Parables from the Heart Land Series

In the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien, Madeleine L'Engle and C.S. Lewis, Roger Robbennolt has fashioned the collection children's stories for adults. In recounting childhod with a expiriences as "autobiographical mythologies," Robbennolt offers a place of refuge where the child within us can find healing. Sharply hpned images weave together laughter and tears to both amuse and call forth compassion and a fuller insight into the human condition. During his life as a performer and minister, Robbennolt regularly told the stories of Gletha the Goatlady aloud to audiences of children. In print, the adventures and misadventures of a young boy in Minnesota, 1942, touch on the universally human need to feel whole.   Roger Robbennolt (1934-2004) grew up in Northern Minnesota, later travelling the country as a carnival barker. He graduated from Hamline Univesity in St. Paul with degrees in philosophy and literature, late studying at Columbia University and Oberlin College of Theology. He became a minister in 1963, and served churches in Oberlin Ohio, Tampa, Pasedena,  andWalla Walla Washington, always co-pastoring with his wife Pat. They retired to Pleasant Hill Tennessee. This e-book was prepared by Phillip Jones with great gratitude to Tom Turkle, and Catherine Owers at Ave Maria Press, and to Pat. All proceeds from this e-book will be donated to the Cumberland County Playhouse, where Roger loved attending performances. His regular reviews of CCP shows were his last published writing.

Tales of Hermit Uncle John continues the "autobiographical mythology" of the popular and acclaimed Tales of Gletha the Goatlady. Young Roger's brutal father and frightened mother move away from northern Minnesota, away from the environs of the mysterious goatlady. The battered boy is now befriended by another outcast, a war-shattered yet wise old man. Like Gletha these children's stories for adults offer a place of healing and refuge for the wounded child within each of us. The joy, humor and healing tears encountered in these tales not only touch the heart, they have the power to bring us directly into charged sacred space, a space of "closeness, caring and deep-running mystery."

The incense of sacred smoke blended with the wind's soft wail and Tony Great Turtle's high-pitched harmonica chanting to massage a battered boy's spirit. The ancient figure silhouetted on the tip of Shaman's Point had battled his own "dark star people" in the process of receiving his sacred name and uncovering his true identity. The aging, ageless shaman now becomes a hole in the fabric of the beyond through which the boy, Rog, hears his own true name. He guides the young man on the doorstep of adulthood through his own "vision quest" to discover the dignity and divinity at the depths of his soul.   Tony Great Turtle teaches Rog to "breathe in the stars" to over come his rage at his abusive father. He helps Rog to see that he is doing his own Sun Dance, his own process of maturing, which is to be not only his source of inner strength but also his ground for becoming a healer and hope-bringer. While introducing Rog, and the reader, to the richness of Native American spirituality, it opens him and us to the heart of the Christian mystery inherent in his and our life experiences. Roger Robbennolt, author of Tales of Gletha, the Goatlady and Tales of Hermit Uncle John, presents finely crafted stories that entertain as well as afford spiritual insight and a vision of hope. In clear, direct images that are powerful and expansive he provides a model, so needed in our contemporary culture, for confronting the pressing issues of abuse with forgiveness, compassion and inner strength.

An author is led to a deserted seashore where he struggles to get onto paper the story of his youth - of a fourteen year old who flees the ravages of the abuse of his mentally ill father and finds refuge in the "Scartown" family of Blind Ben See's Carnival of Wonders. In a pattern of Christ's passion, he begins a journey through his own souls darkness. He faces into scars of adolescence, challenging, hi to open to his wounds without succumbing to self destruction or self-pity - and arrives at "something like forgiveness". In the process he makes his heart a container for transforming suffering into joy - escorting the reader along a similar path. While intended for mature youth and adults, these are not simply tales of pain, but of promise; they skillfully take us into realms of hope, healing and humor. They teach us that underneath the scarring, people are sacred - are of fantastic worth - and that no situation need destroy us.