"Athletes, musicians, witters, gardeners and lovers all attest to the experience the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls 'flow'--the times when our work or play so absorbs and attunes our energies that we lose track of time. For a little while time seems to both expand and contract, becoming spacious rather than constricting, making room for our creativity and activity, and we lose the self-consciousness that wraps itself around most of our waking hours, even as we become most fully awake and alert to the possibilities of what lies in front of us.
In this world, this life, 'flow' comes to an end. The canvas is dry, the fugue is complete, the band plays the tag one more time and then resolves on the final chord. And, too, the book is finished, the service is over, the lights go up in the darkened theatre and we emerge blinking into the bright lights of the 'real world.' But what if the timeless, creative world we had glimpsed is really the real world -- and it is precisely its reality that gave it such power to captivate us for a while? What if our ultimate destiny is that moment of enjoyment and engagement we glimpse in the artist's studio?"
-Andy Crouch author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling
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