| I grew up in a
multicultural family. My grandparents (both sides) were refugees from
Europe with German, Jewish, Russian and Polish blood in their veins. They
followed their track to the ethnic neighbourhoods of Chicago, where my
parents met and married.
I was raised by Christian parents who
were both devout and freethinking. They brought into my early life the
impulse to worship and praise, as well as to question everything that
constricted and opposed the injunction "love your neighbour as
yourself." My father was a chiropractor, my mother a student of the
health education of Edgar Cayce; they raised me with a respect for the
body and the wonders of nature found therein, as well as a disdain for the
superficial innovations of humanity that polluted both body and nature.
Hearing from childhood German, Yiddish
and Polish in our home, raised on the stories and miracles of Jesus,
taught the practical truth of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, I formed an
interest in language, spirituality, the body and ecological justice early
in life. In many ways, I have been pursuing these interests ever since.
After graduation from college in 1973, I
pursued a career as a journalist in the fields of social justice,
environmentalism and consumer protection for several years before turning
to the following questions: Why do people change? What causes me to
change? Is there a more powerful level of motivating change than that of
ideas? In pursuing these questions, I returned to interests I developed in
college that centered on: the body and changes of attitude and behaviour,
mystical and "expanded" states of consciousness, and the early
pre-religious roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
I pursued some of this study academically
through the University of California, Berkeley. But most of it found me
seeking out teachers from the native traditions of the Middle East,
Pakistan and India who introduced me to the other modes and methods of
learning as well as the body-oriented spiritual practices that accompanied
this study. Beginning in 1976, I was very privileged to study with the
early students of the American Hebrew/Sufi mystic Samuel L. Lewis, who
introduced me to the body prayer meditations called the Dances of
Universal Peace. One phase of this intense period of study led me on a
three-month pilgrimage in 1979 to sacred sites and teachers in Turkey,
Pakistan and India.
In 1982, I founded the International
Network for the Dances of Universal Peace (now based in Seattle, WA), a
multicultural resource center for those who chose this form of peacemaking
through the arts as their forum for both peace "demonstration"
as well as spiritual practice. Over the past 15 years, I have been
actively involved in leading educational exchanges and citizen diplomacy
trips with the Dances to Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and to
the Middle East.
From 1986 until 1996, I served as a
faculty member of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality and a
member of the Core Faculty since 1990. During its "golden age,"
the ICCS was a gathering place for scientists, artists, educators and
learners from many different cultural and racial backgrounds. Many of our
students were non-US citizens and I enjoyed the opportunity to teach and
learn across the differences and within a rich field of diversity. This
diversity, at its best, provided a sort of "quantum field" of
uncertainty in which real inquiry and learning occurred for us all.
In September 1993, I co-led a group of
students from Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Canada on a citizen
diplomacy/educational trip to Jordan, Israel and Syria. Serendipitously,
this occurred exactly during the signing of the Israel-PLO accords. We
were greeted warmly and were able to share discussions and artistic and
cultural exchanges with many different people from all the varied sides of
the confrontation. I continue work in this area, both individually, and
collaboratively through the International Association of Sufism.
During my sabbatical to finish my
doctorate, my partner and I moved to Europe. It both allowed me to be
nearer to my Middle Eastern connections and seemed more welcoming to the
type of multicultural work we were both doing (my partner, Kamae A Miller,
is also a published writer in the field of sacred dance.) We enjoyed the
change from a bustling Northern California urban environment to the
rolling farm fields of Thomas Hardy country in Dorset and, since March
1999, to Edinburgh, Scotland, another multicultural arts and music center.
My fluency in German and some other European languages also enables us to
continue our educational exchanges and lectures throughout Europe, which
is at a very intriguing time of its evolution, socially, politically and
spiritually.
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