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Cynthea
Jones
Cynthea
followed a call to manifest the vision of a place where people could come
for personal and spiritual growth, as well as leadership development.
When she and Patricia Storm founded Diana's
Grove in 1993, both a retreat center and a spiritual philosophy dedicated
to healthy group interaction and community building was born. She is the
primary force behind the Mystery School stories and material, and designs
the weekend and week-long intensives.
Cynthea has taught metaphysics, Tarot, and astrology for over 20 years, and her video, The Priestess' Journey through the Tarot invites the viewer into her unique process of bringing the cards out of the box and into conversation. In addition to her passion for myth and community development, Cynthea devotes much of her time to the Diana's Grove Dog Rescue operation, one of the no-kill independent rescues in Missouri, where she has helped to save the lives of countless dogs and puppies and find them homes across the United States and Canada.
Patricia
Storm
Patricia
founded Diana's Grove
with Cynthea Jones and is one of the mentors for those in the leadership
program at DIana's Grove. Patricia Storm was “sponsored” by
the vision of Diana’s Grove in 1993. Her preparation for following
that vision includes a MA in Psychology and experience in working with
special needs children, adults, and families. Additional preparation came
from working as a telephone engineer and supervisor for 8 years. She can
now wire the Grove for phone service and lead a group to discuss the philosophy
of communication.
Since founding Diana’s Grove with Cynthia Jones, Patricia has worked with everyone who has passed through the gate - in person, on line, or on the phone. She is committed to the philosophy of leadership and personal growth that is a part of and a continually developing process at Diana’s Grove. Patricia’s special interest in drumming has been fostered and grown by her work with Layne Redmond, Tommy Brunjes, and Glen Velez. She now has her own introductory frame drum video: The Frame Drum as a Tool for Transformation.
Michelle
Solvej
Michelle
Solvej believes the work of Diana's
Grove leads to transformation and growth that we can each take into
our own hands. The personal work she has done in the Mystery School program
has impacted her life on every level. Believing deeply in the value of
creating healthy community through empowering others in personal growth,
Michelle completed the Diana's Grove leadership training program in 2005
and joined the staff.
Michelle has taught at the University of Utah in women's studies, Gay and Lesbian issues, and for several years she ran a program at the University of Utah Medical school on empowering women patients. She began her personal growth-focused teaching experience as a Youth Leader at south Valley Unitarian Universalist Church leading spiritual growth for teenagers, and teaching classes on world religions. . As a licensed day-care provider, Michelle lives her values by nurturing children and offering them opportunities to develop their individual gifts and talents.
Michelle hopes to bring the opportunity of self-discovery and self-creation to the community of the Kansas City area by offering Grove-style classes, workshops, and events. Learn more about Michelle's work to build and sustain healthy community in Kansas City at www.MichelleSolvej.com
Barbara
Criswell (Ol Zazil)
Barbara is the proprietor of Aquarius Books in Kansas City, and has facilitated
numerous workshops and classes. She has studied Mayan practices for ten
years with Mayan priests and priestesses primarily in Mexico. Barbara's
intent has been to go to the teachers who are most close to source and
committed to maintaining the most authentic, ancient practices. She is
an initiated Mayan priestess and authorized fire bowl carrier and was
given the Mayan priestess name of Ol Zazil.
Her studies have been with several teachers including Hunbatz Men, chief daykeeper of the Itza group who is from a 500 year tradition of Mayan priests. Hunbatz Men is also a professor of Mayan studies at the University of Mexico in Mereda. Other teachers include Na K'in, a Mayan priestess of the Aztec-Mayan tradition; K'in Eagle and his son Cayum, chief priest and elder of the Lacandon Mayans; and Don Alejandro, chief elder of the indigenous tribes of Guatemala. Teachings from the Mayan are by word of mouth and experience as nothing is written. Typically the students go with the elder to a sacred place and hold ritual there with the teachings as a part of the practice.
Laurie
Dietrich
Laurie
Dietrich is a writer, theatre artist and ritualist. She functions as clergy
in several earth-based spiritual communities, supporting growth and personal
development work. She maintains colleagues and contacts in many alternative
spiritual traditions and is herself a practicing Buddhist
Laurie and her co-facilitator Denise bring backgrounds in myth and ritual, diverse, non-traditional religious training, and deep respect for all positive spiritual traditions to their work with the dying of all faiths. They reach out, particularly, to those who may feel disenfranchised by the traditional religious support structure because of their non-traditional choices - around lifestyle, gender identification, family/relationship structure or religious affiliation, including those who have never had a religious affiliation, and suddenly find themselves in an unfamiliar spiritual landscape when facing end-of-life issues.
