AN INTRODUCTION TO CALLIGRAPHIC SENSIBILITIES & CULTURES
Calligraphy is often defined as beautiful writing. In practice, it’s anything but. Ink reveals every hesitation, arrogance, hiding or turning away. Calligraphy, while beautiful, is also trembling & showing up for one’s shortcomings; is incremental shifts in habits in hand & in life; is a visual/historical map of intersecting languages, sacred traditions, & cultural legacies. Oppression, beauty, resistance, prayer.
Situated between discipline & flow, mastery isn’t the goal here. What emerges instead is the cultivation of sustained receptivity & subtle responsiveness. We’ll begin by “savoring” images of traditional & contemporary calligraphies from around the world. We’ll try our hand in a number of scripts & practice being vulnerable & open as well as focused & bold. Along the way, we’ll pay attention to the role of material culture in social, historical & artistic legacies & to the physical qualities of artistic practice itself— different papers, different tools, posture, breath, companionship & subtle states of being. Working small, working big, we’ll aim for the sweet spot between discipline & play.
THE ART OF THE LOVE LETTER: EXPLORATIONS IN WRITING & CALLIGRAPHY
Calligraphy is the providence of love letters. Letterforms, ideograms, & contemporary abstractions have inside of them invisible years of devotion & refinement. So too, with some of the most beautiful people we know. Subtle refinements pass from hand to hand, quietly, for generations & often across cultures. Calligraphy is an embodied practice, elevating language to a place of visual poetry & praise. It’s also earthbound, tied to a body’s pace in the presence of other body’s; requiring an attitude which transcends any hope of mastery (of dominance, control):
There are no finish lines in love.
Rather than begin with the repetition of forms, we begin with the one we’re in: Life in a body. Crystal sound-healing bowls, embodied practice, free-write, & food ground us in a place from which to proceed. This savoring is a just a concrete form of praise, offered without intermediary, & from the fullness of one’s faculties—of life, as it’s lived.
Love letters can be a momentary practice, or a way of life.
Elements of calligraphic study are then used to explore ink work as a tool of listening & self-awareness. In ink, as in writing, as in the testimony you write by how you live: Each hesitation, impatience, trembling, each flight from love & toward her— each subtle arrogance—- shows. However, some of the most beautiful letters deviate & shake—revealing that tender capacity to reach & fail & reach anyway. Because missing the mark, but carrying on in good company, is sometimes the most beautiful thing. The aesthetic here is not one of shape or form, but of showing up.
The first love letter you write will be to yourself.
INTERFAITH STUDY GROUP
Central Valley’s United Methodist Church has a new mission promoting & hosting cross-cultural, interfaith outreach through the study of calligraphic traditions from around the world. Study is informal—integrating discussions on various sacred traditions, texts, & the nature of revelation with hands-on practice. No experience or specific religious background required.
Select Saturdays.
Coming Soon…