TED Community » Frank Pray

More About Me

I'm passionate about

I'm passionate about writing as a craft and art. I am late to the process, but learning the craft brings great satisfaction.

An idea worth spreading

What if we embraced out common dilemma: we're in a mess of our own making with no human way out? What if we found a way to strip religion of religiosity, and law of detachment from ethics and morality? What if we saw and believed that "things" are never just "things" but metaphors pregnant with spiritual life and meaning? What if we valued poetry and art more than bombs and power? What if we valued simplicity and service before social status? What if we loved God and loved others? Jesus modeled the answers to these questions.

Talk to me about

Talk to me about your view of the world. Why are you here, what do you bring into the world that is uniquely "you"? What are you doing that gives you the greatest spiritual satisfaction?

People don't know that I'm good at

People don't know that I'm good at telling a great story, on the fly, with almost no truth to the story at all, or that after a hard day, I enjoy El Pollo Loco "take-out" and a glass of wine with TV.

My TED Story

I have always been a poet. I realized recently, by reason of flashbacks, that this poetic predilection has been a part of my family's DNA. My mother and sister wrote poetry and accumulated it right up until the time of their deaths. My mother wrote a final poem in the hospital the night before a fatal surgery 40 years ago. Our family was both beautiful and beastly. We were not healthy emotionally, but our unhealthy emotions were the compost for our dramatized writing. As I think back, I'm not sure our poetry would have emerged from anything less aromatic. Now, there is this one part of me that is ever "true": my poetry. From it derives a truth that is like a coring drilled into the raw material of life, and brought to the surface for examination. It is as if the truth stands apart from me, and I only discover it, introduce it, allow it to be observed awhile. Yet, it is extracted from the stuff that is my life, and so inescapably "me." This "me" is actually an illusion of us.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Tyler Cowen: Be suspicious of stories

  Nov 16 2012: As a lawyer, I am a master story teller. I have learned over the years that we are wise not to fall in love with the stories we tell, and to remember, it is just a story.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Is being in an open relationship, in an intimate relationship, practicing open mindedness? How?

  Jul 22 2012: I find that as I become more intimate, I also become more vulnerable and dependent. I allow myself to "need" the other person, and at times my need may even become "neediness." Also, as I draw closer to the beloved, the more I am invited to deal with my and her frustrated expectations and shortcomings. In other words, I have to deal with my stuff. Hopefully, because of commitment and grace, the relationship is a place where there is freedom to make mistakes and grow. That "safety" allows for an increased capacity for still more love and intimacy. Bottom line: deeper levels of love require deeper levels of trust. We are just too fragile as human beings, I think, to love deeply someone who may leave us as part of a romantic or sexual experimentation with others.