Preface to “Spiritual Wanderer”

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March 31st, 2009

By David Crumm, Editor of ReadTheSpirit Truth be told? This new guy makes me nervous. That’s the thing I love about his memoirs: I don’t know where he’s taking us, and that’s the richest kind of spiritual adventure. That’s why I’m so proud to introduce the Spiritual Wanderer to you: This guy definitely is not […]

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By David Crumm, Editor of ReadTheSpirit

Truth be told? This new guy makes me nervous.
That’s the thing I love about his memoirs: I don’t know where he’s taking us, and that’s the richest kind of spiritual adventure.
That’s why I’m so proud to introduce the Spiritual Wanderer to you: This guy definitely is not another warmed-over bowl of “Chicken Soup.” Oh, rest assured, your soul will thrive as you follow the twists and turns of Rodney’s travels – but he’s not promising chicken soup in every pot.

One early reader of his manuscript called him “a male Anne Lamott,” but that description also doesn’t fully capture his charm — or his range.
This may seem like a foolish time to join the already jam-packed crowd of spiritual writers offering a new book. But you’ll find that Rodney Curtis (a.k.a. the Spiritual Wanderer) is a brave young voice. He may occasionally jolt you as he cuts to the core of our everyday lives. First and foremost, though, he’s a good and honest friend you’ll want to invite along in your own spiritual journeys. At times, you’ll want to throw your arms around him and give him a great, big hug! But he’s also honest – so you’re in for some surprises.
    Sometimes, he’s so relentlessly honest that you’ll begin to chuckle along with him at the pure pitch of the truth that he’s sharing. At one point, we actually thought about marketing his new book as “The First Inspirational Book to Come in a Plain Brown Bag” – a joke you’ll understand when you eventually read Chapter 7.
And yes, that Chapter 7, officially titled “Dog Duty,” is one of two sample chapters you can read on the Wanderer’s new Web page. Save that sample for last as you explore his new Web site — and I’ll warn you, don’t read it while holding a hot beverage. We’ve road tested that chapter with readers in the U.S. and the U.K. and it never fails to draw at least a grin and often a full-scale guffaw.

   You’ll want to get to know Rodney step by step. What Rodney, Anne Lamott and other memoirists all understand is that the three most urgent spiritual questions of our era aren’t cosmic conundrums about theology. They’re these: Why should I climb out of bed in the morning? How can I make it through another stressful day? And, ultimately, has anything in my life really mattered?
No kidding. These are our echoes of the timeless spiritual questions: Why are we here? How shall we live? And, is there enduring resonance of good and evil in the universe?
Rodney knows – we all know – that we’re pondering those questions all the time. And, when the Spiritual Wanderer wrestles with those questions, he’s not posing as a Zen master on a remote hilltop or a Trappist locked away in a medieval abbey. He’s a guy like you and me.
In the end, that’s why his story can’t be “Chicken Soup.” None of us live in the soup bowl, where every hurt is healed and every question is answered by the turn of the next page. In life, we’re often standing like the Wanderer, staring up at a streetlight that just blinked on at dusk, wondering if that might be the next light to guide us another step along the way.
Oh — and his chapter about streetlights? Yes, that’s the other sample chapter you can read on his new site. It’s called “Father Figuratively.”

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  (Originally published at https://readthespirit.com/)

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