The First Quarter Moon and the Courage to Create
As the 1st Quarter Moon rises, we walk the Via Creativa embracing the joy of making, of playing, and birthing the unseen into form.
Invocation
We pause, not to leave the world behind,
but to notice that we have never been outside of it.
The ground beneath us is alive.
The breath within us is borrowed.
The silence around us is already listening.
What is ancient is still speaking.
What is becoming is already near.
Nothing needs to be summoned.
Nothing needs to be forced.
We rest our attention where life is stirring,
where meaning leans toward us without demand,
where the quiet pull of wonder asks only that we notice.
May we be gentle enough to feel what draws us.
Spacious enough to let it take shape.
Open enough to let it move beyond us when the time comes.
We enter this moment as we are,
held within a living whole,
ready to listen.
The Sacred Moment
Today, the first quarter moon cuts a bold curve through the night, a bright edge of becoming against the sky. May we feel the call to create, to explore, to dance with the holy spark that stirs within us. In the generative tension of the First Quarter Moon, we walk the path of the Via Creativa: the way of inspiration, of sacred imagination, of shaping what has never been before. Our souls reach not for certainty, but for expression: for the joy of making, of playing, of sketching the unseen into form.
This is a moon to imagine, to risk, to begin.
Theme: The Ten Powers and the Via Creativa
The Ground of Co-Creation
According to Brian Swimme, creation operates through ten powers. As we learn to co-create the cosmos, it is important for us to have a good understanding of these ten powers and how we operate and cooperate with them.
Seamlessness: Union Without Effort
The first power is Seamlessness. We can see this seamlessness through the very panentheistic and animistic nature of the universe, that we are in God and God is in us. But it is so much more than that. Our starting point is this understanding, not just of union, but that we are all a part of the ground that we walk on. We begin with this union, not with effort. The better we can see that we are rooted in the cosmos, the easier it is for creativity to resist ego, competition, and isolation.
We live, move, and breathe in this seamless whole, a part and entire in and of ourselves. This is the real meaning of the phrase “As above, so below.” The mutual indwelling of the heavens and the earth means that anything that happens in one happens in the other through the ripple and the seamless pattern of all creation. The effect may look different at different scales, but it is the one cause we’re playing through all of them that makes it happen.
Centration: Attention as Creative Power
In The Book of Twenty-Four Philosophers, we read, “God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.” We find this to be true with the cosmos as well. The Big Bang is coming from wherever you are. Its center appears to be everywhere, and its edge nowhere.
So when the cosmos itself begins to create, it relies on its power of Centration. It draws things to its center, to a central focal point, so that new things can be organized and arise. This is how stars form, planets accrete, and cells organize. Our own creativity requires this kind of focus, a center to honor what matters. What we give our attention to is what we help bring into being.
Allurement: Drawn by Love, Not Coercion
In this way, the cosmos activates its third power: Allurement, drawing things together. The cosmos is not coercive. It doesn’t force things together. It pulls things in, it attracts them one to another so that new things can be formed. Meaning, likewise, beckons us. Desire is not a flaw but a compass, but we must keep it in check, for when desire becomes too strong, it seeks to control and to coerce. When we ask ourselves what draws us with love rather than fear, we are seeing what is desiring to be co-created with us, and that co-creation is already happening.
Emergence: Hospitality to the New
In the Via Negativa, we opened ourselves to spaciousness, and now in the Via Creativa, something new can be born in that space. This is the fourth power of Emergence. Co-creation means leaving room for outcomes that we did not plan and having the hospitality to greet them when they arise. We cannot always predict what will be created, but what we can predict is that something new always arises when the space is open for it.
Homeostasis: Sustaining What Is Born
This is where the fifth power becomes increasingly important, and that is the power of Homeostasis. “Homeostasis” is a big word, but it goes beyond balance or harmony. It is about everything living in right relationship, care, and rhythm sustaining what is created. Creativity and the creative act do not stop once the new thing is made. It requires ongoing mutual care so that life can flourish. The new must learn to live in the cosmos and find the place that sustains it and where it sustains the life around it. This is the power that is absent in most destructive acts.
Cataclysm: Breaking for the Sake of Life
But don’t be mistaken and think that destruction has no part to play in the creative act. In the sixth power, Cataclysm, we learn to see that for some things to be born, others must be broken down, disrupted, or possibly even collapse under their own weight so that something new can arise. This generally happens when those things are no longer able to sustain life. Cataclysm, in this sense, is not an act of cruelty or chaos but a faithfulness to creativity and mutual care.
We may rage against the storm, the volcano, and the earthquake, but these are all ways for the Earth to release its tension, the sky to find balance between various temperature gradients, and for the Earth to recycle and renew itself. We must be careful in our creativity to wield this power lightly and carefully. We may need to take something apart in order to build something new. But if we dismantle the plane that we are flying in, we will all crash together.
Transmutation: Courage to Become
The seventh power of Transmutation is the very power of evolution itself, choosing to become over stagnation where we move forward and change. This is why creativity demands courage from us. The Via Creativa asks us to risk becoming something new rather than clinging to survival alone. Survival is not enough. We, like the cosmos, seek life and life most abundant.
Radioactive decay will eventually turn uranium to lead. This transmutation takes something very dangerous and makes it something still toxic, but not in the same way. Harm is reduced. All things must change, transmute, and evolve if they are to survive.
Transformation: Changing the Pattern of Relationship
The eighth power sounds a lot like the seventh, but Transformation is not about the thing itself changing. It’s about the change in its relationship to everything else and how all of those relationships change. Here, in transformation, change becomes communal and systemic, and not merely individual.
This is the struggle that we’re having in society today, where many have transmuted into a new kind of human, one acting out of compassion or the fourth chakra, while many are still living in the first three. If you are only motivated by survival, lust, or power, then a society built on compassion is frightening and terrifying. The transmutation has happened, but the transformation is being rejected.
For transformation to be successful, space has to be made for more people to transmute into this new compassionate being. And in that space, making a new homeostasis has to be found. Or, if we look at our society and the way it’s run today, homeostasis itself has to be found, since it has been lost and we have not known her for some time.
Interrelatedness: Creativity in Communion
Just as in the first power we talked about the seamlessness of the cosmos, it’s in the ninth power of Interrelatedness that we start to understand the parts in and of themselves within that seamless whole. We have to start asking ourselves how we can build better connections and live with fuller compassion, how we can mutually influence each other through the creative act so that we can live better in the cosmos together.
Nothing creates alone. All things are created through a cascade of mutual interdependencies, creating and co-creating new things as reality ripples out. In understanding these interrelated connections, we learn how to better move and operate in the world and, through our creative powers, imagine solutions that can bring us all together for the betterment of all life and the cosmos itself.
Radiance: Creativity Given Away
The final power, the tenth power, is Radiance. The cosmos shines forth. It is generous and expressive. It is creativity completing itself by giving itself away. This is the endless pouring out we talk about in the Via Negativa that finds its fruition here in the Via Creativa, where that outpouring, that giving, is truly not self-negation, but about connecting into this eternal flow that is constantly moving through us out into the cosmos.
We are not hoarding our wealth, our power, our imagination, our dreams. We are allowing them to flow out so that they can be seen, shared, and offered to others for the betterment of all that is, was, and ever shall be.
Living the Via Creativa
This is the creative act, the way of creation that we learn, and why we use words like mutual indwelling and mutual care. Because as you can see, through the powers of seamlessness and interrelatedness, all things work together to find homeostasis so that what is can be transmuted and transform all that is around it. The cataclysm comes about only to tear down what no longer gives life so that newness and blessing can take its place.
It is in learning to operate in and through these ten powers that we can truly live out this mutuality, this cosmic wonder that is being alive.
Practice: A Threefold Movement of Allurement, Emergence, and Radiance
Take a moment to arrive where you are. This is a time to remember what is already within you, not to step out of the world to pray. We live, move, and breathe within a seamless whole. It is within us, around us, and flowing through us at all times. Our roots are in the cosmos, and the cosmos lives in us.
Let that be enough to begin.
Allurement: Being Drawn
The cosmos does not create by force. It creates by attraction. So we begin here, not by deciding or striving, but by noticing.
Notice what is drawing you right now. Not what pressures you. Not what frightens you. But what beckons you gently, with love rather than fear.
You do not need to act on it. You do not need to name it clearly. Simply let yourself feel the pull.
Desire is not a flaw. It is a compass. As you attend to what draws you, allow your attention to gather naturally.
This is centration. What you give your attention to is what you help bring into being. Remember: you are not separate from what draws you. This allurement arises within a seamless, interrelated field of life. You are already participating.
Rest here for a few breaths.
Emergence: Holding Space
Now, resist the urge to move too quickly. In the Via Negativa, we learned to open space. In the Via Creativa, something new can be born in that space. So we do less here, not more. Allow the spaciousness to remain.
Do not rush to define what is forming. Do not try to control its shape. Co-creation means leaving room for outcomes you did not plan and having the hospitality to greet them when they arise.
Something new is always trying to emerge when the space is open for it. Let care come before action. Let homeostasis matter more than speed.
What is new must learn how to live, and it needs gentleness in order to survive. If something begins to loosen or fall away, do not panic. Cataclysm is not cruelty. It is faithfulness to life when what exists can no longer sustain it.
Hold this moment lightly. Creativity demands courage, but not haste.
Radiance: Letting It Flow
Now, without forcing a conclusion, allow the movement to turn outward.
The cosmos shines forth. It does not hoard its energy, its beauty, or its becoming. Radiance is creativity completing itself by giving itself away.
Whatever has been drawn to you, whatever has begun to form does not belong to you alone. You are not being asked to spend yourself. You are being invited to participate in a flow that was never meant to stop with you.
Let imagination flow.
Let compassion flow.
Let energy, insight, and care move outward to be seen, shared, and offered for the betterment of all that is. Trust that interrelatedness will carry what you release to where it is needed. This is not self-negation. This is mutual indwelling made visible.
Release
This is the creative act. This is the way of creation we learn. Through allurement, emergence, and radiance, supported by seamlessness and interrelatedness, the cosmos finds homeostasis, transmutation, and transformation. What no longer gives life is gently dismantled. What is new is given space to grow. What is alive is allowed to shine.
Remain for a moment in this awareness. You are not outside the creative work of the universe. You are inside it. And it is inside you.
Closing Blessing
Light that grows quietly,
teach us how to grow without force.
Life that draws us gently,
teach us how to listen without fear.
Breath that gathers what is scattered,
teach us how to attend to what matters.
Space that welcomes what is new,
teach us how to wait without grasping.
Care that keeps fragile things alive,
teach us how to tend without control.
Change that breaks what no longer gives life,
teach us how to let go without cruelty.
Becoming that asks for courage,
teach us how to risk more than survival.
Healing that reshapes our shared life,
teach us how to make room for one another.
Connection that binds all things together,
teach us how to live with compassion.
Radiance that pours itself out,
teach us how to give without hoarding.
May what is forming within us
find breath, care, and belonging.
May what we release from our hands
find its way to where it is needed.
And may we remember,
even as this moment ends,
that we are never outside the living whole,
never alone in the work of becoming,
never cut off from the flow of life.
Let what has stirred continue to move.
Let what has been given continue to shine.
Amen.