Coffee on the Patio: A Lesson in Presence

In this short, reflective episode, CJ shares a personal memory of traveling alone to Santa Fe during a stressful season of life and studying with his mentor, abstract painter Virginia Cobb. What remains most vivid is not a technique or critique, but a quiet moment on a patio — coffee in hand, mountains in the distance, and a teacher who asked for nothing but presence.

Through this story, CJ explores how the practice of simply meeting each moment has gradually reshaped his life. He reflects on learning to recognize the body’s signals, releasing the pressure of constant achievement, and allowing thoughts about the past or future to soften. This episode is an invitation to slow down, listen inwardly, and discover how clarity can arise when we stop pushing and begin to be.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art. Good day, spiritual artists. This is CJ Miller, the host of the Spiritual Artist Podcast. It's a rainy morning early, and I'm drinking my coffee. And I recognized and realized something that I wanted to share with you. So there have been two women that were very pivotal in my journey as a spiritual artist. And one, Carolyn, was the one that had such a strong background in spiritual teachings. And she passed away in December. And I don't know if you've read my posts or my uh article, but it was very moving for me. Um, Carolyn was such a good friend of mine, and I kept in touch with her over the years. And uh there's a little kind of a hole in my heart that she's uh no longer with us. But I recently found out that my teaching mentor, my painting mentor, Virginia Cobb, passed away last year also. Virginia is the one who held the retreats in Santa Fe that I went to for so many years. And she um she held them in her house out in the country. And there was, I just want to tell you what I remember about Virginia the most because there's so many times, there's so many lessons I learned from her and her presence, but her presence is what I remember the most. So this was a pivotal time in my life. I was raising a young child. I had a lot of responsibility. Um, I also was running a business with a lot of employees, and I decided to carve out and go to a retreat, to go to a spiritual artist retreat. What's more is I didn't have any friends that were artists that would go with me. So I decided that I would go by myself. I can't tell you how randomly I found her online through a recommendation, uh, saw her title, her book, and reached out to this woman. And she was so pleasant and she gave me instructions on how to sign up for her retreat. Well, somewhere in those retreat processes, because I went for many years, I had to walk past something that was very scary for me, which is to do something on my own. That's right, to do something by yourself. We are so trained to take people to dinner together, but have you ever tried to sit in a restaurant by yourself? Have you ever taken a journey or traveled by yourself? It's an incredible experience. So here I was driving out to this country in Santa Fe. The land, the terrain was so foreign to me. Um, I grew up in the lush forests of Pennsylvania, so this dry, arid uh desert climate was so weird. It seemed um unearthly. And I drove far out past these mountains, and I had to keep driving and driving to find her location. Very scary, but the mountains were so stunningly beautiful, this beautiful purple blue that shifted every time I changed a lane or turned a corner. So one morning when I got to Virginia's place, I arrived a little bit early. I think it was like 15 minutes early, and normally we were supposed to get there at nine, but I found her turquoise gate open, and I walked in and she was there on her patio greeting me. I could still see her holding a coffee mug in her hand, this denim jacket that she wore. It was sort of like an iconic denim jacket with paint stains on it. And she was just calmly sitting there and she welcomed me and she said, Come on in, you want a cup of coffee? And we sat down on this little table, this little metal table out in her little courtyard that never changed. Over all those eight years of going to her retreats, that little courtyard always seemed to stay internally fixed in time. The same broken pot in one corner, some errant vines growing through the wooden beams of the fence, the cedars lining the tree, the smell of the cedar. But most importantly, it was Virginia. It was Virginia. She was just so welcoming. There was no action item, no list, no expectation. She just smiled and we chatted, and she told me inconsequential things. I don't even know what we talked about. But she just was so open, and what I remember the most is that there was no expectation. Virginia was near neither rushing toward the future or mulling over the past. She was just standing on her patio as those turquoise blue skies passed over, clouds and breeze, the smell of cedar, the sound of birds, an occasional crow flying by. Present. That we can just stand in this presence. Now let me tell you about me, little CJ. I was raised with a real can-do, get it done attitude, always about achievement. I'm the kind of kid that even at a young age, probably starting in college, I would write down a to-do list the first thing in the morning and I would start checking them off. I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this. And even now I'd find it very hard to just uh stand in the quiet. Listen to the birds. Taste the coffee. Feel the chair beneath me. Notice the dog with his head on my lap. See the bird land on the feeder outside. Notice the ticking of the clock, the reverberation of the heater, the sounds of the space. That is a spiritual artist. We stay in presence. We stay in that place. And it's not easy. We want to achieve, we want to make ourselves known. Our seeking self wants to be recognized. And I struggle with this all the time to say, ah, stop being recognized, just be present. So there were so many great memories of Virginia. And one time I'm going to share something with you that she did, me being the achiever. The wonderful, beautiful thing about Virginia is in the afternoon, she would have us go into her living room and she would have cheese and crackers and wine and drinks. And we would sit down and we would talk about the work we did, and we would line it up on the wall. And it was kind of nervous at first. You know, when you first came, you were nervous about it, but then you recognized that this wasn't a place of judgment. This was a place of appreciation. And Virginia would expect us to comment on the all the beautiful things we saw in each other's work. And we would recognize the best part of everything. Oh, I love those colors and how they blend in the upper right corner. Or wow, where did you get that crayon? What did you use? A neo color? Oh, is that a fluid ink, or did you use a dry ink or a heavy bodied ink? We would just talk and share, and each person would go up and stand up there uncomfortably so at first and explain, this is what I did. But you've got to understand, it was all about Virginia. There was no need to validate what you did. This wasn't a place of finishing work at all. In fact, she said, This is not we're not here to make a great piece of art. We are here to learn a new new technique. We are learn here to learn about the patterns of our thinking and who we are. So one time, little CJ, you know, he just couldn't stand it. And he decided to voice a criticism of one of the paintings that someone was doing.

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This could be better. What if they did notice this is not right?

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He said. And Virginia quickly, sharply pushed him back in space and said, Chris, that is not what we're here to do. And she pushed little CJ right back in line and created that safe space for that artist to share their ideas. For when we're in presence, we're just standing with something. We're standing with our painting. And we're standing with the people around us. So let me tell you, years have gone by. There's been many other retreats where I've gone alone to paint, where I've gone with people to paint, and I continue to do retreats. But you know what the best part is? It's not the painting. It's not the new technique. It's not the understanding how a new ink works or a brayer or expanding on my talents in the creative pool. It's the sharing and being present with someone else and with a group of people. And when I say present, I mean present. I don't mean being judgmental in a group of other people. I mean being present. So when I found out that Virginia is no longer with us, and yes, I had lost contact with her because she was put into an assisted living and moved to Albuquerque. So when I found out recently that she's no longer with us, there's another little hole in my heart. But I will always remember the wonderful sitting together with these wonderful artists from all over the country, and the talking and the sharing and the presence. The presence of being with these people. And that will always stay with me. So today, today, I want you to practice that. I want you to recognize that there is no to-do list, there's no getting anywhere. We are here. We are now. There's no rush. There's no need to validate. We are whole and complete now. We are simply here to companion each other, to be present for each other. For sometimes those people that mean so much to us are only here right now. Only here right now. And they might not be here later, but the moments we share are moments that last. So go out there, be a spiritual artist, be present, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks again for listening to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. Whether you're watching this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio, make sure you choose the subscribe button so that you will receive updates when new segments are released. Most importantly, be still, listen, and know that you are a spiritual artist.