Monday, April 19, 2010

Serendipity

"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned
so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
Joseph Campbell

I was thinking lately about Serendipity, which is actually a vague word that I kind of.....maybe....understand, or.....contribute to its continuing creative evolution by using it..........or.......? Maybe it's kind of related to synchronicity? Or, kismet?

I was thinking about how lives seem, sometimes, to be woven from random accidents.

Here's an example. Back in 1975 I was living at an artists warehouse in Berkeley. It was almost Halloween, and we were planning our big bash. I had a date for the evening, and a costume.

A little earlier, Paul and Peter from Ontario, Canada, had just graduated from college, and decided to have an adventure by driving across Canada in Paul's Volkswagen bug. They had gone through Vancouver, and were headed down the coast on their way to Mexico, their destination for the winter, until they headed back to Canada when the weather was friendly again.

When they got to Berkeley, the engine blew up.

In those days, if you were a counter culture type, and you had a Volkswagen, you pulled out your friendly counter-cultural volkswagon repair manual, and fixed it yourself. Taking a volkswagon to a mechanic was so "establishment". They even had do-it-yourself garages in Berkeley where one could rent space to work.

While in Berkeley, Paul met a woman who invited him to a Halloween party; which is why he turned up wearing a large plastic garbage bag. His date, however, never turned up. Feeling dejected, Paul wandered around looking for someone to dance with, and found me. My date had also failed to turn up, and feeling equally dejected, I started dancing with the tall, skinny guy in the garbage bag.

To make a long story shorter, Paul (and his friend Peter) stayed on in Berkeley. Peter met Belinda, got married, and had a child, Gabriel. Paul and I got married, moved to Wisconsin, and a few years later were amiably divorced. I moved to Vermont, and Paul met a woman there in Madison who he married, and they later moved to Austin.

While still in California, Paul's sister Pat came out to visit me, and there she got a job as a nanny. She lived in the Warehouse for a while, and met a man from Sri Lanka. They got married, moved back to his homeland, had 3 children, and Pat is still in Sri Lanka. Paul's brother, David, also came to visit, and ended up moving to San Francisco; he lives there still.

None of them ever returned to Canada. All those children born, and careers begun.

If the VW engine hadn't blown up, or if my date, or Paul's date, had shown up, none of it would have happened. Serendipity....................


Wikipedia says that:

"Serendipity is the ability of making accidental but fortuitous discoveries, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages."




“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends”..........Joseph Campbell


Monday, April 12, 2010

Saraswati's River


.

Love is Saraswati's river flowing through our lands.

She will feed the rice fields, She will accept our woven offerings.

She will bear our ashes and the fires of Kintamani to the sea.

Formless, she neither takes nor gives; we impose these significances upon the flowers we cast in her.

From birth to death, Saraswati's river

sustains us to the sea.

In my previous post, I posed the question "how would we live, if rivers were also Goddesses?", and this poem from Bali came to mind.  The Balinese begin each day with an offering. I can't speak about beauty without making my own offering to Saraswati , the Hindu Goddess of the arts, truth., and language.

She is often shown bearing writing tools and a musical instrument, tools for inspiration and truth speaking, which are inseparable. As the embodiment of speech, Saraswati is present wherever speech exists, but She represents the best in human culture: poetry, literature, sacred rituals, and truth-speaking between individuals. Even today, when a new baby arrives, grandmothers make a five pointed star - called "Saraswati-sign" - on the newborn's tongue with honey. The tongue, the organ of speech, is thus "hitched to Saraswati's star" early.

When I was in Ubud, the Arts Capital of Bali, every morning and at twilight I beheld the stately procession of 5 white geese making their way up the busy street I lived on,. In the evening, heading back to whatever rice paddy they called home, they would make their return. Although people on motor scooters often went around them if they could, I was amazed at the utterly un-Western patience with which Balinese motorists followed behind the geese. They did not honk at them (although the geese certainly honked their own mysterious way up the street), nor did the Balinese try to shoo them out of the way.

"Sacred to Saraswati", explained my friend Nyoman.


