Fri, 25 Mar 2016 17:45:04 +0000

On Earth Day 2016, in Portland and across Oregon, you’ll find a plethora of outdoor events. But what about the inner landscape? What about our personal relationship to soil and sky? To change the effect we’re having on the earth, we must also look inward and fertilize our souls.

Authors Caroline Allen and Rev. Judith Laxer join forces for a metaphysical writing workshop at New Renaissance Books on Saturday, April 23rd from 2-5 p.m. as part of the Earth Day 2016 weekend celebrations. The workshop, which will include literary readings, is crafted to help participants explore their connection to Gaia, re-engage the wild nature of their souls and reap the blessings of this abundant planet we inhabit.

Allen and Laxer both explore humanity’s relationship with the earth in their books. Allen’s novelsEarth and Air are part of a four-book series that follows one protagonist in a coming-of-age story that moves full circle from farm, to international city life, through personal healing and back to the earth again. In 2015, Earth won an Independent Publishers gold medal for best regional fiction. “For the protagonist, her primary relationship throughout the books, whether she’s growing up on a subsistence farm in Earth or living floating above the culture in Tokyo in Air, is always with the earth,” Allen explains.

Laxer’s Along the Wheel of Time: Sacred Stories for Nature Lovers follows the Pagan Wheel of the Year, and demonstrates how, “the changing seasons model our souls’ journey in nature’s life cycle: we are born, we grow, we mature, we bear fruit, we decline, we die, but death is not the end for the seed of who we are continues, returns, reemerges as the cycle continues,” Laxer says. “Along the way, we do more than just grow and age, we mature and realize our interconnectedness to all things. We reflect on our contribution to the world and strive to offer it in the time we have.”

Allen was an international journalist (Tokyo, London, S.E. Asia) when a sudden spiritual awakening opened her to channeling, as well as to the literary and visual arts. “In my personal artistic journey and as a coach to other artists, I’m fascinated with how our inner natures echo our relationship with outer nature. Our disconnection from our authentic selves echoes our disconnection from the earth. How do we heal that rift? I’m profoundly interested in mending that dissociation in myself and in others, and will focus on that theme in the workshop,” she says.

A well-known Seattle psychic healer, Laxer has long been committed to restoring the balance between female and male energy in our culture. “In these accelerated times, we are becoming disconnected rapidly and rampantly. We have forgotten that we are not separate from nature and we act as if we are. Our collective healing will occur when we slow down, make eye contact with one another again, and make protecting nature our priority,” she says.

Oregon-based author Caroline Allen is passionate about story, and began her career engaging the stories of people all over the world as a journalist in Tokyo, London and Seattle and as a travel writer across Asia. After a spiritual awakening, she became a channeler, visual artist and fiction writer. Her first two novels, Earth and Air, were published in 2015. Part of the four-book Elemental Journey Series, the novels follow one protagonist over four books on an journey of self discovery in a world rocked by climate change. More than 15 years ago, Caroline took her passion for story and founded Art of Storytelling, where she coaches writers across the globe on books, short stories, and screenplays. She is also a visual artist and has had shows on both U.S. coasts. www.carolineallen.com.

Rev. Judith Laxer is a modern-day mystic who believes that humor, beauty and the wonders of nature make life worth living. The founding Priestess of Seattle’s Gaia’s Temple, an inclusive, earth-based ministry, Judith also enjoys a successful private practice as a psychic, spiritual counselor, hypnotherapist, and teacher of women’s mysteries. A keynote speaker and author of Along the Wheel of Time: Sacred Stories for Nature Lovers, Judith has presented classes and workshops on the re-emergence of the Divine Feminine since 1993 at conferences nationally.www.judithlaxer.com, www.gaiastemple.org