News from The Social Artists' Companion

This issue is full of visions. Sushi has a brush with future visions, Chickee Atalla shares her conversations with a vision, and Social Artists Joy Jinks and Peggy Rubin invite you to join in a vision for Social Artistry and the future.

Janet Levine teases us with Leela's Gift. Bill Chishom connects the dots and Dawn Kirk addresses connections lost. Poet Mary Bett Watt greens our minds with memories of Ireland. Joyce McNamara's Taking Social Artistry to the Streets explores our experience as visionaries and offers a challenge.

Enjoy!

Atalla's Conversations With the
Goddess Published

by Joyce McNamara

West Coast Mystery School and Social Artistry alumna, "Chickee" Dorothy Attla, announced the publication of her book, Conversations With the Goddess: Encounter at Petra, Place of Power in June. In a journey that began with a trip to Petra, Jordan in the 1970s, this work of extraordinary courage and diligence chronicles Chickee's Goddess-guided conversations with the sacred, wise and powerful Feminine. Like many of us who seek experience of other cultures and lands, Chickee traveled with her family to Petra as she says, "on a whim." She was taken by the power of the ruins and felt an "aliveness" in the land. While she was walking the ruins of the ancient city she sensed a tangible presence in the land. She said, "she had not anticipated Petra's wild, surreal beauty." And, that "the walls of the canyon seemed a passageway into another time, another space."

The significance of the sense of Presence and another time, another space was not clearly understood until much later, eight years to be more precise. One winter's day in 1981, Chickee was called by the Goddess. As Chickee writes, "Little did I know that the dark of winter would birth on the very day an event that would change my life." Chickee in meditation, was visited by a Goddess. She wrote that, "I was so surprised by the experience of my vision of the woman that I could barely focus on anything else." She decided to continue to mediate and to research the veracity of the information she received in the "conversations". She states that she's been supported in her life by synchronistic events, like having information, books, or teachers arrive when needed and that pattern continued as Chickee's encounters with the Goddess played out. As she continued having experiences with the Goddess and she diligently researched the information given in the conversations and uncovered the rich weaving of the human experience of the Goddess and her influence throughout time.

These "conversations" over time built the fabric of this book. With each encounter the richness of the patterns of the sacred Feminine's relationship with humanity was revealed and the contemporary relevance of her teachings were made clear. Chickee's inquisitive nature compelled her research. As she said in our interview, "For myself, I asked is this so? Where do I find this in the library?" She concluded that the end result was that her inquiries led to the evidence supporting the Goddess's information. Chickee believes that it will help the readers to ground the experience. And grounding may be necessary for some.

How would you handle having Goddess-driven conversations where, in many cases, your thoughts were known and answers provided before you spoke them? Can you entertain how it would feel to have visions, visitations, and requests from a Goddess revered over seven centuries ago? This is exactly what Chickee faced. Alone in a conservative Midwestern community, she faced the challenge of answering a call from a Presence to engage in a dialogue that would ultimately result in a book for the world. Chickee reflects on the challenge and how the support of one friend gave her the strength to meet the challenge. She said that her friend was willing to listen and be open to the possibility that what Chickee said was happening was in deed. This all transpired long before Chickee's introduction to human capacities with Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin. She did say that her time in the Mystery School and Social Artistry Intensive served to validate her experience. She said, "there is far more to us than we ever dreamed possible. Once we have experience with our capacities we realize that it is supernatural enough to be human." She also mentioned how valuable the community of Mysterians and Social Artists is. She said it is lonely without such support as you explore what is possible.

"What I did was threshold work and there is much more to come," she reflects. Life goes on and so does the work. Chickee has been informed that another book is coming as the Goddess makes herself know to the world and we learn from her presence in our hearts and minds. As Betty Rothenberger wrote, " I read her book with growing excitement about its revelations. Conversations is a wonderful book. I highly recommend it." And so do I!

You can order her book by phone from Book Clearing House at 1-800-431-1579 or at www.conversationswiththegoddess.net, Amazon, Ingram, and New Leaf Distributors.

Swamp Gravy Keynote at SA Summit

Dear Friends,

On July 30, we are fortunate to have Swamp Gravy's founder, Joy Jinks, as the keynote speaker for the 2010 Social Artistry Summit. For years, Jean has cited Swamp gravy as one of the best and longest-running Social Artistry Projects. Swamp Gravy has become the folk Life Play of Georgia. It began at an East Coast Mystery School in 1990. Joy Jinks, with a dream of cultural and economic development for her small rural town of Colquitt, Georgia, connected with Richard Geer, a director from New York. Together, they recruited people to collect stories from local folk, wrote, and produced a play. The rest is history and I'll leave this story to Joy.

