Through  presentation,  ritual  gestures,  poetic  prayers,  contemplative  exercises  and  quiet  walks  Alexander  John  Shaia  invites  you  to  recover  the  mystical  Easter  of  early  Christianity  (pre  500  CE).  

What we Coming to Pray Again?

This ancient Easter  is remarkably different to the one that we know today. The eight days of what Christians call "Holy Week" - Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday - were lovingly crafted some 700 years ago as a dramatic meditation on the imagined last days leading to Jesus’ arrest, trial, death, and resurrection. What may come as a surprise is to know that this prayer is not the origin of Easter. Many centuries before “Holy Week”, Christians marked Easter as a sacred Three Day (Triduum in Latin) or 72 Hour Festival - over three nights and three days.  The Roman, Anglican and Lutheran traditions began restoration of the three days in the 1970s and 80s. The work dimmed in the 90s. And tragically by 2000, all research and efforts came to a standstill. I urge us to take up the work, all of us regardless of tradition.  

The Ancient Easter invites us into depth work and a deep spiritual practice as we pray  with the cosmos, recognising that earth's daily movement  through darkness  to sunrise  tell the great story of our own  continual  dying  and  greater  rising.  The  core  symbols  of  this  Easter  are:  a  wash  basin,  the  four - armed  equidistant  cross,  a  fallow  stillness,  the  fruitful  dark,  dawn's  first  light  and  our  prayer  to  be  in  union  with  All  that  is  within  us  and  without.

Living a new form of human community was the spiritual practice and the true fulfilment of the ancient Easter. Can there be a more noble cause for us today? Do we not need to return to the ancient wisdom of our elders who wait to teach us how to create, sustain and deepen in a vital and diverse communion?

There  will  also  be  some  optional  gentle  explorations  in  sacred geometry  and  painting  with  natural  pigments  with  Bertrand  Gamrowski  and  Basia  Goodwin.

You  can  find  out  more  on  this  link  to  a  video  of  Alexander: "Being  the  Resurrection"   https://vimeo.com/312851040

Alexander  John  Shaia,  PhD,  is  a  thoughtful  and  poetic  man,  living the  ancient  rhythms  of  his  Lebanese,  Aramaic and Maronite  (Eastern) Catholic  heritage.  He  is  an  author,  educator,  cultural  anthropologist, spiritual  director,  Jungian  psychotherapist  known  as  a  creative, multi - disciplinary  thinker  and  internationally  sought  out  speaker. With  deep  conviction,  he  invites  us  into  spiritual  practices  for  the 21st  century - ones  that  cross  traditional  boundaries,  encourage  vital thinking  and  inhabit  a  genuine  community  of  the  heart.  Each autumn  he  guides  a  small  group  of  pilgrims  on  the  Camino  Francés as  an  intentional  rite  of  passage.  And  for  more  than  forty  years,  Alexander  has  worked  to  recover  the  mystical  Easter  of  early Christianity.  He  lives  between  Santa  Fe  New  Mexico, USA  and  Galicia  in  northwest  Spain.