Category: religion

Mentors

Mentors can come from the docks, the back roads and back alleys, or, surprisingly, a monastery in Kentucky. Thomas Merton was one of mine. He wasn’t my only mentor, but he was a steady voice that helped me find clarity.

He was born in 1915 in Prades, France—a place distant from here, and even further removed from the Trappist life he ultimately embraced. Throughout his life, he authored 50 books, wrote 2,000 poems, and kept journals that revealed a relentless pursuit of personal growth.

What I admired wasn’t just that he was a monk. It was the strength underneath. He questioned everything, including himself. He spent time in silence, listening to things most of us drown out with noise, drinking, TV, or anything else we use to avoid facing ourselves.

He wasn’t afraid to say he didn’t have all the answers. Sometimes, he wasn’t even sure he was asking the right questions. That kind of honesty can surprise you and help you see things more clearly.

He taught me that solitude isn’t about escaping. It’s about taking care of yourself, like cleaning a boat so it keeps moving. He showed me that silence isn’t empty; it’s where change happens. He also taught me that being human is slow, difficult work, often done without recognition and against challenges.

I’ve had other mentors—some loud, some quiet, some unexpected. But Merton taught me how to be still without losing myself, how to listen, and how to stay honest even when the truth is hard to accept.

Every year on his birthday, I remember him. Though he was born in France in 1915 and eventually became a Kentucky monk, he somehow found his way into my journey. Even from behind monastery walls, he found ways to help others see new possibilities.

We don’t choose all our mentors. Some arrive unexpectedly, shaped by life, and turn out to be just what we need to keep going.

Now, fifty years later, after running up and down many roads, I find myself once again sitting in silence. Being alone is sometimes the hardest part—quiet, remembering who I have been, and, most importantly, who I am. I sometimes drift with the tide, or swim against it when necessary, here on the shores of Rambling Harbor.

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A Message of Hope — A story about friendship, courage, and the small ways hope still finds us.

I have a friend I’ve known since 1980, someone who used to listen to my overnight radio show when she was only sixteen. She would call me in the middle of the night, and we’d talk. I remember wishing her a happy eighteenth birthday at midnight. We met many years later in a grocery store when she was in her thirties, just before Halloween, at a time when my personal life was going through struggles as my wife battled cancer. I hadn’t seen her standing there, but I guess she remembered my voice, and I heard her say with a question mark in her voice, Sanders? And I then remember the voice that had kept me company through a phone so long ago. I like to tell her it was over the Candy Corn aisle, but she denies that memory. Still, I’ve always liked the idea that hope can show up in the corniest places. We’ve remained friends ever since. And before you get the wrong idea and think you know where this is going, here’s where it takes a sharp left.

My friend has been married and has a daughter and a granddaughter. I met her daughter once, when I think she was around eight years old—a beautiful young child. That daughter is now older than her mother was when she used to call that lonely late-night DJ. My friend comes from a religious upbringing, and her daughter, through her own choices, has been pursuing a life in the ministry as a student at a local school.

Here comes that left turn again. A few days ago, I got a message from my friend saying her daughter was preparing to go to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and that she was both proud and petrified. I told her I could understand both. Of course, we all know the horror unfolding in the city.

My friend is well aware of my resistance to the Vietnam War, my time in prison for refusing induction, my involvement with Phil and Dan Berrigan, as well as my own stay in seminary and a basic life of resistance to oppression in all its ugly forms. And I know that’s one reason she chose to tell me about her daughter’s upcoming adventure.

So why am I telling you this story? Because it’s a story of hope. In this world where ugliness is all around us—where women can be shot as their last words still echo in our minds, “I’m not mad at you, dude”; where our president tries to conquer the world and tear down democracy one White House brick at a time; where someone I’ve known and worked with can try to justify what ICE is doing and justify that shooting—when I’m at my darkest and it feels like everyone has lost all sense of morality and right or wrong… out of nowhere, I got a message of hope.

This beautiful young child I met so many years ago is heading into the belly of the beast to try to influence and bear witness to the truth. And I’m sharing this with you because I have friends who feel as scared and disappointed as I have—friends who, in their own ways, have tried to bring truth and hope into the world, who want things to change and get better, and who have felt disappointed, hopeless, and lost as things just keep getting worse.

