Foreward to Fellowship Continuing: 1978-93
In preparing this sketch of the past fifteen years of the Fellowship I have felt like someone seeing the night sky for the first time. Faced with a random scattering of stars, people impose patterns on those they see. But the patterns are arbitrary -- one need only recall that what we see as The Big Dipper has been seen by others as a bear, a chariot, a bier, and a butcher's cleaver. It will not be surprising, therefore, if some of the pictures I have drawn through the facts and events assembled from Fellowship records do not jibe with those you have formed. It is not only Beauty that lies in the eye of the beholder.
To modify the metaphor, facts, unlike stars, do not shine equally brightly to all observers. It is certain that some events here touched on lightly or not at all will have shone more brightly for some readers than for me. The slight was, I assure them, unintentional. Why is so much space spent on a happening you deem trivial? Because you are the percipient reader and I the purblind writer instead of vice versa.
This booklet would not have been possible without the help of Carolyn Moe, Rose Hoshiko, David Christensen, and Anne Sharpe. They have helped immeasurably in producing whatever is good about this work, but, as indicated above, I alone am responsible for the errors in fact or taste that I am sure it contains.
R. F. Trimble, Editor
March 1993
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Appearing on the inside cover of Continuing Fellowship is the following poem by Richard Franklin, a former member of the Fellowship now residing in Baltimore, Maryland.
Misleading Narrative
The human tale seems but
a narrative
of failure and despair --
yet you can bet
we shall persist, despite
the Fates' foul blows,
the bogs of pain, the pools
of wasted sweat.
We'll climb once more out of
the fetid marsh
braced for the next ordeal
that must be met.
Reprinted with permission of Richard Franklin from the December 1992 issue of
Tradition: A Bi-Monthly Poetry Publication.