"The Sanskrit word sara means "essence" and swa means "self." Thus Saraswati means "the essence of the self." Goddess Saraswati is worshipped by all persons interested in knowledge, especially students, teachers, scholars, and scientists.

Two swans are depicted on the left side of the Goddess. A swan is said to have a sensitive beak that enables it to distinguish pure milk from a mixture of milk and water. A swan symbolizes the power of discrimination. Saraswati uses the swan as Her carrier. This indicates that one must acquire and apply knowledge with discrimination for the good of mankind. Knowledge that is dominated by ego can destroy the world."

- Bansi Pandit

 

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Sacred Space & the Pollen Path

Illustration from "Rita & Julia", poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca (2006)

"This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be, This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."*

Joseph Campbell, in 1985 interview with Bill Moyers

I just recently took a brief trip to New Mexico, to see the subtle dance of spring spread over th0se vast, sun washed lands, and to renew, if only briefly, my acquaintance with the Rio, the Rio Grande, the "big river" that is not really a very big river at all, compared to the great rivers of the east. And yet, the Rio is the slender, turquoise, serpentine Goddess of those dry lands, bringing generous life to all the places she travels through on her long, miraculous journey.

Not so long ago, and in many places still, all rivers were Goddesses (the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, the mystical river of Saraswati)........how differently might we live in the world, when a river is also a Goddess?

While travelling, this quote from Joseph Campbell came to mind. Especially while I travel, I often find myself remembering that the whole world can be a sacred space. That a picnic of sardines and rice cakes under a cottonwood tree, can be a sacred space. Or a sacred space can be a room, or even a table at the library if need be, a place apart. At last, the sacred place has to be the room of one's mind, the closing of doors, for a while at least, so that you find your feet "on the pollen path", so you open your eyes to see, as the Navajo chant goes, that Beauty is all around you.

I have two young 10 year old friends who have what they call "beauty moments"; they will both wave their hands in the air in appreciation of anything that strikes them as beautiful, whether it's a bumble bee, or a painting, or a nice plate of lasagna. I love their aesthetic thank yous. How important it is to take the time to recognize and appreciate the sustaining power of the beautiful.

the Artist brushes a wash of violet,
a moment's gasp of yellow
laughter
in the sand

Yesterday, I was delighted to see blankets of color, poppies, lupine, other wildflowers, dotting the brown landscapes I drove through. Stopping at a gas station, I stood behind a trucker who was actually complaining about having to wash the pollen off of his truck! "It's really bad", he was telling the cashier, "in Texas".

"Bad!" I couldn't believe it! Apparently the fuming chrome of his diesel truck is the only beauty this man sees in the palette of spring. Such a weird, and sad, contrast to the mind of the Hopi, with their reverence for the Butterfly Woman, the Pollinator. Or the Navajo, who anoint girls when they come of age with yellow pollen, so they will walk in beauty on the "Pollen Path". How can we have so much, and yet be so ignorant about the sheer toxicity of our psychic environment? Even going into my favorite coffee shop, I put on my earplugs to block out the background of radio and commercials. I found myself soaking up the stillness of the Gila Wilderness yesterday like Chi, like Prana, like water when thirsty. In the silence, in the wilderness, you can hear the soft voice of your inner life, the voices of the conversant, synchonistic world, the inspiration of the Muses, the dream language of the soul.

We need these places, these sacred places, whether they be a room or a canyon, to find our Selves. We also need the intention to make it so, to weave the cocoon, to cast the magic circle, to c0-create the exchange. Then, emerging anew, we can also cast butterflies, dancing into the world.

http://www.rainewalker.com/butterflywoman.htm

MOYERS: I like the idea that it is not the destination that counts, it’s the journey.

CAMPBELL: Yes. As Karlfried Graf Durckheim says, "When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey itself." The Navajo have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. Pollen is the life source, The pollen path is the path to the center. The Navajo say:

"Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me,beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I’m on the pollen path."