And maybe part of why this hit me so hard is because this isn’t just anyone’s daughter. This is the daughter of a woman who has been woven through almost half my life—a friend who once called a lonely late-night DJ at sixteen, who somehow stayed woven through the fabric of my life through decades of change, disappointment, and small miracles. I care what happens to her. I care what happens to her daughter. And knowing that this young woman is stepping into the world with courage, conviction, and a sense of calling… well, that felt like a comforting hand on my shoulder in a dark room.

Hope doesn’t always arrive with trumpets. Sometimes it shows up as a message from an old friend, telling you her daughter is heading into the storm because she believes in something better. She leaves on Wednesday. And for a moment—just long enough—you remember that belief is still possible, and you feel yourself steady a bit. I hope this story offers the same small steadiness to anyone who’s felt their strength wavering.

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RAMBLING HARBOR: Red Flags, Pink Dreams, and the Ghost of Karl Marx

So it begins again.

Out here in Rambling Harbor, where the fog rolls thicker than campaign promises and gulls squawk like pundits, I heard the old chant—Communism!—echoed not from a union hall, but from the gilded throat of a man who once sold steaks and bankrupt casinos. Trump saw Zohran Mamdani win the mayor’s race and called him a communist. Not a progressive. Not a democratic socialist. Just red paint on a dreamer.

It’s familiar. Every time someone feeds the hungry or dares to house the poor, the powerful reach for fear. They don’t know Marx from Mamdani, but they know fear sells. Say “communism” loud enough, and you don’t have to explain why the soup kitchen’s empty or the subway’s crumbling.

Trump says it’s “communism vs. common sense.” But if common sense means ignoring hunger, I’ll take the red flag and wave it like a lifeline.

Out here, we remember sovereignty isn’t yachts and tax breaks—it’s warm meals, safe beds, and mayors who dream in public.

And I’ve been thinking about words. Big ones. Loaded ones. Communism dreams of erasing the lines. Socialism redraws them more fairly. One says, “No rich or poor.” The other says, “Let’s make sure the poor don’t die waiting.”

We weaponize both. Call libraries socialist and bailouts capitalist. We forget the post office is a miracle, and roads don’t pave themselves.

Me? I’m just a poet with a busted radio, listening to hunger beneath the headlines and wondering what kind of world we could build if we stopped arguing about labels and started listening to mercy.

Out here in Rambling Harbor, the tide keeps rising. And I keep writing—because someone has to remember the difference between a dream and a distraction.

—Dan, still rambling, still harboring

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Mystical Moments

I’ve always believed in mysticism, not as superstition. But as the language of the Universe, symbols, rhythms, numbers, and crows that visited me in an unexpected place at an unexpected time. But they were there. Not long after my wife passed away, the crow woman was my loving nickname for her. For me, numbers are one of the many ways to listen deeper, to honor the unseen, to shape memory and resistance with rhythm. Some of that comes from my mother’s Cherokee Heritage, some of which flows through my veins.

My nephew keeps nudging me when he constantly posts just the numbers 333, that’s all, no explanations, just the numbers, but he knows I know.

I often see numbers repeated; it’s the constant repetition that matters. I’ve been seeing numbers a lot lately, this time it’s 1111 and 444, again and again. In many different places, on clocks, receipts, timestamps, and even in the quiet corners of memory.

1111 is the Breath’s invitation. A portal. A whisper from the Universe that something is aligning. It shows up when I’m on the edge of a new chapter—when the words are ready, when the healing deepens, when the sanctuary expands.

444 is the Breath’s shelter. A reminder that I’m not alone. That our ancestors, angels, or whatever name we give to the unseen, are walking beside me. It arrives when the work is hard, when the jaw clenches, when the lungs ache—and it says: “Keep going. You’re protected.”

Together, they’ve become part of my sanctuary strategy. Not superstition, but poetic geometry. A way to track the invisible architecture of healing.

“The match strikes at 1111.
The harbor holds at 444.”

I don’t claim to know the whole meaning. But I know how it feels. And that’s enough.

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