This Is David Staples

I recently participated in a poetry workshop at our church. I'm not a poet. I have no desire to be a poet. I am not even a big fan of poetry, unless we are talking about songs. I think I got turned off to poetry when we covered it in English class, and my teachers would tell me my interpretation of a poem was wrong. How can it be wrong? I read it; that's what I got out of it. Different people can get different things out of poetry. So why did I go to the poetry workshop? Well, our pastor told me that I was going. She's been encouraging me in my writing, and she felt this would be a good place for me to develop skills or get practice. I didn't have a good argument for that.   One thing that came up during the sessions is that I gravitate more towards prose poetry. Our sessions were led by Ray McManus - a very gifted poet and a professor at UofSC.  He has a new book that just came out, which I am excited to read. The Last Saturday in America . He pointed out multiple tim...

The grand experiment is over. Giving up fear for Lent is done. Now I can go back to being a sniveling coward.  I figured that I should wrap up the experience by evaluating it, like a postmortem on a sports season that recently ended. For the most part, I succeeded in posting. I ended up with 36 posts over the course of 44 days. There were a few days missed, mostly due to illness and water damage. But those generated their own posts! Self-generating content. I wrote 100,000+ words across those posts.  As far as the purpose of the protect goes, I would have to say there was success as well. I was trying to get to the point where I wasn’t afraid to post. There were several elements to this, which I guess were met with varying levels of success. I needed to be able to post for myself, even if nobody else cared. I think I did that. I found myself stressing when a couple of posts weren’t read much   (if  at all), until I reminded myself of why I was doing this. So even if ...

I’m going to say something here that has the potential to really rub some people the wrong way. I hate Easter. Before you show up at my door with pitchforks and torches, let me explain. I don’t hate what Easter represents. I’m all for that. Celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Great stuff. I hate what that day has become. And, no, this isn’t going to be another Christian bemoaning the Easter Bunny and candy and all of that. I’m actually talking about what Easter has become in the Church. That’s why I hate the day.  I’ve spent most of my life in church. I’ve been everything from a disgruntled child being forced to come to a weary staff member. I’ve seen so many different approaches to Easter - good and bad. I’ve been a part of so many Easter activities. I’ve been the one responsible for some very cringy components of the Easter season. So I’m not saying I’m innocent in this whole process. I’m saying that right now - where I am in life - I’m disgusted by Easter.  When you work...

I’ve mentioned a term several times during the course of this whole project that may not be familiar to you. It is a fairly new concept to me, as well. It took me a long time to recognize it for what it was and be comfortable in labeling it as such. This is the concept of Spiritual Abuse. At the outset of this piece, I’m going to reference a book that was very helpful to me as I explored this.  The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse  by David Johnson and others opened my eyes as I read multiple stories that sounded much like my own. I also was going through this with the help of my therapist. I have feeling that some of you have been a victim of spiritual abuse. I know that this is an awkward topic, as anything labeled “abuse”  always is. But I believe that shining light on problems is the way to solve them, not continuing to bury them under the rug. That all being said, I am not a mental health professional. I’m just a person who has been through some shit who wants to help...

Water is really strange. Over half of a person should be water. Over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is water. A person will only live about three days without water. But that same life giving, life sustaining substance is one of the most destructive forces on the planet. It is insidious, relentless. It cares nothing for wealth or status, racial or economic backgrounds. It laughs at the efforts made to control it, makes a mockery of brilliant engineers.  I grew up just a couple of miles away from the ocean. Frequently, news stories would run about the effects erosion was having on Palm Beach. The sand was retreating. Homes were in danger of falling into the encroaching sea. Hurricanes were a regular threat for people in that area of the land, although each year without a direct hit created a kind of rebellious idiocy - thinking that the residents there were somehow invincible. It only took one Andrew or Matthew to disprove that way of thinking. Even with all of the massive storms...