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(0)N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
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If you have never been inside of a prison, there are things you will not know about the community there. You may guess at them, but that is not the same. What it feels like. What it sounds like. What goes on there; these all define portions of what it is. These definitions, or parameters of life inside, come to you quite viscerally. You feel them in and through your skin before you actually give word or shape to understanding them. You sense before...
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When we stand in the presence of the natural world of creation, something very powerful occurs. Our heart senses a raw and vital connection between ourselves and the handiwork of God revealed in the trees and rivers. Our eye catches some small detail and we are opened up to union with the world around us and to the Creator of that world. It does not take a magnificent vista; it could be a snowdrop or the sound of the wind. Our lives are informed by...
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If compromise and disappointment have a home, it is midlife. Here, suffering is like breathing. Longing is like dreaming. Standing midstream in the abrasive forces of life, author N. Thomas Johnson-Medland has learned to wade through the erosion and entropy of failure and incompleteness. And yet, in spite of these massive forces attempting to wear down the very vitality that sustains life, he has come to abide in the fact that life is amazing, wonder-filled,...
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Having grown up in the shadow of the Bomb and having provided supportive care to post-Cold War generations of children and their parents (both in crisis), I have seen a lot of distrust and instability in people--individually and in communities. I have seen how the shadow of impending doom can rewrite a way that people live.
This distrust and instability is not a personal issue. It is a sign and symptom of having lived in a time when the imagination...
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We are nomads. We are all nomads. We are all nomad singing our lives into the night. Our lives arise, melodies and syncopated rhythms giving way to meanings and tellings. Shadows, echoes, and flickerings. Hints, mumblings, and innuendo.
Some of the stanzas are whispers and others are loud, slow dirges. Some we sing alone. Others are call and response. We rarely sing together (all of us at once and in the same place), but we do. From time to time....
6) Duende: Odes of Intimacy and Desire for the Shadow Punctuated with Images of Illusion and Reflection
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Duende is that place in us where the two halves of our life are conjoined. It is the place where we go down into the self and gather up that opposing force to our immediate nature. It involves the undoing of the 'pretending-everything-is-okay-mechanism' in us and it is an overall waking up to the forces of conflict in life and actually mustering a strength to make abiding choices. Many throughout time have likened this awaking process to dreams and...
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The poems and pictures that have been collected here are prompts toward leaning into the places you have been and become. Clearly, every doorway you have crossed over and every window you have gazed yourself through have become woven into the fabric of the you that is now holding this place as here and now. The you that is here has moved through immense passages. They are all inside of you now.
Reach back and in and set yourself free to bathe in all...
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Rivers are not only about themselves and the way they curve and cut across landscapes and time, but about an overall geology of the soul that goes on in each life- all life. Carrying things into our lives and away from our lives is just one of the mysteries of rivers and the tributaries that build them. These poems of life and living in the precincts of the Delaware River and her tributaries underscore the relationship that we have with the wetness,...