EJ Durty

EJ Dury Handicapped by an alcoholic stepfather, Sir E.J. Drury II set off on a crusade, after high school, in search of the very soul he had lost to this ogre. Upon entering the Navy after a brief stint at the US Naval Academy, he struggled for two long years, both in and out of sleep, with the true enemy of mankind—the Beast. As a sailor then, in the US Navy circa 1967, he continued his search for she who must be obeyed if he was to overcome the beastly side of his nature and reunite himself with soul. "Whatever you do," was he forewarned by a fellow shipmate, early on, "don't let them rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths will claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you." And so must he, at all costs, resist the temptation of his father’s before him, to live out the visions of others rather than the one with which he had been entrusted at birth, a quest that eventually pits him against the Navy as he comes to a fuller understanding of the true meaning of military service. Returning to St. Louis after his eventual discharge, he sought out and joined a loosely knit community of antiwar activists, vegetarians, and free-spirited thinkers who published the city's only underground paper, The St. Louis Free Press. After not quite a year of leafleting the induction center downtown and of helping disaffected GIs from a nearby army base at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he joined another community of radical Catholics forming a Catholic Worker House on the near south side of the city. There he stayed until he left for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, later that year, to work at an alcoholic treatment center on the near south side. After suffering through one of the coldest winters he had ever experienced, he moved back to St. Louis to work on a psychiatric floor at Lutheran Hospital. Upon leaving there in protest, with other health care professionals, over the performance of a lobotomy on a 15-year-old patient, he wound up working on an orthopedic floor, and later, a psychiatric floor at Jewish Hospital, for the next seven or so years. At the same time, he purchased a farm about a hundred miles south of St. Louis, where he had begun to experiment with growing organic vegetables that he marketed back in St. Louis. There he built a cabin and began to acquire the tools and equipment he would need to farm 10 to 15 acres of organic fruits and vegetables. Upon leaving Jewish Hospital around 1980, he went to work for a friend and general contractor who was in need of a carpenter. Around this same time, too, he married and began to raise a family. As his oldest son approached the age of two, he started building a new house on the farm, only to have his well-laid plans dashed by an unfortunate but permanent injury to his back, that left him unable to perform any kind of manual labor on a daily basis, ever again. Thrown into a quandary, he eventually went to work for the City of St. Louis as a building inspector, where he worked for two years to the day, before taking a similar position with the City of Richmond Heights, under whose employment he has remained, to this day. After a series of dreams he had in his second year with the City of St. Louis, he started writing, two hours a day until he had completed the book, originally entitled Close Encounters of a Very Special Kind— a recounting of his first year in the Navy, his encounters with soul and their eventual but brief reunion. The book was so poorly produced, it went nowhere. Crushed but not defeated, he continued to work on the book, off and on, until it reached its present form, a work of psychological and social import entitled A Different Kind Of Sentinel, pre-published in 2009 and finally released in 2010, and again in 2013, after its third and final revision. For his part, Sir E.J. is a self-taught, self-made man who has struggled mightily, to live up to his soul's expectations of him, acquiring along the way, whatever it took to get them through the next stage in the development of that one person they are destined to become. Rivendell Books: January 2013 Butch Drury, Publisher Having survived the war in Vietnam, without physical injury to himself, Sir E. J. Drury II “had nonetheless incurred the deeper wounds of a house divided against itself.” As a child, had not he experienced his real father’s schizophrenia and, later, his stepfather’s alcoholism as war related, he may very well have written Review of Book a different kind of story than A Different Kind of Sentinel. For Sir E. J. gives to the imagination what Carl Jung gave to the world—via Active Imagination and the Transcendent Function—a reality “that is just as accessible to one’s faculties as the material world.” From the first page of the book to the last, does the author slip so seamlessly from one world to the next, as if there were truly no distinction between the two. While standing, for example, in front of a mirror, one day, he sees an image of his soul, a woman “standing opposite” him in the mirror. Alarmed at first, he steps “back from the mirror only to find himself being inexorably drawn back into her world through the smile on her face.” In the end, is he “left standing in front of the mirror, smiling at an image of himself dressed as a white knight.” And therein lies the whole story in a nutshell. For this remarkable story is as much about the author as it is about the soul and their eventual reunion. While he fears the white knight, she loves the White Knight “above all else.” Where he longs to be free of his indenture to the beast, she longs to be free of her imprisonment in nature. “I am the way,” she boldly proclaims when he finally admits he is lost. And though the two suffer the same agonizing pain of separation from each other and their respective worlds, both seek the one person they are meant to become. As a sailor then, does he reluctantly set off in search of she who must be obeyed if he is to overcome the beast that burdens him and the rest of humanity with self-destruction or destruction of the self. “Whatever you do,” is he forewarned by a fellow shipmate, “don’t let them rob you of the most precious gift you have, your humanity, for the wraiths will claw away at it until all that remains is the shadow of what was once you.” So must he, at all costs, resist the temptation of his father’s before him, “to live out the visions of others rather than the one with which he had been entrusted at birth,” a vision that eventually pits him against the Navy as he comes to a fuller understanding of the true meaning of military service. Filled with many insights into the workings of the soul and the trinity, human sexuality and creativity, war and the beastly side of human nature, the book is intended for those intrepid souls who will venture to open its pages in search of what might free them from the clutches of the beast that threatens to destroy us all before we destroy our selves—the beast’s only mode of operation. Short Summary Most Recent: The first major work to document the development of a conscientious objector using Jungian Psychology (Active Imagination and the Transcendent Function) Short Summary: Using a little known technique of Jungian Psychology termed Active Imagination and the Transcendent Function, does the author paint a picture of himself as a young man who has lost his way into the Navy, circa 1967. As his body burns with desire for union with soul, with each stroke of the pen does the author delve deeper into the unconscious in his search for what might free him from his indenture to the beast--a quest that eventually pits him against the Navy as he comes to a fuller understanding of the true meaning of military service. My only credentials are that I have spent a good part of my life writing this book while studying the writings of such notable persons as the contemplative Thomas Merton, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and the Zen Master D.T. Suzuki. The only other book that comes close in style to what I have written is C.G. Jung’s The Red Book, which I have only recently acquired due to its unavailability. The main point I would like to get across is that we have lost touch with our souls and lost our way. As a result we are destroying ourselves and the planet, instead of destroying our selves, an ego way of existence that has outlived its usefulness. We must turn inward to find the way, to get back in touch with our souls, to find healing. When a soldier kills himself, as many are doing these days, he has misunderstood the symbolism. It is the self he must kill, not his whole being. To see that takes symbolic understanding which can only be gained by turning inward. We take killing too literally. We kill other people instead of killing what we project on to them to make them an enemy in the first place. Again we misunderstand the symbolism. It is against human nature to kill another but not to kill the enemy within. Union with soul doesn’t always mean union with a flesh and blood woman, but union with what image of our soul we have projected onto her. Again we misunderstand the symbolism, if you get my drift… Butch Podcast of the interview Download: