A Fellow Writer Passed Away Today

My dear friend, Shannon Roquemore, died this morning some time before noon. She was only 29 years old. She and five other friends just returned from Peru, visiting Machu Picchu and other places for about ten days. Full of high spirits from the mystical journey, she phoned me while driving home from the airport full of plans for her next book, which she said would be focused on pedagogical themes. Her first book had just been published. "Images From A Creation Myth" tells the story of her journey to God from childhood through maturity. Her book is intended to inspire Christian school teachers to bring into their work, their personal life experience and the search for their mystical connection. She was a teacher at Veritas Christian Academy in North Carolina.

Here are her own words about her book:

"In this memoir of a teacher's education and spiritual awakening, Classical educator Shannon Roquemore takes the reader on a journey from her childhood conversion to Christianity through her graduate work in the "Great Books" and beyond, bringing to light the essence of what education is meant to be: an illumination of God and his dance with humanity, and an invitation to the soul to awaken. Ultimately, Roquemore's story becomes her primary teaching tool as she examines her own courtship with God and applies it to the individuals in her classroom. For all those who have resisted divorcing their formal education from their identity as a soul, Images From a Creation Myth restores the soul to its rightful place as the beneficiary of education."

She wrote extraordinary beautiful poetry. She was dauntless in her engagement with life.

She died abruptly, was diagnosed with leukemia; but there were bleeding complications that caused her quick death after being hospitalized only two days. No one will ever know the real cause, I'm afraid.

We met four years ago under unusual circumstances. Shannon wrote about our meeting in her introduction to my book Open the River. A beautiful being, she was tall and slim, with long reddish hair that flowed down past her shoulders. A narrow, lengthy face, her complexion reminding one of Elizabethan days. She had a soft, sweet voice that approved of everything. "This is good," she always said. When she spoke, her body tended to undulate in a way that caused her to seem like a long stemmed flower swaying in the breeze. She loved everyone, and especially her retriever, Sundown. She loved and understood beauty in all its forms and all its subtle appearances. I will never forget her.