Years ago I heard Kevin “Katalyst” Carroll speak at a business event.  I remember him asking hundreds of us adults, “Who in the room is an artist?”  If any hands went up – they were few.  I’m talking 3 out of maybe 600.  He went on to say that when he speaks to kindergartners and asks that question, the room ERUPTS with kids standing on their chairs to be MORE OF AN ARTIST than the next.  Move up ten years and the hands drastically drop, hit adulthood and the artist is no more.

I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, as I’ve felt this artist die in me, more on that a later time, and the topic came up while talking to someone on a trip to Nicaragua a couple weeks ago.  I told the Kevin’s story which inspired conversation about how life tends to beat the artist out of us and that we end up living more in our head, less in our heart.  Shame.  Now on to the point –

A couple days later we visited a blacksmith shop where the blacksmith explained the importance of the blacksmith in society how creative they were and how if you wanted to do anything, it started at the blacksmith.  I kid you not, as he starts his talk out he says, “Any artists in the room?”  My jaw dropped as I looked around for how my group would respond.  The following is something I wrote for them later that week at 5am when i just couldn’t sleep.  Perhaps its a word from God, maybe its just a thought from observation.   Either way, I couldn’t sleep and needed to get this down on paper for my peeps.