Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Inspired by nature, art and gratitude, the Gratitude Blooming co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson bring fresh and diverse perspectives to well-being. For us, heartfulness is the new mindfulness. Gratitude Blooming was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Hear from culture keepers, creators, healers, leaders and so many others who share their emergent practices to build the beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each week. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Art and Inquiry: Pathways to Empathy and Democracy
What if you held the power to direct the energy of democracy through your personal feelings and actions? We promise to illuminate this connection as we explore the intersection of art, empathy, and democracy in this live recording at The Democracy Center with director Jim Herr.
The journey delves into creating space to pause and reflect on non-attachment, gratitude, and mindfulness. We reveal how kindness and compassion can enrich your daily life, and the profound impact of nature in helping us connect with our hearts. There's also a discussion with the audience around the themes of intention and curiosity in gratitude and their potential to foster empathy, the concept of impermanence, and how curiosity can help us understand our world better.
We traverse the power of emotional reflection and connection, and how they can bring us closer to understanding ourselves and others. There's a profound discussion on the power of language to share our stories and build community, and how art and inquiry help us navigate our feelings. Lastly, we'll uncover the power of music, control, fear, and how connecting with our emotions can help us shape our world.
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We're really thrilled to have you here this evening, as well as our friends from the Gratitude Bloom podcast.
Jim Herr:The idea behind the center and reopening it over the past several months has been to really figure out ways to have meaningful conversations about democracy, where we center the arts, where we center the experience of Japanese Americans as well as Americans from all walks of life to talk about things that are happening and how we can make the world better, how we can make our world better, how we can make our country stronger, how we can make our democracy stronger and what does that mean. And so when I was originally thinking about kind of programming, this isn't something I thought of. We had thought about a podcast, but my good friend, Omar, who you'll meet in just a minute, has this amazing podcast and he asked me to be on it and through that process, this light bulb went off in my head and we talked about and we'll talk about this a little bit more what that light bulb meant and what this type of programming is trying to do and the conversations that we have. So this is the first of a four part series. We'll be doing it once every season of the year, so we hope that, if you like it, you'll come back and tell your friends.
Jim Herr:This is interactive, so you'll have a chance to participate. So let me bring out our friends from gratitude booming right now Omar Braterson, Arlene Kimseley, Emily Nibir.
Omar Brownson:Well, I'm grateful to be here. Thank you, jim, for really inviting this conversation and pop up art installation. Hopefully you had a chance to visit one of the three reflection booths and this has been exciting because historically, arlene has been the artist for gratitude booming and created the initial art for the card deck. But for this one we've gotten the chance to co-create and, as we were sort of imagining what this conversation could be, I remember, arlene, you were like Omar. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas for this. Why don't you just sort of write what you're thinking? And so I took that as an opportunity to write a poem and then out of that, for me at least, emerged this idea around the voting booths as a way to bring together empathy and democracy. So I'm going to read the poem, which is also on the back of your programs.
Omar Brownson:The plant is present here. We are lost in the wild of climate and inequality, trying to reconnect to our humanity. Maybe in the flower petal we can see our hearts. Maybe in the pollen we can smell our soul attracting. The plant is present here, watching, listening, growing, breathing. Still Imagine flowers and voting booths growing out of composted constitutions, checking the box to our humanity.
Omar Brownson:One of the things that we've been thinking a lot about at Gratitude Blooming is what's really at the heart of our practice. Yes, we love nature, yes, we love art, yes, we love gratitude, but I think partly why we love these things is really about inviting people to pause In that pause, just really giving ourselves a chance to notice, to feel. I had an uncle as a kid who would always tell me Omar, think before you talk. It wasn't until I got to college and I saw this Chinese filmmaker and he shared that his mom told him to feel before he talked. I was like what, feel before you talk? What a concept. So just pausing to sort of notice and name what we're feeling is powerful and then from there many things can bloom. So I think Jim is going to, and Arlene are now going to, share a little bit of why some of this empathy and democracy has inspired us today.
Belinda Liu:I'm Arlene and I'm the artist at Gratitude Blooming, so a lot of the plant drawings that you see here are ones that I drew back in 2015. And so, when we were partnering with the Democracy Center here, we were thinking about the art exhibit that you saw out in the plaza, and so what I would like to? I'd like to just explain a little bit about that art and how we see it connected very much to democracy, and so the art is really intended to be about pausing and noticing. So it's about noticing your emotions, pausing and noticing your emotions, pausing and noticing your energy in that moment, and pausing and noticing your personal power. So those three things are what we're really intending in the booth.
Belinda Liu:And the reason I want to the reason why all of those I think are related to democracy is, if we're unable to feel our own personal power, I think it's hard to imagine how we can make a difference in our democracy, and so it just felt like the work that we have been doing is really about reclaiming that, and that's what we really hope that the art does outside.
Belinda Liu:So the other thing I wanted to say about the art is the art is really about healing and not healing in a way that we're broken and we need to be fixed. The healing, I think, is about reclaiming our energy and reclaiming our that power within us To know that our emotions are just a small part of who we are. It's like we are so much more than the emotion that if we don't build a good relationship with the emotion, we become the emotion, so or we avoid the emotion, and so really, I think that's how we tie, that's how we see the tie between empathy and democracy. Like how can we have a democracy if we can't talk about our emotions or notice them?
Jim Herr:The reason why this is all happening. For me, they're sort of like these two tracks that kind of came together. One is this work that I've been doing on art and empathy for a long time and really see art as really the only way to really get to empathy. I kind of framed it along Maslow's hierarchy of needs and so, at the very base level, as humans, we want to have a voice, so we want to be able to express ourselves, and it can be. If any of you have kids, you know, when they're babies it's so frustrating that they can't communicate, that they don't have that voice. And so I think, as humans, we try to figure out how to have a voice. And once we have that voice, we want to be heard, we want people to hear us. So we want you know, we want this, this message to go out to someone. But then, beyond that, once somebody has, once we found our voice and we've had somebody hear our message, we want them to understand it. It's not just enough for me to talk to you and have you say, oh yeah, I hear you, I want you to understand me, but then really, beyond that is, I want you to feel what I'm feeling, I want, and that is empathy, and I think art gets us to empathy in a way that nothing else can do. Empathy isn't sympathy. Sympathy is I feel something like you like. I feel something like you're feeling, but empathy is I'm feeling what you are feeling. If you remember, like in Star Trek Next Generation, there was the doctor that was the empath, and I actually had an experience with an empath and did not understand it, was not expecting it and could not believe the experience that I went through, where this person actually felt the painful pain that I was experiencing, could name it in her body, where it was in my body. And and so when I think of empathy and I think of art, I think of the goosebumps that you get when you hear a piece of music or when you start to cry because you hear a poem or you look at a piece of artwork and it just stirs emotion. I mean, that's the magic that artists bring to society is that they can create within you that empathy. And so now, jumping from that empathy bridge to the democracy bridge, it was through this podcast.
Jim Herr:Omar had invited me to be on the Gratitude Blooming podcast, and so it's boning up on some of the the most recent episodes and there's one with Simon Sinek. He's like what's the name of his book that's on, why? Sorry, why? I'm sure some of you have heard of him, have heard of the book. He's an amazing speaker, thinker, and he was talking about gratitude and how you know it's. We've centered it on ourselves and really gratitude is something that we should be giving to people and giving to others and giving to the world, but we make it so much about ourselves and he talks, you know, some more.
Jim Herr:I encourage you to go listen to the podcast and he was talking about society and how we're leaving people behind, and it was just that moment that sort of clicked in my hand. Of course, I made it all about me, which is what he was saying not to do, but I began to think well, wait, this is this, is. This is something that's missing in in society. As a democracy, we tend to think of it as majority rules, but it's not. It really is supposed to be rule of the people. It's supposed to be all of us moving together to get to somewhere, to move ahead. It's not leaving people behind if 90% of the people in this, in this country or in a society, say they want peanut butter sandwiches served every day at lunch, but 10% of the people are allergic to peanuts. You can't leave those 10% behind like.
Jim Herr:That's not what a democratic society is about.
Jim Herr:It's not mob rules, it's taking care of everyone, and we today, I think, are sorely lacking that.
Jim Herr:We are lacking that care for one another.
Jim Herr:We are willing to leave people behind.
Jim Herr:We see that every day, and I think that is something that that has to change in our society, and so I think the key to that is empathy, to understand what other people are going through and to feel that, and so I think that's one of the reasons why I wanted to kind of explore this with these wonderful people here to figure out how do we get back to that, and we talked a lot about, you know, one of the booths is forgiveness, and for me, that's the hardest piece. It's hard for me to reach out to people across the aisle or across what seems to be these, these canyons of difference, and and how do we bridge that? Because we have to do that. We have to find a way to to connect with one another even though there are differences, and I don't know how to do that, and I don't, and I feel like I'm not ready to do that and I'm hoping that through this process or through the exploration of empathy and democracy, I can maybe figure out a little bit about that and maybe share that with others.
Omar Brownson:Part of the arc for this evening is this, this idea of story of self, the story of us, the story of now. If you're familiar with Marshall Ganz, he worked with Sator Chavez and Farm Workers Union and it became sort of this organizing principle. So often we start with like the story of now, right, like everything's a crisis this week. It's the economy, or there's a war, or there's a you know shooting, or they're just there's a constant crisis right now, and oftentimes we want to sort of like organize and come together and solve whatever is happening now. The challenge is that it's hard to solve the now when we don't know each other's stories. And the challenge of not knowing each other's stories is that we actually have to really own and be clear about our own story, and so I'll share a little bit of my own story.
Omar Brownson:You're growing up. I moved to LA when I was 10 years old and I remember it was 1984, it was summer Olympics, it was Sam the Eagle and you know we just moved from Vancouver, canada and the Pacific Northwest and I'd lived in more rural communities and I remember, you know, on the first day, walking to school with my mom, who's here, and with my two daughters, I was like mom, how are we supposed to get in? She's like what do you mean? I was like, well, there's a fence all the way around the school. I'd never been to a school with a fence around it. Fast forward to being a senior in high school in 1992, and this is the civil unrest, and I remember that sort of unsettled feeling of our city on fire and the smoke in the air, not being able to see the end of my block and realizing at a very early age how fragile both cities and democracy are. And so I got into my very young head at that time that I was like I want to go build the world I want to live in, not and in taking me into the world of real estate and like literally built housing and Projects and invested in it. And then worked for eight or nine years on the Los Angeles River and reimagining the 51 mile Los Angeles River.
Omar Brownson:And Then about nine years ago, I got a chance, thanks to the Dirtfee Foundation, to do a travel fellowship and I was gonna look at water infrastructure projects in Singapore or Holland, indonesia. But I told the foundation I was like well, before I go to all these places, I want to do a six day silent retreat and they're like oh Omar, you're mistaken, you didn't receive a sabbatical. And I was like I know that, but you're asking me to think differently about my work and I want to go inward before I go outward. And so I went up to Big Sur, 1300 feet up in the bluffs looking out over the Pacific Ocean, and I'd never done anything like that and it was amazing to just pause and really just sort of be present and not have anything organized.
Omar Brownson:And at the end of the six days I got to talk to this monk and I said, in all of this silence, what is deafening is how impatient of a human being I am. And I remember him putting his hand on my shoulder and put his face right up to mine and he just laughed at me. He said, omar, the root word for impatience in Latin is patsis, which means to suffer. He said this is your burden to carry. And I was like this is what I get for six days of silence. I get to carry suffering.
Omar Brownson:I was like, well, how are you supposed to get things done in the world to be non-attached at the same time? And he said, oh, more, non-attachment doesn't mean indifference. You can still care me non-attached. I was like, well, that sounds amazing. Like how do I do that? He said, well, that's for you to go figure out. And so that's really been the journey over the last nine years. Is that like how to go Both care deeply about the world and also be non-attached at the same time? And, as Arlene said, like how do we notice and name what we're feeling without becoming what we're feeling?
Omar Brownson:And I think, for me, I tried meditation, I tried mindfulness, but it was really the practice of gratitude that brought me into my heart. You know, if you'd asked me a couple years ago, I would say that meditation begins with noticing each breath. Mindfulness begins with noticing change. Gratitude begins with noticing good. But now I would say that really the practice of gratitude is about noticing with your heart. You know the word mindfulness comes from the Chinese word shen xin, which in Chinese actually Translates as heart or heart, mind. Western culture focused on the mind part, but the science now shows us that when we add compassion or love or kindness To meditation or mindfulness, the benefits to our brain and nervous system actually accelerate 10x. So it's actually not about being mindful or meditating, it's actually about being kind and kind, loving and compassionate. And so how do we give ourselves permission to feel those things? Not worry about having to become all those things, just feel them, and that has how we make room for ourselves and then, when we do that, we can make room for each other.
Belinda Liu:Beautiful. Thank you so much, omar, for sharing your story. So this is kind of our way of getting into the interactive part of this graduate To-Booming experience, which really is about how do we take that pause For ourselves and also with each other, and just noticing. How does it feel different when I do that? I would just would love for us to connect in With nature in this moment, and that's really the intention of graduate booming is, you know, if we can't be present and notice what's going on in nature, how can we notice what's going on within ourselves and what's going on with each other?
Belinda Liu:And it was so fun today to be in LA looking at the plants in Hashimoto nursery and Actually going to every single row just to ask the plants. Who wants to come to this museum? Who wants to be with everyone today? Who wants to represent hope and Healing and wholeness and forgiveness? And literally the ones that you all got to be with today Were the ones that raised their hand, the the highest, you know, the Shasta daisies.
Belinda Liu:So Before we start each of our circles, we just like to get grounded, and it's a miracle that we have two feet that touch the earth every single moment of the day. So I want to invite you to just plant your feet on the ground this is our moment to really be Grounded and centered with the earth and Just let your feet kind of relax into the ground and just let your toes soften and just relax and feel present here. And there's some really beautiful Elder trees around the space, just imagining ourselves receiving Energy from those trees Just as you inhale, imagine yourself breathing through your feet, just like the trees do with their roots and as you exhale. I didn't go of any emotion that you want to release, for this time we have together, just notice how you feel in
Belinda Liu:this moment, taking one more breath, just gratitude for that gift of our breath. I'm just being able to co-create this space together just by breathing, and when you are ready, we're gonna come back together. Just looking around the room and just acknowledging all the people that chose to say yes to be here today at this gathering. Just looking around, just acknowledging everyone that's here. Thank you all for being here, thank you for saying yes to this experience, and Elmar and Narleen and I have hosted hundreds of these circles. Some of you have been to our circles online or in person, and there's just three ways of being here in this space together. The first is just acknowledging that we are our own best inner teacher and guide and there's no need to fix, save or advise anyone else around, because we all know what's best for each of us. And also just making room for silence to be a participant in this space that we're in together. And as we now kind of explore these three lenses of the story of self, the story of others and the story of now, which is just what is this collective culture, this democracy that we want to be a part of, I invite you to sit with that in your heart. What peace feels the most alive for you in this moment? Is it connecting in with yourself, is it exploring your connection to others, or this collective culture that we're a part of? Just holding that in your heart as we practice that.
Belinda Liu:I'm gonna start with our lean, and then Elmar and Jim, and then we're gonna invite you to practice as well with the cards that you received when you checked in. So, jim, I love that you were a podcast guest for Curiosity. You know, some people might think that we have this whole spreadsheet with everyone's name and the themes you know planned ahead of time, but usually for our podcast episodes we pick a card randomly before the Zoom call. And, jim, it was just incredible how you picked the card Curiosity, and throughout the conversation you embodied that spirit of being open to not knowing. I mean, you were like I don't even know what y'all are gonna ask me to do, but I'm gonna just trust that it's gonna be fine.
Belinda Liu:And Jim wanted you all to have these note cards around Curiosity, kind of connected to his own experience with this podcast. So we're gonna be playing with those right now. So, arlene, we're gonna start with you and I invite you all, as you listen, to just hold this question of story of self, especially for those of you that feel really connected to that question, and for you, arlene, in this moment. Is there a question or intention that you have for yourself? Right now? I have an inquiry around what emotion have I been holding in?
Belinda Liu:my body that I'm not releasing or not allowing to move, because we've all been through so much in the past few years. So I guess the question would be what can I do to help move that energy so that it doesn't get stuck? So Arlene is gonna hold that intention and some of you might have a similar intention to what Arlene is holding for herself and she is going to pick a card from the collection. Just around that intent, what might you need to acknowledge and what you're feeling? Oh no, oh no. We didn't plan this, so we have no idea what's gonna come. I picked card number seven. It's the Iris, and it's always a little weird for me to do this because I drew these and when I drew this, the word impermanence came up. And the question that I have to reflect on is all things fade and change over time. What can this awareness teach you?
Omar Brownson:What comes up for you.
Belinda Liu:Well, I've been personally dealing with a lot of loss and grief, so I mean that's why I said, oh no, it's the card.
Speaker 5:So.
Belinda Liu:I seem to have gotten the card that reminds me that things are and for everything is impermanent. And what comes up for me in a moment is that the reason why impermanence is so hard is because it implies loss, and it's something you really feel impermanence when you lose something, but that's part of life. So, and where do you feel at most in your body? Like a lot in my throat, and I think that's because I'm in front of the crowd, but, yeah, I'm not sure I have my heart. So, omar, you are next and you are going to represent the story of others.
Omar Brownson:Sometimes people have a hard time thinking about, like what does an intention mean? And I like to think of an intention as like a seed that you're planting. My favorite definition of intention is from Bishop TD Jakes, and he said that you can plant something or you can bury it, but the only difference is intention. So what are you really trying to plant?
Omar Brownson:And I would say as I think about the story of us right now. I think how do we make room for each other? I guess would be the question that I'm holding, and so I will randomly select a card. So I got the dog tooth violet, the Curiosity card, and as you pull the card, one of the first things that we invite you to do is just notice the art itself. Sometimes we want to jump to the question because it sort of feels easy to answer. But the dog tooth violet, it's interesting because it's kind of looking down. The flower pillow is sort of looking down and I think sometimes, like, curiosity is a little bit about focusing.
Omar Brownson:I think, as I said at the beginning, gratitude is strengthened with specificity and I think with Curiosity it's like how do we actually take time? Our brains are lazy, like the neuroscience is that we like to just sort of gloss over things. We're like, oh, I've seen it, and just sort of reminding ourselves to like every moment is a new moment. And I think the challenge sometimes, like just personally, is we want to just drive, like I'll speak for myself, like I like to go build things. My mantra is build the world I want to live in, and you know it was my birthday in May and I was at breakfast and there was this mirror on the wall and I said dream, believe, achieve. And that's kind of in my mantra throughout my career and it's sort of helped me be successful in some ways of accomplishing certain things.
Omar Brownson:But in that moment two things came to me. One was like what's it like to dream of things that I cannot achieve, like to be a part of something that's even bigger than I can accomplish on myself. And the other part of it was dream, believe, receive so much. I feel like our culture is achievement oriented and when we do that we sometimes are it's never enough, because once you achieve it, then you're like what's the next thing? And in some ways it actually feeds a scarcity mindset because it's never enough. And so curiosity to me is reminding that there's this amazing world and like how do we just receive it and accept it and be sort of open to all the sort of possibilities that are in front of us?
Omar Brownson:And I think when we do that, we have that curiosity of receiving, and I feel like we actually make room for each other.
Belinda Liu:And I'll just say that it's been amazing to co-create gratitude blooming. I mean, if you had asked me seven years ago what was what is gratitude blooming, I would never have guessed that it would be a co-creation with an artist, a poet, myself as a land steward. I mean, so much of our lives have changed over the past eight years and it's incredible to just like receive this wisdom from nature as kind of a guide For what is the world that we want to live in you know so much of. Where we are now in this moment is a great mystery, and it's kind of up to us, like, what do we want it to be? And I love that. This is emergence. And so I'm really curious, jim, for you as someone that is holding space for these larger conversations what is the question or the intention that you're holding around our collective culture, our democracy? You know, what do you? What would you like to receive insight on in this moment?
Jim Herr:I want to be able for myself first to understand how to I don't know if work with is the right word, but Maybe understand, you know, to get you know that in those stepping stones to empathy, understand people who are different than I am and where that comes from, and maybe by understanding that I can have more empathy for where they're coming from. But I feel that I do need it to be a two-way street and I, but maybe that maybe taking that step of understanding and seeking empathy is what would drive the reciprocation. Of that I'm reminded, I know the Wilds and 12 years of Catholic school with the prayer of St Francis, and seek to understand, to be understood, and so I think that's kind of where I am right now Infinite possibility. I don't even have to say that, I'm just saying that Card, number 27, it's the Delphinium, delphinium, delphinium.
Omar Brownson:So, as you look at the art, what do you sort of see, and how does that potentially relate to seeking to understand not?
Jim Herr:be understood. The first thing that stands out to me and if you guys, hopefully you can see it is that it is very different from that curiosity one. The curiosity one the first thing that's had to me sort of alluded to was that you had it looking down. I had it looking at itself, so looking inward and trying to find out, being curious about what was inside of me. And this one is very kind of standing up very tall, very erect, very confident in a way. And so I think it's this idea of infinite possibility is an optimism, a confident optimism that maybe things will work out, maybe things will, we can create the world that we want.
Jim Herr:And I said when we were outside a little bit earlier, I said nothing. There are no coincidences. Everything happens for reasons. So, pulling this today and thinking about the work that we're trying to do with the center and the work that we're doing with you guys, infinite possibility, like where can we go. So when I first took this position, it was sort of like one of the things that tracked me was blue sky. It's like figure out what you want to do, and everything was on the table, so very happy that I pulled it.
Omar Brownson:This quote from President Obama. He said that democracy is threatened when we take it for granted, and that's kind of what gratitude is this reminder of? Like, gratitude makes visible what we value, but it also helps us to see what we might be making invisible, and so I feel like that's how we create. The other right is we make invisible, you know, and so I think part of it is just how do we notice, like how do we make visible what's already there?
Belinda Liu:Now you all are going to, we're going to flip the mic to your side and I would love for you to take a moment to just be with this question of you. Know what is calling you? Is it the story of self? Is it the story of us or the story of now, around the collective? And you know, just hold that question or intention that you have for yourself and take a moment to practice picking a card.
Belinda Liu:You can go random, like Omar suggested, which is exciting and very much like infinite possibility, right. Or you can kind of look through the collection of 10 and pick the one that is really resonating for you in this moment and just reflect on that plant. You know what is it telling you in this moment? This, this practice, has literally changed my life.
Belinda Liu:I mean, I grew up in a culture where we don't talk about emotions, and so I never learned that in at home, and so I think I needed these cards to help me understand what I was feeling, and then gave me language to actually share it. And my mom and I, every single Saturday, we use these cards, and now we talk about what is vulnerability and what does that translate to in Chinese and what does it mean to you? What does it mean to me? And I really do feel like, for me, the story of us has been really powerful with these cards because nature is something we can all connect with. It's part of all of us in our lives in some way. So, yeah, just take a moment to connect in with your own inquiry and intention and picking that card and thinking about what it's saying to you. It's powerful to do it together in this space.
Omar Brownson:Give yourself like two minutes to kind of reflect on your inquiry, select a card and this kind of again. I invite you to look at the art itself before looking at the prompt.
Belinda Liu:This is, like my favorite part of using these cards. It's just the connections that form that are unexpected sometimes. So Jim is going to walk around and see who wants to share. What is the story that is most present for you self, us, or now the collective and what card did you receive?
Speaker 5:I'm Rodney Perry from Jackson, Tennessee. I'm actually visiting LA and I was invited to this by my friend, Ari Stool, so I appreciate you. This has been really cool. It's been really dope. Did not expect, did not know what this was going to be. I guess the intention that I had was kind of to be open and receptive. I think community has been a buzzword that kind of continues to came to me in the past few weeks so it's interesting that it's been used probably about 37 times in either this conversation or you know, whatever you go ahead and have. So I randomly drew a card and what I have is number 36, the Sweet Pea, the wild card. It made me think about the Bath, Body Works lotion from like so, so like a medium, like it was almost like a smell came to me. So this is one of the wild cards.
Speaker 5:We left for you to imagine your own words of wisdom and gratitude. So what came to me was kind of words that came to me a few months ago and kind of just thinking about my life, thinking about my situation. I currently live in Atlanta, Georgia, which was a place I went to school, went to college and I came back to last year. It's been a weird, weird adjustment because it's a city that I feel like I was familiar to, but it was different, very different. You know, I'm an adult now. I first went there when I was 18, so it was an adjustment. But the words that kind of came to me was that language really is everything and language can express so much. We can always find something right words to say whatever we want to say, and what language doesn't do respect, it does the risk. So that's kind of the words of wisdom that I guess that came to me.
Speaker 6:Hi, my name is.
Speaker 6:Frank and I have been interested in this idea of the non-separate self, the how we are all interconnected. So that was kind of the overarching idea that I started with. How do we contribute to each other? What you know? No person is an island kind of idea. So I chose at random the simplicity card. So, looking at the art first, I got two dancing amoebas or two dancing flowers, two dancing petals. So in nature I mean, what is a petal? But a combination of cells, of energy, of life. So these amoebas are not separate, they are connected by a string or I don't know what that is they're connected by but so they're not dancing alone, they're dancing together and that's kind of the idea of none of us should be dancing alone.
Speaker 6:We should be dancing together.
Omar Brownson:One of the fun things about art is that it's just open to interpretation, and so it's just in psychology. They call it a third object, and so just being able to look at something actually makes you feel more comfortable opening up and sharing. Anyone else like to share what came up for them, their inquiry, the card that they pulled.
Speaker 4:I'm Dara and I, when Omar was speaking about caring, learning how to care without being attached, that was something that I like aspire to but honestly didn't really feel possible. And I pulled randomly the perspective card and it's funny I looked at it and at first I looked at it and I saw the flower and it looked kind of weak to me, like it kind of like scraggly almost. And then I did the exercise of closing my eyes and doing the three breaths and I opened them and I almost feel like it's singing, Like it has this sort of joy and strength and like I don't know. So it in connecting with that sort of sense of possibility, almost of how, and maybe seeing my own strength in that maybe I can actually do that and being less attached while caring. So, thank you.
Speaker 7:I actually went through all the cards and I said which one speaks to me the most. So I chose two because I felt they were interconnected One is impermanence and one is infinite possibility. So I I mean I came, came off a a really I mean deep soul searching year in 2022, you know one that it was work related.
Speaker 7:So, you know, I didn't think I mean it was a dream job and it was my purpose. And then things happened externally and it was very painful, but but I'm reemerging from it this year. So I mean, it's kind of like all things fade and change over time and I'm trying to take that experience, the good part of it, cherish it, savor it, but knowing, looking at the art, and seeing that all flowers die, all flowers bring joy, but they all die, but the petals fall into the ground and and and nourish something new. So that's what I'm trying to process and move forward with that experience that gave me great joy, that ultimately gave me great pain, but I can just channel that into something better.
Speaker 7:So, and segwaying to that, the other card I chose was infinite possibility and just seeing what. You know, the old cliche one door closes and another door opens, but I, I I have about 15 doors. Then I'm going through 15 pathways, I'm trying them, all you know, and and so seeing what befalls and what gives me joy and what, how I can move past this experience. So I the, the, the artwork, I mean I think the the first one spoke to me more than I'm trying to to grasp what these, what the infinite possibilities. But I see a number of different buds and and and blooms. I mean some are in the in the process of emerging and some are in already realized that emergence. So that does speak to me. Thanks, thank you.
Omar Brownson:Thank you, part of when we're holding these spaces is that, whether you're just pulling the card for yourself or you're just sharing with the person next to you or you're sharing, all of it is participation. So we appreciate and that's, I think, ultimately. Empathy and democracy is about our participation. Like, how do we show up? So I think Jim wants to ask us some questions. He's gonna flip the tables off us.
Jim Herr:We're on his stage now. This is, this is my high cast, high cast takeover. No, I think just you know, to introduce you and and your work to to these people and to to, hopefully, everybody that will be listening to the to this once we get it all edited down, I, I I want them to know who you are. So the Belinda and Arlene story, like how did you like, how did you fall into this and what led you to meeting up?
Belinda Liu:How much time do we have? How many hours so I always? I love this word synchronicity, because I feel like in many ways, what's helped me recover from being in like an overachiever is learning to follow the breadcrumbs and like seeing life more like a scavenger hunt versus like a project plan.
Belinda Liu:It's like whoa it's way more fun than a spreadsheet. And Arlene and I met first through a co-worker who I was working with back in the day when I was doing a lot of nonprofit education work and you know I had always kind of seen how creative she was and I, you know, admired her work as an artist back back in the day. We're working on product together and in 2016, when she did this 100 day project where she illustrated 100 plants for 100 days, I remember she came to visit our retreat center in Mount Shasta and she was starting to sketch some of the plants and I was like I wonder what Arlene's up to. And you know, 100 days later, she had 100 illustrations and I remember looking at the plants and seeing these beautiful words like beautiful sadness, impermanence, tenacity you know just things that you don't think about really a lot. And I was like wow, it's like these, these plants are wanting to tell us something. And Arlene kind of had this playbook and I was like I want that playbook, but you know this art is not usable for anyone except Arlene and maybe people she invites to her studio at her home.
Belinda Liu:And basically I got to, I convinced Arlene. I was like I think we need to make a card deck or a tool that people can use for their life, for their own playbook, as they're going through the scavenger hunt of trying to find the clues of meaning and purpose. And that was the first version of the Gratitude Blooming Card Deck in 2016. And then, over the years, we were trying to understand well, what does this thing want to be that we created, we knew we wanted it to feel meaningful for people. We knew we wanted it to be a tool for self-awareness and insight and a tool for conversations like different kinds of conversations that you normally wouldn't have otherwise. And then, in 2019, we're like we need someone to help amplify and tell the story of Gratitude Blooming. Where can we find a storyteller?
Speaker 5:that can help us.
Belinda Liu:that's, you know, tall like an antenna, you know, but on LinkedIn, and you know, I saw Omar's picture from the neck up, and you know.