As an evolving Social Artist trainer, I wanted to taste, touch, and see this project. In 2009, my family took a "roots trip" to Swamp Gravy in Colquitt and to my husband's remaining family on Swamp Road in Pamplico, South Carolina. Both places were filled with story.

In Colquitt, Joy arranged interviews for us with actors, the master story gatherer, two high school playwrights, the community development team, and the head of the Arts Council. We attended the 2009 Swamp Gravy Play, Ain't No Tellin', set in the Great Depression. Touring the town of Colquitt, we saw murals of the local stories presented in past plays.

In addition to the Cotton Hall Theater and murals, Joy showed us many economic development projects that indirectly related to the plays. We saw Jokara, a video/television company, and a non-profit organization that trains young people and adults in disciplines of the film industry. We ate lunch with a teen playwright at the historical Tarrer Inn, itself an economic development project.

From this visit, I saw up close, the qualities of a Social Artist. As a social artist, Joy is part visionary, businesswoman, artist, politician, and whatever-is-needed. She sees the biggest of pictures and the smallest of details. Most of all, she supports those around her to grow and become stars in their own lives.

Colquitt's small stores, few franchises, tourism, town center, and all of the art created from Swamp Gravy add life and purpose to the community.

Come and see for yourself at the SA Congress what one Social Artistry project can become in 20 years.

Sophia Bowie-McCoy

Social Artistry Wants You As A Friend

by Peggy Rubin

Here's an offer you shouldn't refuse.

Dear Friends,

I finished my book (To Be and How to Be, Hooray Hooray!) and have turned my attention to Social Artistry, a program near and dear to me. Please help us build the long-term infrastructure for a thriving, engaged international community. Let us know what being a Friend means to you, and what other kinds of Friend benefits you would like added or included in the future.

Yes, becoming a Friend of Social Artistry will cost you $100 a year.

And Yes! it will give you many new connections to the community, through News Notes and the Social Artists Companion, plus monthly phone calls, and the opportunity to participate in shaping the future of this community of world servers.

Plus a big bargain: a 10 % discount for this summer's Ninth Annual Social Artistry Institute, August 1-8. Here's a deal: if you join now, and you can't attend the Institute, but can send a friend, we'll give the friend your discount.

Today is a good day to join.

Monthly calls for Social Artists begin on Wednesday, September 1. I'm offering the first call: "Sacred Theatre meets Social Artistry," at 6:00 P.M. West Coast time. So join today, using the form below.

The FRIENDS OF SOCIAL ARTISTRY

$100 One-year Subscription (through 9/1/11) provides:
10% discount on Social Artistry events, including this year's Institute!
Monthly conference call, beginning September 1, 2010
Subscription to The Social Artist's Companion and news updates
Engagement and connectivity with colleagues around the world!

OR: pay $400 now for FIVE years of benefits, through 9/1/15!

OR: Lifetime Friend $1000.

To become a Friend go to The Jean Houston Foundation online at www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org/ or send name, address, phone number, email address and check or payment information to Jean Houston Foundation, P.O. Box 3330, Ashland, OR 97520

	Journey to Ireland
by Mary Beth Watt A light like long ago hearth fires Wind that echoes chants of ancient clans Green like comfort wrapping flowered jewels Smiles that speak soulfully before words are said These are my memories of Ireland Soon I will know if there's something I've forgotten Copyright © 2010 Mary Beth Watt. All rights reserved. http://poetryofliving.blogspot.com

Earth's Texting - Blackberries and
the Blackberry

by Dawn Kirk

I haven't quite shaken the fact that the Oxford Jr. Dictionary's latest edition is now minus 10,000 words many related to nature. Most disconcerting is that many of the deleted words are associated with the feminine and Mother Earth while many added are related to technology and celebrity.

I haven't gotten over this and suspect I won't, but speaking of celebrity I have gotten back to life as I know and love it since Oprah's people didn't call last week. I made a blackberry cobbler. Actually I made two from berries a friend gave me and am now contemplating making blackberry wine.

While the cobblers cooked, curiosity prompted me to go on-line where I found that the gadget Blackberry was added to the dictionary while the fruit blackberry was, yes, dropped. How many children or adults for that matter risk thinking a blackberry is the square thing you text with not realizing these juicy orbs are texts from Mother Nature growing wild in rural areas this time of year as well as being grown by local farmers. (See localtable.net for Middle TN farmers with berries.)

When I was in college, I'd return home to pick blackberries with my grandfather, the one to whom it was hard to be close. Years later he still reminded me of the summer day we picked and picked. We filled our bag or thought we were until we realized we were leaving a berry trail as our bag had a hole in the bottom that was gradually getting larger. These experiences in nature activate our sensory selves in ways 'picking' a Blackberry in the store cannot.

