JOYOUS LIFE: In the act of CREATION

I AM A JOYOUS PILGRIM (Image #1). Hallelujah Life. Hallelujah Joy. (Art (c)by Hallelujah Truth, aka Ruth Schowalter)

"The way to live a JOYOUS life is to CREATE. In the act of CREATION, we are BEING, MOVING, and DISCOVERING. Living life in this manner is challenging, hence the need to practice doing it with the languorous ease of a cat napping, suspending judgment and working from our dreams!"  

-Hallelujah Truth (December 2011), "Joy Equals Living with Ease of a Cat Napping"

JOYFUL EASE OF A CAT NAPPING 
(Art by Hallelujah Truth, 2009)

Dear fellow Pilgrims, I have been chasing JOY most of my life, as you probably have too! In 2009, I began a focused pilgrimage to experience that JOY and to have more of it. From some where deep in myself Hallelujah erupted and merged with "Ruth Truth," a more didactic and serious person, resulting in HALLELUJAH TRUTH.

In 2009, with her presence I began this blog, "Coffee With Hallelujah," and established for me the high necessity of having FUN and EASE. And....to CREATE what was mine to discover and express. 

I gave birth to my motto for my DAILY CREATIVE PRACTICE: 

If you have time for a cup of coffee (or a hot beverage), you have time to CREATE.   

WHAT IS UNIQUE TO ME? I asked myself. What is mine to create each day that only I can say, draw, paint, dance, and love? It is a question I have cherished and, yes, struggled with in the past 7 years of Hallelujahing every morning! 

In order to sustain my way of CREATIVE BEING based in "the languorous ease of a cat napping," I needed community, a tribe comprised of other JOYOUS PILGRIMS committed to sharing their creative pulse. Those who would appreciate suspending judgment about their work and find PLEASURE in the ACT of making it!

Here on COFFEE WITH HALLELUJAH, the years of blogging have connected me with other SOUL PILGRIMS from around the globe. Then three years ago, I established the Facebook Group, "The Daily Creative Practice," to engage with others seeking to share their creative acts in a warm supportive online community. My FB world is now outrageously populated!!! as of March (2016) close to 1,100 people are members on the DCP. I invite you to join us if you already haven't.

A wonderful reminder of my commitment to JOY came to me at the 2016 New Year's InterPlay Untensive in North Carolina with Tom Henderson and Ginny Going. The word that randomly chose me from words written on pieces of paper being distributed around the room was JOY! Hallelujah JOY!

The photo above shows my word, JOY, beside the spirit animal I chose to support me during 2016. Months have passed since I began this blog post on JOY in January in the first few days of 2016. Upon my return from the InterPlay New Year's Untensive, I confronted challenges in my JOYFUL PILGRIMAGE. They were the usual suspects: health issues that needed to be resolved, relationships that needed healing, and meaningful employment that would be accompanied with a life sustaining wage/salary. At first, I floundered. I did not operate from JOY. We all go through periods of darkness. BIBO (Breathe-in-Breathe-out). 

Slowly, I have eased my way into finding solutions to my challenges. And best of all? Based on nothing, I am making a choice to BE IN ACTION (thanks Artist Conference Network and InterPlay), I am presently practicing unlocking and embodying my JOY using my CREATIVITY. For it is when I am in action that I experience a satisfying way of being on this beautiful Earth.

UNLOCKING AND EMBODYING JOY. I am deep in my spiritual journey and yet I feel so new and renewed. What does it mean to unlock and embody joy? How does one savor grace? How does the making of things connect me to the Mystery I seek? And really? Can having fun bring me in closer connection with the Unknown? --Hallelujah Truth (February 2015), "Unlocking and Embodying Joy: Savoring Grace, Making Things and Having Fun"


That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me. What is your word for 2016? How is it serving you right now?  Are you unlocking and embodying your word?

REVERB15 (Day 19): Flaming the fire to make the soup

SUNRISE GEORGIA COAST, December 20th, 2015. Thinking about light and heat and cooking things up in my life. Focusing on "light" on this cold December day along the Georgia coast on one of the shortest days of the year amuses me and motivates me. (Photo by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for the soupy mix of our lives and for turning up the heat to make it hot! One day late, here is my response to Kat McNally's December 19th writing prompt that made me think about light and heat.

