I met Rev. Phil Bratcher—a retired minister and therapist from South Carolina and an unapologetic bon vivant—at Byron Katie's School for The Work, where we became fast friends and partners in crime. He's also a great facilitator and for a couple of years we'd have these late-night inquiry marathons where we'd spend an hour or more delving into just one question. I'm always teasing Phil for being "so southern," not only because of his cute accent and preference for things like sweet tea and chicken biscuits, but due to his lovely laconic way of expressing himself both in conversation and in his poetry. Someday he'll publish a book of these poems, he keeps promising. Write to him at the email address below to nag him about it if you want, or to get on his mailing list if you are another Type A Noo Yawkuh who believes, as I do, that you might not live to see the day.
If there were a guru on a Blue Ridge mountaintop, I imagine he'd look and sound a lot like Phil, holding a book of Hafiz's poems in one hand and a Dirty Dusty Martini in the other.
Here's one of my favorite Phil-osophies.
Control Isn't Real
by Reverend Phil Bratcher
There is that sparkle,
If you slap yourself into waking,
Which makes living rich with newer things,
If you can shake your fear of the unknown
Uncomplication is sexy,
So have eggs for dinner and a better conversation
That's very French, by the way, and again quite sexy
Simplicity is more erudite, making room for new experience,
That is if you are secure in your person enough
To lapse into an all night conversation with no goal in mind
Which means letting go
And you know what letting go means--
Ending the illusion you're in control
©2007 by Reverend Phil Bratcher; all rights reserved.
Contact: PeacefulStar@msn.com
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
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