“I think it’s time for us to face the soul of the world,” writes mathematician Ralph Abraham (in Sheldrake, McKenna, Abraham 2001, 65). “Traveling up the great chain of being toward the world soul, we may get in touch with things that precede any capability of verbalization, that seem to reach out for contact, that are learning to communicate in a language we can understand” (p. 92).
I “think” so, too. Experience, however, shows me over and over that the Soul of the World does not yield Itself to thought.
SOUL OF THE WORLD: That knife is too sharp, cuts too clean, you’ve thought too much. Drop your gaze down to the eyes in the soles of your feet, stand on my green body and speak what you feel.
ME: I feel such sorrow that I fall to my knees.
SOUL OF THE WORLD (SMILING): Now lie down, body to body, and let us finally speak, heart to heart, soul to soul, open and let me flow into you and then you will see, thought will not suffice. You must see and hear and smell and touch.
Whenever I am really stumped, I lie down on the earth. Even in my postage-stamp-size backyard, with power lines crisscrossing the sky above my head, I hear the truth when I am body to body with the earth. Sometimes, when I am walking the dog, I stop to stand under a tree. I look up and feel the loving energy streaming down on me. Standing under the tree, my feet on the earth, I open to its voice, I understand its speech, which is rarely in words. I ask a question and my eye may light on something in the landscape that gives me the answer I seek. For the longest time I have known in my bones about the transformative power of images and image making in groups. I have tried through the practice of art therapy, through founding two community studios and doing consulting for a number of others, through initiating community-wide art projects, to think my way into how best to manifest the transformative power of artmaking with others.
Over and over I have also learned that thinking gets in the way. I have learned about the limitations of our present cultural forms, our fixed ideas of how to do things, the illusions we have chosen over the simple example of nature, which we are a part of and apart from. The Soul of the World is saying, Stop, slow down, listen, watch, remember to give and receive. The creative process is a form of respiration, give out, receive back and stop long enough to learn how to give and receive. In creating image communities, I have tried out the form of nonprofit organization in the Open Studio Project and a business model at Studio Pardes. While the idea of Studio Pardes as a “for-profit” business felt incorrect, there are no more nuanced ways for designating what a public space where my name was on the lease and I signed the checks might be called. Both raised enormous questions for me, both philosophical as well as practical. How does the model we choose affect the presence or absence of the Creative Source? What is the best use of my energy, as an artist or as an entrepreneur? What is a fair amount to charge for workshops that honors the value of my time and the cost of rent, materials, and maintenance? As a nonprofit at OSP, we planned fundraising events, which, while they raised cash to supplement fees for workshops, took an enormous toll in time and energy. As a for-profit enterprise at Studio Pardes, we planned shows and sold artwork, taking a percentage for the studio. As I record these strategies, they seem perfectly reasonable, and, evaluated objectively, they were even successful. All I can do is witness the discomfort that grew in me as I saw Studio Pardes in danger of becoming partly a store with items for sale. The half-mile area that my town has designated as an “arts district,” in which Studio Pardes was situated, originally had a number of working artists’ studios. Now it is almost entirely a retail district, with charming shops, many selling handmade items by individual artists. The expectations of shops are different from the expectations of an artist’s workspace. Most artists, like myself, found the two expectations at cross purposes. The main way that most people have of interacting with art is to buy some. Buying art is a perfectly fine thing to do; I do not begrudge artists who sell work, as I have certainly done. But the selling of art in some way conflicts with the engagement with art as a spiritual path. As I sit with the lasting unease that rises in me about the relationship of commerce to art as a spiritual path, I feel like the proverbial blind man trying to describe the elephant. I don’t yet have enough information.
