Maundy Thursday: How I long To Share this Time With You

Maundy Thursday: In the midst of Covid-19

We are Ready for Communion:

But are we ready to face our NEED?

To partake of the gifts of God of the bread and cup, the very taking in of the presence of Jesus, we say we are ready.  But are we ready to face our need?  Before communion, can we take a moment and take a look at our need for the washing waters of heaven to cleanse us? Not so much from the Virus that rages and ravages the globe this day, but from the infections that are already within us? Can I face my own need?

As a Woman Pastor, I sit quietly these days, not because of Covid, but because in so many places the church, like the American people at large, remain unable to see the feminine presence as fully Imago Dei. Am I ready to let Jesus wash my feet of the anger that clings around my ankles splashing towards my knees as I walk this road?

I am a woman therapist who specializes in caring for teens, adults, communities and people groups who suffer the impact of long- term trauma, generational trauma and systemic trauma, and now Covid-19. The borders, the boundaries, the crushing genocides ongoing in this day, in the US, in Israel, In India and… even as those who Love and look to God stand silently by.  Am I willing for Jesus to wash away the burning desire for those who perpetrate such suffering to suffer enough that they might change?

I am a woman with an overdeveloped sense of justice, so I’ve been told.  I ache with the plight of the fish and the birds, the creatures, the seas the sky and the trees. Am I willing to let Jesus wash from my feet the thick, heavy muck of frustration with God’s long determination to bring the Peaceable Kingdom through humanity rather than too humanity?

I don’t know, I just don’t know and so much more I just don’t know.

Am I willing to just sit in the weeping?  For when my feet are washed isn’t that all I am left with; the anguish, the sorrow, the weeping?  The recognition that even after the cup and bread, All will Not be Finished yet?

My tears with God’s once again filling the water pitcher that the next set of feet may suffer my fate.

Yes Maundy Thursday for me stands for “into the weeping.” 

For once the feet are washed, I can see my own need.

My need to receive the living Christ not in triumph, but in humility, knowing I too forsake the path of the Peaceable Kingdom.

Maundy Thursday Service in times of Covid-19:

Preparation:

A clay pitcher full of warm water, a bar of soothing lavender soap, 1 clay bowl to catch the water from my feet, a simple chair and a candle or two.

As the sun goes down and evening comes upon the house, it will be good to sit in the quiet, to breathe in, to pause, to breathe out and pause again, repeating until my need rises like water coming in at high tide. 

And breathing in I will pray “wait on the Lord, whose days is near”

And I will pause and exhale praying “wait on the Lord be strong take heart”

And I will pause and begin again breathing in “wait on the Lord whose day is near”

And I will pause and exhale again praying ”Wait on the Lord, be strong take heart”

And I will continue until all is quiet within and around me.

I will play the songs of the people’s who teach me,

I will listen to

“Wade in The Water”(Sweet Honey and The Rock),

“Wash Your Spirit Clean”(Walela)

When its time the washing may begin

.

My feet shall receive the wetness, tears of heaven already rained down to the well from which my water is drawn. Then gentle hands and the smell of lavender soap, comfort softening the walls of my heart. More tears, more water, my tears, more water. Sadness is all that is left and so much harder to bear than all that was washed away.

And then I will sit once again in the quiet and return to the breath singing on the inhale “Wait on the Lord, whose day is near” and I will pause

and I will exhale singing “wait on the Lord, be strong take heart.”

And I will repeat until in the sadness I become ready for supper, for my greatest need now, in sorrow is HOPE! 

Isn’t this the blessing of Easter to come?  That in humanities greatest failures, God’s grace abounding in the ways of Christ is where we find Living HOPE for the days to come?

Perhaps if first we witness our own need, we will be ready to engage the Lord’s supper.

Maundy Thursday: “into the weeping, into our need”.

Amen amen.

Rev. M

Wherever you find freedom: Fly There!

Wherever you sense freedom... fly there
FLY there
fly There
FLY THERE!!

Wherever freedom for you brings freedom for me

For them, for they, for she

For Black, for Brown, for Yellow, for Red

Wherever you sense freedom for WE!

In Unity in Diversity!

FLY there!

fly THERE!!

FLY THERE!!!

Fly there for/with me

Fly there

Its funny how art that comes to us, speaks long after it has emerged through us.

The art practices presencing itself among us as if The Giver's Word were new every morning, even as it lives long across time….

The first stanza of the poem above and the painting that brought the poem forth emerged as I spent weeks engaging a particular struggle for full inclusion of the LGTBQ community as fully, whole, beloveds of Elohim, Creator God.

Today as I continue learning to walk an anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-oppression life, I heard the first stanza of this poem again.  I saw this bird in flight again.

Wherever you sense freedom... fly there
FLY there
fly There
FLY THERE!!

I remembered being held by armed guards in a Middle Eastern country airport for over an hour and the earlier bird from which this New Bird above was born.

The first bird was a prayer of flight for All women of the world, who are ALL formed as an expression of Elohim: Unity in diversity and bound together in our struggle for freedom of oppression from patriarchy.  

Today I read: I Was Wrong About Race: Posted by JR. Forastero and reposted by Michelle Reyes and The Art of Telah www.theartoftaleh.com

I read again the meaning of Elohim, the Hebrew name for God, translated by Neil-Douglas Klotz as “unity in diversity”.

And the second stanza of this poem came to be.

Wherever freedom for you brings freedom for me

For them, for they, for she

For Black, for Brown, for Yellow, for Red

Wherever you sense freedom for WE!

In Unity in Diversity!

FLY there!

fly THERE!!

FLY THERE!!!

Fly there for/with you/me/we

Fly there

Truly, there is no flight towards freedom for one of us, without choosing flight that is directed towards freedom for all of us! Lets live as anti-oppressionists, flying towards peace together shall we?

Amen and amen… may it be so.

I fly to Nepal In October!

Expressive Arts Nepal:  The Good Work Continues Exponentially!

An update: We have raised $2,000.00 of our funds for this years goals!
I(Mary) will fly to Nepal in October to teach EXA Therapy: Healing the Wounds of Trauma
and Community Art: Community Healing in Traumatic Environments!

Dear Friends,

Expressive Arts Nepal is a project I am involved with to support the development of healing work and community peace building through Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice in Nepal.

Many stories of the work can be found on my blog at: http://hoperisingamidst.blogspot.com/

My role in this project as a volunteer is as a teacher/trainer and project development facilitator.  I go to Nepal bi-annually to teach Expressive Arts Therapy to therapists, social workers, teachers and community care providers.  As a work grounded in justice, my role is to empower Nepali people to establish an organization of their own which is highly credible and professionally effective and ethical.

Funds raised are applied to two primary functions.

1-    Increasing educational, internship and supervision experiences of budding professionals in Nepal from a culturally relevant and respectful posture.

2-    To guide the development and application of Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art for people in need by Nepali practitioners.

Below you will find a description of how we are doing and the progress we have made in this project as well as the goals we have for the coming year.

I may be contacted at walkinggently@gmail.com if you would like more information on the project.

Good News!

Sadhana Thapa and I are thankful to announce Expressive Arts Nepal is now a partner with The Blue Butterfly Foundation a US based non-profit whose mission is to power those in need focusing on the impoverished country of Nepal and victims of child labor, trafficking, and enslavement.

We are so Grateful to Lauren Yanks of Blue Butterfly for welcoming us!

Please check out The Blue Butterfly Foundation website: http://www.bluebutterflyfoundation.org/

Your tax deductible donations to Expressive Arts Nepal can be made right on the Blue Butterfly page above!

