God. It's you stopping the denial that God is in you.

This is hot on my mind today because this week on my podcast, Jess and I recorded week eleven of The Artist's Way. One of the homework assignments was to read Julia Cameron's Basic Principles out loud. I got to the final one, number 10:

Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.

And I stopped.

Because that's exactly what I've been wrestling with. I believe it — I must, because it's why I keep showing up, keep creating, keep moving toward the things that feel alive.

And yet. My divinity.

I can imagine handing that permission to someone else without hesitation. Receiving it for myself is another thing entirely.

Because receiving it means I have to let go of the story I’ve been telling about myself. The one that says: too creative. All over the place. Too much, too fast, too far ahead.

And stand in those things as the power they actually are.

Last fall I received a vision that I’ve shared here before — Body of Work. An invitation to rethink the entire way we understand creative mastery, coherence, legacy. That it doesn’t require sticking to one thing or niching down or making your entire life about it. What’s required is devotion to the practice. Paying attention. Responding. Developing a way of seeing the world that is distinct. Recognizable. Yours.

There is freedom and power in this philosophy because of course our work is bound to change. Because we have so much to learn. So many layers to shed. So many attempts to get at the truth of a thing — but each one shows a different angle, a different color.

Like light through a prism.

From this perspective, I have the audacity to say that what I’ve been calling all over the place was never scattered. It was the same light, moving through.

Catching a different angle with each project, each iteration.

So maybe the activated, creative, full-capacity version of me isn’t something I have to earn or explain or make legible to anyone. Maybe it’s just what I look like when I stop arguing with my own nature.

It’s a little like driving down the highway and seeing a billboard. From a distance it’s vague: you can make out shapes, maybe a color. Then you’re right up on it and it’s all you can see, completely clear. And then you pass it and it’s gone.

You can’t go back. You just have to trust that what you saw was true. That you caught enough of it. That it is worth following until the next sign appears.

This is what I’m learning to do with the visions, the nudges, the ideas that arrive fully formed. See them clearly in the moment. Trust them when they pass.

Adjust the course as needed.

What if this — the gut alignment, the idea that arrives fully formed, the sense that it could actually be good — what if that’s not crazy?

What if this is just how I’m supposed to live?

Warmly,
Jennifer

Creative Current is the podcast I just launched with my friend and creative partner, Jess Schimm. We talk open-book style about our relationship with creativity and all it brings up in our lives. I love it so much. I trust you will too.

P.S. Want to encourage someone in your life whose taking creative risks? Share this email with them. It’s an encouragement to me, too!

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