Virtues Feast
I hosted a virtues meal with my 3 roommates. I asked each of them to display the virtues of generosity, creativity and kindness throughout the meal and identify when they appeared in each other's natural characteristics. This meal was interactive because we were building spring rolls, so it was already creative and exhibited a lot of kind communication. At first, my roommates joked about displaying the emotion of "hangry". However, as the night went on we had fun noticing each other's virtues and laughing at the size of our spring rolls. I think further training in virtues is definitely needed because virtue is not something we think of on a daily basis, a lot of times my roommates thought of it as a positive emotion as opposed to something that is inner dwelling.
Blog Post: Muddled Middle
I often find that it can be most difficult expressing the need for arts and poetry within the sacred context. Maybe this is because I grew up in a culture where art was a nice hobby people did or a thing that only "really creative people" were able to do. Whenever I tell people within the church I grew up about teaching poetry with inner city youth they often remark about how nice that is but aren't truly able to connect with me on a deeper level. Even my own family jokes about how poetry is strange or will blatantly say things like, "poetry isn't important." It is tough to overcome this logic but it almost spurs me on even more to not only continue writing and teaching poetry but to listen to where they're coming and see if I can use poetry in a sneaky way to show them what they've been missing. In these settings, I communicate my values with poetry writing and teaching with real-life experiences and stories I have heard about the power of poetry. Many times people will have some sort of comment about how a certain poem touched them as a child. I would like to empower adults to experience poetry and art-making with that same "awe-some" wonder and curiosity.