Authors have a tinge of arrogance. Well, maybe more than a tinge. It takes some hubris to believe we have something important to say to the world. After spending most of my adulthood trying to identify and minimize this arrogance in myself, I realize I will never fully succeed. Still, it's a good inner battle to fight.
Yesterday, Lisa Graham McMinn and I received cover art from the publisher of our new book. It's beautiful.
Good designers help make the world a lovely place.
And (I say with a smidgen of pride), I took the photo with my iPhone 13 Mini. The lovely soul in the kayak, well that's my co-author in life and this book. The little puff of white fur belongs to our dog, Oliver, who has bounced and fake-barked his way into a surprisingly warm place in my heart.
If we authors carry the arrogance of assuming we have something worth saying, the paradox of this book is that it calls us to say less. The first chapter is Slow to Speak, An Invitation to Quiet.
It's a Loud, Loud World
The world around us and within us can be so loud. A recent Scientific American article outlines the price we pay while living amidst so much noise, from learning disabilities in our children to cardiovascular disease and diabetes for the rest of us.
And talking, oh talking! In the book we tell a story of attending a Valentine's Day event where we were seated at a table with 8 lovely people who drank far too much. If alcohol is a social lubricant in small amounts, it is a verbal laxative in large doses. By the end of the evening Lisa and I couldn't hear one another talk, nor could we hear the musician singing through her amplified sound system. So many words were flying around that evening, so loud and so fast.
In researching this blog post I came across something called the Talkaholic Scale. Who knew there was such a thing? I may print some copies if I ever go back to that Valentine's Day event.
I also came across an observer measure of talkativeness, which means we can now compare our own perceptions of how much we talk alongside what others observe about us. For the science nerds reading this, the correlation is r=.15, which means there is very little overlap between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Sigh.
A Year of Quiet
Three and a half years ago I began attending a Quaker meeting known as waiting worship. Friends gather each week to sit quietly in the presence of God and one another. A few words might be spoken by one or two folks, but mostly we sit and listen together in silence.
I began attending to confront a blind spot I spent most of a lifetime avoiding--a pattern that had hurt various people who were and are dear to me. Somehow it seemed important to sit with my frailness, my brokenness, and not to fill the space with words.
For the first year, I spoke no words at all during those Sunday morning services. I still attend, and occasionally I speak now, but I find the power of quiet to be healing in ways words could never match or describe.
Silence can be an incredible teacher. Or maybe it points us toward that Teacher.
In this same spirit, Lisa and I invite our readers into spaces of quiet. Books are filled with words, so that's the only way we can make our invitations, but the quiet practices we suggest supersede whatever words we muster.
Spiritual Practices
Lisa is a spiritual director now, after many years of working as a sociologist in academia, so she works with people every week in finding practices that help bring peace and meaning into their lives.
As a conclusion to each chapter, we invite people into spiritual practices that encourage slow. Centering Prayer is the invitation Lisa offers at the end of Chapter One.
Each chapter extends an invitation and offers a practice.
An invitation to quiet
An invitation to contentment
An invitation to courage
An invitation to empathy
An invitation to humility
An invitation to gratitude
An invitation to generosity
An invitation to community
I'll be blogging about some of these invitations until the book comes out later this year or early next.
Lisa and I started this project three years ago, shortly after we began attending the waiting worship meeting I just described. It has been a long, slow road to get the book finished and published.
Much of what life teaches us comes as slow.
If you want more information, we have videos of various lengths describing An Invitation to Slow. (1 min | 4 min | 8 min)
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