REVIEW: Gabriel Meyer — On the Verge of the Verb (BOOK)
Gabriel Meyer is a modern-day hero. As a peace activist, he is a shining light in an era where division sells, extremism is afoot on either side, and the pendulum swings but cannot find the center. With the release of his new book, On the Verge of the Verb: An Autobiographical Fiction of Prophetic Sorts, Meyer hopes to provide what he has called “medicine for the dying story and a midwife for the new one.” As a Jewish person myself, I approve of what Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi has called Meyer, simply put “a true representative of the Jewish people.” Like any great peace-maker, Meyer has an enormous amount of empathy — not just sympathy — a key component in true negotiating and the building of bridges.
URL: https://www.gabrielmeyerhalevy.com/en/home
“The old story is crumbling and the new one hasn’t yet clearly emerged. Grounded in uncertainty, the border closures, the pandemics, the global unrest, the wars, the heavy weight of daily life, the loneliness,” Meyer says, regarding our times. “…Two indispensable roles to embody during the current waves of collapse and rebirth: hospice caregivers for our dying story and midwives of the new story…As natural and human-made disasters pop up these days with millions of victims all over our beautiful Earth, the ‘war culture’ continues to crawl inside us every time we go back to our scary shenanigans, antique addictions, passé emotional elbows, and take our ‘selfie’ drama too seriously.
The body feels out of tune and aches in many different ways and places we thought we’d never meet. So, where is our heart news, our creations, our new songs, our play, our new recipes, our lullabies, our lovers? Beyond the buzzwords of ‘systemic shift’ and ‘regenerative culture,’ what do we see? Yearning for the poetry of the miracle, for the overtones of mainstream reality to pierce our shells, right into the original will and instructions of our solar plexus. Where the lion roars drunk, in love with life, and friendship shines like a salad of a million emeralds, rubies, and malachite.”
He ultimately states, “…The secret for sustaining the circle-becoming-a spiral is free. The organization must be decentralized, loose, so loose that it holds. Just support and deliver the precise signal to the untidy spirit warrior at their weakest moment. The alliance will catch. It’s sacred timing which will drum you closer to breath and the wholly playfulness of these letters
being read by you.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Verge-Verb-Autobiographical-Fiction-Prophetic/dp/1960090844
Most people providing flowery analogies and euphemisms are at best somewhat inscrutable, and at worst feeling like BS artists. Meyer is neither of these. It’s not just his recorded bonafides that ensure this is not the case. There’s something about the writing and statements, no matter how verbose, that highlight the fundamental, conceptual simplicities involved. Everything is such a beautiful illustration of these universal precepts, regarding our shared humanity. When the root idea is so effective, so fundamental, getting elaborate with representation only enhances its value, rather than undermines it. In Meyer’s case, when some of his objectives prove abstract, a good immersive analogy is a help. Plus, it makes things fully comprehensible.
Colin Jordan
