Slow. Stop. Imagine:
Imagine you’re seated in an office, or a bedroom, or at the window of some café. Your cell phone reclines beside you. Maybe it’s snowing outside and the vapor drifts lazy from the surface of your mug. Maybe it’s 95 degrees out and a glass full of tea and ice sweats rings into the wood of a table where you’re seated with a laptop and a friend. There’s the slow cool flow of AC brushing gently across your skin. Music plays softly in the background.
Outside this somewhere, in the same world you have come to know, a mother and her child crouch in rags beneath the shelter of a bridge. 40 mph winds screech and tear against the rashes on their skin. An elderly veteran expires on the sidewalk in the heat of an Arizona day, in plain view of a couple dozen passersby just like you or I.
Slow. Stop. Remember:
Imagine for a moment the version of yourself that recognizes this reality. See yourself rising to the occasion, deciding to help in any way you can. Maybe you take to the streets of downtown Cleveland with $20 in your pocket, find the hunched figure of a homeless man and invite him to share a meal. Perhaps you volunteer at a women’s shelter, or donate to a cause.
The point is, it’s easy to pass our days in the feverish push of a daily existence. Family, profession, bills, advertising – all these rote distractions pull us forward from one moment to the next. It can be hard to remember that much else in this world exists beyond ourselves.
Slow. Stop. Look:
Wayne Rainey, owner of The Monorchid, and Jon Linton, founder of the I Have A Name Project, have teamed up to conceptualize a project which allows us all to become a part of something larger than the individual worlds within which we exist. The project is called Art & Advocacy. I Have a Name. You can read about it HERE.
The project takes place here in Phoenix, but its reach extends all borders; it tells the story of the homeless, but it’s larger than any single demographic.
Art & Advocacy is about raising awareness, it’s about community involvement, it’s about addressing the human element of this daily flow of activity we call Life. It’s about seeing outside of ourselves and touching the heart of something so much more global, so much more rewarding, so much more… enduring.
Slow. Stop. Engage:
Each of us has a story. Each of us has a name. Each of us is only different from the Other by degrees. We are all one family. Art & Advocacy tells the story of you, tells the story of you in action for a cause that helps us all become more beautiful, more conscious, more worthy of the space we co-inhabit.
Join us at the Monorchid as we strive to make a mark that’s truly lasting.
– Tim
