Becoming Lightning, Becoming Bird concerns a journey of evolving consciousness in a particular woman at the midpoint of her life. It answers the question of how a journey of evolution might appear through a woman's experiences beyond the ideas in R.M.Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness and Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Imagine a woman in the middle of her life, in the middle of Oklahoma, shocked into the adventure of awakening by totally losing her way. Her normal world as an interior designer and ever-pleasing wife and mother is turned upside down as she is compelled to break all ties to find a new way of being. From the violent storms and dark nights of Oklahoma, from betrayal and loss of vision, she travels southwest to care for an injured relative and her life changes along the way. Symbol clashes upon symbol and everything becomes a metaphor for transcendence. Trickster helpers masquerade now as mangy dog, now as crow, now as shaking old woman. The temptation to go back to the way she was remains a constant enticement and new temptations forever arise. She's faced again and again with the choice of regression or going beyond. In every moment. Just as we all are.
R.S. Robison leads a contemplative life in The Village, Oklahoma, painting, gardening and nursing injured wild life. She has successfully released hundreds of birds back to the wild as well as a few opossums, raccoons, rabbits and bats. R. S. received a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma and teaches free Zen drawing classes in the community. She and her architect husband, John, own a historic building in the Paseo Art District of Oklahoma City which is divided into artist studios and a main gallery for exhibitions. For many years R.S. has enjoyed exploring a wild marsh area near her home where beaver, foxes, water birds and even osprey frequent. When developers attempted to drain the marshland for human encroachment, she became an environmental activist and succeeded in having it declared a federally protected wetlands. R.S.'s poetry, essays and illustrations have been published several times in PARABOLA: "Rushing Wind" in Prophets and Prophecy, "Five in the Center" in Number and Symbol, "Through Beauty" in Grace. Her narrative poem, "Consolamentum" was set to music by William Ludtke and became the opera/pageant Gaia Sophia which received grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and was performed in Oakland and San Francisco.
