REVERB15 (Day 11): Processing the unknown to understand and foster love through image making and storytelling

MANDALA of WOMEN WEARING HIJABS. (Art by Hallelujah Truth, aka Ruth Schowalter)

Hallelujah for each and everyone of us! We each are precious and unique and deserving of being loved and respected for our differences. All of our lives matter! I support the FREEDOM to be ourselves in our local and global communities.

Instead of embracing diversity, so many people in our world seem to be battling for their perceived "right" way of being. Not one to turn on the televison, I do listen to National Public Radio fairly regularly and glance at the New York Times, here and there, but most of my awareness of world affairs is first discovered on Facebook. Whatever world news is trending gets commented on by friends and acquaintances I respect--even ones with different opinions. They link to news stories and I follow their trails.

As the candidates for the USA presidential race campaign,  terrorists massacre the innocent in public spaces, and Syrians flea the violence in their country and seek refuge on a massive scale, the intolerance I am witnessing haunts me. What can each one of us do to support our personal FREEDOM and that of others who differ from us? Today's REVERB15 (Day 11) prompt seems relevant to my question:

REVERB15 (Day 11) Prompt: Muriel Rukeyser once wrote: "The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms." And I could not agree more. Our stories are our own but, in sharing them, they become universal. And timeless. What stories touched you this year? Which stories of your own are you glad you shared?

Today in response to this prompt, I want to embrace and honor two Muslim women's personal stories I heard on today's Morning Edition on National Public Radio (NPR) today. They are doing what they can in their community to connect with others to foster a better understanding of who they are as individuals and their choice to wear a head covering. 

You can click on this NPR link to hear it:
Muslim Women Who Wear Hijabs Are Fearful of Backlash After Attacks

Each one of us needs to tell our personal stories based on our experiences to foster tolerance and promote FREEDOM for each of us to live securely in our communities and to blossom. 

During my time as an English language instructor at the Georgia Tech Language Institute, I wrote the following blogs and created the images as I processed my understanding of women in hijabs. 

That Something Other: The Mystery of the Hijab
Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream and the Journey of One Spiritual Art Pilgrim 
I Never Thought the Burka Would Seduce Me 
Veiled: Exploring Connections and Finding Meaning Across Time, Culture, and Purpose

ACCEPTING WHAT WE DON'T KNOW WITH THE READINESS OF LOVE (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

That's Coffee with Hallelujah. Soul Blog with me and share one of your stories with me.

POMEGRANATE SEEDS, GESTATION, CREATIVITY DURING PERIODS OF DARKNESS

GESTATING. While waiting for what is next, I draw. Working full-time at the Georgia Tech Language Institute diminishes my drawing time. Patiently, I meditate each morning...making the marks I can in the moments allowed me before I leave to teach my international students--many of them inspiration for the drawings I make in the morning. (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Recently, I have started a new habit! As I sit down to draw, I put in a CD of Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Numerous times, have I listened to "The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories about the Cycles of Creativity." One the central myths she talks about is Persephone's journey to the underworld and her becoming the bride of Hades while her mother Demeter suffers above. Dr. Estes explanation of this myth is rich and merits repeated listenings. I would like to blog more about my understanding of this myth in the future when I return from my visit to the underworld. 


That's Coffee with Hallelujah! Soul Blog with me! Tell me of your creativity journeys. What do you know of the underworld? Of Clarissa Pinkola Estes?

NEW STUDENT IN A BURKA: INVITATION INTO THE UNKNOWN

NEW STUDENT IN A BURKA. In the fall of 2011, for the first time here at the Georgia Tech Language Institute where I teach English, I noticed a student wearing a burka. For several years now, I have been observing the women in hijabs from Turkey, Saudia Abrabia, Jordan, and Libya, intrigued by the fabrics and myriad of designs as well as by the various ways that the women adjust their scarves around their temples, ears, and neck. In my art, I have allowed these women in hijabs to become symbols of what I do not understand--in other words--the GREAT MYSTERY! I am curious about this new student who has chosen to wear her burka to our international classrooms. Perhaps, it is the way her eyes glance out at all of us--seeing us in full form--as she moves down the hallway, a bit hidden and obscured. I hope in the coming weeks, I might get to know her. (art by Hallelujah Truth)