Over the past 4 years, through the generosity of our donors:

EXA Nepal has facilitated:

·      1,124 hrs of Expressive Arts Therapy/Community Art with children in need

·      Provided 378 hrs of Expressive Arts therapy with Seniors

·      Provided 200 hrs of EXA therapy with the LGTBQ community

·      Provided 478 hrs of EXA Therapy with Trafficking survivors

·      Provided Sadhana Thapa with 2 out of 3 years of her Masters studies in Expressive Arts Therapy

·      Provided for Mary Putera(LMHC, CAGS, PhD candidate) to travel to Nepal every year for up to 6 weeks to provide training and ongoing supervision and support of Expressive Arts Nepal via internet consultation.

·      Provided 3 years of EXA Therapy Level 1 Masterslevel classes for 77 Nepali professionals and students across the fields of Psychology, Education and Social Work

·      Provided 2 years of Level ll EXA Therapy trainings and Community Art for 27 Nepali professionals and students

·      Provided ongoing supervision for EXA and Community Art students

·      Sadhana Thapa’s work to teach Introductory Masters level courses in Expressive Arts and Creative Arts Therapy in 2 Nepali universities.

·      Provided Sadhana Thapa with 2 of 3 years of economic support to achieve her Masters in Expressive Arts Therapy.

Truly, through the generous help of donors, Expressive Arts Nepal is growing!

Next Steps:

In the coming year, we have some very critical hurdles to leap together.

Sadhana Thapa needs to complete her final year of Masters work at European Graduate School: The costs include

·      Tuition, thesis advisor and editor fees, travel expenses and graduation fees totaling $10,000.

Support for a second Nepali national to begin studies at European Graduate School

·      Tuition and travel $8,000

Travel expenses for Mary Putera to teach in Nepal.(all work is done as a volunteer)

·      $2,500

Provision of ongoing Expressive Arts therapy for Blue Butterfly Foundations Trauma Informed Programs, Nepali Seniors, Trafficking survivors and street children:

·      $3,000

Income streams:

Expressive Arts Nepal: Sadhana Thapa and Bipin Thapa will raise $2,000 towards tuition costs

Mary Putera: Will offer international Masters level EXA students cross-cultural academic and internship opportunities with all funds beyond expenses directly supporting EXA Nepal’s budget. $2,000

Donations and Sponsor development: $19,000

Ways to Contribute:

Donations:

·      Donate directly at The Blue Butterfly Foundation: http://www.bluebutterflyfoundation.org (designating funds for EXA Nepal) monthly, quarterly, yearly…

·      If your Employer(or previous employer if you are retired)participates in Benevity (www.benevity.com) you can designate your employee giving and corporate match funds to Blue Butterfly and the Expressive Arts Nepal project.

·      Watch for our Giving Tuesday event in November!

All contributions are gratefully received!

A letter for tax purposes will be sent to all donors before January 30^th.

In 2019-2020 as a partner with Blue Butterfly Foundation:

Expressive Arts Nepal will bring Expressive Arts therapeutic support for the children and staff of Blue Butterfly Foundations newly forming school for children. This school is designed around a trauma informed curriculum for children whom suffer environmental and personal trauma. We are so excited for this project.

Rev. Mary Putera LMHC, CAGS, MDiv. PhD candidate.

Email: walkinggently@gmail.com; Phone 401-239-7981

Introducing Isabelle

Introducing Isabelle!

In this world of ours so broken by misuse of power,  I find such relief and HOPE in raising artful expression through teaching Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art.  The work itself invites everyone into equanimity as teacher and student lean in to our responsibilities and our innate abilities in service of artful expressions emerging.  Whether in Nepal, the US, Central America, or Europe, teaching for me is a work of humble attentiveness to the artists, the  process and the energy of art emerging. Most important for me is finding way to teach which frees everyone to stand in equal dignity and ability in the art-making. In multi-cultural settings, where diverse understandings and experiences of power, privilege and hierarchical authority are present I practice letting go of power, transferring ascribed power of position to the energy of the art arriving and the art makers gathered.  My hope is that in modeling standing in just my space of responsibility for empowering the sense based process of art making, students can fully present themselves as diverse artists with distinct abilities needed in forming art. While teaching in Nepal recently, it was the art emerging through Isabelle which helped us all stay in tune with our diverse abilities and responsibilities for bringing forth the art arriving in the room.

