Seeds in Winter

I’ve spent years of my adult life quietly tending to callings of a creative nature which have never come to fruition, at least not as I had once hoped they would. I write, I draw, I take nature photography; these could be called selfish pursuits and not worth the effort. These creative pursuits do not pay my bills, nor are they productive in any measurable way to my day-to-day needs. In the busy world we live in, where every hour must be relentlessly monetized and capitalized upon, these callings are arguably a huge waste of time.

Yet, they have nonetheless been essential to my soul and deeply sustaining to my spirit. I live a busy life. I have two small children; one is age 6 and the other is 3 and up until recently I’ve worked full time to support them and provide for the family. My wife is a full-time mom, so we rely on my single income, which is not substantial. We attend monthly Meeting when we can, usually only once or twice every couple months. The full-time job I worked in through the children’s childhood, at the Portland Japanese Garden, has barely covered our monthly bills. When I’m home, I cook the family’s meals or help with the childcare.

There’s precious little time for self-indulgence, and what little free time I have is usually spent on basic self-care, like showering, shaving, and laundry if I’m lucky. I sneak tiny, chance opportunities for creativity here and there where and when I’m able. But what I’ve found is that if I don’t carve out time for these callings, the absence of them takes a toll on my spirit.

I consider these practices to be like seeds in the winter. So far, I have not had the right, “spring”-like conditions for seeds like these to take root and blossom. I’m 38, and the two decades of adulthood I’ve lived so far have felt like an endless winter, working constantly to keep a roof over my head and to earn the education I’ve earned. My creative practices do produce results that are important to me, such as beautiful photos, essays, drawings, and poems that I take great pride in. My work rarely if ever sold, displayed, or published, except on my own website.

Quaker community has been ever-present for me since my twenties. I met my wife through Multnomah Monthly Meeting, here in Portland, where I am now a member, and I’m an alumnus of Quaker Voluntary Service, having served with the organization during its founding year from 2012-2013. I have found that among Friends, there are those who are very good at recognizing and nurturing spiritual gifts. My early mentor in a Friends Meeting, Maurine Pyle, was exceptionally good at this. Maurine was a recorded minister in the Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting, where I grew up. She would meet young people like myself and simply talk with them, ask questions, and share in the experiences they were going through.

She would encourage me to write as often as I was able, and she took my writing seriously, even including some of my thoughts in one of her own books. Through her encouragement, I continued blogging and investing in my own thoughts and my creative aspirations. Where there was never support for this in the working world, or elsewhere, I found support with my friend Maurine. Maurine was a true Quaker nurturer. She noticed if people in the Meeting were going through what I have called a “winter” stage in their life, and she sat with those people. She would help them navigate their daily lives and help them tend to the conditions of their spirit.

During my QVS year, I was paired with a spiritual nurturer named David Foster who was also a nature photographer, and he would sit and talk with me periodically throughout the year that I spent as a volunteer service worker. He was always patient and supportive, and witnessing his work gave me hope that someday I could take my own work more seriously. Quaker meetings need more people like this, people who are able to sit with and gently nurture young people with nascent gifts in their community. I am, as of yet, a frustrated creative, and I have not found a way to make my spiritual gifts into anything more than just that… seeds. But I will be forever grateful that there have been people in my Quaker community who have noticed, and who sat with me in this seemingly endless winter.

Looking back, it has not been the “productive” pursuits that have been most meaningful in my life. A paycheck was certainly necessary to get by, but I’ve found that money usually walks right back out the door again almost as soon as it has arrived. My college degrees gather dust, buried in a box somewhere in my garage. But I’ve found that any creative seeds I’ve been able to nurture, such as photos captured on sunny days, or pieces of writing from when my need to get something on paper became too strong, have never disappeared. These creative seeds have always found a way to re-emerge, and spark something in my memory again later on.

Spiritual gifts left dormant become painful scars. But if they are nurtured and fed, then they may eventually be re-discovered and re-planted or revived at a later stage in life. These seeds may serve as a history that my older self will be able to look back proudly on. I never regret instances that I steal away from my daily life to be creative. We owe it to ourselves to indulge that kind of calling in our community.

I pray that we as a Quaker community will find avenues for Friends, especially young Friends for whom the future seems so profoundly bleak, to express and nurture their gifts, and build those gifts into something greater. I, for one, will do what I can to emulate my mentors. I’ll keep my eyes and my ears open, and encourage young Friends in my community to follow their creative dreams, even if the pursuit appears at first unproductive or counterintuitive. We owe it to ourselves to let our spirits speak.

Justin Leverett is member of Multnomah Friends Meeting and an alum of Quaker Voluntary Service (QVS) in Atlanta, GA from 2012-2013. He lives in Portland, OR with his wife and two children. He was raised in both the Jewish (reform) tradition and among Quakers in Southern Illinois. His portfolio of work can be found at justinleverett.com