Greetings, Emmanuelites! I feel very fortunate to be joining a wonderful group of interns from Boston area colleges and universities at Emmanuel. My name is Liz and I am one of the three first-year Expressive Arts Therapies interns from the Lesley University Graduate School of Arts. I would like to introduce you to my two partners in creative expression whom I feel ecstatic to be working with. Evey, who shared her reflections about Emmanuel in last week’s blog entry, is a Dance Therapy major with a beautiful smile and a fondness for ballroom dancing. Amanda, a Bluegrass music loving sculptor, who will be introducing herself in next week’s blog, is an Art Therapy student. As a lover of variety who is admittedly a bit indecisive, I am enjoying the many creative modalities of the Expressive Arts Therapies major. Continue reading
Musings from the Margins
Evey joins the program.
Hello everyone! I hope that this finds you well. My name is Evey and I am one of the three interns from the Lesley Graduate Expressive Therapies Program at Emmanuel this year. I feel very honored and privileged to have the opportunity to become part of this community. I am looking forward to getting to know you better! My three clinical assignments are programs that you help make happen: Common Art, Café Emmanuel, and Pam Werntz’s Art & Spirituality prison ministry program. Continue reading
Founding of This Blog
While our rector Pamela Werntz traveled on her 2013 sabbatical, we also had opportunities to explore Spirituality and the Arts at Emmanuel (thanks to the generosity of the Lilly Foundation). A collaboration with Lesley University’s Expressive Arts Therapy program seemed like a perfect means of enriching the church’s mission for using the arts as vehicle for healing and spiritual growth. On April 7, 2013, faculty from Lesley joined us for the service and offered a stimulating presentation about their program and ideas for working with Emmanuel.
In order to build upon this exciting beginning, a group of Lesley University faculty met with representatives from Emmanuel to discuss our future collaborations. Between these two meetings, the bombings at The Boston Marathon resulted in feelings of pain, loss, fear, and anger. The group decided its first event should involve the healing power of creativity in addressing these wounds, so we called it “When Words Are Not Enough.” When Our first intern arrived that Fall, we chose the name to Musings from the Margins for a blog to record their thoughts about their experiences at Emmanuel.
The Rev. Susan Ackley, our Sabbatical Priest/Artist-in-Residence, and participants in “Words Are Not Enough” carry prayer flags down Newbury Street to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.