Beyond Me

Poems about Spirit in Scripture, Psychotherapy, and Life

Carroll E. Arkema

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625645388
  9781498269360
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630872335
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

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.

Something That’s Just Mine?
or God’s Not Even Like That

“Damn it!

Can’t I have something

That’s just mine?”

I felt stricken

By the pain in his voice

More than the curse.

Some fifty years later

I can still conjure up

The shock in my gut:

The nascent recognition

That my provider Dad

Had needs of his own;

That those delicious

Bite-size Milky Way bars

In the refrigerator drawer

Weren’t automatically

For me; that he, he

Wasn’t only for me.

Shock, yes, and loss:

They felt taken away,

He seemed further away.

His verbal outburst

Over candy bars

Opened the abyss

Of existential isolation:

I was suddenly alone:

Had lost my innocence,

Had a hole in my gut,

A new-found guilt.

I felt indicted.

My inward protest

Of innocence, unvoiced,

Was undone by his pain.

But he didn’t hit me

This time. He used words.

He held back his arm.

He endured some pain,

Expressed some in words,

Held what remained.

This too was a change:

Less physical contact,

Words bridged the gap.

The gap, yes, the gap.

I had to give back

Not candy bars, but work,

To pay my own way,

Carry my own weight:

This was the new state.

My worth was my own now,

No longer tied to his.

What now means love?

No longer enmeshed,

With my value assured,

Which I hadn’t had to earn.

More on my own now,

I knew good and evil:

I’d eaten the apple.

In the sweat of his brow

D...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Panic
• Pastoral Formation in the Congregation
• Twelve-Year-Old Face, Holy Heart
• David, Goliath, and Psychotherapy
• Death on the Farm and The Riddle of Samson
• Wild Bill Took Down Our Barn, or The End of My Childhood
• Crack in the Clock Case
• Grandpa Lost an Arm and Wrestled with the Devil, or Was It the Lord?
• Uncle Charlie’s Funeral
• Kingdom of Heaven: Still At Hand?
• God Stammers with Longing, Then Shows Sacrificial Love
• Something That’s Just Mine? or God’s Not Even Like That
• Broken Ankle, Touched, and Healed
• Emptiness
• Benjy Suffers Life, and Is There a Point?
• Quetzal at El Triunfo
• As Her Pastor
• Hands