Where Our Deep Creativity and the World’s Deep Hunger Meets
“Where is that place for me? For you? For the creative community of us — we, the ladies who art. Where is the seam that weaves together our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger?”
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These are emerging thoughts and I share them with not an un-small amount of trepidation. But they won’t leave me alone, these wonderings, and I need all the contributors to The Giant Pool of Wisdom to help me out.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately — off and on for years really — about this odd and wonderful bubble we live in. On good-humor days I think of it as something like “the women’s creative empowerment community.” I like it, this loose group of wonderful women who are finding their voice, expressing their creativity, and rebuilding their spirituality in the studio instead of the sanctuary. (Or as I like to think of it, the studio has become the sanctuary.) I love working in this milieu. I know, that I know, that I know these are my people. And nothing gives me more joy than teaching and learning in this world.
On cynical-humor days I think of myself as “the middle-class middle-aged white woman doing crafts.” Do you know what I mean? Kind of cushy, and whiney, and little bit frivolous. It makes me think of all those Jane Austen novels. How all the female characters embroidered, or did crewel work, or played the harpsichord. “The womanly arts,” they were called. It was what women did when they weren’t allowed to do anything else. Correction, it was what privileged women did when then didn’t have to do anything else (and also, they weren’t allowed. A combination then.) On cynical days I substitute “embroidery, crewel work, and harpsichord” with “mixed media collage, photography, and guitar lessons” and I feel a little–well, frivolous.
Then I get my feminist dander up and I remember that women’s work has always been downgraded. The most amazing intricate needle and tapestry work would be referred to as “craft” while oil paintings done in the all-male studios of yore were classified as “art.” Even now, women are severely under-represented in galleries and museums, as the film Who Does She Think She Is so passionately demonstrates. This distinction is still there — it’s changing, true — but it’s still there. And it bothers me.
But in addition to this feminist outrage, more than the slight discomfort I feel around my so-called cushy life, I am deeply bothered by the imbalance that I feel between two worlds I admire and desire: The introspective and necessary world of self-fulfillment and self-expression. And the equally necessary world of charity and social justice. I feel…unsatisfied…with the extent to which these two worlds intertwine. And I see other creative women trying to find a way to tie the two together as well. There are ripples out there, and rumors of another way. We are exploring. We are finding the connection.
It’s already so hard to make a living, to make your art, to raise your kids, to tell your story, and to be in a relationship. How can we possibly do any more? (Throw in all these mysterious “women’s diseases” like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and migraines and it gets even harder.) And yet, and yet….
I guess it’s that I feel, YES, your story is important. Yes, you, white girl with the two kids and the minivan. You story, your creative dreams are essential to the universe. But so are our African sisters’, so are our Latina sisters’, so is every sisters’. And how do they find the strength to tell their stories, after a day of trying to make ends meet. How do we help? How do we partner? How do we teach and learn from each other?
I keep thinking about Fredrick Beuchner’s famous quote about vocation from Wishful Thinking:
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Where is that place for me? For you? For the creative community of us — we, the ladies who art. Where is the seam that weaves together our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger?
In the excellent but now defunct television series Joan of Arcadia, God tells Joan that she has suffered from “a crisis of imagination.” I think that might be it. In spite of all our creativity, I think we are suffering from a crisis of imagination. I think there is more.
Recently, I’ve been listening to Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, a freaking brilliant adaptation of the Jane Austen novel in which the characters do not practice “The Womanly Arts,” but rather are trained in “The Deadly Arts.” The art of combat. The art of defense. These are not little women. These are Warrior Girls. How can we be warrior girls for our sisters? How can champion their right to be in this world?
Really I have very little idea. But I know it’s always a good plan to take a step. It might not be the step that works out, but it will lead you to the next, and the next, until you find the path. So my step, right now, is to put both feet quite firmly on one particular stepping stone. I will announce that I have fallen in love with the Apparent Project, a program run by people I know and adore in Haiti. Through the Apparent Project, Shelley and Corrigan Clay, who are artists, feed street kids, house kids who were forced to be left behind due to poverty, adopt orphans into their own family, and help women learn skills to support their families. I am head-over-heels with this small, grassroots program— in much the same way that I am in love with art. But I can you imagine me, the migraineur, in Haiti? No. Help. At. All.
