Spanish Version Available

Let It Be

We are at the end of our stay in Gorlitz and are inspired knowing that the artists here will take this experience and encourage it to grow and blossom as it will.  Lily felt this on our first workshop day, noting that “the artists here see the beauty and want to awaken the soul.  We come together to journey collectively to touch our souls.  Through art we are called to make the way free.”

From the Barefoot Artists perspective, the success of this particular effort was not necessarily in a concrete result but in the process; that there was an engagement, enthusiasm and imagining that seemed not to have an inclusive and safe space to unfold before this camp.  Our part in this was minor, serving only as a catalyst through the sharing of a particular methodology.  What emerged through the Bohemian Crossings’ direction is uniquely theirs, perfectly timely for this moment and space.

 

Below is a video of the Smoke Ceremony conducted by Tony Harwood of Australia.

Gorlitz is a rich place, these are rich people – not necessarily in resources and money, but in depth of experience, in pain and suffering, in resiliency, in hope.  An essay by Michael Meade eloquently speaks to many questions that have arisen and the conversations we have had while in Gorlitz, touched by individual stories, historic community trauma and the global crisis that binds us all.  He says, “the counterbalance to collective forms of terror and tragic acts of inhumanity must be found first of all in the awakening of the individual soul to the underlying wholeness and inherent meaning of life.  We must find a greater sense of self or become more isolated, divided and subject to increasing anxieties and feelings of helplessness.  In the great drama of life the awakened human soul becomes the extra quantity and uniquely living quality needed to help tip the balance of the world away from destruction and towards ongoing creation.”

We continue to find our way, at least take steps, on the journey of awakening.  As one of the team members shared during our final reflections, “On the first day I was sad.  Now I am exhausted, but happy. So happy that I want to scream!”

Poems emerged out of our workshop exercises and were shared in the evenings as we sat around the dinner table, so perhaps it is fitting to end with one as well.  These words by Federico Garcia Lorca captures what Barefoot Artists believes and what we have felt here, what has been offered us in vulnerability and open-heartedness.  Thank you Bohemian Crossings and Gorlitz.

The poem
the song,
the picture,
are only water
drawn from the
well of the people
and it must be given back to them
in a cup of beauty,
that they may drink
and in drinking,
understand themselves.

– Federico Garcia Lorca

Gorlitz, Germany Update 1

Spanish Version Available A colleague noted that the Barefoot Artists generally create projects only in places of extreme poverty, even though there is suffering and brokenness in comparatively rich communities.  Germany is one of the wealthiest countries in the world...

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Gorlitz, Germany Update 2

Spanish Version Available  Danielle Hoefler, an artist and advocate, came to Gorlitz six years ago and is the main organizing force behind Bohemian Crossings.  She is a strong, passionate and compassionate presence who believes that the depression weighing down some...

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Gorlitz, Germany Update 3

Spanish Version Available Working with Youth This week, Bohemian Crossings summer camp has welcomed youth groups to the site to create story poles.  We have been delighted to meet little ones from a day care, a group from the refugee community, elementary classes from...

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