Author: John Calvi

The 39^th Beethoven Letter

Dear Friends, 

Thank you for your kind and generous support over the years.  This keeps me going in all ways.  Your good care via these pragmatic gifts are the bread and butter of my life and a delight to receive.  Thank you for years of including me in your generosity.  

Writing this winter was a good hard work of getting down the stories of my life.  It was more than difficult to write about early hurt, echoes reverberate through my whole body.  I trust these stories in my third book will be a help to others seeking more than survival, thriving with less pain.  The remaining task will be writing the stories of my four decades of work as a Quaker healer studying trauma in many settings.  My editors request your help by sending a short blurb as to how my work may have helped you to go in the front of the book. 

Seeing all my doctors this month.  So far, so good.  I’ve more energy a year after the heart attack and activities increase.  It’s unclear if I can return to the full health I had, but there’s lots of living just as I am, thank goodness. I’ve been cruising in the breakdown lane, but now I’ve picked up a little speed.  

I apologize to those contacting me for help and teaching.  I’m in a time of rebuilding.  I’m not ill, but I am still recovering energy and strength.  There are encouraging signs of returning physical health bringing bits of my gifts back.  There are three signs in particular-

• My hands have begun to heat up again, though the amount of energy coming through is less than half of what it was.
• I’ve begun to receive messages again about the nature of others’ pain, though I do not engage with each message or person.
• When I was overcome with illness, I had an ache in my chest whenever I had an empathetic response to someone in trouble.  That ache is now gone.  I don’t have the stamina to engage, but I often see the nature of our human knots.

I still publish stories on behalf of The Quaker Initiative to End Torture- QUIT! on our FaceBook page.  I am the founding convener of QUIT! beginning in May of 2005.  There is progress and there is much work to do, especially in Uganda.

Thank you for all your care and support.  I will continue writing this memoir and seek better health.  I am writing my best stories of moving from wounded to healing.  Thank you for making my work possible over the years.  Please help with your gifts, supporting what I can do.

In the Light, 

John Calvi, May 2023

Dear All, 

I’m probably not dying.  Not right away, not anytime soon.  It may be years.  But I’ve been disabled to the point where I can no longer teach or use my healing touch.  My healing gift has become greatly diminished.  There is no consensus among my doctors.  It’s mainly fatigue and shortness of breath if I speak for too long or walk too fast.  I am not in pain and I don’t feel I am in immediate danger.  I am not suffering.  There is no prescribed treatment yet, as we don’t know what is wrong.  Will I get better?  Will I get worse and leave?  Will I stay as I am?  This is not yet known.  I am tidying up a few things in case.  I am saddened, but not afraid.

I have been feeling these changes coming on gradually the last few years.  I’ve felt a lessening of energy in ways that rest did not restore.  It became critical last fall when breathing got very difficult.  I’ve not worked since that time.  More tests are coming.  It’s a very big change. 

I gave myself to a life work of healing trauma through a spiritual gift of releasing pain.  This began in the summer of 1982.  My last teaching engagement was in the fall of 2020.  It’s been 38 years of a traveling work with much Light speaking to great need.  I’ve worked in the crises of rape, AIDS, prisons, tortured refugees, ritual abuse, among others.  All this by invitations to work and gifts of support.  This was within the tradition of Quaker ministry and following a leading. I’m also the founding convener of The Quaker Initiative to End Torture – QUIT! since 2005 and still publish news of American torture on the QUIT website and FaceBook.  Note my calendars – 1982 to 2020.  I’ve been well used.  There has been much Light and much work.

Both my books are available on Kindle- paper from Quaker Books and paper & Kindle from Amazon.  Progress on my third book, a memoir of healing my own life wounds and becoming a healer, is my current work- along with clearing my archives to be given to a Quaker college library.  All this goes slowly as you can imagine.  I am 69 on May 14.  Every day is not a good energy day.  I expect my excessive qualities of stubbornness to prevail as I continue to write. 

To be clear- I am not in pain or current danger.  I am not suffering or homebound, but energy is quite limited. I am grieving that a grand work that took years to learn and perform gracefully has for the most part ended, at least I think so.  I’ll write and will put archive audio/video recordings on my website.  Marshall & I have much to adjust to.  He’s been my anchor.

I have lived and worked primarily by invitations and gifts since 1982.  I still need your gifts.  My living has been simple- a small home, limited income- i.e. no dental work and snow tires purchased in the same month.  Your help over the years has been the lifeline that kept me going.  It still is.  I hope you will take this message to heart.  Please be careful – I have no capacity for the burden of others’ grief.  It’s a time be glad for what has been a great ride.  Imagine a person doing good works, people seeing it, and supporting it for nearly 4 decades.  Amazing and humbling!  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  And please send a gift.

In the Light, 

John Calvi

April 2021      PO Box 301 Putney VT 05346      paypal.me/JohnCalvi