Welcome to the Off the Page Podcast from Franciscan Media.
This is part two of our podcast with Franciscan priest and poet Father Murray Bodo.
I highly recommend listening to part one if you have not done so already.
Part two picks up after a conversation we had in part one about his journey back to
his own heart as a poet and I then ask him how he got there.
This opens things up to a wonderful conversation around creativity and the origins of some
of his own poetry.
Father Murray is so awesome.
Several times it seemed like we were winding down but then something would be said that
would make him think of another poem that he'd then go digging through his books to
find which would then open up more personal stories from his journey.
So I did take some liberty with the editing here.
No need for you to listen to us flipping through pages or having small talk because we think
things are winding down.
But the conversations we had here were too special to not include.
This was an awesome episode.
So I hope it's as encouraging to you as it was for me.
And again, here is Father Murray Bodo.
How did you reconnect to your heart?
I'm curious.
You know, you mentioned as you're writing, you've become so critical, kind of stuck in
your head.
And then you said something started opening up for you.
I think that's a very relatable experience as well.
Like how did you get back to here?
Well it was an interesting thing.
Simultaneously with studying for my doctorate, I was writing poems and short stories because
that would be the dissertation.
But they were, I was mining and rewriting poems that I had written before.
And there were some new poems there.
But I think what happened is I got beyond all I had learned about the craft of poetry.
And then the love of poetry took over again.
And I was also simultaneously, in the afternoons I was a record, I was typing the stories of
one of our Navajo missionaries about the early years of the friars on the Navajo reservation
at that time.
And so, you know, I'm dealing with story.
I was dealing with stories and that gave me a better handle on story.
But it really started to change when I wrote the little book Juniper, God's Fool, or whatever
it's a brother, friend of Francis, Fool of Christ, or whatever.
I wrote that book and all that world of the heart and the early Franciscan stories came
about and then I was just somehow, I wouldn't say miraculously, but more suddenly than I
thought of that super critical attitude toward my own writing.
And I just let it start coming.
At the same time, I had become a friend of the American poet Denise Levertov, whom I
met through Song of the Sparrow.
I was teaching her poems and I got this letter from her that this book meant so much to her.
And of course, I was teaching the college seminarians at that time, the young friars.
I knew she didn't write that letter because I was teaching her, opening up her poems for
them and I was trying to figure out for three or four days which one of them did it and
to have me answer a letter.
But so, you know, after days of torture and I don't know what else I did, but then none
of them did it.
So I wrote back to her and we then had a correspondence and she stated our friary with us and I visited
her in her home in Seattle.
And so she was the main one that was pulling my poetry out of my head and back into concrete
images that would speak better than what I was trying to preach.
It's kind of heady.
When poetry becomes too cerebral, it just doesn't work for me.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you sharing a little bit about that journey for you because every poem
I've read of yours, I'm truly amazed of your ability for it to come from here.
But it's interesting that there was a journey for you back to that and I'm sure that you've
had to make that journey back again as well.
I did.
I had to remake the journey.
Some of it involved as Rilke, the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to a young
poet emphasizes if you don't have anything to say or think you don't, then go back to
your childhood.
That's when the poems really began to take on a deeper personal dimension.
I wrote quite a few poems about my childhood.
I'm always writing.
I'm still writing about my childhood because those images are very strong.
But that's part of the discipline.
Of course, I'm not in any way putting down my doctoral degree in English because the
geniuses that I was opened up to that I hadn't maybe just peripherally read, Henry James
would be a perfect example.
And I've written a couple of poems of being at his home in Rye Lamb House in England because
it's about a half hour train ride from the Poor Clairs that I always make it a point
to visit on my way back and forth to Italy.
And so he became a huge character in my literary world.
But that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about how to get back into my own world.
One of the well, it's too long a poem, but that might be for somewhere else.
I wrote a poem that I wrote in Rye at Lamb House.
But as you know, I put a couple of new poems in the new edition that's coming out.
