NEED LAST MINUTE MOTHER’S DAY GIFT? For that enlightened woman in your life, here’s an offer hard to beat. Everyone who orders $40 in products from my website by midnight May 2 gets a free DVD and book of “Mother Wove the Morning” ($39.95 value), one-woman play written and performed over 300 times by CLP, sixteen women throughout history in search of God the Mother. (Booklist: one of the best 25 videos of the year!) Everyone who orders anything at all by midnight May 2 gets a free copy of the book (without DVD), full text and pictures. Bet your mother would also love Beginnings and Beyond, compilation of CLP best-loved poems, or Embracing Coincidence, or the newly available Girlfriend, You Are the Best! http://www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm.

PRIVATE RETREAT IN ST GEORGE, Utah. Only three spots left! May 9-10 (same time as “Facing East,” see below), limited to 15 women for an intensive on women’s spirituality and the Divine Mother; readers theatre presentation of “Mother Wove the Morning” and spirited discussion of reclaiming the power of the Mother in our own lives. Sponsored by Your Health Your Choice Foundation. Call Karyne at 801-717-6115 or see http://clpearson.com/stgeoretreat.htm.

STORY: WE ARE LAND MINE DETONATORS. In April I saw on the Sunday bulletin of my LDS ward an invitation I could not refuse--to participate with St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in a humanitarian project, assembling a prosthetic hand to go to one of the many thousands of children somewhere in the world who have lost a hand to land mine explosions. We went from table to table putting together with tiny screws and springs a small, brown, plastic “hand,” three “fingers” facing two moving “fingers.” By the end of the evening I held in my hands a complete, amazing plastic gift that will change someone’s life. (See http://www.ln-4.org/.) I gave my little hand a blessing and put it on the table with the other one hundred hands that were assembled that night. It was a powerful, sort of God-like feeling--actually creating a hand! But then the thought--why must we spend energy in repairing the damage we’ve done instead of preventing it in the first place? It’s so much easier to reach out a hand in friendship than create a plastic one after the harm is done.
And then--as so often happens (honestly, you need to read Embracing Coincidence; see http://www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm) --this experience turned into a “synchronicity.” Visiting my brother Don Wright in Utah, I told him about the prosthetic hands. He told me something I did not know--that in his six month stretch in the army he was trained to be a land mine detonator. And then, later in the same day in the book I was reading, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert (is that a fine book or what?) Liz described a man that “became an international mine-field detonation guy.”
Ah! An important and symbolic image--detonating land mines. They’re all over the place, aren’t they?--the fears and the hatreds of the past. We’ve planted them for one another, sometimes not realizing the stupendous damage they will do. One of my callings, as you may know, is to help detonate the land mines that our prejudice and our ignorance have planted on the territory walked by our gay brothers and sisters and their families. I hear nearly every day of losses that are worse than the loss of a hand--lost relationships, lost belief in self, in God--lost lives.
You and I have the training, the ability to clear the land and prevent so many kinds of injuries. We have hands--and, more important--we have hearts.

*****

MORE ENTHUSIASTIC RESPONSE TO NO MORE GOODBYES–CIRCLING THE WAGONS AROUND OUR GAY LOVED ONES:

Dear Carol Lynn,
We recently shared with our extended family the fact that our third son is gay. He had come out to our immediate family and school friends when he was 15 but since we live about 300 miles from most of the relatives, we had chosen to side-step the issue with everyone else in the family. Now that our son has started college and is likely to start bringing a boyfriend to a family reunion or wedding at some point, we wanted to share the fact of his being gay with everyone so that they would have time to get used to the idea.
We mailed a letter to the 12 families all at the same time about a week before Christmas and we included a copy of "No More Goodbyes" in each envelope. The response was amazingly supportive, and several family members thanked us for sending them your book because it helped educate them (their responses were roughly - "Wow... never would have guessed it... I'll have to read this book right away.")
Thank you for your book, your e-newsletter, and your gracious spirit so freely shared with everyone. Your ministry of compassion blossoms more each day, because those whom you touch can in turn touch others.
Hugs, R.

*****

Order a signed copy of NO MORE GOODBYES at: http://www.clpearson.com/personal_gifts.htm.

TELEPHONE CONSULATATIONS: http://clpearson.com/consultations.htm.
PRIVATE RETREATS: http://www.clpearson.com/CLPRetreatFLYER.pdf.

*****

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES OF FACING EAST (LDS couple deals with suicide of gay son):

May 8-24: St. George, Utah
The Space Between Theatre Company
www.tsbtc.org 435-216-5523

2nd and 3rd weeks of June: Baltimore, Maryland
Spotlighters Theatre
www.spotlighters.org

July 11-August 3: Los Angeles, CaliforniaStillspeaking Theatre
www.stillspeakingtheatre.org

*NEW*
March-April 2009, San Diego, California
Diversionary Theatre
www.diversionary.org

DO YOU WANT TO SEE “FACING EAST” IN YOUR AREA? Send for complimentary script to give to a producing company you know.

And speaking of Mother’s Day– “The more than usually miserable state of the world demands that the supreme Godhead be redefined, that the repressed desire of the Western races for some practical form of Goddess worship be satisfied.” –mythologist Robert Graves.

Love from

Carol Lynn