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I was going to write something different today, I really was. But out on my bike in the middle of the Northamptonshire countryside, the sky began to grow darker, and a light rain began to fall. Over the gentle slopes in the middle distance, the sky darkened to a deep, roiling indigo, and out of the blackness a shard of electricity carved its way from the heavens, while a millisecond later another joined it, to be followed by a third. A few seconds later, the sky was filled with a roaring as if of a landslide or the growl of an angrily awakened giant. A few moments later the scene was repeated, a little closer this time. I stood and watched the spectacle repeat itself, conscious of the dangerous energies that were gathering yet transfixed by the beauty of the sight as trees were silhouetted in the stark flashes that ripped open a cobalt sky. The rain got heavier and turned to the harshness of hail, and I pulled my hood over my helmet and reluctantly turned my face away from the sky, working hard to make it to shelter before the arcs of untamed electricity got too close.
Thawing out in my office, my eyes were drawn to the image on my desktop, a picture of the billions of stars that make up the Milky Way, so many that many of them seemed to coalesce into clouds scattered across a night sky.
And I marvelled. Marvelled at the hugeness of creation, the wonderful, beautiful vastness of it all. I wondered what there was out there to discover, what amazing secrets it held. What wonders lie out there amongst the stars? And I marvelled at the energies that the sky could unfold with a simple rainstorm, effortless magic unleashes by Nature herself.
And yet all of this is almost as nothing compared to the creative power within the human spirit. Within each one of us crackles the creative force that calls dream into reality, that earths imagination and vision and turns into something real. Each one of us holds within ourselves the creative power of the universe, waiting to be released and to create, to build, to write, to paint, to play, to invent, to sculpt, to dance – to become something other.
That force is within you… and within me. None of us is special – and yet every one of us is special, gifted with the power to shape the universe. What will we do with it today?
