Above is the Iris Germanica I flower mandala (which I’d love to have your comments on, either here or in the Flower Mandalas Project group). Here is the invitation:
Although the Beliefnet.com home page calls me an “expert,” I’m really just another traveller on life’s journey, and I’d very much like to hear from you about yours.
I’ve noticed that quite a few people have joined the Art, Healing, and Transformation group, and that’s great! I hope, here, to create a community in which blog readers and group members are not just listening to me, but are sharing in each other’s stories, thoughts, feelings, experiences, ideas, and struggles, as well as sharing their creative work. So I hope I will see more and more of this, and encourage you to post “early and often.”
I’m also interested in experimenting with using the “Miracle Question” I wrote about here, and I’m asking for volunteers to engage with. I’d like to use it online as a way to let myself and other members of the Beliefnet community help people to discover/recover their creative selves.
One of the things I do in the physical world is lead small groups I call Artists on Artists. In these groups, I use the Miracle Question as a framework for people to imagine what their lives would be like if all the issues and concerns they have as creative people were, like that!, solved. They write or draw these visions of their “miracle” lives and then, step by step, week by week, through a combination of peer review of their product and peer review of their process, the group helps them get there. It really works! People who have been blocked get unblocked. People who have always wanted to do something artistic discover what it is they want to do. People who are timid about getting their work out there — get their work out there. And so on. Each person’s miracle is different, and they’re all exciting to help actualize.
I’d like to do that here on Beliefnet, too. I’d like to encourage you to experiment, with me as your “miracle coach,” on you developing your particular miracle. Miracle workers of the world, unite! And post your questions, concerns…, and your miracles.
See you in cyberspace,
More anon,
– David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group

© 2008, David J. Bookbinder