Episode 140 - Can Art Help Us Heal?

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our world is built with stories sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other the liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart there's only a slight amount of wind blowing not even fully for the trees to shake or the leaves to shift out of place but if you pay close attention you will watch the grass wave furiously their hair blowing with every soft breeze affected by the subtle whisper as it shakes each blade's existence as i breathe while i lay in the grass i watch as the trees gentle dance match the inhales and the exhales of my breath i do not have enough power to move them these trees i think to myself tracing their roots very deep into the earth but i do have enough power to match the movement like i too am part of this piece this ebb and flow of watching blades of grass move with the trees this connection of breath and movement like the whole earth breathes with me i'm part of this i think to myself as the brush of the wind kisses my arms as a blade of grass stains wildly as the leaves move with the breeze i am part of this too as the blades of grass single leaves all sing to me yes you are hey everyone welcome to the liturgist podcast i'm william matthews and i'm so excited on this episode to have someone that i honestly consider uh a good friend something i don't just say lightly to folks uh ariel astoria and ariel is such a dynamic poet writer but one of the things that i love about her the most is that she carries such a strong presence about her when she speaks and she she enters the room and she speaks people listen if you've ever heard her share her poetry it's the way she shares it it's the intentionality and the love that she communicates and i think that's one of my favorite things about her is listening to her journey listening to her share her presence with all of us so i'm really excited that you guys get to experience the the the gold that is arielle and so also we have on the podcast of course michael gunger and dr hilary mcbride so um let's get started all right arielle here's my question i picked this question for you when we thought about having you on the podcast mainly because i know that out of everyone you can really answer this one and i think you're going to give us some good insights the question i have for you is can art or in your example poetry help us heal and if so how does art and poetry and music or song or dance or these mediums how do they help us heal yeah um in short answer yes absolutely um in in a longer answer i i think that art in itself comes out a very cathartic experiences so we usually use art as a way of processing um either that through grief through trauma through and the things that happen to us in life even through i'm navigating through joy and what that means for us through life experiences um and for me personally i i went to school for psychology in theater um to try and navigate through can these conversations be bridged and if so how i specifically wanted to do art therapy for children because i know that there is some type of tapping into um not only myself but also tapping into the world around me when i did step into my art form and so for me it started with acting um and that in itself was a healing experience because in order for me to step into the bravery or the awareness of my own journey and my own story i feel like i needed to step into the shoes of other people and the characters of other people in order to marshal with them through their experience and through their pain and their fair trauma and there was something i'm healing in its own right through that experience being able to step into an experience that didn't necessarily feel like my own but ended up getting results like it was my own and then poetry kind of gave me the permission to step into my own vulnerability and my own story and i think artists every single time it is a brave thing to put forth uh what they create it is it is a very bearing thing you are showing and the most vulnerable and intimate parts of yourself to strangers countless times again and that in itself is terrifying um but also healing at the same time and i think for the process of writing i always say that my healing comes from putting it down on paper and as a spoken word poet as a mostly a speaking person of the art form i'm sing it out loud to other people kind of unlocks this permission and this healing for others as well and so i mean you think of a song and a song that marshals a certain energy of them that kind of gives you this emotion either it makes you want to dance or an adele's case it makes you want to cry or there's this nostalgic experience all of that i think in in its own right is forms of healing over and over again um and and tapping into something and that is deeply placed inside of us or maybe not so deeply placed inside of us and so um yeah i think in short yes and then long what i just said i i i think you're the perfect person to talk about this because you you sort of hinted at something which i want you to describe a little bit more in detail here um you almost paint art or poetry or words as something to something to to enter into rather than something to just theoretically just think about or concepts to think about it's like i talked about your gravitas or your your presence as a poet it's like your words create these worlds that feels like people can inhabit and there's almost like this space that maybe is on the kind of this almost feels like it's in the ether and it's like a good poem or a good song can just put you into this space where it's like you're entering a room for the first time and maybe you're able to feel some things like you said do you think my question is do you think words are worlds do you think that they really carry that type of tangible energy that can help us transcend pain and or help us uh see another person's reality as a way in which we're immersed in that other reality is it that tangible not real yeah well i mean if i i often say for me the process of writing is is more so the art of spilling um it's not this planned setup kind of moment i don't like my