2021
November 17, 2021: Update
So perhaps the first question is why there was approximately
an eight-year gap within this online journal. Well, it would be a gross understatement
to say that a lot has happened.
My Old English Sheepdog, Gareth, died in March of 2014 (I’m not certain I’ve
ever recovered from that loss) and late in 2014 I was dumped out of my first doctoral
program, because they were unable to find a professor willing to work with my autism
(in spite of having created five papers that were each one hundred pages in length
and graded as 4.0 with no requests for revision). Thereafter, I lost my home in
the northwest part of the Denver-metro area, due to an inability to continue paying
the mortgage. I thought perhaps I could survive by purchasing a house in need of
extensive repair for a low price, but the only desirable possibilities I could find
were in the far northeastern part of the United States. The realtors of course told
me whatever they thought I wanted to hear and were conspicuously absent when I later
encountered astonishing hostility, because I had not grown up there. One attempt
was located in extreme upstate New York; another in northern New Hampshire. The
answer I now receive is that I was being introduced to those two buildings in order
to incorporate them into a second manifestation of my 501(c)3 religious non-profit
organization, God Space Sanctuary, a genuinely interfaith spiritual retreat center,
which is described as “nurturing the relationship between the human and the Divine,
without dogma or discrimination.” That manifestation, however, is still pending.
Regardless, the years since losing my sense of home have been absolutely the
worst years of my life, yet I persist in having faith that all things will ultimately
be made right.
Conversely, some good news is that another university offered a degree-completion
program which is likely to be completed within the next two to four weeks, rendering
me ever afterward, Dr. Denver NeVaar (or Denver NeVaar, PhD, whichever pronunciation
one prefers). Additionally, the years in between then and now have also included
the creation of The Tarot of Sister Who, episodes of “Sister Who Presents...” that
now number up to 524, and hiking in complete ritual garb and face-paint to the summit
of Mount Columbia (my sixteenth summit above 14,000’ in Colorado, while dressed in
ritual garb and face-paint). I am also working on a completely new instrument that
combines the neck of a guitar with the body of a cello, after which a fifth album
of original songs is planned. I have also had a pitbull service dog, Bedivere, since
shortly before Gareth died, who has traveled thousands of miles with me by motorcycle,
but who is aging. The expectation is that he will be succeeded by an Old English
Sheepdog service dog named Dunstan, who may remind me of Gareth in various ways.
I sincerely hope he enjoys riding with me on my motorcycle, as Bedivere has.
Yet even with all of that, life is far from easy and I am still desperately
longing for forms of home, family, and community. It is only the ongoing reality
of spiritual vocation and service that keep me going--trying to make the world a
better place in any way I can.