For centuries here on Planet Earth, it seems we're challenged when it comes to holding the concept of both. We separate things and one another into good/bad, doing/being, thinking/feeling, city/rural, North/South, right/wrong, masculine/feminine or in this case Blackberry vs. blackberry.

I envision a world where we have both the blackberry and Blackberry. Both connect and nourish us, one to Nature through food and one to others through friendship. Both provide experiences of creating a bridge between our outer world and our insides, offering the possibility for greater love and awareness of life. Both offer text messages from loved ones and friends as well as Mother Earth.

We are surrounded by text messages from Mother Earth in the trees and bricks that become our homes, the gravel or asphalt that becomes our driveways, the potatoes that become our fries, the birds that sing, the rains that fall. I could go on and on.

Earth is texting. Are you listening? Imagine the Shift in our daily lives and around the world, if we began to text back with feelings of gratitude and appreciation to Nature and Earth for this beautiful place we call home.

-Dawn! Still the Good News Muse, 16 July 2010

Contact email: dawn@imaginetheshift.com

As for that blackberry wine, well that's another story......

Taking Social Artistry to the Streets

by Joyce McNamara

Our community is sizzling this summer with events in Ashland, Oregon ranging from the JHF Social Artistry Trainer's Practicum, SA Summit, SA Congress, and the Ninth Annual Social Artistry Summer Leadership Institute. This is a time where experience meets wide-eyed wonderment and all things are possible. A gathering of the seasoned leaders in Social Artistry, like Joy Jinks, who will share their experiences at the SA Summit. It is inspiring to hear how an idea becomes a change-agent for a whole community, like Colquitt, Georgia's journey with Joy Jinks' vision. The SA community will be reignited with passion from this summer's gathering.

Where have your SA visions taken you? Have you found yourself stuck? Are your visions but a memory? Who was the dreamer who had the vision? Was he full of a sense of the possible? Was she newly imbued with a knowing of herself after the experiences of an intensive or Mystery School weekend? It is true that the sum of the experience of moments spent journeying through time, inner space, outer perception, in the company of fellow questers as we experienced when we work with Jean or Peggy, will produce knowings of capacities, sensing of possibilities, and the courage to take the first steps toward birthing a vision. So what happens as time spools out? Where is the difference between your experience and say, Joy Jinks'?

What I've observed in myself and others is obstructed vision. What so I mean? I'm referring to the inability to take the energy and passion that we felt in the throes of the group experience and make it our own. I remember in a SA Summer Institute Lynn Twist challenging us to take a stand. Most of us were able to take the microphone and stand before the group and state for all to hear what we took a stand for. It was a powerful experience. Were our stands personal enough for us to own? Probably not. Not enough to carry us into our lives.

I find it easy to be swept up in the passion and power of the group and take stands for the great and important causes. These causes deserve our care and energy, but are they our own project? I think that the lack of engagement in a project lies in the disconnect with our own spirit, our own personal interests. Joy Jinks took what was happening in her community personally. In that personal connection she found the drive to see her vision become a reality.

When we return to our lives fresh from our passion for the possible experience, what is in our lives that compels us? As I like to say when I'm working with clients, "bring it home". By that I mean what is the circumstance, feeling, or situation telling you about you? Our work, our vision of what we are to do in the world starts at home. What matters to you where you live, metaphorically or literally. I believe that any work that begins where you live will naturally have a place in the larger story.

Along with the work having a place in your life, in your heart and in your spirit, it will have a match to your innate capacities. It will have grown as a seed nested within your experience and your life, filled with aspects of your journey. As you've lived your life so too has your calling. Over time and with the great assistance of processes Jean and Peggy guide us through, we have begun to discover who we are. This who is not what our parents saw or that society desired but the who we were created to be. Remember entelechy. Have you taken the time to discover and know the "seed" you are? Are you a communicator, creator of art, music? Are you naturally a networker? Do you keep people's contact information in your head along with their dreams, wishes, and abilities? What about your nature do you discount because it comes easy or you think everyone does it?

The real work is discovering who you are and what you can do. I mean DO, the things that are your specialty, your gift, your passion. If you've not discovered them what are you bringing to your vision? Can you even know what your vision is? Is the vision yours or someone else's?

Is your vision of yourself obstructed? What is it that you care deeply about, enough to give your life over to? I'm not saying that we all have to be in the founder's role but we all must take a leadership position in our own lives. Take a stand for our own life and its meaning and purpose. We may not be the one who changes the larger story in a grand way but we all can be the one who makes the difference at home, in our lives, in our relationships with people and the earth. Find your heart, your gifts, and engage your life as a Social Artist, someone who discovered new territory and gave the world the treasures that were hidden within.

From The Inside Out

getting it, under our skin

by Bill Chisholm

This was going to be a treatise on education, but the ramifications and the realities of our education system mirrors the culture and vice versa, thus an expanded focus. It is still on education, or perhaps better said on learning, on our perceptions of the world.

