Rev Dr Sparky on Real/igion

Tag: Self

  • Why You Don’t Take A “No” From Someone Who Can’t Give A “Yes”

    Typical naysayer. Photo by Ryan Franco on Unsplash And it’s totally okay I wasted a little time today because I forgot the simplest negotiating principle ever: don’t take a “no” from someone in an organization who’s not empowered to say “yes.” It all worked out, but I felt foolish — I should know better than to ask someone to…

  • Madcap Delinquent Prophet on a Scooter

    Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash On taking back your power My new electric scooter arrived last week, and I am already hopelessly in love with it. It’s the stand-up kind — I just step on with one foot, kick off with the other foot, and toggle a power switch that glides me forward. Wind in my hair……

  • From My 40 to Your 14

    Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash reluctant poem for my daughter We are both fourteen, and alsogoing-on-forty-or-more:Both of woman-mind and soul,yet nested still in girls’ wild ways. At fourteen, life is awful promise; nothing certainnothing known.But still she is/we are the sumof all, for best or worse.With womankind, it’s hard to tellthe promise from the curse. At fourteen,…

  • Named After God

    Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash reluctant poetry Tell me now, again, what God’s name is: When prayer wields words like fiery phallic swords; When we must worship towers of bishops,casting out heretics, burning witches; When Eve our mother bears the blame for sin and pain,though bearing all in birth, and bearing all to Adam,just a mudman…

  • I’ve Flunked Traveling

    Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash Thank goodness. Ask anyone what they would do if they had the leisure, and what do they answer? That’s right: “Survey says: Travel!” I’ll bet nine out of ten Americans see themselves traveling the world, broadening their horizons by visiting countries not as great as this one and posting pictures…

  • Smoke and Mirrors

    Photo by Luke Besley on Unsplash reluctant poetry I’ve only espoused one cause in my lifeThe cause of myself. I champion me.My loves and my rages, opinions, and pinions, and ways,My privileged dreams; my unique debris. Precarious hold on the world, that seemed all rightat the time — well-centered in self. No outsideLines to tangle my senses with…

  • I’m Nobody! Who are you?

    sparkPhoto by JR Korpa on Unsplash Are you — Nobody — too? My dear colleagues, fellow writers and readers and spiritual seekers and satirists, the Rev Dr Sparky is having an identity crisis. When a reader recently asked me straight up who I was, it took me aback, though not unpleasantly. I deflected his inquiry with the first lines of…