REVERB15 (Day 19) Prompt: “Today I am wondering what would happen if I allowed a little more out-of-control-ness in my life. So I invite you to consider: where could you (like me) consider turning it up a few notches in the new year?”—Kat McNally

FLAMING THE FIRE

What a lovely invitation this REVERB (Day 19) prompt is! To increase the intensity of something in my life that is ready to manifest! What FIRE needs to be stoked? How bright does the light need to be?

INTO THE SOUP

On the stove and in the “soup pot,” I see preparing the ingredients and cooking up a three-month program to ignite and guide myself and others on a creative path using the tools and principles of InterPlay. 

In fact, as I write this blog post,  I’m in the kitchen cooking! Sitting at a table of my writer’s retreat to design this course, with a view of the Sapelo marsh, I’m observing the fire of the setting sun glow golden on and above the Spartina and below the blue sky. Something is heating up for sure ! Turn up the dial and increase the temperature! Intensify the light!

GOLDEN MARSH GLOW. The alchemy of light, fire, heat! This view from my writing table at Sapelo. I am working alongside my husband. During the day, I am his field assistant and by night, a writer, creator, artist, and InterPlayer. (photo by Hallelujah Truth)

Other items I want to throw into the soupy mix of my life and add fuel to the flame and light of my life are the following:

InterPlay Art & Soul Creativity Coaching. Continue to articulate the service I offer as a creativity coach, using play to support authenticity and develop confidence and joy. Attract new clients.

ARTiculate my ART. Motivated by a fellow artist, to begin speaking up for my art, I am making 2016 a year for speaking my truth as well as making images to express it. Whenever given the opportunity, I pledge to stand up and speak out.

Receive and Celebrate Abundance. In 2016, I envision working and connecting with others meaningfully whether it is through my InterPlaying, Creativity Coaching, Art Making or Teaching American English Fluency. I see me being paid well for this rewarding work.

Health. Now is the time for me to really commit to a healthy regimen of diet and exercise to complement my creative work.

SAPELO SUNSET. I am happy and do not feel the nostalgia that generally accompanies the setting of the sun. Instead, I feel imbued with the light I gathered today while I roamed the natural wonders of this Georgia coast island. (Photo by Hallelujah Truth)

That’s Coffee with Hallelujah! Soul Blog with me and tell me what FIRES you plan to FLAME. What SOUPY MIX of LIFE are you cooking?

REVERB15 (Day 18) : Accessing new worlds through creative portals

PORTALS, PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE.  I see you! Do you see me? Do you see yourself? Are you at a threshold? (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for DOORWAYS, OPENINGS, or PORTALS that become passageways for transformation. Hallelujah for knowing when to cross the threshold or to acknowledge that you have indeed stepped into another world! 

Hallelujah for NEW WORLDS being accessed! Today's REVERB15 prompt comes from C. Streetlights and celebrates the ALCHEMY of gateways!

REVERB15  (Day 18) Prompt: Haven’t you ever been caught in a moment, a magnetic swirl of a moment, when you knew – just knew – that something magical was taking place? You might feel as if a portal into Something has opened at your heart to release a sort of energy into your own private universe, telling you, “Remember your magic…” 
Think of three important portal points – one in the past, the present, and one you hope to have in the future – and join them together into one powerful and personal gateway into 2015. Where will walking through this gateway lead you in this upcoming new year?

DANCING THROUGH PORTALS.

People have always provided important passageways for me. As an educator, I used to repeat to my students: 

"Remember, it is the people that you meet in your life that matter and will transform it. You never know who it is going to be, so keep your eyes and heart open! You will do the same for others." 

In my life, there have been many significant human beings discovered in books, movies, travel, on the bus, in the park, at the gym, in a lecture, at a dance, around the corner, and on the Internet. I cannot name them all here.

Instead, I will concentrate on how they have appeared in my life through structured CREATIVE PORTALS (yes, created by women) that have significantly impacted who I am as the SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, Hallelujah Truth. 

This pink photo of me stepping into the UNKNOWN was taken by my boon companion and husband, Chiboogamoo at the children's section of the Jepson Museum in Savannah, Georgia, while I was playing around with clothing with symbols on November 17, 2015.  Symbolic play is one way to step through DOORWAYS.

