Ep 89 Art, Creativity, and the Contemplative

Art and creativity can be a useful way of opening our awareness. So many moments in our lives can leave us feeling disconnected and out of touch. Today we talk about how engaging our creative side can help us slow down and open to possibility. We name our own struggles with feeling vulnerable and inadequate. And we share our moments of feeling like we’ve broken through the veil in order to encounter the Divine. We hope you’ll join us as we engage in the reality that art is everywhere, painted into the very fabric of our world. 

#Poetry #Retreat #Labyrinth #Mandala #Vulnerability #MovementMeditation #Crafts #Haiku #Color #Chakras #VisioDivina

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Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
art, creativity, movement, color, journaling, mandala, paint

Dominic Kaiser

Welcome to The Contemplative Life. Three pastors, friends and spiritual companions help us explore spirituality through a contemplative lens. I'm Christina Roberts. I'm Chris Roberts. I'm Kristina Kaiser. We're glad you joined us.

Kristina Kaiser

Hello, it's great to be with you. Today we're taking some time to talk about using art and creativity as a way of opening our awareness to the divine within and around us. And so, probably all of us know this can be done in so many ways: painting, music, movement, writing.  It's just vast the amount of ways that one can be creative. But for many, it can be a useful way of switching that focus, in order to become more connected to process and meaning over and above that experience of feeling like, Oh, I've got to focus on product and end result. So I think for me, there's this phrase that I sometimes hear: we are human beings, not human doings. And I think that creativity often helps me bring in that experience of being a human being.  It helps me get into that space of feeling calmer and helps me to slow down. And so with that being said, I'd love to open the conversation up today. Is it similarly true for you? Or are there other ways in which creativity and art enhance your spiritual lives?

Chris Roberts

 I would say most definitely art and creativity helps me to shed away some of the barriers or distractions that I have. I feel like it opens me up to possibility, it kind of just removes that veil, that layer between me and the Divine. And so whenever I fully let myself immerse or engage in creativity, I find all kinds of possibilities at my fingertips. So I would say most definitely, I think the thing that most readily comes to mind is poetry.

And I think I've mentioned before, I did not grow up with poetry. It was maybe something that you looked down upon.  Who has time for that?  I went on a silent retreat and I decided to try writing poetry.  The setting that I was in, I was having somewhat of a challenge with all the free time that I had.  My mind was wandering and going to all these different places and I found that sitting down and writing poetry was just an absolutely fantastic way to connect me to God in that moment, in that experience. So absolutely.  

Christina Roberts
I think I'm recognizing on this podcast that I am with two people who are very artistic.  You're both musicians, and art and music plays a predominant role. And so I think sometimes when we're having these types of conversations, I can wonder, Okay, is this me?  I'm not really an artist. I certainly have particular creative outlets, but it's not the standard.  I don't bust out paints or those sorts of things. But I think recognizing that if we lower the definition of what that means to be creative, then absolutely.  I think, sometimes for me, even cooking and being creative in the kitchen is an outlet for me. Or I do like to write and journal. So that is something that is probably more of a personal process than something that I'm necessarily sharing outward. So anyway, maybe just to mention, for those that maybe don't immediately identify with like, oh, yeah, art creativity, that's how I would identify myself.  I do think that there are on ramps for even people like us. 

Kristina Kaiser

No, I love what you're saying, because I am artistic, but I think maybe all of us have this feeling of am I good enough at this to do anything or to share it even? Sometimes I've been with people and they've got these really fancy chalks or charcoals, or watercolors, and they can do these amazing things. And I feel like oh, here's my fifth grade art. And then other people will say like, no, it's totally not fifth grade art.  

I was reading an article recently about this very sort of thing, which I think is because of our culture. We feel like we have to have end results and if we make something then we should probably market it, sell it, offer it up to people to make money on it. And so the article was all about how art in the contemplative is not about doing any of those things. It's about the whole process. It's about the meaning behind it, not the end result. And so you don't have to worry about it, which I think for one thing gives me that kind of exhale going like, okay, great, I don't have to produce. This is just what's coming out of me. But it also reminded me of labyrinth walking, where it's not about getting to the center, it's about the process, the whole thing. It is solved by walking. So I do resonate with what you're saying.

