Coral Castles

View this email in your browser

 

June 17, 2019

A poem she wrote has been translated into multiple languages, set to music, and featured in a best-selling book on spirituality and the twelve steps. But until recently, the author of “Breathing Underwater” has been virtually unknown, and the collection containing that famous poem has never been published. Richard Rohr calls it “stunning”; other writers and poets describe Carol Bialock’s debut collection as “brilliant and luminous”; “lighthearted and holy”; “dynamic, immediate, ecstatic”; “a book of love and God ... bursting into bloom.”

Read more about Carol here. We are releasing her book on Carol’s 90th birthday, a week from this coming Friday.

Honestly, the poetry of Carol Bialock is stunning! Her ability to communicate inner states, universal truths, and spiritual depth is unparalleled. What a loss that the world did not discover her earlier!  But it is not too late! – Richard Rohr, OFM, Founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation

Reading Carol Bialock’s poems, I forget to doubt and critique and meddle and complain. Here is a spiritual poetry that offers the reader vivid, dynamic, immediate, ecstatic experience on a human scale. “Dizzy with love and light,” this book is a delight. – Katie Peterson, author of A Piece of Good News

Carol Bialock’s work hums in wise praise of a world hemmed in mystery and wildness. Brilliant and luminous, each poem burns with a quiet, interior light. – Gina Ochsner, author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B.

Carol Bialock’s Coral Castles is a wide and generous door into poetry and joy. These poems offer us a merging of forces that are tangible and full of delight: here we find bone meeting soul, I journeying to We, and the seen fearlessly greeting the unseen. “Go sane,” the poems tell us, “You are the whole, not part…Come home to being world / and galaxy / and universe.” This is a book of love and God in which poet and poem also fuse, bursting into bloom. I want to give it to everyone I know, saying, “Look and see!” – Annie Lighthart, author of Iron String and Lantern

“All you need is a little courage” Carol Bialock declares, and then takes us through image and rhythm on a “trip to the edge of the world” where we encounter sacred mysteries, the heart of the poet, and our own surprising wholeness. This work is lighthearted and holy, whimsical and profound—the fruit of a life spent watching for wonder, the gift of a soul in love with the world. – Bethany Lee, author of The Breath Between

Carol Bialock’s heart is a “huge and lovely land” filled with poems of invitation to the available communion in every moment. They affirm that God is  irresistibly, mysteriously afoot. Sister Carol is not afraid of paradox or the embodied wild experience of the greatest, fierce and Sacred Adventure. She asks us to “let the true Gods out” and to know “we have been in heaven all our lives.” She is a loving companion whispering to us look, listen, touch, right here now, do you love this world? All you need is a little courage, a dash of daring. Take the invitation, read these poems, walk this mystic’s path, join this wise woman awhile. – Peg Edera, author of Love Is Deeper than Distance





 
BARCLAY
PRESS

211 N. Meridian St. #101
Newberg, OR 97132
503.538.9775


www.barclaypress.com
Copyright © 2019 Barclay Press, All rights reserved.


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp

A request

View this email in your browser

 

June 3, 2019

In this morning’s Fruit of the Vine, Dan Cammack tells the story of Eli and Sybil Jones. Early after their marriage, “Eli and Sybil sensed a call to itinerant ministry” that took them across North America and “then to Europe where they ministered among Friends in Ireland and England. The Lord also led them to Liberia, Syria, and Palestine.”

It was in 1869, in Ramallah, Palestine, that the Joneses had an encounter that changed their lives. A young woman “asked Eli to open a school for girls. There was one for boys but none for girls. Her request so moved Eli and Sybil that they gave money to start a day school for girls.” Over the next hundred years, Friends from eleven American yearly meetings served in that school. “The area continues to attract Friends to this day.” 

Dan suggests that the school exists because Eli and Sybil took seriously a request from this young woman they met in Palestine. And Dan asks us to consider what requests Jesus might have us respond to today. Dan also suggests this prayer: “Lord, help me to see, hear, and respond according to your will.” 

This is my prayer today. I hope you’ll join me.

Eric Muhr





 
BARCLAY
PRESS

211 N. Meridian St. #101
Newberg, OR 97132
503.538.9775


www.barclaypress.com
Copyright © 2019 Barclay Press, All rights reserved.


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp

Questions

View this email in your browser

 

May 27, 2019

In this morning’s Fruit of the Vine, Howard Macy points out that Jesus asked a lot of questions. Take the 20th chapter of Luke for example:

  • John’s baptism — was it from heaven, or of human origin?
  • What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?
  • Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”?
  • Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?
  • Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?
  • Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? .... David calls him “Lord.” How then can he be his son?

Howard reminds us that “in Jesus’ time, a common way to learn was to ask the rabbi questions and to engage in the dialogue that followed. Jesus knew that pattern.... Jesus was good with questions.... Jesus was so good with questions,” Howard writes, “that one day he dazzled his antagonists with such a puzzler that ‘from that day forward nobody dared to ask him anything’” (Matthew 22:46, CEB).

But we shouldn’t be afraid. “We can still learn from Jesus by asking questions,” according to Howard. “I’m sure Jesus welcomes our questions.”

Think about what you might want to ask Jesus. After all, if Jesus is present with us, then every moment of every day is an opportunity for conversation, an opening for learning and growth, a chance to ask the questions we’ve been carrying.

Howard offers a prayer for us: “Jesus, through questions and listening, help us learn from you as our Teacher.”

Eric Muhr

PS. You can support the work of collecting, editing, preparing, and sharing each quarter’s Fruit of the Vine – work we’ve been doing at Barclay Press since 1961.





 
BARCLAY
PRESS

211 N. Meridian St. #101
Newberg, OR 97132
503.538.9775


www.barclaypress.com
Copyright © 2019 Barclay Press, All rights reserved.


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp