Good morning, and Happy Publication Day to Living In Wonder! It’s been a long time coming, ain’t it? I had a great book launch last night at Samford here in Birmingham, Alabama; what wonderful people there are at that school, in particular Beeson Divinity School, who were my hosts. Look at that fathead sitting there being interviewed by Mark Gignilliat:
It was such a treat to meet so many people who read this newsletter. Thank you all for coming out! It means the world to a writer to know that he has readers who care. This is especially true for me, given the tumult of my own life these past two or three years.
So, the book is out everywhere today in the US; British readers, you’ll be able to buy Living In Wonder starting Thursday.
The danger for every grand story of decline is that it overwhelms the reader. There’s not much to do at the end of the world except watch it go down. Thankfully, Dreher avoids fatalism and despair. We find ourselves, at most, “at the end of a world”—not the world, much less the only world.
If some of Dreher’s earlier work could be read as conflating the church with Western culture so that the future of one determines the future of the other, not so here. In a surprising twist, Living in Wonder turns out to be the book I always imagined when I first learned about The Benedict Option. Sex and politics are mostly missing in action. Dreher isn’t trying to intervene in worldly affairs; he’s trying to throw a lifeline to the lost, lonely, and adrift. The ethos of the book is not so much apolitical as post-political.
What matters instead, he argues, is attending to the world God has made, sacrificing our wills on the altar of Christ, and submitting to the power of the Spirit in the age of the Machine. If we do this, God is faithful and will keep us. Our seeming spiritual impotence, inherited from modernity, will not condemn us to alienation. The life of God is more powerful than that.
Moreover, the life of God is the whole ballgame. Moral rules, political order, social justice—these are goods the church nurtures and pursues. But they are not the end of the Christian life. God alone is our end, the final end of all creation. As Dante writes, “There is a light above, which visible / Makes the Creator unto every creature, / Who only in beholding Him has peace.”
But to see God requires repentance. In Dreher’s words, “If we want to live, we have to turn our lives around and walk away from the false parts of the Enlightenment and toward the true Light.” Such a total revolution is not primarily intellectual but affective and bodily: “We cannot think our way back to enchantment or unity with God. We can find it only by participating in his life,” that is, “by using our entire selves” in worship.
We must be wary of cheap substitutes, though. Dreher warns that churches “forever seeking the Next Big Thing to keep people entertained and in the pews” will not last in the long run. Sure, it’s “fun and exciting for a while, but it’s hard for church-as-spectacle to keep the show endlessly exciting. It comes to seem shallow and gimmicky, because, well, it is.”
At the same time, the solution isn’t “powerful exegesis of papal encyclicals, erudite sermons about the mechanics of salvation, five killer apologetic arguments to use against atheists, or any other canned strategy.” Rationalism is no alternative to emotionalism. Each is a misreading of what people in the West—especially young people—are seeking.
“They want to know whether life has any meaning or this is all there is,” Dreher recognizes. “They don’t want to know about God; they want to know God.”
At times, Living in Wonder reads like a tract for Eastern Orthodoxy. A convert himself, Dreher is likely to lead others eastward. So be it: I’m not converting, but neither will I gainsay him. The best books are not dispassionate treatments of neutral subject matter; they reach out from the page and seize the reader by the lapels. That’s what Dreher has done. He wants your soul for Christ.
Well said, and thank you. I do not wish to hide my Orthodox convictions, but I wrote the book for all Christians. East gets it: the thing that matters to me most of all is that you end up with Christ. I believe Orthodoxy is the truest and most reliable path to unity with Jesus. Moreover, as I write in the book, I believe that the Christian East offers things to our Western brothers and sisters in the faith that can help them through their crisis now. But yeah, Jesus is what matters most. Period. The end.
Dan LeRoy gave me a Hillbilly Thomists coozy
I want to use this day to draw attention to a good man who was a great inspiration for this book: Luca Daum, the Italian artist who came up to me one night after a presentation I made in Genoa, told me he is a Catholic, and had been told in prayer by the Holy Spirit to come to the church and give something to the American (me). It was this engraving he made, titled “The Temptation of St. Galgano”. You all know the story of it, so I won’t repeat it here (if you want a refresher, go here). It’s how I ended up next to the miraculous sword in the stone, praying for God to show me His will. A few months after that, I signed the deal to write Living In Wonder.
The thing some of you may not know, or have forgotten, is that I discovered by the end of writing the book that the core message of it is condensed in Luca’s image of the enchanted saint struggling against temptation to be distracted from the contemplation of God. Here are the final grafs of Living In Wonder:
One more thing: we have to learn openness to synchronicity, serendipity, and signs—and to listen (with discernment) to them. Where would I be if that Genoese artist had not listened to what God told him that afternoon in his studio and come that night bearing a gift for the American writer? Where would I be if I had not made the connection between the artist’s drawing of the obscure medieval saint and a little-known Russian film that just happened to pass before my sad and weary eyes on a warm spring night in Louisiana, offering me a way out of my despair?
