REVERB11: THE SOUL FOOD OF A CREATIVITY EVANGELICAL—GOING DEEPER AND WIDER AND SHARING THE PROCESS

THE UNIVERSE AM I. Soul Food is BEING here with YOU. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

REVERB#11 PROMPT(December 10): SOUL FOOD. How do you nourish your soul? What activities are essential nutrients for your soul’s well-being? (Carolyn Rubenstein’s blog, A Beautiful Ripple Effect)

It is early morning--6:00 am on Saturday, December 10--and I am feasting on my SOUL FOOD. Surrounded by my watercolor paints and paper, micron-pens, a light wave of patchouli incense flows over me, as Donovan croons his sutras on the Bose. The red Christmas lights warm this cold winter morning as Donovan repeats the words NIRVANA, NIRVANA, NIRVANA. He sings, “with no obstacles and no fear liberates herself from illusion, now to realize perfect NIRVANA.  This is a typical “awakening” for me at the table of my SOUL FOOD. I am comforted by the fact that Chiboogamoo is up in bed drinking his Gingko tea and reading the latest New Yorker.

At the table of my SOUL FOOD, I am fed by the GREAT MYSTERY! I invite the UNKNOWN to visit me through my creativity. Recently, I began developing a mission statement for this SOUL BLOG of mine. In my JOURNEY, I look for ways to “clarify” my intentions around my creativity. Why do I have a presence in the blogging community? What is the purpose of Coffee With Hallelujah?  This is what I have come up with so far:

My mission is to be a joyful pilgrim in awe of the great spirit as I go deeper and wider in my journey. I connect and share with souls across generations who seek well-being and wisdom through playful artistic and scientific expression.

COSMOS EYES. I am fed by CREATIVITY. I believe we SEE the TRUTH through our understanding of the COSMOS.  ART EQUALS SOUL. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Like any food, SOUL FOOD can be shared. Sharing ways to go deeper into one’s own creativity FEEDS me (I have been called a creativity evangelical)! As soon as I had cultivated this mission statement for my creativity blog, I brought the same activity to my creative writing class at the Georgia Tech Language Institute. What a glorious way to enact my mission statement of “sharing with souls across generations”! How thrilling it was to see my students write on the top of a blank sheet of paper: WHAT IS MY TRUE PURPOSE OF LIFE? (activity adapted from Steve Pavlina). I felt their energy consolidate. They hunkered down and became committed to penning their visions of self. Here are two results from this class activity:


A Venezuelan student, Vanessa, on her blog, Embracing My Inner Jackson Pollock, developed this mission statement:

No space is left unpainted in the unstoppable and dramatic representation of the subconscious. An 18-year-old naturally seeking the creation of a complete atmosphere through strong and rapid brush movements with no frame limiting the canvas of life. Innovation, depth, passion…Experiencing chaos within order.

Another student from Saudi Arabia, Fahad, wrote on his blog, Hope in the Dark Desert: I am the hope in the dark desert. I never give up. I always believe in God. I always believe in myself. I always know I WILL DO IT, but I just don’t know when. His mission statement:

I am here to expose myself. I am here to learn. I am here to think. I am here to thank. I am here to make mistakes. I am here to learn from my mistakes.

Universe Am I. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Shine ye spinning orbs of light

Shine ye crystal starts so bright

All ye harmonized by love

Set in motion, moved by love

Homo sapien am I no more

Beyond Beyond I soar the universe am I

From Donovan Sutras, Universe Am I

That's Coffee with Hallelujah!  I will continue to share my SOUL FOOD with you and I ask that you share your SOUL FOOD with me. Let's feast together at the table of LIFE! 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thank you Gwen Bell for the 3-month course, Align Your Website, and for being true to yourself and calling. I am so glad to have met you online last year during #REVERB10. Great appreciation to Donovan for his beautiful album, Donovan Sutras, which I have been in love with since the late 1990’s when I discovered it. Your lyrical voice and words have melted into my life. Creativity Writing Students thank you for your willingness to explore the mystery of yourselves and to "try on" something new. As always, thanks Chiboogamoo!

SOUL FOOD. Coffee with Hallelujah (photo by Chiboogamoo)

THIS PILGRIM WAY

THANKSGIVING GUEST BLOG BY MELISSA TIDWELL

MELISSA TIDWELL, SPIRITUAL WRITER

Introduction by Hallelujah Truth  HAPPY THANKSGIVING WEEK PILGRIMS! It is the time of year to openly express our gratitude about being here on this beautiful planet. It is also a very good time to address the question of PILGRIMAGE—OUR JOURNEY HERE NOW.

Hallelujah for finding fellow pilgrims while we pursue our own individual JOURNEYS! In the spring of 2010, I connected with the writer, Melissa Tidwell, at the Artist Conference Network (ACN) weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. During this weekend, we artists delve deeply into our hearts and minds and cultivate a vision statement to guide us in our work. At the completion of the ACN weekend, I knew I had met a soulmate. It is with great pleasure that I offer you Hallelujah’s first guest blog, THIS PILGRIM WAY, written by spiritual art pilgrim, Melissa Tidwell.

