Are you passionate about creativity? Seeking inspiration? As a writer, storyteller, song keeper, and elder, I experience creativity as a transforming force and the doorway to the sacred potentials that live within every human being.

My love for mythopoetics and the wisdom of ancient cultures are inspirations for my work as workshop leader, spiritual counselor, and the published author of eleven books. Those lifelong passions have been alchemized over the decades of my “wandering years,” when I traveled the world on pilgrimage to sacred sites in India, Europe and the Celtic world. From the gentle or rugged, lush or sere landscapes of our individual experience, we are all travelers on the path of life.

Take a read through my blog, books, and photos… You may find inspiration for your own journey, creative pursuits and contemplation—the theme of my newest book, available now from Hohm Press.

Let me know what captures your attention.

If you’re interested in a speaking engagement, group, or workshop with me, leave your request and information on the contact page of this website.  I’ll respond as soon as possible.

Thanks for visiting,

Mary Angelon

Featured Events with Mary Angelon Young

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The Summer Country Trilogy: New eBooks Available

2020 - A Contemplation in Reality, as it is …

As the global pandemic continues, our shared human experience—socially, politically, culturally, and spiritually—is being stripped down to the bare bones of what really matters. Current events keep us reeling, like in Arizona, where I live. Covid-19 continues to spike at alarming rates, making international news, while “Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry for the suffering in the world today and even of the Earth herself. As we navigate the rapids, sailing on toward uncharted seas, if we have not actively developed our contemplative side before, we have a unique opportunity to dive into that inner world so famously avoided in modern Western culture. 

Contemplation takes us deeper into reality as it is in our world. Now, during the summer of 2020, we cannot turn away from the horrific, shocking, and heartbreaking events occurring in our world today. For the past several months in many cities of the U.S., riots, swat teams, tear gas, and police brutality has been the response as people take to the streets to protest racial violence.

It’s unimaginable, for many of us, that our culture has not deeply realized that black lives, brown lives, indigenous lives, and the lives of all people of color are vital to the well-being of our planet and to the soul of the world. Instead of living into that realization of the truth, racism, classism, prejudice and bigotry continue to form the foundations in our society. Scratch the surface and we can see the terrible connection between genocide and the destruction of the Earth; the connection between racism and our profound displacement from the natural world.

The world today is in desperate need of a revolution of spirit and soul. The pervasive tragedy of our times has honed a radical spirit in me over the years. At times the privilege of being a white woman of conscience has caused me to bow my head in shame, to agonize over the plight of people of color, and to “take to the streets” in protest. Today, my radicalism, fomented back in the late sixties and seventies, still runs deep. Germinated in the political awareness a time long past, it has grown deep roots the rich soil of a lifetime commitment to nonviolence and personal transformation through contemplation and prayer. 

I’ve come to realize that the inner life of one individual can play a vital role in the revolutionary spirit. Contemplation is radical. Rebellious and generous of spirit, contemplation defies the belief that we are separate from one another, from animals, plants, and nature. Contemplation leads me into a deeper relationship with everyone and everything. In contemplation and prayer I connect at the level of the heart with humanity and the whole world, and in this way I deeply want to make a difference. 

One of the most central teachings of my teacher, Lee: On the path of spiritual transformation, you must have a broken heart that only God can heal. Heartbreak has many ways of visiting, then coming to stay. Maybe we are struggling to survive, to care for children and aging parents; we are wrestling with a personal health crisis, debilitating depression, a divorce, a dislocation, or financial worries. Maybe we are lucky and life goes smoothly despite the pandemic, and yet all we have to do is open our eyes and look around—heartbreak is there in so much of what we see and experience in the world. How can we give back to the world, when we have so much?

When one human being suffers, we all suffer. What the Earth suffers, we all suffer. Covid-19 is a perfect metaphor for the way the dominant culture of the world today has spread like a virus to every corner of life on Earth. That virus brings with it a deadening denial that is killing our planet, its animals, plants and people. Countless acts of greed, injustice, and violence are rationalized and justified, condoned and fueled by a desperate grasp for superiority, for comfort, excess, and empty luxuries enjoyed by the few, while the many starve in ghettos, dusty villages, and slums around the globe.

Individually and collectively, we suffer deeply in our separation from humanity and those we consider “other” or “strangers.” ICut off from our own native selves, we become strangers to ourselves, blind and unfeeling to the suffering of others and the Earth. When we are blind, insensitive, and unfeeling toward others, we are profoundly buffered against our own suffering. Even those who commit violence against others need our awakened compassion (not our complicity, complacency, or casual cynicism), because these behaviors are rooted in the deep suffering of the human soul. Gandhi’s life continues to inspire the nonviolent revolutionary spirit: we have to be the change that we want to see. 

Believing we are separate gives rise to the bleeding malaise of panic and anxiety that is taking over the world. It gives rise to countless frantic, toxic, grasping, fearful and shadowy activities of mind and emotion that fill up our inner space until we are suffocating. We cannot breathe or take in nourishment for the soul because there’s nowhere to put it. There is no space for anything but the defense mechanisms that guard our inner war zone—the symbolic AK 37s and automatic rifles, the grenades and machetes. To make a difference of any kind in the world, we must begin with ourselves. Like Gandhi, we must say no to weapons of destruction, even those that are symbolic.

As we awaken our own awareness, we are faced with potent, life-giving questions: Who am I in these powerful and terrible times? Where do I stand? What sustains my faith? What erodes it? What keeps me from deeper self-knowledge? Where does Grace come in? These are the building blocks of contemplation that can lead us to the open door of true being. 

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Upcoming Events with Mary Angelon

Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, many of my events for 2020 are in the process of being rescheduled. Please check back regularly for schedule updates. Thanks.