FINDING MY VOICE BY LISTENING TO MY INSIDES AGAIN AND AGAIN THEN DRAWING

HALLELUJAH WEARING THE CROWN OF AN ANCIENT FEMININE DEITY.  Finding my voice by listening to the inside and projecting it to the outside via drawing! (Art by Halleujah Truth)

Greeting Pilgrims! Do you SPEAK YOUR TRUTH? Have you "found your voice"?Are you present to what is INSIDE you and what longs to be expressed on the OUTSIDE articulately and creatively?  I have longed to SPEAK MY TRUTH clearly and inventively my entire life but have only recently (last 3 years) found a satisfying way to do it here on my blog, "Coffee With Hallelujah." Let me be clear--For me, SPEAKING MY TRUTH artistically equals "finding my voice."

Surprisingly, "finding my voice" began with the "simple" act of LISTENING. I listen to myself each day, again and again. I lean into my SOUL (the inside) and listen to what is being asked of me to BE in the world (the outside). 

Time and time again, when I listen to my SOUL, I hear a causal chain of old teachings, responding behaviors, and resulting thoughts that are no longer serving me in my present life. I have become familiar enough with this collection of old lessons to know that they are the muck-and-yuck obscuring the shineyness of ME. As I gently lean in deeper past their murmurings, I hear myself BEING CALLED to do my life's work of BEING ME.

SOUL: BEING ME 

I draw every day to better listen to myself. Just as many people write their morning pages inspired by Julia Cameron and her 12-week journey in her book, The Artist's Way, so I make my morning drawings, emptying my SOUL from the night's  sleep on the paper before me. SPEAKING MY TRUTH by listening and drawing. As if it is magic, I connect my INSIDES with my OUTSIDES.

My daily drawing also connects me to others. As I draw and SPEAK MY TRUTH, those who I am meant to know are summoned. They may come to me and ask me to draw something for them. Or they might show me images they have made. Some ask me to talk to them about my JOURNEY AS AN ARTIST, so they can follow me. Just last week, Maria Helena Dolan, a member of the Atlanta Artist Conference Network, invited me to her home and filled my arms with books on feminine deities.

INSPIRATION FROM FRIENDS AND TEXTS! I have been letting these images in the books that Maria Helena loaned me guide me in my morning drawings. It has been fun listening to what intrigues me and pulls me in. This particular image has been the source of my image making for the past few days.

HALLELUJAH WITH HER INSIDES OUT. Here I am! Ta Da! This image speaks ME. Can you see MY VOICE? What do I say to you?

That's Coffee with Hallelujah! Please know Pilgrims that my creative act of drawing every day has given me my voice, providing a palpable concrete way to express ME for myself and a celebratory way to broadcast MY TRUTH to you and the world. Through this SOUL ACT, I have shifted my way of BEING in the world. I am changed. And, perhaps, you are TOO! Soul blog with me and tell me about your WAY OF BEING in the world. 

FOLLOWING THE IDEA: MARIA THE HUTIA COLOURING ACTIVITY BOOK

INTRODUCING THE COLOURING BOOK for Maria the Hutia! (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah Pilgrims! Welcome to my JOURNEY. I have chosen CREATIVITY as the PATH for my LIFE. It is through my CREATIVE projects that I truly learn about myself in relation to my world.

REACHING FOR THE LOW HANGING FRUIT is the current focus of my joyful, playful art making endeavors. At the end of July, I experienced the first publication of my ART as illustration in Ron Shaklee's children's science conservation story, "The Misadventures of Maria the Hutia."  

HURRAY A MONUMENT CONSTRUCTED ON MY JOURNEY! The publication of this work represents four years of learning how to draw and dedicating myself to a new way of seeing and being in LIFE. The illustrations are the "tip of the iceberg" of my pilgrimage. 

Then on Labor Day at the end of August, I relished the magnificent moment of presenting my work in this book at the 2012 Decatur's Book Festival to a crowd of book lovers, many of which are dear friends of mine!

A HUTIA IS BETWEEN THE SIZE OF GROUND HOG AND PRAIRIE DOG.  Explaining a little bit about the main character in Ron Shaklee's book, "The Misadventures of Maria the Hutia" at the 2012  Decatur Book Festival. How lovely it is to represent a small creature that may disappear from this Earth with few people knowing about it. 

Now, as September comes to an end, I am reaching for the RIPE JUICY FRUIT already present in my life from my illustrative work on the story of Maria the Hutia. "The Maria Hutia Colouring and Activity Book" is forming (colouring is the Bahamian spelling)! When one project ends, another one emerges. Instead of waffling about what is next, I will luxuriate in what is already PRESENT to me: LINE DRAWINGS of Maria the Hutia!

As I developed the drawings for the book, I scanned the "line" drawings that I had made with micron pens on bristol board and saved them in a folder on my desktop titled, "Coloring Book." Then my project expanded after Sandy Voegeli visited me at the end of July and I interviewed her about the San Salvador Sea Camp (see these two blogs: Teaching Children The Science of Looking in Their Own Backyard and The Art of Teaching Science Creatively).