Chris Roberts

Yeah, I find that there's, there's ways to engage with different types of art that might take us out of our comfort zones.  I remember going to some retreat. And they offered up this way to engage with God in their retreat by doing mandalas. And I'm like, What the heck is this? I've never engaged in anything like that; it feels foreign to me. And I think part of this, what we're talking about in art and creativity, that contemplative it's opening ourselves up to engage in a new experience that might connect us to the Divine. And so recently, I was at an event, and one of the things that we're doing is we were doing some breath work. And then we were invited by the facilitator to sort of do some body movement.  I'm going to play some music and then you just move your body.  I don't know, I just had lots of images of a bigger man, in a tutu, and gracefully dancing across the floor.  I struggled because of my imagery of body movement, what it looks like. I'm not a ballerina, I can't gracefully do a pirouette or anything like that as people are looking at me. And I found that I had to sink into myself and say, Okay, how am I going to connect with this right now? There's barriers that we have, or there's these things that I don't know if I'm willing to take the risk to do that. And I think if we can just slow it down and say, Okay, what does this look like, for me personally?  How can I engage with what's being offered?  People do things together, I think there's something very powerful about engaging in a creative act with other people. So I think one of the things that sticks out from this gathering is other people who normally don't do something like body movement have found that they were engaging with God in ways that they never had before.  It lent an energy to the air that we all got to experience together. And so that's another thing that comes up for me with art and creativity.  

Christina Roberts
It's important to name that there's a vulnerable piece with art, whether it's what you're talking about, kind of being stretched out of your zone with a mandala or movement or just even getting in touch with the deeper parts of you and what that means.  There's a vulnerability to it. I would say also, on a practical end, I think sometimes just having things accessible. And so probably about a half a year ago, we had an extra really large table with the intention of doing crafty kind of stuff. And I moved into the basement area, and one of my kids is in her zone.  She is there all the time making bracelets and listening to her audiobook. And it's sort of her way of decompressing and winding down. And then we moved the drums into my other kid’s room. And when there's high emotions, you hear the drums going, and that's an outlet and a release.  Several years ago, in our living room area, we hung the guitar, the banjo, with a piano in there. And so when we're kind of just in-between moments when we're done with dinner, and maybe going to transition to the next thing, different family members will gravitate towards the instruments because they're out there and available. And so I think there is something to recognize, this is an important outlet to your point, Kristina.  I do think we all have those sorts of things. Maybe for me, it's wandering around a new grocery store, one that I don't normally go to, and getting inspired by something that I see on the shelf that I might want to use in cooking. Exposing myself to those things. So I do think it's important to recognize the barriers, but also just having things accessible seems really important and very practical. 

Kristina Kaiser

No, I appreciate that. And it is helpful if they're available to us. And we know that we can do them. And I think there's numerous things that come up, like you had mentioned journaling.  We don't necessarily think of journaling as creative.  I wonder but maybe because we thought of it as a diary or something that was personal to us?  But recently I did this month long my deepest type reflections, like a daily reflection. I did a lot of journaling. But then I would get done and realize, look at all the words.  So I started using haiku at the end of my journaling time as a way to maybe put it all down in less words at the end of each of these days as often as I could. I often missed the weekends, because weekends have their own rhythm, but just having a moment to tie it all up.  It was almost like building an altar like you could come back to it. Yeah, that's what they did. Like, that's what the Old Testament did: they built an altar so that they could always remember this special thing that had happened there. And these haikus became a little bit like that for me. And I ended up putting them all into one document and sharing that with my family, which is the opposite of what I said before.  But because I wanted to be able to go back to them myself. 

Chris Roberts

Yeah, I like that. I experienced that on my walks. There's a little path that I take, and someone throughout the year makes some sort of bracelet.  This person puts it on a branch, I'm assuming that they're a walker in the woods as well. And when you pass by that it sort of signifies something.  It's this experience that not only do they have, but I have with them. And so I like that you're identifying it, maybe we have these markers that identify certain periods in our life. 

Christina Roberts

And I do think that, again, there's this opportunity to go into new territories with art that we don't just get from kind of our basic spiritual practices. And, Kristina, I know that you're really into color. And I've never really understood that. I know you love that and so I celebrate that with you. But this last weekend, I was in a seminar and somebody else brought up colors. And they specifically were mentioning that each of the chakras have a different color. And I was sort of thinking about chakras. And so when they mentioned, oh, this particular chakra is this color, it was like, Oh, I get that. There's something about that particular color that feels very vibrant. And it made sense the way that she had conducted it. And so in my mind, I'm like, okay, maybe that there is something that color can offer me.  I'm a very word based person, hence, the journaling, etc. But even as I'm putting together a bouquet of fresh flowers for the dining table once a week or things like that, it's like there is something about color that engages my spirit in a new, celebratory way. And so I think, again, these opportunities where maybe at first, we aren't connecting with that, like the Haiku or the different things that you're mentioning with body, but then we might return back to it and it can be a different invitation to us towards that artistic side. 

