Merritt
A lot of dedicated effort went into the creation of this compendium, and it was a journey of 35 years from when the first poem was written till the last. It was something that was based on a love of geography, history, the cultures of humanity and a great love for maps in particular. Merritt could sit for hours and look at a map as other people would look at paintings. He would imagine himself travelling on those roads and coming into a city or a mountain range and encountering the people who lived in these areas not only in present times but in the past as well. All of this in his mind’s eye, and it was only natural that when he began to write, it would be along these lines.
Merritt was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1956 into the ethnic stew that Brooklyn still remains today, and due to the fascinating story that New York, as a whole, presents to the world, he eventually became a tour guide and a full time chauffeur as well. Merritt was, however, subject to a lifetime of strange dreams, automatic handwriting and had an attraction to all things spiritual. Concepts and words just kept on flowing in his quiet moments, and he gradually discovered that he was walking down two roads simultaneously. It was not an easy existence, because he didn’t know this at first. He definitely needed some kind of direction.
Through coincidence, timing, meeting people, and perhaps what some people would call karma, Merritt eventually met a spiritual teacher who could explain what he had been experiencing all his life, and that this handwriting was something that should be brought to the fore. It was explained to him that this writing was a ‘gift’. Not thinking of ever publishing these poems, he just kept piling them up and putting them in the drawer. In time, these poems covered almost every country in the world.
Merritt believes the poems describe how love does exist in the universe and how humanity is spiritually connected to the whole of Creation. Everyone alive should know about this and should feel good about it. The only modifications he made to the automatic handwriting was putting some of them into a more poetic phrase, but the conceptualization remained intact as befitting the message.