So I will do what little I can. I will give ten percent of whatever profit I make this year – from my upcoming EBooks and Ecourses and whatever else might come my way—I will give ten percent of that profit to Haiti. And, whenever I can think of a way to encourage others to chip-in, through the A Year Without Clothes Pledge, or any other thing that crosses my path, I will do so. I will not have a crisis of imagination. I will learn to connect the dots.
It won’t be much. But perhaps this is the practice that will open the door, the rehearsal that will shine light on the solution to this hunger in my life. To be a mother, and an artist…and a warrior girl for others.
Do you think we can find the way? Let’s jump.
Click here to contribute to the chip-in for the Apparent Project, or tell us your ideas in the comments below. Thank you for being here!
13 comments
When I traveled in the Bihar region of India last year, among the Musahar people (the lowest sect of the lowest caste), I was left with the most unsettled, depressed feeling I’d ever experienced on a trip like that. Though I’d traveled in several developing countries before then, in villages that were equally impoverished, I’d never felt such a deep sense of hopelessness and despair.
As I reflected on the experience, and compared it to similar experiences in Africa, I realized that there were 2 factors at play that were causing my reaction. First of all, there was virtually no justice available for the Musahar people because years of history had left them the most marginalized people who were so fatalistic that they didn’t even see the point of sending their kids to school because their only hope was to make it through this life and come back into slightly different circumstances. But the other thing I realized, that had shaken my spirit while I was in the villages was that there was also essentially no beauty there. They lived in the most desolate circumstances, as squatters at the edges of fields they didn’t own, and there was so little permanence and so little pride that few people in the village cared enough to comb their hair or care for their appearances or their homes. Few people smiled, and there was none of the lavish greetings and show of local culture that we are usually greeted with in similar contexts in Africa or Bangladesh. There was a striking difference for me when I compared them to equally impoverished villages in Ethiopia where the young women had the most intricately beaded and braided hair and clean (though tattered) clothing and performed the most beautiful dances for us in the setting sun.
It struck me after that experience that we are called to the service of both beauty and justice and that the two are intricately intertwined and possibly even dependent on each other. If we serve beauty, we invite justice, and if we serve justice, we invite beauty. I think those that serve one or the other, if they are true to their calling, will also be drawn to the other.
(I keep meaning to write a longer piece about this some day. Perhaps this will serve as the catalyst.)
” guess it’s that I feel, YES, your story is important. Yes, you, white girl with the two kids and the minivan. You story, your creative dreams are essential to the universe. But so are our African sisters’, so are our Latina sisters’, so is every sisters’. And how do they find the strength to tell their stories, after a day of trying to make ends meet. How do we help? How do we partner? How do we teach and learn from each other?”
I have no idea but OMG, I really needed to read that paragraph today.
Thank You!
:)
I always end up back at the Dalai Lama — that I cannot help to liberate the world until I have liberated myself, and liberating myself is the SAME THING as liberating the world if we free ourselves from the illusion of Separate Individuals.
The world cannot be happy if I am not doing what I was sent here to do. (The “many talents” idea.)
The problem is that so many people are not honest enough to know themselves well enough to know what their particular happiness entails. There is also much fear about it and thus the desire to “fit in.”
Then I come up against the “how dare I think I know what is good for anyone!?” How dare I judge them “poor” compared to what? my wealth?
This is where I could easily go NUTS. ;)
And I end up back at the Dalai Lama and the idea that I need to focus on the lonely right next door to me, the hungry right down the block, the lost right inside myself…
Awesome post, Rachelle. WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!
I love living out on the edge of “how the hell can it happen”? Amazing things happen there :)
This is an AMAZING POST! It is just beautiful to hear you allowing yourself to be great as you really are. My kids are grown and grandchildren are fabulous and I’ll tell you it took me this long to really ALLOW myself freedom of, well of everything – writing and poetry and painting and blogging and retreats and spirituality and life! Love it and be what you were made to be. I went immediately to the site of the film you recommended and was ready to “jump” into purchasing the dvd but then I saw that it was $149 and I decided to wait until morning to make that decision:) BUT the women featured are inspirational and thanks for exposing them to all of us readers. Keep up the great YOU that you are and that you are building upon!