I share with you Isabelle!

Yes Isabelle is flute presence, setting the tone of the place and shared presence of our Expressive Arts Therapy course.  It is the voice of Isabelle that called us to the work as we began each morning and session.  When I have sunken into the deepest listening place with students it is also Isabelle who is given space to hold us in liminality, the magical, imaginal space of time away from ordinary time, where our senses lead.  It is Isabelle who encourages the flow between the art which comes and the senses of the students to receive it. As the teacher/witness in the room, I listen for Isabelle's artful way moment by moment as we, Isabelle and I, hold the space and guide the process within the frame of the EXA session.  We are a team Isabelle and I, opening up the space for "what art may come".

When working in multi-cultural, highly diverse settings, it is the "lifting" of innate qualities of our humanity that bring us into ease.   In western traditions of psychology hierarchy of the expert over the one in need is deeply entombed as the grounding expectation of the work of healing and learning.  In the liminal space of Expressive Arts Therapy, it is our shared humanity which is the foundational expectation of sharing space, and the inspiration of the art arriving in the presence of relationship.

Isabelle knows somehow, even when I don't, a way to speak to the heart and ease the strain of being open, vulnerable, and trusting of the process.  In liminal space we leave behind the soci-cultural landscape of habituated, systemic, intersecting oppression's and bring forth our art differently, remaining supportive of each other and the diversity present in our artful renderings. In this world divided by race, class, religion, gender, sexual identity, age and anything else people can find to bully one another through, YES the liminal space of teaching and providing Expressive Arts Therapy is opportunity for reprieve and resurrection of our common humanity.  Yes, the art of Isabelle in the lead, levels us into our humanity as common ground for being in and bringing forth, artful expression.

I am so grateful, so grateful indeed for my Isabelle.

Love letters remembering- Art Making in Nepal.

Love Letters Remembering - Art Making in Nepal

Teaching and practicing Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art in environments of cultural diversity ethically requires letting go of the idea that I am "the expert" in the room.  As a teacher I bring a particular expertise in concepts and guiding principles shown to be effective in this work as I know it.  However, Art making is intrinsically human.  Our innate artistry is deeply entwined with our cultural, communal, geographic and generational history. We are Living Artistry, all of us! Remembering and re-engaging the art maker within us requires moving out of everyday, acculturated patterns of engagement.  We work to enter the world of playful surprise which naturally sets free our inner artistry! Art making happens where inspiration has room to enter and imagination has breath to fly.  Routine life often stifles the creative flow within. Everyone is the expert in the room in Expressive Arts Therapy, especially the ART.

In Nepal, moving into learning Expressive Arts Therapy, began with exploring who we brought ourselves to be in the art making, in the artful exploring.  We first found our place in the rooms which would serve our artful exploration.  Somehow the interior space and the exterior place, must become friends, and so we create interaction through the breath, exchanging air between our inner selves and our outer place, which carries us into moving.  We move through the air which is our inhaled, exhaled exchange with our place and with one another.  As we move we begin to find the others involved in sharing breath with place, in innovative ways.  As we move, we let our knee lead us and then we follow our nose, our shoulder  and even our left hip, and we begin introducing ourselves to others through the meeting of knees, shoulders, elbows, and yes lol... sometimes toes. What wonderful, playful perspectives from which to meet and begin seeing one another.

And we move to colors, boxes of pastels arrive to help us explore who we are becoming in this art space already. Which color chooses us? We worked until we found just the one that called us!  And we let the colors move on our papers and give us our names that day.  The name by which we wished to be called.  And we formed our presence, individually as part of our community of artists for the week.

