Author: americanjulie

What is the Point of Church?

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I am part of the St John’s Lutheran Church community in Sacramento. The leaders are always pushing our community to do better. This Sunday I had to laugh when I shut the stall door in the ladies’ restroom. These two questions (pictured above) were posted there. They also provided paper in the courtyard for us to share our thoughts.

I’m sure this was planned long before Hurricane Harvey hovered over Houston. However, in the light of the social media outrage over prosperity preacher Joel Osteen’s seeming indifference to the plight of neighbors flooded out of their homes, it is very timely.

Even people who don’t share our faith expect churches, synagogues and mosques to do good together. When a disaster or crisis hits a community, the public expectation is that these communities of faith will organize a response. I admit, I expect this too. I emailed my pastor to ask if St John’s was going to take a collection for the Evangelical Lutheran Church response. (yes) While the media was focused playing off Osteen’s lack of response against the muslim communities collective rescue efforts, I knew that all of the mainline denominations, World Vision and others were also on the ground with supplies and money. As I walked around the church campus on Sunday I wondered if as much water fell on Sacramento and the areas ringed by levees filled up like a bathtub, would St John’s be above flood stage? What refuge could we offer?

Everyday in Sacramento we have an on-going  emergency of homelessness and our church community does a lot with other communities of faith to respond. I participate in that effort. This is not the place to boast, but I did choose this congregation to join, in part, because of their service to the whole community: LGBT, homeless, youth, and the elderly and people like me.

Could I do all of these things without the church? Of course, there are many organizations that I could give to and participate in a variety of ways to address homelessness. And in Houston we see neighbors helping neighbors without being asked. Doctors and nurses reported to hospitals to volunteer. Social workers reported to emergency shelters, and so on.

I could meditate every morning instead of reading scripture and having a quiet time. I could go on a walk along the river each Sunday morning and enjoy God’s creation. But I crave the unique experience of singing, praying, reading scripture with my community. There are many styles of worship but all for the same purpose: to praise God, confess our sins, and experience God together. Do we actually experience God? Yes, but only faintly. Yet every Sunday I participate and marvel at way the combination of ritual, music and sermon ground me again in my values and beliefs for the coming week.

I also look to the my church family to help me through life, and me them. Celebrate the marriage, food and gifts for baby, comfort and aid when sick, comfort and condolence when death comes to someone we love. Again, this can also be experienced with family and friends; however, not necessarily with the hope our faith provides.

It is true that organized religion can also hurt. I’ve experienced the incredible agape love that transports and I’ve been judged very harshly and my family shunned. Some people have been victimized by the authority given to priests and pastors. It is a community meaning it is made up of humans and sometimes the phrase “only human” applies.

The church community can also coddle its members and become another self-help vending machine. There is often very little recognition of the spiritual disciplines and the importance of an interior life in the USA church life.  I want my church community to challenge me to spiritual growth.

Listening to the replay of Krista Tippett’s interview with poet and philosopher John O’Donohue, they discussed whether we are more impoverished than previous generations as to our ability to love and be a friend. He said no, we are just out of practice. This is where the church could be more active: in naming the love and friendship that Christ called us to and modeled for us. In the past the church has been a prophet in the community. The church community should wonder what they are not doing if everyone is comfortable.

Best if we show, not tell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s in a Name?

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment
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Gwen Amos, “Dark Angel”

I’ve recently reread Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series. In the second book, A Wind at the Door, the young heroine Meg teams up with a cherubim to pass three tests. He explains to Meg that she is a Namer. In fact, all of us who are on the side of good in the world are Namers. Those who are on the side of the Echthroi, or the chaos, evil and war in the world are “un-namers.” In this story they can X creation out, including stars, thus creating tears in the universe.

Meg’s plight resonated with me because I love naming things–pets, children, artwork–and yet there is a big responsibility that goes along with it. In naming something or someone we are calling out what something truly is or who they are meant to be (except the Jack Russell Terrorizer down the block whose name is Angel). In the Genesis story (Chapter 2) God brings his creation to mankind for him to name them. This story tells us that this is our first “job” on earth.

