Counting Blessings by Morris Berman

Counting Blessings by Morris Berman

Counting Blessings is an expression of gratitude for a life lived away from the madding crowd. This poetry collection was penned about a year after the author moved to a small town in Mexico. With the frenzy of American life receding into the background, he was able to sink into the stillness of his new surroundings, allowing long-dormant creative energies to surface.

As it turns out, only a few of these poems are about life in Mexico per se. For the most part, Mexico provided the backdrop, the peaceful context in which the author's unconscious processes were free to roam over the inner landscape, explore its contours and fine details. What emerged were vibrant memories of childhood and adolescence, of times lived abroad, of people who have come and gone. These lyrical poems capture the extraordinary essence of ordinary lived experience, and in doing so represent the true content of our lives, the simple core of what makes us human.

Morris Berman is a cultural historian and social critic who is well-known for his unique ideas. He has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College, the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, and Mexico. He was the Lansdowne Professor of Science History at the University of Victoria from 1982 until 1988. Berman received the Washington State Governor's Writers Award in 1990 and the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. The New York Times selected The Twilight of American Civilization a Noteworthy Book in 2000. The Reenchantment of the Earth (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000), and Dark Ages America (2006) are among his other works.