Tending The Fire: Through War and The Path of Meditation

Raised on a South Carolina sea island, tempered by experiences in the Vietnam War, and trained as a physchotherapist, Ralph Steele decided at midlife that tending the fire of this life would be to take robes as a forest monk in Thailand and Myanmar–for a year or for a lifetime. He left his career and twenty-year relationship without knowing if he would return. Tending the Fire is the gripping, enlightening, and very human story of Ralph's transformative journey through war and meditation to a sense of wholeness, responsibility, peace, and compassion.