Author: James McCollum

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-12-27

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1532664915

Follow the author’s odyssey of the mind in his endless search for God and meaning in life, as well as his plea for moral action in the uncertainty, discord, and chaos of a world that appears callous and cruel and is prone to political exploitation of vulnerable people, cultures, and countries of our shared planet. Although the manuscript views organized religion, religious hypocrisy, and social injustice through a microscope, this book is spiritual and life-affirming while recognizing the inherent impermanence of the universe and humanity’s collective and individual imprint. You can read short stories with a nontraditional take on John the Baptist and Jesus; shorter poems dealing with Tourette syndrome, aging, and suicide; religious conformity and hypocrisy in the context of finding a moral compass that guides humans down a path of right actions, responsibility, and compassion in a philosophical essay; and a substantial poem that unfolds a panoramic social and political critic of the American experiment through the dialogue of a dreaming man in successive encounters with Crowfoot, Black Elk, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, Christ, and the Buddha.