Hello

Before I begin posting next week, I thought it might be interesting to some to know how this all came about. As you know from my other pages, poetry is not my forte. In fact, it's nothing I know anything about. So how did all this come into being?

As it happens, this is not about poetry. This is about the human spirit. And that's something I know a bit about. A series of coincedences caused it all to come together. Our family had suffered the loss of a beloved son far too earliy in his young and promising life. It was devastating and I was at a very low point in my own life, not knowing how to really go on. At the time, I was translating diaries and other documents related to the Mennonites during the Russian revolution and the first years of communism. In these stories I came to know the almost super-human achievements of some of these people against insurmountable odds. The only explanation was the overwhelming power of the human spirit. I was in awe of the tenacity with which these people, both men and women clung to and called forth their spirit to carry them through impossible odds, never bowing to their oppressors - not even once. I must admit to feeling a little small for allowing myself to wallow in my own grief.

Just at that time I received a number of sketches - doodles, really, from the daughter of a friend of ours. They were abstracts of her musings that struck me to be manifestations of different aspects of the human spirit but had no words to express them.

So the words began to flow from my pen, almost by themselves. They were very dark at first, expressing self-doubt, pain, and hopelesness but as they progressed, delving ever more into the different facets of the spirit, became bolder, more confident, more assertive. By the time I had completed the fifth book, I knew I was at the place where the people I had written about were. I was now able to allow the precious memories we had shared with our son to come alive and to take them to me as part of my own spirit. They have never left me., not even for a day. I am enriched beyond measure.

I wanted to share this and all the books with you. Hopefully I'll be able to start posting them weekly, starting next week. I have also made these into an audio book which is even more compelling than the printed word. As soon as it is mastered, it will be available at Sunshine Records.