I am deeply grateful for those who can, like Dayna, stay with a form, in her case a nonprofit community studio, and work patiently to transform it, I found I could not. She continually tempers the enthusiasm of those within OSP’s board and members who imagine bigger would be better by guiding them as a community to return to their intention and receive guidance from the Creative Source about how to manifest that intention most authentically. After despairing of my own failures, I realized that the answer is not in doing away with the forms and existing models, which have value in spite of their imperfections. They must be helped to evolve. The answer that interests me is instead to create simple, small experimental forms that can allow us to invite some of the thoughts that bind us into the creative process, where we can surface our thoughts and feelings and examine how deep our allegiance is and should be to certain ideas—for instance, that profit is the ultimate good. This idea is so embedded in our culture as to be almost unquestioned. We don’t realize we are following the model of the corporation without asking if it fits our circumstances or needs to be modified. As Robert Hinkley’s work shows, when we trace the origin of profit as the ultimate aim, we begin to see how such an idea can be shifted. He says: “Corporations act the way they do for one simple reason: they are bound by corporate law to try to make a profit for shareholders . . . in 1886 the Supreme Court determined that corporations were entitled to the rights of citizenship under our Constitution. Since then, the corporation has developed into the worst kind of citizen: one that claims all the rights but shirks the responsibilities of citizenship” (in Cooper 2004, 5). Hinkley is working to change the mandate of the corporation so that the corporate code reads: “The duty of the directors henceforth shall be to make money for shareholders but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health and safety, dignity of employees, and the welfare of the communities in which the company operates” (ibid). This simple addition of twenty-eight words to a standing law is a revolutionary change in intention.
In small, sustainable image communities, like Barbara’s Art for Peace group, we can allow ourselves to be instructed by the Soul of the World. When the members of that group had been meeting for a while, ideas began to arise such as “maybe we should take this into a public space, invite a larger group, have a show.” Being together and remembering their basic intention—to remain peaceful—helped them discuss and decide what to do about issues of ownership and taking credit for the group. We need transitional spaces and we need a lot of them; they need to be accessible, abundant, and free.
I have noticed that in most situations, once a person has paid money for something, his or her feeling of obligation stops. The transactional model of exchange actually inhibits creativity to some degree. As the Creative Source reminded me in the witness cited at the beginning of this chapter, “the creative process is a form of respiration”—or, as Estella Conwill Majozo says, a form of call and response. Lewis Hyde writes: “As the artist works, some portion of his creation is bestowed upon him. An idea pops into his head, a tune begins to play, a phrase comes to mind, a color falls into place on the canvas. . . . with any true creation comes the uncanny sense that ‘I,’ the artist, did not make the work” (1983, xii). When we open to the Creative Source, we receive a gift. Most of our dealings in life are transactional; we buy almost anything we want. While money is an impersonal currency that offers universality and convenience, it blunts the development of relationship. Hyde says: “It is the cardinal difference between gift and commodity exchange that a gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people, while the sale of a commodity leaves no necessary connection” (1983, 56). Unlike my husband, who searches for the cheapest gas when filling his car, I go consistently to the station where I also receive the gift of added service. The owner has been willing to drive out in his truck when I’ve been stuck to jump-start my car and has performed other acts of generosity that bind me to him in loyalty. I was sad when he installed pay-at-the-pump credit-card service, even though it saves time. Now I just exchange a wave with whoever is operating the cash register inside the station, if they aren’t staring off into space in boredom. When ideas are surfaced, we can weigh whether convenience and profit are more valuable than personal contact, than saying hello to a live person and hearing about their recent vacation or their grandchildren. Do we want connection? The Creative Source surely does.
Paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely such simple and crucial ideas that arise when one sits in the studio, makes an intention to see what is, and follows the image to the message it holds. It occurs to me that we need to nurture and support a commerce-free zone of creativity for ourselves, our neighbors, and people we don’t yet know. Wherever we are guided by intention and witness—whether in neighborhood image making, creativity circles, or situations like Amazi Abesifazane—we can witness and record the history of ordinary people, which makes us more mindful of our own lives. We can surface the ideas that underlie our actions and expectations, and decide intentionally, and with guidance from the Creative Source, whether they serve us.
Such artmaking opportunities can begin a tiny movement to recover what Hyde calls a gift economy (1983). “We might picture differences between gifts and commodities . . . by imagining two territories separated by a boundary. A gift, when it moves across the boundary, either stops being a gift or else it abolishes the boundary” (p. 61). We need to relearn gift exchange precisely because there are so many boundaries that need to be transgressed. Hyde continues: “Because of the bonding power of gifts and the detached nature of commodity exchange, gifts have become associated with community and with being obliged to others, while commodities are associated with alienation and freedom” (p. 67). Having a choice of commodities is one kind of freedom, one on which our culture and our corporations concentrate a great deal of effort. One could spend a lifetime, several even, sorting through the available types and brands of face creams, cars, telephone long-distance plans, breakfast cereals, cable television services, stereo systems, and exercise equipment. But this freedom only has value if our basic needs are authentically met outside the sphere of commerce. Although television commercials would have us believe otherwise, we cannot purchase meaning or a sense of belonging.
I first began to think about these ideas when spontaneous gift giving emerged in the studio. Mary, one of the artists who exhibited their work in Mother: Real and Imagined, was engaged with ideas about her mother, who had valued cooking, cleaning, and taking care of her family. Like many of us, Mary rebelled against a circumscribed role as housewife and mother. In her art, she witnessed the act of cleaning as a divine act of service. She brought nontoxic cleaning supplies and cleaned a section of the wall on which many artists had left drips and marks while painting. She framed the section of clean wall with masking tape and witnessed it. She recovered the dignity of sacred service and recognized the gift in her mother’s life of service to her family. She created handmade invitations to invite artists to come for a cleaning day at the studio and brought lunch for everyone. She made it clear that everyone was welcome to eat, whether or not they could stay to help clean. Some artists, not wanting to or unable to clean, could not accept the gift of lunch and made various excuses to leave right after the class. Some stayed for lunch and left; a few stayed with Mary and I and cleaned. I felt uplifted and energized as I scrubbed the floor alongside Mary. I had witnessed a true gift exchange—not to me directly, but to the Creative Source and to the space of the studio.
During a retreat I took in Arizona to work on this book, I received an image of a woman dressed in saffron robes, her head shaved like a nun or monk. She sits on the ground in a desert surrounded by mountains, a serene expression on her face. She holds a begging bowl. She speaks about an essential element of the creative process: We open ourselves, and something like grace, some deep and mysterious force, flows into and transforms us. It is a relational experience. Martin Buber (1970) says: “This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being: if he commits it and speaks with his being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released and the work comes into being” (p. 60).
Like Mary, many of the artists described in this book are responding to the Soul of the World as they relearn and reinvent ideas about service, work, value, and gift. We are called to work together in a way that mirrors the generosity of the Creative Source back to Itself and to each of us. We must see the Divine in everything if we are to survive. We can’t simply think “Oh, we are all connected” and point to cell phones and computers as our primary evidence for this. We are being called to define self and other in new terms, but with old means—images and the support of others.
Images initiate the shift, and the presence of others allows us to amplify it through the process of witness in a group, which yields changes that transcend mere thinking, changes that reverberate on every level of our intersubjective being. Joanna Macy (1990) says: “The self is a metaphor. We can decide to limit it to our skin, our person, our family, our organization or our species. We can select its boundaries in objective reality. As system theorists see it, our consciousness illuminates a small arc in the wider currents and loops of knowing that interconnect us” (p. 59). Macy characterizes our growing awareness as a “greening of the self” and observes that “we are beginning to realize that the world is our body” (ibid., 60). She says that letting the energy of the earth flow through us gives us buoyancy and resilience. These are the very qualities that we access and cultivate in the studio process. Art is a way of knowing.
To form an image community, take two or more people, sit down together at a table or tape paper to the wall. State an intention collectively as well as individually: What do you really wish to call into your life? Write down these intentions. Make marks on the paper in a way that gives you pleasure, with whatever materials are at hand. After a while, sit down and look at what has been created. Notice what captures your attention, and write what comes. Then read to each other the new stories you’ve received. Next week, do it again. Light a candle. Bring food. Bless one another. We can recover all we need to know.
We can reinhabit time and our own story as a species. We were present back there in the fireball and the rains that streamed down on this still molten planet, and in the primordial seas. We remember that in our mother’s womb, where we wear vestigial gills and tail and fins for hands. We remember that. That information is in us and there is a deep, deep kinship in us, beneath the outer layers of our neocortex or what we learned in school. There is a deep wisdom, a bondedness with our creation and an ingenuity far beyond what we think we have. And when we expand our notions of what we are to include in this story, we will have a wonderful time and we will survive. (ibid., 63)
Art is a path to this place and these stories. If we engage our images, they will sketch a map to our survival.