"Sheltering the Creative Spirit"
Taos, New Mexico USA
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"Sheltering the Creative Spirit"
Taos, New Mexico USA
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HOT
OFF THE PRESS
Rekindling
the Inner Light: The Frank Waters Centennial, a rich collection of
essays and papers about Waters, is available just in time to simplify your
Christmas shopping with the unique. Beginning
with an entertaining essay by John Nichols, the book continues with
contributions from Rudolfo Anaya, Vine Deloria, Jr., Denise Chavez, Tony
Hillerman, and twenty others featured in the 2002 centennial honoring Waters’
birth on Judy 25, 1902, and his long lifetime of writing achievement. As
Vine Deloria explains to his reading audience in a moving foreword, “. . .
this gathering was more than a centennial celebration.
It was as if we were all engaged in a dramatic presentation of a life
fully lived, and our task was to build on what we had been given this weekend to
enrich our own lives.” Rudolfo
Anaya wrote in his paper about mythos, “It is appropriate we gather to
celebrate the man, his life, and his works.
Celebrate because the man did change the course of Southwest letters as
he explored the myth consciousness of our land and people.
He not only influenced a generation of writers, but he brought world
attention to our corner of mother earth.” Deloria’s
subjective foreword, followed by an objective introduction by John Nizalowski,
sets up one of several contrasts that keep the book’s content moving.
Others are longer pieces followed by shorter pieces; varying writing
styles, tone, and focus; and participants alternating between scholars and
non-scholastic acquaintances or admirers of Waters’ work. Examples
of the varied content are Joseph Gordon’s piece about the influence of
mountains upon Waters, questions about his background posed by Thomas Lyon,
“Frank Waters Park” by Phil Davis, poetic personal reactions to the author
by Imogene Bolls, and Denise Chavez’s essay on passion and obsession in two
early Waters novels. The
title, deriving from an Albert Schweitzer quotation about being thankful for
those who continue to inspire us when we most need it, is expanded upon in
William Edelen’s paper. Vivid
color photographs of the event, taken by expert Holly Reed of Austin, help to
share the impression that this had felt like a participatory “dramatic
presentation.” See detailed articles here about the public booksigning celebration on Sunday, November 30, at 3:00 p.m. in the Mabel Dodge Luhan House for Rekindling the Inner Light, Ann Jauregui’s Epiphanies, and the tenth anniversary of the Frank Waters Foundation. Entertainment and refreshments will be provided. Right
from the start Rekindling the Inner Light
is a collectors’ item that you will want for your own library and for gifts.
Fifty public libraries throughout the state will also receive copies as
gifts.
Barbara Waters
Rekindling the Innter Light: The Frank Waters Centennial Order Form Ship to/Name ______________________________ Address __________________________________ City _____________________ State/Zip ______________________ Daytime Phone _____________________ Copy, paste and print this order form and send along with a check to Frank Waters Foundation PO Box 1127, Taos, New Mexico 87571
Breakthrough In
a quiet moment of therapy, a breakthrough comes ─ the miracle of the new. In her
new book, Epiphanies: A
Psychotherapist’s Tales of Spontaneous Emotional Healing (Prima/Random
House, 2003), psychotherapist Ann Jauregui writes that “epiphany” is defined
by Webster’s as a “sudden insight into the reality or essential meaning of
something.” “But
my favorite part of the definition,” says Jauregui, “tells us that the
revelation is usually brought on by some simple, homely, or commonplace
experience. Something big is occasioned by something little, something
easily missed. And it unfolds from
there in exquisite slow motion. ‘Look at this,’ you whisper as you see
something about the universe you’ve never seen before.
‘And look at this,’ you whisper, too, seeing yourself seeing it.
The universe is bigger than it was a minute ago, and so are you.” In
this intimate, lyrical integration of psychology and spirituality, Dr. Jauregui
shares the stories of nine clients, casting light on moments that “just
came,” bringing surprise, comfort, and joy.
“Shyly we venture out with these stories,” she writes, “into a
world still in the thrall of a reluctant science and its cousin, a reluctant
psychotherapy. “Early
on we know the bind. An epiphany is
supported by almost nothing on the street.
The transcendent experience that seems truer than anything has ever
seemed before will not be believed by this world.
We hedge. ‘If I speak of
it,’ we say, ‘I will expose it to ridicule, or diagnosis, or ─ worst
of all ─ the realm of the ordinary. If
I don’t speak of it, it will be hidden away, by me and from me.’
Yet even now, science is encountering astonishing non sequiturs of its
own, surprises that beg us to reinstate all our stories and include them in our
explorations. “Above
all, these are sacred tales. And
they are profoundly healing as they remind us of ─ and restore us to
─ our innate all-right-ness.” Ann
Jauregui, Ph.D., has been a practicing psychotherapist, consultant, and teacher
for the past twenty years. She is
the cofounder of Marin Creek Center, a multidisciplinary center for the healing
arts in Berkeley, California, an adjunct professor of the Graduate School of
Professional Psychology of John F. Kennedy University, and Visiting Professor at
the Wright Institute. Her essays
have appeared in Common Boundary, Dulwich Centre Newsletter, Institute
of Noetic Sciences Review, and The
Chrysalis Reader. Dr.
