This morning I made a cup of coffee and wrote in my journal. I told it my worries and hopes and complaints and then I closed it shut. I set my coffee cup on top, to hold the pages down. To keep the words in. To keep them contained. And then I lit a candle. I lit another because one didn’t feel like enough. I asked Spirit to meet me.

I pulled three cards from the tarot deck: Maturity, Patience, Flowering. And I thought about flowers. How flowers require patience and patience is a type of wisdom and how maturity is a merging with what is. A merging with the flowers that bloom and die and bloom again. The truth of impermanence. The fragility of life. The beauty therein.

Manifestation vs Faith

Last year I shared some mockups for album art to Instagram. In the caption, I declared to the Universe that one day, I would like to do some album artwork, dammit! I don’t think I actually said the dammit part, but it was the implied spirit.

Last week, a friend who had seen that post reached out with a job for me.

Modern proclivity would have me say I manifested this. That I told the Universe what I wanted and the Universe delivered.

I don’t think this is what happened.

Jump and Pray. It’s our mantra around here, right? But what does it mean?

In creative work, in life, we constantly walk the line between action and surrender. We put ourselves out there — we go for the job, we write the book, we apply for the residency. And then we surrender.

t’s common to think that surrender is a type of inaction. We sit back, kick our feet up, let whatever happens, happen.

But surrender is an action, too.

Surrender contains rest, trust, faith.

When I told the Universe (and everyone on Instagram) that I wanted to do some album art, I had faith that one day this would happen. I had zero doubts.

Delusional? Maybe. Or maybe this is where the magic lies.

That we humans can dream a thing to life. And that we do it with the help of something greater than us, something that’s inside every one of us, something that put that dream there in the first place.

So make your vision boards, make your declarations. But mostly do the inner work that moves you toward faith. Faith in self, faith in the Universe conspiring in your favor.

We are co-creators. We don’t work alone. It’s a big weight off, don’t you think?

Sun and

clouds and

rain and

four full rainbows.

The sky —

abundant.