Recently in the USA we’ve all been roiled by the specter of American nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups openly demonstrating their dark beliefs. Some are trying to normalize them by calling them Alt-right groups and making them parallel to so-called “Alt Left” groups. There is one group that sometimes uses violence called Antifa and this stands for “Anti-fascists,” which is not on the same moral plane as someone who is racist and is comfortable celebrating political ideologies that lead to genocide.

Alas our skill at naming things to be what they truly are is getting so out of practice that many people are confused. As Marilyn Chandler McIntyre points out in her book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, “the deceptions we particularly seem to want are those that comfort, insulate, legitimate and provide ready excuses for inaction.” (p 57) Because if your electoral power depends on those who view the other as less than fully human, then you need some way to justify not standing up to #45 and others who give them credibility.

These are perilous times. This morning Pastor Frank preached on Matthew 16: 13-20 when Jesus asks the disciples, “who do you say I am?” He began by calling our community of faith to be clear that there are white supremacists and nazis mobilizing in our country today. It does no good to equivocate and call them something else. Just as it does no good as a person of faith to call Jesus “Elijah” or “John the Baptist.” We must recognize the power of the living God to have the Spirit’s help in discerning what is real and what is comfortable deceit.

What strikes me as particularly confounding is the evangelical “Christian” churches belief that they are persecuted for their faith in the USA. This fear that someone is about to keep them from saying “Merry Christmas” must keep them from examining what real persecution looks like. Just listen to this story on NPR.org about Esther who was kidnapped by the Boko Haram and enslaved for sex and hard housework. (The Lament of the Boko Haram ‘Brides’ August 27, 2017) When she was caught worshipping Jesus, she was beaten and her life threatened. When we call having to live alongside people of other faiths as “persecution” we cheapen what it really means to people of faith around the world.

Let’s be impeccable with our words. And give no allowances to those who are not.

Jane’s Playhouse

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment

IMG_2056My inspiration for this artwork began with an article from City Lab by Richard Florida about Jane Jacobs. (12/20/2016) Jacobs wrote about her pessimism for the United States’ experiment with democracy. Her main question is “how and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes literally lost?” How do we dissolve to a place where facts have no meaning?

The election of #45 prompted Richard Florida to remember this particular Jacobs book, Dark Age Ahead, her last book written in 2005. This is not about Trump. It’s about all the things we’ve done collectively and individually to create the conditions where a populist backlash could succeed in electing an incompetent to the most important leadership role in our country. Of course, aided by the Russians—hence the spy—but we served up our country on a silver platter even before Putin let loose his computer hackers.

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She named the five pillars of society that if we allow to decay or fail to protect from assault will lead to a new dark age. The first is family and community. The replacement of nuclear families from extended families makes housing unaffordable for many people or upset work/life balance. Materialism, market pressures and a brand culture erode community. She takes issues with automobiles as enabling self-interest over community interest.

The denigration of education into something of value only as a means of getting a better job weakens the second pillar. After desegregation, we began defunding public education throughout the United States. At about the same time, fundamental zealots separated themselves through homeschooling and religious schools that applaud an ignorance of science and post-modern ideas. It is also the failure of schools to adapt. Reforms resulted in testing instead of using the new brain science to create better learning environments. Higher education has lost complete touch with their mission by pricing themselves so high as to create an educated class of young people loaded with a debt burden that is becoming a drag on the entire economy.

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Science is the third pillar and Jacobs was concerned about science becoming dogma. I find it more like a two-headed dog biting itself. The one head barks to leave it alone to do it’s work without the burden of moral principles or ethics and no accountability for their impact—especially pollution to our planet. All while the other head measures discovery, technology, and the increasing peril to our every existence due to climate change.

The next to last pillar is the “dumbing down of taxes.” The political chant began “no new taxes” then it became “tax cuts,” which mainly benefited the wealthiest people and corporations. Then we are surprised that such selfishness results in the greatest divide between rich and poor since World War II. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our transit systems inadequate, and schools and prisons crowded because the majority of the population no longer understands “public goods.” Anything for the community is seen as waste.

The fifth and final pillar is professionalism and ethics. Jacobs calls it “learned professions,” and includes medicine, law, architecture, engineering and journalism. These professions give us our ethics and professional standards that set behavioral boundaries. These are under attack by “frauds, brutes, and psychopaths.” Not coincidentally immigrants often hold up these values more than other Americans and aspire to these professions, so newcomers also come under attack by native barbarians.

