Category: Biographical Essays and Musings

A Long Way Up: Reflections on Memoir

Maedv O’Hlfearnain Some of my fondest childhood memories are those of my father and me. He was lanky and handsome, his form topped by a thatch of thick black hair. I was his sidekick,  and we were travelers, he and I, pioneers, wending through the small of time. My father was a funny man, a …

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Of Air and Breath

“Breathing dreams like air”. ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby The world is a tiny place now, as each of us folds in on ourselves. There’s a dislodging, perhaps, from sensibility. Like Alice peering through the Looking Glass, we are prone to illusion, to falling into a boondoggle of thought and action. It’s a dangerous time. …

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Present; Forward, in a Poem

Margot Heffernan, MLS, has an entry in the book Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution: Christ-Orpheus (Volume Three 2019)

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings   Words, I love them more as I get older. They, like ancestors, pull me; assembling, as visitation; gathering around midnight. And they, outfitted in the garb of ancient kin, are sitting; close. …

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Keeper of Faith (Or, God Doesn’t Care if You Wear Birkenstocks)

“Go where your best prayers take you.” ― Frederick Buechner   My mother’s name was Evelyn, and she was a storyteller, an artful historian with a gift for gab. Her memory my companion, still, is the fabric that shaped her voice, and mine. Evelyn, my mother, mom, ma, mommy, and, nanny, in the end, was …

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Redemption

The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection. – Kay Ryan, poet   To be human is to embrace memory, or to grasp recollection the way a child squeezes a rubber ball in his tiny, clenched fist. Memory. It’s cornerstone, isn’t it? Bedrock, owned. Coveted. …

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