Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

Larry J Mccloskey

Description

For 40 years, Larry McCloskey has had the privilege of working with persons with disabilities. He applied for a job, which grew into a profession, which—because of the people—became a welcomed vocation. The people in this account might be regarded as common or even unexceptional by modern celebrity culture, but to the examining mind they are really quite astonishing. Here, Larry reveals that the most spectacular lives, those that can best instruct us on how to live life well, regardless of circumstance, tend to pass quietly and unnoticed by the distracted majority. Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, winner of the Word Guild Best Manuscript Award, exposes the deeper meaning in people’s lives beyond the material world restrictions and trendy nihilistic thinking. “Character,” Larry asserts, “is determined by how we play the cards we have been dealt,” and in this book he attempts to articulate what can only be characterized as the inarticulate speech of its characters’ perfect but wounded hearts. Prepare to be astonished and affected profoundly.
“Winner of the 2020 Word Guild Best New Manuscript Award”

Sujets

• People with Disabilities
• Inspirational
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Religión
• People with Disability
• Disability
• Social sciences
• Inspiration

Informations

• Publié par: Castle Quay Books
• Date de parution: 07 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781988928401
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

“ Inarticulate Speech of the Heart is filled with real and raw stories about human struggle and people facing adversity. With creativity, thoughtfulness, and humour, Larry uses these stories to explore how the beauty, complexity, pain, and longing of our experience points to a God who gives dignity, meaning, and purpose to life. This book is a satisfying meal for the soul!”
Christopher Barrett, national director, The Navigators of Canada
“An engaging, wise, funny, touching, probing, intelligent zinger of a book with the gift of grace. It seduces the r eader with its powerful logic, sustained drive, and wonder. Perfection in so many ways.”
Richard Taylor, writing instructor at Carleton University and author of House Inside the Waves: Domesticity, Art and the Surfing Life
“This ‘speech of the heart’ is a compassionate inquiry into personal humanity and meaning following events, not unlike a lightning strike that changes the ground beneath. This experience resonates at a profound level that powerfully surpasses language and speaks to the endurance of the human spirit.”
John Meissner, PhD, CPsych
Inarticulate Speech of the Heart
Copyright ©2021 Larry J. McCloskey
Published by Castle Quay Books
Burlington, Ontario, Canada and Jupiter, Florida, U.S.A.
416-573-3249 | [e-mail] | www.castlequaybooks.com
Edited by Marina Hofman Willard.
Cover design and book interior by Burst Impressions.
Photo/art credits: Donald Menton (cover image), Cara Lipsett (Preface), Kristen McCloskey (Introduction, Chapter 12), Larry McCloskey (Chapters 4, 5, 10), Mike Nemesvary and Mark Junak (Chapter 9).
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission of the publishers.
978-1-988928-39-5 soft cover
978-1-988928-40-1 e-book
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Title: Inarticulate Speech of the Heart
Names: McCloskey, Larry J., 1955- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana 2020034725X | ISBN 9781988928395 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: People with disabilities—Biography. | LCSH: People with disabilities—Attitudes. | LCGFT: Biographies.
Classification: LCC HV1552.3 .M33 2020 | DDC 362.4092/2—dc23

Dedication
If work “is our love made visible” (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet ), it follows that the people you work with over the decades are the love of your life. This book is dedicated to the thousands of students and hundreds of staff I have had the privilege of working with these past 35 years. Most of all, this dedication is to my peeps from early days, too many of whom are no more.
“W isdom is the recovery of innocence at the end of experience.”
David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
“A human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
Albert Einstein, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, extract from a letter written to Robert Marcus, on the passing of his son from polio (February 12, 1950)
A Note on the Title
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One
Where Have All the Young Quads Gone?
Chapter Two
“No Big Deal”
Chapter Three
Early Tales from the Island of the Misfits
Chapter Four
Angel Eyes
Chapter Five
Hearing from the Human Heart
Chapter Six
Inarticulate Sight of the Heart
Chapter Seven
The Problem of Peter
Chapter Eight
“I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”
Chapter Nine
Supermen
Chapter Ten
Do-Mance of the Century
Chapter Eleven
A Two-Headed Monster Called Love
Chapter Twelve
“Follow the Argument Wherever It Leads”
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Title

