Charles Finn: Ithaca Is The Journey

Ithaca is the Journey is the story of poet Charlie Finn's evolution from being a born-and-bred-Catholic to being a Quaker who embraces the new cosmology and all of its theological implications. The story is told in poetry and prose, with many references to other readings. Here is an excerpt from a chapter called "Anniversaries of Spirit":

Maybe the question can be better put, do we have any private anniversaries of spirit? Our other anniversaries celebrate a person, community, nation, or whatever. What about events of the spirit in our lives that involved no other--affairs of the heart, if you will, between each of us and the ground of our being? One of the things that got me thinking along this line was learning that what many Native Americans had emblazoned on their shields were breathtaking breakthroughs of the spirit. It was like they carried their coat of arms with them, but what they felt most deserved tribute was not pedigree of family lineage or conquest of war but conquest of spirit, visitation by spirit, often relating to vision quest or sun dance or great dream. And these shields were not painted with symbol and color so much to tell the world of these great inner events as to show gratitude to the spirit world on the one hand and, on the other, to help the bearer himself remember.

Ithaca Is The Journey: A Personal Odyssey by Charles C. Finn

TELL US THE STORY OF YOUR JOURNEY