In between my grandmother's childhood home on Monastery Ave and my great grandmother's grave in Loudon Park, I led my first Freewrite in Irvington Peace Park at the BGiftE Urban Homestead's Winter Forest Garden Festival. The Chesapeake Bay Trust has provided a grant to plant 139 trees, a reforestation project in Southwest Baltimore. Red birches, Eastern red cedars, Satyr Hills, and River Birches are all planted in honor of a deceased community member, ach tree planted along Maiden Choice Run Stream will represent a community member. At the Winter Garden Festival, deer cages were put up to protect the river birch trees. APM Food Works provided winter garden salad planting kits. After the goat walk along the stream, we sat in Irvington Peace Park and wrote. This was my first nature- themed Freewrite. One woman showed me the star she had made out of tying branches together with string when the prompt was Wendell Berry's "the day blind stars, waiting with their light," revealing to me the diversity of ways people can be expressive during a Freewrite!  I look forward to continuing Nature Themed Freewrites with Ulysses' Goat Walks in Irvington where we will be promoting mental health and community in my grandmother's neighborhood, connecting with deceased loved ones and the ancestors of this community as well as our neighbors. 

After reading about the saints' altars in Willa Cather's "Death Comes for the Archbishop," I began to take notice of our own little saints alters at St Joseph Monastery, in Irvington. I discovered the Mexican votive prayer of gratitude that greatly influenced Frida Kahlo's art. I began to research the collection of Ex-Voto's that are exhibited in Frida Kahlo Museum. These small pieces of art with writings of very private and personal experiences, and words of gratitude, giving thanks for the divine intervention in their own lives. These small paintings made on pieces of scrap tin were left on saints' altars or their own home altars. This recognition of a Higher Power, a Divine presence that is at work in our lives, brings a connectedness, and Oneness that I wanted to share. 

I volunteered leading workshops at the Baltimore County Arts Guild, teaching the tradition of votive painting and writing of a personal experience. Within the Mexican culture, this style of art was one that greatly influenced Frida Kahlo's work. I led the community on how to create their own personal Mexican folk-art, ex-voto's - "votive offering", left on saints alters, an artistic expression of gratitude. I am still very moved by the honesty that is shared in these personal stories, and the ritual of an art that is a devotion to gratitude.

After researching Frida Kahlo's ex-voto's and "votive offerings" for saint's altars, I loved the invitation to "find the hidden staircase that leads to our own altars", an invitation into a French mystics spiritual practice.  I began taking courses with James Finley from The Center of Action and Contemplation, I discovered that while practicing the spiritual exercises of the 12th century French mystic, Guigo II, that poetry was everywhere. I wanted to share the practice of contemplation and discovering the poems in our own midst. I designed this workshop of writing contemplative poetry through the spiritual practice of Guigo II, in hopes of promoting mindfulness and being awakened to see the sacred in the ordinary moments of our lives. I discovered this "inner space" was something that all mystics speak of. John O'Donohue wrote of "An inner landscape", Teresa of Avila "An interior castle", and an "Inner Island" of Thich Nhat Hanh.  I found that "the inner space where God dwells can often be uniquely accessed by the arts", just as Richard Rohr beautifully stated.  I taught this workshop several times at The Baltimore County Arts Guild.  

Two years ago- while leading a Freewrite - a van showed up and students of My Life Learning Center, stepped out and found us! My Life Learning Center, an Adult Autistic Day Program joins us two times a month at Oca Mocha coffeeshop in Arbutus to write. After two years of writing together, all the students have grown comfortable sharing their writing, even if one word stories, or one sentence stories. I'm in awe how socially comfortable all the students have grown in our group of 25 people! I'm in awe with the sharing of their one sentence stories. I'm in awe of how much a one sentence story can hold!  One young man wrote, "I like watching the fireworks with my mom".  Everyone in the room, retired professors from Vassar College, playwright, poets, the woman cleaning out her recently deceased mother's closet- could all relate. In the future, I hope to create a journal of our writing and art with My Life Learning Center.