Is it this year?
Yeah.
I know I cut you off earlier.
Was there another poem you wanted to read or maybe one of your new ones?
It was going to be this one, but it's because it relates to prayer in another way.
This other one is very personal, very concentrated on the eye in the poem.
And this one is a poem quite recently, this year in my hermitage in Florida, outside of
the hermitage, I got this wonderful bougainvillea bush and it's eternal.
No matter how many times you cut it back, it just gets bigger and better.
So this poem, because it's about a sparrow and the song of the sparrow, a sparrow is
so, I'm building around this a little bit, a sparrow is so important to me for these
reasons, but here it is, in the song of the sparrow, I say there is something ragged and
unfinished about sparrows, yet they have always endeared themselves to me.
There is something Franciscan about their simplicity, their habit-colored feathers and their availability
when other birds hide away in the woods or fly south for the winter.
Now I read that and I say, well, that's me, I'm one of those other birds I go to in the
winter to write in this.
That was my reason for, that's part of the play of poetry.
Yeah, exactly.
I remember seeing it in your little life or whatever.
Okay, so this one is called Green Sparrow in the bougainvillea.
I've been sitting a long time under the bougainvillea.
So far nothing has happened.
Though a green sparrow did perch briefly among the red leaves, then flew to the feeder to
show off his glorious green for me and others who'd seen.
Such surprised performances keep me coming back to sit and wait with no agenda.
Aimless as it seems, waiting is the deepest kind of prayer.
More than birds show up there.
So there's something cerebral about this one.
But still it's saying more than it's saying.
I've been sitting a long time under the bougainvillea.
It used to be a cottonwood tree when I was seven years old.
But I've been sitting under that tree for a long time.
So you make this specific and it covers a lot of territory.
So far nothing has happened.
So it seems.
Although a green sparrow, which are very rare of course, perched briefly among the red leaves,
all that contrast, then flew to the feeder to show off his glorious green for me and
others who'd seen.
It's a very tight poem because it's a sonnet, an Italian sonnet, eight lines and then six.
Such surprised performances keep me coming back to sit and wait with no agenda.
Aimless as it seems, waiting is the deepest kind of prayer.
More than birds show up there.
It's like all those times that I had an agenda and spent most of the prayer on my agenda
for God.
And it's all about me or whatever.
And there are other times when I'm just sitting like here and a green sparrow shows up.
I couldn't thought that up.
If you know or made that happen, it happened because I was there.
The same thing we were talking about earlier.
So that dimension of poetry and also journey and also story.
Story is very important.
And in the new section that I wrote in the song of the sparrow, it begins with journeys.
But it's also about story.
And I see that that's one of the things that another academic degree really made me aware
of our stories.
We're all stories.
And it depends on who's telling them, who is the narrator, what is the story and the
best way to connect to an experience.
I'm talking in terms of art now is often story.
There's a story involved or there's a backstory that's making this thing click for people.
I don't know, this is kind of but just to show you the difference of when this thing
came.
So I'll just read a little bit.
Please.
Yeah.
A summer Sunday evening on the Lakeshore Limited from New York City to Cleveland.
Oh, that's where I was.
I wonder about.
We are passing along the Hudson River at sunset, a red glow on the New Jersey hills across
the river as we approach the tip of Manhattan.
I pray for loved ones as I watch the broad Hudson flat and smooth at this hour.
Like a hammered bronze shield, the river reflects the reddening sky and turns silver as the
glow of the setting sun gradually wanes and the gray light of twilight irons out the red
tints on the water.
We pass Dobbs Ferry just as the sun pops up over a low hill for a few seconds, roughing
the water, rouging the water as if for a festive celebration.
Swiftly we pass Irvington.
For Washington Irving?
The crests of the hills across the Hudson burn as in an Irving tale.
The clouds form fantastic shapes.
Is Sleepy Hollow Cemetery near?
I wonder.