The Enlightened Soul/Psyche
the psychology of dreams....a Jungian perspective....with Joseph Campbell
Myths-Dreams-Symbols
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/index.shtmlhe Mythic World of Joseph Campbell


Friday, April 2, 2010

Great Syncronicity Blog & Book

"SYNCHRONICITY: the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that can't be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer. Or: meaningful coincidences."
I wanted to introduce the work of new friends I've made in the Blogosphere, Rob and Trish MacGregor. They have a wonderful blog about synchronicity: http://ofscarabs.blogspot.com. and have been collecting stories of synchronicity for a forthcoming book, 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Coincidences Big and Small. (http://www.synchrosecrets.com) The book is scheduled to be published in August 2010.
"If you've found your way here, then it's likely you have experienced meaningful coincidences - what psychologist Carl Jung called synchronicity. Here, we explore the phenomenon in depth and invite all of you to participate. If you have synchronicity stories you would like to share, drop us a note at macs@synchrosecrets.com. "

Monday, March 29, 2010

Another Jungian moment.....

or, "Me and my shadow hit the trail.........."

"Everyone casts a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individuals conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."
My therapist, Dr. Jeaneen Vogal, is facilitating a Jungian group this coming month, with it's central focus being Shadow work. One of the things she said to me this morning is that, by middle age and beyond, Shadow becomes persistent in it's demand for attention. What was in youth a "Freudian slip" is now a sledgehammer attempting to break through the concrete layers of your calcifying self. Why? Because as we age, perhaps the soul's need to integrate personae, for the psyche to mature into wholeness......."shadow work" becomes imperative. Jeaneen is 85; I feel very privileged indeed that she has chosen to counsel me. As sh e also said this morning, aging isn't for sissies, and you can either get acquainted with your shadows and change, or look forward to a miserable, unenlightened (or un-endarkened) old age. I'm beginning to see what she means.

To Dr. Jung, the Shadow represented the dark (un-illuminated), rejected parts of the psyche. As a mask artist, I've sometimes envisioned "shadow selves" as personae that disrupt the show my ego persona likes to think it's putting on. They are the selves that are disowned, unloved, shameful, inadequate, obtuse. As such, they also are also depositories for reservoirs of huge energy, clamoring for attention. Shadow can also be positive qualities that are repressed because of societal pressure. It's a potent workshop to make masks of Shadows, and put them on, seeing what they have to say.

"The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves. .....we cannot learn about ourselves if we do not learn about our Shadow: so, we are going to attract it through the mirrors of other people."

Carl Jung
I never intended this blog to be "Lauren's therapy page", but Spider Woman's path to wisdom is not always bright. The weaving is sometimes about re-weaving, patiently trying to untangle skeins and threads in order to make a new fabric.

I don't dream very much, so when I do have a memorable dream, I figure it's my unconscious doing the equivalent of throwing a brick at me. The dream below occurred around the new year, and I've been contemplating it ever since. While this blog is also not a "dream journal", I feel it's worth meditating on, because it's a classic "shadow" dream.

In my New Year dream, I was in my car confronting a descending road high on a mountain. I stopped with trepidation; finally I drove almost vertically down that very steep road, to find myself on a cliff with a magnificent view of the ocean far below. It was obvious there would be no going back up that impossible road, so I parked my car. There was a woman there, and she let me know that in order to proceed (and there was really no other alternative) we had to go down yet another intimidating chute or narrow tunnel.

The woman went before me, which was reassuring. At last, down the rabbit hole or chute I went, to find myself standing again with a view of the ocean, and a narrow trail now ahead of me. I watched the woman again go before me. But I lingered, fussing about my backpack (did I bring everything? Where did my purse go? Did I have food, a sweater?). Somehow, from having a car and purse, I had been reduced to a small backpack. There seemed to b e familiar but annoying voices jabbering at me as I fiddled with it. And they kept calling me "Shane". I realized "I" was no longer Lauren, but had become a man named Shane.

Finally, tired of the inertia, I stopped fussing, put the small pack on my back , found I had a walking stick in my hand, and set my feet on the first step toward the path ahead. Then I woke up.

Dreams, of course, are multidimensional in their meanings. To keep descending into the underground is archetypal. The woman going ahead of me can be previous selves. Exchanging my car and personal assets....on this trip, one has no choice but to travel light, and there is no surety that what one needs for comfort will be available.

