PARTLY BROKEN

  Men don’t like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Step Twelve, The Twelve Step Program In the second to last meeting of the course “Social and Cultural Foundations”, Dr. Butler told us, not once but twice, because some in the class didn’t understand what she said the first time, that “It is not necessary or possible to learn about other cultural groups in the abstract.” It was a concept worth repeating, I believe, because it was exactly this attempt to categorize and somehow “own” knowledge about other cultural groups that most of us in the class had hoped to gain from it. Instead of having a better handle on minority groups, for example, we have learned about the inadequacies of all stere...

  View the music video: https://youtu.be/oVQEtwe9lX4 The soundscape finds us on a busy street where the song of birds competes with honking car horns and idling truck engines. The children at a nearby bus stop chatter among themselves as they enter the familiar yellow vehicle, some scraping their feet on the floor of the bus before taking their seats. It is just another day in a life of education and socialization for this generation. You can hear and feel the curiosity and sense of belonging in the young voices. Nothing special here unless we take the view that all of it is special and important – just as each child and each family member and every relationship is special and important in the grand scheme of things. Gun shots are suddenly fired in the middle of this world, which could easily be the Cincinnati neighborhood of Evanston where two drive-by shootings happened this past week. 39-year-old Yarsellay Sammie Sr. and 16-year-old Javeir Randolph were shot on the...

 Author's Talk: About My Books ALWAYS PARTLY BROKEN and PARTLY BROKEN POEMS  https://youtu.be/UYxn1w7lqw0 Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by  following us »  

The hollow ringing in my ears reminds me of the crickets of summers long passed away. The quiet moments now, though never complete, offer me their strength. In a realm of inner riches, love is always flowing and growing - within and without. And all shall be well, even in this shell full of crickets, there is quiet. * *Photo courtesy of Carole Barnhart.  The poem, on one level, is about my tinnitus.  On another, it is about life. Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by  following us »  

Quotes: Love in action     is a harsh and dreadful thing          compared to love in dreams. Dostoevsky If you see it another way, God will clarify the difficulty for you.   It is important that we continue on our course,  no matter what stage we have reached. A Letter of Paul to the Philipeans 3:15-16 A hole was secretly dug in the back of the family yard.  Into it, a pair of ugly brown plastic glasses were dropped and hurriedly covered over with dirt before anyone could see it.  When questioned the next day, "Where are your glasses?" I could easily lie and say "I don't know.  Maybe they're lost somewhere."  The over-riding concern of those pre-adolescent days was "How will I look?" and "Will I be accepted?"  One would rather be accepted than anything, even if it meant blurring the only vision one had. One would rather be accepted than anything,  even if it meant blurring the only vision one had!!🙈 T...

  The late 1970s had some of the coldest winters ever recorded in the Midwestern part of the country where I grew up. We had days and weeks of wind-chilled temperatures, often below zero. Like my young friends, I adapted well to these conditions. We had free time to burn due to so many days of called-off school, time that we spent sled riding, building snow forts and generally sliding and skating across the frozen landscape. Meanwhile, I kept up with my old habit of hiking alone in the woods and pastures surrounding our suburban neighborhood. One time in particular, I had my sketchbook and journal with me, as usual, in order to record thoughts and images that might occur to me. I was about 16 or 17, still in high school, and several years before I choose to join a monastery to live a contemplative life. The hike took place in the middle of an epic winter snow storm. I started a poem then which I later entitled “Burning Sun”. Burning Sun is basically about a young person seekin...

  The following are revised descriptions of my first two books. It seems that I only understand what I was trying to do with the writing as time passes. ALWAYS PARTLY BROKEN Is he broken, or merely breaking into something new again? Many of us fall in love more than once in our brief lives. Sometimes a former love object, which we thought was safely put to rest, comes alive in us again. Soon, we're wrestling with different versions of ourselves. Raymond Seers, the former Brother Adam, has never been a consistently cautious person. He is a convert back to "normalcy" after his youthful years of reckless, but always earnest, experiments in spiritual-seeking. Now a settled householder and mid-life daydreamer, he cannot seem to forget that he once tried to be a real mystic in a world-famous, monastery. Ghosts of the past haunt his sleep, so much so that he eventually gives himself permission to re-examine the wonder and sense of failure leading to the hard break with his fo...