I can tell you this much: you would not have the book you have just read. In fact, the image of Saint Galgano’s temptation is a condensed symbol of this book’s message: it is a portrait of a strong-willed man who, after refusing God’s call, went to a mountaintop and saw God. In response to this revelation, which included a true miracle (which you can still see today), he sacrificed his life for Christ, before whom, in Daum’s drawing, Galgano bows. Yet Galgano struggles to keep his eyes firmly fixed on heaven, despite the temptation of his own thoughts to attract his attention away from God.
There you have it: the core message of re-enchantment, in a single man’s story, captured in a single image.
Listen for the Lord’s calling with a heart willing to obey when the word comes.
Respond to the revelation of awe by sacrificing everything to serve God.
Pray without ceasing.
Keep your eyes on heaven, despite the many temptations to turn your eyes to the things of the earth.
Any seeds that this story has planted in your heart that bear good fruit can be traced first to Luca Daum’s act of prayerful obedience and my own willingness to receive this strange grace and to act on it as if it were a message in a bottle.
I put the message into this book and have handed off the message to you. I pray that you open your mind and heart to receive it! For sooner or later, if you are standing in the right place, with your eyes wide open to the night sky, a great comet will come blazing by and invite you to hitch a ride.
Well, here is LucaDaum.com, the website of the artist. It’s in English. Please visit it and see this man’s extraordinary work. You can buy some of it, too. He is a deeply devout Christian — the kind who prays in his studio and goes into churches to approach strange Americans to give gifts, because the Holy Spirit prompted him to:
Luca Daum
My life is so rich because it brings me into the hearts and minds of people like Luca, and people like my old friends in Alabama, and new friends that I make along the way. One of you readers approached me last night and told me that your wife divorced you, and you lost everything, but God sent a new wife to you, who changed your life. “Don’t lose hope,” you said. Another man approached me Saturday after the presentation Kingsnorth and I did at the Orthodox church, and said the same thing. Thank you, guys. I need to hear that. You lift me up.
Now that everybody can read the book, I am eager to read your reactions. I am also more than eager to hear you tell of your own encounters with God, angels, or (:::shiver:::) demons. The world is not what many people think it is. It is so much more. Let’s talk about it!
Many, many thanks to my agent Gary Morris at David Black Agency, and to Webb Younce, Paul Pastor, and the team at Zondervan, who have been absolutely wonderful. Did I tell you that the publicity team at Z sent me NINE POUNDS of gummi bears, my favorite candy? This here is what you want in a publisher:
So, look, I’m off this afternoon to my next stop — no public appearances, just doing some media, then back to Budapest on Thursday. One last very Alabama farewell — Your Working Boy wearing an iconic t-shirt someone gave me here:
Seven years ago I was speaking at a Protestant apologetics conference on a roster with the esteemed J. P. Moreland. In a breakout session, he told the astounding incident of the appearance of an angel in a classroom where he was teaching -- and event witnessed by the students. Moreland asked the breakout session if any of us had seen an angel. I alone raised my hand. After class he shooed everyone away and listened attentively as I told of seeing a long line of armed men along the north wall of my church sanctuary. They were standing at what I'd call "parade rest," and I knew they were there for a reason (I had just revised a controversial book I'd written and needed protection.). When I finished telling Dr. Moreland this incident, he nodded gravely and said, "You are a very dangerous woman."
Rod, you are a dangerous man, and I believe you are being similarly protected. I can't wait to get my copy of the book which should arrive tomorrow.
Thank you, Rod, for all that you do. As a formerly-atheist political philosopher, I'm hardly your target audience. Yet notice the "formerly" in that sentence. Your work--in your books, at TAC and on this substack--has opened my mind and heart. (The Exorcist Files podcast has played a role, too, as has meditation.)
Seven years ago I was speaking at a Protestant apologetics conference on a roster with the esteemed J. P. Moreland. In a breakout session, he told the astounding incident of the appearance of an angel in a classroom where he was teaching -- and event witnessed by the students. Moreland asked the breakout session if any of us had seen an angel. I alone raised my hand. After class he shooed everyone away and listened attentively as I told of seeing a long line of armed men along the north wall of my church sanctuary. They were standing at what I'd call "parade rest," and I knew they were there for a reason (I had just revised a controversial book I'd written and needed protection.). When I finished telling Dr. Moreland this incident, he nodded gravely and said, "You are a very dangerous woman."
Rod, you are a dangerous man, and I believe you are being similarly protected. I can't wait to get my copy of the book which should arrive tomorrow.
My preorder is arriving today!
Thank you, Rod, for all that you do. As a formerly-atheist political philosopher, I'm hardly your target audience. Yet notice the "formerly" in that sentence. Your work--in your books, at TAC and on this substack--has opened my mind and heart. (The Exorcist Files podcast has played a role, too, as has meditation.)
I daresay you'll make a Christian out of me yet.
Best wishes to you, brother!