PATTY GRIFFIN’S IMPOSSIBLE DREAM and the JOURNEY OF ONE SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM

Great Feminine Mystery (All Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for the JOURNEY! Hallelujah for being a PILGRIM. Today, I wept as I listened to Patty Griffin’s 2004 album, Impossible Dream, for the tenth time in three days as I’ve been making the images you see here with this blog. I’ve had this Patty Griffin album for years and loved Griffin’s wailing plaintive voice but never really listened to the lyrics. Yesterday, my PILGRIM ears perked up every time the “Rowing Song” came on:

As I row, row, row

Going slow, slow, slow

Just down below me is the old sea…

Nobody knows, knows, knows

So many things things so

So out of range…

Sometimes so strange

Sometimes so sweet

Sometimes so lonely…

I have been blogging as Hallelujah Truth, SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, for more than two years now. Sometimes, I write about art, death, science, teaching, or just daily struggles and how ART heals, but ALWAYS, I am writing about JOURNEY.

Recently, there have been events in my life that are so HUGE and PAINFUL, that I have been unable to find an appropriate way to blog about them. In August, my young nephew Thomas committed suicide two weeks before he turned sixteen. This event deepened my commitment to JOURNEY of AUTHENTICITY, yet left me even farther from the HOME of the familiar that I left once I decided I had to be ME and I had to HEAL and GROW.

My family members, who are experiencing collective pain, are slowly finding individual ways to lessen the intensity of their grief surrounding Thomas’ death. I, too, find that to keep moving on my SOJOURN, I must go to the SOURCE of the anguish and allow my feelings to BE. Perhaps, I will write more about Thomas at another time when I KNOW more about the BIRTH and DEATH cycle.

At this moment, my Chiboogamoo is at the University of Georgia in Athens to give a talk about his Australian research. I could not go with him because my feline companion of 17 years is dying, and I can’t bear to part with him. My ATTACHMENTS—large and small—don’t matter, for I am alone—we are all alone on our JOURNEYS. I must eventually release my dear kitty Misha and in doing so might find some resolve to accept Thomas’ premature departure from this EARTH.

The rest of Griffin’s “Rowing Song” expresses my sentiments:

The further I go

More letters from home never arrive

And I’m alone

All of the way

All of the way

Alone and Alive

You just have to go, go, go

Where I don’t know, know, know….

My PILGRIMAGE to be my AUTHENTIC SELF has taken me deeply into the UNKNOWN. This is what JOURNEY is about fellow SOUL BLOGGERS. I write to you as a changed PILGRIM unknown to MYSELF. Hallelujah Truth!

ABOUT THE MYSTERY OF THE HIJAB: Several years ago when increasing numbers of women from the Middle East started attending the Language Institute at Georgia Tech, where I teach ESL, I grew fascinated with the image of the hijab, the scarf the women use to conceal their hair, ears, and neck.

The women lingering in the hallways and leaning earnestly into their English language textbooks became a symbol of the UNKNOWN for me. At first, I knew very little about their countries of Libya, Jordan, Yemen, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and who they were in their roles as wives, mothers, daughters, students and professionals. Now, more informed about the “real” physical women, I still have allowed their beautifully covered heads and cloaked bodies to represent the MYSTERY of LIFE for me. For me, each woman in a hijab has become the symbol of the GREAT FEMININE MOTHER.

I allow GREAT FEMININE MOTHER to be present in my drawings and paintings, patient to learn from her. Where is SHE from? Where is SHE going? Where might I go with HER?

PAINTING FROM MEMORY of THE MYSTERY

FROM MEMORY. On one sunny Friday in October, a volunteer organization, The One Project, held an event to raise money to support breast cancer research. Created by international students at the Georgia Tech Language Institute, The One Project sold pink t-shirts, the breast cancer foundation’s color, painted faces, and threw pies at instructors who had collected more than fifty dollars each.

Many photos were being taken on that lovely fall day. I watched as a group of women in hijabs gathered on a picnic table, fascinated by the array of colors and fabric. Then to my great delight, one woman opened a white umbrella! The diffused light floated like gauze over the pink adorned women. I was entranced and had to “copy” the image by drawing and painting it that weekend!

