Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
provide all that was needed. He lived this way for 15 years. In
1998 he moved to Washington State where he eventually married
Marilyn Strong, and produced a large new body of art. Marilyn
and Jerry's charming Whidbey Island home is now filled with his
unique interactive sculptures and paintings.
Jerry also built a 40-foot meditation tower on his property, which
is featured along with his story in a book by Laura Chester called
Holy Personal. Jerry's own book is entitled The Inspired Heart:
An Artist's Journey of Transformation. Jerry, what's up with that
40-foot meditation tower, you getting closer to God?
JERRY WENNSTROM: I'm trying.
TRIP: I know you don't need a 40-foot tower to get up next to
God, do you?
JERRY WENNSTROM: I don't know.
TRIP: What was the inspiration for building it so tall?
JERRY WENNSTROM: Well the initial inspiration, my wife
always wanted a meditation space, and there was this cistern out
in our yard, and so I decided to build it on top of that high. And
then I got the idea to build it like a church steeple. So inside it's
only eight foot square, but it goes up 40 feet. So it was a gift for
my wife when we first got married.
TRIP: Well speaking of her, we're going to spend most of the hour
talking about your incredible life. But I didn't know whether
Marilyn would be joining us today, I thought she would be. So I
have a question to start off with about her. When you met her she
was coming off of a painful divorce, and you were coming off years
of celibacy. That sounds like the antithesis of an e-harmony
relationship. So what were the hidden seeds of romance in that
unusual beginning?
276