A few reactions from The Famous and the Important, just to be impressive

Andrew Cohen
I wanted to send you heartfelt congratulations on winning the Templeton Foundation Power of Purpose essay contest. I just read your essay and was deeply moved by it. Father Christian's words—"Bob's problem was that he couldn't take the contradiction between his preaching and his living. So God gets the boot. Remember this; all philosophical problems are at heart moral problems. It all comes down to how you intend to live your life."—say it all. I hope many, many people are able to read and hear about your essay, and I've put an excerpt from it up on the wall for everyone here.

Ken Wilber
Totally cool.

Father Christian (an important figure in the essay itself)
I'm thrilled that [Augie] actually included me in his paean of praise of our Br. John. Those six pages will be set in stone and awed at in a thousand years.

Bill Cahoy, Dean of Theology, Saint John's School of Theology*Seminary
This really is a beautiful essay. It is deeply Kierkegaardian in the very best sense. SK would be proud of you.

Charles Bobertz, St. John's University School of Theology
To say I was moved was an understatement. There are times in which I doubt anything is real, that what I teach does not have real meaning, and then this happens. The right essay at the right time. Especially one line of the essay: "All evil begins with a lie. The biggest evil comes from the biggest lies, and the biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves. And we lie to ourselves because we're afraid to take ourselves on."

For two years I had been afraid to take myself on. I still have that fear—but I know what that seemingly insurmountable task is.

The rabbis say that to save one life is to save the world. You have saved one life with this writing and, I am sure, will save many more if you do keep writing. The great test will be whether you believe the lie. I don't think you will—and so you must write. You will have one avid reader at least...


A lot of reactions from regular folks who were touched by the essay

I have to say I was moved to tears, reading your essay Brother John. Reading it brought the power of the experience back to me strongly enough to allow me to feel a sense of being so overwhelmed by God's love to simply not know what to do.

It also brought to mind for me a recollection of standing on a foot bridge over the Spokane Falls with you and Ed a year and a half ago. Gazing at the purity and energy of the water spraying up from the rocks, I heard you softly say, "that is what heaven is like." My own momentary experience of "touching the hem of God's robe" also is grounded in such light and purity, as well as power, and your soft statement reinforced my awareness of both my own experience and that you are motivated from that deeply profound place of love and mercy.

Congratulations. The recognition is well deserved, and I am sure will help to grow the capacity to do good work in the world.

Jonathan Reams

I had difficult difficult difficult time. I had problems at home, at work and some additional personal problems. Everything together. I had no power and bad emotional conditions. Actually, all these problems continuous....And one day I started to read your essay. I already read it in English several months before, and in general I remembered the text. But...when I started to read in Russian, my emotions changed, my brain and my heart opened. It was so clear for me, that I need, I must to do some changes in my life. Influence of your assay was so strong! Translation is perfect. And incredible influence!!!

I was so grateful to you for this essay, for advice which I obtained from you. I feel something like happiness when I was reading The Essay.

This is absolutely truth.

I am so grateful to you. God bless you.

Natalia P

I have just read "Brother John" for the first time. I don't even know what to say except thank you. I will read it over and over again, peeling back its layers, contemplating each layer, hoping to plumb the depths of each.

Christina Myers

Now that I have read Brother John (multiple times), I feel compelled to write to you—not so much to congratulate you for your award , but to thank you for sharing with me and with us all a story that is not so much profound as it is profoundly thought-provoking. I am really at a point in my life where that inner voice is maddeningly, deafeningly, and oh-so-softly urging me to be and do what I must. Of course that is not so easy—difficult at least, highly improbable and for most, impossible.

I've come to believe that you are somehow a part of the path that I have to follow. Maybe it's Brother John. Maybe it's the story of Brother John. Maybe it's this quote from you I found on the SKS website:

I sincerely doubt that much good comes from the logical content of what I have to talk about...nobody gets argued into this sort of quest. I'm much more of a story-teller, a raconteur, than a "man of learning." I've had a heck of a life, and I've got a lot of stories to tell. And sometimes, through grace or who knows what, sometimes the power is given to me to move people, to bring out that longing for transcendence that is hidden inside them. Or, as Edgar Lee Masters puts it: "You're catching a whiff of the ether reserved for God Himself." And if you can move people, if you can give them that whiff, and touch that eternal part of them, and inspire them to give over their lives to the struggle to be the best human beings they can possibly be...what better teaching is there than that?
Hell, maybe it's something else. Somehow I'm going to get on my path. Thanks Augie.

Randy Jones

Thank you for publishing "Brother John" on the web. It brought tears of joy, gratitude, and inspiration to my heart.

Faith Evans