Dust and Ashes Tapa dura - 2010

In the wake of excessive evil--the Holocaust, genocide in Africa, tsunamis in Indonesia, terrorism, earthquakes, and floods--must one surrender belief in a good God? The poems in this volume, honest and reverent, arose from the struggle to answer that question with an emphatic "No." They exhibit the tension that also exists in the Bible where the expression "Dust and Ashes" occurs. When Abraham questioned God's justice involving the wholesale destruction of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and an aggrieved Job responded to speeches from a whirlwind, their status as mortals gave rise to different approaches, boldness in one, humility in the other. Following their examples and the voice of dissenters within much of Scripture, these poems chronicle the journey of a lonely "man of faith," the agony and ecstasy of one who refuses to abandon belief in God despite much evidence that brings it into question. They discover the Sacred in Nature, a book written by the finger of God, and they lovingly reflect on biblical texts, a human record of encounter with the Sublime.