Harry Wesley Gilmer

Giving Thanks For Being Harry Wesley Gilmer

This collection of poetry, prayers, and presentations were produced over a long professional career. Writing is a difficult task. It is fraught with stops and starts, with periods of famine and feasting. The author spent much of his life writing those technical papers and reports that are a requirement of scholarship or administrative responsibility. The discipline of form criticism, brings an awareness that writing issues forth in many different forms depending upon the function it addresses or, to put it into the proper academic jargon, its situation in life. The particular forms contained in these pages are ones the writer did not employ as an academic researcher. The first, poetry, the author says he took up simply to express thoughts or feelings or insights that could not be expressed any other way. The prayers emerged from the fact that even though he lived his life as an academic, he nevertheless is an ordained minister and therefore frequently called upon to perform in a liturgical role. The platform collection is mixed and consists of sermons that were actually delivered and speeches that were presented. The essays address topics that have been of keen interest over the years.