I’m Ann Keeler Evans – Peacemaker, poet, priestess –
and you are welcome here!
What started out to be an adventure of two friends exploring Antarctica, turned into a spiritual sojourn that took us far beyond our wildest imaginations. I am a thealogian by training, a Peacemaker by vocation, and a Poet by expression. My friend, Faye, is a spiritual educator and a gospel/choral musician.
Faye and I and our companions on this trip were stunned by the power and majesty of this place and became committed to this still barely known continent and its pristine surrounding waters. Antarctica has no citizens; it needs ambassadors to speak to the importance of its pristine beauty and promote the Antarctic Treaty, signed by 58 countries in 1959, that is dedicated to Science and Peace.
As a thealogian, I went with questions — what is it like to visit a place with no indigenous people, no gods, no wee folk? Maybe it’s the spirit of the orca and the penguins and all the other lifeforms whose home it is, that has shaped what the continent has become.
Antarctica transformed my life; I experienced a Peace so profound that 54 poems flowed from me, and I invite to share that experience through them.
Welcome, and thanks for dropping by today!
Peacemaking and Spirituality are serious pursuits. They can also be conduits for joy and fulfillment in everyday life. As Priestess and Peacemaker, I help you map a path while uplifting the world, uncover the delight and camaraderie in finding life’s meaning, as well as your place and purpose, as you become authentically and powerfully yourself. You deserve a joyous, practical, spiritual life, dedicated to Peacemaking, while living carefully yet abundantly on our Planet Earth.
It is a joy to be invited into communities to create ritual and meaning for people exactly where they live — across this wide country and deep in their souls.
A Prayer for Everyday
Out of the dark stillness
Light gathers, softening the sky.
A new day dawns —
Unknown potential and reborn hope.
I give thanks for the daily living of my life
Moment by Moment
The gifts and the challenges,
The sweet and the silly
Transformed by Time’s passing
Into Memory and History.
I offer myself to the world
As an instrument of Peace.
I will let every day and every endeavor
Be a prayer of thanks for life.
With Your Name on my lips,
I begin.
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Peace
As a Peacemaker and a Community Builder, I help people understand their gifts and strengths, while discovering the best ways for them to use them in to make Peace in the world. I have been working at being a Peacemaker throughout my ministry — and looking back, I realize that I have been working toward this for my whole life. It is a curious, confusing, and wonderfully rewarding way of life.
Peace matters. It matters enough that we are called to participate in building communities in which Peace can flourish. We are not Peaceful if we are not Peaceful in relationship, whether with Nature or Beings. Peace is so much more than a lovely concept. It is not simply an idea; it is a goal.
Throughout time, Peace has been understood far too often as either the opposite or the absence of war. That understanding severely underestimates the hope and potential of Peace. Peacemaking is an active verb that starts with a sense of wonderment about the Beauty and Abundance in which we live and leads us forward into community.
As a Peacemaker, I focus on finding the possibilities for connection and meaning, for creating rather than simply combatting. As such, I am a student of Nonviolence, which is the use of peaceful means, rather than force, to bring about political or social change. Nonviolence is a challenge to those of us raised in the Western World, but without it, without the creativity and collaboration, there can be no Peace.
We all need support in our process of building Peace and your Sacred Village(s) of Peace. As a Priestess and a Peacemaker, my calling is to be ‘in’ here for you to encounter and engage with for support and inspiration as you become a Peacemaker too.
Most Recent Peacemaker Pondering :
- One of the ways I practice Peace is by being a hospital chaplain. Often my work is supporting the patients involved in traumatic events and their families. It’s work that I was surprised to find as rewarding as I do and at which I am quite competent. If you’re going to have a job after … Continue reading "Creating Safe, Peaceful Community that Includes our Soldiers"
More Peacemaker Ponderings
We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from person to person, and from moment to moment.
Viktor Frankl, 1905 – 1997
Peacemaker’s Tarot
I highly recommend buying all three of Ann’s Peacemaker’s Tarot books, as I have done. Not only are they an interesting read on her creative process in developing this unique approach to the Tarot, but they also give insights into what humanity needs in our evolution to more conscious living.
Laura Rose Gatley, Spiritual Mentor
Peacemaker’s Tarot
for the 21st century
“Not your grandmother’s tarot!” ™
Tarot helps us to be more present and aware in the moment. We don’t know what will happen in Life, so it’s crucial to know where we are in our own lives. However, old symbols and metaphors no longer have meaning in a world that is longing for new and meaningful reference points.
Peacemaker’s Tarot for the 21st Century (PT21C) is not a parlor game and does not predict your future as a passive event over which you have no control. PT21C is intended to explore how you can actively create your future based on the values of Peace and nonviolence.
Peacemaker’s Tarot for the 21st Century is a powerful invitation for you to consider your strengths and the allies you will want to develop as you work toward being a force for Peace in your life and your world. The Major Arcana cards are designed to center your talents as you become the person you mean to be.
