Enterprise

Becoming a Capitalist

I just did something I’ve never done before.

I took out an ad to promote my newest book.

Admittedly, a tiny ad in the monthly newsletter of the parish in California where I was rector for 10 years toward the end of the 20th century. The cost to run the ad for a full year ($250) could conceivably produce enough sales to get my bait back.

Still, a major departure from my long habit of writing – books, blogs, random pieces – mostly for my own mental health and sense of self. I’ve always been happy when someone tells me something I’ve written connected with them in a way that mattered.

The expense of editing and publishing has rarely been equalized by sales.

That’s been ok with me because the writing is my way, not only of discovering what’s on my mind, but of meaning to explore dimensions beyond, or within, the limits we normally assign to intellect.

I love to do it. Something about making a major commercial push seems inevitably to change the nature and purpose of doing the writing.

So why this? Now?

Maybe whimsy. The parish administrator slipped in that handle-bar mustache, maybe the only thing people there remember about me all these years later.

The parish newsletter is not a hard-charging commercial venture. It’s mostly about opportunities to join in good works to help address the woes of the world, and to refocus our own spirits that so often and so easily go off the rails as we’re seduced by our aggressive, commercial culture.

So it at least sort of fits.

At the risk of diluting my writing as vocation, and of being seduced by ego, I think this book – I Reserve The Right To Be Terrified – has helpful wisdom that could be of use to people. That conviction, a happy surprise, grew after the book was published, as if it were about something someone wiser than I had written.

I am cautiously proud of that. And, in my small, tentative way, I am promoting the book.