candle i mean set my music it's more so just like this this piece these words this experience is happening now um which in what you're saying is this this other world this creative space i'm begging to be tapped into in those moment and it coincides with the present with the conscious because i think a lot of what creativity is especially since it feels so familiar and so connectable um is because it's something that just kind of lives in our subconscious and there are certain things that we experience in life that really taps into those moments and so for me i think when i go into that process of spilling or of writing it i definitely have to re-come back to something at the end of it all it's like the poem is written the words have been said the the song has been spilled and then i got to kind of like bring myself back to reality almost or like tap out of this space that i just was deeply into so much so that like anything else distracts me i'm like shit or like can we turn that down or like there's something that is very sensitive about the space that you go into in those moments and so i think to create is to tap into something ethereal something spiritual something bigger than the present than the physical and then the in in moment realities and i think that is the most beautiful part of of the work in itself is that it's a constant reminder of this is so much bigger than me and yet i have the gift and the opportunity to continuously tap into something um that not only exists outside of and around me but also so beautifully i'm inside of me at the same time yeah that makes me think of what what i grew up hearing about imago day the the spark inside of all of us this thing that is the actual image of god in us is not necessarily the ability to have dominion over land or uh selfness or personhood but rather the ability to create to be in this dance of creating and creativity yeah so what emerges from me hearing you say that is art as this process of returning to to the holiness and saying yes to that and not necessarily to the to the being all of these other ways that fragment us or take us away from ourselves but a kind of returning to ourselves uh returning to what is what's true and the process of saying yes to that because you do there is a initial yes that has to happen i do think there is an initial agreement that has to happen with you um with the divine with whatever it is you're saying yes to in that moment because i know for me i really was like i'm not an artist i do practical things you know i do adult things you know like sure i like to be creative but like those are not things that you do professionally or continuously and so i really had to come to terms with my yes first and foremost um i say that art my my friend actually he says your art makes space for you um but i think you first have to create room for the art to exist um you first have to give the permission for your art to show up because when you do that when you're saying yes in that initial right it means that you are wrecked for the rest of your life pretty much like you you are saying yes to this process happening over and over again for the rest of your life like you are now made for um and with this thing called creativity um called artistry and it's really terrifying to be at uh the surrender to something you can't control um but then i think that's where um the healing actually comes in is that every single time you experience this space where you're like i have i've no control really over what's happening here and yet it is the most free i can feel in a given moment um which is in itself just such a beautiful experience i have a poem called created to create and it was the first poem i wrote when i had to come to terms with this part of being a creative this part of being an artist was not something i just simply do but it was who i've always been made and created and ordained to be are you saying that you believe artists are ordained by god to to to do what they're called to do to um to create expressions of of grace in the world or expressing expressions of beauty um do you feel called you know as as that and and what do you how do you speak to those who maybe believe they are called how do they know they are they are called to do this hmm they're so there's so much there first and foremost i think like i said in my initial experience running from the uh ordination of it all if you will i'm running from the calling of it all of like no this is not the practical thing you know and then twofold also growing up as a pastor's kid and a baptist pastor's kid and not really knowing if if being an artist in its right was a divine thing um really wrestling with can i be an artist and still have a faith right can i be an artist and be on stage and be quote glorified in that moment and it still be quote glorifying um to god at the same time and so i i really wrestled with that and then just in a bare sharedness of it you know my dad would warn us not to be the katy perrys of the world you know like not to become an artist and and stray away uh from who you you can't stray away from in the first place and it's and if you really think about it and so for me i really wrestled with like i can't be an artist i can't be on stage and still uh believe in in god and so believe in something bigger it's it will draw attention from away from me and so i really wrestled with that part of myself with the the calling of it all um by listening to other people who you know it can't be glorifying because x y and z but in its own essence it is in its own right it it is this space of i can't help but this be my form of worship if you will i can't help but my existence in creating just being what i've been made to do it be because we call you know arts and talents and things like that we call it gifts gifts are given either you give them to yourself you give them up to other people but in in the sheer transaction of gifts they're given and and in my poem created to create i had to realize i had been given something i had been given something to do something with to give to other people then to give to myself sometimes because not everything is shared to give to you know as gifts