Spirituality at the Movies

Tags

growth, leveling up, spiritual goals, writing

Welcome to the first post in our ‘mid-week’ series of guest posts by #spiritchat members, tentatively categorized, “spiriflections”. I hope that you enjoy the author’s efforts, and maybe even contribute a comment (to encourage them) and/or contribute to this series in the future. Thank you. – Kumud

Spirituality at the Movies – by David Tumbarello

I sat in the dark theater and watched a beautiful movie about growth and strength. About battling demons, learning about sacrifice, and learning about love. The main character began the story literally and figuratively without a body. She was also soul-less. By the end of the first act, she was given a body. After battling a demon, this replacement body was destroyed and she was given a second, upgraded body. This one was more mature and she integrated with this one far better than the first. In a moment, she “leveled up”. Due to her desire to fight for justice, she acquired accessories that integrated with her body. She brought these accessories to battle and “leveled up” once more.

I sat down the other day to watch another movie, this one twelve years in the making. During those 12 years, the protagonist grows from a boy to a man. As a six year old, he rides a bike, and then as a 16 year old drives a car, and when he graduates from high school, he drives off to the university. His parents divorce, they remarry, and divorce again. He struggles with his classes and learns he is an artist. This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes 12 years for him to be okay with his art. It also takes 12 years for him to grow from boyhood into something close to being an adult.

I think about maturation versus leveling up. For me, spirituality does not fit with the model of a person leveling up. A spiritual deposit today will not increase the size of my spiritual bank account tomorrow. My deposit today, however, may contribute to my growth.

It has been said, “When you open your heart and mind up to allowing yourself to experience the doubts, tension, and discomforts associated with facing fears and making changes, you allow the possibility for real growth to occur.” Should we shy away from pain, discomfort, loss, and fear? If our mindset is growth, we should find ways to embrace these difficulties because in their purest form, they are not barrier but rather gates to growth.

I recall sitting in therapy one afternoon and the therapist and I talked about trying out new behaviors. She turned to me and said, “It’s a stretch.” She wasn’t asking that I change overnight or level up. She was asking that I consider doing something just a bit outside my comfort zone. Something that would stretch my self-care muscles. Something that would help me grow.

As I write today, I embrace my flaws, blemishes, bruises, and aches. Even with these spiritual difficulties, I aspire. Without them, how would I stretch? How would I grow? I write today to address spiritual weakness. For me, writing today is a stretch. I address weakness and with this stretch, I grow. Will I have aches? Yes. Will I stretch and grow? Absolutely.

And when you mature, when you truly grow, others around you will notice and in the right circumstances they are changed as well. You change, they change. Would you want it any other way?

– David Tumbarello (@davetumbarello)

David Tumbarello is a technical communicator with over 50 years in the growth industry, with 49 of those years communicative and on two feet. When he is not technically communicating, he enjoys hiking, biking, and writing. Feel free to connect with David on LinkedIn.

Spiritual Reflections (photo by @AjmaniK)

The Spirit of a Writer

Tags

spiritchat, spirituality, writer, writing

Ever since we learnt the letters of the alphabet, and then learnt how to build words, sentences and paragraphs out of those letters, we have been writers. All of us, whether we realize it or not, have perhaps written tens of thousands of words in our progress through school, and maybe even college. Some of us may have even taken formal “writing” courses, attended writing workshops, participated in writing seminars and so on. 

With the advent of the Internet came an entirely new type of writing – the “blog”. The blogging platforms leveled the writing playing field in favor of anyone and everyone who wanted to share their written work with the world. The traditional “long form” blogs were followed by micro-blogging platforms like Tumblr and its like. The advent of Twitter and its 140 character limit literally shrank the idea of “writing” – although some will rightly argue that tweets do not exactly qualify as works of prose.

Regardless of your style of writing, your favorite subject(s) of writing, your preferred platforms of publishing your writing (electronic or print), the length of your writing (short, medium or long), there is perhaps one thing in common. And that, is the innate desire to write. The desire to put our thoughts down on “paper”, the desire for self-expression. In this sense, the Spirit of a Writer is very close to the Spirit of an artist, a musician, a dancer, a sculptor, an inventor, and so on. The act of writing becomes an opportunity for us to communicate what we truly feel from a heart-based perspective. For some, it almost invokes a form of spiritual practice. 

I have been fortunate to befriend many writers in the course of my hosting of the weekly #SpiritChat conversation on twitter. One of those writer friends is Alexis Daria. Her twitter profile states: “Creativity, Literacy, Community. Tutor and group facilitator. Artist and writer.” Her blog is titled “Creative Staycation” (see http://creativestaycation.com ). In Alexis’ words,  "The Creative Staycation blog is a celebration, a sharing of creative and spiritual steps on this journey of the self.”  

I am delighted and grateful that she will be guest hosting our live twitter chat #SpiritChat on Sunday April 20th at 9amET on the topic: “The Spirit of a Writer”. She has some wonderful questions on writers, writing and spirituality lined up for you (yes, I have seen the questions, and some of her preparatory notes), and it promises to be a great chat! Please join @AlexisDaria and share your love of writing and spirituality.

Namaste, and thank you Alexis, for stepping up as I take a Sunday off of hosting duties for a family vacation. 

Be well. And for all those celebrating, a very Happy Easter to you and your near and dear ones 🙂

Kumud

 

The Creativity of the Spirit

Tags

arts, music, painting, spirit, spiritchat, theater, writing

I was inspired to start SpiritChat four weeks ago (last week of July) by a confluence of events and have received tremendous support from the twitter community and beyond. I have always thought of ‘SpiritChat’ as an open forum, where people can come and share openly.

I have learnt (and am still learning) a lot about how to co-ordinate a twitter ‘chat’ by watching a lot of good folks on twitter conduct their own chat events. One of the oldest chats on twitter is blogchat, run by Mack Collier. This weekly chat has made a great impact on me ~ and one of the lessons I have decided to adopt from blogchat is the idea of an ‘open-mike’ chat. 

However, being an engineer, I like to tweak things. So I thought I would get creative and tweak the ‘open-mike’ idea to a ’focused open-mike’ concept.

The focus this week will be on the Creative Arts (Music, Painting, Writing and more). I think the creative arts are great at ‘slowing us down’ to help us ‘speed up’. P.S. This will echo the subject of our very first SpiritChat 🙂

As I said, there will be no ‘formal’ questions ~ just share and enjoy. Here are some pointers for you (just in case) ~ How do the Creative Arts help you in your spiritual growth? Are you a Creative Artist (musician, author, painter, theater artist or more)? Do you have a favorite “creative art’ or favorite creative technique?

Come join us on Sunday 28th August at 11am EDT (USA, UTC-4) or 8:30pm (India) in the #SpiritChat room (web link). You can also send a tweet with the hashtag #SpiritChat from your twitter platform to send the community your message.

Do share ~ for as @cammipham reminded me the other day (in a chat I learn a lot from), ’Sharing is Caring, Dear’.

~ Kumud

P.S. As I write this post, the East coast of USA is bearing the brunt of Hurricane #Irene. I hope and pray for the safety of all those in in it’s path.