Casting Pearls before Swine?

I’d given away thousands of books, both paperback and ebooks, though the latter were in the majority. I placed no conditions on the beneficiaries, yet, I must admit, I’d hoped that at least some of them would have succumbed to writing a brief note of “Thanks”? Don’t get me wrong. No one was obliged to write a review. They might give the free copy to a library, a hospital, a school, or to people in need of literary diet. Perhaps that would discharge their debts.

Not all books are pearls, and I am lucky. I don’t have to rely on income from my thirty titles to make the ends meet. You might say writing is my passion and a finished manuscript is a reward in itself.

This blog is not about me. 

But there are others who share my passion yet do not have other means of support? Every reader knows that a decent review helps to market a book. What they don’t seem to know is that people who continuously take things for free incur a karmic debt that, sooner of later, will have to be repaid. Giving makes us richer, taking—invariably makes us poorer. That’s what debts do. They impoverish us.

And what of the real pearls?

We all are in danger of risking the wealth stored in our consciousness? How does one repay ones debt to Shakespeare, or Keats, or Shelley, or any of the great writers of so the past?

For writers there is a way. We entertain.

I believe we must also do our very best to try and emulate them. To have as much poetry, as much love of truth or philosophy, as much honesty and wisdom in our writing as our great predecessor passed on to us. After all, truth must be continuously rediscovered. Perhaps we might not create pearls, but at least we shall do our best to repay our debt. One day writers will stop giving books away. Surely, they’ll think, one ought to not throw pearls before swine. No matter how tiny, imperfect pearls. The best they could create.

I felt such debt towards one man in particular. His name was Jalaluddin Rumi. He was a Persian poet, and he taught me a great deal. You might enjoy my attempt to thank him.

Your glory reflected in oceans of time

Amongst the stars of your universe

Spanning millennia, eons of elusive might

Suspended, expansive, omnipresent light.

Your wisdom immanent in every paltry atom

Tangible expression of your ephemeral presence

As you look through my eyes, unblemished by desire

Your life pulsating love’s consuming fire.

I taste euphoria, mysterious ambrosia,

As I inhale your enduring, intoxicating zest.

Though in my becoming, I am all I’ll ever be:

You and I are one––You and paltry me.

There was another man to whom I owe even more. His name was Yeshûa. I described his quest in a novel. When I was writing it, it felt like a personal memoir. Perhaps it was. 

To write a review on Amazon of

Yeshûa—Personal Memoir of the Missing Years of Jesus

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