THIS PILGRIM WAY

Spiritual practices move us from one place to another, from our habitual stances of fear and reactivity into a longing to go deeper in the mystery. Some practices use stillness to do this, while other practices achieve the same thing with movement. Pilgrimage is a practice that is about moving our feet along a more or less fixed route so that our spirits can be set free to take in the holiness around us.

Going along these paths worn smooth by the feet of other pilgrims, we can see what they saw, breathe in the same air and stumble over the same rocks. Our process is unique to our experience but also part of a bigger pattern, tradition, history, some of which we can only guess at. And this seeing that we are not alone gives us courage to undertake the arduous parts of the journey, face the emptiness of the desert before us or in us.

This pilgrimage need not be formal, like the tradition of San Juan de Campostelo, following a path across Spain that thousands of pilgrims walk every year. A pilgrimage can be the walk through the year, tracing the path from season to season, watching the leaves turn or the butterflies arrive. Holidays are a lovely way to mark the passage of time, and most of us have a built-in calendar of personal holy days that we recognize as we tramp through the year. The anniversary of a loved one’s death can be one such marker, a day of remembrance. Other days can carry a lighter touch, as my own personal ritual for the opening day of baseball season is about more than the game but also about the eternal recurring hope that this is the year.

Some of our ritual observances can grow stale of course, especially those that are accompanied by commercialized excess. We can try to breathe new life into the old ways, invent new forms, refuse altogether to participate. But the art of being a pilgrim involves the continual putting of one foot after the other, of being exactly where we are, not skipping ahead to the end or sitting stuck by the side of the road.

In my family, there are certain foods that must be present at holiday meals, like special cake baked for Christmas, but more than anything the iron clad requirement that potato salad be served for every important gathering. Even at Christmas, when this summery picnic food seems in some ways wildly out of place. But we have to have it, and it has to be made to exacting specifications, down to a sort of ritual blessing that must be uttered when mixing it. At times it seems like so much trouble, but it is also a comfort and now I can’t imagine not having it. I have puzzled over it, wondered about its origins in our class and cultural context, poked around the edges of it as family myth and lore. It’s an oddity, a symbol, a sign, the sort of things pilgrims carry with them as a key to this deeper life we seek, rich with the past and the heart of always becoming.

What is your pilgrim path about? What clues or tools do you carry with you? What special points along the way do you observe with ritual or special attention? If you aren’t sure, maybe it’s time to begin seeing yourself as a pilgrim, being attentive to the path, and marking the way with little feasts of joy and remembrance.

“I’m curious and hopeful at every bend.” -Melissa Tidwell
photos by Halllelujah Truth

ABOUT MELISSA TIDWELL, SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM

Melissa Tidwell, a spiritually focused writer, was born in Augsburg, Germany, and grew up on military bases around the world. After residing in Nashville for more than a decade, Melissa “pilgrimed” her way to Atlanta in 2010.  Currently, she is seeking a publisher for her spiritual memoir, How Janis Saved Me.

In response to my question, “Who are you spiritually?,” Melissa responded thoughtfully, “My spiritual pilgrimage at times has been a process of fleeing from an oppressive orthodoxy towards a wider understanding of the spirit. Curiously, the path seems to be leading me in some ways right back to where I started.”

CREATIVITY EXERCISE at the GT LANGUAGE INSTITUTE: SCENES FROM A DAY

Hallelujah for CREATIVITY and the celebration of diversity! As one of the final blog entries in my creative writing class at the GT Language Institute for Spring Session One, my class chose eight topics for photos to be taken by everyone over the weekend. The goal was to loosely capture the same “Scenes from a Day” in their individual lives in order to tell a story about themselves. We hoped this project would help us glimpse how different and unique each one is—being that the 15 students hail from Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Korea, China, Libya, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Spain.

We agreed to post our photos--one of the bedroom, a view from our window, shoes we wear every day, the fridge, an activity from the day, an object in the hand, our computer desktop, and writing or drawing on paper--on the same day at the same time in class, so that everyone would have the freedom to create independently. My desire was for my students to experience the quality of their own creative voices and imagery while at the same time collaborating with their classmates to make “one” class project—something like individual singers contributing to a chorus.

I asked them if they wanted me to participate and they said yes. Below are my photos and captions for “Scenes from a Day (February 26-28). First, however, I invite you to sample some of my students' imaginative responses: Blueberry Cellophane, Pitch Your Guts,  Butterflying to Infinity, The Footprint of Water, and Happy Stapler.

1. BEDROOM: COMPOSING AND REPOSING—WHEREVER!

Creativity dwells in my home, in my husband, and in my heart. We both write, make art, and teach. Our bedroom has two creativity stations. Here you witness my Chiboogamoo happily composing underneath a painting we brought back from the top end of Australia.

2. VIEW FROM YOUR WINDOW: UNHARNESSED IMAGINATION

SEES BEYOND BARRIERS

My imagination seeks companionship through my art and by SOUL BLOGGING. I greet ALL GUESTS—real and imagined—with “HELLO” and “GOOD.” In my physical world, my Chiboogamoo and I live in a condo in Decatur and can walk to the library and numerous pubs and shops in 10 to 15 minutes.