Pick up the roof and look inside. Our citizen is watching tv and he and his daughter are connected to wifi and distracting themselves from the reality of the house falling down around them. In high school history I learned that the Roman Empire fell apart because of the rot from within, and then the barbarians were able to swiftly conquer. It is more complicated but these stories ring true today.

What then shall be done? Jacobs saw cities are bulwarks against the darkness. And she believed in protest. It’s up to those of us who understand the reality, that we are all interconnected and we all benefit from a vital culture, to shore up the pillars of society. We should do it for ourselves, and for humankind.

Art and photos by Julie Pieper.

Father Denmark Inspires Deeper Thinking

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IMG_1121I didn’t want to make a thesis about Denmark’s political culture from one bike tour guide’s comments. So after stopping at the Father of Denmark’s statue I sought out a book that could tell me more about NFS Grundtvig.

At the bookshop they had two options in English and one was lighter to carry and described as more accessible. I bought Knud J V Jespersen’s A History of Denmark and read the relevant chapters. (I skipped “Economic Conditions 1500-1800”!)

It turns out that Grundtvig is even more interesting than BikeMike shared. Grundtvig lived from 1783-1872 and his life spanned from the age of Enlightenment to Romanticism to Bismarck’s Realpolitik. “All of the strong philosophical currents contributed in their own way to his thinking, and so to the creation of a particularly Danish ‘ism’—Grundtvigianism–which probably affected Denmark far more than any other European political or ideological movement.” (p 112-113)

His written histories reintroduced pagan Norse myths and gods to the Danish people. His subsequent three extended study visits to England gave him an appreciation for the value of pragmatism and freedom of thought. His most famous maxim is “First a human, then a Christian.” Ponder that for a moment.

What if everyone in the world thought in these terms?

  • First a human, then a Muslim.
  • First a human, then an American.
  • First a human, then a Republican.

How much of our conflicts would go away? Similarly if all people could acknowledge they are humans and not gods or God’s agent. Humbly accept the limitations of being human, which includes an imperfect understanding of the divine. What peace and love and understanding might be available? But I digress.

In Denmark in the early 1800s, society was mired in a stranglehold of the church institution and aristocratic absolutism. The defeat to Bismarck created an existential crisis and Grundtvig articulated a new way to be Danish. He was a Lutheran pastor who preached separation of church and state. He preferred a Christian faith that is a conversation among equals rather than a long theological sermon. Amen.

He also reformed education with his ideas about a “school of life,” which was aimed at rural youth who’d been deprived of educational opportunity. “In short the intent was no less than to transform the inarticulate masses into responsible and articulate citizens in the new democratic society, which was slowly taking shape.” (p 114)

In a series of commentaries on contemporary societal problems (in 1838), Grundtvig created the word “folkelighed” to present his central concept:

…belonging to a nation was a matter of free choice. One could choose to join or remain outside. Choosing to join the popular, that is, national, community meant accepting certain duties towards that community as a whole, not just linguistic, but in the form of taking for the whole and an obligation to include the members in a folkelig, a mutually committed community. (p 118)

Grundtvig arrived at a propitious time in Denmark’s history when they were at a crossroads. The USA and England are at a crossroads. Who will inspire us to be more fully human, to look after one another and our planet? In the absence of a philosophical giant such as Grundtvig, we will have to read his words and others from history and find our inspiration.

Creativity Vs Commerce

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment

Writing prompt: “The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living room and our porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world.” from Writing Down the Bones

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Art installation made of old life preservers in Copenhagen.

I am realizing how deep the conditioning of capitalism is in my life. I carry the automatic monetization of everything I do in my head like a calculator on auto pilot. If I write the travel guide, is it worth it, as in will it make money? The bitter irony is that nothing creates resistance to creativity like this cha-ching habit. I can’t get JK Rowling’s fabulous financial success out of my head.

As a self-employed person, wait, let’s examine that phrase. We are all “self-employed” deciding how we will spend our time and creative resources even if it is to give it to an organization for 8-10 hours a day. As a consultant paid because of a contract, I have been listening to Side Hustle School podcast by Chris Guillebeau. I am realizing that I let it feed the monetization monster. All of my side hustle ideas started with my long time writing projects. I told myself that this would be motivational.

