Gateway House Mission Statement
Where sacred community gathers to embody love in action.
Gateway House is dedicated to building sacred community through ceremony, performance, prayer, music, food and fire. We are committed to the evolution of consciousness through the nurturance of curiosity and imagination. We believe in the power of community to embody love in action. We joyfully work, play and pray together, supporting each other’s creativity, compassion, activism and service to our communities. Our spiritual practice is a multi faith weave of diverse ritual traditions, centered around the Celtic Turn of the Wheel, celebrating the Summer & Winter Solstices, Vernal & Autumnal Equinoxes as well as the Cross Quarter days of Halloween, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas.
Overview
In Rosendale, NY, (Mid Hudson Valley) IgniVox has created a venue, Gateway House, right off the Rosendale Trestle on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, a popular, recreational and historic thoroughfare with dramatic geography. Gateway House produces Celtic Turn of the Wheel events, celebrating the Summer & Winter Solstices, Vernal & Autumnal Equinoxes as well as the Cross Quarter days of Halloween, Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas. The high holy days of Christmas and Easter are also celebrated. Our events include performative arts and ceremonies, community networking, food, and fire, followed by performances off our Gateway House stage.
We host workshops in a variety of spiritual & performative modalities including Family Constellations, Playback Theater, and Sacred Circle Dance as well provide a venue for personal celebrations, music rehearsal & jams. In the last three years, Gateway House has produced and hosted over 40 events, including ‘Honoring Loss; Covid; a Gathering’, a mandala making & performance ceremony to honor those who have died during Covid and ‘Snap, Tap & Clap’, a Children’s WInter Celebration.
A Growing Audience
During Covid times, we continued to hold small gatherings, keeping the flame alive as people so deeply needed a locale in which to stay connected. Our last Imbolc event–on the coldest day of winter–was warmed by three fires! We have provided live streaming for a number of local musicians. Over the last two years, our audience is growing and our mission is thriving. We regularly have seventy plus people attending our events with new people coming each time. Gateway House has a core visioning group which meets regularly. We are beginning a choir as well as regular childrens’ programming. A new initiative is in the works to begin a friendly visitor network for those who need support during illness or crisis care.
Gateway House has provided production fundraising, coaching services as well as a performing venue for many local musicians, dancers, circus artisans, storytellers and fire performers. Some describe it’s work as being a ‘Portal to the People’. Our audience is intergenerational with elders, young people and children; multi-faith with people from a diversity of spiritual backgrounds; regionally broad with attendees from both sides of the Hudson River as well as New York City. As a ceremonialist, Espiscopal priest and producer, my work has long been engaged with the sacred in music, nature and community. Now this enterprise of Gateway House is blooming as an ongoing expression of IgniVox’s mission in the Mid Hudson Valley.