Nurturing Creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity

I was running around aimlessly on the Internet looking for music ideas from people whose music taste I love, new books to read, new blogs to read, new things to buy, new ideas to consider -- and I found this video of Elizabeth Gilbert. There is currently no video link on the National Cathedral website of her lecture that I heard a few weeks ago but this video would give you a good sense of what it was like, particularly given that it was given only a month before the DC lecture.

I'm also learning to love www.ted.com and all the fabulous videos and ideas and wonderfulness. Did you hear about the guy regrowing rain forest in Indonesia?

When I hear that there is someone regrowing rain forest and doing it in such a hopeful, positive, smart, community-building, and sustainable way, it makes me think all the other problems in the world aren't so unsolvable. There is a giant garbage patch of plastic floating around in the Pacific Ocean that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas -- scientists say that we may never be able to get the plastic out. Plastic bottles float in by the coast and instead of biodegrading, they "photograde" by becoming brittle by the sun's UV rays and then splintering into small pieces and even, regrettably, becoming as fine as dust. Scientists have been saying for a few years now that we may never be able to get this plastic out of the ocean, it's just too small and it's too remote from land to make the process doable. But when I hear about rain forest being regrown and Elizabeth Gilbert saving creative people from themselves and their daemons, I start to think that maybe we just haven't come up with the right way yet. But we should....

There is, after all, that mysterious source of goodness and ideas that everyone can link into. Ideas are unlimited. They give us hope.