Musings from the Margins

Posts to this blog, also published in This Week @ Emmanuel, are written by our student intern from Lesley University’s masters program in Expressive Arts Therapy. This year, we are pleased to welcome intern Marielle Carpentier.

“Musings from the Margins” was founded in 2013, when The Rev. Susan Ackley was Sabbatical Priest and Artist in Residence with us. Over the years since then our Expressive Therapy Interns have faithfully and creatively recorded their thoughts about their experiences during the academic year at Emmanuel.

Rainbow Message

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Last week I put on the plastic cover to protect our Rainbow Messages and placed it on the wall in the Parish Hall.  I am deeply grateful that folks at Café Emmanuel allowed me to share my idea. I’m proud of everyone in the group. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I have witnessed how beautiful we are in our community and how much I have grown in the past eight months. Love is the power, and I know we all have it. I felt love sometimes hidden in interactions between people. I know I will still feel it even after we say goodbye. Again, I sincerely appreciate all the kindness and wisdom we have shared. I will use it to nourish my professional expertise in art therapy.
–Wanyi (pronunciation: wan-ee)
Note: Cafe Emmanuel is our weekly, well-being-luncheon-and-entertainment program for LGBTQ+ seniors and their friends. It has become a model of LGBTQ+ eldercare for the rest of the country.

Interfaith Honoring of Earth Cycles

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Is it Lent or Pisces season? While it may not seem like it from the sudden dip in temperature, spring is officially around the corner. March 21st marks the spring equinox, which is both the first day of spring and the astrological new year, when old Pisces is reborn into fresh baby Aries. The equinox is also Nowruz, the Persian new year; and this year Ramadan will begin the following day. Just a couple weeks later are Passover (April 5th) and Easter (April 9th). While many religions, cosmologies, and belief systems are left out in this short list, I believe it’s safe to say that this earth-cycle period is celebrated internationally and inter-faithfully.
On Ash Wednesday I was struck by how many of the rituals and teachings surrounding Lent reminded me so much of how I have always honored Pisces season every year: self-denial, spiritual detox, abstaining from social media and more, spending more time alone meditating, praying, etc.. In fact, I have traditionally always tried to align my vacation time with Pisces season so as to deeply honor this cycle. It was pleasantly surprising to learn that Christian tradition has so many practices that naturally honor the wisdom of the ancient astrological water sign.
So, happy end of winter, everyone! We’re almost out the other side, just about to be reborn with the spring. I hope each of us has some time to go inwards, tend to seeds we may be growing, and, despite the cold, enjoy the process.                            |+| EAS

Let the art speak.

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I first visited my internship site on Ash Wednesday a year ago. I still remember how nervous I was that day and so quietly hid among the people. Reflecting on myself this year, I have learned a lot from our community, about such things as my leadership skills, the history of its diverse cultures, cultural competence, nonverbal communication skills, and different life-stage experiences. The joy of self-growing also includes knowing so many beautiful souls here. They have welcomed me to join, even if it has taken time.

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Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn

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February is the national Black History Month in the United States. This is a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. I understand so many hurt souls have been mistreated for a long time. As it is never too late to have a space for discussion of social justice, this week in common art we started a group-based art project focused on it. Using a black marker to draw a line, each person connected to the line of the next person. After creating a group image of a line, we created art to express our intention toward a social issue we cared about. ( I want to thank my professor for bringing our class the idea of the structure for this exercise.)

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The Space Between: On the Healing Power of Gaze

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For the last three years, many of us have socialized and worked on Zoom, which, while convenient, is simply not the same as in-person, human-to-human contact, particularly in therapeutic contexts, particularly when it comes to affect regulation. This last Sunday at Tikkun Time, wanting to gently introduce a gazing exercise, I drew from Marina Abramovic’s work The Artist is Present as well as classic theater works. Gazing is a powerful, and often very hard, exercise. Trauma-informed bodies and neuro-divergent brains often struggle to sustain eye contact.

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The Value of Giving

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This weekend (February 3-4) when record-breaking cold was coming to Boston and surrounding areas, the topic of weather kept popping into every conversation at Boston Warm, common art, and Cafe Emmanuel. I noticed people reminding each other to take care of themselves and to close the windows as best as they could. My instinct told me that the deepest part of myself wanted to do something as a part of the community before the cold came.

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On the Fear of Stepping into Ourselves

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All year long, I have navigated resistance that seems to get heavier by the day, at times feels like depression; shape-shifts as needs be; takes on oh-so-many elusive forms; mutters in my ear that I can’t do it, that I shouldn’t do it, and even questions what is the point of doing it; finds excuses, blames others, drains me of all willpower to go forth. Resistance!

Where is it coming from? Anyone who has known me for a long time can attest that I am pretty much as strong-willed as it gets. I have never had any issue plunging into the unknown if intuition strongly told me to do so, never doubted my purpose, my path, or my mission. Only now, as the start of my professional life, which I have strived for for so long and in so many ways, draws closer, do I find myself pulling back. Shrinking. Disappearing. Resisting.

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Being in Darkness

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Image by Wanyi Huang

This week at common art, I randomly drew with colored markers a cactus growing under the stars. I shared my art with S., who asked me, “Have you seen the sky at night without lights and moonlight?” He described his experiences outside the city with only the starlight singing in the sky. His experience in the starlight shower was so vivid in his brain. When my image reminded him of this joyfulness and mental stillness, he felt gratitude. They finally see the bright stars in the sky when everything is dark. Indeed, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

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If you were a clock, what time would you show? 

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“Saying goodbye is not easy.” resonated in my head this week. Monday (1/9) was my last day after nine weeks at the Suffolk County House of Correction for the Art and Spirituality Program. When leading the opening group check-in, I asked participants: “If you were a clock, what time would you be now?” Some people said they were in the morning; some people said they were in the afternoon. What spoke to me was that some people said they were at 12 o’clock midnight, which means it is an end but also a start of something new. I related to their words deeply. Indeed, without goodbyes, we would not be able to have a new beginning. The ending of something can also be a new start for people who are looking for a change.

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Happy Holidays

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Last Friday at Boston Warm, we had a party: there were red-clothed tables, a community-decorated Christmas tree, a Christmas movie, hand-decorated cookies, all of it. It was such a joyful and relaxing moment as a community. As always, my favorite moment was our Uno game (shout out to Junior for winning four games in a row)! I’ve often found that when we play Uno, the game brings us together, and there is tangible relaxation in the atmosphere. We can all focus on flexing our skills. Overshadowed by fun and friendly competition, our differences are minimized. This focus on play is also part of what makes drama therapy effective.

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