In the beginning

Like many, I experienced an adolescence of insecurity with feelings of inadequacy. As I entered adulthood, I compensated for these feelings by throwing myself into work. Relentlessly trying to prove to others (and to myself) that I was good enough, my competitiveness and ambition brought me success in careers in engineering, and later business.

At the age of forty-five, I wanted to change my life and I decided to retire and study theology. I was raised Roman Catholic, but my spiritual life was shallow. During my first year of studies at the Aquinas Institute of Theology, I began receiving the counsel of a spiritual director and participated in The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. It was then that my life and my relationship with God changed profoundly.

I first started writing poems when I was courting my wife, but this expression of my creativity soon became dormant. During a prayer session in 2003 (two years after retirement), my urge to write poetry returned. Since then, more than three hundred poems, prayers, and reflections have come to me.

I am not so much an author or artist as I am a pray-er. The process of writing occurs in the context of prayer, most often during a block of time I have intentionally set aside to pray. When I am moved to write, it always starts with a word or two that opens the door to a sacred space, and then I pick up my pen and write in my notebook. It is an interactive process. It is an act of welcoming and surrendering, giving and receiving.