It’s a Match! Up to $5,000, Dollar for Dollar, Your Donation will be matched by RSF Social Finance

The AnJel Fund, a Donor-Advised Fund of RSF generously committed $5,000 to the Keepers of Love as a matching grant. Thanks to RSF’s generous support in July, 2009, we’ve been able to make significant progress on our documentary, move into a temporary shared office, and work with two more visionary filmmakers to continue logging and digitizing videotape.

We've received the endorsement of the San Francisco Film Society  along with our university sponsor of fifteen years, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.  

The film includes interviews with prominent African American professors at Harvard, Rev. Peter Gomes and Dr. S. Allen Counter, as well as Rep. John Lewis from Georgia, often called "one of the most courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced", he has dedicated his life to protecting human rights, securing civil liberties, and building what he calls "The Beloved Community" in America. We also interviewed Elwyn Wilson, the former white supremacist who beat up Lewis in 1961, during a non-violent demonstration. Lewis never struck back. In 2009, Wilson had a conversion experience and began to publicly apologize to John Lewis, who graciously accepted his apology and has forgiven him. Their words are revelatory, inspiring hope and change.

Every donation, large or small makes a difference and will be matched dollar for dollar by RSF up to $5,000. The end result will be $10,000 of funding to the Keepers of Love.
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! You can donate to us through the Paypal link:

OR send a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, “The Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education” (C.A.R.E.) with “The Keepers of Love” on the memo line.

The address is: The Keepers of Love, 20 Sunnyside Ave., Suite A, Mill Valley, CA 94941. if you have any questions, you may contact me at (415) 451-7497 email: chinagalland@yahoo.com
Read More About Keepers of Love

You will receive a letter of acknowledgment from CARE for tax purposes in either case. All gifts are tax-deductible. The Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE), is a 501 c 3 non-profit organization within the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, the largest mainstream multi-denominational theological school in the country.

Back to top

When Massive Change is Needed...You Can Start Anywhere

Success! A new law establishing legal consequences and fines for locking people out of cemeteries and for obstructing access went into effect this fall in Texas. Publication of Love Cemetery set off the state-wide controversy over burial grounds that continues to grow. Despite the new law in effect, the Love Cemetery committee is still locked out after 2.5 years. Before we got involved (2003), descendants had been locked out for 40 years.

Families and friends of historic black cemeteries are joining hands and reaching out across the U.S. From Scottsville, Houston, and West Columbia, Texas to New York City, we're documenting this controversy and we won't stop! Help us finish this documentary for television, theatrical release, and schools across the nation!

Go to www.chinagalland.com to view our trailer and see why the Dean of the Jesuit's university of San Francisco Law School says this story is critical and needs to get out.

Back to top

Art, Darkness, and the Womb of God: a four-day instensive class at The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

January 19th - 22nd, 2010 (Tuesday - Friday 1-5pm) in Berkeley
CARE, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education, an Affiliated Center at the GTU, is offering this four day-long graduate level intensive by China Galland, one of the world's foremost scholars on the Black Madonnas. She will be joined by guest lecturers and artists. Trained Labyrinth facilitators, Catlyn Fendler and Anna Cook, will lead a Chartres-style Labyrinth walk one afternoon. Carla De Sola, M.A. CARE Board member and adjunct faculty, will help facilitate a Liturgy of the Excluded. Kayleen Asbo, M.M., M.A., San Francisco Conservatory professor of music, will perform and teach chants sung on the famous pilgrimmage to the Black Madonna of Compostela. Galland's lectures are illustrated with original images and film clips from pilgrimages around the world. Read more about the class.

This class is open to outside auditors. You do not have to be a student at the GTU. Acceptance as an auditor is up to Galland's discretion and requires a phone interview.

To REGISTER: People outside the GTU need to contact China Galland directly about taking this class: chinagalland@yahoo.com or telephone 415/451-7497. In response to the times that we live in China has reduced the course audit price to $295 with a $100 deposit required. GTU students need to contact John Seal, the GTU Registrar; jseal@gtu.edu.

Back to top

The Courage of Conscience Award

We are in the process of organizing an event for China to receive the Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey, in Sherborn, MA. It’s an illustrious company for her to become a part of: the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, Mother Teresa, Maya Angelou, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Paul Farmer, Julia Butterfly Hill, and a host of others. China is receiving this award in recognition of her years of writing, leadership, and activism on behalf of justice, reconciliation, and peace. The award is being given to her at this time because of the Abbey's belief that her visionary work on truth and reconciliation has never been needed more than now. Read more about the Courage of Conscience Award and the Peace Abbey.

Back to top

December 11-12th, 2009: Hold a vigil or join one!

Support real change in Copenhagen when world leaders meet on global warming. Go to www.350.org and join the global community speaking on behalf of the future of the earth and the world’s children. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, environmentalist and author, says that even reducing our global emissions and switching to clean technology and alternative energy is not enough to mitigate global warming. We have to turn back to the technology of building community or all will be lost.

The Keepers of Love is situated within this framework of having to build community and reduce emissions simultaneously. We believe that in order to have sustainable communities we have to have constructive ways to tell the truth and be reconciled with one another, no matter race or creed. These lockouts are about what noted civil rights attorney and professor John A. Powell calls “social death.” They destroy family tradition and memory and knowledge of our shared past. “In order to have a future, we have to reconstruct our common past,” Manning Marable says. And Kundera, our choice is clear: “Memory or repression.”

Back to top

Interview with Harvard Peter J. Gomes helps seed "Writing History" with Wiley College

Peter J. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church and and American Baptist Minister. A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School, Professor Gomes is a beloved figure, revered teacher, and icon at Harvard. His books include New York Times best-sellers as well as the marked up title i turn back to, The Scandolous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News? " The Gospels are countercultural, a reality that mainstream churches often put aside", he wryly notes.

My Cambridge interview with him inspired me to make storytelling the foundaiton of my work on 'Writing History," the curriculum development project I'm working on with English Department Instructor, Lisa Taylor, at Wiley College, the home of the Great Debaters, in Marshall, Texas. I've been shaken by witnessing...Read More

Back to top