CREATING THE GOOD & HOPE

FINDING SUSTENANCE IN THE WHOLE SENSE OF SELF 

Greetings Dear Sojourners! 

It has been more than a year (November 10, 2017) since I blogged last. I have completed my year's grieving over the election of Donald Trump as our 45th president of the United States. I am acknowledging  my responsibility to have a voice in my community and to speak out in my own way.

Many of us--sensitive spirits and even not-so-sensitive spirits--have suffered from the negativity and harm we see being done to the people inhabiting our country, to our lands, and our world neighbors. Other than making phone calls, signing petitions, and marching, we experience a helplessness of being unable to effect any positive change. I have struggled with my own ineffectiveness.

In the Facebook Group, "The Daily Creative Practice," that I founded and administer, I have led "gratitude" practices, asking participants to create and express "the good." During the entire month of November 2017, we posted and commented on multiple aspects of our lives in which we found  and named the positive.

ROOTED IN THE HEART (all art by Hallelujah Truth)

In times of stress like now, I know that we need to keep looking for the GOOD, asking ourselves, "What good can come from this turmoil, this injustice, and ignorance?" I know that we can reach into this darkness and find the jewels in one another, this nurturing abundant planet, and in ourselves.

Let's dance, digging our feet into the rich soil of the Earth and our Souls. This image (posted above) that I created represents my desire for us to soothe our hearts at the root level, bathing our nervous system with love, patience, hope, insight, and yes--imagination. 

Through self care a healthy perspective becomes possible. This morning my brilliant husband Tony and I will attend "Dance Church" in our little town of Decatur. At the ballet studio, we will move our bodies in whatever ways they need to be moved with other Decaturites to random music that someone has prepared for us. It is a lovely connective community experience. At the end of 90 minutes of dance, we sit down on the floor together and name "what we are present to." 

I firmly believe that this kind of activity of "Dance Church" helps me administer to the seeds of hope in my heart and allows me to generate more hope. Like a seasoned gardener, I can grow hope. 

I have found that the act of "listening" to other people's despair and acknowledging their need to be heard is also a positive act. By listening and not judging allows me to connect in a deep way with people. I have a young friend from Iran, who I met with the day after the Supreme Court approved the travel ban, preventing people from eight countries (six of them Muslim) from traveling to the United States. She has not seen her parents for three years. Now, she cannot leave the U.S. to visit them, and they are prevented from entering our country to visit their daughter. I am so sorry. While listening to my friend's story, we both found strength and connection. Hope.

BEING PRESENT TO ASSISTANCE FROM THE DIVINE

And I ask myself, "What about asking assistance from the Divine? I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, but I house mine under one big spiritual tent. I envision (using my imagination) a relationship with the Great Mystery. Through this relationship, I experience inspiration that fuels my hope. Mostly in the morning, I move (dance?) in what I have learned to call "dancing prayer." Like wings, I lift my arms up and push my heart out into my imagined universe. It is in this act and this environment of hope that I express my prayers.

FINDING LIFE IN DEATH

Each day, we experience disappointment, and a little bit of us dies. We are surrounded by the living and the dead. I know that is the perpetual cycle of life. I keep making decisions on how to grow life from what has fallen fallow. Perfect at this time of year. The days are short. The nights are long. And the Earth in Decatur, Georgia, is resting for the winter. 

I make the choice to see the good, to name the good, and to create HOPE for more good. That's Coffee with Hallelujah. Soul Blog with me and tell me what actions you are taking to create and express the Good/Hope.

ARTICULATED SOUL: New land for a new day, experiencing boy energy

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH JOURNEYS. (all art by Hallelujah Truth)

 

 

 

 

Hallelujah for speaking! Speaking in words! Speaking in image! Speaking to each other, certain or uncertain, we speak... And in speaking, we travel into old or new lands. Recently I began to travel and would like to share one small aspect about my experience...

Travel begins with an invitation... 

Would you like 
some coffee?

Travel depends of your engagement with the environment... 
 

Humus is rich organic material,
and worms wait for 
your fingers 


Travel introduces "otherness."
 

You, with your boy energy,
how hot will it 
get...
before I understand
the maturity
behind your 
playfulness?
 

That's Coffee With Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me. You are invited to articulate your SOUL.

Dreamtime Hallelujah: Welcome to my soul, the beginning of my story using words and images

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH. The beginning of a sequential art story using words. (all art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for being an artist! Hallelujah for supportive friends and fellow artists who encourage me to grow. My journey is rich with fellow sojourners asking me to expand.

These are some of their urgings:

Where do you want to go?