In fact, what I know now is my creative life works best when I give it space to happen and enjoy it for the pleasure of being a human with opposable thumbs that can create art or write with a pen.

My life works best when I have a work/life balance that holds the space for art and respects my need for creativity. This was thrown into relief when I thought of a side hustle that is truly commerce only. And the thought that I could pursue my collage/assemblage and writing projects without pressure to make money was so soul lifting and smile making. Confirmation that it is the right choice for me.

Is there a “Right Size” for Cooperation?

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment
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Libraries, like this massive one in Copenhagen, are a sign of a healthy, collaborative society.

While I’ve been in Europe I am following what is happening nationally in the USA via Vox news, the Atlantic and New Yorker social media, and FiveThirtyEight and other podcasts. They are bearing witness to extreme democratic dysfunction. Clowns appointed as judges, bills written in secret, a President tweeting his id. Meanwhile in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries they are quietly inventing ways to turn household waste into energy without pollution and cooperating with one another to ensure everyone has enough.

I mention this to my friend UK Sarah on our walks and she says what she said in New Zealand, “Yes, but how many people are there?” Denmark has 5.5 million, New Zealand 4.5 million. It is a bit of a conversation ender. However, this morning I woke up wondering if those who predicted the USA would break into regions were in fact prescient. Perhaps democracy works best on a small scale. Not the scale of the town hall meeting alone, which frankly I’ve experienced as both a tyranny of petty-crats and a glorious thing. Maybe something on the scale of a region like the Pacific Coast states. We share a coastline and I-5.  In Denmark, they maintain their social democracy, in part, through a strong consensus on what Danishness is and is not. The Pacific Coast states share a pioneering history, plus an orientation to the Pacific and a majority of the populations are post-modern. It would be easy to also include Hawaii, and harder to include Alaska.

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Public Transportation is another sign of collaboration. (Waterloo Station in London)

I remember in the 80s there were a number of intellectuals writing articles about the demise of California. One that sticks in my memory compared it to ancient Alexandria and proposed that with so many languages spoken in the schools and so much conflict over the environment and resources that surely the ship of democracy will sink. Actually, thanks to the creative and technology economies, California is thriving in many ways that many parts of the USA are not.

Another intellectual recently argued that the way forward in the USA will be led by our great cities. The Pacific Coast states have many excellent cities, but they are only sustained by the agricultural production and the watersheds of the associated rural places around them. So while there may be much innovation in cities for many things, a city cannot live behind a wall. Their survival depends on a dense network of connection to the outside world.

Do we need a federal government? Or a European Union? This is the open question that I am faced with in the U.K. and reading news from home. The righty-right leaning Republicans have been arguing the federal government is too expensive, too large, too meddlesome for many years. By electing an unqualified person to the chief executive they are perhaps forcing the question on the rest of the electorate. They may not like the answer that the collective comes up with.

Maturity Versus Age

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment

I’m on the Isle of Wight for my friend UK Sarah’s 60th birthday celebration. It took quite a lot of effort to physically get here and that somehow befits what it takes to reach age 60 with grace. Last night, in a conversation with two women friends, we discussed how frustrating it can be when family members confuse that grace we’ve earned with luck. They envy our good fortune, glossing over all of the hard stuff we’ve endured or overcome. It is especially confusing if there is a disparity in wealth. This is hardest with family because we all started at the same address so to speak.

Each of us, in our own way, expressed our desire to encourage our family members but couldn’t break through the jealousy or the victimhood or the depression. We paused in a moment of sadness.

This morning I woke up from my first good night of sleep in my travels and remembered my cousin Kim’s meme she shared in honor of her 44th birthday:18953077_10209369588185158_4451343193687950954_n

Maybe life is more like video gaming than we care to admit. Those who persist even after they’ve been “destroyed” reach new levels. Along the way they learn shortcuts that help to seemingly “skip” through levels to get back to where they left off in the last game and work on the next level.

Those of us who persist in life-learning reach new levels too. What we earn is maturity. This is not a guarantee of wealth, some of my most mature friends have not experienced the added blessing of wealth. And I know at least one very wealthy person who did not gain in maturity in spite of her age. Often though, it does result in material blessing because we stop making bad choices about money or we made different choices about work and it eventually pays dividends.

