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Megan Phillips is an inspiring presence at Be Space. It has been a pleasure to play and share with her from month to month. In the time I’ve known her, I have come to understand that anything that inspires her, will probably inspire every other person I know. That’s why I invited her to write a LoveNote for the Be Space blog. She is planning to host a study/practice group for Creating Time, starting May 22. Contact me for more info!
I am a person who loves to be silly, creative and free. This is why I feel at home with art and why I love expressive arts practice in particular. It’s a way to play with bright colors, with weird sounds, with intriguing images or funny characters and receive meaningful insight about life and myself when I least expect it. This gives me hope.
As one who is seriously ‘time challenged’, I forget all about creativity when I’m tangled in the mess of trying to be ‘on time’. I’m always running to get somewhere or get something done by the deadline. I try every trick in the book to be prepared and arrive early, but without fail, I’m late. Sometimes hours late. I have friends who are extremely patient and others who have had it with me. The worst part is that I feel terrible every time I’m late and the pattern becomes more tenacious as time passes.
My suffering over this problem has led me to deeper questions. What does it really take to change a thorny pattern like this? How do I heal and get back to wholeness, in regards to time? Maybe it takes a paradox.
I recently stumbled upon a book called Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reinvent Your Life. If I had just seen the title, I would have passed it over as yet another interesting self-help book that’s practical, but not really going to lead me to lasting change.
Then I heard the author, Marney Makridakis, talk about the book. She described ‘Creating Time’ as a process of turning time 
on its head by playing with it – creatively and with loving curiosity. She talked about, “the end of time as we know it” by defining time from a whole new paradigm that sounded more spiritual than logical. She talked about having a ‘time metamorphosis’ when she went on this journey.
This was transformation language. How refreshing! It sparked me to remember a teaching I recently heard—that healing involves moving. Moving our bodies to a new locale to get a fresh perspective. My ‘time problem’ seems very tied to my mind, so how could I move my mind? Oh yeah—imagination! Play!
I borrowed the book from the library and was surprised to see colorful photos of time-themed artwork that others made during their ‘time journey’ with this book. Time is such a heavy topic for me and paradoxically, the exercises looked lighthearted and fun. What a warm invitation!
Then my skeptic kicked in. How can playing around with art and poetry, collage and fun ideas affect Time? (yes, with a capital “T”!) I’m the last person with a handle on time. How can I magically turn around and create some of it? Let’s get real. I’m no magician. I just need to be more practical and manage myself better. Right? On the other hand, my best attempts to follow a logical scheme for punctuality (planning, setting alarms) haven’t changed my behavior one bit. I’m at my wit’s end and it’s high time I consider a new approach.
One of the chapters in Creating Time proposes that time is a qualitative experience more than a temporal one. This opened my mind to question the very definition of time.
What if time is something well beyond the utilitarian notion of tempo and measurement? What if it was a feeling, a quality, a value I hold dear to my heart? It could be something I stretch, something I re-name, re-make, re-claim. Instead of time being a tornado I’m trying to navigate in high heels, or a mysterious bully who lurks behind the corner and picks fights with my self-esteem, I now see how time could be a friend and even a source of healing.
In the past, I have been at peace only when ‘losing track of time’. With the invitation from this book, I am now ready to bring my creative, silly self to the dance floor and try a new kind of ‘tango’, consciously, with this new friend called time. Let the dance party begin!
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Megan Phillips, friend of Space.
Megan is an expressive artist, healer and a splendidly imperfect student of Life. She is an enormous fan of Be Space and enjoys playing exuberantly in many classes and events there. Megan resides in Portland, Oregon and has a degree in Sacred Transformation from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][et_pb_code admin_label=”Code”]Hear author Marney Makridakis introduce the Creating Time book, and learn more about Artella Land, her online creative community: http://www.artellaland.com/ <iframe width=”265″ height=”179″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/nEozHt8ilnU” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>[/et_pb_code][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]