That the "I" of the dreamer ceased to be Lauren and became a man called "Shane" was the mysterious aspect of this dream. I looked up the name and was delighted to learn it was an Irish rendering of John, meaning, "God is Gracious", or simply, "Grace" . I assumed it meant that as I processed on the path unknown, I would be given grace.

Which is true. But as dreams are multi-dimensional, there was another side it took me a while to examine. Shadows, after all, don't reveal themselves easily.

Because of my abusive father, I have never really felt at ease with the masculine. I think for many women who've grown up with tyrannical fathers it's so. The "Shane" I have become in the dream could be my "animus", the male self I need to be as I proceed down this new trail. "Masculine" can mean many things. If the woman I used to be when I took former "leaps of faith" valued being receptive, psychic, instinctual and intuitive, perhaps the "male" self means being, now, also discerning, analytical, assertive, and, most importantly, self-protective.

After a while, I also began to allow that the only "Shane" I know is someone I intensely dislike. An opportunistic young egotist who has profited greatly by taking credit for my ideas and work, which I imagine he does with any generous or talented person he encounters. None the less, my aversion is out of all proportion. When one encounters something like that, it's sure to be a shadow lurking in the recess. It took me longer to realize that "Shane" represents all the people I've "given myself away" to.......because I never thought I was worth much, or because my mother, trapped in a harsh marriage, taught us to be "selfless" without an appropriate instinct for self-preservation. I complain about the exploitative "Shanes" in my life, and yet I have reached the point of (uncomfortable) self-awareness where I can no longer render over responsibililty and personal power in order to see myself as an "innocent victim" - what I complain about I create. When you actually see that phenomenon in process, it can really piss you off.

The path ahead now requires simplifying to what is necessary and no more, and bringing to awareness, indeed recognizing that I am, my "shadow self". I can no longer get away with projecting it outside of me. I don't know where the trail ahead goes......but, on top of that mountain with the ocean far below, the view it affords is magnificent.

All of which, ultimately, is Grace.

"Most of us encounter our own shadows in the form of projection. That is to say, we disown the characteristics and behaviors we cannot stand about ourselves and project them onto others. We then insist that they carry our shadow for us and may even punish them for the things we hate about ourselves. One example of this might be a minister who openly despises gays while privately engaging in closeted homosexual activity. Those who can not accept their shadow will reject it in favor of embracing their Persona. The persona is the idealized image we present of who we really are. And still ... The Shadow Knows when we are lying to ourselves and those around us. The shadow contains our every fear, our every terror, it knows our every truth -- especially the ones we can't stand to face about ourselves."

spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/07/proce

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Song of Medusa




Recently I revisited a novel I wrote with my former partner, Duncan Eagleson, back in 1993. It's still published by Infinity Press, and probably badly in need of revision. It was the only novel I ever wrote, and it was so much fun, I remember, to see the characters come to life, develop personalities, each day as I sat down at a typewriter. The story was inspired by Riane Eisler's paradigm shifting, seminal book, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, (1989), and archeologist Marija Gimbuta's work on old Europe.  The novel was about a woman who became the "Oracle of Delphi", and envisioned a world that embraced "Gaianism".  A time of respect for the Earth being alive, communicative, and utterly interdependant. Below is the closing of the novel. 


AFTERWARD: September 21, 2027
As the trail winding up Spirit Mountain grew steeper, Susan was a little out of breath. She could see the summit ahead, the rounded, granite bones of a once massive mountain range, a sight common to this part of New England. Rounded boulders loomed on either side of her, painted whimsically with colorful abstractions of lichen and moss. Susan remembered when she lived in Colorado, the rock climbing she did when she was younger. The mountains of southern New Hampshire were among the oldest ranges in the U.S., great-grandmother mountains softened, folded and smoothed by a long, long life. These were not the Rockies, and she knew she was out of shape.

It was late September, a brilliant fall blessed by the right amount of rain and sun. The sugar maples were almost psychedelic in their glory of reds, yellows and oranges. The sun was bright, tender and poignant with a frailty felt only during Indian Summer; the last and perhaps sweetest days of summer. Such days were the grand finale to that great burst of fertile creation that began in the Spring. To her, it seemed as if all the land, and all the devas of the plant kingdom, were giving their final concert, their master chorale. Soon the first frost would come, and Susan would walk with her morning coffee into a garden fallen overnight, melting away like a dream, ready to sleep beneath the immanent blanket of snow.

Below her came a procession of people, making their way up the trail between rock outcroppings. Some carried baskets of food, bread, and torches, candles; all carried flashlights and blankets. It was the evening of the Fall Equinox, a special Fall Equinox, because it was also to be a full moon. She felt the pulse of the land beneath her feet, heat, a coursing of energies like a heartbeat, humming through her. The drummers would syncronize with that heartbeat after the sun went down; she knew they were already attuning themselves even as they walked. She took her shoes off.

“Breathe, just breathe”. With each inhale, Susan let the sense of Gaia come into her. She never knew what else to call it; “earth energies”, “Creator”, “Source”; to her it was Gaia, and she visualized roots that grew from her feet, roots that went down deep into the Earth, connecting her with the web of life. It wasn’t even that abstract, really. It was just what it felt like - as if she became bigger.Her breathing became rhythmic, releasing the small concerns of her personal life, the tensions and conflicts of the day, breathing in a pulse that rose through her now bare feet.. “Hello, hello” she said out loud. “Here we are.” In answer, currents flowed up her legs, into her hands. Susan paused, leaned against a granite boulder, slightly dizzy.....“not so fast...” Closing her eyes for a moment, she felt Martin’s hand on her back. He was feeling it as well. She almost heard his “Are you all right?”, but he hadn’t spoken.

The warmth of his presence steadied her. A little further up the trailhead was an arbor woven of branches and grapevines. Tanya and James stood on either side of it, ready with the sage smudge sticks they used as each person entered the place where the ceremony would be held. A raucous crow flew suddenly across the path, to land in a nearby tree. It squawked at them as if to say “well, hurry up!” and flew off. Martin broke his trance to laugh; they had, as far as he was concerned, been welcomed.

The top of Spirit Mountain was flat granite shelf. It was a splendid view; to the east the spire of an old church rose from an ocean of trees, and the Connecticut River was visible, winding like a snake through the landscape. Before her, ten boulders formed an imperfect circle. Perhaps they had once been more regular, but erosion or earthquake had, over time, worked them out of alignment. At the circle’s center stood a whitish boulder, shot with veins of quartz; crystalline intrusions flashed here and there on it’s surface as it reflected the setting sun. Susan wondered, as always, how the long ago people who once came here had managed to move rocks weighing several tons into these placements.

The ancient people who made this stone circle millennia ago were a mystery. There was evidence that Phoenician or Celtic colonists had once settled along the Connecticut river, fishing, sailing, and marking places that were sacred to them with standing stones and cairns very similar to prehistoric sites in Ireland and Europe. Perhaps this was Tiranog, the “blessed land to the West” of ancient Irish legend. The controversy surrounding these structures and “calendar sites” had never been settled. The vanished people who so laboriously moved enormous and carefully selected stones to mark this place could also have been native Americans long lost to history. It really didn’t matter to Susan.

What these mysterious places did share in common was geomantic intensity. A divining rod held over the quartz boulder at this circle’s center frenetically turned like the blades of a helicopter. To a geologist, they were places of geomagnetic force. But it took no scientific knowledge to experience the presence of this place. At last, just like the ancients who once came here, people were beginning to realize that these were places of communion. One did not build condos on them.

In the deepening twilight, people passed through the woven entranceway, seating themselves around the circle. Some brought blankets to wrap themselves in, and some of the older folks had folding chairs. Beneath the white quartz stone were offerings of food, wine and written prayers to the ancestors of this place, as well as a basket of seed as offerings to the animals and nature spirits who lived here. And a few small personal shrines had been set up in an inner circle. Susan saw her friend Margo’s little Goddess statue resting on a red silk cloth. Nearby was a brass statue of the Buddha, a photo of the late Dalai Lama placed at his feet. From a crevice in the stone hung a laughing Greenman mask . Candles in colored votive holders flickered like a shimmering rainbow around the base of the stone.

