My name is Ingrid Shafer. I teach interdisicplinary history of global ideas at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, and while I am obviously concerned with providing my students factual building blocks and introducing them to habits of clear thinking, my main emphasis has always been on helping them become caring, compassionate, and responsible human beings. In 1995 I began to design webpages because I believed that the Internet would offer unprecedented opportunities of reaching out to the world and building bridges across the chasms that divide humanity. In addition, web design gave me an opportunity to return to my first love -- my teenage passion for drawing, painting, and calligraphy. For decades, I had dreamed of using art to communicate a sense of beauty and wholeness, of somehow creating "stained glass windows" to symbolize the power of light to overcome darkness and love to conquer indifference and hatred. After all, image and story precede theoretical discourse. I wanted to find ways of evoking faith in the future of humanity by touching people's hearts and spirits and minds. The combination of cyberspace and computer technology is now giving me an opportunity of doing precisely that, complete with 21st century versions of stained glass windows.

I began to build sites for non-profit, humanitarian organizations and a number of my own projects. In December 2000 I set up this domain as a response to those who have seen my pages and have asked me to build a website for them. If you like my pages and want me to work with you, keep in mind that I can only develop and maintain a very small number of websites. Before you even contact me, please, carefully look at my main domain, ecumene.org and its subsidiaries, read the introduction to the site, and be sure you meet the following conditions:

  • Your organization must be demonstrably dedicated to the increased welfare of the earth, including but not limited to its human inhabitants.
  • If your site or domain is to be hosted in my virtual server, I will be the only one with access to modify the site, and no mailbox will be provided. I want to avoid both being spammed and having someone use the domain to send out advertising and other unsolicited messages.
  • All graphic elements will be designed or approved by me. In general, no public-domain, mass-produced graphics can be used.
  • The images, icons, flash movies, and other elements of a website I create are the client's to keep, even if we sever our relationship, provided I am given credit as author, with a link to my site, if they are incorporated in another site.
  • Except for a description of your organization and its goals, no advertisements or links to commercial sites will be allowed.
  • While I will update the content of pages as needed, the designs are inspired by thousands of years of artistic traditions, creatively joined to the potential of contemporary techniques and intended to delight for many years. I hope to develop a few high quality, totally custom-built sites that are immune to the prevalent rage for instant designs, mass-produced, disposable posters, and planned obsolescence in everything from cars to fashion and music. I am tired of books being remaindered a year or two after publication and websites disappearing within months after they were established.
  • You must own the copyright to anything you send to me for publication.
  • Please contact me for fees and explain why you are interested in my work.

Ingrid Shafer
31 December 2000

Text and graphics copyright © 2001 Ingrid H. Shafer