Despite our big brains, our intellect, out language and our sophisticated technology, we are an incredibly shallow, surface oriented species. Many of our interactions with the world lack depth. We deal with the world, including ourselves surface to surface, skin to skin, but go no deeper; yet it is that which is below the surface that gives form and substance to ourselves and the world around us.

We view the world through our senses, our eyes, our ears, our skin; we see things, hear things, and feel things. Our attraction toward or repulsion away from each other or even a different species, has much to do with the skin, the looks of the other. We don't go deeper to get to know, to understand and to appreciate the other.

When something goes wrong with ourselves, we run to the doctor to get an analysis of what it might be. We know little of the inner workings of our bodies, our cars, our houses, our food or the soil in which that food is grown. We don't connect the surface dots, what for instance the management of a water shed has to do with the flooding of the rivers. We certainly don't connect the dots that go deeper in our selves; the health of our bodies with the health of our food with the health of the soil with the health of the water with the health of the planet.

Our education system is curriculum based (external) not curiosity based (internal). We force feed the curriculum into often unready minds. Curiosity, learning from the inside out, relies on intellectual hunger, to draw in or absorb knowledge of the world around us. There seems to be an assumption that the software, the books and the teachers are the most important part of the system and we ignore the hard drive, the brain/mind/body of the students. We have tech support people in the schools to keep the computer system running, but we don't have an equivalent person with the depth of knowledge and understanding of the human hard drive counseling us on how to maximize the capabilities of the students with the recognition of the differences in the software that has been loaded onto their hard drives through their environment.

Neuro-science, the new biology, the new psychology, the consciousness movement have opened incredible doors into our selves. This depth of knowledge is being overlooked in dealing with the many issues that face us. Dealing surface to surface limits our understanding and thus the depth required to actually solve our problems. There are those that like to keep us focused surface to surface, they make a lot of money off us that way selling us the latest product to make us supposedly prettier, happier, more productive and thus richer in some surface way.

Many an unscrupulous contractor has gotten rich off the ignorance of homeowners who have no clue about what is below the siding on their houses or the paint on their walls. After an earthquake sheetrock or stucco might pop loose from the framing and appear to indicate structural damage, where in reality the sheetrock may have popped through the screws, the stucco cracked or the chicken wire behind it came loose. The same may be said of our relationship with our bodies and the doctors we turn our bodies over to in a moment of crisis. Certainly not all contractors or doctors exploit our internal as opposed to external ignorance, but our lack of knowledge makes us victims rather than partners in the healing process.

I use The Anatomy Coloring Book in my yoga class referring to it as the body's owner's manual; a vehicle to get familiar with the body's working parts, to then do yoga from the inside out, not from the outside in. Knowing the muscular/skeletal structure, the location of the organs in the body; gives one some sense of what is going on in the body. One can then take more control of the process of keeping the body at one, attuned.

We would be better served across the board if we got beneath the surface appearances of things. Imagine a curiosity based education system where the student at an early age is given some sense of the tremendous capabilities and the workings of their brains and bodies, their curiosity encouraged and with the teachers as facilitators of learning rather than administrators of curriculum standards. Think how the medical system would change if patients were knowledgeable partners in their health issues with the doctors. What would our food be like if farmers really knew about the relationships between the health of the soil and the quality of the food they were growing?

In our relationships with each other, what if we paid attention to the cause and effects we have on each other, not just on the skin, but at the emotional/spiritual level? The depth of understanding of the wrongs we inflict on each other and a desire to remedy them would make our families healthier and happier, and this is not just true of our blood ties, but the family of man. In international relations, do we ever consider that those that hate us have some history in their dealings with us that has made them like they are? Perhaps the solution rests more with changing ourselves than with changing them: an internal rather than an external response.

The most fundamental manifestation of our shallowness, our lack of depth and internal understandings is our relationship with the Earth and those other forms of life with which we share this incredible place. We ignore the inter-connectedness of species. We ignore the depths of the impacts of how we live on the planet on those other species and on the planet itself. Have we ever questioned what role all that oil we seem to be ready to draw out from the Earth at almost any expense actually plays in the physical function of the planet?

Leonardo da Vinci noted that "We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot." We are more in awe of the latest technology than our own brains, from which that technology came. It is the disconnect from the internal that leads as Thoreau said to most men living lives of quiet desperation.

We hope you've enjoyed the July issue of The Companion. We welcome submissions of letters, articles, photography and announcements of interest to our global community of Social Artists.

To subscribe to The Companion please sent $25 for a year's subscription with your email address to me at 3100 N. Tamar Road, Wasilla, AK 99654. Thank you for your interest in The Companion and in Social Artistry.

Sincerely,

Joyce McNamara, Publisher
The Social Artists' Companion