From my earliest memories I have always enjoyed learning. This joy was connected to both reading and writing. When I was nine or ten, my father, not prone to buying any of us gifts, one evening gave me a Scripto fountain pen, along with five translucent cartridges that showed the ink level in them. When one ran out, I just punctured another one on to the pen and kept going.
I was so excited about this gift that I sat on the arm of a living room chair and wrote out a short story involving my two brothers and me on an adventure. I believe my writing life had its genesis on that arm of the chair by the front window of our living room. I found that the act of creating something new, something that had not existed before, gave me a sense of both power and pleasure. I have spent the last 52 years in one form of a classroom or another, reading, writing and speaking from the arm of that original chair.
If I were to sketch a quick portrait of who I am, in addition to being a brother, husband, father and grandfather, I would put it in the following form:
Sharing learning that leads to a deeper understanding, to a greater depth of consciousness of who and what I am
Loving language in the way that words play off of one another to create a world that did not exist before
Cultivating a mythopoetic consciousness that is creative, mysterious and unfathomable
Willingness to regularly risk something new
Studying the power of analogy, metaphor, symbol to open up and relate worlds to one another that might not otherwise seem to be connected
Engaging the sheer wonder of a poem, a painting, a sculpture, a musical composition, or a journey in the world to places never before visited
Celebrating the dignity of others
Cultivating a monastic, meditative life through monastic retreats as well as spiritual readings from many traditions
Being generous towards others
Developing an attitude of being relaxed, receptive and open to what a given day might reveal
Cultivating a sense of gratefulness for what I have been blessed with
Willingness to let go of what is no longer useful, functional or constructive in my life
Entertaining the ideas of others, which can create new inroads to becoming more aware of what I believe and why
Cultivating my abilities as a reader/writer as forms of imaginal journeying by noticing where an idea, an image, an intuition might lead
Discerning the poetic sense inherent in all people, things and situations
Reflecting on something to the point that its own form begins to emerge
This thumbnail sketch will give you, reader, a sense of who I am as I reflect on myself in this introduction.