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This is an excerpt from my book of poems, What the Body Wants:

From the age of reason and probably before that but I can’t remember, I have wanted tomato sauce that tasted like tomato sauce, the kind my Mom made and my grandmother, Carmela Romeo, still makes at age ninety-five. Not too sweet, not drowned in spices.

For the past several years I’ve been asking myself one question a lot: What do I want? And because the most basic desires, besides for food, have been pretty much socialized and educated out of me over the years, What does my body want?

This question was awakened at an Interplay workshop, where I experienced my embodied presence for the first time in an improvised dance. Moving into the question of what I want has taken me down some roads not taken before: doing contact improv (dirty dancing to some), getting treatment for depression, being real with men in transition from homelessness and recovery from addiction, finding a place in the poetry community, soaking naked in a hot-tub, yelling obscenities at the Pope in Tilden Park, and leaving the priesthood.

Writing poetry has been a way to move into the question. At the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, I realized I could continue my priesthood in a new way. Sharon Olds said there that poetry was about transforming matter into spirit. After joking with her about her poem ‘The Pope’s Penis,’ I had to agree with her and rejoice in our common priesthood. Eight months later, on my way to hear Marie Howe read poems from her book What the Living Do, I dropped my letter of resignation into a mailbox. It was April 1, 1999: the 10-year anniversary of my ordination.

I still write poetry, but I make my living now as the managing editor of Home Energy Magazine. We cover green home building and renovation for an audience of builders, contractors, energy auditors, weatherization professionals and others. I'm still asking the same kinds of questions, only now the focus is on the kind of housing that the world wants in order for us human beings to continue to be a happy, healthy, integral, creative, and sustainable part of it! 

I met my wife through an ad in the East Bay Express. The words that hooked her were: "Jim is a science writer and poet with a strong spiritual bent." That's me all over.