About
Maya is an artist, author, and educator. She has long collaborated with Children’s Book Press illustrating multicultural children’s books. Although, she does not consider herself an illustrator she has illustrated nearly 20 children’s books and received numerous awards including the 2008 Pura Belpré Honor Award for illustration for My Colors, My World. This was the first book Maya both illustrated and wrote. She has since written and illustrated another book, I Know the River Loves Me, which was released in 2009.
Since 1996, Maya has been providing presentations to children and educators about the power of reflection in our children’s media and the importance of creativity as a tool for personal empowerment. She has witnessed remarkable experiences in classrooms and auditoriums around the country. Through her work with educators and children, she, together with her husband Matthew, cofounded Reflecion Press. The mission and goals of Reflection Press have been a vision of Maya's for quite some time and are now finally coming to fruition.
Maya grew up in the Mojave Desert in Southern California during times when virtually no imagery existed that reflected her experience as a biracial, Chicana. Throughout her life she used creativity as a tool to find, explore, and know herself. Her art is featured in many art books including on the cover of Living Chicana Theory and Contemporary Chicano/a Art.
Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God
Description
<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>
Story Behind The Book
Searching for reflection in her world since she was a child, Maya Gonzalez has been using art to affirm and claim herself, her life, and her experience. Now as an adult she is honored to have made art for nearly 20 bilingual children’s books, two of which she has also authored, including the 2008 Pura Belpré Honor Award winner, My Colors, My World. She has been going into schools and universities since 1996 teaching the CLAIMING FACE lessons of using creativity as a tool for self-empowerment. The Educator’s Guide serves to encapsulate these lessons into a comprehensive and transformative guide for educators to implement in their lives and classrooms.
Reviews
<p style="color:#7f007f;"><strong><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">What Educators and Students are Saying:</span></span></font></span></strong></p>
<p><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><br />“I feel so good, inspired, calm. It encouraged me because it gave me a creative space to put myself into when I was feeling like I couldn’t get there. Useful! Informative! Inspiring!"</em> -Educator</span></font></p>
<p><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><br />“Still blown away with how the art (the act of making art) can be so effective on so many levels. Also the rules were great.” -Educator</span></font></p>
<p><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><br />“Moving, Cathartic, Beautiful, Delightful.”</em>-Educator</span></font></p>
<p><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><em><br />“You showed me how to do the most fantastic art I’ve ever done”</em>-Abel, age 9</span></font></p>
<p><em><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><br />“You made me </span></font><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"></span></font></em><font size="1"><span style="font-size:12px;"><em>believe in Art”</em>-Jazmin, age 9</span></font></p>