Belinda Liu:I was like, oh he's working on gratitude stuff Like this is the time to collaborate, you know, not a time to work in your own silo trying to, you know, do it all yourself, which was something that I was trying to learn not to do anymore, and it was just amazing how curious and open Omar was to this random LinkedIn message from this random person in Oakland, california, and from there we experimented with hundreds of gratitude circles, holding space every single week during the pandemic, and I think we learned how to work together the three of us in that time period of you know how do you hold space for each other and then for this larger collective which is, I think, is the story of us and the story of now.
Jim Herr:I was curious with the cards. If you don't know, the card deck that you have is sort of like a subset of the complete deck of the gratitude booming card set. So how did you, how did you come to the groupings? Because they're all thematic, the different sets, right.
Belinda Liu:We put 39 themes into four gardens and then, just to even it out, we created a four-leaf card. But we really thought we liked this exploration of these different. Each of the themes seemed to have a bigger intent, and so we have a garden of healing, which contains 10, the 10 of the 40. And then a garden of joy, a garden of fear we started to call it the fearless garden, but I think it's become fearless gratitude garden. And then this one is the curiosity garden, and they just sort of felt like these bigger themes that were easier to get your head around rather than all of the cards together.
Belinda Liu:And I want to say, as the artist, that I am a self-taught artist. I did this 100-day project and really I used to feel like so self-conscious about the like, like the images, feeling like spare and not done. And but over time, what I've noticed in a lot of the circles and the way people react to the art is that there was actually, I think, a gift in the art being played, because it allowed space for others to like interpret the art the way they need me to. And so you know, I feel like really all of the gardens and all of the themes are really about possibility, infinite possibility and potential, like the gardens are really hoping that we can, through these practices of the themes, reach a potential in our lives that is hard to get to without you know tools and practices.
Jim Herr:I wanted to share a couple of reflections. One, you know, kind of this is very new for us. I think it's new for this type of programming. When we went, when there was that silent moment when people were reflecting, I just kept thinking to myself it's dead air, it's dead air, it's dead air. You don't have that in a podcast, you don't have that on the radio. But you and I also said, omar, about just taking a moment just to sit, and it's okay to be quiet and it's okay not to say something, and I think that was working through that for me. Working through that uncomfortability of silence, was something important for me.
Jim Herr:The second is also, you know, the idea of, like, I think, in the back of my mind, there was this hope that we would come out of this with the solution to all the world's problems.
Jim Herr:Like you know, we would, you know, be on our way to Norway to accept our you know, about East Christ, because we had solved everything. But it is a process and it's okay that it's a process and it's okay that we, I think, lay the foundation with this initial kind of podcast of how we're going to use these tools, these inquiries, these questions to probe deeper into this issue of empathy and democracy and how we can build that. And I think that's what you know we will be doing over the next we'll have if you did not already know, this is the first of four conversations that we're going to be having over the next year. So hopefully we will build upon that with each succession, with each successive iteration of this and hopefully you'll come back and join us and hopefully we will all have time to kind of reflect on the conversation tonight, reflect more on the podcast when it comes out, as well as the Progratitude Voluminous Podcast, and give us a chance to have this conversation again with you. So hopefully you will join us again.
Omar Brownson:The other cool thing about the themes is the music that you were hearing right before we opened, and the music that was in the foyer is actually from a musician, ariel Lowe, who is here in LA and he released two albums so far, based on the Garden of Joy and the Garden of Healing.
Omar Brownson:So every theme in the deck by the end of the year is going to have a song, and so part of it again is just whether you pause to listen to the music, pause for reflecting on the card, or the prompt is just there is a power, and I think sometimes we're so eager to jump to the problems, and I'll just say that for me, realizing my impatience was really about control, and control was really about fear, and so until I could sort of face my fears, I can't really build the world I want to live in, because I'm actually coming from a place of fear, and so if I want this more beautiful place that my heart knows is possible, I actually have to sort of acknowledge those fears and those things, and then I feel like that's actually how we find space and room for each other.
Omar Brownson:So we're just going to do three breaths together. So in this first breath I just invite you, over the last hour or so that we've shared with each other what is a positive feeling or emotion that has come to you, and just in this breath, I invite you to savor that feeling and emotion. And for this second breath, what might have been a difficult or charged emotion for you, I just invite you to notice and name that feeling in this next breath and for this last breath, what do you want to take with you from this experience in a moment? Again, thank you so much for joining us and here's to more.
