peace art: watercolor wildness

"okay, so you tried spreading the paint around with a dry brush, you know how that feels...now see what happens when you add more water...see how the color moves on the paper...now try making a straight line...now a wavy line...now make a pool of plain water on part of your paper and put a drop of paint in it, watch what happens...and what does it look like if you dip your brush in water, then in a color, then in water again, and let it drip onto the paper? how about if you take a wad of paper towel and blot it on? what if you wet the paper towel a little first? okay now with your brush again, try mixing colors, either on your paper or in the palette...try with more water, less water...just experiment! see what you can do with it! all the different possibilities..."

patiently and energetically my fellow volunteer and passionate teaching artist, Miss N., gave these instructions and modeled what she meant, as the children listened and followed along at our most recent session of the Camden Peace Art Project. i followed, too! i never knew there were so many variations of techniques and textures to be explored in the wonderful world of watercolors.

and afterwards we went home and were somehow inspired to cut apart N.'s creations from that session, rearrange them on poster-board, and then she painted more watercolor between them to bring them together, and inscribed Langston Hughes poems over them. what wisdom. what peace. what wildness. :)

skating.in.sync.

on the River Rink!

[that was our FVM fun night a few weeks ago]

[you should go]

peace art: pastels for haiti

"what does peace mean? peace means taking care of

what does peace mean? peace means taking care of

what does peace mean? peace means taking care of

ourselves, each other, and the earth!"

children circle around me, some singing, some hesitantly mouthing the words, some confidently shouting out this little piece that has become the theme song for the Camden Peace Art Project. after music time sitting on the floor, we move to the tables and my co-leader, Miss N., begins to tell us and show us how to use oil pastels...shading, stippling, cross-hatching, straight lines and curved lines and wavy lines...a whole new world of artistic technique opening up in front of our eyes!
children's eyes crinkle up with excitement and thinking as they get to pick out colors and create designs for crazy hair and crazy faces to practice the different techniques. when they're satisfied with their creations, we draw the children again into a circle on the floor to prepare them for their next project, which will not only bring them the joy of creating, but also (we hope) bring some peace and comfort to some others in our community.

"okay, does anyone remember what happened last week on a little island?" eager hands go up, but more-eager mouths blurt out, "Haiti!" "earthquake!" "tsunami?" "no, crazy" "people got hurt" "people's house fall down" "lots of people die" "people hungry". yes, children. can you see the hurt in my eyes? "and did you know that we have some families from Haiti right here in Camden? they live and go to school and go to church just down the road from us, and they probably have family and friends who got hurt or maybe died in the earthquake. so, how do you think they are feeling right now?" ... "how would you like to make a card that we can give to these families? what would you like to draw on it and write on it? here, you can use what you learned with the oil pastels...and here are some phrases you can write in French or Creole, to let them know you are thinking of them and praying for Haiti..."

you should have seen these crazy kids settle down and get to work. well, they were still pretty rowdy, but hey, they really put their hearts into those cards. one of my favorites, by one of the rowdiest kids in the room, just said "I LOVE YOU HAITI".

i know, of course, that Haiti STILL HURTS, that a few hand-colored cards from a crew of Hispanic kids in Camden to a few Haitian families in Camden is not even a drop in the bucket of all the healing water that is needed to soothe the pain of so many people and enable such a wounded nation to walk again... but in the meantime, and in light of my lack of direct access to make a concrete difference in that situation... i'm pretty proud of my Peace Art kids, and their gift to their neighbors: pastels for haiti.

all.the.arms.we.need.

i promised more information about the peace and justice gathering last month at Sacred Heart church, so here it is: a day of thinking/learning/praying about 'all the arms we need'.

the keynote speaker was Frida Berrigan, peace activist and Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. she spoke about the 'global arms trade', which is all a euphemism except for the 'global' part, which is pretty accurate. 'arms' is a blatant euphemism that really refers to advanced technology designed to kill and maim people and destroy property. 'trade' is something of a misnomer because it's not an equal playing field of exchange between countries; in reality, out of the $55 billion of weapons that are exchanged worldwide each year, the United States supplies 70% of those, and its closest competitor is Italy with a 3.7% share in that market. so, there's mostly one seller and lots of buyers. Frida had many more eye-opening things to say about the 'arms' and the 'trade', but mostly encouraged us to be curious about what's going on, and what is the difference between the arms that the nations think they need to design and produce and stockpile, vs. the kind of strong, true peacemaking arms we need way more of in this world.

the first workshop i went to was about women's spirituality and peacemaking. there was time and creative space for sharing how we as women have been negated by society, told we're not enough and we should be thinner.sexier.quieter.more modest.more shapely.more achievement-oriented.more practical.etc. then we joined in a ritual of remembering times when we have felt powerful as women. the session came from a small-group curriculum called 'Traveling with the Turtle' published by Pace e Bene, a Catholic peace and justice publishing company. we ended with a communal body-sculpture of ourselves in powerful positions, most with arms raised or arms around each other. all the arms we need.

there were images of turtles all over the room, in honor of this small group. i love turtles. my ideal style of living resonates with the intentional taking-time, the purposeful slowness, leading to wisdom because of the space for reflection in the midst of that life-giving pace of activity. also, one image in the room made me think of how turtles have to adapt to different environments. they have to learn to live and move and breathe and navigate equally well on land and in water. they spend their whole lives transitioning between these two, never fully belonging in either. like me! like all third culture kids!

the lunchtime literature tables included a local poetry and painting community, a conscientious objectors league, a campaign for establishing a 'department of peace' in the government, a used book sale, and author/Sacred Heart parishioner/Camden dweller Chris Haw selling and signing his book Jesus for President (co-written with friend Shane Claiborne)

the second session i chose was about the myth of redemptive violence, with stories and reflection questions interwoven with material from Walter Wink's theology of nonviolence shown in Jesus of the gospels. this workshop was led by Fr. Gerard Marable, an African American priest who has had several young male family members shot and killed in Camden, who is a prominent leader in CCOP, who is trying to merge his own parish with a primarily Hispanic parish, and is on the journey of discovering what it means to practice, promote, and pursue peace starting within his own inner violence and his relationships and his community and the world. he brought up an interesting question we have to ask ourselves, to test our cultural competence when we have these kinds of conversations - "who is in the room? and who is not in the room?" for example - he was one of the only black people at the entire gathering. most Sacred Heart members are aging middle class white people from the suburbs who come into the heart of Camden, the middle of a majorly black and hispanic neighborhood, and they do helpful work to serve in the community but not much success involving the community in taking over the work of serving within itself. some folks at this workshop came from a church in Philadelphia where the congregation appears to be 'very integrated', mostly black, some hispanic and some white, and very vibrant and inclusive worship times. but still, this elderly gentleman said, when they have their meetings of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, it's just a few white people who show up, and they're wondering why don't the black parishioners care about these issues. why, Father, when we were behind them in all the civil rights marches and struggles for equality in this country, why won't they stand with us in the justice issues of the world today? why?

my impulse was to ask, well, what are you doing that is somehow not inviting to them? fortunately Fr. Gerard was able to bring this realization to the table very diplomatically, that when we notice certain groups of people whose voices are not in the room, the first thing to do is examine ourselves and what it might be about us that is not inviting them into the room, not making it feel safe or meaningful to them to join in those conversations and efforts.

i wondered to what extent, too, it has to do simply with the life situations of the majority of the black parishioners as opposed to the relatively more affluent and comfortable white parishioners who freely choose to come in from the suburbs to attend these 'integrated' churches in impoverished neighborhoods. can you imagine what it feels like, when you're just trying to survive, just trying to meet the bottom-of-the-psychological-pyramid needs for food security, job security, and emotional security, trying to find support in your immediately-surrounding relationships. all of those issues of nuclear disarmament and fair wages for farm workers in Florida and stopping the far-away war in Afghanistan...seem so distant, so luxurious to worry about when all you can do is work to survive and provide for your family. not that people in poverty are not capable of thinking compassionately and acting to help others beyond their immediate surroundings - they absolutely are capable! and often when issues are presented in a meaningful way, with a deserved sense of urgency and magnitude of need, people who have very little themselves may very well be, proportionately, the more generous to the causes. but if you're talking about bi-monthly meetings with agendas and assignments and action steps toward the distant and relatively abstract goals of ending a war or making peace in the middle east or gaining justice for immigrants or even registering people as conscientious objectors...that may just not seem to matter as much as getting food on the table so that your child is not crying with hunger pains that night or getting frostbite from lack of gloves or boots you couldn't buy that month. what do you think? am i being too simplistic or stereotypical here? there's the people who feel like they don't have all the arms they need to just get through each day, and then there's the people who have arms to spare to lift up all these worthy causes in the world, but not enough to just walk arm in arm alongside their neighbors, their brothers and sisters they clamor to see and embrace in church but turn a blind eye to the kind of homes and jobs and financial situations they go back to after mass. and there's all kinds of others in between and even further extremes. and yet we mostly all have good intentions, we all want to care, we all want to share our arms with somebody, somehow...

and the day concluded with a prayer service honoring a variety of our brothers and sisters in history who have given their arms, their hearts and minds and ears and voices, and even their lives given up in the process of making peace and working for justice, in the hopes that we may do the same, in our own ways, times, and places.

amen.

poets.of.poverty.and.peace.

yesterday i went to the 7th annual gathering on peace and justice, hosted by the peace community that lives around the Sacred Heart parish in south Camden. in between sessions, i wandered a bit through the cracks and crevices and passageways of the church and up and down the dirty-snow-lined streets of row houses around it. my camera's eyes were captured by some stunning works of art done by parishioners - some vibrant iconic paintings hung in frames on walls in sacred spaces in the church, and some guerrilla poetry slammed gracefully on sheets of wood and nailed to the windows and doors of abandoned houses and storefronts in the neighborhood. here is a little video giving glimpses of these bursts of beauty and light in the 'dark' of a city many assume to be as good as dead or dying. the song is from the Taize community, saying "La tenebre n'est point tenebre devant toi; la nuit comme le jour est lumiere" / Our darkness is never darkness in your sight; the deepest night is clear as the daylight. [amen]

snow.havoc.means.skating.to.school.

the city of Camden is too poor to plow the streets. i don't think they even own snowplows. maybe we're not the only place in the country where this is true, but wow, it makes a big difference in the way things look and work after a snowstorm. it's basically up to the first brave souls who go out after the blizzard to beat it down as they drive through the drifts. sometimes those few, fortunate neighbors who have possession of a pick-up truck with a plow thing on the front will help clear up a path through part of the neighborhood to make it passable. hmm, what does 'passable' look like to you?

after 2 or so feet (somewhere between 25 and 27 inches) of snow fell this past weekend, 'passable' in our case means that the width of the neighborhood streets has shrunk by about half due to the cars parked on either side with several feet of snow surrounding them. in the remaining space, down the middle of the road, there is a rutted, uneven inch or three of slick packed-down snow/ice blanketing most of the road surface, with a few patches of pure slush and a couple blobs of open pavement peeking out like potholes. so, on my four-block walk from my house to the church/school where i taught ESL on monday morning, it was entirely possible to use my boots like ice-skates and slide almost the whole way on that slick layer of dirty white frozenness. and since sidewalk shoveling is not enforced in front of every house...the most dependable option really is to skate down the middle of the road to get to school and back.

of course, i won't be skating to school today or tomorrow, because everything's closed. we're supposed to get another foot or so today, and then it'll be another day or so before it's safe and 'passable' enough for everybody to come out from our snow-cocoons.

and the snowflakes keep falling...