Stephen was recently interviewed byLaila Saber on The Shapeshifting Play Podcast. This is what Laila had to say about their time together:
What does it mean to receive a card you didn’t ask for, and how do you respond? In Act 5 of The Shapeshifting Play, we step into House Eight, the house of death, transformation, and what survives the crossing, with Stephen Jenkinson: writer, teacher, ceremonialist, farmer, and one of the most precise and oracular voices alive.
Stephen’s newest book, Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse, is a year-long journal written from the day of his Parkinson’s diagnosis to its first anniversary. A rosary of shards, he calls it. This conversation follows its spine, from the laughter of the gods to the grammar of grief, from the etymology of fate to the oldest religion amongst humans, which Stephen names simply as awe.
We talk about why joy is born from sorrow of sufficient depth, not after it, not despite it, from it. We talk about what the dying kept returning to. We talk about what it means to say yes anyway, even when you are not ready, even when it is not according to what you had in mind for yourself.
This one opened me up, and I hope it does the same for you.
