A Kind of Flourishing by Angela Griner

If I could be a word, Like Yahweh, God’s breath, our love brought out from the chaos lifted out from the depths, broken love made whole, God-breathed yes, that’s it, Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh. Angela’s poetry in A Kind of Flourishing, searches in what feels like the contradictory nature of human love and builds up as it rests in the finding of the final treasure-Yahweh. As I experience my own chaos and the chaos of the leaders I support, I am reminded of the breath, the answer. Broken love made whole God-breathed. Yahweh. It feels like a strong whisper. It brings me to a place of grounded rest.

–Angie Winn, activist, speaker, teacher, author of Pausing in Motion: Cultivating Resilience and Stability for a Life of Intention and Impact (Winn Summit Publishing, 2022)

Reading Angela’s poetry feels like standing on the ocean’s edge, listening to the rhythmic waves as they swell, curl and crash onto the shore of life and as you stand you realize you have been drawn into the ocean; you begin to feel the wave’s swell and every now and then the words curl over you and push you to ride the strong wave from the inside, until you find yourself lying on the sand of the shoreline. Exquisite, compelling, contemplative poetry. A fresh voice that draws my heart to peace. I can’t wait to have this on my shelf.

–Reverend Canon Patricia Orlando, priest for Spiritual Formation and Pastoral Care, Cathedral Church of St. Luke

Have you ever encountered that place where the shallow layer of earthen life breaks just enough that you can feel how deep the sea is beneath you?  Beneath you with such a beauty that to glimpse it is to find a longing so deep your soul aches? Angela writes from, in, and to this space.  Weaving and inviting us into the depths of grief and recovery, nature and heart, the reader is welcomed into a place of such beauty that at times made me have to find my breath and shield my eyes for it was almost too much to bear. How can the vision of a mother’s comb hold such a direct line to our hearts and the heart of God?  Angela’s work here is not only a honor to her own mother, but to her own heart, to yours and mine, and to the hands and hearts that have fed, loved, formed, wounded, and healed our own souls.  I hope you find that same beautiful ache in these words and pages.  I hope that you welcome that longing and in it you find glimpses of yourself, of who you have been, and who you are becoming. These words call out the beauty in the wrinkled hands and old streets that formed us and form us even now, in such heart-rending beauty.

–Aaron Moore, MA, MA, LMHC, speaker, author, advocate, cofounder of Solace Counseling in Orlando, Florida