Today, I Grieve 5:16 PM

Dallas LOVE Project Venue: Dallas Public Library 1:00 PM

During the entire month of November we will be highlighting Dallas LOVE Project venues.  Featured in this blog is the Dallas Public Central Library located at 1515 Young Street, Dallas 75201. 

One of the largest exhibits of Dallas LOVE art in the city, the library is open Tuesday through Sunday.  Click here for Central Library hours.

Upload your Instagram photos and don't forget to tag us: 

#DLoveProject #29pieces #dallaslovequilt

What IS 29 Pieces and Why Should You Give? 3:00 PM

Dallas LOVE Project

Barbara Miller - Creative Connections Workshop

Ann Hines - Creative Connections Workshop

MasterPEACE IF Lesson

29 Pieces began as one artist’s personal, spiritual response to a murder.

Through commitment and passion, it has become a vibrant, growing organization that touches universal responses to the meaning and value of life. 

Its vision is one of hope - to create a provocative, spiritual and purpose-driven art experience. 29 Pieces exists to empower children and adults by directly connecting them with their creative center – changing the way they learn, they way they problem solve, the way they interact with the world around them. 

Please support 29 Pieces on September 19, North Texas Giving Day, by giving generously through DonorBridgeTX.org.  Your dollars will be doubled by matching funds from the
29 Pieces Board of Directors.

29 Pieces Art #28 "Let me walk in beauty"

Dallas LOVE Project

MasterPEACE Love Lesson

Support 29 Pieces programming on Thursday, September 19 between
7AM-Midnight by giving generously at DonorBridgeTX.org

Speak What You Feel: Aurora 11:16 AM

Charme Robarts, VP of the Board of Directors for 29 Pieces, wrote this blog about the tragedy in Aurora.  29 Pieces shares this with her permission.

Speak What You Feel: Aurora: Reeling from shock and pain we rush to issues of justice and blame and gun control and violence in entertainment. The pain arouses our ...

29 Pieces Partners with Maya Angelou High School 7:47 PM

We have recently partnered with the Maya Angelou High School for pregnant teens, in which we taught the students our MasterPEACE program.  The lessons from the program instruct and build skills with a unique mix of art projects, real-life improvisation and spoken performance.

Proudly, an installation of the love collage artwork from Maya Angelou students was displayed at the Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center from February 14 – April 18. 

The artwork is now on display at City Hall and the Dallas Public Library not until June 14.

2012 Deep Ellum Art Walk 9:46 PM

Come out to the 2012 Deep Ellum Art Walk, in which the public can enjoy art viewing, shopping, music, food and drink. The event is free and most people can easily walk from gallery to gallery.

29 Pieces will have student-created on display in their offices.  Make sure you check us out!

National Latin Recording Artist Cristina Eustace Partners with 29 Pieces 3:45 PM

Cristina Eustace has just been announced as the new celebrity spokesperson for 29 Pieces.  Read more about this announcement at the Dallas Morning News!

No doubt you will become an angel 3:24 PM

Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996, by Martin Puryear.
At the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas

From the moment you came into this world

A ladder was placed in front of you

That you might escape.

From earth you became plant,

From plant you became animal.

Afterwards you became a human being,              

Endowed with knowledge, intellect, and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust –

How perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?

When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,

No doubt you will become an angel

And soar through the heavens.

- Jelaluddin Rumi, 

excerpt from "A Garden Beyond Paradise"

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Beauty without purpose 1:31 PM

Photograph by Man Ray

”Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function — to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory to the world, that good teacher.”  — Mary Oliver 

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29 Pieces Workshops 10:13 PM

Kelly Nash, with his original art - Patience Attains the Goal - from the workshop.

About once a month, 29 Pieces offers one of its Creative Connections workshops. I had the opportunity to attend one last month, and, like everyone else, learned some new creative connections of my own. The workshops are “about” art and meditation, but, of course, there is much more. So it’s not just for artists; the people at my workshop included a lawyer, a real-estate executive, a minister, an IT manager, a corporate CFO, and a geologist (me). Everyone needs to be creative. This was to be a peaceful and quiet day, so – cellphones off.

The workshop began with an introduction of the process that Karen Blessen used to create the body of work called “29 Pieces”. It’s the story of a transformative journey, as told through each of the pieces that are on view as models at the studio. I won’t go into the story here, except to say that it alone is worth the workshop price. It is a story of death  and life, and it incorporates the tools that attendees use to make their own creative connections. 

The first “tool” that Karen introduces in the workshop is passage meditation, a method of meditation that involves memorizing sacred passages from the world’s faith traditions (for example, the Prayer of St. Francis), and repeating them slowly and silently in the mind, for a half-hour daily. There are other aspects to the practice, spelled out on the website of the Blue Mountain Center of Mediation  (www.easwaran.org). Karen said that she was not involved with teaching meditation, only introducing the practice as a “jumping off point” to find a source of creativity. She handed out a sheet of sacred passages from thousands of years of sacred traditions, including the Indian Vedas, a Native American poem and the words of Christian saints and mystics, and invited us to select a passage that was meaningful for us. Then we did a 10-minute meditation on the passage.   

After that, we chose a phrase from our passage that particular resonated. My phrase was “Patience attains the goal” from a passage by St. Theresa of Avila. What followed was fascinating to me, as we used our dominant and non-dominant hand to write our impressions of the phrase. As you may know, the right hand is connected to the left side of the brain and vice-versa. Writing with my right hand produced thoughts that I might have expected from years of doing it that way. When I put the pen in my left hand, I found that, of course, it wasn’t easy to write legibly, but also, it was a totally new thinking process, namely, a much less literate and logical flow of words, but with more instinctual and metaphorical lines of thought. The women seemed to be more comfortable with this than the men.

Then we made a sketch of an art piece that illustrated our concepts. A trove of supplies was laid out including colored papers of all kinds, cardboard, wood, beads, seeds, glue and glue guns, paint and brushes, paper mache, and all kinds of other stuff. We quietly went to work, utterly absorbed, and about three hours later, each of us wound up with a physical work of art produced by our own minds channeling the wisdom of the ages. What better way to spend a day? 

The Creative Connections workshops are $95, including a delicious vegetarian lunch. They are limited to about 12 attendees per workshop. Check the calendar page at www.29Pieces.org for schedules. 
                                                                                       — By Kelly Nash       

29 Pieces Celebrates Wangari Maathai Day! 1:31 PM

29 Pieces celebrates Wangari Maathai day!  She has accomplished great things such as becoming the first women in East and Central Aftrica to earn a doctorate degree, and becoming the first African American women to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

The artwork was created by MasterPEACE students as part of the Great Peacemakers lesson, in which children are introduced to 12 heroic peacemakers. Then the children are challenged to learn about the peacemakers and “walk in their shoes” as they create a portrait of them.

WOW! 10:36 PM

 

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Happy Birthday to You! 11:58 AM

Cover Art by student in the MasterPEACE program of 29 Pieces

"I believe that unarmed truth 
and unconditional love 
will have the final 
word in reality."
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
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Great Peacemakers Like You & Me! 7:20 AM

Great Peacemakers Like You and Me // The children from the MasterPEACE program of 29 Pieces (formerly Today Marks the Beginning) say it all. It’s up to us! Happy International Day of Peace!! Kudos to John Katz, James Neel and Fast Cut Edits for this video. 

Since late 2007, it has been our privilege to work with over 2000 Dallas children in the MasterPEACE program. Thank you to all the generous people and organizations who have made this work possible. Just look at what you started! Thank you.

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Peace Day is tomorrow! 9:46 PM

For hatred can never put an end to hatred; love alone can. This is an unalterable law. People forget that their lives will end soon. For those who remember, quarrels come to an end.
— From "Twin Verses", the Dhammapada


Twin Verses This is the opening chapter of the Dhammapada, an ancient collection of the Buddha's teachings in verse form. Buddha – literally“he who is awake” – is the title given to the young prince Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563–483 B.C.) after he attained nirvana or self-realization. The translation is by Eknath Easwaran, adapted for meditation from The Dhammapada (Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1985).
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2 days to International Day of Peace 10:06 AM

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of all the world and to the community for which it stands: one people loved into existence by God, breathing an indivisible air, warmed by a sun that shines on good and bad alike, kept alive by rain that falls on the just and unjust. I commit myself to spend my life for this world for liberty and justice for all. Amen.
— Sister Mary Evelyn Jegen 

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Sister Mary Evelyn Jegen, SND, taught history at UD from 1967 to 1971.  She worked with students who were struggling with their response to the war in Vietnam and considering conscientious objection.  This experience changed her response to war itself, and some years later she became a pacifist.  She eventually became the first national coordinator of Pax Christi USA, in 1979, and in 1984 was elected vice president of Pax Christi International.  Dr. Jegen served on a team representing Pax Christi at the United Nations, 1991-2000 (Pax Christi International has special consultative status as a nongovernmental organization at the United Nations).
 
She is the author of several books, including Just Peacemakers: An Introduction to Peace and Justice (Paulist Press, paperback 2005), and How You Can Be a Peacemaker: Catholic Teachings and Practical Suggestions (Liguori Publications, 1985).

Sister Mary Evelyn received her doctorate in medieval European history from St. Louis University.  

3 Days to International Day of Peace! 11:33 AM

Sri Sarada Devi

I tell you one thing — if you want peace of mind, do not find fault with others. Rather learn to see your own faults. Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own. 
— Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi
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Sarada Devi (Bengali) (22 December 1853 – 20 July 1920), born Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya, was the wife and spiritual counterpart of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a nineteenth century mystic of Bengal. Sarada Devi is also reverentially addressed as the Holy Mother (Sri Maa) by the followers of the Ramakrishna monastic order. Sarada Devi played an important role in the growth of the Ramakrishna Movement.

Countdown to September 21 12:33 PM

By Charlotte Miller

Peaceful thought for the day . . .

Hospitality.  It is more than having friends over for dinner, and more than a guest bedroom with clean sheets, though these common practices are things of wonder. The practice of hospitality is a two way street, it is giving and receiving, like a dance in which no one can tell who is leading and who is following, and it moves to the rhythm of the oneness of humanity.

— Charme Robarts

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Countdown to Peace Day, Sept. 21! 10:07 PM

The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace. 
— Colman McCarthy 
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A Time of Peace: Dr. Barbara Miller 10:07 AM

Dr. Barbara Miller, as featured in the Baylor Dental Journal

Dr. Barbara Miller, co-founder of Today Marks the Beginning, and Board Member of 29 Pieces, is featured in the current Baylor Dental Journal! In her day job, Barbara is the Executive Director of recruitment and admissions at Baylor College of Dentistry. To read the full article, please go to either of the following links. The story tells of Barbara's love of art as a tool to transform lives and enrich communities.
http://issuu.com/artupton/docs/baylordentaljournal-2011/24
This is to the entire Journal:
http://bcd.tamhsc.edu/bdjo/readbdjournal.html

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