Peacemaker’s Tarot for the 21st Century helps us think about the moment with Peace and nonviolence at the center of our considerations. Read this and get curious about what comes next. Then come enjoy a reading with Ann — the Tarot Priestess is In for you.
* After purchasing your PT21C Major Arcana cards,
download your free PDF of Vol. II-C, Your Personal Journey to Wisdom
Readings
Major Arcana readings are unlike full deck readings. There’s no need to pull a card every day; the Major Arcana explore at the vast movements in your life. Readings allow you to gain information on complicated questions. Peacemaker’s Tarot does not concern itself with how the fates are moving you; it looks at who you are and what opportunities are available to you and then looks at how you can let your gifts and talents grow to respond to the need. Look over your reading opportunities below and select what works best for you in this moment.
One-Card Readings
Right here, Right now: What do I need to understand about what’s going on? What skills do I need to bring to bear on this situation? How should I consider it?
Two-Card Readings
Making a choice: What will I need to bring to the situation if it’s one particular way? What if it’s the second way? OR Working with two different individuals or entities: What does each situation require of me? How willing/able am I to meet those demands?
Three-Card Readings
My best way to work on change? Prolonger, Protester, or Proactivist • Past, Present, Future: Reviewing, Examining, Planning • Dark Moon Readings: Releasing, Reflecting, Choosing Your Course • Full Moon Readings: Counting Blessings, Celebrating, Recalibrating.
Four-Card Readings
What do we need to bring to bear to each of the directions — East: insight • South: passion • West: dreams • North: foundation.
Five-Card Readings
You in your World: My first original reading for Peacemaker’s Tarot Major Arcana, combining Past, Present, Future, with two new cards: Your Better Angels and The Road You’re Traveling. • Or: The Four-Direction Reading plus the Places in Between Card. Fascinating!
Community
My understanding of faith is one of applied faith. What do you believe and how do you bring that alive in the world? For me, this is Spiritual Journey — a practical spiritual journey that brings your body and life along!
There are many Social Justice issues with which I am involved personally, emotionally, and financially, from the national level with Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to the Takery, a local, interfaith food and product give-away in Sunbury, PA. (Held every third Thursday of the month – contact me for how you can help.) And my deepest commitment is to the Shape of Justice:
Shape of Justice: I am a founder of this project, which helps ensure that menstruators in rural Pennsylvania have period products that allow them to work, study, and play throughout their periods. Period Poverty is real. One in four women are forced to make decisions between period products and feeding their families. We’re about to expand to include incontinence products. Seniors don’t have the money they need. We need your help. We need donations. We need board members if you’re local. We need you to start programs like this if you live in rural America. (We can help!)
Worthwhile reading *
Please shop at independent bookstores. The covers on these pages are links to IndieBound.org where you can locate and purchase from various independent booksellers.
* Sacred Village has an affilliate account with Indiebound.org and may receive compensation
Stories
I love the work I do. I appreciate the importance of work on ritual, tarot, and community within the context of Peace. Sometimes, however, my world can become too focused on this importance.
So I also write stories that emerge from the heart of my whimsy. Preaching and public speaking reaches to stir people’s souls; my stories wish to stir delight and laughter and joy.
As a high school Rotary Youth Exchange student in Sweden, I encountered stories of the “Hidden Folk.” I am fascinated by the notion of Nature Magic. In those stories, many of the folk are said to be mischievous or “pranky,” but usually you find that humans have tricked or mistreated them. I believe the hidden folk not only represent the possibilities of magic and the doing of good and caring deeds, they also show humans how life would be different, were we only to act as kindly toward one another as they act toward us and toward the land they represent.
I am very excited to be working with Siri as an illustrator, for her love for these beings is as deep as mine — and whereas I hear them and see their action, she has been catching their likenesses for years.
Hmmm…I wonder what magic being put us together? I can’t wait to see what you have to say about how they create community, and how they build Peace.
The Venn of Ann
Encompassing everything is Peace; Peacemaking is the ocean I have committed to swim in. It is the air I breathe. I work hard to keep the focus of all my work on Peacemaking.
Within are the circles representing my deepest talents. These are my gifts and the skills I have worked to develop. I create ritual in these arenas and I write, read, and reflect on them as well.
Tarot • Ritual • Community … and the places in between? Ah, those are where the magic happens:
Tarot – Ritual :
• Determine a course of action, then create a ritual dedicated to the work ahead.
• Recover from trauma by creating a ritual that purifies and moves the trauma into the non-active past.
• Seek out new possibilities and take the time to ritually commit to growing into what you hadn’t been able to imagine before.
Ritual – Community :
• Rites of passage for individuals, couples, and families that happen within proscribed communities.
• Celebrations and commemorations that concern the entire community, violence, regret, remembrance.
• Celebrations of dedication to possibility and peace.
Community – Tarot :
• Readings at gatherings that define what the community needs to work on.
• Readings for projects that examine the roles that will be needed to complete a project and who ought to be included.
• Readings that explore how groups can work together.
And in the center of it all, when the balance is right and I’m doing my best work, the Hickernell Springs Moon Fairy dances for joy.