Kristina Kaiser

No, I think that's so true. Because pretty much anytime something has been introduced to me I think similar to Chris' thing about, You want me to do what with my body? This has been kind of my story for years because I first went to school for opera. So there were all these moments of you onstage asking you to do something really weird. And so very early on, I was exposed to this happening. I guess I gotta jump in with two feet, because it's sink or swim here. And so I would just kind of go into it. Movement has that for me. Like some people my oldest, she's been in dance since she was six, her body does things that I find amazing. I never got to take dance lessons so I feel very self conscious about my body. But I'm willing to jump in and see what will happen. 

And I think this is true of the contemplative regardless, for me, it doesn't have to be creativity. But we often go in thinking, what am I going to get from this? Is this gonna work? Will God speak to me by doing this kind of thing? And then what I've observed in the world is people often walk away from retreats and spiritual experiences feeling so surprised that God spoke to me, that it was amazing. And the same has been true in creativity.  Okay, I'm gonna do this weird movement thing. And then I will find myself surprised because of how not in tune I often am to my body when I'm not paying enough attention. So maybe we pretend that we are a tree and we drop our leaves, and I get stuck down there like I can't regrow. And then that teaches me something like why am I stuck bent over like this? Or, you know, we're flowing, we're moving to the music and I decided to turn there. Why did I decide to turn there? That was completely independent. So again, it's slowing down, getting to ask ourselves questions, getting to notice things about ourselves, and it is vulnerable. And we often don't know if anything's gonna come of it, and then boom, something unexpected happens.

Christina Roberts 14:42

And I might just add one more piece that, in my opinion, doesn't mean that we have to create the art. Sometimes just taking in art and appreciating creativity also nourishes the soul. And so whether it's listening to a moving piece of music, I'm not going to play that because I can't but I can certainly be moved by a piece of music or photos or things like that. And so I want to make sure that we're mentioning too, it doesn't necessarily have to be that you're creating or putting art into the world that can be taking in art as well. 

Kristina Kaiser

Yeah, I think that's a really beautiful point. Sometimes, like you were mentioning color before, we can do this as Visio Divina.  What is standing out to me? What about this would come up? Why is this happening? What might God be saying to me, in the midst of this?

That's the same experience, and we can do it with music or painting or, or none of those, right? It could just be on our nature walk as you were pointing out.  It doesn't have to be specific.  Sometimes, artists are kind of everywhere, the way the sky is painted. My children right now are into figuring out what clouds look like to them. So oftentimes that drives there's commentary about the clouds, even our littlest.  I was so surprised, and I've mentioned this before, but he will comment on the beauty of the snow or the event that has an element of its art all around us. It's just painted into the world. Well, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. Hopefully, it inspires all of us towards a little bit of creativity in some way. 

And now is the part of our podcast where we take a moment to talk about what we are into. So tell me, what are you into?  

Chris Roberts
Well, I am into sunrises. Every morning, I walk my oldest child to the bus stop. And it is kind of a time for us to bond. And every morning the sun has been just peeking over the trees at the bus stop. And so we're rating the sunrises. Is this picture worthy? And so this morning, the Sunrise was very picture worthy, and it's something that we look forward to as we walk to the bus stop. So I'm into beautiful sunrises with my oldest. 

Christina Roberts

 Well I am into my new pair of bell bottom jeans. They are very comfortable and fun. And often I shy away from bell bottoms, because I'm super short. But one of my neighbors is a seamstress I discovered during the pandemic. And so I have these awesome pairs of bell bottoms. And so it's just a fun fashion splash for the fall. So that's exciting. 

Kristina Kaiser

I love it. Both of those actually.   We're almost at the end of this possibility, but this time of year, there sometimes is an influx of cucumbers, not just from our garden, but from my husband's parents garden and his husband's sister's garden and my husband's aunts garden. Everybody's got a garden. And so we were getting so many pickles, we started making these refrigerator pickles.  Just get a big bucket out, put some brine in there, and then you can eat them.  I have found these things are delightful, they're tasty, They're light, they're crispy, they're crunchy. There's almost no consequence to eating them. And so I had refrigerator pickles in the middle of the day. At the end of a meal. If I'm still a little bit hungry, they've just come out all the time. And I recognize that it's a brief period of time because you won't have them forever. So I'm savoring the moment.

Thank you everybody for being with us. We'll look forward to seeing you again next time. 

Dominic Kaiser

If you enjoy listening to the podcast, we invite you to stay connected by signing up for our Foundry Spiritual Center newsletter where you can learn about even more programs and offerings. You'll find a link to subscribe in the show notes or visit us anytime at foundrysc.com. Thanks again for being with us. We hope you have a great week.