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Gerald Maclennon
Goodreads Author
Born
in Red Oak, Iowa, USA, The United States
Genre
Influences
Sholem Asch, Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley, James Mischener, Graham Hancock,
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July 2016
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https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomgerald_maclennon
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Gerald Maclennon
I have to get the rest of my life in order. Only then can I see and feel the words forming in my head. Silence is most conducive to creativity.
* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.
Open Letter to Dr Eban Alexander Regarding His Book About Dying and Going to Heaven: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
Upon completion of this book (13 Apr 2017) I didn't know quite what to think of the good doctor's journey into the unknown. It seemed more like hell than it did heaven. I experienced the same feeling of spiritual betrayal that I had after watching director Tim Burton's Beetlejuice (1988) starring Michael Keaton. Such an existential emptiness... I felt sorry for impressionable youth exposed to such
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“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” C.S. Lewis |
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With Nothing But Our Courage: The Loyalist Diary of Mary MacDonald (Dear Canada):
"Youth book that takes me back to my Little House days. As an adult I definitely read with different eyes. As an American, it’s horrifying to think that “we” did this to our own countrymen. "
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With Nothing But Our Courage: The Loyalist Diary of Mary MacDonald (Dear Canada)
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On a website called ultimateflags.com I read about the American rebels who valued freedom more than old loyalties to the English Crown. Here is an exc
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"I just want to say that the last 15 pages of this book are for me worth 50 of the most important and significant books of this century...
I don’t have much to say, except that the greatest grace that a person can live and experience today is surely fo" Read more of this review » |
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"“Marie stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path, like a white night-moth out of the fields. The years seemed to stretch before her like the land...always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning"
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“War is what Homo sapiens do best.”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
“Only God knows the future. When told by doctors in 2014 that cancer could cease function of his mind and body in two years or less, the author experienced a transition. Suddenly all priorities were rearranged in order of their eternal value. Many of those things that seemed so important the day before, became nothing: a grudge was dropped, a hurt forgiven, a threat dismissed, an apprehension set aside, a bucket list reduced to one or two accomplishments prior to death.”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
“Sitting out on the canoe tonight, watching the indigo waters of the South China Sea, I noticed the waxing moon calculating that maybe by the time it is full we’ll be back in the U.S. of A. I shed a few tears for Michael again. I was hoping his ghost would materialize just to let me know there actually is a spiritual realm but no such luck. It was just me, alone. It’s so bizarre. He was here and now… he’s gone. That’s the way it is. We are… and then, we are no more. Two or three loved ones keep our memory alive… and then, they are no more. And we all fade into that massive vapor cloud of forgotten souls. Why were we even here in the first place?
I began to stand up. That’s when I saw it. It entered the night sky from the west and streaked to the east, forming a brilliant but thin arc of flame. A shooting star. A meteorite. Was that my confirmation? I would like to think so.”
― God, Bombs & Viet Nam: Based on the Diary of a 20-Year-Old Navy Enlisted Man in the Vietnam Air War - 1967
I began to stand up. That’s when I saw it. It entered the night sky from the west and streaked to the east, forming a brilliant but thin arc of flame. A shooting star. A meteorite. Was that my confirmation? I would like to think so.”
― God, Bombs & Viet Nam: Based on the Diary of a 20-Year-Old Navy Enlisted Man in the Vietnam Air War - 1967
“We hippies talked of peace and love, and the good men we championed fell because of violence and hatred.”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
“That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and the cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin.”
―
―
“Only God knows the future. When told by doctors in 2014 that cancer could cease function of his mind and body in two years or less, the author experienced a transition. Suddenly all priorities were rearranged in order of their eternal value. Many of those things that seemed so important the day before, became nothing: a grudge was dropped, a hurt forgiven, a threat dismissed, an apprehension set aside, a bucket list reduced to one or two accomplishments prior to death.”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
“Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee -- or to watch out for -- long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer. (109)”
― A Short History of Progress
― A Short History of Progress
“So there we were, in the middle of the night, on our hands and knees with scrub brushes, steel wool, sponges, scouring powder and buckets of water making the old shop look spic and span. We secured from the task at 0400. I should have hit the rack but instead went topside and out to the canoe, the sacred spot where Lieutenant Goldberg and I had sat together contemplating the why's of life. I was saying farewell in my own way. I wanted to experience the Oriskany for the last time on the high seas. It was still dark – the dark that comes just before dawn. The waning moon, merely a fluorescent nail clipping, hung near the horizon. The night air was crisp; the sky a deep, cold black with pinpoints of stars shimmering through the earth’s canopy. Above me was the endless universe; below me, the deep mystical sea. Large undulating swells gently rocked the ship like a babe in its mother’s arms. Mother Ocean. Father Sky.
I meditated upon this new life that I am now obliged to live. I thought about youth. I thought about old age. Apparently bad memories fade away with time and only the moments of goodness and joy remain. Those who are nearing the end of their lives revel in the bliss of yesterday but we the young have this day and tomorrow to contend with. Today, we see the world naked, exposed before our eyes. We see hatred, misery and pain. We find it difficult to live for today. Only the desires for tomorrow’s better world can alleviate the suffering that is today. Only tomorrow can offer us hope that glimmering moments will again materialize. So we continue to exist for a dream, a wish that tomorrow we can say: “This is a day worth living.”
Excerpted from God, Bombs & Viet Nam: Based on the Diary of...”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
I meditated upon this new life that I am now obliged to live. I thought about youth. I thought about old age. Apparently bad memories fade away with time and only the moments of goodness and joy remain. Those who are nearing the end of their lives revel in the bliss of yesterday but we the young have this day and tomorrow to contend with. Today, we see the world naked, exposed before our eyes. We see hatred, misery and pain. We find it difficult to live for today. Only the desires for tomorrow’s better world can alleviate the suffering that is today. Only tomorrow can offer us hope that glimmering moments will again materialize. So we continue to exist for a dream, a wish that tomorrow we can say: “This is a day worth living.”
Excerpted from God, Bombs & Viet Nam: Based on the Diary of...”
― Wrestling with Angels: An Anthology of Prose & Poetry 1962-2016 Revised
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