232 MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW
ment of limits, a new cultural imperative is being argued and
fought. "Today," Charlene Spretnak writes in Reweaving the
World, "we work for ecopeace, ecojustice, ecotheology, and for the
evolution of ecofeminism." Something is shifting in our notion of the
self. As deep ecologist Joanna Macy puts it, the ego-self is being
replaced by the eco-self. This self realizes that we are profoundly
interconnected and interdependent. It recognizes our embeddedness
in nature, and mourns the destruction of our biosphere.
At the edge of a frozen lake, a woman dances herself into a visionary state. Her presence in the landscape is like a numinous symbol of
wings and flight, signifying the possibility of transition into another
mode of being. She wears an extraordinary garment of raffia and
string that transforms her into a supernatural being she is impersonating. The woman is Fern Shaffer, an artist from Chicago, enacting
a symbolic ritual intended to purify the waters of Lake Michigan
through using crystals, which represent a vital part of the earth's
resources.
Shaffer's rituals are the result of a collaboration between herself
and Othello Anderson, a painter and photographer. They began
creating rituals to mark the equinoxes and solstices with special
ceremonies. "The significance of what we do is to reenact, or
remember, ways of healing the earth," Shaffer states. "An ancient
rhythm takes over; time does not exist anymore. We perform the
rituals to keep the idea alive. This ceremony was held at sunrise. We
met at the lakefront at 5 a.m. It was minus 35 degrees with a
windchill factor of minus 80 degrees. We seemed to have gone into
another time zone..... I washed the crystals in the lake, putting my
hands in the water. Two of Othello's cameras froze completely and
the film in the third camera split. It was very cold and yet Othello
and I were not affected by it."
For their most recent collaboration, Shaffer and Anderson initiated an urban series, in which two separate healing rituals were
performed at full moon, and another during the eclipse. The rituals
were enacted at the site of an ugly, litter-strewn, rat-infested, noman's-land located near their studio building in downtown Chicago. Shaffer made herself a transparent garment out of plastic
bubble wrap, as a means of pointing to the problem of nonbiodegradable materials. In this ritual, the idea was to tread lightly and
bring light upon a devastated area, by showing kindness and humility in the form of prayer. "I believe very strongly in working with
