My story is a lot like yours. I live and love, I am a mother and grandmother, and I am an artist. God blesses me every day and empowers me to create, give, receive, and do the best I can. I am creating my story in pictures with my photo Albums, and some of my story is in sound and words on this page. A lot of my story is expressed in art.
My story has become the story of Hope Peace Chamber. You can follow the progress of building Hope Peace Chamber at my Powerful Intentions Blog.
Please visit and comment and add your voice to my story.
Listen to some of the story, recorded at the Hope Peace Chamber site, and recorded by HPC tech wizard, Bob O'Connor.
(14 minutes)
Hope Peace Ceremonies is now officially a nonprofit educational and spiritual organization (application pending). Our purpose is to help people find spiritual peace and healing through chanting, sweat lodges, dances, men's and women's ceremonies, the experience of nature, and creative expression.
We have added some beautiful wooded acreage to our land, and protected it all with a conservation easement, so that even after we are gone, the land will be wild nature for people to enjoy.
We have also made a dance arbor and some beautiful indoor spaces for people to gather, surrounded by exquisite gardens in the precious brief Maine summer, and snow sculptures in our gorgeous winters. We have a fun "work is worship" program. People from all over the world come for special weekends or longer internships to help with the work that maintains the land and its beauty. They take what they receive from us back home and their communities and homes are transformed.
As an integral part of the community of midcoast Maine, we partner with local conservancy groups, artists, educators, and others who are working to teach people about nature, sustainable living, art, and above all, Peace. It is so satisfying to have people come to us asking for help, or asking to sing in the Hope Peace Chamber to bless their project. People sometimes fight weary battles in the name of peace and healing. We give them a place to recharge, remember who they are, and to feel that life and doing good is not a battle, but a joyful dance of love! Together, we are changing the world.
We are also worldwide partners with the other Peace Chambers, and part of our mission is to support the work of the Peace Chambers energetically and financially. Hope Peace Chamber is a seed chamber. We will help with the building of new Peace Chambers in any way that we can. We will also support the vision quest dances and ceremonies worldwide, and the work and life of Grandfather Joseph Rael, Beautiful Painted Arrow.
The centerpiece of Hope Peace Ceremonies is the Peace Chamber. The Hope Peace Chamber lives in a beautiful oval building with a domed roof. It is made of wood and stone, imbedded with crystals, built solidly on living rock on the knee of Hatchet Mountain.
It is a Light House, as Joseph Rael calls it, a house that glows with inner light, and calls to the Light that lives in each person. It is a Light the glows brightly for Peace on earth and within all our hearts.
The Hope Peace Chamber is filled with art contributed by artists around the world. The art spills over into the courtyard, which is landscaped with native plants, stone, and crystals.
The chamber is partly underground and partly above ground, representing the dimensions of our experience. It resonates a beautiful sound with the chanting voices that sing inside of it, and it reverberates with the music of the land it is built upon. It brings down to earth the sacred voices of the galaxies. The sound is the sound of peace, the feeling of peace.
People come to the Hope Peace Chamber to chant, pray, be blessed with ceremony, and to give and receive healing. Here they remember they are made of music, and of light. They are beautiful people. I am honored.