that when i was really broke you know that here's a poem like you're welcome you know and so there is something where i think all artists in their own right are examples of what hillary was talking about that imago day we have been created therefore we have the ability to then create and let us make them in our image the image of creation if you really want to go there and so yeah i think we've we've all been cold um in certain ways in our own you know uniqueness to be artists um in a sense um to be to be creatives in a sense and if you look at it everything is art everything is creative there's a process of of creating things out of nothing for anything that we look at in our world and so i really do think i have been made for nothing else but this in this present point in time and especially now in the society we're sitting in i had a friend who reached out to me at the beginning of of the pandemic and everything and she was like how are you and i was like i'm fine i guess you know and i asked her how how are you she's like great as weird as it sounds i feel like i was born for this exact moment in our society and i was like it does sound weird but then also am i made for this exact moment in our society as an artist as a person who who speaks light to things as a person who calls out the darkness and things am am i also made for this moment in time in our society to call out injustice um but also to call out spaces of rest and healing um in in a space where we would want to go and and pick up and and start life again um this is exactly what we were made for um this exact tension this exact discomfort to bring light to things to to bring song to things to bring dance to to things and yeah i think i rolled i rolled i don't know where the intentional moment was but yeah there is a calling to this i i do i do believe that yeah i love that like what you're saying about being made for this exact moment that really resonated with me about where else where else would we be made for and you don't have to i don't think you even have to use like christian mythic imagery for that i mean where humans are alive i think that's how evolution works it's like you're suitable for an environment that's why you made it here and i i love i also love that imago day thing that you and hillary have been talking about and i think that it's i heard a talk yesterday from satguru about the idea of consecration and how you we take normal things like stones and we say this is now a temple or you can see your body as a temple you can have your body be just flesh and bone or you can see your body as a consecrated temple and anything that's what that's what the eucharist is right like we did we take bread and wine and we go okay this is not just bread and wine this is the body and the blood of christ or this is not just a metal statue this is shiva or whatever the thing is um art is sort of like that isn't it like you take yeah here's a series of words or a series of sounds or a series of movements of my body and it's not just chaos even like a a fi you know like a modern piece of art whereas there's like a block of color on a canvas or something it's not actually just that block of color there's something that gets consecrated in a way that goes there's intentionality it's naming it something it's naming it art it's called it's saying this is not like look deeper than that look deeper than the block of color look deeper than the sound of my voice right now these words that i'm saying there's something else here that i'm experiencing and i'm inviting you into that space and i think bringing that imago day back into it the image of god that the the divine creative spark of life that is the spirit the human spirit human soul and when we're moving into that when we're moving into that creative energy it reminds me a little bit of like it's it's there's a consecration nature of it there's an element that's almost like when you one of the meditative techniques that i really like is heart-centered breathing and it's like you're moving by focusing on your heart and breath you're kind of moving your attention back into the source of your attention like it's that blood that's giving you the ability to be aware in this mind and in this body and so when you bring when you go back into it you're kind of you're going back to source you're putting your attention back towards source jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within you and and so i think that's like it's a it's a spiritual thing to be creating because yeah it is you're moving back to source you're moving back to that creative spark that is your your essence that is the the core of your being and and when you move there and you consecrate a space or a piece of work and i don't think it has to just be people who think of themselves as artists what are you making in the world can be spreadsheets it can be any number of things that you're bringing the out the in inner world of what you want into the outer world and and shaping the world accordingly and so that doing it intentionally doing it consciously doing it spiritually can be a powerful and yeah maybe healing experience yeah art for me was my opinion was the doorway to my healing liberation deconstruction my spirituality connecting to the source was all through art i would not be the same person i am today if i had not started painting two years ago i would say for me art allows me to enter into what i call both the stillness and the movement of life so when i continue to find my inner voice i am allowed to both move and walk through life at a greater confidence while also knowing when there might be times of stillness as well when i experience art that other people have made it often draws me in to like another space another life that i haven't lived and i always find that whether i'm listening or watching or reading it draws me in and helps me experience life more fully i was taught to look at the world through the lenses of sacred or profane up there or down here holy or mundane and this reduced the world to to such a dualistic way of observing just either one or the other but never the two together and i remember reading a poem written by leonard