And he loves to read. He loves the whisper of the pages and the way his fingertips catch on rough paper, the pour of the words up from the leaves, through soft light, into his eyes, the mute voice in his ears.
Conversations in the flesh are the first drafts toward the later conversations of the mind, where words and ideas are sorted and elaborated, recast.
The way to love someone is to lightly run your finger over that person’s soul until you find a crack, and then gently pour your love into that crack.
I have learned to like myself for the first time and to have some serenity.
I am discovering that in trying to find God’s will and the shape of the Christian life I have begun an adventure so great that its total completion will always be ahead.
I remember when I was a little boy my father didn’t love me; he couldn’t. He loved my older brother but he couldn’t love me somehow, at least not in a way I could understand it.
Memories must enter the bloodstream, must churn awhile through the heart’s mill, must be crushed and polished, be nearly forgotten or cling like burs to other stories before they spill forth in purple patterns, shapes of small bones and worm rot, shapes of clouds and the spaces between leaves.
Intimacy, as I am using it, is sharing my reality with you.
A lot of us have jobs where we need to give people structure but that is different from controlling.
The problem is that this speeded-up life and stress in America causes us to cut off our feelings, so we are out of touch with our reality.
I grew up and I became very successful at what I did as a young man. I became a work addict because this was the only way I could get any relief from this pain.
Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.
The writing of poetry is a chancy business, it’s currency solitude and loss, its tools coffee and too much wine, its hours midnight, dawn, and dusk, and unlike other trade the hours asleep are not time off.
The primary symptom of a controller is denial, that is I can’t see its symptoms in myself.
A spiritual person is also in touch with his or her own reality, feelings and thoughts, and the reality of the people around him or her, not projecting on them.
A forest is mystery but the desert is truth. Life pared to the bone.
I am six feet tall. I am not supposed to be afraid.
I am too old to think.
I am deeply a part of the problem for which Christ died.