Click on the book cover to download a PDF of the first chapter or purchase the book on-line.

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Maybe it sounds cliché, but this book began with a defined nudge, a whisper, a call.  I was awakening to God in new ways and loving the grace and freedom I had found through my exploration of the true and the false self.  Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, Brennan Manning—these guys helped me to confront my own mask and begin to come out the other side.  

Thanksgiving week 1996, I spent several days alone on a prayer retreat in a Wisconsin cabin.  It was a sweet time.  Afterwards, I felt compelled to type up some of my journal notes from that retreat.  As I did so, I knew something else was brewing, something bigger.  But I was reluctant, embarrassed almost.  I was a poet, not a prose writer.  Poets are good at plumbing the depths of the moment—constructing prose with all its movements and facets can be difficult.  Plus, I didn’t have a big interest in learning the ropes of a new genre.  

This project took shape over the next six years.  My ideas became fully formed along with the text—it was an organic process.  I experienced the presence of God in palpable ways as the ideas grew into a coherent whole.  This book became an outgrowth of my belovedness in God and, in a way, a spiritual autobiography.  Even now, there’s something very precious, very intimate, about this book to me.

Word Becoming Flesh (PDF) Conversations, Spring 2005

Community of the Broken: Finding Intimacy Through Poverty (PDF) Conversations, Fall 2005

The Kingdom is for the Broken: Keeping Church Doors Open for Ragamuffins (PDF) Conversations, Spring 2006