And just as I'm thinking these thoughts, we pass Tarrytown.
And yes, I murmur, here is Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle and the headless horseman.
You see how the journey is because I'm paying attention to it.
Dark hills now, black with a hint of blue where the remaining twilight breaks through.
Idyllic seems an understated word for the magic that light and shadow, red glow and
bronzed river turning to silver and the memory of reading Irving creates.
So what you're seeing related to the story and then you're making your own story.
I reach for color, but I have no art with paint and brush.
I wish I could reach up to a shelf of Irving works and pull down what his word painted
there of black hills and blue as we rush through Austin where mallards root like an escutcheon
on the burnished shield of a Hudson inlet that will bring us into Croton Arden.
And this looking at the things that come up outside the train.
How is it I'm mesmerized here so far from the New Mexico landscape of my youth?
And why is this landscape so congenial, so familiar?
Isn't it because it is already inside me in the words of Irving who made this landscape
a part of my own interior geography through the enchanting power of words like these from
the legend of sleepy of all of them.
I'll read them and because this goes on and on, but I'll just give you a little bit of
Washington Irving.
But so you see this is meditation.
Yes.
In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the shore of the Hudson at the
broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators as the top on
Zay and where they always prudently shortened sale and implored the protection of St. Nicholas
when they crossed there lies a small market town or rural port which by some is called
Greensboro but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarrytown.
It's all those images of your youth of the stories and you know the name was given we
are told in former days by the good housewives of the adjacent country.
I wonder if that's supposed to be county.
Oh my we already sent the book in didn't we?
We may have found that one actually.
I think the proofreader may have found that one.
Oh wonderful.
Because it sounds familiar.
The good wives of the ancient county from the inveterate propensity of their husbands
to linger about the village tavern on market days.
So as I read that and read the beginning of the book this writing is much more sophisticated
than when I first started writing in 1976 and so and a lot of that has come from my
academic richening of my academic background and but it becomes part of them then of who
I am and so one of my favorite things about that poem is you said it earlier it's one
moment yeah it's one moment that you're gazing upon and yet because you're allowing yourself
to become vulnerable to that moment yeah all these things are opening up within you know
stories from your youth things that are already ingrained within you that you didn't realize
were ingrained within you until you're seeing this scene and I mean that's such a beautiful
thing about poetry and your poetry in particular is it and that's prayer too right it's like
hey like that there's something here in this moment and in a lot of times when you give
that moment a chance it does pull you deeper into wonder and in paying attention it's and
sometimes it's disorienting like it's usually not very linear but it's wondrous nonetheless
it's wondrous nonetheless when you were speaking it just reminded me of Robert Frost's definition
of a poem he said it's a momentary it's a momentary pause it's not pause and a momentary
stay against confusion a momentary stay against confusion yeah yeah and and yeah go ahead
and I thought when I first wrote in 76 you know they were saying they said you're going
to put poems in the book nobody reads poems I said no but if they come let me just put
them in and you can take them out if they don't but if they seem to fit but at the same
time I secretly wished in my heart that it was a way to show people that poems can be
read that they're not just for people who read poetry but this little thing speaking
to me call it a poem or prayer whatever you can call that they would no longer shy away
from a book that had poetry in it as well as prose yeah you know so it's all of it
is is a very organic thing you know if you let something unfold you know like if I had
gotten on that train and say well good now I'm going to write something about story and
yeah but I did I didn't know I wasn't doing that I was looking and I was so taken with
what I was looking I just started I like a scribe writing down what I was seeing or hearing
or feeling and that's how that that sort of thing happens yeah and I when I saw that first
piece of writing in summer I was really excited I said I'll I'll write things that will be
a little different than they were the big at the beginning but they'll be the same thing
in another voice or another time of my life here I'm almost 80 when I was writing it I'm
36 37 whatever and so something should have happened in between all of that if that makes
any sense it does it does and it kind of leads to my one of my final questions is is you