cohen and i thought this is this is holy although it's not written in a holy book this this is sacred although doesn't come from like the bible or it's not happening in the church then i started more and more introducing poetry as in in my prayers and reading poetry as a form of prayer that was he or that is very healing still so i think that my relationship with creativity was sort of fractured or damaged in a kind of a world or culture that prioritizes productivity and through going to engineering school and then to architecture school i sort of learned that everyone isn't just like a left brain right brain type of person but everyone kind of holds the whole universe of possibilities within themselves today's episode of the liturgist podcast is brought to you by better help is there something that interferes with your well-being is preventing you from achieving your life goals betterhelp.com is a website that can help match you with a personal professional counselor and you can start communicating with your counselor in under 24 hours you can act in a safe private online environment betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more and they're 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everybody look at their hands and we went through all these different words and like what how does your experience of your hand change if you look at it and you go hand and then you say skin and you look at it as skin muscle magic god art like you can you can lay over anything all these concepts we could lay therapy over everything which creates a very different experience of this conversation if we think of this conversation as therapy right now versus as we experience this conversation as art or we experience this conversation as spiritual practice you can you can lay these like filters over what your experiences and they create different different stuff comes out depending on the filter sometimes and this i think art can be an interesting filter to put over whatever you're doing it doesn't matter literally whatever you're doing to see it as a part of you're creating the world whatever you're doing right now whether you're just breathing you're creating the world yeah well in that way aren't you kind of saying if we reframe the question not can art help us heal but can can expression can creativity help us heal the somehow the process of being in this unbridled expression as again to use my same language returning us back to what is returning us back to truth when we constantly societally are called to leave ourselves called to be something else to be lovable to be accepted that it is this intentional act of of expression that somehow writes something that has gotten separated yeah but that to me feels thinking about the expression or the creativity itself feels different than art which maybe i think about as like the the final product or the thing that when it's over we name and less about the process that got us there are they tied together like the the experience of and this is a legitimate question i don't have where to direct this but i'm wondering like how is experiencing someone else's expression a way of tapping into that same thing even for yourself as you're as you're experiencing source creating in the world does something in your own creative spark go ah and you see the world anew and you what's that relationship between creating and receiving art is it's a um it is an ever going exchange no um to i think of especially now you know like i miss concerts i miss live stages i miss performances and i i did a i did a video for for a church recently and their band was finishing up and i noticed i was like weeping like legitimately crying hearing a live guitar a live piano live voices you know and and i think in that is where i i believe there's less of a those are not our bodies responding necessarily i think that is where our our this the soul comes in if if that is something that uh uh is seen as something as being part of a person my whole motto for writing for speaking is words not for the ears but for the soul i'm not i'm not talking to bodies um i'm i'm talking to the deepest existing parts of us you know like you you were saying michael that that going that going inward that going back to the source um it is this constant depth that we are experiencing and which is why it elicits emotion you know or outward um expression or response to things i i think of you know anything i i love adele and so anything she sings i will have this whole experience with you know i i will create a scenario in which i i've cried over a lost loved one even though i may not have had one or or or seen a dance and there's something about the way the body is moving that is speaking in its own self on its own right that is storytelling there's there's a painting that you look at you're like i don't even i can't even fully tell what to the visual is however the depth of this the soul of this is speaking to the soul of me and there's something about that exchange that we're having that is ethereal because it is deeper than what's happening um in our physical present reality in our physical present body i'm always struck you know when we have this conversation on art or poetry and we speak as we just did we speak to kind of like the deeper parts of us the the part of us that's loving awareness like we speak to how those mediums can like hit us in that core but i also feel like particularly with poetry there's something in the languaging of of poetry that seems to cut into that it's like rather you know like if i go to the grocery store right and you know they're like and i bring some items and they're like um this fruit is half off you know that right i'm like yeah thank you that doesn't speak to the deepest core of who i am you know like i'm not like moved but well maybe i would if i like needed them i'm like oh sweet those are discounted maybe they would actually never mind maybe that's a bad example but you know what i mean like just casual interactions casual like asking someone for directions doesn't move me to the core of my soul i might be grateful for it but um but there's something in the way that poetry is languaged um almost in this