The stunning book cover of Tony Pfannenstiel’s “Prayer Poems from a Reluctant Disciple.”

Renaissance man

Anthony Pfannenstiel, “Tony,” and his beloved wife Betsy moved to the Peninsula full-time from Portland several years ago. They settled into their charming home on the ridge in Surfside and both got busy immediately making a difference in our community. Tony sparked the building of Poetry Boxes here and there, where local poets could post their own writing or the favorite poem of another author. He organized poetry readings. He and Betsy joined the weekly Quaker meeting at the Ocean Park Timberland Library. As Betsy says, “Tony just makes things happen. That’s the story of his life.”

I couldn’t agree more. Tony is the kind of fellow who lights up any room he enters or any gathering he joins. His enthusiasm for life, for love and laughter radiates from him almost like beams from the sun. If he directs his big smile at you, you can’t help but smile back no matter what dire things are happening in your day. His friends have described him as “charismatic,” “a renaissance man,” “he loves to laugh,” “a deep thinker,” “he’s one of a kind.” “He’s always interested in learning and growing and doing positive things for his family, friends, community, and country.”

Tony and Betsy: A love story

I met Tony and Betsy because of our common love of writing, poetry and art. Their story is legendary. As Tony writes in his newly published book, “Prayer Poems from a Reluctant Disciple,” “At fourteen I made the decision to join a monastery. I was searching for something — peace, structure, safety, and escape. But by the age of nineteen, I realized that the life of a monk or priest was not my path. I met the love of my life, Betsy, at Georgetown University. She had been a nun for five years before we found each other, and in 1971, the former nun and the former monk-in-training were married. Some might say it was a marriage made in heaven.” I think so. They are the happiest couple I know.

A year and a half ago, Tony and Betsy wandered down south to get some sun; then, lo and behold! they up and purchased a beautiful rambling home in Green Valley, Arizona. Their place looks out over the Sonoran desert at the edge of an arroyo frequented by desert creatures and birds of all kinds. When Gary and Marla McGrew are also installed in their Tucson snowbird digs, the five of us get together to laugh and catch up on all the crazy Peninsula stories and characters. Tony and Betsy have never been happier, though they’ve admitted that maybe one incredibly hot summer is enough, that maybe they’d have to decamp during the hottest southwest months. (Are “sunbirds” a thing?)

Tony has been a writer and poet for many years, and, as mentioned, is now the proud author of a new poetry collection. I’ve followed him for part of this publishing venture. After a reading at our local library, Sue Holway, Tony and I made plans to get together to work on our own manuscripts, to help and inspire each other. Yet, as often happens, life got in the way of our potential collaboration. But Tony went on to meet his goal.

Enter the cloud portal

The first thing you’ll notice about his new book is the stunning cover: a tiny figure, dwarfed by an unearthly landscape of clouds, seems about to enter a magnificent spherical portal. I asked Tony how the cover came about. “I created it myself. I’ve been experimenting and working with ChatGPT [an AI platform] for six months. So, in this case, I asked it to create someone walking on clouds, but the image that came back was someone in the air. Then I said, no, I don’t want someone flying above the clouds. I want his feet to be on the clouds. Then I said I want some kind of waterfall coming down out of the skies. In one image it was a circle, and I said, Ah, yes! Keep wrapping those clouds around that circle. Finally I said that’s perfect!”

But the cover is only the first invocative aspect of the book; it’s full of Tony’s thought provoking images. Open it and you’re on the beginning of a voyage, an adventure into a world of spirituality. Much of Tony’s life has been about spirit, faith, and belief. He’s been a “reluctant disciple,” as he says, because he’s often felt that he’s chasing God, who seems to appear and disappear in almost whimsical, teasing ways. “I’ve lost my faith so many times. I have it and then it all escapes me. God is … well, he or she has been vacant in my life at times and so quiet. I don’t know why. My spiritual journey has not been neat and orderly — it’s gone everywhere. But I’m starting to get it now. My religion is based on my emotions,” he says. “I want my spirituality to show.”

And that’s how Tony creates his poetry. “I get a deep emotion that absolutely throws me, a feeling inside me of loss or suffering, anger or love. Then I just start writing. I’ll take the best lines as a scaffolding and build on those.” So Tony’s poetry traces his journey as a human struggling with meaning. Simply scanning the poetry titles gives you a glimpse of his themes: The Hidden Path, Finding My Way Back to God, When God Dies, Strivers and Seekers, Dialogue with the Divine.

Quiet yourself

Tony calls himself a disciple; he’s on a odyssey, and along the way he encounters his own insecurities, delights, successes, and failures. In these pages you’ll find Tony’s profound love of life and the kind of advice that only a deeply committed “seeker” can provide. Here are the beginning lines from “Where the Quiet Dwells:”

Quiet yourself.

Sit still.

Let life find you there—

Tiny souls like ants and spiders,

Greater ones like squirrels and birds,

The steady ones like trees and rocks.

They come when silence opens the doors.

Nature, all around us here on the Peninsula and where Betsy and Tony now live, can provide a promising and renewing elixir. At eight, I still remember one of my first poems about a hummingbird in my backyard. What did it all mean? As a child I attended Sunday school every week at the Central Lutheran Church in Yakima — the music drew me in — and I was confirmed in this Lutheran church. But as an adult, as I learned more about the world and constructed my own values, I must admit I’m now closer to Christopher Hitchens’ beliefs (or lack of). Though I believe in some deep order in the natural world, and find, as Tony obviously does, spirituality in the details of the life around us, I do not believe there is a white eminence with a white beard up above us somewhere looking down on all humanity. I know that having no proof of this possibility but still believing in some version of it is the purview of faith. But that I do not have.

For all these reasons walking through Tony’s book resonates with me. Being human — and one must admit there’s a billion in one chance of becoming conscious in the universe — is nothing short of miraculous. (As Tony writes in “Let There Be Humans” — “Look what happens to a clump of mud!”) He writes so well about the struggles of a spiritual pilgrim. As noted on the back cover, “This collection is an aching meditation on the journey of the heart.”

In some ways, Tony’s first poem provides an answer to the conundrums unfolding in his book:

I walk on

a reluctant disciple,

faith in my steps,

questions in my heart,

embracing the mystery,

knowing that to search

is its own form of finding,

and to wander

is sometimes the closest way to

home.

Tony’s book has inspired me in so many ways, and inspiration is what many of us need right now. You too may find that his words can spark your thoughts about life, love, death, and what it means to be human. May we all find our rightful spiritual homes. His book is available on Amazon, and you can write to him at tonypfan@aol.com .