Today we CONTINUE! Engaging transformative process!

Today we CONTINUE!

Hope Rising Amidst US! 
Engaging transformative process: Community Art Practice!

In the United States we are constantly confronted with the horrific reality of injustice measured out daily against many peoples.  Racism, genocide, gender oppression, religious hatred and the pain of intersectionality -  multiple layers of oppression, dismissal, disregard, denial of rights and even death are experienced by many in this country.  Our systems of power wield their might over Indigenous people's, African American/Black peoples, Hispanic peoples and immigrants with the force to even maim, kill and destroy without impunity.  Women suffer period, although how much is dictated by the layers of intersectionality of race, class, physical appearance, education, relational status and more.  In Nepal, as Sadhana explains in the next paragraphs, systemic oppression is embedded in the Caste System.

The Caste system in Nepal is a deeply rooted form of social stratum.  Historically, this way of dividing people was used to create a division of labor to support societal functioning.  Each subgroup on the caste system strata was assigned according to a groups origins.  Their were originally four categories: Brahmin were priests and teachers, Chhetriya were warriors who protected community and country, Vaisya were farmers and merchants, and the Sudra were the lowest caste group who were farm workers, laborers, carpenters, cobblers, tailors ect.

Like racism, the caste system objectifies portions of human beings and decreases their human worth and dignity.  The Caste system empowers some people to overpower, mistreat, misuse and diminish others, without receiving consequences of any sort. Low caste people are known as untouchables and suffer the most degradation of their humanity.  They are not allowed to touch so called high caste people or community wells and water taps.  Low caste people are not allowed to enter into the temple or higher caste people’s houses.  Lower caste people have separate places in school to sit, far from higher caste people. People are strictly prohibited to have inter-caste marriage.  The caste system opens the way for suffering. The violations and suffering of lower caste people is increasing physically, socially and emotionally. A total of 14 severe cases including attempted murder were reported to police in 2015 from different communities (source: Kuriti Book 2016- SOCH Nepal). There are many, many more unreported small cases in the community. Although the caste system has been legally abolished in the new constitution of Nepal, in the lived experiences of communities, the Caste system beliefs and practices remain strongly rooted. People are legally secure but experientially unsafe in society, remaining forced by cultural mores to live as less than human.  Lower caste people are still living as slaves, living with feelings of fear every day.

As Sadhana and I share in the work of Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice in Nepal, we find hope together that all inhumane treatment can find healing and oppressive systems can be broken down and abolished.  Bringing people from diverse backgrounds and social strata into a common experience of art making, which is an ability intrinsic to all humanity, brings people into shared space, shared work, shared struggle and mutual encouragement to let expressions bubble up in our midst and become manifest as art!  The art that is formed then speaks to the community, presenting people with new evidence of the human ability to form not only their expressions artfully, but relationships with themselves and one another differently, effectively, even beautifully, through the process.

The work in Nepal, inspires my work in the US.  On college campuses, in church communities with neighborhoods and high schools and at local farmers markets and gathering spots. I engage people in Community Art Practice as opportunity to share artful interactions of dignity in diverse community. I hope in and do now trust that through this practice, we too in the US will form community differently,  for the sake of peace thriving in our midst.

While in Nepal in January, Sadhana and I will teach Community Art Practice to Nepali village leaders by their request.  Some have already experienced a taste of this work and believe Community Art Practice to be part of the pathway forward of transforming lived experiences of all people into experiences of dignity.  This work in Nepal will contribute to the effectiveness of the work I engage in here in the US upon my return.

May this work inspire a rising HOPE in everyone that peace within us, between us and amidst us will come... Beautifully!

Tax Deductible Donations may be made through:
Mary Putera's Facebook Fundraiser 
or
The Blue Butterfly Foundation  
www.bluebutterflyfoundation.org 

Finding/Building Peace with the help of Expressive Arts Nepal

Finding/Building Peace with Expressive Arts Nepal

A mutually supportive, impactful friendship for the sake of building Peace!

We welcome your partnership with us!

Nepal and the U.S.? We are the same in some ways.  Many people in each place are struggling to refocus and regain solid grounding in our humanity, which is always defined in and by the way we stand in, hold, lift up and embrace community.  We have no future without one another. 

I teach Community Art Practice and facilitate Community Art events that we may bring forth the HOPE in our bones of having a FUTURE.  Community Art is practice in discovering a plan that imagines and fosters a way forward step by step that lifts communities into life abundant, full measure of JOY experienced and potential for peace.