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.”
Victor Frankl, writer, Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist (1905–1997)
One of Van Morrison’s many great albums is entitled Inarticulate Speech of the Heart . Van attributed his arriving at this title to a Shavian (G. B. Shaw) saying, “of communicating with as little articulation as possible, at the same time being emotionally articulate.” The title has always resonated with me because of the inarticulate nature of human existence.
For all the benefits of the modern world, people’s inarticulate speech of the heart—that is, our inability to communicate the essence of who we are to those whom we want to be known by—seems a greater problem than ever before. I feel the problem in myself and decided to try to articulate something of my own pathetic speech of the heart throughout my years of taking care of, and being taken care of by, those whom God has placed on my path.
Forewor d
By John Weston, Former MP, West Vancouver
I believe that someone asked to do a foreword for a book should like the book and know who the audience is that they are writing for.
On the first item, one can pick up any chapter in this book and know why I love every word of Inarticulate Speech of the Heart , for both its literary flourish and its deep wisdom. So, you can consider me an enthusiast.
As for the audience? If you’re a parent or grandparent, Larry McCloskey’s stories will help you translate today’s turbulence into buckets of meaningful wisdom. If you’re young, you’ll receive a glimpse of the best and the brightest that your forebears had to offer. If you’re able-bodied, you’ll be challenged to do more with your gifts to help others. If you acknowledge your personal disabilities—and we all have them—you’ll learn how challenges may reveal and then fortify your inner strength, your unique beauty, and your connection to your Maker. In short, anyone interested in life’s meaning, who appreciates great storytelling, will enjoy and benefit from this book.
Larry’s great writing is only one of the reasons to read his latest book, Inarticulate Speech of the Heart. The book is full of captivating stories that answer life’s most difficult and important questions. One of his themes challenges us to record and quantify the gains and losses of our civilization as we evolved from the early twentieth century to the present. People born around the 1920s suffered through the Great Depression and fought World War II; they were “The Greatest Generation,” as Tom Brokaw called them in a book by that name. They parented the baby boomers and, as grandparents, helped bring up Generation X and the millennials. Larry conveys reverence for their legacy through artistic yet frank glimpses of his own parents. He dovetails those observations with an assessment of the current human condition, earned through his unique work as a counsellor to people with disabilities. Marshalling these reflections, he positions us to examine our own condition—our own soul—to ask important questions of ourselves and our relationships and, as Tolstoy posed the question, “What must we then do?” He does all of this with memorable turns of phrase, vivid illustrations, and compelling prose.
Larry completed his book as COVID-19 consumed the world. For the first time in history, the whole world did something together: struggled with the uncertainty of a pandemic. Where do we go from here? Logical people have said that life will get more uncertain, not less. Larry grapples with questions that, more than ever, now engage us all.
What are you here for?
Is what you’re doing worthwhile?
How do you measure your success?
How do you want to be remembered?
Who is your Maker?
What difference does it make?
What gives Larry the credentials to tackle such profound and compelling questions? Look no further than his germane experience that equipped him with countless relevant insights. His family life and circle of friends have seen tragedy. At the other end of the spectrum, he’s enjoyed supreme achievement. In sport, Larry was a premier long-distance runner. Running enthusiasts will tell you not that he ran well (his form was notoriously bad) but that he ran fast, enduring pain, injury, and impediment, winning many tough races during a 30-year competitive career .
Speaking of impediments, Marcus Aurelius said, “What stands in the way … becomes the way.” Whether you’re buffeted by life’s challenges or coddled from them, Larry moves you to realize that suffering forms character. The stretch realization is that character might even exceed happiness in importance. Larry lived that lesson long before Jordan Peterson achieved fame by writing about it.
Larry’s work uniquely prepared him to talk about the soul. In serving quadriplegics, he learned what’s left of human and transcendental value when a person loses control of most physical functions. As a former premier athlete, Larry was at one time focused on all the elements of physical prowess: exercise, nutrition, training, and equipment. What a revelation for someone immersed in physical achievement to work with people who lack the ability to move!
Another distinct thing about the book is the surreptitious nature of the issues Larry confronts. Like it or not, we don’t naturally like to admit or talk about our disabilities. Yet we all have them. In fact, our capacity to acknowledge our disabilities allows us to examine what’s really important ab