GEORGIA TECH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE STUDENTS, OCTOBER 2011

THE PHOTO: On Monday at the GT Language Institute, I implored the student who had taken the photos on her cell phone to email me one of the photos—which she did. I have altered the image in photoshop to obscure the women’s identity in order to give them privacy. A side effect of asking this young hijabbed woman to send me the photo was that we had an electric discussion about making art! She draws! She was hungry to talk about her love of using graphite to depict everything around her. The next day, seeking me out, she flipped open her cell phone to show me an image of her room that she had drawn since our discussion! Hallelujah for ART, the universal language!

THE IMAGE FROM THE PHOTO. Oh GREAT FEMININE MYSTERY—where is your ESSENCE when seen directly, as I witness you in the photo?

PAINTING THE MYSTERY FROM A PHOTO

As I worked on creating a second image while looking at the photo of these women in hijabs, I allowed myself to experience their “hands”—something that was not in my first image. I decided to omit the sunglass and jeans and open smiled mouths.

After this painting was completed, I surmised that I like better painting from my memory….after all the ESSENCE of the GREAT MYSTERY is not physical…SHE is a feeling, a thought, a moment in time. Both EPHEMERAL and INFINITE.

Read my other blogs related to Women in Hijabs:

• Gasper of the Great Mystery
• I Never Thought the Burka Would Seduce Me
• This I Believe: Creativity Transforms
• That Something Other: The Mystery of the Hijab

The Impossible Dream Lyrics

To dream ... the impossible dream ...
To fight ... the unbeatable foe ...
To bear ... with unbearable sorrow ...
To run ... where the brave dare not go ...
To right ... the unrightable wrong ...
To love ... pure and chaste from afar ...
To try ... when your arms are too weary ...
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie will lie peaceful and calm,
when I'm laid to my rest ...
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach ... the unreachable star ...

--Lyrics by Joe Darion

IS THE MYSTERY UNREACHABLE?

LIBYAN VIGIL at the GT LANGUAGE INSTITUTE: PLEASE LET PEACEFUL CHANGE OCCUR

LIBYA. I sit next to women from your cities who have come to study English at Georgia Tech. They are keeping daily vigils in our Language Institute hallways with their laptop computers flashing live news of your protests. Their computers are emitting steady streams of shouting and gunfire.

Today, I sit next to two LIBYAN women. One LIBYAN student, who I have only gotten to know in the last week because of LIBYA’s civilian uprising and her persistent vigil, looks at me. “My whole body is sore,” she says. “It hurts if you touch it.” She takes one hand and touches her arm. She shakes her body trying to free it from the horrors of the killing going on in her country. She generously accepts my concern and scoops me into the experience of her pain. There seems to be strength in unanimously acknowledging the inhumanity of Gadhafi’s response to the LIBYAN people’s protests.

I am familiar with the other student sitting next to her. She is taking my intermediate writing class. She nestles close to the woman with the computer, saying nothing only leaning into the face of the computer. “Right now, Gadhafi’s army is attacking her city,” explains the other woman. “Mine was attacked three days ago.” We pause. The noise and confusion continue to blare from the computer. And we just sit there with nothing to say. My writing student, an obstetrician with four children, peers into the computer. Her silky brown hijab and long black coat seem to engulf her. There is too much suffering. Too much worry. Too much unknown. Too much shooting. We cannot make eye contact. Then it is time for all of us to go to class. We disperse.

“How was your day,” my Chiboogamoo greets me in the evening. I cannot shake away the hallway vigils of my LIBYAN students. I cannot forget their sense of helplessness. “I feel lost,” I tell my patient husband, “What are we supposed to do in the face of evil?”  Earlier in the day, the LIBYAN woman had quietly said to me, “In my religion, we are told that we can only do our small part. We cannot change the large picture.”

After failing to get CNN’s attention here in Atlanta, some of our Language Institute LIBYAN students left for Washington, DC. I haven’t heard or seen if these LIBYANS succeeded in capturing US media attention.

 

Hallelujah asks for what is right and true to triumph. LIBYA listen to your citizens. My country, the UNITED STATES of AMERICA listen to LIBYA’s cry for help. WORLD assist the LIBYANS who are asking for change. Let change occur peacefully without mothers sacrificing themselves as explained to me: “Mothers are going out with their sons,” one LIBYAN student told me. “ ’If you are going to die, we are going to die with you,’ these mothers tell their sons.”