A Book is Just A Beginning

This week my book The Gift of Restlessness: A Spirituality for Unsettled Seasons launches into the world.

Curious to think about how this book came to be, because books are curious things anyway.  

Listening to Neil Gaiman’s audiobook Art Matters, he talks about writer Douglas Adams’ contention that books are like sharks. Essentially, sharks have been around since before dinosaurs because there is “nothing better at being a shark than a shark.”

Books live, exist, and thrive in our digital climate because ultimately whether audio or digital or print – there is nothing better at being a book than a book.

But if you want to talk about what makes a book really live – I think you have to talk about the fact that books are just beginnings. Books are great at starting things - conversations, lines of thought, even revolutions.

Everything I’ve written in the past is just a stab at starting something.

All the blogs on this website, articles, books, talks – anything that has become a “piece” to be shared and consumed – is just the genesis of something else.

The restless book is the same. It isn’t the conclusive guide to what we do when we’re restless, but I feel like it is (at least) the way I’m making sense of this existentially shared reality and (at best) an invitation for others to join in the creative journey of receiving irritated, unsettled seasons as key to their growth.

I feel so strongly that life with the Divine is about starting something.

The arc of every human story (which are spiritual stories) begins with, well, a beginning.

Moses begins with a basket in a river.

Joshua begins with wandering in the desert.

Jesus begins with stars, stables, and savage tyrant kings.

Each beginning is also immediate. There is typically no preparation, no preamble. We start where we are. Page one of the book, day one of the job, the first breath of life is where we begin and we make our way from there.

I wonder if we can fully embrace this today: the Divine is beginning something today in each of us. There are, of course, our “works in progress” – our life story as it is up to this point – and yet within each large overarching story there are little beginnings as well.

New ways of seeing what we’re already up to emerge like tulips in early spring.

A thought that sits in our mind, squishing into our thoughts and feelings it makes itself comfortable and we’re content to keep company with that new notion.

Someone creatively reimagines a blessing or a prayer (I’m partial to this one by my friend Pádraig Ó Tuama) and we see a common thing in an uncommon way and a path opens up before us, begging to be explored.

Here is what I know about this little project launching into the world today.

I wrote it in my basement, office, and hotel rooms. I wrote parts of it while furious, depressed, and fogged up by COVID-19.  

Parts I wrote while I didn’t quite know what to say. Parts I wrote when I struggled to believe what I was saying.

I wrote while I was hungry, hadn’t showered, when I was distracted, tired, and anxious. Why? Because I wanted to start something. If for no one else, I wanted to get what was in my bones regarding restlessness out into the air and see what it looked like.

So, what you need to know is this:

This is by no means the best book you’ll ever read.

It isn’t even the best book on restlessness and spirituality.

I say this with as much true humility as I can muster, I’m just not that smart.

But what I know is that this book may start something for you.

I know it has started something for others, and specifically I’ve heard feedback from early readers who are not people of faith who said this book connected with them in a certain way.

And that’s my hope. Let’s just start something.

With parents in the south suburbs of Chicago, with educators in Calgary, Alberta Canada. In readers down under and just over the Atlantic, may something begin in these little pages and with my small stories of grace.

So what is the Divine starting in you today? What beginnings are you noticing?

What is the first step on the way of following these beginnings wherever they may lead? 

If it helps, and if restlessness is part of your story, this book may give you some guidance.

Read well my friends. I’ll see you along the way.

Photo by Amel Majanovic on Unsplash