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.

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.

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’m off to France for a few days, but hugs to you all…keep talking amongst yourselves.

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. :)

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

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, your response really touched me as well.

Christine – I know well that place you are talking about. :)

I love living out on the edge of “how the hell can it happen”? Amazing things happen there :)

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…

I have no idea but OMG, I really needed to read that paragraph today.
Thank You!
:)

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.)