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"...There is no more important contribution than this in the world of healthcare..."  – Barbara Montgomery Dossey, PhD and author of  Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer

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$24.95 US

This beautifully produced Paul and Jennifer Kaufman documentary was featured at the 2007 International Film Festival of the Spirit.  It had already won a first place documentary award at the 1997 Palm Springs International Film Festival, and was made possible by a generous grant from the John E. Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  Told through vivid, real life footage, this work brings into focus the historical spiritual and clinical practice of music-thanatology.  An intimate, quiet, reflective work found in countless oncology wards and hospices, and used in university nursing, medical, social work, chaplaincy, music therapy, theology and anthropology classrooms throughout the county.  Twenty-page booklet included.

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$24.95 US

This new edition of the beautifully produced Paul and Jennifer Kaufman documentary was featured at the 2007 International Film Festival of the Spirit.  It had already won a first place documentary award at the 1997 Palm Springs International Film Festival.  Digitally remastered with current information added, this DVD can be viewed on DVD players throughout the world.  Told through vivid, real life footage, this work brings into focus the historical spiritual and clinical practice of music-thanatology.  An intimate, quiet, reflective work found in countless oncology wards and hospices, and used in university nursing, medical, social work, chaplaincy, music therapy, theology and anthropology classrooms throughout the county.

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$17.00 US

With Cruit go nÓr * Harp of Gold, the world’s premiere wire strung harpist has done it yet again.  In an outstanding work of artistry, scholarship, partnership, insight and imagination, Ann Heymann’s visionary use of gold strings has restored the medieval cláirseach's original voice, and made a very significant contribution to the history of music.

This recording includes thirteen compositions from Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Italian manuscripts of the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, moving from hermit’s cell to royal court.  Ms. Heyman plays on all thirteen pieces, and is joined in eight of these selections by Charlie Heymann (voice and percussion), Ronn McFarlane (lute), Julie Elhard (viola da gamba and vielle) and Laura MacKenzie (flute), all of whom bring a strong and seamless ensemble responsivity to the fore.  Mr. McFarlane’s lute solo on Canaries is awash in joy. Mr. Heymann’s warm, unaffected, baritone/tenor, perfect for the seán nos tradition, sings and declaims the wildly difficult Old Irish in intimate, truthful and affecting deliveries.  Ms. Elhard’s vielle is poignant, restrained, and wistful; her gamba rich.  Ms. MacKenzie on flute is warm and gracious.  Special note must be given to the historical reproduction harp made by David Kortier for this recording.  Carved (traditionally) from a single felled willow and strung in brass, silver and gold, it is a spectacular instrument.  In an example of collaborative research made in heaven, Mr. Kortier could have found no better, more worthy artist to have commissioned this instrument.

One of the great exemplars of the left-shouldered tradition, Ms. Heymann has worked tirelessly for over thirty years in all areas relating to Gaelic historical harps, and the techniques she has mastered bring to life a truly virtuosic repertoire.  Listeners may be familiar with genres such as jigs, reels, laments, hymns and chants popularized by Celtic bands or early music ensembles on many other American and European recordings, but this production breathes new life into several unknown gems while entering or reviving the spirit of all the works, familiar or not, as a whole.  Drawing upon oral and written traditions, myth and tablature, imagination and creativity, the artist spans several centuries with mastery, lyricism and acuity, and the ensemble work is marvelous.  The program notes provided in the booklet are excellent, and provide attentive listeners with many important citations and clues, including very sensitive etymological and hermeneutical asides.  Ms. Heymann’s  methodology has been pioneered and perfected through decades of research and performance, all of which have born gorgeous fruit.

Of particular note, because of her remarkably articulated fingernail and dampening techniques, Ms. Heyman is a master of both texture and tonal color. Her melodies are lyric, commanding and scintillating  – she never loses clarity.  Her rhythmic devices and ornaments fairly leap in the air.  Her Tristan’s Lament and the attendant rotta are by far the most beautiful and imaginative realizations of those titles ever committed to recording.  Her hands are born to both solo performance and bardic accompaniment.  The famed Robert ap Huw manuscript becomes completely transparent when she picks up the harp, and in their delivery of the Bunting Airrgeann Mor, both Heymann's bring great artistry to the recreation of bardic poetry.  There is no hint of theatrical nostalgia or anachronism – when you listen to this work, as they have presented it, you quite simply enter another world, and I liken this world to something like rose gold. 

