About
Us
and
Logo
Symbology |
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Vocal music
used to support
the
journey
through the major
life-passages
of birthing
and dying 
Victoria,
B. C.
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About
Us En~chanting
Beyond was set
up to offer Bedside Singing services
to those who are giving birth or dying, in various
kinds of environments around the Victoria,
B.C. area.Those
involved have a background in health services,
pastoral care and/or alternative therapies
as well as a love for music, and a passion for
its ability to support life-passages.
In
the 1980s, she worked with Northern Lights
(Ontario)
a self-help community for people living with HIV/AIDS
and used Bedside Singing to support
friends and co-workers who were dying from this
disease, as well as officiating at their requiems
or memorials.During
the same time period, she was birth-coach for
3 single mothers, and began to recognize the power
of music to help them through the birthing process.One
of these cases included the birth of a fetus who
had died in utero: and she stayed with the mother
for 36 hours afterwards, using Bedside Singing
as part of the support to the mother's immediate
grieving.
Pashta's
background is primarily in social concerns and
pastoral work.In
the late 1990s, she joined the pastoral/spiritual
care team at the Royal Jubilee Hospital
(Victoria), and became its
first non-Christian member.During
one experience using Bedside Singing
(hymns, in this case) with
a patient during this service, she became aware
of the power of vocal music as a way to reach
those who were dying in a state of partial or
full dementia: and this experience left her wondering
how to make this kind of musical support more
easily available to all people who were dying.
While
a member of the
Gettin'
Higher Choir, she met another singer who had
similar interests and was already working as a
Victoria Hospice unit volunteer.Together,
they co-founded Songs
of Passage (SoP), which
offered Bedside Singing as a regular
service to patients at Victoria
Hospice unit in the Royal Jubilee hospital
perhaps the first of its kind in Canada to do
so as a formal adjunct service to a Hospice unit.SoP's
repertoire was similar to
and to a great degree, taken from
the repertoire of Threshold
choir, but offers an invocative program
to train singers in the non-singing aspects of
working with dying patients.After
two years of setting up the program, Pashta left
Songs of Passage; and started En~chanting
Beyond in order to bring Bedside Singing
to those it might help beyond a Hospice unit.
This Bedside Singing program
is now directly under Victoria
Hospice.
In
2008, Pashta supported a birthing mother using
the Toning method of dealing with contractions
through her labour and delivery
which re-kindled her earlier experience using
music to support birth-coaching practices.As
a result, En~chanting Beyond now offers
Bedside Singing services to both major
life-passages
birthing and dying.
Pashta
offers Death Midwifery services
in Victoria, B.C. through Journeying
Beyond
which includes support to the dying loved one
and family preparing for the death, bedside vigil
during active dying (including
Bedside Singing, if one wishes), after
deathcare (home funeral),
and personalized funeral/memorial services. Contact
her at contact
us for further information.
As
also a mediator (trained by the
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Management,
and the Justice Institute) and founder
of E~merging
Beyond mediation services, Pashta has a particular
focus on supporting families facing 'end of life'
situations.
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to top)
Logo
Symbology
| The
base-symbol used in the En~chanting Beyond
logo is the character Omega
turned upside down. |
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The
Omega symbol itself represents a womb, preparing
to 'pour forth' (or 'let down',
in birthing language)
and dates back at least to the ancient Mesopotamia
cultures (3000 B.C.E.),
but was also found in ancient China.The
symbol was used on gravestones, but was a tribute
(or appeal) to a goddess
of birthing
a connection that existed even in biblical terminology:
interestingly, in China, a tombstone was called
a "womb-stone".The
symbol is best known as the last letter in the
Greek alphabet, meaning 'the end': and the general
ancient implication was that 'an end always leads
to a new beginning'
whether reincarnation, or a new life in Heaven
or other concepts of Paradise or the afterlife.
| Alpha
(the beginning) and
Omega are often pictured together, reinforcing
the idea that the end leads to another beginning.
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However,
the Omega symbol, itself, carries the connotation
of both of the two major passages of a lifeterm
in essence, 'Out of the Womb' and 'Into the Tomb';
and implies that the second leads once again to
the first.It
is interesting that the two words Womb
and Tomb are almost identical, but aren't
directly related etymologically
and yet, the Proto-Indo European base for the
word tomb is "to swell", which
is one of the key elements of a womb.Some
of the earliest uses of the Omega symbol interpret
the side handles as the two proto-people (different
genders) born out of the Goddess's womb.Whether
or not the two words were originally etymologically
related, most ancient cultures did see the tomb
as a kind of womb to some form of new life.
By
turning it upside-down, the 'pouring out' womb
becomes a 'holding within' cradle-vessel (or
cauldron) of life.It
enfolds the journey between the Womb and
the Tomb
but focuses on the care-taking involved in the
beginning and end of it.The
tomb element is understood as the release
of form (leaving this world)
to trans~formation; and the womb element,
the new in~form~ation (i.e. fetal
development, preparing to enter this world).The
rounded part becomes the 'journey of life' itself,
and the two side handles become the times of major
life passages.
The
notes, hanging from the sides as part of the handles,
represent using music to aid this 'cradling of
the journey into, or out of, this world' on both
ends of a lifeterm.The
two notes face each other because, while both
tomb and womb imply a journey beyond
the world they now inhabit (the
womb is the first world of a child; our world,
its second), they mark the opening and
closure of this lifeterm; yet their tails stretch
beyond , indicating a journey to
somewhere other than where the en~wombed child
or dying loved one is now.
If
you look very carefully at a full moon, you might
see the face of person singing.In
most ancient cultures, the Moon was seen as a
mother figure, watching over her children during
her journey though the night sky
and understood to be the protector of dreams,
visions, mysteries and/or any development that
could not be directly seen.The
singing-moon-mother face in the middle of the
cauldron/cradle represents both mystical protection
through major life-passage journeys, and the power
of music to guide these (mostly
unseen) journeys.
(back
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Please
use the left menu to navigate through the En~chanting
Beyond website,
and then contact
us for more information on Bedside Singing
in the Victoria, B.C. area, and/or about
the general concept.
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