While my cousin’s meme inspired this post, it is slightly off in one respect. Age does not equal your level. If it did my cousin would always be 10 levels behind me. Whereas, in real life, she may well outstrip me in maturity.

How then do we encourage family and friends to live towards lives of maturity? Share our experiences as transparently as we can. Love them just as they are right now. Pray for humility because sometimes life will knock you back a few levels. Value our mature friends.

Hmmm. I have some work to do.

(Forgive me if I get some aspects of video game playing wrong as I’ve not spent much time actually playing.)

P.S. This TED Talk by Anne Lamott is on topic. Enjoy.

Your Life is Calling: Redesign Anytime

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jane pauley bookWhen I first started reading Your Life Calling by Jane Pauley, I had wished I read this during my life redesign in 2010-11, then I realized it is a kind of Chicken Soup for the Mid-Life Crises. It feels good while reading but is forgettable when you put it down.

The cover implies that it is more self-help than it is: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life. I did glean a couple of useful ideas from her memoir/show notes (from recurring feature on The Today Show of same name).

The target audience are baby boomers who are blessed with ample retirement funds and good health to explore a second career. The baby boomers are the most blessed generation, benefiting from the rapid economic expansion, inexpensive college educations, and generous pensions. They are also going to be the longest lived in the US. However, everyone, at whatever age, should seek purpose in their life either through their main income or as a volunteer.

You have to do the work to figure out your purpose and the best way to pursue it. It is going to be unique to each person. If you apply Stephen Covey’s “begin with the end in mind” then you need to define what success looks like for you. As in Sylvia Abrigo-Araiza’s story, “She said, ‘I would define success as pouring yourself into what do into what you have a passion for doing, giving compassion for others, and basically changing the world one individual at a time.” (p  ) For Sylvia it is counseling teens struggling with substance abuse.

your life callingWhen you do decide to redesign then the advice from the hiker Joe/Braid: “Moving into uncertainty involves managing risks–planning, preparing, and practicing–like Joe did before he took his first step on the [Appalachian] trail. But even then, as Joe put it, ‘Nothing can prepare you for the trail like getting out on the trail and just doing it.” (p 162)

And many times it also requires a change in thinking. In the story about a professional golfer giving the tournament another go, his wife said: “If you are going to do this again, you must do something different.’ As Michael explained it to me, she meant, ‘You can’t go about it the same old way. You can’t just keep beating your head against the wall, working on the same things. You need a different approach.”

 

#MarchforScience: Why I March

~ americanjulie ~ 1 Comment
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Mom and I marched in Sacramento on Earth Day 2017

These remarks were prepared for a panel presentation at St John’s Lutheran Church on Earth Sunday April 23, 2017.

I am trained as a political scientist and work in California water policy on the big questions of how to keep water flowing to 40 million people and 7.9 million acres of irrigated farmland whilst sustaining native threatened and endangered species.

The water policy discussions I have been a part of are gaining in sophistication and specialization. Policy makers are relying on science more and more; demanding real time data to make decisions about daily water operations. This is driven in large part by environmental regulation: the California Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, to name a few.

As a result, there is a growing gap between the voting public’s understanding of the issues and the amount of technical information used to decide if water will be released from, say Shasta reservoir, or pumped at Tracy and so forth. This is eroding trust in decision-making processes and is part of the larger story of distrust of experts and anti-intellectualism in the US today.

Political scientists study power: for example, how it is held and exercised, and how tradeoffs are brokered. The story of the state of California can be told in the story of water rights, land use battles entwined with water, and battles for control of water. Whether water is absent in drought or over abundant in floods, Californians have debated water policy for its entire modern existence.

In the first half of the 20th century, civil engineers were the heroes of the story as they built the reservoirs, canals and pumping plants of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, plus the flood control structures of levees and bypasses. That generation’s gifts have allowed us to rapidly grow economically with both cheap hydroelectric power and relatively cheap and abundant water.

In the second half of the 20th century the chemists and the ecologists began to play a more prominent role in the story. We demanded better water quality, and sewage treatment, and we became aware of the damage we were doing to the environment by disrupting natural ecosystems–95% of the floodplain is gone; almost as much of the wetlands and vernal pools are gone.