What is your story?

Try animation!

Try sequential art!

From these verbal interactions, I understood the overall request to develop a story employing these figures—Mother Mystery, Hallelujah Truth, Mother Alligator, and Wandjina—from my psyche.The best kind of urging to write a story granted me the permission to begin “wherever” with “whatever” (thank you Maggie Davis).

As you know, in my creative daily practice, I repeat the mantra: Not good. Not bad. Just is. So let’s get started with the beginning...

1: The Beginning

Mother awakens

welcoming the river

under the river

honoring the moisture

forming the cloud,

hoisting the anguish

of the flowers.

As I breathe,

breath to breath

laboring petal to petal

to petal to petal

you listen, uncertain

of your story

and you bite

into mine, tear

it with your

teeth, demanding the

grit beneath BEAUTY.

2: Self One

Before TIME, before

your perception of

sunlight flowing from

my head, I

held you swaddled

in my fist.

I drank spit

from the pollinators

and my toes

covered in honey

danced the incremental

steps of BEING.

3: Self Two

Singing you into

teeth, tooth by

tooth, you are

the good mother

cradling me gently

in your jaws,

tongue wet I

dream red dust

wind blowing grit

severing divine intimacy

storm is birth

to dreamtime infinity

4. Self Three

You are ignorant.

That is the beginning of telling the story of my Dreamtime Hallelujah. Welcome to my soul. SOUL BLOG with me at Coffee with Hallelujah!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:  Big thanks to Women’s Caucus for Arts of Georgia (WCAGA), which brought me into close proximity with approximately 20 artists during the drawing marathon, “Draw 4 Days.” (see this blog, blog, blog for starters)

During this time, I was given numerous opportunities to tell “my story” connected to my images to accomplished artists who were very supportive of my creative process as they listened. I especially want to acknowledge five WCAGA artists: 1) Maggie Davis, who invited me into an in-depth conversation about the future of my work. 2) Loretta Paraguassu, whose playfulness as expressed in her being and her art, wants to collaborate on an animated film with me(What an exciting idea!). 3) Anita Stewart, who dug deep and wanted to know specifics about my images and share her experiences about rock art and other cultures. 4) Marie Weaver, who expressed appreciation for my compositions and encouraged me to explore expanding the imagery I’m currently using. 5) Callahan Pope McDonough, whose high energy and creativity, kept me engaged in my artmaking during the marathon in addition to her constant encouragement of the value of me work.

I would also like to thank Trish Weaver, an active participant in my Facebook Group, The Daily Creative Practice (join us), who is such a fabulous story teller both through images and words. She has kept asking for my story in words.  Let’s see what I might do Trish!

And thank you to the Decatur Book Festival 2014 that had a “Graphic Lit” section and heard the expression, sequential art, for the first time.

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH: Honoring infinite easeful joyful creation and connection through mystical trinity!

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH 1. Introducing Hallelujah's mystical trinity! Hallelujah is all three: The Youthful Journeying Maiden (center), the Comforting Mother of Mystery (left), and the Primal Androgynous Alligator. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for YOU, the OTHER. For YOU are the reason I blog! Hallelujah for MY PRACTICE of drawing, for making images deepens me on my journey! Hallelujah for DISCOVERY of the NEW and hallelujah for ALL that stays the same.

I practice continuity through FAMILIARITY and passage into the UNKNOWN through established routes! What a thrilling way to travel in one's life! My LIFE is filled with the PURPOSE of BEING the same and something different--simultaneously!

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH 2. How excited I was to see Wandjina emerge combined with Mother Mystery! Drawing is meaningfully fun. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Always thankful for my humanities major from Pepperdine University, I believe my early college studies grounded my soul in metaphor. Thank goodness for poring through art history, museums, and Europe, expanding ideas by reading philosophy and immersing myself in religious studies, minoring in theatre, and always appreciating power of the written word! Over the years since then, I have grounded myself in easeful joyful creation.

Today I am celebrating the heightened MAGIC of BEING--words and image combined! Cooperating to create an altogether new entity! I have done so with images expressing my psyche.
 

DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH 3. We Hallelujahs began to celebrate by drawing #3. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Ta da! Introducing the Hallelujah Trinity! Three Hallelujahs comprise one Hallelujah--DREAMTIME HALLELUJAH, past, present, and future. I am the same but different depending on deep time. Thank you for being the OTHER to hold the open space for me, for witnessing me--Dreamtime Hallelujah.

That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me. Tell me what you think of Dreamtime Hallelujah and how you might imagine your mystical trinity!