Here, Father Jacques de Foiard Brown, the priest fictionalized in some of Marilyn Nelson\'s poems as the hermit monk "Abba Jacob," combines his own voice with that of his fictional self to write about how he learned to meditate from a Baobab tree which was his boyhood\'s "best silence teacher." Observing the Baobab and the creatures who lived in its trunk and branches taught him about beauty, friendship, generosity, vulnerability, compassion, and the community of living things: lessons he tells.
Here, Father Jacques de Foiard Brown, the priest fictionalized in some of Marilyn Nelson\'s poems as the hermit monk "Abba Jacob," combines his own voice with that of his fictional self to write about how he learned to meditate from a Baobab tree which was his boyhood\'s "best silence teacher." Observing the Baobab and the creatures who lived in its trunk and branches taught him about beauty, friendship, generosity, vulnerability, compassion, and the community of living things: lessons he tells
