Rebecca Armstrong

Rebecca Armstrong is a minister, musician and mythologist. She is a second-generation folk singer and storyteller raised in Chicago by George and Gerry Armstrong, often called "the mom and pop" of the Chicago folk music scene. She appears on numerous recordings and has performed all over the world, including South Africa where she was privileged to open for Nelson Mandela's acceptance speech of a world peace award during the 1999 Parliament of the World's Religions. Joseph Campbell was a close family friend of the Armstrongs when Rebecca was growing up, and he encouraged Rebecca and Gerry to tour a program of Myths to Live By in the Chicagoland schools, which they did for many years. After Campbell's untimely death, Rebecca founded The Joseph Campbell Society in Chicago where she hosted monthly gatherings to discuss the work of the late mythologist. Meanwhile, Campbell's widow, Jean Erdman, and his editor and friend, Robert Walter, had started the Joseph Campbell Foundation with the goal of getting into print the posthumous writings. Rebecca was asked to join the Foundation and turn it into a membership-based organization. For the next 12 years she worked with JCF spearheading the international outreach program, visiting and nurturing the dozens of local study groups in places as far away as Malaysia, Lithuania and Brazil, Ecuador and Germany. She worked on behalf of the Campbell Foundation to create programs at each of the Parliaments of World's Religions in Chicago ('93), Capetown, South Africa ('99) and Barcelona, Spain ('04). In addition to being one of the interviewees in Pat Solomon's film, "Finding Joe." Rebecca has been a keynote speaker in many conferences that focus on mythology, including "Mythic Journeys" at The Center for the Mythic Imagination in Atlanta, "Celebrating the Mythic Life" at the Center for Symbolic Studies in New York, "Mythological Europe Revisited" in La Fratta, Italy for Arnhem Institute for the Arts, "The Grail" with Jean Houston in Santa Barbara, and the annual "Mythological Toolbox" at Esalen Institute. Rebecca has degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School, Meadville-Lombard (the Unitarian-Universalist seminary) and a doctorate from the Chicago Theological Seminary. She served in two UU churches before striking out on her own as a freelance minister with an ecumenical urban-based ministry. She teaches religion, philosophy and ethics at DePaul University and Indiana University, and continues to work as a wedding minister and counselor. Campbell's injunction to Follow Your Bliss has become almost a household phrase, yet very few really comprehend the depth and power of those three words. Having worked with the mythic texts and the Campbellian approach for over thirty years, Rebecca has created some clear and workable paths for groups and individuals to come closer to that reality for themselves. Her approach uses dreams, the awareness of synchronicity, art, poetry, ritual and Socratic dialogue to help others enter the path of bliss. You can read more of her ideas at her online blog, In-Spires.net.