Community Art Practice is the work of creating art-making frames that move participants away from struggles and into a playful, imaginative process that is focused on bringing forth what is longed for.  Community transformation occurs through individual realization of personal resiliency skills and strengths that contribute to the accomplishments of the group.  The participating community is in turn strengthened as participants work together for the sake of bringing forth one complete art piece through the receiving of each one’s contributions.  Resiliency in the art making community is increased as everyone works through naturally occurring struggles successfully. What is learned in the art making process is harvested and returned to everyday life that growth that occurs in Community Art Practice becomes real life community competency.  This work is always imaginative, improvisational and new to us all everyday.  This work is honest, at times hard, and always fruitful in some way.

In Nepal, in addition to teaching an Introduction to Expressive Arts Therapy, it seemed vital to introduce Community Art Practice as well, for the sake of growing community peace.  The students in this experience were diverse in more ways than I could identify.  And everyone in Nepal has had their very foundations shaken through long and difficult political struggle, environmental destruction, and literally by recent earthquakes and personal life events.  Below are photos of a mural created as we worked to hear and learn about ourselves in the company of one another.  The photo is followed by the aesthetic response, a poem written in response to the mural work. 

Perhaps, as we in the U.S. walk through painful, painful experiences of perpetrated violence stemming from the self-aggrandizement of some which are reflected in the suffering of many, even unto death, Mahesh Adhikari and the people of Nepal have some words of HOPE to help us.

Peace

I have searched long and hard for peace,

I have made countless attempts to understand it even.

And all that has taught me is that peace can only be achieved through freedom,

Certainly not through bombings and murder.

I'm saddened because there is no peace in the land of Buddha,

I'm worried because there is no peace of mind in the people of the land.

I want wings so that I can fly like a bird,

I want courage so that I can understand nature's true magnificence.

Everywhere I go, I look for peace, oh lord!

But even so, I fear for what awaits.

You can learn a lot about happiness simply from watching Buddha,

You can understand a lot about yourself and others by becoming free.

Look around - everything is empowering, everything is humble,

Always remember to pride yourself in being born a Nepali.

Everyone dies eventually, stop counting the hours,

All of us express differently, stop with the worry.

No matter how busy you get, I wish you'd remember to stop and sniff the flowers,

-Mahesh Adhikari

To partner with us in fostering peace in Nepal which breathes peace into our lives in the U.S. and Globally please DONATE Today! 

Tax Deductible Donations May Be Given At:

The Blue Butterfly Foundation:
http://www.bluebutterflyfoundation.org/

May peace be upon you and within you this day.

Mary

Hope Rising Amidst the Sharing

Expressive Arts Therapy: Sharing the learning!


Answering how Expressive Arts Practice brings forth peace is a long journey connected to the idea of sharing what arises with all the personal and cultural distinctives' the art forms through.  Expressive Arts work is all about the immediacy of the current moment as experienced through our senses and the improvisational rendering of this experience into artistic form.  Expressive Art work is immediately risky, vulnerable, revealing, often hard and beautiful even though not always pretty. Samjhana Thapa, a student in the Introduction to Expressive Arts Practice offered through Expressive Arts Nepal last fall, has begun to risk creating Expressive Arts opportunities for others.  Below she writes of the openings that came as she offered an opportunity for Expressive Arts Practice to others.

It is me Samjhana Thapa. I am a 3rd year Bachelor student in the study of social work and psychology. I work as a Social Worker in Amrita Foundation Nepal. It is a rehabilitation center that works from a family centered modal of therapy.
  Today I have provided an art therapy practice opportunity for patients suffering with mental illness. We began by moving into our senses through playing a name game with everyone.  We played by clapping, moving and sharing our names in a rhythm sequence with each other. After that I offered opportunity for everyone to choose the two colors which they don't like. Then I gave a blank paper. The participants began to draw something they liked or felt.  Clients found it was easier to talk with each other and share their feelings while drawing and even when they were finished. Each one wrote their feeling at the back of the paper.
  This process created a positive vibe amongst the group. The patients then shared with each other about their experience.  Expressive Arts Practice helps to build a kind of trust between everyone, people even smiled while making art. I noticed too that, through making the art, they start to look at their problem in a positive way. One participant told everyone, " I used to hate these two color but I didn't  know with these colors I hate, I can make a beautiful picture. " This sentence touched my heart. All patients said that they have really enjoyed this opportunity. The art making helped the clients to cope with their situation.
   Providing this Expressive Arts opportunity was a plus for me also. I gained confidence that I can offer something helpful to my clients. Before this experience they seemed to have a kind of worthless feeling about themselves. But after Expressive Arts Practice they can understand more about their situation. It make me happy and satisfied to see the smile of patients as they respond to expressive art therapy. It helps us all to cope with our shared  situation of finding a pathway of peace even with the struggle of mental illness. 
This is the story of my first experience offering of Expressive Art Practice with participants suffering with mental illness.