PAST CREATIVITY PORTALS
My experience as the founder and leader of "Spiritual Art Pilgrims," which lasted three years, was the culmination from engagement with the resources or past creativity PORTALS listed here. Explaining how they helped me cultivate my creative practice is a lengthy discussion, perhaps a book to be written or a course to be taken with me. 

Writing Down the Bones (1986), Natalie Goldberg

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (1992), Julia Cameron

Artist Conference Network, founded by Beverly Cassell in 1983)

It was empowering to hunger for and create the "Spiritual Art Pilgrims," a group founded for three years as a way to explore creativity through different modalities. This important PORTAL creation was also influenced by Shaun McNiff and his book, Art as Medicine.

PRESENT CREATIVITY PORTALS
These present PORTALS are the creative engines driving the dance of my life currently and forging new ones:
 

Coffee with Hallelujah
Begun in 2009, this blog is my PORTAL to the world community in my search for like-minded SOULS. When one's surrounding community doesn't seem big enough to find creative companionship, look farther outside its perimeter, I tell myself. 

My GOALS? While developing my voice through image, word, and persona, I connect with other CREATIVE SOULS. If you have fifteen minutes for a cup of coffee, then you have time to create! I've been successful in sharing my daily creativity with others through this blog.

The Daily Creative Practice
Understanding that my blog, Coffee with Hallelujah, was like an isolated island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean unbeknownst to anyone, I knew that I needed to go to New York City (Facebook) and invite CREATIVE SOULS back to my island. Thus in 2013, I gave birth to the PORTAL, The Daily Creative Practice on Facebook, which now has more than a 1,000 members. 

In addition to connecting my blog island to a big city on FB, I have also succeeded in creating a warm online community, one in which there is support for each other's unique offerings and everyone receives a "hurray"!

Women's Caucus for Arts Georgia (WCAGA)
What a delight to discover this PORTAL in my own metro-Atlanta community in 2009! The members comprising WCAGA are compassionate caring creatives who are feminists deeply engaged in their own work while connecting with others and fostering social justice.

InterPlay 
Hurray for my beloved InterPlay and its co-founders Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry! This improvisational system has transformed my life, by allowing me to integrate my body, mind, heart, and spirit all together in what is expressed by the word "bodyspirit"!

My BODYSPIRIT is comprised of infinite DOORWAYS that can be accessed through movement, voice, story, and stillness, alone or in community with others.

FUTURE CREATIVITY PORTALS
So! FUTURE PORTALS are opening, incorporating all that I have learned from the past and present PORTALS. 

In 2016, I see my creativity coaching business, InterPlay Art & Soul Creativity Coaching, expanding to online coaching and group play. 

Also using the deep and rewarding improvisational system of InterPlay, I will forge a CREATIVE SOJOURN which will be a quarterly journey inspired by my deep experience with the Artist's Way and Artist Conference Network. 

And, yes, I will launch my website, that has three PORTALS through which others can reach me.

That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me about where you intersected with me, which portal you came through and what we have created together. Or tell me about your own portals!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Gracias to my beloved Chiboogamoo, who makes so much magic possible in my life. Today, we are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. Kisses!  And without Lesly Fredman, friend and creativity coach, I would probably not have named myself Hallelujah Truth and started this blog. 

PERUVIAN HONEYMOON 2004. Happy 11th Wedding Anniversary Darling!

 

REVERB15 (Day 8) Efforting versus Serendipty

MORE THAN TWO MILLION VIEWS! In the few years I've had my Google Account (which I rarely attend to), I have acquired more than 2.5 million views! That is serendipitous! Meanwhile, my blog, "Coffee with Hallelujah," which has been a labor of love for six years has accrued just over 200,000 hits. Who or what can explain for this kind of chance occurrence?

Hallelujah for the MAGIC that we encounter on our LIFE JOURNEYS! What is the result of active effort and what happens serendipitously? This question arises from the REVERB15 (Day 8) Prompt:  

While alchemy is the active process of creating something of value, serendipity is the passive path to finding an unexpected treasure. Looking back through 2015, what did you diligently try to create?  What great thing did you just happen to find?