Each one an expert in ourselves; each one opening to the art emerging as expert directing the making; each one recognizing the other as fellow artist, a companion on the way.

And lets not forget the bumps.  The places where our knees introduced each other too forcefully, the moments when balance was lost, and my toes for a moment, stepped on yours.   These are incredible opportunities where the play might have been interrupted, that we might be students of the art informing us of the shadows within, and the struggles between, that in this container, can be transformed in and between us as the art comes!

We are All Living Artistry.

May peace within us and between us expand its depth and reach as we make art.

Next time: Isabelle, our surprise expert appears!

Until then... may beauty surprise you and art making call you!
Warmly,
Mary

The Harvesting Begins!

Harvesting is the gleaning of the work, the locating of that which brings life and love and friendship through the art making we share. This is the work of Today and the next few weeks of Todays for Sadhana Thappa and I.  Fostering dignity in diversity through Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice is first and foremost fostered through a chosen posture of love.   Nothing less would be effective.  Too much interior and relational work is required in this endeavor for anything less than love to be an effective motivator and embrace of our effort.

Although love is undefinable completely, it is sensorially experienced and intellectually describable.  I(Mary) experience love "felt" first.  There is first and foremost a sense of being drawn towards someone or something.  My senses are tapped and move their attention towards the stimuli that has drawn them, my body posture is redirected towards  and opens to that which has called to me. My emotions are enlivened, and curiosity engaged. My whole being seems to open up to capture the experiencing of what has drawn me to attend its presence.  When this phenomena occurs, it is because I am in the moment before I am drawn in, standing in the posture of being in love with, open, vulnerable to my present experiencing.

When I am an effective facilitator of Expressive Arts Therapy, Community Art Practice and teacher of this work, it is because love is, as much as possible, the posture of my approach. It is this posture that Sadhana Thapa and I have witnessed in each other which has brought us to engage this work together and keeps us pressing into the call of bringing forth Expressive Arts Institute Nepal and Living Artistry: Community Art Practice as joint ventures of peace building work.  We are engaged in a labor of Love sometimes from opposite sides of the world and sometimes literally side by side.  Location hasn't mattered.  Love and choosing again and again to love, enables us to absorb the revelations of our humanness, our strengths, struggles, challenges and frustrations as well as our giftings, education, cultural distinctions and culturally embedded praxis and continue to reach towards each other for the sake of friendship and the work. The strain is possible because the work is embraced by the love and surpassed by shared joy!

We are so very deeply grateful to all have supported this work.  We thank you for your financial contributions, your shared gifts of art made and sold for donations, your words of encouragement, your time!  We thank most tenderly Prem and Joe our husbands, for their tireless effort and support of us and this project! 

Below is a short synopsis of the facts of our latest training in Nepal.  This will be followed by a regular stream of stories from the work.  The beauty of the people we were with, we want to share with you!  For All who partake in this project, are Beautiful!!!

Expressive Arts Institute Nepal: Fall 2017

Mary was on the ground in Nepal from October 28 through November 19. During this time,Mary taught two Masters Level courses: Expressive Arts Therapy: Foundations, Forms and Ethics and Community Art Practice: A Pathway towards Peace.  Sadhana and Mary led students through practicum experiences in 8 locations with a variety of populations.  Mary provided practicum supervision for all field work at all sites and Sadhana provided cultural mentoring and as a 3rd year Masters Student of Expressive Arts Therapy led a team of students at her site in the work.  In addition Mary provided Supervision to two other Masters Students from the European Graduate School for their practicum hours and training in multi-cultural ethics practice and cross cultural humility.

For both Sadhana and Mary, these were 16 hour days, 6 out of 7 per week.  It was powerful and exhausting and so very beautiful!  We have learned so much about what went well and what we will do differently next fall when we bring to life the next Expressive Arts Institute Nepal full training experience.

