Richard Ruof

Return of the Martyrs: Among Those Who Serve the Prince of Peace Richard Ruof

These poems describe the character, trials, and faith of the neighborhood churches that deeply affected the lives of children, teenagers, and adults on the American scene. The changing experience is described in poems on the Beatitudes and American life as parents unknowingly invite strangers into their homes who instill the secular views of television, the Internet, and public school text books. The sheer weight of indoctrination dismisses the Spiritual from childhood experience and conviction. The book concludes with the trials of the martyrs who pursued the poet throughout his life. They were not then known to him by name or story, save in spiritual experiences. Lately he fully learned their identity as the founders of Christian schools for children in Wales and England. Their costly sacrifice is related. The book ends with a tribute to those martyrs who died before a weeping nation-the heroes of the Twin Towers-a tragedy, but a willing sacrifice of historic proportion.