3. SHOES YOU ALWAYS WEAR: DEPENDABLE WORTHY STEEDS

I am a PILGRIM. I am on a SPIRITUAL ART JOURNEY. I depend on my sturdy shoes to take me to places of DISCOVERY away from the sole preoccupation of self to the UNIVERSALITY we all share!

4. FRIDGE: SAY YES

I say YES to nurturing the BODY and the SOUL! YES! Feed me lovingly one and all. I believe in the joy of mutuality and reciprocity. I believe in a steady diet of YESes and CREATIVITY.

5. AN ACTIVITYFROM YOUR DAY: CONNECTING WITH THE WORLD

At moments, TIME stops. Suns set. We breathe our individual happy breaths, but then we are compelled to connect with OTHERS…and the WORLD. The New York Times serves me indigestible facts--citizens are being killed in Libya by their own government. (See my blog entry about interaction with Libyan students.) It is warm for February. The early evening air whispers softly of approaching spring.

6. AN OBJECT IN YOUR HAND: THE WORLD

I’ve got the whole world in my hands! I feel so fortunate to commune with the people of the world here at the Language Institute at Georgia Tech! You broaden my experience of the self; you deepen me. You make me a better person, artist, and teacher. (Listen to Veronica Frosgren sing the song, “I’ve Got the Whole World in My Hands” in Dublin.)

7. YOUR DESKTOP COMPUTER SCREEN: CELEBRATION OF COLOR

Green excites and ignites me. My green “Celebration of Summer” mermaid greets me every day on my “virtual” desktop.  I absolutely adore COLOR. As an artist, my “real” desktop is an explosive song of COLOR and IMAGE. I am a primitive sophisticate!

8. WRITE OR DRAW SOMETHING ON A WHITE SHEET OF PAPER: YES

YES! YES, I say to myself. Not good. Not bad. Just is. Say YES! Lean into YES and see where it takes you! Say YES! (To see more on this topic of YES, check out Alice Teeter’s poem with the same name in a past blog entry of mine.)

Hallelujah for the JOURNEY! That concludes COFFEE WITH HALLELUJAH for today. SOUL BLOG with me and tell me about your JOURNEY today! 

STRATA OF SELF: Not Good, Not Bad

Judgment? Nonjudgment? Acceptance? What kind of PATH are you JOURNEYING on? Do you allow yourself to BE? Does BEINGNESS occur naturally or is there a PRACTICE required—a way of listening to ourselves gently, taking in what we are thinking, feeling, and doing?

Welcome FELLOW PILGRIMS to MY ARTFUL JOURNEY, one that unwinds for me each day. Having just completed a writing workshop with Natalie Goldberg, in Charleston, South Carolina, I am repeating to myself, “Not good. Not Bad. Just is.”

With this PRACTICER OF ZEN, who wrote the book, “WRITING DOWN THE BONES,” we did numerous 10-minute “digs,” excavating layers of ourselves responding to writing prompts “I remember,” “ I don’t remember,” “I’m thinking of,” “I’m not thinking of.” We stacked each layer of ourselves in our notebooks one after the other. My Chiboogamoo, paleontologist extraordinaire, would have marveled at the STRATA OF SELF we accumulated. 

Then Natalie, WELL TRAVELLED SOJOURNER, asked us to read OUR BONES (writing) out loud to witnesses, who were to “recall” our words non-judgmentally. As we extracted the writer’s bones (words) from our memory and spoke them aloud, all of us were to repeat silently to ourselves, “Not good. Not bad. Just is.”

Done daily, this kind of structured “writing and reading out loud to a nonjudgmental listener”—even if that listener is the individual pilgrim’s self—is what’s called a WRITING PRACTICE.

WRITING DOWN THE BONES, which was published in 1986, shattered the previous writing paradigms. This ZEN PILGRIM emphasizes the PROCESS of writing, not the FINISHED PRODUCT. In an ongoing PROCESS of writing (journey), you listen to the knowledge of your body--that deep knowing each one of us possesses. This knowledge is not good, not bad--it just is.

Take a breath. Write. Breathe. Write. These words are leaving a breadcrumb trail to YOUSELF, PILGRIM. As our breathing ANCHORS us to THE NOW, so does our writing. WRITING is BEING.

Hallelujah inhaled the TEACHINGS of this WELL TRAVELLED SOJOURNER. H A L L E L U J A H ! My daily practice of drawing and painting—NOT GOOD. NOT BAD. JUST IS.

The kangaroos depicted here are from two sources. First, they hold my memories of watching aboriginal dancers become THE KANGAROO from their DREAMTIME in performances in downtown Melbourne, Victoria in 2006 during the Commonwealth Games. Second, they merge with my long observations of the actual marsupial, as I traveled across the vastness of the Australian continent with my Chiboogamoo. Breathe.

My daily practice, my STRATA of SELF yearned to speak of my Australian observations and the hold DREAMTIME has on me. NOT BAD. NOT GOOD. 

Recall for Hallelujah your STRATA of SELF. Breathe…