reflect on your life that you've spent not only in religious life but your creative life
I'm just curious what have you learned about God or life capital ly for creativity that's
another softball question I mean that is the softball question becoming hardball I think
is what but it it I think what I'm thinking here but but my the first thing that comes
off the top of my head when I look back on my creative life and my life of prayer which
have been joined together from the minute I started writing I think what I'm most aware
of today is how much of our lives is about gift and about not meriting or deserving of
things that happen that are marvelous something happens and it's a gift of God and so I am
much more daring I'm writing a new book of poetry now in just trusting the gift it's
coming from the spirit it's true it's coming from God and just let it come and enjoy it
and be thankful for it and try to make it on the page the Greek word means a maker and
I'm making and the word stanza a stanza of poetry is Italian word stanza it's a room
and I'm I have this empty room when I look at a page and I'm going to put furniture in
there I'm going to rearrange it and all of this so it becomes more of a of everything
coming being a gift and how would it fit in this picture instead of saying well that doesn't
quite fit now so I you know but let it come and then see what the final what the outcome
is of that it's the same thing in prayer if you go in with one intention or you hope that
this is going to be this and all of a sudden it's anything but what you thought it was
going to be and you're trying to be open to it and if you receive it as a gift and then
bless it it will be and so that that's a lot of what I just noticed that about my last
four or five poems have had a lot to do about death and I say now where is that coming from
a young guy like me what is this what is happening here but I wouldn't say well I better not
write that it might take me somewhere I don't want to go and I said why why would I be afraid
to go that's a great gift it's a portal into something that might deepen my love of the
journey all the way to the end and beyond so that's kind of what I I'm kind of so much
aware of right now and and that being so whenever anything comes I mean I practically I'm glad
I'm not a race car driver or something because I'd have to stop the car and write it down
you know I get up in the middle of the night and I write whatever it is because it's a
gift it might never come again and I'm so aware of that I have been my whole life but
not not as not as poignantly as I do now when when something comes I don't say oh I can't
I can't do that I won't have enough years to even do I just say wow what is well look
at this let's see what goes you know and so that is that's been one of the things I've
learned it's beautiful and I've also learned that in one sense my life your life our lives
those who pray my life is a prayer it's becoming a prayer and so is your life and her life
and their lives you know a life lived sincerely with a longing for God is a prayer yes your
life itself and sometimes you you you have the time to pray more deeply or write or dance
or sing or paint or whatever it is but there's more time than others but you're still in
the game you're still the little boy or the little girl who wondered who God is and and
will I ever see God is he an old man is he is it somebody told me the other day her
her little granddaughter who had not the parents of her granddaughter are unchurched so she
or another woman took the little girl to church she said would you like to go and she said
oh yes and so she goes into comes into the church and she said why is that man hanging
up there on that cross who is that and they said well that's Jesus and she said oh no
it's not Jesus is a baby that is her for God you know and of course who God is in each
of our lives is much more expansive and profound and deep than what we could even imagine but
if you've continued to pray and and continue to try to be in a space where God can find
you you you you God God changes yeah for you he's not God of you know God of course is
eternal but that's nice who can connect with that you know it's it's it's how I experience
God now oh I know that God is in my life I know God is touching me here you know sometimes
you can even break into tears and you don't know why you're crying and you could be in
church you could be walking down the street you could be taking a shower you know you
just don't know but there is something that is tremendously important to you that's trying
to break through somehow and tell you that it's there and it wants to make friends with
you somehow or connect with you so it's it's like it's like living in the spirit is living
in the body it's who you are right now I keep over my desk all the time this quote from
one Corinthians Paul 15 to 44 what is sown a physical body is raised a spiritual body
if there is a physical body there is also a spiritual body there are they are one there
are one and so to live in the spirit is to live in your own skin in touch with the spirit
part of who you are I don't know why that touches me so but it does that that's that's
