MAGGIE KAST "The Crack Between the Worlds: A Dancer's Memoir of Loss, Faith and Family" January 27th at 6pm
A car crashes, and Maggie Kast, at the peak of a modern dance career,
loses a three-year-old daughter. Raised without religion and now mired
in grief, she senses a persistent connection to the little girl, a love
somehow more powerful than the brute fact of death. This awareness
leads her, over three years, to the Catholic Church. After the
accident, her marriage is greatly stressed by the entrance of religion
into married life, and she and her husband each accuse the other of
being too religious or too secular at various times. Despite conflict,
dialogue keeps the marriage intimate and vital. Following study of
liturgy at Catholic Theological Union, she teaches and tours sacred
dance nationally and internationally, exploring the arts as a spiritual
path. Moving forward and looking back at once, she discovers early
hints of religious experience in childhood celebrations, encounters
with art, and marriage. Her husband dies. Now a single parent of a
ten-year-old and a developmentally disabled teenager, as well as
college-aged sons, she continues her search.
"In prose that is spare, lucid, and elegiac, Maggie Kast's memoir, The Crack
Between the Worlds, tells the story of a pilgrimage and a conversion. A
dancer and choreographer, Kast knows that the most expressive
gestures-and words-are often the simplest, rooted in the dailiness of
our lives. Her search for a faith that can embrace both the tragic
sense of life and the ecstatic sacramentality of ordinary matter leads
her inexorably to the church whose name means 'universal.' Readers will
find in Kast's particular story something universal, moving, and true."
-Gregory Wolfe, Editor, Image
"Maggie Kast's memoir is a rich, powerful, affecting story of how even in tragedy grace can be found.
She has written a book that will be a consolation and resource for
many." -Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy and Exiles
"The Crack
Between the Worlds is a graceful, deeply-felt spiritual memoir. Dancer
and choreographer Maggie Kast moves through the hidden alcoves of her
heart to reflect on a life of love and tragedy, and in that sacred
space she finds mystery, faith, and healing gestures." -Dinty W. Moore,
author of The Accidental Buddhist
- Street:
- 509 E. 4th Ave
- City:
- Olympia ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98501
- Country:
- United States