Samjana and many of the other students from our first Expressive Arts and Community Art Practice trainings continue to share what they have learned.  There are more stories to come!
  
As teachers of Expressive Arts therapy, Sadhana Thapa and I hope to continue to contribute to the development of the field of Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice grounded in the distinctive cultural perspective of Nepal.  Not only will this prove most culturally relevant and effective for Nepali people, this distinctive grounding will also then contribute to the Global efforts to establish Peace, Health and Healing through out humanity and all life.  

We need your support to continue to bring this dream forward. Please find full details of our project Expressive Arts Nepal: Expressive Arts for Inner Peace and Community Health at our Go Fund Me page:
https://funds.gofundme.com/dashboard/p5u74qd4




To Make a Tax Deductable donation: 
Checks with "Nepal" in the memo may be sent to: 
Sunset Covenant Church
18555 NW Rock Creek Blvd.
Portalnd, Oregon 97229

Hope Rising Amidst The Question of a Friend!

Hope Rising Amidst: The question of a friend!

A friend asked me what do you mean that Community Art Practice is a way of bringing peace?

The answer of course is found in the art making itself. Indigenous healers, our Creation myths, religious ways, legends, stories and human instincts and history have all taught us that Making Art has is way of making peace. Tensions, big and small are experienced as tightness, lack of room, closed spaces, roads we thought we were going down that have stopped with a jolt in the side of a mountain or edge of a cliff!  Violence, is often the out-BURSTING of wants, demands and desires that have not found outlet in any other form.  Fear and trembling come from places within our-selves and our communities that lurk in the shadows.  Even Joy when needing to be expressed and having no path, breeds frustration that is palpable. No peace can come when we feel boxed in, blinded, tense with what is in and around us which cant find way of being expressed. Choosing to respond to the senses, which are our first responders to dangers and beauty in our midst, can help us all engage in Artful Living, rather than frustrated, even reckless responding.

Community Art Practice is a way of engaging our senses. I would like to share a story with you of one the Community Art Experience's Sadhana Thapa and I led in Nepal with some of our first year students from Expressive Arts Nepal.

Imagine if you will, a quiet open air covered porch, like a window unto the world of Kathmandu, being flooded by 30+ school children between 8and 10 bounding in from one entrance!  Yes the pushing, shoving, running, yelling, tugging, irritating, frustrating entrances were happening! You’ve got the scene in all its frenzy for sure!  And we make a BIG circle of course!

Round and round the circle we went inviting each child  out of words and into  SOUNDS! “Listen for and make the sound you have within you right now!” we said! And everyone did! Some blasted out noise in Dr. Seuss trumpet fashion, animal sounds too came flying in like birds, and whispers, of life being imagined for the first time blew gently through! We even on the final round added gestures to enliven the space and sound! The sounds and movement were imaginative, the laughter was freedom of hearts opening.

We moved from sounding to color in our explorations! “Open up the world of your colors and land them on the page in the markings of your own creating!  This was our initial visual art -making frame.  And these children did make art perhaps tentatively at first, but not for long. It was marvelous indeed to see them moving into the work of letting Art find its way to their pages. 

There are children who are deemed lower cast children, subjected to the enslavement of their potential to fit the expectations of society as servants, as slaves, as those who are born to perform menial, mean tasks.  In other countries, some children suffer similar objectification because of racism, gender bias, religious affiliation and more.  Art does not discriminate or segregate, diminish or degrade.  It is simply gift that comes to all children and indeed all humanity reminding each one of their inherent value as unique and beautiful and able to receive inspiration and bring forth Art! 

The peace that settled into the group through our time together was palpable, noticeable.  We ended the day, talking together about the fun, the play, the value of each one and the Art!  We considered what the mural had to say to all of us.  We smiled together in the softness of honoring one another, our work and saying goodbye.

Community Art, engages the heart of each one and gathers the contributions of everyone! The art-making somehow brought the children into a space where grace and graceful treatment of each other, as if each one had value, was the right protocol. Their exit was different! What, but the Art making could have inspired, inspirited such transformation?

The Art these children are and expressed, are part of what inspires Sadhana Thapa and I to continue partnering for the sake of establishing Expressive Arts Nepal: Expressive Arts for Inner Peace and Community Health.  

To learn more about our project and the variety of ways we are together reviving art making as therapeutic practice and Community healing in Nepal, please visit us at https://www.gofundme.com/p5u74qd4 and look for my next blog soon!  More stories to come!

We HOPE you are Inspired to partner with us!