Rocco Maiolo's Ramblings and Musings

I've been thinking about writing this blog for a while now, but I've hesitated because writing it means not only facing attitudes I have that I'm not proud of, it also means baring my soul to my 15 followers... and random people from Kirksvill Missouri? and Kristiansand, Vest-Agder -- really? According to Feejit, I guess so. First some background information: The church I attend runs a 24-7 homeless shelter. We've been at it for several years during which time we've helped countless people by giving meals, beds and clothing. We've also worked closely with outside agencies to help with everything from social services to education, rehab, recovery and the list goes on. The "Shelter", as we call it at Southridge Community Church, is the most singular thing that has defined us in our community. When we say we attend Southridge, invariably the response is, "Oh ya; aren't you the guys who run the homeless shelter?" Having said all this, much to...

I’ve just finished reading The Church of Irresistible Influence . Several things in this book resonated with what’s been going on in my world. First of all, let me clarify something: Little Rock, the church that Robert Lewis the author pastors, is a mega-church. I attend what some would consider a “mega-church” and I love it. We run a 24-7 homeless shelter out of one site; we partner with a children’s organization out of another site in a desire to minister to the “orphans and widows”, biblically, not literally, speaking; and out of our third site, our anchor cause is caring for the elderly – the site is in the vicinity of several senior homes. Our staff is wonderful. They're both incredibly gifted and humble. They model a life of Christ-centredness and they challenge us to do likewise. Having said all of that, I will neither defend nor criticize the concept of the mega-church. In fact, that’s my first point. Church – wake up! Let’s stop criticizing each other. Actually, it’s not...

In three days I'm about to start teaching a whole new crop of high school kids the craft of writing. This will be around the twentieth time. 20 X 25... that's 500 students. That's a humbling thought because every time prior to meeting my new students, I feel that I'm not qualified to teach them. I do write and I have been published professionally (as an educator) and as a freelancer in real magazines and periodicals, but -- lest it sounds like I'm exaggerating -- my total published pieces are around 10. Maybe a dozen but definitely not twenty. When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. I read this book from Scholastic Press (I think): The Mystery of the White Oak. Not a famous book by any stretch. I'm sure it's been long out of print. Years ago, I Googled it. It took me a lot of fancy Boolean search logic before I finally found it. Anyhow, it was the first chapter book I read if you don't include Bobby Coon by Thorton Burgess. Interesting sto...

My wife will tell you that I'm a very unemotional person. When our kids were little and the Disney cartoon Beauty and the Beast had just come out, she nicknamed me "Beast"; my son who was born shortly after the movie came out on video -- and who saw it about a hundred times -- was lovingly nicknamed "Beast Jr" by his mother. All this is to say, that I don't cry much. Although, I have to tell you, I did a lot of throat clearing the first time I saw Beauty and the Beast, Free Willy and Homeward Bound. Well, in the last several years, I've cried at several scenes in books: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, and Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stow The first book, I can't tell you about because it would give away a serious spoiler. Do yourself a favour: Read it. Especially if you're a male. It'll make you ashamed of our gender and wish you were a better man (pardon the cliche). The sec...

Great Quotes From Jack Kerouac's On the Road "Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child, believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome, grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life."- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 13 "The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death."- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 4 "Our final excited joy in talking and living to the blank tranced end of all innumerable riotous angelic particulars that had been lurking in our souls all our lives."- Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 5 “You don’t die enough to cry.” Part 3,...

Sie и Io we speak two different Γλώσσες How to talk to you love you hold your hurt like tea in a cup but you are so far a way

there’s an attic in my head and it sifts time – the stairs leading there creak like forgotten (and now recalled) ghosts: equivocating apparitions that might mean me well but I’ll never know; I evict them from the attic in my head before their echoes die (I imagine that) each echo like a well-meaning curate goes back to the parsonage to intercede on my behalf and later returns in stealth to occupy its previous station there are mirrors and bird cages and hymnals and wardrobes and painted work horses and drafts and forgotten dreams in the attic in my head I think the ghosts live among these things one day I will speak to the ghosts of these things but not today.