The Process & The Path Duane Toops

Recently, the awesome folks over at the Tattooed Buddha offered me an opportunity to review a book called The Dharma of Poetry by John Brehm. The subject matter of this book is something very personal for me and so I leapt at the chance to write a review.

This certainly isn't the first time I've written for the Tattooed Buddha, but it was still an absolute joy to do so again. 

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Shout out to my Patrons and Supporters:

Jim Martin

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Julianna Minotty




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A couple weeks ago I posted an audio version of poem I wrote called "Abide". Someone of you seemed to like it. I really enjoy spoken word poetry and listening to poetry readings, so I thought I'd try another. Hope you like it!

I dig my heels deep and hard into the pulse and pace of a pulmonary valve bursting wide
I was born with the restless heart rate of a runner
I was born running
This pavement hears my pleas
It bears the full weight of all my angst and agony without relenting
It reaches up and pulls me into peace
An embrace as solid as the concrete that calls me home to someplace unknown
I was born running
I dig my heels hard and deep into the pulse that runs in search of poetry and my pace quickens into a prayer

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I can be a lot. Perhaps, I crave a kind of simple living because I've subconsciously convinced myself that if I can just minimiz the things I possess then maybe I can minimize the things that possess me. Yet, I've found that no matter how bare my cupboard is made to be, internally I'm still a cluster-fuck of complexity and disarray that not even Marie Kondo can tidy up and clear away.

I harbor a quiet intensity. I can have an overwhelmingly large and looming energy. It be more than some can handle, and more than most would want to. I can be isolated, solemn, severe, distant, and closed-off. I'm slow to warm and difficult to connect with. I'm ferociously passionate in my involvement with the things I care about, and I throw myself fully and fervently into them. And in most of my relationships I have either been too much or not enough.

I'm brutally aware of my foibles and I continue to do the work of trying to smooth-out, or at least dull-down, the serrated edges of myself. Yes, I can be better. Yes, I can do better. But, my efforts to improve will also require a degree of acceptance. There are parts of myself in need of repair, but some of these places of damage and discontent are also places of depth and divinity. There are shattered places in who I am that, in the light of awareness and acceptance, are also the consecrated ground of hallowed shrines. In these places the shards of past failures become holy objects, the remnants of who I havr been are sacred relics. As Cheryl Strayed explains, this is "the temple I built in my obliterated place."

The solemnity of my cold and quiet distance may create the appearance of someone disassociative, but come closer and you'll discover that this analytical silence provides me with a keen ability to listen, closely and deeply. My brokenness may mean that my heart is cracked , but that also means that is is wide and ever-open. The weight of my concern is heavy and burdensome indeed, but within the burden is the breadth and depth of an expanding empathy. The pitch of the black that envelops me is uncomfortable and consuming. There are few who are willing to peer into the darkness with an un-averted gaze. Many recoil from the mystery and ambiguity of the dark, but, as John O' Donohue says, "There is an inner depth and texture to the darkness that we never notice until we have to negotiate the absence of light." O' Donohue writes that "Something within us knows the darkness more deeply than it knows the light." I'm beginning to understand that my darkness is not a curse. The black bile coursing through my veins is neither a disease, nor a sickness requiring a cure, it is my greatest strength. this darkness is my gift, my gift to the world.

For some, and in some ways, I will always be too much. For other people, and in other places, i will simply never be enough. This kind of acceptance takes time. It requires frailty and fragility. I take deep breaths that test the capacity of my lungs. I breathe out long and hard, making a wish that the sheer force of the exhalation will blow out the candles of my burning worries and fears. This kind of acceptance is often awkward and clumsy, but it helps me to connect with what Neil Gaiman might call a "crooked hopefulness, a "crooked hopefulness" that knows that the crooked place in me naturally bend toward mercy and compassion.



If you liked this episode, consider supporting my work by Buying Me a Coffee

If you'd like to get shout-outs in podcasts, and get behind the scenes access to exclusive Patron only content, check out my Patreon page. 

Shout out to my Patrons and Supporters:

Jim Martin

Ben Bridges

Tarrah Schmidt

Julianna Minotty

Keep Showing up, Keep doing the work, FAIL BOLDLY, and let's make something meaningful.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/duanetoops/support

My friend Daniel Midson Short, whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing on my podcast a year or so ago, left a comment on something I posted recently.

He told me that my persistent creativity was inspiring.

I don't know if it's a matter of persistence or inspiration so much as it is a matter of desperation and survival.

I make things because I must.

I make things because if I stop moving and if I stop making things I'll die.

I make things because I cannot find hope, and making things is the means by which I admit that I cannot find it.

I make things in the abundant lack of hope because if I cannot find hope perhaps I can make it. And if I can make hope then perhaps I can enough to give to others, and perhaps I can even make enough to have a little left over for myself.

Perhaps hope is something that has always been made. Perhaps whenever we find hope it is because it was first made by a maker of things, who in the sheer agony of her hopelessness and despair managed to make some hope. And rather than keep it for herself, she chose instead to hide it in the world, in the hopes that perhaps, in case of emergency, the hands of those who are not as skilled or adept at making hope would find it and then they would have it.

Perhaps makers have always first and foremost been makers of hope. I don't know for sure, but I hope so, and so I make things....



If you enjoyed this podcast, consider supporting my work by Buying Me a Coffee.

Keep showing up, Keep doing the work, FAIL BOLDLY, and let's make something meaningful.

Shout to my Patrons and supporters:

Jim Martin

Ben Bridges

Tarrah Schmidt

Julianna Minotty

If you'd like to get shout-outs in podcast episodes, and behind the scenes access to Patron only content, check out my Patreon page.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/duanetoops/support

Last week I wrote and posted a poem inspired by a friend's sermon. I thought it might be fun or at least interesting to record a video of the poem being read as a spoken word piece. My initial intention was just to post the video on my social media accounts, but then I thought it couldn't hurt to make the audio available as a kind of podcast episode. So here it is, hope you like it.

If you enjoyed this poem, podcast, thing, consider supporting my work by Buying Me a Coffee.

Keep showing up, Keep doing the work, FAIL BOLDLY, and let's make something meaningful.

Shout to my Patrons and supporters:

Jim Martin

Ben Bridges

Tarrah Schmidt

Julianna Minotty

If you'd like to get shout-outs in podcast episodes, and behind the scenes access to Patron only content, check out my Patreon page.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/duanetoops/support

In the previous podcast episode I talked about a book I had been sent to review called Learning to Be by Juanita Campbell Rasmus. I'm still reading my way through the book, and struggling to do so honestly. But, I wanted to share a few more thoughts that have occurred to me during the process of working on it.

If you'd like to read the transcript of the episode you can find it here.

If you enjoyed the episode, consider supporting my work by Buying Me a Coffee.

Shout out to my Patrons and supporters:

Ben Bridges

Jim Martin

Tarah Schmidt 

Julianna Minotty

If you'd like to get shout outs in podcasts and behind the scenes accesses to Patron only content consider supporting me on Patreon.

Keep showing up, Keep doing the work, FAIL BOLDLY, and let's make something meaningful.


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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/duanetoops/support