20 July 2012
US theologian, storyteller and spiritual writer Megan McKenna is to give a two-day seminar in Wellington next month.
She is a keynote speaker at the Education Convention in the second week of August and will give seminars on the weekend (August 11-12) in St Joseph’s Church, Mt Victoria.
She will also speak at a public meeting on Monday night August 13 in Connolly Hall.
Here is an excerpt from her 2008 book, The Hour of the Tiger about the fears that wake us at four in the morning:
‘There is a story told of a pianist, Walter Nowick, who was playing Beethoven’s piano Sonata no 32, a composition noted for its difficulty.
‘It was night and all of a sudden, in the middle of the performance, the power went out and the entire auditorium was plunged into darkness.
‘Nowick played through to the end. Afterwards everyone wanted to know how he had managed to continue playing when he didn’t have his sheet music to read.
‘His reply: ‘If you can’t play it in the darkness, you can’t play it in the light.’ What keeps us playing is love. It can be the love of music, of words, of science, of the earth, of someone, of friends, or God or of life itself, but it is love, infinitely bound to gratitude for life, raw life and all that is attached to living.
‘It is living that makes the future. It is living that makes the dreaming come true.
‘We actually “remember the future” in the sense of putting it back together the way it could be and was meant to be.
‘To remember life; to remember each other; to remember everyone; to remember earth; to remember the Holy among us – that is how the future comes to us.
‘Whatever the future is lies buried in seed already now in the present. It is found in our spirits, our hopes and dreams, and our will to live.’
Please register for the weekend seminars – marcellinrsm@xtra.co.nz or (04) 891 8326.