Rachelle – once upon a time, when I was a catholic girl going to confession I once asked the priest how I could be sure I was sorry enough to be forgiven. He said to me “if you are worried about being sorry enough, you *are* sorry enough”. So I say to you, when you are worried if you are doing enough, you are doing enough. This post alone has probably been read and mulled over by many and already rippled in ways you have no idea of.
Heather, your response really touched me as well.
Christine – I know well that place you are talking about. :)
Sunrise Sister,
The movie is priced like that because it is independant and not widely distributed. I don’t even own it. But even the trailer is so inspirational that I wanted to link to it. I keep hoping they will get a more economic distribution deal!
Thank you for sharing your heart with us. It’s so great to have a multigenerational giant pool of wisdom!
R
Heather,
I love what you are saying about beauty and justice. I want to learn more about how they are intertwined, and I’m struggling — no — s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g to learn what that looks like for me, a middle-aged white girl with a chronic illness. I’m excited to see what unfolds!
Shalom!
R
I am so tickled that you linked me to Pride, Prejudice and Zombies. Jane Austen books being one of my most favorite things and Zombies being one of my most irrationally feared things.
And as for women and art, I kind of feel that I am more in the nun or witch category than I am the accomplished gentlewoman category.
Personally, when I was growing up in the Bronx, and not the nice part of the Bronx, I recognized how important the arts were. I could see how they helped people and made tough things easier. After I went to college and spent a few years in relative comfort, trying to be an artist and writer on my own, I forgot how important they were to humanity and felt simply SELFISH.
Then I decided to teach HS so that I could do something worthwhile for the world and almost immediately, I remembere. Art is vital. Art is salvation. Art is empowerment. Art fills us up and give us direction.
When I taught I could see, I could physically watch teenagers start to believe in themselves as they encountered, engaged in, and created art, poetry, literature, music, film, dance.
Maybe it’s a good thing that you bring this up now, and it has come up in my thoughts again. It reminds me that I am not just painting and writing for my own enjoyment. It reminds me that my calling is to empower others, particularly women, to find their creativity, their vision, their strength, their personal beauty.
Maybe I’m wrapped up in my personal dramas of raising children and trying to recreate a life and home in new circumstances, small and personal goals, but the long view is still there. And I’m still working towards it, even if I can’t jump into things right this very instant. It’s coming. :)
Love, LOVE that Rowena. Thank you for being a kindered spirit.
I’m off to France for a few days, but hugs to you all…keep talking amongst yourselves.
Blisschick, I really appreciate all your comments. I have to agree, by being “me” only then am I full enough to have something left to give others.
Also, I find most artists I know, including myself, are often in tune with humanitarian concerns. I think it’s pretty hard to be an artist or creative without that concern and connection, because it takes a lot of noticing and connection to make art.
Thanks for the article Rachelle, I can relate!
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire
to improve the world and a desire
to enjoy the world. This makes it hard
to plan the day.”
~ E. B. White
Quote courtesy of bliss chick.
I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. I have an intense dislike of unwanted/misdirected charity. This makes me reticent to offer. But then I hear about beautiful projects
- bloggers partnering with women in third world countries to help them get their voices heard on line.
- a project to teach yoga and yoga teachers in Kenya.
- or people handing out zines in Rwanda.
- a school for classical violin in Soweto.
These things seem quite wonderful, and entirely inappropriate, at the same time. Why give books when people need food? Why teach yoga when people face violence? and yet…
I don’t know.
Your posts touch things that run deep in my thoughts these days.
ooooooo thank you so much for calling it a “crisis of imagination” instead of calling it “being a bad person” like the gremlins do in my head.
That really helps me feel like there is wiggle room here. Opportunity room here. Room for hope and growth here.
And your post reminds me that I’m not giving myself credit for what I am already doing. (for what we all are already doing) For the way I am fighting rape in Congo with my KIVA loan.
And the way my friend Rita in Ghana West Africa is buying cheap used books on Amazon and mailing them to my house so I can ship them to her cos they can’t get used cheap books there and the new books there are shockingly expensive and she has so many people asking her for books that she wants to open a book store if I can just get my stuff to her.
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