You First

Spiritual encounters can upend one’s life. Karen Luke Jackson discovered this firsthand while sitting at the bedside of a dying friend. She didn’t know who to confide in. She’d grown up in a small country church and knew nothing about mystical traditions. Only when a therapist told her that such experiences were a divine gift did she realize she was not alone. A quest to know more took her to the secluded island of Iona, St. Clare’s humble monastery near Assisi, the Pacific redwoods, and an interfaith mikvah. In You First, Jackson shares what she gleaned. The title poem records her initial bewilderment until she learned about three Christian mystics: “I would have gone mad / had I not heard of / Julian. Teresa. Hildegard.” Later, at St. Columba’s Bay, “I picked up a stone, infused it with useless regrets, and tossed it into the sea.” And her insights from walking labyrinths, “I enter a path with no false turns, no dead ends / . . . Everything is stellar dust.” As readers dip into these poems and essays, may what is discovered shed light on their own sacred explorations.