podcast 3

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hello this is robin norgren and i am here with creativity montessori and the meaning of life thanks so much for joining me um today i wanted to kind of go in the different direction and i wanted to introduce you to a creative person that i met about a few years ago and i wanted to just share her story about her walk with creativity and the way she connected it with her faith in god her name is jill metz and her company at the time was called true original her creative influences were god nature and family and when she thinks about being an artist that inspire what inspires her most she surprised when she thinks of picasso she says his work is so free and diverse you can see he was on a creative journey and not afraid to explore the limitlessness of art

as far as influences go she says i think i've been truly impacted by every artist i have seen but especially my mother her perform her preferred medium of creativity was mixed media and collage though she loves abstract too she says i've been married to the love of my life for over 12 years and have been blessed with two children a girl and a boy i went to college for a year where i took classes in art psychology and child development i'm mostly a self-taught artist who's had the pleasure of taking many amazing art classes and workshops all over the country in the last ten years i have owned my creative business for four years and enjoyed watching it grow and evolve according to god's perfect timing

she says one of her most earliest her one of her earliest creative memories came from a very because she comes from a very long line of creative women on her mother's side she feels it's been a blessing passed down through each generation she says one of her earliest memories is helping her mom collect flattened soda and beer cans so she could paint a character on them according to the shape of the can as a six-year-old she says it was so amazing to see my mom bring a piece of discarded trash to life

when asked if her creative habits have made a smooth transition into her adult life she says um smooth no she says i believed for a very long time that my creative habits were more of a curse than a blessing since i saw and did things in a very different way than most people why can i be normal i would ask myself it has only been in the last 10 years that i have truly embraced this side of myself and stopped fighting god's gift to me

when asked if you've had a creative hiatus and if if you did what event or circumstance brought you back to the creative lifestyle she says i spent most of my twenties trying to live mainstream and really blocked my creative reality which caused me to make some very poor choices i was trying to fill the hole in my heart i didn't acknowledge god i didn't acknowledge my true self and then after some time really hitting one of many bottoms i let god back into my life and i let him do for me what i couldn't do for myself which was healed the brokenness of my childhood

when asked how has god been a part of her creative process or lifestyle she says most of the time i work on a piece and i invite the holy spirit into my heart into my art it was evident in my results when i have forgotten god in the process it truly amazes me how god does this so when i paint well i know it's him the same holds true in my daily life when things are good it's god and when they suck it's me

she says i work every day to put god first in all i do i say work because this is not always easy for me sometimes it is but mostly it is a choice i have to make daily

jill's been playing a lot with ink and alcohol not the kind of alcohol you think and enjoying abstract results very much since she works very intuitively trying to let god lead she says i never know how any of my artwork will turn out recently she began taking a figurative painting class and enjoys getting back to the fundamentals though it is a bit challenging a lot like picasso she says i too am on a creative journey and i am also enjoying the ride

so that's jill metz if you want to look her up online her last name is spelled m-e-t-z i wanted to begin with that because last episode i talked about the muse and how there are different ways that we describe that inspiration but there are also moments where you are very clear that it did not come from you and it's way out of your comfort zone and so as i've talked with many people about this idea of the muse i've experienced it and i've seen others talk about or heard them talk about it and i realize that's part of this creative process you have to start somewhere and then once you begin and you really get committed to the journey that's where the inspirational spark really starts to come forth

today i want to tackle more about the idea of god as a sustainer and this week's prompt is all about declaring peace the anchor versus second corinthians 12 9 my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness

people explore many avenues in an effort to experience passion working eating sex drugs alcohol motherhood marriage singlehood all can be used as vices to substitute this need for purpose and for passion have you noticed a shift in how the world views creativity things like music sewing singing cooking dancing seem nowadays to be views viewed as time wasters yet reality shows have tapped into our need to be passionate about something i find that i have spent a good amount of time watching these reality shows it began as merely curiosity on my part but quickly turned into a means to vicariously live out some of my secret goals too much fear surrounded my desire to try something new interestingly rather than fueling me to try something new these shows seem to somehow quench my thirst for really going out and trying something new on my own what may have started as a potential spark for me to move a bit more deeply into my own life quickly turned into an escape from my own reality and just another time killer today i'd like you to think about any hesitation that you may have felt about doing a creative project and we talked about this more in the last couple episodes if you want to go back and listen to it i want to ponder the things that got in the way the successes you felt the changes you took or the chances you took or did not take the revelations you came to about yourself personally and then for fun i'd like you to jot down three or four shows that you watch without fail and think about what draws you in do they enhance or minimize your creative energy

i leave you with these questions what are your thoughts about the pa idea of passion in a christian's life have there been situations in your life that hinder the idea that passion could be god inspired

i want you to look through the bible in a way that may be a little different to you there is this book called the concordance and what it is it's a tool you can use with your bible where you can take a word kind of like a keyword search and you can look up all the verses of a particular word so for example if you look up the verses of passion i'd like you to look that up and then challenge your thinking on those on those verses and and why or why not passion could possibly be something that's god inspired now remember to write down those three or four must-see shows do any of them draw you deeper into your creative life do you find a pattern in your viewing habits are there any shows that actually have inspired you to be more creative

and thinking on your creative endeavors are you finding that you're excited to start this process and continue with it or are you having more fear around it

and then have there been any aha moments for you

i want to thank you for stopping by this is based on a course that i um i wrote a few years back called your creative peace finding and deepening your creative voice while connecting with god if you'd like to follow along in book form there is a copy of it in my etsy shop over under josie's art school so go ahead and check it out download your copy or purchase a hard copy or feel free as you're listening to the podcast just to write notes and create your own little journal where you have all your thoughts logged together so you can see your evolution over the next few weeks thanks so much for stopping by again if you want to see more of what i'm doing my name is robin norgren n-o-r-g-r-e-n and my websites are josie's art school dot com j-o-s-e-y-s-a-r-t

s-e-h-o-o-l or you can check me out at bright child montessori where i also offer leaders guides for montessori teachers