We will in these days, be sharing the stories of this past fall more fully than our facebook posts and time would allow last fall!  We share in hopes of honoring the work of the people in Nepal and the team that engaged this global opportunity. We share in hopes of honoring all who support us in anyway.  And yes we share to encourage everyone to continue with us, supporting this work and perhaps bringing others alongside us.  The project and therefor our need for support, is growing.

We share stories to celebrate the Love that grows and grows us when we gather in dignity, in diversity and in care for our shared humanity.

On Monday I will post Expressive Arts Nepal: Phase 3 for everyone to see and consider supporting.

Namaste
May we greet the love of God in each one, every time!

Mary Putera, LMHC, MDiv., CAGS, PhD candidate
Sadhana Thapa, MA (Social Work), Expressive Arts Therapies masters student 3rd year

Why Community Art Practice?

Why I’m Passionate About Facilitating Community Art

         Today, August 19, 2017, I swam in the pool at the gym! I have been trying to remember the co-ordination of my limbs for moving through the water reasonably smoothly for years! Today August 19, 2017, my body somehow RECONNECTED the full length of my legs to the activity of kicking! Ahhh yes! This is what it is like to experience the felt sense of smooth, long propulsion through the water with my whole body!  Joyful surprise of whole body functioning filled me. This somehow newly found, remembered ability, meaning I CAN, is mine again!

         On February 14, 1999, I was in a horse riding accident. On that day, I experienced the crushing and twisting of my torso and spine from my tail bone to my skull, a redistributing of abdominal organs, and the destruction of neurological pathways from my brain to my body especially my limbs. I also sustained a brain injury that left me without many years of memory, unable to manage emotional flooding, with altered visual capacity, a thick muddy experiencing of a felt sense of life, and a newly expanded pain scale unlike anything I had ever known. I felt like a shattered glass window barely held together by its frame, in a posture of intense vulnerability and excruciating self-protection. Sheer determination to experience as little loss of connection with my husband, children, extended family and profession as possible somehow propelled me through my day-to-day life for a few years.

         After the accident, I could no longer integrate information or function through left brain pathways in clear fashion. Intellectual and embodied intelligence remained locked in me, in chaos and unable to be refined, reshaped, accessed or developed through regular thought processes. For a highly functioning woman, this was an extremely painful part of my experience.

         Three months after the accident, I graduated from Lesley University with an MA in Clinical Mental Health, with specializations in Holistic Practice and Expressive Arts Therapy. The specialization in Expressive Arts Therapy became such a place of grace in my work with others and my own life. As my body was literally being reconstructed by physical therapists, massage therapists and chiropractors, my soul, my heart and my brain were being re-imagined into functioning through personal and community art making. Expressive Arts therapy as low skill, high sensitivity embodied work emerging through the senses, was a healing process which met me right where I was, in my own place of being remade, and even newly made through imaginative play. My laughter was restored along with neural pathways, the ability to breathe more fully, and newfound abilities for sharing life with others that were Oh So Much Bigger, Fuller and Freer!

         A turning point in my Expressive Arts Journey came in the fall of 2001/2002 I believe (I am still a bit memory impaired). I attended a series of EXA workshops with Shaun McNiff.  The shards of myself were reheated in the alchemical process of embodied art making and repetition in this peer group setting as Shaun guided us through.  Together we engaged sensory based, intuitive, multi-modal, embodied work that was held by following the emergent, engaging repetition, trusting the process, and experiencing the vulnerability of seeing and being seen.  I was aware too that our process seemed held by something larger than myself and larger than the group. I sensed a warmth, comfort and safety that truly comes in the presence of love. The courage came to live into healing moments of soul-filled singing and moving which re-enlivened my sense of being originally formed as living artistry in my mother’s womb. The group with Shaun as facilitator created together a container safe enough for delving deep and excavating hidden beauty within ourselves.

