Showing results by narrator "Michael Williams" in All Categories

A Stranger’s Story is based on one of the many intriguing, sometimes heartwarming and sometimes not, but always emotionally rich memories of John J.J. Batiste, Sr. He was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1913 to father Eraste and mother Elizabeth. This story takes place circa 1942 when John was traveling to Vancouver, Washington, to start a job in the shipyards in support of the war efforts. It reveals John’s faith, his efforts to share it to support a stranger, and that stranger’s demonstration of what is meant by free will.

Exploring the see-saw tension between frustration and faith, between the paralysis of despondency and the vitality of hope, between the inevitability of dread and the surges of joy, The Lovely Sight of Ithaca strives to document the travail in attempting to walk the "steep and narrow path" of a spiritual life. Though interspersed with occasional light verse, the poems of this volume speak heavily on love, loneliness, longing, despair, insanity, Divinity, serenity, and triumph.