ME + US

About the Book

I beckon you to a wondrous journey—a pilgrimage—into an exploration of you and of the specific world you inhabit: your history, your people, your struggles and joys, your everyday and intimate relationships, your future hopes. This beckoning—from me to you—is based on a personal conclusion: over a period of 35 years of working in various areas of counseling and therapy, I have realized that it is possible for individuals—and couples—to promote a substantial part of their own continuing growth and discovery by using some “guideposts” that other people might provide...This pilgrimage is divided into two main sections: “ME” and “US.” The “ME” section will be devoted to you...and, if you choose so, the “US” section will allow you to be in intimate dialogue and presence with other people, especially the individual whom you have chosen (or might choose in the future) to consistently share your life…Consequently, it is my intent to directly beckon you to “insert” yourself—your thoughts, your feelings, your tentative or firm conclusions, your fears, and your resolve—into the scenario of your own life…. —From the author’s introduction

About the Author

From standing alone in a doorway of a house on an early-May morning, looking out on the torn backstreets of a Texas city in the early 1990s, Fr. Tom Jackson--a “marginal” Episcopal priest and former “shrink“--began to experience a new life in what seemed to be a strange place…and the house would quickly become known as “St. Dismas House” (named for a criminal/saint)…and the House would fill and overflow with hundreds and hundreds of folks…and a roller-coaster ride would follow: a community life of work and ministry and emotion and loss and gain …and there would be more Houses and more folks and more kaleidoscopic life. Although this personal narrative is a continuation of the journey described in Fr. Tom’s earlier diary, Go Back, You Didn’t Say May I, it is, in fact, an entity unto itself: a record of the risks and glories of real people dealing with the life-and-death vagaries of Companionship at the turning of a new millennium…one day at a time.