a I see I guess it's because so throughout my life in my own life and in other people's
lives I have seen people trying to become spiritual whatever that means and they're
running away from the body or they are trying to become a spirit or something and they're
trying to ascend upward and God is coming down becoming incarnate and we meet each other
it's so obvious where God is because we're going up and he's scratching his head coming
down he's going to be a baby he is a human being this is the incarnation for Franciscans
is the center of all spirituality the incarnation of God God actually becomes human just like
us except for sin that's what Paul said he knows things you know he sometimes he sounds
like he knows everything but he really is a writer who you say where it's gotta come
from God he knows much and of course he's writing his epistle to the Romans before the
four gospels were even written yeah it's okay he really kind of founded Christianity in
one sense but he found language or language found him you know that's another way of putting
it you know in the beginning was the word but the word became flesh and dwelt among
us you know it's like the all of those all of those things that tend to separate are
not good in my vocabulary separate people separate soul from body separate this from
things which integrate are of God because everything is of God and so to bring all that
together in your life Thomas or not Thomas what's his name John eats writing to his brother
once who lived in Kentucky of all places in America and he was writing to him and he says
that earth or life on earth is a veil of the a le a valley veil of soul making we're learning
to make our souls and it sounds like you don't have a soul you have to make one but there
is something about accepting that gift that you have a soul now what are you going to
do with it and we see the people we say they're great soul what a great soul that person was
it is you know like they have really worked on this gift yes yeah they're they're they're
their wholeness their spirit their body their goodness or whatever and sorry yeah that is
and that makes me think of creativity again where we started you know where it's in the
spiritual life to seems like there is okay yes you are born with the soul but there's
this participatory element to it like you you are making you're creating yes partnering
with someone in that creation to deepen your soul to become more aware of what's already
true within you oh yeah it's just such a that's a good beautiful way to put it that's what
it is it's this cooperation this participatory act of of taking this great gift of you your
unique personality and embracing that and then expanding it by cooperating with God's
grace God's inspiration God's you know and because we you know we we spend our whole
lives people like me and you we spend our whole lives you know trying to see God or
feel God or know where God is when and every day we're meeting him I'm meeting God right
now I don't see any other Christ except you and you're in the screen I can't even get
in there but I know I know you're there in there somewhere but it's that's where we seek
God that's where we become Christ I am sorry you're fine a few years ago I'll I'll I'll
end with this is this is this yeah yeah because I because my voice is going I haven't done
some opera this morning yet to make my opera self anyway I went to Gethsemane Abbey because
of there was this conference there you go you have it between the Trappists and the
Tibetan monks led by the Dalai Lama who was doing a return journey to Merton's grave as
Merton made the journey to see the Dalai Lama when he went to Bangkok when he was where
he died you know that so they were having this conference and I just I had to get there
I didn't know how to lie shields like trying to find a Benedict and have it or anything
I said trying to get into and so I called a friend of my Trappists there Patrick Hart
who had been Merton's secretary and I said how can I possibly get into that conference
and he said well what I'd suggest is through the press go to St. Anthony messenger at that
time the press and say could could could I write an article or something and I have a
press thing too and that's how I got in I wrote a article for the St. Anthony messenger
in a chapter in in my one of my books the landscape of prayer so I'm there and the we
were like in a like almost a balcony but it was kind of raised and then the monks were
down in the arena down here it seemed and we were just listening and observing and one
day I looked up about 1030 in the morning 10 there was a coffee break bathroom break
or whatever they took a break and I was fiddling with something and I looked up and there was
everybody was gone except the Dalai Lama who was sitting down there with the ended up being
his bodyguard on the other side but and I said hmm God wants me to go down I have to
go down there I you know I they'll start coming back as soon as I head down there I know it
but it didn't happen so I got down there I didn't even know what I was going to say but
I said I have to get down there so I went down and came up to him and I said your holiness
