“Each of us
must find a way to love the world.”
Sue Monk Kidd
Finding a Way to Love
In the mid-1990’s, I sat in an expressive art class with five others. The calm waters of Gig Harbor, Washington, shimmered through large windows to my right. Beyond the harbor, Mt. Rainier rose, snowcovered and majestic. Pastels, colored pencils and pens, multi-hued papers, and lumps of red and grey clay lay before us beckoning.
Our small group had been gathering every Wednesday for several years, portraying the events of our lives—large and small, inner and outer. On this day, I was working with clay, depicting my family at the time of my birth. When I was sixteen, my mother had told me about the bitter conflicts that split our family then, including my father’s and grandmothers’ aversion to my upcoming birth. Remembering her stories, I was shaping each person in poses that symbolized their jealousy, hostility, apathy, or depression. Acknowledging these painful memories would, I assumed, help me to release them.
Recalling my mother’s mother, I pressed my fingers into a mound of soft, grey clay, and began creating a shape to express her aggressive, competitive life-stance. I formed a strident figure, with legs firmly planted, and hands solidly fixed on her hips. Soon the figure portrayed the unpleasant side of my grandmother, as my mother had described her. But the clay figure, which I’d created quickly, was lumpy and unattractive. I wet the clay with water, and slowly, meditatively, smoothed the shape.
Unexpectedly, this process, which had begun with an aesthetic purpose, turned into a spiritual experience. As I smoothed my grandmother’s clay shape, my liquid strokes seemed like an anointing. I was blessing—loving—my grandmother in her painful, aggressive mood. This experience, which arose spontaneously, had not been planned. On other Wednesdays, when I depicted more family members in clay, this same sense of anointing arose.
Years later, I created the expressive art practices called the Art of Surrender and Word Weavers. My earlier experiences with clay had focused on blessing others, but these new processes invited us to attend compassionately to our own human self, while inviting it to entwine with the divine love that is our very core.
When I first experienced unconditional love while doing expressive art, I was surprised. Today, these experiences no longer seem unusual. I look forward to picking up expressive art materials, and using them to remind the human me of its divine essence. Drawing, constructing with paper or clay, and writing lyrically about these experiences, have become ways for me to love. Writing these words for you now— also a creative act—is another way for me to love the world.
My Background
Founder of the Living Arts Center, I am an Interfaith Minister, ordained by the New Seminary in New York City. In addition, I hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in Religion from the University of Southern California, and a Master’s degree in Social Work (Social Policy) from the State University of New York. A member of Spiritual Directors International, I have been privately trained in Creative Journal Work, Person Centered Expressive Arts, and Authentic Movement. I also served as faculty member on a dissertation committee at the Union Institute in Ohio.
