Part of this year 2008 is devoted to my book on Living Life as Sacred Theatre.

Here is a piece of the opening chapter:
Life can be experienced as a great play, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, sometimes history, sometimes meander, sometimes emptiness, but a play.

A play is a story enacted by living actors before a living audience, not filmed, not pre-recorded, but alive now. Plays have been around since the earliest days of humankind. I like to think of plays coming into being soon after we discovered fire, and enjoyed the innumerable interactions that must have taken place around the fire. For example, painting on walls of caves, or rocks, or the bark of trees; making music, storytelling, dancing, teaching the young ones, all the elements that comprise the essence of human culture.

Imagine, in that ancient firelight, one of our ancestors wanting to tell us how she found the honey by following the bees to their hive/home, or how he and his cohorts chased and killed the wooly mastodon. As a group we are celebrating the honey, or the great roasting haunch of protein. Suddenly telling the story excites us so that one person leaps up and begins to enact the adventure, to tell it through his body, as well as through the voice, as if it were happening in this moment. We watch and admire and question and respond; perhaps we add music and sound to the enactment; we participate in it, we are changed by it, and we never forget it.

Letting our present-day eyes go soft, we find it possible to see those ancestral shapes and shadows in the light of the fire, reflected in the flames, against the earth and sky. This way of telling stories as drama has given us many of our versions of the past, of our history, our culture. Today it is a way of honoring our lives, a means of holding us together as a community of human beings.

Playing the play of life is a daring adventure. It takes courage, focus, excitement and intention to stop just letting our life story passively happen, and instead stand up to enact it with verve and delight. This book invites you to take the stage of life and play your sacred story for all it’s worth.

The Lady’s Book of Days
New Edition, larger format, of the former “A Book of the Lady”

A special book of days gleaned from a year of Sacred Theatre participants’ writings, exploring the possibility of creating a goddess bible: a collection of stories, psalms, artwork, lamentations, and hymns that can be used to express and guide our lives, as well as help to restore an awareness of the feminine face of the divine. This little day book (for recording important dates for years to come) is a tiny piece of the whole story, a sprinkling of those created to reveal today’s versions of her ever-renewing story.

[Order The Lady’s Book of Days]

“The soul is here for its own joy” –Rumi

Sabbatical Year…

Twenty-one years ago, at the invitation of Jean Houston, I began an exploration of Sacred Theatre.

During those intervening years, I have presented many workshops based on the general theme of embracing Life as Sacred Theatre. I have learned much, mostly from the wonderful participants willing to put their lives on stage in these workshops.

The time has come to take the work deeper, to ponder more tellingly, to assess new understanding, and discover, through listening, the next phase of Sacred Theatre.

For that reason I have declared 2008 my sabbatical year. With two exceptions: weeklong workshops in Michigan at the Leaven Center at the end of March and first of April, and in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, in October. Perhaps I will see you at one of these events.

It's also the time to rethink and rewrite my book on Living Life as Sacred Theatre. So many years in the making, and I have missed my first deadline at Quest books, and am determined not to miss my next one.

In other pages of this website are some whispers from chapters of the book. If you read them, please let me know how the work works for you.

May 2008 bring you blessings unforeseen and potent beyond imagining.

The Lady’s Year of Joy, a calendar of slow and easy days

Some years ago, this gift of the goddess arrived with directions about a Ninefold Path that brings, finds, celebrates, enhances and strengthens Joy. The year consists of nine months, each named for a step on the Ninefold Path, and each with 40 days. It is perennial; that is, not tied to any particular year. Each month is divided into four weeks of ten days each, and each week is devoted to one of the elements, Earth, Water, Fire, and Air.

For example, in the traditional calendar, I am writing on January 13. In the Joy Calendar, this is the month of Joyful Sourcing and Re-sourcing, and this is the third day of the week of finding myself sourced in joy through experiences of water—drinking water, bathing in it, feeling the crunch of ice under my feet, lifting my face to the rainfall, watching the clouds for snow—every touch of water reminds me of joy and the ever-flowing fountains that are sources of joy.

I use the calendar to remind myself to practice joy. One friend keeps a Joy Diary based on the Calendar; she records an image from each day that brought her special joy and touched her with its blessings. Another keeps it at her desk to remind her of the path of joy; she finds that embracing such a path releases stress and slows things down long enough for her to remember to appreciate the mystery and miracle of life.

A version of the calendar is available to you through our STORE.

“I dream of travel”
Sacred Theatre Trips

2009 is the year when we make a Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna. Christiane Meunier, Sacred Player Extraordinaire, is organizing a journey through France, her home country, to visit some of the numerous sites devoted to the Black Madonna, as well as those of Mary Magdalene. Details and dates soon. [TRIPS]

Speaking of Travel

If you or your friends are planning a visit to Sicily and Malta, Turkey, or Ireland, the books prepared by Sacred Players for the Sacred Theatre journeys to those countries are available, and can be downloaded in PDF form through our STORE. The books contain stories about the areas of travel, mythic underpinnings for the land itself, poetry and daily readings to evoke deeper spiritual awareness of the worlds one is traveling through, room for sketches and notes and more. Not your traditional travel guide; but especially evocative for someone who wants to see more than is available at the surface, and who wants to know more about the forces emanating from the Divine Feminine throughout her world. [STORE]

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