would you pray with me that was a total gift I didn't know I was going to say that or what
I was going to do so and he said of course so he sat down he took my hand he was sitting
down I sat down next to him and he took my hand looked into my eyes total silence for
about three minutes I had never felt compassion and love at that level coming from another
human being through his eyes of course he is the in their faith the reincarnation of
the Buddha of compassion so I mean I was so I mean I was just done in I did manage to
get back to me there's more to the story but what I what I just recently I was thinking
about that experience and I never had never asked myself I wonder what he felt coming
from me did he see Christ did he feel my all in being in his presence did he feel my my
love my compassion I didn't think of this but until recently I said because you know
it's always a two-way street in one way or another and I thought wow that's how we are
present to others yes it's by looking with love at somebody and or and if we are making
our souls building our souls we're trying to be Christ like most probably that's what
they'll feel they want to feel evil they won't feel hatred or violence or they will feel
this soul that we've become and I'm using that in quotes you know so and and it was
so strange because I never now this is the way God works because I remember now when
he left there were all the monks were lined up you know like a belt line or something
that you had to run through and his car was at the end down there and his car came in
and and he rolled the window down and he looked at everything and then he looked at me he
looked right at me and I knew that once again I had to go there so I walked through all
those monks said I know they thought I was crazy but I walked through and went right
to the car and and and and he wanted to shake my hand he looked at me again and then he
left but so maybe he saw something too that of himself in me as I saw something of myself
in him and that's that's how that's how we make God presence to one present to one another
so that all the prayer we're doing all the work all the grace all the masses all the
sacraments all this are so that we can be Christ we don't have to say oh I have to turn
Christ on now you know when we're present to someone and that is the error are of the
word sport your openness will your response will be to build a soul that's worthy of the
other whoever that other is it could be somebody who'd like to wring their neck but you're
moved yeah you're moved by Christ to be Christ because that's who you have become and that
was all gift yeah I didn't say it would have gone saying I'll make me into Christ and don't
take don't take too long because I'm gonna have a more the short life or what it happens
in the process of being who we are and with you know at least a minimum of discipline
to try to focus at least once a day on God's love God's goodness God's presence you know
however briefly because it always goes longer if you do brief visits you're gonna have a
lot of visits and you're gonna end and to use your words you're going to long for it
the longing will come and that's what will which will make the difference yeah the moral
of the Dalai Lama story is that st. Anthony messenger needs to give you more trespasses
that they're not what that they what I said the st. Anthony messenger needs to give you
more trespasses more assignments last time they put you on assignment you met the Dalai
Lama tonight oh yeah saying hello Dolly or what but I ended up asking him into pray you
know it's the it's those kinds of happenings in our life and thank you for this opportunity
to talk about the books it's been awesome spirituality and you know I had a real a period
in my life where it started at the seminary where we had teachers who were saying you
know this is a backstory now how was your time oh I'm good yeah I mean I want to be
conscious of your time and your energy but I'm I'm fine I'm I'm all ears for as long
as you want to talk okay well this this then would be the you know like one of them would
say you know you can't you can't this we were teenagers in the mind you can't you can't
have pets and you can't pet animals and dogs and cats and that because it'll arouse your
senses teenagers they're always aroused what they don't need cats and I said no that's
what you know what what were they talking about but I got so scared and I had my Sally
my dog oh god I loved my Sally it was was this said when you were in school I think
I missed something like me I was teach I was a teenager at the high school seminary in
Mount Elk okay gotcha okay gotcha so we got to go home for Christmas both I only got home
because I had to ride a bus so I was home four days and the rest I was three days on
each side on the bus and my dad and I was lying in bed first night and there in my room
and my dog Sally came in and and I was afraid to pet her so what a good dog and then I just
went and then when I came back in the summer she was dead and that kind of spirituality
I fought against that for years you know because they'd got it somehow in my system yeah so
it took me a long time to pull out a ball of that we still have friars and have those
