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Passionate Embrace

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Karen Shklanka: Spiritual Abandon

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-09-23

shklankaAs promised, here is another back cover blurb to tempt your appetite for Passionate Embrace:  Faith, Flesh, Tango.  Karen Shklanka is a local tanguera, poet, and physician.  We met in 2009, at the book launch party for her collection of poetry, Sumac’s Red Arms (Coteau Books) and have since become good friends.  I was honoured when she agreed to read my manuscript.  Here’s her endorsement:
Karen Shklanka, poet, author of Sumac’s Red Arms

“Passionate Embrace is not only a nuanced description of falling in love with Argentine tango, it is a powerful story of healing.  Vander Schaaf leads the reader into the dance to share her experience as a beginning tanguera—the spark of curiosity, the awkward beginnings, the surprise of being held tenderly and respectfully in the arms of strangers, and the exquisite moment of spiritual abandon when she inhabits her body anew, awake once again to the unselfconscious joy of movement and beauty of her childhood self.  As a professional photographer, Vander Schaaf adds another dimension to the story.  Her subtle images transcend tango clichés and capture moments of connection and interiority, inviting the reader to discover this rich and complex social dance and its profoundly textured culture and community.”

2013-09-23 0 comment
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Luci Shaw: Refreshing Surprise

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-09-17

I’m going to allow my brother-in-law, a Manitoba rancher and cattle breeder, introduce poet Luci Shaw’s review of Passionate Embrace.

At a recent family gathering on the prairies, my brother-in-law plunked himself down in the lawn chair across from me, took a long sip of his beer and said, “I hear you’ve written a book.”  He’s not a very talkative guy—I’ve known him for four years and I believe this was the first time he’d started a conversation with me.  Being a bit startled, the only reply I could manage in the moment was, “Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

Never having pitched my book to a Charolais cattle breeder, I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just trotted out the short version of what I usually say, “It’s a story about how learning to dance Argentine Tango changed how I understand my body and God.”

His eyebrows momentarily disappeared under the visor of his baseball cap.  He took another sip of beer, smiled broadly, shook his head and said, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting that.”

I’m not sure what Luci Shaw was expecting when she agreed to read my manuscript, but I love that she found Passionate Embrace to be a “refreshing surprise.”  This is what she wrote after reading the book in one sitting:

 

shaw“This is a sumptuous story, dramatic, literally an invitation to the dance.  It made me want to tango along with Sandra.  I read it straight through, drawn into it as she was when first invited to tango.  She daringly compares learning the dance with learning to pray; each is a movement of faith. That this new venture into physical intimacy was the means of grace that led her to greater spiritual intimacy with God is the refreshing surprise of this striking and moving account of renewal.”

–Luci Shaw, author, Breath for the Bones, and Adventure of Ascent


To learn more about Luci Shaw and her work, go to http://www.lucishaw.com

Originally published on www.passionateembrace.ca, September 2013.

2013-09-17 0 comment
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Celeste Snowber: Embodied Prayer

by Sandra Vander Shaaf 2013-08-28

If books were dancers, I would take special delight in sending Passionate Embrace:  Faith, Flesh, Tango onto the dance floor with Celeste Snowber’s Embodied Prayer:  Towards Wholeness of Body, Mind, Soul.  When I read this inspired book almost twenty years ago, I underlined passages like this:

However we phrase it, men and women are crying out to discover the wildness within them, the passionate, the intuitive, the child, the creative, the part that acknowledges both spirit and body, the part of them that enlivens and fuels them through life.  We are tired of being separated from our bodies, we yearn for connectedness, wholeness, and healing.

When I entered the sensually and spiritually rich world of Argentine Tango, Embodied Prayer came off my bookshelves once again, practically begging to be read anew.  Fresh meaning infused the words; this time I read it not just with my mind but with my whole body.  So it is that I dared to ask Celeste Snowber to provide an advance review of my book.  With delight and gratitude, I share her response here:

snowber With Passionate Embrace, Vander Schaaf brings us into a beautiful, vibrant space, filled with visceral details of a life lived authentically.  With poetic sensibility, she tells the story of how the beauty of tango lead her on an intimate and profound journey.  Vander Schaaf brings spirit and body to all her words, words that celebrate vulnerability, resilience, and yearning.  We are led as by a beautiful dance partner, with words that dance on the page.

–Celeste Snowber, PhD, dancer, educator, writer, author of Embodied Prayer: Towards Wholeness of Body, Mind, Soul.

 

Originally posted on www.passionateembrace.ca, August 2013.

2013-08-28 0 comment
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  • White Girl Listening : Beginnings
  • Myth Management for Beginners
  • Karen Shklanka: Spiritual Abandon
  • Luci Shaw: Refreshing Surprise
  • Celeste Snowber: Embodied Prayer

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