final days forum

Will the recession steal your creativity?

This recession is sneaky.

Not content to rob the country financially, this recession aims to nab our creativity. The gift of our ingenuity is the real prize this recession season seeks. The media reports about the lingering misery of the nation's financial loss, but the news shrouds the most lethal weapon -- the underlying lie that we can't get beyond this recession.

Chaos always attempts to trample the resilient order within human beings, that part of us that says: "Wait a minute! The last time I faced this, it actually turned out OK..." or "Whoa! Remember how I actually achieved more after I lost so much?"

When we give up, when we freeze in place because of chronic problems and overwhelming odds, chaos wins.

If you're out of work, you have time to think. If you want to quit a job you're clinging to because it keeps the lights on and that's about it, take time to think. Great minds seize the freedom to conceive dreams and visions and hopes even when their lives are constrained.  Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich  about a Soviet labor camp touched me when I read it in high school because of the gritty survival it depicted. And I'm still amazed by Paul, who wrote inspired words to his friends in Philippi while under what traditional scholarship says was captivity in Rome.

I have not faced a Soviet labor camp or house arrest, but stories like these and the recession itself have taught me this: Chaos may limit circumstances, but chaos can't capture my spirit unless I submit to it.

Because of this recession, much has been lost, but much more is to be gained. The American Express card may be gone, but because of creative thinking during this recession, you may reach the Dave Ramsey sweet spot where you resist all plastic. The house may be gone, but its loss may drive you to build a business that builds you a new one, not to mention houses for others.

What we do now, what we create when we fight worry with work, what we reinvent ourselves to be despite the financial ashes -- will determine how luminously we emerge when this sly recession passes.

Judy Howard Ellis

Photo: Russian writer and Nobel prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn looks out from a train, in Vladivostok, summer 1994, before departing on a journey across Russia. Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after nearly 20 years in exile. Photo by Mikhail Evstafiev

'Fat Man's Misery' and the squeeze of transition

One of my fondest memories as a kid was attending Camp Ondessonk in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois. As a city kid, the camp was my first taste of freedom. And adventure.

I slept in a tepee one year, then another year in a cabin where the floor was perpetually dusty, despite sweeping. Canoeing was blissful on summer days when the water sparkled. I adored archery but got jittery when my horse bolted out of line on the trail and galloped to the front. No harm done, but I mastered my knuckle-grip that day. During the evenings, we enjoyed a stomach-sticking meal. Our tables were judged by the clean, creative way we stacked our plates, utensils, and glasses. I can hear the campers singing at their tables with the melodic clarity of youth: Do Lord, Oh do Lord, Oh do remember me, Look a way beyond the blue (horizon).

Camp Ondessonk, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009, comes to mind today because of an activity many campers shared. For those who were willing, we climbed through a rock formation called "Fat Man's Misery" or "Fat Man's Squeeze." The narrow area of rock is closed now, a camp official told me today, but I still recall the slimy, cramped space. As young campers we shimmied through, our T-shirts and shorts soiled by the dampness. When we made it out, we realized that we had relied on each other and conquered fear.

This space with its impolite nickname is a picture of current times. Many of us face transition. Job loss or job change. Marital turmoil. Financial hardship. Health challenges. Bereavement. Uncertainity. Such life passages can be as slippery as that area of cool rock at Camp Ondessonk. Make a wrong turn and slow your progress. Become inert and delay those before and after you. Lose self-control and squander an opportunity. Refuse help and remain in that fear-ridden, claustrophic space that much longer.

At the place of transition, breathe, think clearly, and move.

Judy Howard Ellis

Tolerating toxicity

The Bible talks about how God is a God of order. Another way to say that is: God doesn't do dysfunction.

It's amazing how we tolerate what should not be accepted, churning madly in twisted relationships and toiling in places far from where our passion abides. We squirm when others take leaps of faith we tremble at trying and nitpick those who appear more cowardly than us. We traffic in misery.

Toxicity is addictive. Weird, I know, but why else do we wallow in chaos instead of moving forward? If we grasped the depth of God's Emancipation Proclamation of Free Living, we wouldn't settle for under-the-radar-living. We would go everywhere He leads and do everything He asks.