Calvin Ross
At one of our in-person class reunions some years ago, I recited a quotation from Thomas Dooley, M.D. I may have been asked to speak, or I may have just shared it as some of us were informally offering updates on our lives.
I included in my comments a quotation from Thomas Dooley, a medical missionary in the 1950s in Southeast Asia during the onset of the Vietnam War. He wrote of his ministry in three popular books. One is The Night They Burned the Mountain. Another is Deliver Us from Evil. He died in his 30s of cancer.
Likely during those final days, he wrote about the wind (which Kansans know too well) and about a “wilder storm of peace” (which hopefully we know as well). Here are his words I quoted that afternoon at our reunion:
Monstrous Phantoms
I have monstrous phantoms.
Inside and outside the wind
blows. But there are times when
the storm around me does not
matter. A wilder storm of peace
gathers in my heart. What seems
unpossessable, I can possess.
What seems unutterable, I can
utter. Because I can pray, I can
communicate. How do people
endure anything on earth,
without God?
