Scattered Light: Poems By

About the Book

The poems in this book reveal the phases in my life, and the places where I have done my living. The poems are of several different kinds: some are philosophical, some theological, some are spiritual, and some merely trivial -- but reflecting the trivia of our human lives. Most of the poems are quite concentrated and short, but some are a little longer and ask that the reader should 'think along' with the author. In religious matters, the poems express not scepticism but the incredulity that comes with the experience of a long life. The world and its meanings are not to be picked up and squeezed into any convenient religious or philosophical package!

About the Author

Gordon Stewart Ellens is a Londoner born, now resident in Santa Monica, California. But all his life, he has been a wanderer. In youth, he was in the Indian Army where he met Indian religious cultures head on! Thereafter, he after gained the degree of Bachelor of Divinity at King's College London. He became an academic, taught a while in Québec, and moved on to Columbia University in the City of New York where he received his doctor's degree in the History of Religions. He taught in the USA for several years, and thereafter in Japan for twenty years. During that period he became personally familiar with the several major religious traditions of East and South Asia, and gained the degree of broadening in mind and spirit, reflected in his poetry, that such wandering brings.