One Day Late!

For those who have enjoyed my prose, here is a sample of my poetry--one day late for the Winter Solstice .

                                Winter Solstice

As we gather tonight, the longest of the year
We wait expectantly for light to reappear
Burning candles to recall days of greater duration
To see returning light is our anticipation.

Where has it gone? We ask while on this plane
We gather closer as we watch the daylight wane.
This season is the Advent of the time to be
When we will live in light perpetually.

We come from light, we are the light
The darkness now may take its flight.
It is an illusion of this incarnation
This human corner of creation.

We praise the Creator, giver of light
On this brilliant winter solstice night.

The First Review on Amazon.com !

While not a lengthy read, Jairus' Daughter is nonetheless an intriguing one, and it often strangely feels as if it there were many more pages. There is a mystical thread interwoven throughout, although not everyone may sense it in the same manner, if at all. It seems to defy reality in this and other ways, somehow bringing the lives of many people who lived over many decades into the spotlight for only a few brief minutes; yet I was left with the impression that I had spent hours, days, and even decades with them. This interwoven collection of their lives' tales reminded me of the old black and white Twilight Zone television series, which presented brief vignettes--but as timeless glimpses into intimate moments of the most seemingly innocuous people, who were brought up against unanticipated circumstances that marked and changed them. The author's gentle voice is intricate, unordinary, oddly piercing -- yet as if coming from a great distance --- as it is so often is with mystics. I was also somehow strangely reminded of Thornton Wilder's play, "Our Town" as each character steps briefly into the light to show us their hopes and dreams, triumphs and fears, defiance and surrender; then they step away, gone but somehow still sensed somewhere in the wings.

The deeper, vibrant colors of the visible spectrum that glow throughout this book are mainly those that emanate from Sarah, who sees, hears, and feels other dimensions of reality that set her apart from the colorful yet uncompromising existences of family, friends, and even her religious inheritance. This is more than a tale about the New Land of America rising above and eventually overshadowing the Old World, where pre-emigration life was a struggle. Continuing to stay locked into the old ways, Sarah's family never seems to stop struggling to get silent enough to wonder about the underlying mystery of it all, to be consciously confronted by the deepest of life's questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Sarah wonders and asks such things, which sets her apart, and such defiance make others uncomfortable, all the while leading her further on her own road to Damascus. This is the tale of her conversion, one on many levels of awareness and existence.

Besides Sarah, the only others who are able to look at their former earthly existence with new world eyes, thoughts, and even humor, are certain people from Sarah's family who no longer walk the earth. They make appearances as narrators throughout the book, as they look back on their terrestrial lives --- something that may have evaded them when on the earth. Somehow, it seems easier to connect with these individuals of the New World of the Afterlife, for they seem much more alive than the "living." One gets the feeling that these are the people Sarah can connect with, in real ways not possible or even necessarily wanted with her living family members. One misses them when they step back into the shadows of the stage.

So many of the lives in this book are inextricably entangled with one another without their truly knowing it, perhaps because of their very human unwillingness to accept that every person has their own experience and understanding of truth, and that even truth can change in its aspects. Change is not often seen as all that good by them, and Sarah notices this throughout her life as she grows from a little girl to adulthood. Yet somehow she believes "truth expressed is a healthy thing. Truth repressed may be harmful in ways we cannot imagine." But Sarah is also a mystic, and is able to see the moon as something that "never changes ... it is the same moon I watched when I was a child in the city." She comprehends that the moon's light is not its own, and comes from a higher source. Not everyone accepts that their light originates not from them, but from some Higher Source; many may even shield themselves from this Light. Such a realization brings this woman of Jewish descent to accept the Source of her own Light as she understands It--the Christ.

For all its mystical and even sometimes sad undertones, there was something about the writing that was both homey and comforting. This is a book meant to be read a little at a time to savor and absorb, and even to revisit certain parts that somehow seem to transform, looking and sounding different the second time. One wishes that it wouldn't end and that one could follow Sarah as she disappears around the curve in the road, as she departs this world and steps upon the path to the next one.

August Goforth, co-author of The Risen: Dialogues of Love, Grief, & Survival Beyond Death

Remembering

Just listened to a Hay House Radio interview with Wm. Paul Young, the author of "The Shack", remembering that he was the one who inspired me to publish my book. "The Shack" was a work that was written for his family, so they might better understand his concept of God. It was passed around as a Kinko's copy to family and friends and then it was made available to millions of readers.
I am so grateful to him and his work for prodding me on in my own work !