kinds of fears you're young you've got to be careful what you say to young people the
guy was nuts anyway but anyway so that was the thing that I found words for yeah when
I went to Henry James's house because I knew he had these little dogs these little Dotsons
it was really and I might read you the poem but if I can't get this yeah it's a hard
one for me to read but I think it was in the its book is called a far country near poems
new and selected so the new ones were far country near it might been right where I thought
it was you see why they have first lines at the end of collected works and all of them
must not want me to read this poem I don't know or it means at midnight I oh I don't
think that's a very early book visions and revisions it could be in that one or maybe
God really wants you to read the poem because we're we've been playing with these themes
of waiting throughout the whole conversation I have I'm gonna have to work at this exactly
it's a blend of looking at every Sunday with Julian oh that's a fun Julian of Norwich that's
a that's a fun poem but now said go complain to the sea this is very strange it should
be on visiting the home of Henry James here it is I kept looking for on its visiting the
home of Henry James in rye he was called you know by other writers the master so the master
in here is James not Jesus
while visiting the theme of Henry James in rye my dog Sally the Springer spaniel of my
childhood just bounded down the street outside lamb house that's his home and I saw my dog
I mean it was a real dog but just like my dog where I'm reading Denise Lebert off waiting
for Henry James to open the door the master of whom Lebert off writes then I quote her
remember James rehearsing over and over his theme the loss of innocence and the attainment
note by separate note sounding its tone until by accretion a chord resounds of somber understanding
what a summary of James like my dog Sally appearing so many years after my loss of innocence
and me seeing birth and finally understanding not somberly but with a rueful smile that
things recur and we can bless what we dismissed like the childhood dog we outgrew or in my
case gave up or a pseudo God who disappeared years later so that I want to run after someone
else's dog and brace her and say I'm sorry I did not understand lost my innocence to
a false repressive religion that frowned on petting and cuddling animals I now embrace
to refine the innocent God of my childhood gentle Sally hear my prayer as now I enter
James's dining room and walk out in the sunlit garden where I bury you at last in the southwest
corner of James's garden at lamb house where the master buried his own dogs and where these
elegiac lines try to render the tone of the spreading mulberry tree the dog like Sally
and me tones everything and Henry James by picking uses that word over and over again
what is that yeah yeah just you know I thought of that when you were talking about your spirituality
you know fundamentalist and then and you were a creator of the world what what were your
next something all the things you went until you finally read this burn you yeah yeah in
it I appreciate you sharing that story about Sally and reading the poem and it's a beautiful
but also heartbreaking poem but then it's so so crazy for me to think about your journey
of like there was a time when you were afraid to pet this dog you are and yet now all your
poems are so sensory I know it's like it's like you're petting Sally with each poem you
know it's oh boy is that ever true and and that is a good description of my poetry sensory
you know there I try to be anyway because it's all we talked about that there's a spiritual
body there's a physical body if there's a spiritual body you know all of this that is
a part of integration yes there didn't psychological terms but no matter what the terms does the
experience is the same that we achieve a certain amount of integrity in the sense of integration
of all of these seemingly opposing ideas or opposing feelings opposing sites and sounds
or whatever yeah so anyway that I well thank you yeah this has been so fun and I'm glad
I hope you there's something there you can use or if not at least you know it's it's
something you can laugh about and then it moved by from time to time and whatever I'm
sure there's plenty we can use here again that was father Murray Bodo his new book God's
love song the vision of Francis and Claire which he co-authored with Susan st. Singh
is available in the Franciscan media store at shop franciscanmedia.org in the refresh
of song of the sparrow four seasons of prayer will be released August 2024 it's a beautiful
and honest book that really invites readers into the rhythm of a disciplined lifestyle
of prayer even through seasons of life that are filled with waiting if you enjoyed this
conversation I think you'll really enjoy the book huge thanks again to father Murray for
being on the off the page podcast from Franciscan media and thanks as well to father Cyprian
Concilio for providing the music for this episode I encourage you to check his music
out on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music this is Stephen Copeland signing off
peace and all good