Four drummers were already synchronized into a heartbeat rhythm. They were attuned to each other and the qualities of the element each drummer was inviting to be present, air, fire, water and earth. Their rhythms flowed into the azure twilight as Martin sat down to join them, his dumbek between his knees. Susan walked around the circle, bowed to the center, and then picked up a pack of matches on the ground to light citronella torches mounted around the periphery.

At last she sank down to join the chanting, to enter into deep receptivity. She saw that she was a little nervous, and tried to shake it out of her body for a minute. She was one of the focalizers tonight, and although she had served in that way before, she never knew exactly what she would do until the moment arose. Years as a public speaker and environmental activist still made it difficult for her to completely relax into a wholly intuitive way of working within a group, trusting that indescribable merging that always happened. She took another deep breath and visualized her roots going down into the earth. It didn’t matter, she remembered. “It doesn’t matter in the least whether I’m nervous or not. It’s not about me, and it never is.”

She could see it now, if she unfocussed her eyes; a glow that seemed to come from the granite floor she sat cross-legged on, a pulse that attuned her to the drums, light that seemed to pour from cracks in the ancient boulders. Her unease was gone, unimportant.

Tonight they would offer thanks for the food grown and harvested throughout the summer; not just for them, but for all those who eat. They would chant and pray and dance their gratitude for being fed by the Earth and all the beings upon Her, and, in a ritual of reciprocity, they would offer their prayers, music, gratitude and love back, sending it down into the Earth to sustain and nurture the One who sustained and nurtured them. Susan was one of those tonight who would become a kind of filament for the ritual. In the course of the ceremony, she would open herself to communion with the spirit of place,and what visions she received she would share.

Sometimes what came to her was empathic, a feeling of sadness or disharmony that needed to be witnessed by the group, or simply a tremendous love that radiated between all present, renewing them. Sometimes she received images that were far from grandiose and very specific - once she saw a piece of baked liver on a plate before one of the women present. It seemed that she was both pregnant and anemic.

Later in the evening there would be pumpkin bread, cheese, fruit, bottles of wine and mead. The drummers would continue to drum until the sun rose, letting rhythms flow through them in constantly changing waves, moving beyond exhaustion.

Before closing her eyes to chant, Susan looked around the circle. South of her, at the Temanos center, her friend Jewell would be facilitating a gathering. She visualized Jewell’s strong, lined face, her famous blue rattle in her hand, and a momentary flash of love, support flooded her; she knew Jewell was aware of her, and very busy.

“Gaia. Gaia, thank you. I am here.”






Order On-Line through: Infinity Publishing
Toll free (877) Buy Book........ $9.95 plus shipping.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

The Hidden Sky


"all creation promises the thread
that pulls me in my heart
that passes through my head"

I just had to share this beautiful video from "The Hidden Sky". Threads spiral into the universal mystery as Spider Woman Ursula K. Leguin's story "The Masters" is spun and re-woven into theatre in 2010.

The Hidden Sky: Fibonacci Movie from Cara Reichel on Vimeo.

THE HIDDEN SKY
Jan. 30 – Feb. 28, 2010
at the West End Theatre (263 West 86th St.)
in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew
music and lyrics by Peter Foley
based on the short story “The Masters”
by Ursula K. Le Guin
directed by Kate Chisholm

Science and religion collide in this sophisticated and mythic new musical. At the center of the conflict is Ganil, a young woman whose passionate longing for knowledge leads her on a dangerous journey in pursuit of lost and forbidden truths. With an eclectic score featuring lush choral singing, this compelling tale of spiritual awakening illuminates the complex dialogue between faith and reason.

“The power of Foley´s score effectively communicates the exhilaration of intellectual discovery… The melodic urgency, rhythmic variety, harmonic invention and orchestral sophistication of his music compel the attention. Foley acknowledges a range of influences from Sufi music to the rock band U2, yet what he has made of them is something uniquely his own.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer