Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Beyond Me: Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life
    Beyond Me: Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life
    Beyond Me: Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life
    Ebook251 pages2 hours

    Beyond Me: Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life

    By Carroll E. Arkema and Donald R. Ferrell

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Beyond Me seeks to capture and convey the wonder, mystery, and healing power of the Divine Spirit and its activity in human beings, life, and relationships. This Divine Presence is often felt or glimpsed as Mystery--beyond us, yet within us--which grabs our attention and pulls us into a deeper and fuller exploration of what life and human existence is all about. As an ordained Presbyterian minister serving as a Pastoral Psychotherapist, Carroll E. Arkema is especially thrilled and fascinated to notice and then capture in his poems the congruency between psychodynamics, spiritual growth, and scriptural stories. His interdisciplinary perspective illuminates the complexity of the divine/human relationship, tracing how people change, heal, and are sanctified, while also resisting such change and growth. Personal experiences and scriptural accounts throw light on each other, and Arkema shows poetry to be a format capable of holding and integrating both.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateApr 24, 2014
    ISBN9781630872335
    Beyond Me: Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life
    Author

    Carroll E. Arkema

    Carroll E. Arkema is an ordained Presbyterian minister (Presbytery of New York City), licensed as a psychoanalyst and as a marriage and family therapist. He was on the faculty at Blanton-Peale for sixteen years, teaching and supervising other therapists. This is his fourth book of poems to be published.

    Related to Beyond Me

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 23, 2020

      I’d been out of the hospital following (let’s call it) treatment for COVID-19 about a month. My hospital ward of 50 patients had one oxygen concentrator. Despite my blood-oxygen saturation levels of 90%, that device wasn’t coming my way anytime soon.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Saving Grace of Mary Oliver

      Jan 22, 2019

      Oliver’s queer identity and search for meaning provided the subtle underpinning for much of her work and we—in search of understanding, comfort, fortitude—often saw ourselves and our questions reflected in it. The post The Saving Grace of Mary Oliver

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Pained Intuition and a Palpable Longing: Katie Ford on Theology, Poetry, and the Unknowable

      Sep 13, 2018

      If You Have to Go, the new collection of poems by Katie Ford, is a book that conjures powers of possession. I feel that way about all of her books: Her poems bring me to a mystical plane somewhere between language and life. I’m left shaken. Her willi

      17 min read

    • Article

      Beyond “Survival Of The Fittest”

      Oct 15, 2021

      If you learned about Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in school, most likely it was presented as a straightforward explanation for how species have evolved to become what they are today. Individuals with different traits competed, and the stronge

      4 min read

    • Article

      Writing From The Edge

      May 1, 2019

      One outreaches language in poetry when the inseeing elements of consciousness ask the unseen of life to come forward. My aim has been to unseat what we assume about time, about the verities of love and death, of the consciousness of those other senti

      9 min read

    • Article

      Vagrant & Vulnerable

      Aug 16, 2017

      Vagrant & Vulnerable
      12 min read

    • Article

      On Writing Poems Facing Into The Broken World

      Mar 1, 2020

      Kaveh Akbar and Jane Hirshfield have been in a running e-mail conversation since January 2016, when Akbar first contacted Hirshfield about doing an interview in his Divedapper series, before his first, widely acclaimed book, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Al

      16 min read

    • Article

      Harold Bloom’s Immortality

      Oct 16, 2019

      Harold Bloom’s Immortality
      4 min read

    • Article

      Prayer Consists of Attention: On Reading as a Spiritual Practice

      May 9, 2022

      I realized that all words, even those contained in secular literature, have the potential to become prayers. The post Prayer Consists of Attention: On Reading as a Spiritual Practice appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Arinze Ifeakandu

      Jun 15, 2022

      Arinze Ifeakandu
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Dark Side of Awe

      Jan 29, 2024

      The Dark Side of Awe
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry Of Perseverance

      Aug 15, 2018

      The Poetry Of Perseverance
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side Of Burning

      Oct 10, 2018

      The Other Side Of Burning
      11 min read

    • Article

      Love Is Not a Destination: The Millions Interviews Kaveh Akbar

      Jul 21, 2021

      Without some physiological sublimation of the inert font into a living poem—whether via breath or the movement of ocular muscles along a line, fingers across Braille—the poem remains ink on a page. If a poem augurs any holiness, it begins in the body

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Other Side of Burning

      Apr 12, 2017

      The Other Side of Burning
      11 min read

    • Article

      Man of Science, Man of Faith

      Sep 22, 2017

      Man of Science, Man of Faith
      14 min read

    • Article

      VAGRANT & VULNERABLE

      Aug 16, 2017

      VAGRANT & VULNERABLE
      11 min read

    • Article

      On Apocalyptic Poetry

      Jun 25, 2018

      On Apocalyptic Poetry
      14 min read

    • Article

      Of Faith and Tragedy

      Dec 3, 2018

      Ecco, 235 pp., $27.99 “WHY RELIGION, OF ALL THINGS?” a confident young physicist asks the young Elaine Hiesey, while she is pursuing her graduate studies at Harvard. “Why not something that has an impact in the real world?” His question is, for her,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Heart To Heart