In a most impressive example of imaginative thinking, Isth co nemh is an ancient bee-charm, speaking to the swarming of bees and the drizzling of honey, a liquid gold treasured throughout the ages.  Without a doubt, in Harp of Gold, we have a sustained vision, artistry and scholarship that raises the bar for every aspect of historical harp and wire-strung performance.

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$19.95 US

The Russian émigré Father Kovalevsky worked for the French Orthodox Church in the ferment of a post-war Paris.  This slender and marvelous volume speaks directly and authentically to the challenges that keep us from prayer and from learning how to pray.  At the end of each brief chapter, the author asks questions that help us see ourselves as we truly are, and he gives practical exercises that help us learn how to pray, how to empty ourselves and how to incorporate prayer into the rhythm of life.  He addresses breath-prayer, silent prayer, dispassion and the prayer of the heart.  He continues with a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer, the sign of the cross, and several sections of commentaries by Origen and others.  The author has truly lived, has a warm and wry sense of humor, and much compassion for the human condition.  Highly recommended!

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Shadows of the Living Light: Songs of Saint Hildegard of Bingen
by Mona Peck and Melinda Gardiner (Nada Publications, 2006)

$20.00 US

This spiral-bound anthology presents seven highly melismatic compositions, mostly antiphons, reproduced in square neume notation on the verso (left page) and modern notation on the recto (right page).  This compact edition includes translations of the Latin, a modest bibliography and discography, brief commentaries, and a great deal of idealism and devotion to the material.  The notation is clear and well-spaced, and the spiral binding creates a very practical performance edition.  The editors have interpreted the compositions modestly, with lead-sheets, making an ideal selection for either harpists or singers who are exploring Hildegard studies.  One antiphon, O Pastor Animarum, is presented in a fully modern interpretation, with complete notation in two clefs rather than lead sheet conventions. Both Mona and Melinda are students in our programs, and we salute their efforts warmly!

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Voices of Integrative Medicine: Conversations and Encounters, edited by Bonnie Horrigan. (Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier Science, 2003)

$39.95 US

This anthology gathers together in one volume a series of particularly skilled interviews conducted by the editor Bonnie Horrigan for Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, and they represent the full spectrum of complementary, alternative and integrative medicine in the world today. The editor interviewed forty-four of the most distinguished international practitioners, allowing readers to learn about the current states of the various fields each voice represents or in many cases, pioneered, the underlying principles that make these therapies so viable in today’s medical practices, and the challenges of their different but aligned futures. Conversations cover the mind-body-spirit paradigm; death and dying; alternative systems; spirituality, love and healing; the art and science of healing; consciousness and intentionality; new views of health and healing; medical education; indigenous medicine; cross-cultural medicine, healing with hands, and medicine as a spiritual path. You will read the voices of Larry LeShan, Jeanne Achterberg, Candace Pert, Ken Pelletier, Joan Halifax, Therese Schroeder-Sheker, Michael Murray, Thomas Rau, Barbara Dossey, Rachel Naomi Remen, Dean Ornish, Tracy Gaudet, Ralph Snyderman, Janet Quinn, Dolores Kreiger, Michael Harner, Stanley Krippner, Robert Thurman, Christine Northrup and more. A thoughtful and thought-filled overview.

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$24.95 US            TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE

When Joa was a forty-year-old mother and pastor's wife living in Switzerland, her solid and faithful prayer life began to change and include the experience of visions.  As a member of the Swiss Reformed Church, these experiences were foreign to her religious sensibilities.  So That You May Be One is taken from thirty-three years of diary and journal entries (1957 to 1990), and addresses such themes as the Rosary, icons, the Hebrew and the Christian Testaments, the unity of the churches, the unity of the forces within each individual, and the unity of the peoples of the Earth.  Joa's writings describe her struggle to understand her experiences and the profound, unasked-for messages that came to her through Mary, the apostles, angels and saints.  A dozen of the monophonic and polyphonic visionlieder given to her by angels is included in an appendix, along with a lengthy essay by Therese Schroeder-Sheker entitled "I Heard the Call of the Seraph," about the spiritual and theological nature of listening and obeying.  Additionally, she describes what it has been like to receive the visionlieder directly from Joa, and to work with her and the mystic and the music for close to twenty years.  The psychologist Robert Sardello also wrote a very important essay for this volume on the nature of revelation, and carefully differentiates channeled material and related phenomena from the inner experience which occurs without loss of consciousness.

