Volunteering: A Giving in to the sharing, in Nepal

Volunteering: A Giving in to the sharing, in Nepal

            When the title hits first, it is like receiving an “intrusive word”,  an obnoxious perhaps, announcement of a beautiful gift becoming.  We shall see how this title that has found me, moves.

In September I will return to Nepal as a volunteer offering training in Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art practice to Nepali nationals who serve as humanitarian workers, community outreach and development specialists, social activists and care providers.   The training and coaching offered is freely given, with the help of many friends who have and will donate funds to http://www.gofundme.com/hoperisingamidstne. 

To “offer oneself” though, to bring and give freely of who one is, in a foreign context, amidst the complex circumstances of recent systemic trauma, ongoing societal struggles and the emerging qualities of resilience, is to become vulnerable. 

As a volunteer serving in a foreign country, I am a cultural stranger, linguistically incompetent, way-finding challenged, and utterly in need of a cultural mentor to translate for me the mores and folkways abounding in the midst of every interaction.  Simply put, whatever expertise I have been invited to share, is in need of major reconstruction, on the fly, in the midst of a new and challenging culturally different circumstance. I need help! 

I am not alone.

The people in Nepal who have extended invitation also are vulnerable, experiencing a need.  Something is happening amidst the people that requires support from others to fully emerge.  Sadhana Thapa and Reeta Bomjan the founders of Expressive Arts Nepal, have identified the emerging presence and gift of Expressive Art and Community Art in their country as pathways and practices that are life giving to Nepali people.   This has been true in all human society for all times.  I do not go to introduce Expressive Art and Community Art practice as if it is something completely new to the people of Nepal. I go  to bring culturally meaningful experiences of engaging creatively with the circumstances and conditions of life people in Nepal are enduring and moving through.  I bring these experiences as opportunities for re-enlivening what is already in the hearts of humanity.  We are all formed and informed, embodied creatures possessing instinctual, innate ability to creatively meet life.  We can always work to sense and imagine what more Truth, Goodness, Love and Beauty can be brought into this world through us for the healing of all living Creation.  This is the very essence for me of being “imago DEI” formed in the image, the active ability of living as witness to who God is.  This is for me what it means to live into my faith in God and living as faithful witnessing of God’s sacred and Loving existence.

It is indeed the volunteering in Nepal, the giving into the sharing, in vulnerability with Nepali people, that makes way for Beauty to become amongst us and the miraculous to appear.

The anthropologist Victor Turner describes this as entering liminal space, a time out of time, where we leave behind, detach from our “fixed” identities, knowledge, social status, community conditions, public face, power, prestige and hierarchies and bring to the place who we are. We come as people volunteering to be vulnerable, open to experiencing one another anew through embodied presence while sharing what gifts we have in the art of making. We enter liminal space willingly seeking something new and helpful, even hopeful and transformative of us all, individually and a s a group.

As I prepare to return soon to Nepal, I know that my volunteering will provide opportunity for giving in to the shared vulnerability of walking on land that resounds its current rumblings visually. Volunteering is opportunity to give in to sharing in the sense of physical and emotional vulnerability one cannot avoid as one walks through Nepal’s crumbled history that resides now in heaps of stone crying out in memorial of what was. There is no doubt that sharing time and space with Nepali people in art making will include sharing in their expressions of grief, loss, fear, anguish and struggle. And yet as has been demonstrated repeatedly, being together vulnerably in expressive, improvisational art making, gives rise to something so much more than pain! Dr. Brene Brown in a recent interview stated, “We associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame and uncertainty.  Yet we too often loose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging and creativity”.  This is indeed what comes forward when we settle into our senses and let art making lead us!

            Expressive Arts and Community Art practice have demonstrated great efficacy as processes that facilitate recovery, resilience, renewal of imagination and hope in the midst of working through trauma.

Expressive Art and Community Art practice engage humanity through low skill high sensitivity processes that are accessible to anyone regardless of prior experience in any artistic modality.  All people who enter the liminal space of artistic play and discovery can participate in contributing to the art piece that is emerging.

In the experience of making art in liminal space, this other worldly environment away from trauma, a bridge to the potential for rekindling of internal resources and resiliency skills that bring people through traumatic events can emerge in art making and be brought back into everyday life.  Yes indeed, volunteering is a giving in to the sharing of Expressive Arts and Community Art practice as opportunity for Nepali people to imagine what beauty may come in Nepal.

Please consider sharing in the work of supporting the emerging beauty in Nepal.