Beholding, bringing forth, and sharing Beauty has been the way of my mother’s family and Maltese Italian heritage for generations. As my training and self healing continued, body memories awoke in me of old habits of engaging visual art, dance, movement and music as practices of resiliency and hope in my youth and young adult years. The muse, the spirit of Creator/Creating was once again alive in my psyche and soul.  I could sense myself once again as an integrated self in the making, always seeking Beauty amongst us.

         In 2005 I returned to Graduate school seeking an MDiv.  Sensory based artistry re-made in me flourished as I facilitated Collaborative Community Art in Worship in the Seminary. A multi-ethinic, multi-lingual, gender inclusive, multi-national, intergenerational group of students came together with the hope of creating artfully engaging worship experiences for the entire seminary community. Together we explored themes of liturgical life through a frame I developed for Collaborative Community Art Making. We stepped into liminal space, a time out of time where social constructs of who we were defined to be were left aside. We engaged various modalities of visual art making, sounding, dance and movement to explore themes, ideas and imaginings. Weavings extended upward in two-story tall Chapel windows, stories formed telling us what mattered, movement and dance brought forth the sense of Spirit, and sacred presence and performance led to ways for the entire worship community to be gathered into artful expressions of love. Collaborative Community Art making became the opportunity to form a community full of dignity in diversity in a Seminary setting.  It was also a very difficult space as diverse people were invited to share this exploration in an atmosphere of mores and folkways profoundly shaped in colonialist, patriarchal, white western male dominance.  Through Collaborative Community Arts based Worship, Hope grew in me that the divides of oppression could be transformed. I also came to understand that I would need to go beyond the seminary to engage the human community more fully.

         On Friday August 11, 2011 (I looked it up) Shaun McNiff and Paolo Knill co-facilitated a one-day conference, “Liberating Creativity: Courage to Lead.” From Alaska to Boston I did go! Such sacred space it was indeed. I was introduced to Paolo’s way of expanding the range of play, and the possibilities for engaging the art emerging among people gathered. We created a parade! As my group worked to become an offering to be witnessed by the street crowd, the synergy of us made space for a new experience we could have never have created alone. We were different from each other in so many ways and similar in our potential for participating in the incredible craft of bringing forth an emerging art piece. Paolo led us through our senses, rather than words, and through embodied presencing rather than habituated thoughts, to be present with each other. Paolo fostered our willingness to be enticed, interested in the process and surprised by what would come, and we were! We found a way to live into the humility and generosity of making space not only for each other, but for “the third,” the art as its own entity developing with us.  For a little while, I was flying as a Hawk, sounding the call of fully experiencing and Joyously belonging in the parade of musical, dancing, finger-snapping float form of my group.  That day, I learned to trust the Community Art Practice process as pathway for bringing diverse people into shared space of dignity as human community. This was joyous to me!

        

         Since this workshop in 2011, I have gone on to receive a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Expressive Arts Therapies and Community Art and am currently working on my dissertation in Community Art Practice as pathway for peace-building. I have facilitated Community Art Practice in the form of low skill, high sensitivity work in five countries, and taught in three. I have facilitated Community Art in groups as small as 6 and as large as 260. Facilitations have sometimes focused on theme-close work such as exploring gender oppression, cultural humility, bridging socially constructed divides of race, class, gender identity, and the anguish of collective trauma and transitory existence. Other Community Art facilitations were about holding space for friendships to grow, laughter, vulnerability and trust to become normalized, imagination and hope to flourish and community joy to expand exponentially. In all these circumstances, I have experienced the power of Community Art as an opportunity for imagining wholeness and bringing forth a foretaste of what we can live into in community wholeness embraced by beauty. 

         What began as a very personal journey of rediscovery and newly imagining my own life has emerged into a lifelong exploration of imagining human community in dignity and diversity. In Community Art Practice, we joyfully engage in forming emerging works of art with others in a process that is open wide to the collective imagination and Beauty inherent in both the process of being together and experiencing the art that comes! It is an artful practice of forming dignity in diversity for the sake of bringing forth the beloved beautiful human community. 

In Community Art Practice we together become, Living Artistry.