Multi-Faith and Belief Chaplaincy, For All Faiths and None

Introduction

Welcome to Slow Journeys in the Same Direction blog series written by Associate Chaplain, Geoffrey Baines.

I’ve often found myself using this phrase to describe my life.  When I had the opportunity to publish a colouring book, I thought it would be a good title for something combining my love of doodling and dreamwhispering.

 

This blog will share the contents of the colouring book to help us identify more about our values, energies, talents and most important environments in a more visual way.  The intention is to identify our stories, including some simple exercises to try along the way. There will also be a monthly opportunity to come together within our slow journeys: see the information below.

 

Some seem to get to where they want to be quickly, but not me.  It’s taken most of my life to arrive here.  There have been countless challenges and turning points along the way, places visited that have proven to be significant, new ideas encountered that have messed with my mind, and, especially, lots of people who have helped me.   

 

I could so easily have ended up somewhere else, but I didn’t.  I’m here and it feels to be where the journey has always being leading me.  I suspect this may also be true for you.

 

The things that thoroughly engage me are gathered along the way, though I had no idea what these might be as I set out.  Constantin Cavafy captures the sense of this for me in his poem Ithaka.

 

The day that is described in a very functional way can as accurately be described mythologically way, providing us with a more expansive life narrative:

 

Photograph of front and back cover of Slow Journeys in the same direction colouring book.

Following your bliss just seems to me to be the clue to believing what might be called the mythologically inspired life.*

 

Bliss is mythologist Joseph Campbell’s term for purpose, our contribution to others through life.

 

The places I describe and illustrate in the blog exist within this greater story.  

 

In the movie The Matrix, Trinity learns to fly a helicopter in a matter of seconds by having the appropriate file downloaded directly into her brain.  Whilst I love this movie I doubt this would work, even if the technology was possible.  Flying isn’t only head knowledge, it’s also body knowledge: heart and gut and muscles in sync.

 

We slow things down to hear what our lives are saying to us.  This is the place we journey to first of all.The doodles (from dawdle) will provide hours of colouring for relaxing along the way.  Then, by creating our own doodles, we’ll be encouraged to listen for our stories.  This week’s doodle is simply the cover of Slow Journeys in the Same Direction.

 

SOMETHING TO DO: Each post and doodle includes something to do.   

 

For this first blog, I’m including a visual alphabet from which you can create any doodle you want to. 

A line drawing of different shaped doodles with the text: A visual alphabet

Here’s a link to a blog in which I offer a simple way of using this to build up a complex image.

 

RESOURCES YOU MAY ENJOY: There’ll also be books and other resources suggested with each post.  

 

*From Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.

 

Here’s a start:

Drawn Together Through Visual Practice edited by Brandy Agerback, Kelly Bird, Sam Bradd, and Jennifer Shepherd

The Doodle Revolution by Sunni Brown

TEDtalk: Doodlers Unite! by Sunni Brown