"Aum is the sound of God's radiance." — Joseph Campbell
Aum is the sound of God’s radiance. — Reflections on the Art of Living, Joseph Campbell
L Doctor Sketchbook
Many of you have asked about the possibility of me teaching online. I have thought a long while about this, and have begun by offering some one-on-one classes. Below are my thoughts on how to approach teaching through a screen.
My motivation as a teacher is to connect with my students. When we are all in the same room together, something happens: birdsong is audible, silences deepen, and the sky is visible. Presences gather as the class progresses. That energy does not communicate in the same embodied way through a screen.
What lifeline can we use through this electronic medium to evoke what we are missing? This is the question I have been asking myself in response to requests for me to teach online.
There are two things that are a part of every class I teach: meditation and poetry.
Contemplation is the ground for my classes. It does not mean withdrawal, but rather this inward gaze creates connection with the outer world, and deepens your work. Meditation creates space inside you for what wants to come, and things do want to come. Meditation is a vehicle for transforming anxiety into being at ease with what is — whether it is what you see on the page, or in the world.
Poetry is language that lands in your body. It points you in a certain direction, and cultivates imagination. A good poem gives voice to the nameless things, to the yearning in every maker to be close to the mystery.
Meditation and poetry set the stage for what I want to do as a teacher: to empower you to do the work you are here to do, to draw the best out of you. This includes teaching techniques that develop skill — but there must be something in addition to “how to” methods, something to create an atmosphere for eliciting discovery, for doing work that surprises you, that you didn’t think you could do. There is an underlying principle that bridges image and realization, sky and hands, ideal and tangible: the old wisdom of “as above, so below”.
It is important to me, if I am going to try this, to retain the meditative aspect, the poetry, and the challenge tasks that we do in the physical group setting.
So, just as we do in the classroom, we will begin each online session with a short meditation, followed by a poem.
Each session will include an exercise or skill for you to practice and experiment with.
Screen time cannot ever replace embodied time in a natural setting, but it will support my connection with you, my readers and makers, and we may make new discoveries along the way.
And here’s some more very good news: I am delighted and honored to report that John Neal, of Letter Arts Review and Bound & Lettered publications, has chosen work from 21 of my students to be published in the current issue! The article includes my writing about the classes, and bookbinding diagrams.
Featuring student work chosen by John Neal: Noelle Tennis Gulden, Sally Lasater, Rita Foltz, Ellen Mott-Jablonski, Lisa Cancro, Martin Erspamer, Trudy Ray, Happy Price, Lynn Rogers, Hennie van de Voort, Bernadette D’haese, John Hammons, Jean Lopez, Johanna Geiss, Roz Barhaugh, Katie Barnes, Marcia Hocevar, Janice Barton, Lily Stoeber, Dagmar Moeller & Sydney McDonnell.
It is a lovely six page spread, with writing about my class, and diagrams of the book form.
While I am developing the online class presence (and I hope to have a class open to all ready by the fall), I find myself in an odyssey with my 96 year old father, who has just lost his wife, and wondering how, in these strange times, we will get him from Minnesota to California. Driving an almost 100 year old Dad across the country will be another story.
How are you continuing to learn and create in Covid times? What are you curious about? (Besides how we are all going to get through this!) I’d love to hear from you.