Jauregui and her husband, John, a primary care physician who shares her interest
in an inclusive approach to wellness, boast of eight children and twelve
grandchildren. The family spends
quiet and not-so-quiet time in Taos and the Sierra. About
Epiphanies “A powerful and delightful account of the mind’s ability to
gain spontaneous insight and to reorganize information in therapeutically
successful ways. Such events
inevitably reduce stress and elevate emotional tone toward joy.
This is the stuff of conscious evolution.” Edgar Mitchell, Apollo
astronaut, founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences Visit:
www.sharingepiphanies.com
Frank Waters, the Man Who Rekindled the Inner Light William
Edelen Being
an ex-preacher, I have to find a text to wrap my presentation around, and today
I have the absolutely perfect quotation. In
the words of Albert Schweitzer, “Sometimes our light goes out
but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being.
Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner
light.” To
understand how and why Frank rekindled my inner light, you need to understand
what it was like becoming a newspaper columnist for the first time in my life
back in the early 1980s. The Idaho
Statesman of Boise, Idaho, starting publishing my weekly columns.
That paper covers all of Idaho and eastern Oregon and western Wyoming, a
very large area, a very, very conservative area. And yet the editor of the Statesman
told me she wanted to use my columns with no strings attached.
“Say what you want to say,” was her counsel to me when I started. At
this time I had my master’s degree in theology from my seminary on the
University of Chicago campus, plus graduate work in anthropology from the
University of Colorado. So I
thought, “What a joy it will be to raise the level of religious literacy in
the very conservative state of Idaho.” How
naïve can you be? I started
writing my columns using the best scholarship known to me from my university
work, plus my studies with Joseph Campbell.
Well, let me tell you it really hit the fan, as they say. Letters to the editor started pouring in, burning me at the
stake and crucifying me. I tell you
the truth, every day, every day there
were anywhere from one to three letters to the editor telling me what a heretic,
heathen, Satan, or infidel I was. And
from there it went downhill. I
have a thick skin, but day after day of being so brutally attacked finally got
to me. Now comes the saving grace,
however. I had always been enriched
by the writings of Frank Waters. I
started sending him my columns at a time when my inner light was not just
flickering, it was almost completely out. In
a letter dated September 27, 1980, from Tucson, Arizona, came his answer.
He wrote: “You are reaching such wide
audience through the Idaho Statesman
of Boise, the Herald of Everett,
Washington, and the Press Democrat of
Santa Rosa, California. Writing
these regular columns and lecturing in addition to your church duties requires a
great vitality. You are helping to
move the world in the right direction during these chaotic times.
Your columns and letters always pep me up.
Keep writing. Love, Frank.” Frank
Waters had blown my flickering light back into a blazing flame.
And as Albert Schweitzer said, “Each of us owes the deepest thanks to
those who have rekindled our inner light.” Frank’s
writings continue to rekindle my inner light, day after day.
At those times when my spirit sags, I go to my bookcase and pull out Mountain
Dialogues, or Of Time and Change,
or People of the Valley.
I take the book outside to the patio off my study.
There I feel the spirit of Frank everywhere present: in the shade of the
tree; in the doves splashing in the bird bath; in the puffy, cotton candy clouds
drifting against a crystal, smog-free sky; in my paisano, my fellow countryman
roadrunner streaking through the yard. And
I know again that all is One, including Frank’s words and ideas that fill my
mind, brain, soul, spirit. I
have lost count of how many times I have used a few of my favorite Waters
paragraphs in my lectures and columns. There
is always a visible response from an audience, for instance, when I read aloud, “[E]very
place on earth bespeaks its own rhythm of life . . . every locality . . . has
its own spirit. . . . There is no accounting for the mysterious magnetism that
draws and holds us to that one locality we know as our heart’s home, whose
karmic propensities or simple vibratory quality may coincide with our own.
Or when I read from his exquisite chapter on “Silence,” It is my habit . . . to observe a
time of meditative stillness each morning when the sun first tips the rimrock of
the mountain range behind my adobe. The
place for it is always the same. . . . Here I stand, sniffing the early morning breeze . . . like an
old coyote, as if to assure myself I am in the center flow of its invisible,
magnetic currents . . . I offer my
morning prayers. Then, I give
myself up to a thoughtless silence.” All
great spiritual traditions began with the vision quest of one lone individual
who, in solitude and in silence, saw through the veil of the superficial into
those realms and dimensions of reality that are of the timeless and eternal. Frank
writes in Mountain Dialogues about the
“evolution of consciousness” as the “Coming Sixth World.”
He writes, “We all stand today on the threshold of a new era . . . we
must reestablish our relationship with all the forms of living nature.” My own consciousness has been enlarged, and refined and
expanded, through his words. And my
own inner light rekindled again, and again, and again. . . .
William
Edelen was an adjunct professor of religion at University of Puget Sound and an
ordained Presbyterian and Congregational minister for more than thirty years.
He still is a columnist and spiritual leader.
Please go to Contents, Forward by Vine Deloria, Jr. and the List of Contributors--> CLICK HERE
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