Category: Autobio

• OUTSIDE, LOOKING IN

  A winter day in 1967 Boston becomes a wordless lesson in faith, hunger, and social blindness, as cold, abundance, and waste collide on Christmas in Beacon Hill.

  RMDell’Orfano

  January 28, 2026

  Autobio

  Beacon Hill, Boston, Christmas, class divide, cold, compassion, deep POV, embodiment, Homelessness, hunger, lived faith, moral contrast, poverty, silence, social invisibility, spiritual testing, thresholds, waste, Winter

• Living Deliberately—In Quiet Desperation

  My soul longed to stand tall, even as it remained shackled to the cowardice of my flesh.

  RMDell’Orfano

  January 21, 2026

  Autobio

  1960s America, academic materialism, faith and providence, Harvard, Henry David Thoreau, Jr., Living Deliberately, Martin Luther King, memoir excerpt, MIT, moral courage, Path Perilous, pilgrimage, Primitive diets, quiet desperation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, roots and branches, spiritual search, transcendentalism, Walden Pond

• Embracing Poverty—I Found Christ

  An excerpt from Path Perilous recounting chosen poverty, quiet companionship with pensioners, and the discovery of Christ in a wounded World War II veteran.

  RMDell’Orfano

  January 14, 2026

  Autobio

  Beacon Hill, Boston, Christ among the poor, Christian memoir, detachment, Franciscan poverty, funeral Mass, hidden holiness, Path Perilous, Purple Heart, Spiritual Formation, veterans, vocation, World War II

• Timeless Little Children

  A reflective memoir excerpt exploring Krishnamurti’s Choiceless Awareness, childhood innocence, and the illusion of time through contemplative silence.

  RMDell’Orfano

  January 9, 2026

  Autobio

  becoming like a child, childhood innocence, Choiceless Awareness, Christian mysticism, contemplative silence, Gospel of Matthew, illusion of time, Jiddu Krishnamurti, nondual awareness, Quantum Physics, sacred stillness, spiritual humility, spiritual perception, Theosophy, time and consciousness

• Breakthrough

  A memoir excerpt recounting a quiet turning point during psychiatric hospitalization, where truth was received without recoil and healing could begin.

  RMDell’Orfano

  December 31, 2025

  Autobio

  Catholic reflection, discernment, healing and recovery, human presence, memoir excerpt, mental health journey, spiritual memoir

• THEN THE BELLS TOLLED

  A firsthand account of November 22, 1963—when JFK was assassinated, church bells tolled, snow kept falling, and a young man stepped unknowingly into a lifelong spiritual threshold.

  RMDell’Orfano

  December 24, 2025

  Autobio

  1963 Catholic faith Spiritual awakening Mystical experience Religious memoir, JFK assassination November 22, Mystical Experience, Religious Memoir

• The Wrong Career

  Even back in 1963, sitting in that lecture hall, I had felt a similar confusion—and quietly recognized that I had entered the wrong room. I just didn’t yet know why.

  RMDell’Orfano

  December 17, 2025

  Autobio

  career discernment, higher education, humanities, lived experieince, memoir vocation higher education misalignment self-knowledge, memori, presitge, vocation

• Danger Zone

  College in the early 1960s was a collision of ideals and crude impulses, especially for a young man like me who carried a tender conscience into an era of loosening morals.

  RMDell’Orfano

  December 9, 2025

  Autobio

  1960s college life, Catholic upbringing, coming-of-age, danger zone, deep POV memoir, emotional maturity, fear and instinct, fraternity culture, human vulnerability, men’s inner life, moral tension, Path Perilous memoir, psychological awakening, rites of passage, sexual awakening, spiritual innocence, teenage conscience, youthful desire

• Plato’s Cave Shadows

  In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the shadows on the wall represent illusions and the false reality that people perceive as truth.

  RMDell’Orfano

  November 25, 2025

  Autobio

  cave of ignorance, Chained prisoners all, Nonconformist, Plato’s Cave, Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Fraternity Hell Week

  Hell Week teaches that important social lesson, unless the ritual turns cruel and deadly.

  RMDell’Orfano

  November 18, 2025

  Autobio

  ATO, Hazing, Hell Week, Path Perilous