04.18.07
Terry Wallace’s Sparrow Seed Available From Amazon
I’m glad I was wise enough to pre-order Sparrow Seed. I’ve now had almost two weeks to savor it. And it is wonderful. I wish I had time to write a more complete review.
These poems, based on the life of Francis of Assisi, are powerful and beautiful, and are so even in their ugly moments, as in “The One Who Thought Nothing of Money”:
You may think the penance he gave extreme,
perhaps mean, even downright cruel:
to kneel in the road with the coin
in my lips and thrust it in dung,…
It was only with my knees in the dust
that I saw my world, a little dung heap
and in the heart of it, placed by my own
soiled lips, the coin. It was then that I rose
and smiled and said “Brothers, I did this gladly.”
Terry Wallace (T.H.S. Wallace when he writes) has been the mainstay of the New Foundation Fellowship for a couple of decades. In writing and in person, Terry has the endearing quality (endearing especially in someone with a gift for words), of saying no more than he needs to say. Some of his spare words in ministry, spoken at NFF gatherings, will be with me as long as I have a working mind. These poems likewise.
Sparrow Seed was published by Friends United Press. I hear it’s their first-ever effort to publish a book intended for an audience beyond Quakerdom. I hope it succeeds.
The book is available from Amazon.com. If you wanted to buy it direct from Friends United Press (more money might go to them and/or to Terry) you could email them and ask how.
Bill Samuel said,
April 24, 2007 at 11:56 am
I was surprised to see your comment about this book being FUP’s “first-ever effort to publish a book intended for an audience beyond Quakerism.” The Howard Thurman books they have published appeal to a larger Christian audience, and the bulk of the sales are to non-Quakers. They have been the financial bedrock of FUP for a very long time.
maxhansen said,
April 24, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I got the information from Terry, but I may have distorted it. Perhaps he was only pointing out that FUP hoped for a wider audience, and I might have added the notion that it was their first such attempt.
Thanks for the correction, Bill.