FALLOW

Life knows about the cycles and seasons. Life accepts that they must come and surrendering is an absolute. Life invites in periods of rest, recognizing them as a time of rejuvenation, welcoming them for their gifts. Life knows that everything changes, and always will. Life just seems to trust it all.

I remember the first time I received the suggestion to “trust the process of life.” I really didn’t know how to do that or even what that meant. It was a wise and gifted counsellor that offered me that wisdom as a counter to my angst-filled heart. Life wasn’t going very well for me at that time and I needed help to find a way through. Life knows there is always a way through and, thankfully, this reminder – to trust the process of life – became a way forward and out of my suffering. I was so grateful for that teaching that it has always stayed with me.

This idea that we can trust the process of life is one that can offer us so much more ease in every moment. As we make our creative work alongside our lives it’s not surprising that art and life have an interconnectedness that can’t be denied. Our art-making is informed by our lives, and where we place our trust. When we can trust the process of our creative cycles and allow for spaciousness, slowness, and rest to be a part of that process, we find that new life is found in our creative work and we have returned once again.

This poem by the Irish poet John O’Donohue offers us the gentle reminder that we tend to resist this most natural and necessary part of the creative process. Fallow seasons that offer rest and revitalization are rich periods of fertile development, when met with the awareness of that potential. 

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes. 

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous, 
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

As artists we may come to face these fallow times in the course of making our creative work, as they are important intersections of envisioning and gathering. During these times we’re actually engaged in a process that allows for our growth and development. It’s a time of birthing something new, and to do that we have to let go of where we are for what wants to arrive. 

While this can feel challenging for us in some ways, it can be quite a different experience than being creativity blocked, although they may feel similar and have some overlap. When we’re stuck and feeling resistance about making our work, that is a time to push forward and break through what is in the way. It’s often connected to our mindset and the hold that fear can have on us, in all its subtle ways.

But creative rest, or fallow periods, are usually preceded with a feeling of needing a break, or experiencing a disinterest in what we’re working on. It can feel like dissatisfaction mingled with longing, and fear isn’t present. There is just a strong impetus to move somewhere else without knowing where. There isn’t resistance to making our art, just an awareness that something is missing, needed, or arriving. 

The poem tells us “If you remain generous” and “Try, as best you can, to not let the wire brush of doubt scrape from your heart all sense of yourself…” These lines offer us everything about how to hold space for ourselves when these fallow periods arrive. 

If we can meet this time, and ourselves, with the deepest compassion – remaining generous – we will find our way and be better for the time spent with the fallow ground. We will have rejuvenated ourselves because we trusted, rather than stressed or pushed too hard. We surrendered to the process of creativity and allowed the soil to be tilled and rested until the seeds could be planted. And when they are, the ground they are sown into is rich with nutrition and substance – and growth is inevitable. 

So how can we welcome these times of slowing for the gift they are? How might we engage with this time differently? By checking in with ourselves for clarity around what we’re feeling, we can know if the time we’re in is asking us to slow or are we allowing resistance to take hold. Knowing this will allow us to take the right actions for ourselves. However, the piece that can be missing for so many of us is permission. We need to give ourselves permission to rest, to go slow, as it is not really a quality western culture celebrates or encourages. We’re more inclined toward productivity and see resting as wasting time, or a sign of weakness. 

We need these reminders – from the earth, from our lives, and from poets – that everything changes, has cycles, and continues to evolve, or shift. So, of course, our art-making does too. It’s when we can meet that time for all it holds, and allow it to be present, that we can reap the benefits and experience less angst at the same time. 

If we can acknowledge and accept the life cycle of our art-making and the creative process, we could meet the rise and fall of creative output with equal reverence. We wouldn’t feel any fear arriving in response, because we trust this place with our work as much as we do in times of high output. We would move ourselves into a place of reflection, restoration, and gestation. Continuing an art-practice in a way that honours the space that has arrived. Welcoming and dancing with the whims and whimsy of ideas, visions, and longing.

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