ALCHEMY (EFFORTING) versus SERENDIPTY (SURPRISE)

EFFORTING
"I've been efforting," said the Korean student sitting in my office at the Language Institute at Georgia Tech. I was his English teacher, and he, indeed, had been "efforting" to improve his English fluency. I have kept this form of "effort" in my expressive vocabulary, for I, too, do a lot of "efforting" this past year to establish a new career for myself as a facilitator of the life enriching improvisational system of InterPlay.


In 2015, I actively worked on CREATING my InterPlay reality in the following ways:

1. Received my InterPlay Leader certification.
2. Created the "InterPlay Alchemy" class and facilitated it for 16 weeks.
3. Created "InterPlay Lift," a Friday InterPlay offering, and met once a month for five months.
4. Offered a "free taste" of InterPlay with Jennifer Denning at the Clarkston Community Market one Saturday a month from May to November.
5. Created and developed "Creative Communication," using the forms and principles of InterPlay for a nine-week course for teenage refugees at the Clarkston Community Center. 
6. Facilitated InterPlay with Jennifer Denning at the Friendship Center for five Thursdays at the Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, engaging with people living with the challenge of chronic mental illness and poverty. 
7. Attended 4 InterPlay untensives, two in North Carolina, one in Wisconsin, and one here in Georgia with CathyAnn Beaty.
8. Created, collaborated, and conducted an InterPlay Atlanta untensive with Jennifer Denning and Christine Gautreaux in October.
9. Served as a creative director with Jennifer Denning to celebrate International InterPlay day in Atlanta.
10. Participated in the InterPlay Entrepreneurs class offered by Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry May through August. 
11. Created, collaborated, and conducted 3 InterPlay/Improv workshops with Lesly Fredman for a business program at Georgia Tech.
12. Offered and conducted 4 free InterPlay classes, (two at local universities) one at Agnes Scott and the other at Emory.
13. Wrote 20 blog posts for our InterPlay Atlanta blog. 
14. Made 6 slideshow InterPlay videos on my Hallelujah Truth youtube channel.
15. Created, collaborated, applied and got accepted an InterPlay workshop on Evolution at the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa.
16. Created my business, InterPlay Art & Soul Creativity Coaching, started a page on Facebook, offered free 30-minute sessions, and worked with several paying clients.
17. During 2015, I also attended every Second Saturday play session I could, was a substitute facilitator for Jennifer's Friday Spirit Play 2 times, and attended a story telling workshop with Masankho Banda.  

MANIFESTING MONDAYS (Coffee with Hallelujah). Effort or Serendipty? At the suggestion of Christine Gautreaux, I posted on Facebook my desire to begin a manifesting group. These 3 folks responded. Random? We've been meeting since August. The joy of calling people together and seeing what you might discover seems serendipitous! I love it that the word PROOF is behind us! Proof of manifesting what we name?

OTHER EFFORTINGS
In other areas that I "efforted include, drawing or painting every day for a minimum of 15 minutes; moderating my Facebook group, "The Daily Creative Practice" (please join us, here), during which I led three quarterly creativity challenges and am getting ready to offer the fourth for this year beginning December 21st; wrote 39 blog posts for this blog, "Coffee with Hallelujah;" and created Manifesting Mondays (Coffee with Hallelujah) in August and have met every Monday since its origin. I also "efforted" to lose 25 pounds to ensure I don't go on highblood pressure medication and to maintain and deepen my existing relationships by fostering love and forgiveness.

SERENDIPTY? SURPRISE?
Was it serendipitous that the Valentine card my 85-year-old mother gave me in 2015 filled a deep yearning of what I longed to hear her say to me? How about the love I feel for myself when I dance and the fullness of connecting with others? There is that surge in my heart, which is so satisfying and always catches me by surprise.  There is also the awe I feel when looking up at the sky and the clouds as they pass me by (especially after being in a windowless office for 20 years).  

And then there is the dynamic moment of true knowing that electrifies me. 

I will continue to examine this complex question and see what else I might discover about the SERENDIPTY in my life. And I would like to transform for the "efforting" into something more easeful and lighthearted. 

That's Coffee with Hallelujah Truth! SOUL BLOG with me about the alchemy and serendipty in your life.