Their work is the result of years of study in mythology, comparative religion and thanatology, and years spent in the creative areas of poetry, drama, drumming and ritual. They share a passion for exploring other ways of accessing the deep self through voice, story and rhythm.
Laurie holds a certificate in thanatology – the study of death, dying and bereavement – from the National Institute for Death Education, and serves as staff at Diana's Grove, where her training emphasized dual-voice trance, group facilitation and community arts. www.dreaminggate.com
Denise
Lee (sisalfish)
Denise
has worked in earth-based communities for over twelve years, using trance,
ritual and work with intuition to open doors to other ways of
knowing. She is an award-winning writer, poet and musician, with an MFA
in Creative Fiction from Warren Wilson College. She is certified in
Thanatology through the Association for Death Education and Counseling
and serves on a corporate chaplain team, specializing in death and bereavement.
With her trance partner,
Laurie Dietrich, she explores the uses of the Grove's approach to dual-voice
trance in her work with earth-based
populations and hospice clients, particularly those disenfranchised by
the traditional religious support structures. In particular, she works
to offer rite-of-passage rituals and personal growth work as ways for
those who are actively dying, and those who are not, to transform their
relationship with death. You can visit the website she and Laurie share
at www.dreaminggate.com
Lucinda
Sohn
Lucinda
is a passionate learner and teacher, devoted to building healthy, viable
community. She joined the Diana's
Grove staff in 2007. Lucinda's education and experiences as a voice/speech
pathologist, vocal coach, percussionist, massage therapist, teacher, and
choral music conductor unite in her work at Diana's Grove. Her focus is
building group intimacy through voice, breath, sound, and movement. She
facilitates groups in bringing an experience of the energy of sound and
voice into the realm of the sacred and magical. She loves working with
other vocalists and percussionists to hold sacred space through the magical
energy of sound.
Lucinda is a Nationally Certified Massage Therapist, and Usui and Karuna Reiki Master Teacher. Lucinda has studied and practiced massage therapy techniques since 1994. Lucinda has been teaching courses and holding workshops in the St. Louis area since 1990.
Lucinda loves the earth, and finds her spirituality tied closely to the outdoors. Outside of Diana's Grove, Lucinda offers a variety of community building, voice-related and wellness workshops including her newest "Weaving the Web of Sacred Interaction". She also owns and operates Elements of Wellness, a massage school and education center in St. Louis, Missouri.
Shaun
Perkins
Shaun Perkins is a poet, teacher, storyteller, and workshop presenter.
She has a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in liberal
studies and has been a high school/college teacher for over twenty years.
She facilitates the Grove's online writing class, and her Journey in Words workshops have been presented many times at Diana's Grove and for other organizations, such as the National Storytelling Network, the Popular Culture Society, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, Story Circle Network, and Tellabration. For more information about her and her work, see www.journeyinwords.com. She is the co-author of two books, and information about them can be found at www.rumorperkins.com.
Kara
Hawkins
Rev
Dr. Kara Hawkins has been teaching American Indian Spirituality and Culture
for over twenty years, coast to coast to students young and old, health
care professionals, church groups, community groups, and to the interfaith
community. Through song, rattle, story-telling, and visual displays, Hawkins
teaches how to integrate American Indian Spirituality to enrich one's
life and spiritual practice.
Hawkins has been a ministerial trainer since 1995 and has been on the
faculty of the Alliance of Divine Love, an international interfaith ministry,
since 2003 and writes a monthly column for their newsletter, The Dayspring.
Hawkins serves as elder and ceremonial leader for the Kansas City Pipe
Circle, and is a practicing life-long apprentice of traditional grandmother
ways. Hawkins is a board member of Shawnee Mission Medical Center's, Institute
of Spirituality in Health, and participates in its monthly clergy-physician
dialougues. Secretary for the Greater Kansas
City Interfaith Council, serving on its Speaker's Bureau, Hawkins
has been its American Indian Spirituality Faith member since about 1996.
Mike
Nichols
Mike
Nichols is the celebrated author of The
Witches' Sabbats (both the book and the website). He is also a contributing
author to Creating
Circles & Ceremonnies. He does extensive teaching and writing,
guest lectures at Pagan festivals, and performs in a Pagan band called
Spellbound. Mike has been a featured speaker on National Public Radio,
Spiral Dance Radio, and Eclectic Pagan Podcast on iTunes.
A pioneer in the American neo-Pagan movement, Nichols taught classes in Witchcraft for twenty years continuously, from 1970 to 1989, in Columbia and Kansas City, Missouri, through the Communiversity; and will be teaching classes again beginning in January 2008. A founding member of the Coven of New Gwynedd, Nichols was the first Wiccan representative on the Kansas City Interfaith Council.
Carey
Oxler and Kimberly Gier
Carey Oxler is a priestess, writer, and artist living in the Kansas City
area. She and Kimberly Gier are members and lay leaders of Gaia
Community, an earth-based Unitarian Universalist congregation, and
also develop curriculum for and teach Gaia Community's ritualist training
classes. Carey and Kimberly are also art director and editor (respectively)
of Nine Fires Press, a creative services company that also offers a line
of alternative greeting cards.
Robin
Murphy
Robin
Murphy has been involved in sacred exploration for over 25 years. She
has facilitated community rituals and rites of passages, being passionate
about the personal transformation and group impact of such events. She
has served as doula for several births and has led celebrations of life
transitions such as infant naming ceremonies, marriages and deaths.
Her favorite rituals have been the ones that acknowledge the movement from one phase of life to another; child to youth, youth to adult, adult to elder as well as honoring the change from pregnancy to parenting. She is committed to working with youth to encourage their growth as spiritual beings, to help awaken their potential as aware and enlightened individuals.
Robin is a high school drama teacher with a Masters in Liberal Arts. She is currently participating in the leadership training program at Diana's Grove. She is the mother of three children and mentor to many. The four pillars of Faith, Hope, Love and Joy, inspired by the Divine and accessed through Courage, are the foundation of her life work and expression in the world.
Caroline Baughman
Caroline
Baughman has been in service to the Kansas City Pagan community since
she moved to the KC area in 2000. She has served as the Pagan member of
the Greater Kansas
City Interfaith Council since 2002 and a long time member of Gaia
Community. She was a lay leader with Gaia Community for several years
and also helped develop and continues to guest teach a section of Gaia
Community’s ritulist training classes. Caroline has had the honor
within her own chosen family to plan, participate in, lead and “receive”
the blessings of community and individual rites of passage.
Caroline is a stay at home mom and is currently pursuing coursework that will lead to a Masters in Psychology. She also celebrates sacred sensuality in performance with Burlesque Downtown Underground.
Tessa
Lynch
As a Pagan Priestess since 1989, Tessa's focus has been to create communities
of Goddess-loving women and men, each of whom have developed a personal
connection to the Immanent Divine and an understanding of the context
in which spiritual communities evolve and work to improve our world. "The
Mundane" and "The Magical" are equally emphasized and developed.
Weaving together a love of legend, history, literature, and language,
and drawing on her experience with dance, voice, event management, and
professional presentation, Tessa is known for perfecting the art of ritual
theatre and using it as a medium to bring participants into sacred space
for transformation.
Tessa has traveled extensively in England, Scotland, and Wales, visiting and researching sacred sites and incorporating their mythos into her ritual practice. Among the many groups and circles she has created and led through the years, she is the guide for "Amazons, Queens, and Crones," a monthly women's circle; a partner with Gaia's Womb, a spiritual organization in the traditions of the Earth; a founding member of the Whores of Babylon (a group of wicked feisty women); and part of the core staff of Pagan Spirit Gathering, an international Pagan festival held annually at the Summer Solstice and hosted by Circle Sanctuary.
Currently, she is
working in the meeting management industry, has recently relocated from
her friends and projects in Chicago to her partner and family in Kansas
City, is developing a full
curriculum of Rites of Passage ceremonies, and just finished teaching
a series on Ritual Theory and Practice. She can be reached at wildgoddess@sbcglobal.net.
Steve
Smith
A dancer and martial artist with nearly 20 years of experience, Steve
loves movement as a form of expression and divine communion. He is
beginning an intensive year of leadership training at Diana's
Grove and has facilitated movement workshops within that community
to help others discover how to use body motion as a vehicle for divine
expression and ecstatic experience.
He greatly enjoys encouraging those around him to explore and identify their own passions, believing that such pursuits are crucial to an individual's experience of the divine.
Shauna
Aura
Shauna
dreams of impossible projects and brings them into being. Her vision is
to build temples, shrines, community centers, large-scale events, and
pagan seminaries. Through her organization Ringing
Anvil, Shauna creates events, experiences, and spaces that facilitate
transformation.She
has produced events, public rituals, and facilitated numerous workshops
to bring personal growth and community building work to those who seek
it.
With her design and leadership experience, she has produced theatrical designs, themed parties, masquerade balls, rituals, fundraisers. Creativity is her primary form of spiritual expression, she is the most passionate about projects that hold a challenge, as well as an opportunity to visually and experientially transform a space. Recently she enjoyed hauling rocks to build an outdoor shrine to Brigid, and plans to build more shrines, temples, and other sacred spaces.
Shauna has ten years of experience as a design and marketing consultant, and currently freelances as as a designer, artist, writer, and marketing strategist. She is a graduate of the Diana’s Grove Leadership Training Program with a focus in community building, ritual arts, and facilitation of workshops.
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