PRELUDES

About the Book

These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to the death camps of the Holocaust. They are about the space, the Spielraum, necessary for the wheel of life to turn soulfully. Christine Downing's essays may be felt to function as a possible prelude to the play of a truly ludic imagination, which, like Buber's "slow medicine," quietly enters the soul, working into the heart, awakening a secret melody to be noticed only later. Preludes, indeed!

David L. Miller
Author of Three Faces of God
and Hells and Holy Ghosts

About the Author

After a long career as Professor and Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, Christine Downing now divides her time between teaching in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara and playing at retirement in her home on Orcas Island, Washington.