paradoxical type of language that seems to sort of open up the heart space to begin to do that that deep deep deep work do you do you feel like that's that's true or or as a poet how do you craft language um that you know is i mean yes it's the spilling thing that you talked about but you know there is there's the editing phase too of any creative project can you maybe speak to that that process of of of of language and how language used in certain ways in certain cadences and certain rhythms will really open up the heart um and and and and become the vehicle by which we can accept deeper truths i feel as though i'm so bad at this because i i don't i don't edit stuff to be completely honest i don't the whole point of the spilling and and it's initial just outpouring there is an intentionality in that in that first exposure to it i might tweak things if i'm writing a book you know but for the most part any poem i've written has just been the poem i've written um and there was something about how he how it existed in its first breath that was on purpose um and i don't i don't take that lightly so if i do ever edit anything i always keep the original version of it um because i may come back to that um i may still want a piece of of that first part and so for me i i i think in metaphor i think in in simile i think and and so when people say something to me like i i do poems for couples um like i listen to their love story and then i take notes and then by the end of it i stop taking notes and i just start writing a poem because it's how it's how i'm hearing what they're saying to me so as i spit that back out to people they're like what in the world and i'm like but that's what you said to me that that's how my brain computed what it is that you said so you said we met you know at a baseball game and and i i think you know they're they're this love is a home run you know or whatever so that's just kind of how my brain like inputs it you know like i i'm just taking in what i've what i've heard and so when you when you put that back out to people what's so beautiful about it is is not that it wasn't what was said it wasn't what they didn't need it was what they already said what they did need and i just re re gave it back to them in a way that sounded different but their heart and yeah but their heart and soul already knew it so it's always fascinating to me that that is the response i get to people they're like how did you like stop reading my diary or like how did you know i needed to hear that and i think the one that is just a common reminder that the human experience though varying um it has a very similar and universal thread i also think that plays into the tune of i've i've my background in psychology is purposely for me to understand people and and why they work the way they work why their heart is wired the way it's wired and then funneling that into poetry feels like i kind of cheat you know like i'm i'm purposely pulling on your heartstrings because i know i have been gifted to do so poetry is the same it is it is taking those experiences that are really just the thread between us in the first place and then you make it sound pretty you know you paint a picture with it you create a moment with it and that brings people in because we love stories and poetry is is a story and yeah what you said that's how i'm hearing it like you're hearing it by expressing at some point the hearing becomes the expressing and they become blurred that where you're in the line between you that space that's like it sounds very much like a flow state to me that you're talking about where you like this state of creativity that feels it's it's not limited by your sense of self anymore it's not just about the ego doing something that the ego wants to do there's like you get called into this greater space this space of connectivity the space of divine spark of creativity and i it makes me think of like there is something there people talk about like where it feels like there's this outside source so you hear people whether if you might hear a christian be like god gave me this song or somebody that's in just like a flow state where it does not feel like i made this that i this is just me it's like coming through me i'm channeling it and when you really are in that experience there is something that it does it does feel larger than just your individual small ego and and i think it is bigger than your small it is actually the universe continuing to create itself it is you can how can the ego take credit for that idea where did it come from like you didn't like by effort come up with that great idea it just happened it was gifted through that vessel to the universe and so you can feel that when it's happening to you and i think the more that you see that even when you engage went back to my question about how the listening and the speaking you know like how engaging in art versus creating an art go together i do think both of them can bring you to that space like when you're fully engaging in a piece of art whether it's your own or somebody else's it can bring you into that space that is less divided between you and i because it's not the artist gets lost in that divine spark the listener gets lost in that divine spark and it just is this um the newness the the spirit of of fresh business yeah it's this very um oh like oh there you are kind of moment both to yourself and also to the to the person or people or or whoever is in that moment with you it's like oh there there i am and oh there you are as if we've not been in this space together the whole time you know um and i i actually i have this poem that i wrote at this park that's like by our house and um my my apple watch was like reminding me to breathe because apparently i forget to do that sometimes and and so i started and put my book down and i started breathing and i noticed like the grass was like swaying furiously and then i look up and the trees are moving too and i'm like i i don't have the power to do these things right to move the grass to move the tree however at the same time i am inhaling and exhaling there's movement happening in those things as well which is this reminder of oh i'm a part of