From the Belly of the Whale: Poems of the Male Soul

By N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

Men have been spit up onto shore by whales and great fish since the beginning of time. This has been going on for forever; perhaps, even longer than forever. This may be true.
It may also be true that men have spit whales and great fish up onto shore since the beginning of time. This has also been going on or forever; perhaps, even longer than forever. Which of these happened first, I cannot say. Who knows; who can say?
Regardless, before being spit up on land both men and fish sat idly by inside the bellies of their captors, ruminating on their fate-wondering what it all meant-what it all means. Men and fish and everything alive wonder about life, and how they fit into it and it into them; as much as they are able to wonder. Some men I have met seem to wonder less than some fish I have met. Who knows; who can say?
Our lives are about wondering: wondering about our lives. Each and every living thing yearns toward growth. This longing is nothing but an eternal search, an eternal wondering about everything that is. At some point we lose the beginning into the end; and what came first is dissolved into the ongoing process. Fish then man, or man then fish, no one can say which came first. All we know is that we are held captive, we ruminate, and then we are spit out into a rebirth.
Our mythic journeys as men are like this. Sometimes you cannot tell which came first, the idea that you are a man and that you should do a certain thing because of that; or the doing of a certain thing and then later realizing or deciding that you did it because you are a man. Which came first the fish or the man? You cannot be sure and when you think you have become sure, things shift.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: May 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781621893875

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland is an end-of-life specialist and doula. He is the author of Wayfaring Stranger; River Bending; Coming Back Home; In the Same Place; Bathed in Abrasion; Bridges, Paths, and Waters: Dirt, Sky, and Mountains; Cairn-Space; Entering the Stream; Along the Road; From the Belly of the Whale; Danse Macabre; Feed My Sheep: Lead My Sheep; Windows and Doors; For the Beauty of the Earth; Duende; and Turning Within. He lives a stone's throw from the Susquehanna River in Columbia, Pennsylvania-just outside Lancaster-with his wife, Glinda. Tom and Glinda have two adult sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel. Reach him here

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From the Belly of the Whale

Poems of the Male Soul

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland

From the Belly of the Whale

Poems of the Male Soul

Copyright ©

2011

N. Thomas Johnson-Medland. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

The Poems

Yosemite at Fifty

This book is dedicated to all of the male-mothers in my life. To all the men that taught me how to birth my own male soul: Thomas Merton, Bhagawan Nityananda, Baba Muktananda, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Rumi, Lao-Tzu, Robert Bly, Sam Keen, John Lee, Coleman Barks, Robert Hass, Christopher Bursk, and Richard Rohr. To my dear and lifelong friends Mark Robbins, Glenn Walsh, Jim McGovern, John Kurki, and Joachim Cotsonis without you fine men I have no past worth mentioning. You guys were and still are a part of my lifeline. To my father, who put me in touch with the father-wound in me; and pointed me toward my own soul-wound. To my brother Glenn Medland who helped me survive the dark-side of our childhood home with his keen sense of humor and love. And, to my sons, Zachary Aidan and Josiah Gabriel, who have taught me more about being a father than any son should be allowed to teach: male-mothers in their own rite. Finally, to all men searching for something more than the television and the remote, may you stand up, build a fire and tell the tales of the male soul—to other men.

"What our senses perceive is but the jutting edge of what is deeply hidden. Extending over into the invisible, the things of this world stand in secret contact with that which no eye has ever perceived.

There is no particular that is detached from universal meaning. What appears to be a center to the eye is but a point on the periphery around another center."

—Abraham Joshua Heschel,

The Mystical Element in Judaism

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

—John Muir

Introduction

Men have been spit up onto shore by whales and great fish since the beginning of time. This has been going on for forever; perhaps, even longer than forever. This may be true.

It may also be true that men have spit whales and great fish up onto shore since the beginning of time. This has also been going on for forever; perhaps, even longer than forever. Which of these happened first, I cannot say. Who knows; who can say?

Regardless, before being spit up on land both men and fish sat idly by inside the bellies of their captors, ruminating on their fate—wondering what it all meant—what it all means. Men and fish and everything alive wonder about life, and how they fit into it and it into them; as much as they are able to wonder. Some men I have met seem to wonder less than some fish I have met. Who knows; who can say?

Our lives are about wondering: wondering about our lives. Each and every living thing yearns toward growth. This longing is nothing but an eternal search, an eternal wondering about everything that is. At some point we lose the beginning into the end; and what came first is dissolved into the ongoing process. Fish then man, or man then fish, no one can say which came first. All we know is that we are held captive, we ruminate, and then we are spit out into a rebirth.

Our mythic journeys as men are like this. Sometimes you cannot tell which came first, the idea that you are a man and that you should do