In my work I am always looking for more information to better understand the challenges and to look for solutions to the conflicts that continually arise over water. I look to knowledge gained through science. I also look to what I call “native wisdom” from people who have worked or lived on the land for much longer—in some instances before we developed the water systems we have today. Wisdom can come in many forms.

Humility is invaluable especially humbly acknowledging what we do not know whether it is in the field of science or while reading my Bible. I also appreciate the times when the Holy Spirit inspired actions or ideas in my work.

When I became a Christian in the 1970s, the evangelical Presbyterian Church I attended was full of engineers and doctors. Over time, as the church became more and more certain or rigid about faith matters, I felt increasingly alienated. I thought then and now that since God gave me an intellect, it is my vocation to use it in ways that make the world in better alignment with the way God calls us to live and with reverence for God’s creation.

Scientists and persons of faith need not be mutually exclusive—listening to debates amongst scientists about salmon habitat has convinced me that there is as much faith in action amongst scientists arguing their theories as there is among theologians.

And in my experience there isn’t a conflict between the stories in the Bible and the truths that social science and physical science discover, because I do not always interpret God’s wisdom in the Bible literally nor do I swallow whole every hypotheses posed by scientists.

I have learned there are many ways to understanding reality and much mystery remains. This is true if you are trying to understand the mind of God, human behavior or determine the needs of Delta Smelt.

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One sign read “GOP, Science Doesn’t Care What You Believe”

My friend and retired science teacher Michael Bickford recently posted this on his Facebook page: “All humans are qualified to be scientists! Many people misunderstand what science is. It’s a way of defining, knowing and understanding truth. We use the truth (facts) in turn, like a tool, to determine the nature of reality and then, individually and collectively through communication, the meaning and direction of our lives together.”

Michael is a self-proclaimed atheist. And he is as hostile to the Church as some evangelicals are to science. In fact he wrote: “(Science is) under attack by those with alternatives systems of defining the truth.” In my experience it need not be a battle. While we may not seek the truth with the same methods, we are all truth seekers.

For the person of faith I would ask: why must God have created the earth in a literal 6 days for creation to be divinely awesome and amazing? And for the scientist who may be an atheist or agnostic, why is it threatening to leave room in the equation for the divine?

Growth as a Boredom Buster

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I doubt anyone would call artist and writer Julia Couzens’ life dull. She is an art critic for the Sacramento Bee, and a productive fine artist. She recently gave a presentation as part of the Centennial Lecture Series at the Sacramento City College Art Department. Her first slide said:

It’s the journey, not the destination.

Questions live longer than answers.

Sometimes the back side is the piece.

She also distributed the “Incomplete Manifesto for Growth” by Bruce Mau. This manifesto, she said, is the secret of life. It certainly is the key to understanding her creative life. In the subsequent slides she showed us her work. “I like chaos. I like dissonance.” Her work shows 3. Process is more important than outcome and 4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). 

I was able to participate in this lecture series because I enrolled in a Collage/Assemblage studio art class at Sacramento City College. It has been terrific for opening up both sides of my brain to more creativity.  I recommend all leaders find a creative expression that helps them to be more intuitive and get back in touch with something you enjoy doing.

This weekend I caught up with my major professor now retired from USC. John Odell is taking voice lessons and sings in two vocal groups. He is finding great pleasure in this creative expression. Don’t wait until retirement to make time for this in your leadership life.

I am realizing that much of my redesign at 49 has evolved into finding the space for a creative life–writing, doing art, or taking naps. And in so doing I am approaching all of my work challenges more creatively. Taking the class this semester has helped me be much more intentional. Listening to Side Hustle School podcast has helped motivate me to work towards it every day.

Last week I listened to Rob Bell’s podcast “The Importance of Boredom” but I don’t think he really meant boredom. What he was really talking about is making time to unplug and allow creative thought. I am finding since I started the class that I am less interested in watching movies or television shows and more interested in creating my own stuff. And it is anything but boring because you inevitably grow and change when you create.

One last thought, I looked up a few of Julia Couzen’s reviews in the Sacramento Bee’s Arts & Theater and loved her review of the Diebenkorn and Matisse show at SFMOMA (March 23, 2017). It is is a beautiful example of Mou’s Manifesto #23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.