From a dry rural county in the Bible belt – a Southern Baptist saturated childhood – school, sports, and church were the few venues of engagement readily accessible to me. Though uninspiring, I succeeded in school – I was coaches’ choice as leader on sports teams – but church became my life. I was at church consistently Sunday morning, Sunday and Wednesday night for youth group and regularly at Christian conferences and concerts. My religious life stretched deeply into my personal life – leading bible-studies in classrooms and prayer groups in hallways before school, President of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, organizing county-wide youth events and more importantly spending hours in my room reading, praying, reflecting and writing on the subjects of spiritual life.

My religious experience of church and its interconnection with my personal experience of spirituality continually inform each other but are different experiences. I see now that my religious experience brought discipline to my spiritual practice. At times I feel a void no longer aligning myself with any specific community or institution of religious life – but reconcile this affect with lessons from native spiritual wisdom that suggest that once a person has developed a sense for personal spiritual connection – the tradition and ritual of institution become a hindrance to further developing and relying on the personalness of spiritual connection and practice. My experience with Brett Cook during his Fall Residency here in my home state reinforced that lesson.

I was privileged to spend a good amount of one-on-one time with Brett during his two weeks this November. I was informed by our conversations through which he imparted ideas about approach, grace, perspective and practice. More significantly, I was inspired by working along side Brett preparing his studio space for his work to be done. Brett has consistently imparted, the hard work is not what he does with spray-paint but the practice of collaborating with all-types of individuals.

The first-half of week one the studio space at BrightLeaf was a raw and frankly an uninspiring workspace – I did my best with limited time to prepare it by pulling up carpet-tack strips and give it a quick sweep but work started almost immediately preparing the canvasses for our co-creations. Brett tried to make sure I had enjoyable music to set an inviting vibe as I did this prep-work. Brett did much of his work during the first week away from the studio – meetings at CDS and around Durham, a workshop in a Duke classroom, and a house party. He would drop into the studio throughout the week with items of intention – lovely plants, tea candles, pictures and rememberbillia of Pauli Murray, debris from our-time together co.creating, tangerines as representations of personal nourishment and finally his tools – spray paints and yerba mate. By Saturday the entire space became and installation representing his effect on those who engaged in the FaceUpProject and our affect – as art.

As we moved into the second week – Brett hoped to spend much of his time with what he considers to be part of his spiritual practice. The more time he spent in the studio the more order, intention, and energy filled the space – it was becoming less studio and more temple. I would pop-in and spend time with him on occasion during that week and began to understand his practice. During the social & interactive aspects of his process, he seemed to focus on personally and objectively absorbing the suffering and hopes of the many individuals he interacted with – from focused and intentional conversation to collecting their many different colors on the face of our great community leaders – he was embodying and creating a reflection of the connectivity that exists amongst all who engaged on what ever level they were presently able – that is his work. Later, in his studio transformed temple – in a process in which he “tightened up” the reflection of our connectivity – Brett unveiled his subjective understandings – his perspective – of our individual and collective hope and suffering – a spiritual act – an act of worship and mourning that relieves suffering by memorializing and celebrating our experiences.

Sunday was a culmination that celebrated the whole process and Pauli Murray – a figure from the Durham community whose spirit also embodies the diversity of our individual and collective selves – our darker and lighter, feminine and masculine, richer and poorer, amongst many continuum’s of self. Pauli Murray was a dynamic person with a range of life experiences; from a mixed race family in the American South to Hunter University in NYC, to rail-road cars with bums cross-country, to pre-Rosa Parks sit-ins, rejected from Harvard because of gender and UNC because of race – a doctorate in Law from Yale – CoFounder of NationalOrganizationforWomen, a Master of Divinity and first black female Episcopal Priestess – poet & author – Pauli exemplifies the best in us.

Durham is full of community leaders, social change agents, and artist – we are heirs to the shadow and light of a heritage that deserves celebration. Durhamites love ourselves most when we are not afraid of the shadow or the light – when mourning and praise are present – when stories are not only told and heard – but lived. Brett affirms that quality and is extending his perspective as an invitation to stand in the “Proud Shoes” of Pauli Murray as we face up to our heritage and claim its inheritance.