Amy Penne’s spirituality can be summed up pretty easily: “I am a creative and Divine holy spirit. There is infinite creativity in the world so it may as well come through me.”
In this episode, Kelly and Amy talk about the spiritual practice of being creative, whether it’s through art, journaling, writing, researching, or just putting together new ideas in new ways.
As an academic and a self-professed “rabbit-hole” reader” who seldom finishes a book before being drawn to a new thing, Amy encourages us each to find a way to think outside of our own self-imposed limitations and be creative. Even if you can’t draw a stick figure, you can be inspired and build upon the work of other artists.
For Amy, when creativity is combined with meditation and the practice of the mindful pause, it can be a powerful tool for kindness and compassion that shows up at home, in her work, and in so many parts of her life.
Meet Amy
Amy Penne, Ph.D. is a writer and Professor of English at Parkland College. She’s a true lover of books, as is her husband Bryan who’s a school librarian. She also has two grown sons who are brilliant musicians, writers, and thinkers, but most importantly, they are compassionate young men. She and her family live in a hundred-year-old arts & crafts home in Tuscola, a small town thirty miles south of Champaign, along with two dogs and two cats. She’s known as the lady who feeds all the birds in town.
She shares her thoughts and musing around the intersections of creative writing, poetry, and life in her blog The Pensive Penne. Amy’s essays, reviews, and poems have been included in Tupelo Quarterly, Minerva Rising, and Brain Child, among others, and she has a new essay called Exit 212: A Haibun Comfort Food Essay forthcoming in Midwest Writing Center’s upcoming anthology These Interesting Times: Surviving 2020 in the QC.
You can follow Amy on Instagram (@pensivepenne), Facebook (@amy.penne), and Twitter (@thepensivepenne). You can email her at amy.penne@gmail.com.
Resources We Mention
- Creation and destruction are all part of the same cycle (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
- Art of Frieda Khalo
- Dalai Lama and the Heart Sutra
- Karen Armstrong and the Charter for Compassion
- Lost Art of Scripture by Karen Armstrong (NY Times Review)
- John King’s The Drunken Odyssey podcast
- Parkland College Community Education
- MADE show at Parkland College
- Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP)
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