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$16.95 US

Joa's message about life, change, and the great life has significance for our our time and for all time.   The editors chose and collated a series of the mystic's inner experiences that begin in prayer and were sustained in what I can only call interior conversations.  This book is the fruit of an intensely creative collaboration between a small number of people who pray to God and ask questions over time, who seek answers or guidance to the problems of the day – an endeavor that stands in marked contrast to the first volume and to the private legacy of the prayer that pervades this mystic's life, losses, and capacity to love.  Alive in God's World reminds us that there is life beyond biological death.   Joa sees how life-filled humans are in their new state and calls them "Risen Ones".   The source of these conversations is rooted in prayer, sustained for decades, and grounded in her Swiss Protestant Bible readings.  Therese Schroeder-Sheker's essay, "Steered by Grace:  The Mystical Life of Joa Bolendas", describes the poignant conditions of their original meeting in the 80's, something of their relationship through the years, the challenge of bringing her legacy to the world, and the nature of the mystic's service to the Johannine church.

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$24.95 US

This exquisite Penny Price production on the life and legacy of Helen Keller, produced for the Swedenborg Foundation, has tremendous cultural and spiritual significance and is perfectly titled: Shining Soul.   Evelyn Glennie says: "This portrait of Helen Keller should be shown in every school, every workplace and in every home across the world", and we agree.  With the aid of her teacher Ann Sullivan, a quickening occurred, and the blind and deaf Keller emerged with both language and consciousness of being:

"Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am.  I lived in a world that was – no-world.  I cannot hope to describe that unconscious,  yet conscious time of nothingness.  I did not know that I knew nought, or that I lived or acted or desired.  I had neither will nor intellect."

Keller also explains the turning point of her life, the movement from a pre-linguistic existence into the time when language offered "strange new light."    Listen to how it came about. 

"We walked down the path to the well house...Someone was drawing water, and my teacher placed my hand under the spout.  As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly.  I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers.  Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.  I knew that water –- W – A – T – E – R –- meant the wonderful something that was flowing over my hand.  I left the well house eager to learn.  Everything had a name, and each new name gave birth to a new thought.  As we returned to the house, every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life.  That was because I saw everything with a strange new light that had come to me."

Penny Price's award winning documentary, lovingly and insightfully developed, shows the bright illumination of Keller's interiority and tireless philanthropy, while also bringing to light the remarkable historical teamwork required of teacher and pupil, in order for this personal and universal triumph to emerge for the benefit of the world at large.  The history of film and literature both offer us towering examples of heroic exemplars, people who overcome all odds, but something about the message of this production goes beyond the heroic.  There isn't an ounce of domination in the way in which Keller scaled or triumphed.  She seemed to be more like a burning flame, bringing all the ills of the day through a central illumined source, her lively and integrated heart, rather than someone who scaled challenges by learning how to control them.  If more films of this nature and depth were made, I cannot doubt that a strange new light would illumine everything.   In returning the life and significance of Keller (and Sullivan) to the world at large, Ms. Price (and the Swedenborg Foundation) have quietly nurtured an entirely new model of radiance and leadership.  Its femininity feels forward into possibility, and in so doing, shows what ensouled mastery looks, sounds, reasons, feels and moves like: Helen Keller.   This is a work of creativity, integrity and inspiration about a woman who embodied all three.   Brava! 

Quotes taken from Keller's autobiographical The World I Live In and The Story of My Life
 

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Released in 1984, this pioneering work lit a fire in the classical world because it was one of the earliest recordings of historical harp from either American or European labels. (To the best of our knowledge, one of the very earliest was Elena Polonska's The Medieval Harp on Vox Turnabout in the early 70's, on which she recorded on one gut and one wire strung harp.  It is our understanding that this title Celebrant was the second American recording of early harp to be produced, and at the time, was was the first to feature the sounds of several reproduction historical harps – all made by Lewandowski).  Although she had recorded a large catalogue of music for bi-weekly radio programs for KVOD-FM in Denver, Celebrant is Schroeder-Sheker's first solo recording, and features music of the trouveres, minnesingers, the Cantigas de la Santa Maria, the Llibre Vermell, Adam de la Halle, de Berneville, Machaut, Dufay, Josquin des Prez, the Montpellier Codex, John Dunstable, the Glogauer Liederbuch, and more.  In sacred and secular, medieval and Renaissance literature from France, England, Spain, Catalonia, Ireland, Belgium and Germany, the artist performs on romanesque, French Gothic, Renaissance, and Celtic wire-strung harps as well as trapezoidal and other medieval wire-strung psalteries.  She sings in Latin, Old Irish, early French, Galician-Portuguese, and Chaucerian English.  From 1978 through to 1988, Schroeder-Sheker toured the United States and Europe extensively with many different repertoires featuring eight different kinds of historical harps and two kinds of psalteries, but eventually, in 1989, she began concertizing with larger neo and hybrid harps, such as those designed by Jerry Brown, Robert Bunker, and Dusty Strings.  By 1990, research into historical harp performance practice lessened, concerts and new recordings of newly composed music increased, and the harpistic work of the Chalice of Repose Project and music-thanatology took a higher priority in the artist's life, along with composition.  Nevertheless, this pioneering work ushered in an entirely new aspect of art and scholarship in the history of harp.

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$15.95 US         TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE

Poet-philosopher Mark Nepo taught for 18 years at the State University of New York at Albany, but serves now as a program officer and poet-in-residence at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a non-profit foundation that has been very generous to the Chalice of Repose Project.  Inside the Miracle is a collection of poems that reflect Mr. Nepo's healing journey through cancer and return to health.   His poems and essays are published in numerous solo volumes and anthologies, among them Suite for the Living, Inhabiting Wonder, and his forthcoming Exquisite Risk:  Daring to Live an Authentic Life (Harmony Books, February 15, 2005).

Inside the Miracle includes Therese Schroeder-Sheker's rare recording of "The Prayers from the Four Directions," for voice and shruti box, the Indian hand-held bellows she always takes on tour.  The prayers she sings are Hindi, Israeli, Irish and Latin.

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$34.95 US

This ground-breaking work on the Cluniac monastic customaries has been used in our classroom for years, in combination with many other texts.  The volume is a scholarly text that describes the culture of a late 11th century French Benedictine infirmary, including details of confession, absolution, anointings, farewells, vigils, the agony, the peaceful resolution, the preparation of the corpse, funeral procession and burial practices, commemorative rites, and attitudes toward death.  This publication also describes the manuscript tradition, and provides a translation of the salient chapters from the two different customaries, and finishes with a good bibliography.  The Cluniac culture and the French monastic infirmary in general have provided rich spiritual and historical inspiration and psychological insight for the field of music-thanatology.

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$3.50 US

An intimate, fervent and solemn a cappella work, this sung prayer is ideal for either liturgy or concert – an offertory or communion hymn, an evening of prayer or vespers, or within any chamber choral ensemble concert repertoire. A fine performing edition with composer's notes, translations, and an essay about the theological/mystical teachings of the working of angels in human life.  The composer was overjoyed to be able to hand deliver the score to Arvo Pärt a decade ago.  Hymn to the Angels is recorded on The Geography of the Soul, available here through Sapientia Music.

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$3.50 US


Beautiful performing edition with composer's notes and an essay about Emily Dickinson.  A transparent and lyrical work that is ideal for a cappella chamber choral concert repertoire or any memorial services, retreats or liturgies dealing with themes of grief, loss, hope and healing.

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Liturgy and Anthropology: A Monastic Death Ritual of the Eleventh Century, (Chalice of Repose Project Studies in Music-Thanatology, Volume II), Frederick Paxton, preface Therese Schroeder-Sheker, St. Dunstan's Press, 1993.

$10.00 US

This little chapbook contextualizes the monastic death rituals of Cluny and introduces themes from anthropologists P. Aries and A. van Gennep as they relate to the experience of liminality in medieval Western European attitudes towards health, illness, death, dying and community.   Music-thanatologists do not replicate rituals, but the opportunity to study and learn from inspired, compassionate early liturgies, works and ways of being rising out of intentional communities provides a rich basis of understanding for music-thanatology formation and education today. This work also serves as an anthropological doorway to understanding some of the basic values of monastic medicine.