Song & Spirit of Liberty

Wednesday, August 20 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

The United States was founded on a break with the past, on the notion that a fresh start could be the spark that ignites a new world of liberty and freedom. 

That America hasn't always lived up to that ideal doesn't diminish freedom's call. Nor does it diminish the powerful symbols of liberty and of America's potential that continue to move and inspire freedom-seekers around the world.

As you meditate on this image, inspired by the Statue of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence and the Liberty Bell and by my 2005 "Freedom Trail" travels and writings, remember that freedom is your choice, that liberty is your birthright and that the prisons you have built for yourself have no walls, fences or gates.

In this moment, you are as free as you allow yourself to be.

Art by Mark David Gerson: "Song & Spirit of Liberty (#62)"

The Art of Creative Living...and of a Creative Life

Wednesday, August 6 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

If you've read my words or heard me speak, you'll know that how passionately I believe that life and creativity are one, that there's little difference between the principles and precepts that foster success in one or the other.

In fact, the 10 Rules for Living you'll find on my web site and in an earlier post on this blog were adapted -- with little effort -- from the 13 Rules for Writing that appear both in my book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, and its companion CD.

Twice this week, I was given an opportunity to share my thoughts about creative living and living your creativity. And although my talk at Saturday's Albuquerque meeting of Southwest Writers wasn't recorded, this afternoon's radio conversation with Rev. Jamie Sanders of Unity of Pensacola was.

During our hour together on Jamie's Spirituality Today book club show on the Unity.fm radio network, we talked about life, spirituality, creativity and all that link them together.

To hear the interview, click on the player icon below. If the icon doesn't show up, use this link.



How do life, creativity and spirituality come together for you?

Art by Mark David Gerson: Portal to Your Passion (#117)

A Leap into the Unknown

Saturday, July 26 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

Most of my previous drawings have been linked to sacred Earth sites or to a predetermined topic. When I sat down to draw today, though (for the first time in over a year), I had no sense at all of what this drawing would be about or where it would take me.

As first one purple arc and then another formed on the blank page, all I could do was surrender -- fully and unconditionally -- to something that dwelt beyond all imagining, something that could only emerge as I abandoned all control, something I could not know until I stepped away from all expectations.

The Cities of Light incubating within us and the New Earth we are now birthing require this same willingness to leap into the unknown, to step beyond the familiar world of our experience and imagination and into a Heaven on Earth that will create itself...to the extent that we let it.

Are you ready to birth Heaven on Earth in your life? In what ways are you open? In what ways are you blocked? As you meditate on this drawing, let yourself leap beyond your known world and into the wonder and joy of all you cannot yet imagine.

Art by Mark David Gerson: City of Light (#401)

Holy Faith I

Tuesday, May 15 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico

It's Sunday morning. I'm sitting in Santa Fe's Church of Religious Science listening to the service and an image forms in my mind's eye...a series of angles, lines and contours that expresses the energy of Santa Fe and the notion of "holy faith," which is the English translation of the city's name.

I reach for a piece of paper and sketch what I see.

A few hours later, I'm at the dining room table with my colored pencils arrayed before a blank page. Propped up to the side is my rough sketch.

As what takes shape on the page begins to bear less and less resemblance to the sketch, I grow edgy.

Not because of the differences. Many finished drawings veer away from my initial concept.

No, my edginess relates to how much I don't like what is forming on the page. To be blunt, I hate it.

The emergent image, I say to myself, is just not very good. For a few minutes, I consider scrapping the drawing. After all, my judgmental self points out to my creator self, all artists have pieces they abandon. And for good reason.

Then I remember another drawing. Number 15. Titled Stepping into Your Power and Empowerment, I so disliked it that I almost removed it from my catalogue. It was hard to do, though, because people kept buying it. In the end, I didn't delete it.

In that memory, I realize what's going on within me today. My reactions to #15 and what is slated to become #116 (Holy Faith) have nothing to do with esthetics and everything to do with the theme/title of the piece.

In December 2004 I was resisting the next level of my empowerment. Today, as my pencil hesitates over the paper, I am resisting the next level of a faith that Santa Fe always demands.

The first demand on my faith is the drawing itself: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my hand? Or will I let my judgment (read: fear) overtake my faith?

Faith wins out, as it always does in the end, and I complete the drawing (Holy Faith, pictured above).

Later, a client describes the image as "faith in the midst of chaos," which is perfect. For it's in the midst of (apparent) chaos that we most need our faith.

Demands on my faith in subsequent days, like all such demands, are similar to those I experience with the drawing and ask similar questions: Do I have the faith to trust the divine imperative that always guides my life and choices? Or will I let my fear take precedence?

So many demands on my faith in this city of Holy Faith: they revolve around finances (always a stand-in for deeper fears), around this publishing enterprise I have launched, around The MoonQuest itself, around where I will go when my current sublet runs out in a few weeks, around every aspect of my life that is steeped in transformation and uncertainty. And what aspect isn't, these days?

This morning, a new demand: Even as The MoonQuest has yet to leave its Michigan printing plant, a sensing emerges that its long-stalled sequel, The StarQuest, is calling to me.

If, as I realized in A Stunning One-Liner During Dinner at the Diner, publishing The MoonQuest frees me to move forward and stop wandering, that forward motion now appears to be an acceleration toward The StarQuest. In other words, my wandering will come to an end when it's necessary to complete the next book.

That completion will require all the holy faith that Santa Fe can send my way. Or maybe not. Perhaps all that's required to write the second book is to come to completion on the first, "to fix The MoonQuest on parchment," as the story itself demands.

For now, all I can do is remain grounded in this moment as I anchor all aspects of my beingness in faith -- Holy Faith -- and in that divine imperative that always guides me foward in love.

~ View a larger a copy of Holy Faith (#116) or order your own

~ Listen to a free audio excerpt of The MoonQuest

~ Read about The MoonQuest as a journey of trust

All copies of The MoonQuest ordered before June 11 will be autographed to you (or to whomever you're gifting it) and will get free U.S. shipping. (Normal shipping charges apply as of June 11.)

Divine Will

Saturday, February 24 ~ Santa Fe, New Mexico


When I completed the rough sketch for this drawing five days ago in Sedona, it asked to be titled Free Will.

Yet as the energy of the sketch percolated within me, Free Will morphed into Divine Will.

What happened?

As I contemplate the final drawing, almost identical to its sketch, I realize that our truest freedom is not the freedom to do what we want when we want. That’s not free will. That’s ego gratification.

True free will -- and, with it, true freedom -- exists when we surrender to and act on the most authentic expression of our highest will, our Divine Will.

Order a copy of "Free Will" (#114) or see other of Mark David's sacred geometry and sacred earth drawings