American poet, author & priest (1940-2020)
Funerals are the rituals we create to help us face the reality of death, to give us a way of expressing our response to that reality with other persons, and to protect us from the full impact of the meaning of death for ourselves. Some funerals fulfill these functions beautifully. Others fail.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
Life Is Goodbye, Life is Hello
The soul has to learn how to respond when bad weather comes, as well as sudden bliss.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"Interview with Alla Renée Bozarth about Writing and Poetry"
My nose is a bridge
between East and West.
My little eye is a wink from God.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"Facing the Lightning Stroke--Double-Sighted Mantra"
I enjoy the plunge into the Unknown that happens with poetry. The composing process is a little dangerous, risky, exciting. It makes me flush all over. It comes up from somewhere under the earth through my soles, or hits like lightning. I must be responding to it erotically, to the process itself, for I love the surrender to it, the tending of it, the engagement of all my experience and senses, thought and feeling, but also the need to stretch beyond myself all the time, open a door to my core being and say, "Yes, I'm here. Take me. I'm yours for as long as you need me."
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"Interview with Alla Renée Bozarth about Writing and Poetry"
Prose is sending poets to prison.
Poetry is the poet in prison secretly
composing poems by heart,
going right on with the truth.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"What is the Difference Between Poetry and Prose?"
The sensual and spiritual are the same energy playing at different speeds, like poetry and dance.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"God Is a Verb", The Divine Mosaic
We need to begin by recognizing the validity and value of our own experience for the corporate good. Contrary to the distorted view of theology often communicated by our teachers in the past, our own experience is relevant to the theology of the whole community. If our theological understanding has no connection with lived experience, it has no validation of its own and becomes part of the dead weight that burdens us instead of the meaningful context that illuminates our lives.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"God Is a Verb", The Divine Mosaic
Dreams have always impressed me as spontaneous works of art, produced by the unconscious parts of the psyche with breathtaking clarity. Our dreams are a valid expression of spirituality, for they tell of the life of the soul, as do our waking fantasies, images, and collective myths.
ALLA BOZARTH-CAMPBELL
"God Is a Verb", The Divine Mosaic