this i've always been a part of this we've always been a part of this um whatever this is this existence this living this humanity this society and we've always been a part of this but things created division here and there and made us forget that not that we were never were but that we always have been and and like hillary was talking about earlier this returning um to being this connectedness that has always been part of who we are and why we what we do and why we exist and how we interact with each other there's always been there and then it's just this reminder of oh there i am and oh there you are and oh we have been connected and part of this this whole time with that if we can go back like linking that to what your question william i was immediately thinking about the the indigenous tradition at least um for the people on whose land i live where the the belief is that whatever spirit you create something in gets infused into the thing itself as if it actually your whatever is happening for you which is why i've been told like don't make something when you're bitter don't make a piece of art for someone when you're you know you're angry at them or angry about something because it will become part of the substance of what's created itself that there is this this ability that seems wordless and beyond my capacity to understand it for us to experience somebody else through what they create in a in a felt sense um like you were talking about what it's like to to feel with a song an adult song and all of a sudden become part of this world that you haven't lived but all of a sudden you can enter into something else because of that but i like to think about that as being because of a part of whatever's happening for us gets gets woven into it yeah but in this conversation i have to say that my struggle with the way that we're languaging it or maybe some tension in me has to do with what it means for those of us who don't feel the ordination who don't feel the calling and what what happens when when art and creativity is something we have to do as a spiritual discipline because it it feels like it got so cut off from us or we were it's so not a part of how we move through this world and and thinking about creativity and expression as both something that some people are called to in a very specific kind of singular way but actually something that's in inherently part of our wholeness as being human and something we we actually need to do otherwise we get fragmented or we get stifled or whatever's moving through us gets stifled in such a way that it actually harms us like i've heard it said that unused creativity metastasizes that it's not benign that we actually need to keep dipping into this part of ourselves in order to keep ourselves whole and yet for some of us that is such a to engage in and it doesn't feel mystical and like something is spilling so i'm just curious about for the three of you particularly who who make your way in the world as artists in a way that i i don't i'd be curious about the discipline piece of it too the how how you have committed yourself to showing up or to create the container within which you could hold the muse when it comes but don't you think hillary that you do that when you're in a flow state with a patient a client that like or on a podcast or writing where you get into this state where what's inside your imagination of what could be said what body position could be taken to communicate something that's effective that communicates something that is like moves that person towards belonging or love or does that not feel like something that's almost like coming through you sometimes oh yeah 100 percent but the discipline piece of it for me is that i spend most of my free time reading academic literature about the therapeutic process and how people change and paying attention to what is what are the biophysiological markers of a duchenne smile a specific smile that tells us if it's a genuine smile versus if it's a performed smile and noticing the difference between those and how micro movements around the eyes look what is this one that feels like art to me i mean maybe and maybe that's what we're sitting in the tension of of like you were talking about earlier this art has a has a stereotype to it right has a stigma to it has a specific to it um so and then in that first word it's like you know so so many people i'm just i'm not an artist you know i'm not a writer so then going back to the fullness of expressionness where you're an expressionist um because you can look and and decide from a person's smile whether or not you know what kind of smile it is or even just the flow of conversation in in in the podcast you know that i've that i've had the honor of listening to and taking in there's there's a flow there's a connectability that happens in the conversations and so i think first and foremost is to to debunk the assumption and that art has to be or look any certain way is the first and foremost thing you in your own right as as a therapist as a as a connector of of traumas and griefs and experiences for people is an art if you will um and so i think that would be my first thing is to to first just bare minimum um yeah debunk that stereotype of what what art is and and then to bring into the conversation expression it is all expression in its own right and we express in varying different ways um that that match who we are and how we show up in this world and but all of it being a form of creation all of it for being a form of expression you might notice that i didn't say that i'm not an artist right i actually think that what i do is extremely extremely creative but i think that that that binary that we create of like art needs to look a certain way stops people from doing the showing up like i heard audrey assad give a description of this as it related to spiritual practice recently that that these miracles are like little butterflies that come in but our job is to weave a tighter net so that we can catch them when they do come and what i'm curious about is how when we don't have that felt sense of expression how we how we remind ourselves that that is an important thing to go after because some people