Mara Lynn Keller

1944 - 2023

Mara Lynn Keller
April 10, 1944 - December 23, 2023
Mara Lynn Keller, Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, died of cancer the day after the Winter Solstice 2023. She was born in Cleveland to Mary Virginia Weisell Keller and Karl Howard Keller, the younger sister of Karyn Sue Keller Dickson. The family moved to Connecticut and then to Maryland on Chesapeake Bay. After earning a B.A. in Religion from Gettysburg College and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University, Keller taught at the University of California at Riverside, San Francisco State University, the International Women's Studies Institute, and CIIS, a teaching career spanning 51 years of inspiration and mentoring, while contributing articles and presentations to numerous journals and symposia. She was a distinguished spiritual feminist philosopher, scholar, Goddess thealogian, and passionate advocate of embodied spirituality and multicultural eco-social justice. She believed Freedom of Religion to worship Goddess was a social justice issue. For many years Keller was the Director of the Women's Spirituality Program within the Philosophy and Religion Department at CIIS. She loved friendship, feminism, family, and Greece, which she often visited. Keller was preceded in death by her husband, Bob Spurgeon; and her sister, Karyn. She is survived by her nieces, Deborah Lynn Hamrick and Donna Carol Day; her brother-in-law, Bruce Spurgeon; their families; and her many friends. Her final achievement was to stave off cancer long enough to finish five books that consolidated her research, teaching, and spiritual insights and also to live through her dying in clarity and peace. A tribute to her life will be held on Zoom in the spring. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution to the nonprofit publishing house Keller founded during her final year: Women's Spirituality Studies Press via marinlink.org.
"My name is Mara,
Daughter of Mary
Daughter of Jeannette
Daughter of Mary.
I come to tell the story of
Demeter and Persephone,
Mother-Daughter Goddesses
Beloved in ancient Greece!
Their story, more ancient than any remembers,
lives on in each woman, in some version or another,
touching every child and the life of every man –
we carry Their heartbeats! May Their healing be ours!
The Daughter finds a way to return to Her Mother,
The Mother finds a way to return to Her Daughter.
Demeter and Persephone
Are reunited in joy!"
- Mara Keller, 2022