      Jan 24, 2023

      Heart To Heart
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Beyond Me

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Beyond Me - Carroll E. Arkema

      Panic

      Through rolling Time’s interstices,

      Which I thought neat and tightly sewn,

      Sheer Panic pops—or is it Void?—

      And rips a ragged hole so large

      That Panic’s all there is.

      Breath won’t come, I cannot breathe!

      Except for short sharp anxious gasps.

      Past and future are no more

      The Now is nothing either,

      Is death the only out? Please end!

      But wait, I live!

      I’m not in charge, I need not be,

      Of breath and body rhythm.

      Unsteady, though.

      I search for sense

      To make of where I’ve been.

      My life is not my own, I see.

      My breath’s a gift to me.

      It’s not for me to make Time flow.

      I’m not secure in any Now,

      And Void is always nigh.

      What Peace I have

      Is when I rest

      In Source beyond my I,

      And seek to live in harmony

      With Source who lives through me.

      The Panic is a wake-up call

      To see if I’m on track,

      Remembering that I’m not in charge

      Of getting born nor back.

      I live in Time a little while;

      It need not be intact.

      I’m held by grace, unending Love;

      E’en midst my fears, I can relax.

      A man named Enoch walked with God

      Until, we read, "he was no more

      Because God took him."¹ Void’s redefined!

      As Life with God forevermore.

      As Time ticks on now, day by day,

      The Void I feared now reminds me

      That when I walk and talk with God

      I do and do not cease to be.

      1. The Holy Bible (NRSV), Genesis

      5

      :

      24

      .

      Pastoral Formation in the Congregation

      The Elders are gathered in their Meeting Room,

      Eight of the twelve of them.

      Sunday worship is due to start soon.

      At five minutes till, the Pastor comes in.

      As he enters the room, they all rise

      In a decades-old greeting tradition.

      This Pastor is new here, still ill at ease,

      Made more so by this old-fashioned custom.

      Is it me you guys are standing for? asks he.

      You men don’t need to stand up for me.

      He graduated in the Eighties from Seminary,

      And is more comfortable relating casually.

      But he gives off an air of superiority,

      A self-centeredness of which he’s not aware;

      Unable to acknowledge his insecurity,

      He compensates with a casual flair.

      But almost all of these Elders are farmers,

      They’re quite used to smelling manure.

      A certain amount of it is harmless,

      But a big pile of it is hard to ignore.

      After weeks of these same protestations,

      The discomfort increased on both sides.

      The Elders respected his education;

      His disrespect of their wisdom was not wise.

      They sensed that he was caught up in himself,

      That his modesty was actually a disguise

      For inner doubts about his spiritual health,

      And a willfulness he wouldn’t recognize.

      Unresolved tension continued to increase;

      And everyone began to fear an outburst.

      Then one Sunday they heard a still small voice,

      Verifying the trope that the last shall be first.²

      "It’s not you that we’re rising for, Pastor;

      It’s for the role that you’re sent here to fill."

      The Spirit was speaking through Arie Lanser:

      The whole room became profoundly still.

      The tension immediately disappeared,

      But Arie continued to speak;

      The Spirit was empowering each word,

      Through Arie’s voice, which was otherwise weak.

      "You’re the one who leads us in worship,

      You preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,

      You’re set apart and ordained to God’s service;

      That’s the reason—not just for you—we all rise."

      Arie was a thin, diminutive man,

      Not a man with a big booming voice.

      We’re often much clearer that the Spirit’s at hand

      By the irony of the Spirit’s human choice.

      Wise is suspicion of a charismatic man;

      He appeals to the ideal in us all.

      We can lose ourselves in his animation,

      And forget that the Spirit’s in us all.

      Pastor’s ordination had been self-ordination:

      At the center was his ego, not God;

      But he was haunted by his own imperfection,

      Which he tried hard to deny but could not.

      He believed God wanted him to be perfect

      Before using him, so he tried hard to hide

      His inadequacies, but then all he had left

      Was false modesty and a self-deluding pride.

      He’d thus set himself up to be desolate,

      Cut off from other humans and God.

      The real God didn’t expect him to be perfect,

      But to be humble and empowered by God.

      What Arie offered him was the gift of new life:

      God’s presence as mediated through words,

      And a roomful of men channeling love,

      Reassuring him he could serve as he was.

      So the Pastor was freed from his

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1