Women and Men Together - Volunteers Gather for Group Intention Circle at
Agape International Center for Truth
Agape Web Site
|
"We Are the Weavers, We Are the Weave" was designed to model what is possible
when we come together around a shared vision. The entire all-volunteer
event was created in only nine weeks - from inception through the most basic
logistics to the evening's intricate program to the beautiful level of relating
that was met at every juncture. It was a dynamic experience in creative
collaboration that extended far beyond the evening, impulsing many wonderful
friendships and collaborations that continue to flourish and grow to this day.
Our theme spoke to the role women are playing today - as both the weavers and
the weave, creating the Greater Tapestry by refining ourselves and drawing on
our gift of relationality to bring our global family together - in harmony with
all our relations, in harmony with the earth herself and in peace.
|
|
Women's Day 1999 took place in the newly opened
Agape International Spiritual Center as part of the annual Season for
Non-Violence which originated there.
The center is home to the Agape Church of Religious Science, one of the largest
multicultural churches of its kind in the United States, which supports over
20 ministries and projects "dedicated to the realization of the presence of
God, Peace, and Love on this planet."
|
|
Clara Moseley and Vionela Vaughn-Austin, representatives for Agape
|
Movement Rehearsal - Constance Demby, Evone Lespier, Leeta Kunnel,
Ruth Goodman, Heaven and Sara Stone
Ruth Goodman Web Site
|
The movement piece "Women in Conversation" was gifted into our Weavers event
by the collaborative Sounds, Stones and Spirals. Inspired to share their
story exploring the relationships between women, as part of the larger mytho-poetic
story we were weaving together for Women's Day, it was the maiden public showing
for the intimate work they had been honing for over a year in a private studio
environment. The women moved to the electra-acoustical music of Constance Demby.
|
|
Artist Ariyana Gibbon created the participatory ceremonial painting A Woman's
Promise to invite women to think deeply about what it means to be a woman today,
to be a new woman and a guardian of the future. As with other of her ceremonial
paintings, dedicated to caretaking the earth and living in peace, A Woman's
Promise serves as a kind of pledge. Each participant speaks the promise
ascribed on the painting out-loud in her own voice, while placing her hand over
her heart, then dipping it in the red paint Ariyana chose to represent "the
blood of our being and the fire of our actions" and adding her handprint together
with others in a gesture of solidarity.
|
|
A Woman's Promise ceremonial painting with artist Ariyana Gibbon and Erin Murphy
|
|
The Womb of Creation - Constance Demby on Space Base Instrument
- an original sonic steel instrument she designed with tuned steel and brass
rods that emit five octaves of deep, primordial, archetypal resonances
|
|
"There's nothing like being in the moment of the dance, being in the moment
of the creation, being in the moment of expression, when Spirit is just flowing
through you, when you're feeling that gratitude and the aliveness and
that Celebration of Life. And to have my mother present was very profound,
to have her witness this phenomenal event that Celebrates the Magnificence of
Women, something which I'm certain she was not empowered with as a child growing
up in another culture, at another time. I could see and feel a veritable
shift in her, that is something which is absolutely happening on a planetary
level."
|
- Heaven
|
Constance Demby Web Site
|
|
|
|
|
|