might not self-identify as being ordained as creative and yet it's something that is essential for our fullness and so how do we how do we commit ourselves to showing up so that that unused creativity doesn't do us harm and how do we for the people who don't see themselves as creative make the space in their life to to adventure or to see what already is creative in such a way that that we can break down the binaries of what is art and what is not i so i i think part of this hillary though is is the recognition that everyone does have a calling whether it feels or comes to them in some mystical form or whether it simply is i would argue that the calling is the thing that you're drawn to the question you keep wanting to ask the curiosity that's brewing inside of you that is that is the calling and the calling can change it can morph and it will through all of our lives and i think even yes we talked about it in kind of mystical maybe language or metaphorical language but i think that how people show up is to believe that they are that thing like so actually you do need to believe that you are creative before you can really show up to be creative right you have to know that the thing that you are putting your hand to whatever it is not just the stereotypes like we identified of what an artist is but whatever you're putting your hand to that i can be creative in this whether i'm laying bricks i can be creative in my expression of laying bricks whether i am bagging groceries i can be creative in my expression in the in the life-giving artfulness of like how i bag these groceries right like but it comes from you have to start with the with the belief that that what what i do matters that what i produce is important and there are ways in which i can do that that are that are artful and life-giving because then it becomes a curiosity question and far less of simply a discipline question of like let me see you know and learn the scales for the next you know month let me you know that becomes the easy part of like doing the discipline of how can i how can whatever my creative expression is or whatever my expression is that you have to be creative whatever my expression is how can i get do it a little bit better right and then it i feel like it becomes then a place of want wonder rather than a like simply like i've got to make my my your like my discipline bad and do it and like write every day and da da da da not saying any of those are bad but i i do think it has if you come from the the belief that you are creative then you will naturally make room for anything in your life to work out that creativity you will move heaven and earth to make that creativity possible it becomes less about like an external thing and more of a core function of who you are so maybe the discipline then like when i think about discipline i don't think about harshness or criticism or rigidity i think about it as commitment or like the the choice to show up that like i think about you arielle saying saying yes as your discipline that you have made a commitment to when the spilling feels like it's about to happen to notice what that feels like and to say yes to it and to have the avenue like okay voice memo or like i'm gonna write this down and maybe the maybe the discipline in light of what you're saying william needs to be just to choose to see ourselves as creative in a world that has told us we're not yeah everything else yeah is like oh i have choice here and i have choice about how i show up in this space and that is my creative expression and anything that holds holds me back from that um isn't necessarily spirit moving through me isn't necessarily me and my in my fullness so so i'm choosing to see my option to be creative here can i uh offer something i don't generally share this a lot but i would love to offer something um as a practical principle of what you just shared as a singer particularly as a worship leader it was easy to stand on a stage and sing songs other people had written even i had written but early on kind of in my development as a worship leader i began to engage in spontaneous uh free-flow worship right and and where which i would just create something out of a moment and when i lived in kansas city we were trained in spontaneous flow which simply meant i would you know i remember i would show up and you know we would sing from the bible or something and i had to come up with a spontaneous melody and maybe i had some language from the bible but ultimately i had to create a melody and a flow that that was i could sing and then there's just that was happening the free flow of that but then if you were in kansas city we did this harp and bowl model of uh worship and intercession there were rankings for the singers the prophetic singers and the there was singer number one two three four five six right and if you got to singer number one then you were the chorus leader which meant that your job was to come up with a repeatable chorus that everybody could sing and you had to do it in like less than well you know you had to come up with it in seconds right i never had the singer one i i eventually worked my way up to single one absolutely and that's why i'm here today and that's what got me where it got me no and truthfully it did and here's why because i never had the i no matter how i felt when i showed up to a worship set i knew that it was my job as singer number one to come up with that repeatable course that i can get a whole room to sing didn't matter how i felt didn't matter like uh what the melody was did none of it matter i didn't have like that was that was my first choice was to show up and say yes that i knew that if i opened my mouth god would feel it that if i opened my mouth to be creative and spontaneous then something would come out and the more that i did it the easier it became to simply just to to do the thing that needs to get say the thing that needs to get said and do the thing that needs to be done especially in a in a creative creative realm and i i think so much of this is exactly how you described of like saying having that commitment to say yes to creativity to say regardless of how i feel i know when i open my mouth or i put my pen to pad or or in whether i'm a therapist and and i'm looking for these connections to help this patient or like i said i'm a i'm laying bricks or i'm a grosser whatever that is there is an artful expression to it and if i show up and say yes to it um i'm then i'm not going to be found lacking and i think that's the kind of secret sauce of creativity is that there is a deep well of abundance that lives inside of each and every one of us and just by saying yes to it i can actually open that well inside of me that is infinite that is is uh as big as the cosmos right and i think the fear is that we don't have enough that the scarcity thing that we don't we won't have enough to say there won't be enough to to sing there won't be enough to movement there somebody else will always do it better right but like you said it's the commitment but all of you have said to to showing up and being creative and i think in my life that situation taught me that if i walk into a studio i can write a song it may not be the best song but i can write a song right right yeah it may not be the grammy winning song like michael gunder but it's gonna be a song right like i can walk into a podcast and maybe don't you know and and find something to say that because i'm choosing to tap into a deeper space in me um right even if i feel tapped out sometimes right like and we do it too when we show up in the space and and do that when i was a little girl my mom used to tell me that whenever someone would tell me i was black i would scream that i was pink instead and for a really long time i wanted to be a barista so that i could love strangers without even knowing them and for too long i hushed the novel streaming from this tongue because i never thought that what i had to say was good enough i never thought that who i was was good enough if i were to get a second tattoo i would have them ink out the words worthy on my wrist so that it goes back into my bloodstream because for too long i've been conditioned and thinking that i am defined by what i do and not simply by who i am and and i heard someone say once that they don't give power to young people because they don't think that they can handle it but but who's to say that i'm not capable of turning this world inside out who's to say that this body and soul can be contained within logical you know i don't know about you but i believe in more than just the logical that our list and expectations are no match for the already written plan your purpose destined in the fact that you were called called the speak and to teach call to orchestrate and to dance and maybe maybe you're so afraid of it all because it doesn't make sense but i'm sorry that i'm not sorry that sometimes the best things in this life just don't make sense i've always wondered why these restless feet stumbled head first into poetry and not medicine why why my life desires to leave footprints in word form everywhere that i go i guess i was just afraid of the burning bush placed inside this soul see i i am an artist and they will tell me that art will do nothing but keep me distracted but i'm tired of pretending that every spill of a poem is not a prayer and that every stage is not a sanctuary see we we are all artists created to create and yet our own worst enemy and our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure it is our light not our darkness that frightens us most we ask ourselves who am i to be talented brilliant fabulous gorgeous actually who are you not to be you're playing small does not serve this world marianne williamson and i know i know i know that there are fears tucked in your conscious like little monsters that just keep showing up and that game of comparison you play will strip you of the marvel in your own story there will always be someone who comes along and does something a little bit differently than you they will laugh with more of a twinkle and walk as if they were floating instead but honey you honey there will never be another one like you because you were placed on this earth to lead goodness like something crucial and be the most beautifully flawed heaven on earth that the world has ever seen that the world has ever seen and so i guess i will stop being afraid of how i can contribute i'll pick up my pen so beauty back into this world every day that i can even if it's the very last thing that i ever do i similarly feel calling and feel in in what you're saying arielle this resonance of almost like a compulsion like i have to there is like something driving me towards these certain ways of being in the world but i want to acknowledge that there is beauty and goodness and uh importance in creativity and play even when they're when there isn't a felt sense of calling even when there isn't a felt sense of ordination that that we can choose to carve out space in our lives in order to enter to build this container to to engage in a process of expression and practice holding back the critic that tells us well that's not art or that it can't look that way and in that way we are we are doing the healing like to go us go back to this question that we started with can art help us heal whenever i think about healing i think what needs healing where's the hurt can art help us with the hurt and sometimes the heart is felt in an individual way and sometimes the heart is collective because we have learned to see everything as separate and so in that way the practice of moving into play the practice of moving into creativity for the purpose of connecting to ourselves and what's around us and expressing to me feels like a way that we restore what's been artificially separated that's so true hillary because art really does help us make sense of a chaotic universe and it helps us reconcile um and put things together that feel kind of out of order and just the process alone is is deeply healing um whichever practice we we implore um it's deeply deeply healing thank you for bringing that up well thank you so much for joining us arielle for blending your voice your your sweetness your your presence we love you so much and your power yeah yeah thank you you guys are awesome thank you for having me yeah thank you for being here