Awakened
Woman e-magazine
goddessaltar.com
Taking
a stand isn't easy when cool is in fashion by
Stephanie Hiller Play
me a song from a prairie night "Alberta
Moon" on Refuge Jennifer
Berezan is a girl of the prairies, but she does not have
that faraway look in her eyes. Her gaze is keenly
present, and her wide smile tells you she's right there.
Now a resident of North Berkeley, she leads a busy life,
writing and singing her soulful music, teaching classes
at the California Institute for Integral Studies, and
leading tours to goddess sites in Turkey, Greece, and
Malta. I
always forget to ask people how old they are; the numbers
would seem to put Jennifer in her late thirties, but her
freshness is ageless. She runs free and clear, like
prairie waters, and deep underground. Music
came early. It was a traveling saleslady who brought the
guitar to Jennifer's door. "She convinced my parents to
sign me up for her company's guitar lessons. And that's
how it all began." Her father bought her an electric
guitar. She was seven. Raised
Catholic, she attended a liberal Catholic high school in
Calgary, her hometown, where she performed George
Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" at Mass. She played
basketball. She remembers it fondly as "the only place
where girls came together strong in our bodies. My life
was basketball for a long time." All
the while, less publicly, she kept playing her guitar.
"There was a lot of wonderful music on the air, even on
the radio." She went to the University of Calgary to
study comparative religion, supporting herself by singing
in a duo with another woman. She sang her way through
Europe before returning home to finish college. In 1978
an English teacher introduced her to Bob Dylan. She was
stunned by his music. "I went back and rediscovered the
whole American '60s experience through the music." That
was the beginning of her activist years. "I believed we
were going to make the world different in a
decade." But a
spiritual crisis was on the horizon. "My spirituality has
been formed by nature more than anything else, in the
actual physicality of the trees and plants. I think about
being profoundly touched by creation, and that's the
goddess. It's the divine." Feminism raised questions
about Catholicism which she could not allay.
"When
I left the church, my spiritual and political selves were
disjointed." She came to the San Francisco Bay Area to do
graduate work at Matthew Fox's Creation Spirituality
Institute. Those were fertile days for the goddess
movement. Z Budapest was doing rituals at the Women's
Building. Jennifer performed some early rituals with
Gaia Through
Karen Vogel, she met Vicki Noble, with whom she has been
working and teaching ever since. She made a tape, Voices
in the Wind, for women who attended her
workshops. In
1989, Jennifer made her first album, Eye of the
Storm, on her own label, Edge of Wonder. Borderline
was recorded with Flying Fish Records in 1992. When they
folded, she went back to her own company, where she
produced She Carries Me, Refuge and now, Returning.
She
can be reached by e-mail, berezan@sirius.com
or through her website, http://www.edgeofwonder.com. End of
Berezan profile
>>>for
more information on Buddhism, read a selection from
Women
and Buddhism
by Sandy Boucher >>>for
more information about visiting goddess sites, see
Ancient
Goddess Sites, Joan Marler <<<Back
to Berezan
But the fate of the world is dependent on living
with passion
And I'll stand for change next to any ol' woman
or man
But if I can't dance I don't want to be part of
that plan.Who
is Jennifer Berezan?
Sing me a meadowlark's tune
Waltz me in grasses that dance in the light
'Neath the big orange glow of an Alberta moon
Fly
me back home, fly me away
Where miles of borders don't stand in my
way
No matter where I'm living I can't help but
find
I'm on the other side of some
borderline"
&endash;Borderlines
(1992)