Guest Profile

Dena Merriam

When the Bright Moon Rises: The Awakening of Ancient Memories is Dena’s story of her rich and extensive past lives. It is a love story between the sages and the cosmic forces known as the deities and love between two individuals seeking to express this universal force of love that exists within us all. It is also a study of karma, the cosmic law of cause and effect. Dena weaves her story through her life that begins in Vedic India, around the 9th century BCE, when two people meet. It is the seeding of a love that cannot be fulfilled then, but which comes to fruition about 9,000 years later, during the Tang Empire in China. The lovers are reborn as the renown poet Li Bai and his poet wife, Lady Zong Shu. The awakening of her previous births initiates an inner struggle that is only resolved under the guidance of her Daoist Master. This is a story of love and compassion, trust, truth, living with grace and inner peace.

The method through which Dena recalls her earlier lifetimes is only lightly covered in these stories, but the value of past life memory to self-understanding is obvious and repeatedly demonstrated.

Dena is an author, storyteller, and the Founder and Convener of the Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW), bringing spiritual resources to address critical global challenges, such as conflict, social justice, and ecological scarring of the earth. Over the years she has worked to bring greater gender balance and balance between the Abrahamic and Dharma-based religious traditions for a more inclusive interfaith movement