I knew that I wanted to expand my Maria Hutia coloring book to include activities by which all children and interested adults could learn more about the natural environments of the Bahamas. 

Therefore DEAR PILGRIMS I announce to you my next creative intentions--THE MARIA THE HUTIA COLOURING AND ACTIVITY BOOK!

What low hanging fruit will you pluck from your CREATIVE TREE today? Soul blog with me at Coffee with Hallelujah!

HALLELUJAH TRUTH TODAY--HALLELUJAH!

BEING HERE NOW! (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Greetings Pilgrims! You see in the image above a rendering of myself based on a study of a Hebrew Goddess called Queen of the Wild Beasts! Hallelujah for study, deep thought, and integrating that understanding with each breath and each moment that passes.

The wild beasts? They live in all of us in the form of fear, anger, hurt, and misunderstanding. Today, I proclaim that I, Hallelujah, am the Queen of all my wild beasts! I hold them and talk to them and choose to be informed by them. After our discussion, I breathe more deeply, walk more firmly on the Mother Earth, and am enlivened. 

TODAY IS TO BE LIVED BY THE LIVING.

That's Coffee with Hallelujah. May you all be blessed in discussion with your wild beasts!

PAUSING IN ORDER TO BE: INTEGRATING THE INNER WITH THE OUTER

PAUSING. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for PAUSING. Who among us hasn't felt the frenzy of TIME storming overhead, demanding we run hither and thither seeking cover and then tending to the destruction once the squall is over? WHO ARE WE at that TIME?

FULLNESS, FRUITION, END OF SUMMER (art by Hallelujah Truth)

I am PAUSING from the busy-ness of my SUMMER before I step one toe into the approaching FALL. Already the temperatures are cooling and the mornings have prolonged hours of darkness. WHO AM I, now after the "allness" and "doneness" of the season of extended daylight hours and heat has concluded? Have I ripened? Are parts of me readying for FALL's harvest?

PAUSING, INTEGRATING THE OUTER WITH THE INNER (art by Hallelujah Truth)

I AM PAUSING....

It is time to retreat from the OUTER "scapes" of Atlanta, London, and St. Johns--highlights of my summer--and visit my INNER "scapes." It is in the terrain of ME that I rediscover the miracle of BEING here. Pulling in the OUTER and integrating it with the INNER.

BEING ME (art by Hallelujah Truth)

BEING. No need to surge ahead striving for new accomplishments. Instead I will be PRESENT to YOU, YOU, and what is here in front of me, and WHAT IS ME. NOW.

I WILL BE THE JOURNEY! That is Coffee With Hallelujah! Thank you for BEING with ME.

Acknowledgment: I continue to be thankful to Mark Nepo and his Book of Awakening. In his passage on "When Feeling Stuck," he quotes Rabindranath Tagore:

The same stream of life
that runs through the world
runs through my veins.

IMAGINING THE MOTHER IN ME: A BIRTHDAY IMAGE FOR BEING WELL

MY MOTHER AND I GO ON AN ADVENTURE EVERY BIRTHDAY.  Art by Hallelujah Truth

Hallelujah for the JOURNEY! And for those moments or occasions that MARK the time. Today was my 54th birthday, and I have traveled a ways on my SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIMAGE. For four years now, I have lived boldly, jumping into the UNKNOWN of my own CREATIVITY. I go into my FEAR, clutching my HEART, knowing that taking risks is a bold, bold way to GROW.

At the end of July 2012, I celebrated a TRIUMPH--the publishing of "The Misadventures of Maria the Hutia." This book embodies my creative vision in 32 black and white images which illustrate a story about an endangered animal, a Bahamian hutia, written by Ron Shaklee. In the last four years, I have drawn images, painted them, and collected numerous tablets of watercolors of visions, thoughts, and emotions. I have blogged about science, travels, collaborating with my husband, the wonderful Tony Martin, and I have interviewed artists. LIFE HAS BEEN RICH and REWARDING since I turned 50 years old and ventured into the realm of BEING and acting from my HEART.

But what about MOTHER? I have the wonderful good fortune to have a living mother, but have found the need to plunge into my own BEING to cultivate something MATERNAL lacking in my daily life. And because I am a SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, I am charged with the honor and good will to discover solutions to the compelling needs I am confronted with. I LOVE ART because through creative endeavors, one can maintain sanity and health and go deeper and further into the richness of life.

As a result of my pledge to be authentic, to truly live, and to trust my intuitions, I have started diving into my heart to uncover my own mothering instincts. The mother you see above, is the MOTHER IN ME. When I awoke this morning, I waited in bed waiting for MOTHER to speak to me. She said, "Let's go wherever! It doesn't matter where! We will be together!" So I got up and drew this image. 

I am simultaneously the daughter and the mother. We are united in this drawing, and we went bowling today and had lots of fun! HALLELUJAH FOR THE IMAGINATION! Hallelujah for BEING WELL!

THE MOTHER IN ME TOOK ME BOWLING WITH FRIENDS! (photo by Chiboogamoo)

BOWLING WITH MY HONEY!