Roots and Wings: Gifts from Parents

By Charles C. Finn

Few things go deeper than relationships with parents, or are more complex. And as children become adults and their parents move inexorably towards decline and death, the complexity only deepens even as a primordial simplicity reemerges.

While the reflections in these poems are of course personal, they touch on things universal. Many besides me have struggled with ambivalence towards their parents, and all of us, unless the natural order is reversed, have to live through the fiery crucible of our parents dying.

Come learn of the man from whom I learned stability, integrity, roots; come learn of the woman who opened me to beauty, empathy, wings. Ponder in the process whence might have come your own grounding and soaring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477266793

Charles C. Finn

Finn spent ten years in the Society of Jesus after graduating from high school in Cincinnati. With degrees in literature and psychology from Chicago’s Loyola University, he taught high school and then became a mental health counselor before relocating to Virginia with his wife in 1979. He lives near Fincastle with his family and commutes to nearby Roanoke where he is a licensed professional counselor. Among Finn’s writings is the internationally-known poem “Please Hear What I’m Not Saying.” His published works, which can be found on his website (www.poetrybycharlescfinn.com), include the following: Circle of Grace: In Praise of Months and Seasons Natural Highs: An Invitation to Wonder For the Mystically Inclined Contemplatively Sweet: Slow-Down Poems to Ponder Earthtalks: Conjectures on the Spirit Journey The Elixir of Air: Unguessed Gifts of Addiction Deep Joy, Steep Challenge: 365 Poems on Parenting Earth Brother Jesus: Musings Free of Dogma Embraced It Will Serve You: Encounters with Death If a Child, Why Not a Cosmos? Lovesongs to Earth and Evolution Fuel for War: Patriotic Entrancement Earth Pleasures: Pets, Plants, Trees and Rain Ithaca is the Journey: A Personal Odyssey Steppingstones to the Civil War: Slavery Integral to Each Aging Liberal Nostalgic for Vision Empathy is the Key: Toward a Civil War Healing Gentle Warrior John Yungblut: Guide on the Mystic’s Journey Full Heart Singing: Letters and Poems to a Girlchild The Mastery of the Thing! Transcendence in Counseling and Sports Crafting Soul into Words: a Poet Sings of the Journey Please Hear What I’m Not Saying: a Poem’s Reach Around the World John Yungblut: Passing the Mystical Torch (a Pendle Hill pamphlet) All of Finn’s writings relate to the spirit journey. His own has been grounded in Catholicism and nourished by Jesuit, Taoist, Native American, Creation-Centered, and Quaker spiritualities.

Book preview

Roots and Wings:

Gifts from Parents

by Charles C. Finn

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AuthorHouse™

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© 2012 Charles C. Finn. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/10/12

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6680-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6679-3 (e)

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Part I: Roots

How Good He Once Was

Just So I Could Play

When the Page Can’t be Turned

Really So Few?

Either Way They Will be Poignant

Sacrificial

May It Help to Hear

Bright Angel Waiting

Two Songs Returning

Facing the Reddening West

Incongruous

When Sitting with One Dying and Denying

Both Less and More

Hurry Serves Only to Bury

Hard Getting Started

Both Principled to the Core

On Puns and My Father

Always There

Is That So?

Perhaps Where He Needs to Be

This Time There’s No Denying

Filling to the Brim

Give Us a Break

Grounded

Bond Unbreakable

My Father Leaves Me Rich

Can It Be Time Already?

The Web for Us Life Has Been Weaving

Some Such Welcoming

It Will Not Find Him Alone

The Five of Us

Miracle Gift from the Blue

Burnishing

May I Manage Something More

Mysteriously Enlarged

Beginnings

Encircled

Beneficiary Yet

Not Unlike Tears

Just to Hear the Two of Them

How Painful It Must Have Been

Too Much Love to Keep His Grip

Wishing I Had to Rack My Brain

He Endures in Me

Like Father, Like Son

Part II: Wings

Wisdom Born of Scars

Even Were I Shorn of It

Consecration

O No, Carroll

Prayer of Two Sons