Prelude to Praise: Celebrate The Unfolding of Our Humanity with Poetry, Music and Art
What does it mean to be wholeheartedly human? To meet the world nakedly with our fear and our joy, with our crippling sorrow and our ecstatic jubilance? What does it mean to belong? How do we celebrate this journey of our becoming?
Join poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, composer Kayleen Asbo and artist Johanna Baruch as they conspire to wonder about the nature of praise with this interdisciplinary celebration of Rosemerry’s new collection. In The Unfolding, released from Wildhouse Publishing on October 1, 2024. The book is based on four new, nuanced words for praise that Rosemerry made up to express the complexity of experiencing simultaneous grief and joy:
verilujah: the praise that rises when we are in a state of raw, naked honesty, aligning with the vast mystery of life as it is,
sorrom: a paradoxical praise for beauty, love, strength and connection that can only emerge as we wrestle with devastation, grief and the worries and pains of daily living
samunion: the elation that arises when we trust everything belongs and transforms together (even what we greatly dislike), and we’re in service to that belonging
pangloria: a strange certainty that there are opportunities for praise everywhere, even where we would rather not look
For each of these words, Rosemerry has written a chapter of poems, Kayleen has composed a prelude on piano, and Johanna has provided artwork based on images from the Hubble telescope. In the future, there will also be lines from poems that Kayleen has created as “responsaries,” secular chants we might sing together.
This event is the official launch for this new collection of poems. In The Unfolding, Rosemerry explores the wonder, beauty, and sacred connection that blossom out of living wholeheartedly. Here the aching heart goes dancing. Written after the deaths of her son and father, these poems embody paradox—simultaneously somber and playful, brokenhearted and uplifting, even solemn and sexy. Rosemerry wades heart-deep in the broken world and finds in the rubble these honest, surprising invitations to praise.
“I didn’t realize how much I needed Rosemerry’s words to remind me of what most matters,” says Tara Brach, author of Radical Compassion. “Each offering is a powerful transmission: our spirit is invited forward to cherish—praise!—both the darkness and luminosity of existence. Pure medicine for our tender, awakening hearts.” And poet Naomi Shihab Nye writes, “I don’t know how she does it. In The Unfolding, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer opens her arms and heart and voice so wide, everything we experience comes inside to be held, to shine.”
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