Balance is the key to my serenity. I attain balance by listening to my inner wisdom and to the wisdom of others. There is no situation in which I cannot find a point of balance. There is no circumstance in which I cannot find inner harmony. As I ask to be led into equilibrium and clarity, I will find that my answers come to me. I am wiser than I know, more capable of right action and attitudes than I yet believe. In every event, I seek the balance point of God's action through me.

While there is no quick fix for instant, pain-free creativity, creative recovery (or discovery) is a teachable, trackable spiritual process. Each of us is complex and highly individual, yet there are common recognizable denominators to the creative recovery process.

As we lose our vagueness about ourself, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet our truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression .

"God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.

There will be many times when we won't look good-to ourselves or anyone else. We need to stop demanding that we do. It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

Accept the fact that you're an artist and stop second-guessing yourself. Just do it.

When we put the pen to paper, we articulate things in our life that we may have felt vague about. Before you write about something, somebody says, 'How do you feel?' and you say, 'Oh, I feel okay.' Then you write about it, and you discover you don't feel okay.