On Monday I will be sending the final manuscript of A Year of Faith and Philosophy: Exploring Spiritual Growth Through the Liturgical Cycle (three weeks ahead of the deadline I might add!) to my editor at Church Publishing.
I will be sending it digitally, of course–the hard copy is just for my own pleasure. For those unfamiliar with the proces of book publishing, here’s what comes next:
- After reading the manuscript, my editor will send questions and/or suggested editorial changes. We had several exchanges over several weeks in the spring to get the book over the finish line of a contract offer, but I fully expect there will be more adjustments and editing to do. So far, this is the best editor I’ve ever worked with (this is book #6), so I’m looking forward to the process.
- Once the editor and I agree that the manuscript is final, she will send it to the publisher’s production team, upon which that team will contact me with a definitive production schedule.
- Shortly afterwards I will be contacted by the marketing team about plans to market the book. This will include a several page marketing questionnaire.
- The book then gets sent to a copyeditor who will review it for style, grammar, and consistency. Once they are done I will get the copyedited manuscript for my review and the opportunity to respond to any queries. This will be my last chance to make any substantive changes to the book, under a pretty short deadline.
- Now the book goes to a typesetter. When the page proofs are done, I will receive a copy to review carefully, but only for the purpose of correcting typos and other errors.
- After all of the above, the typesetter creates a final version which goes to press.
Since my book is themed to the liturgical year which begins with Advent shortly after Thanksgiving every year, and since the above could not possibly take place in time for Advent this year, my book is currently scehduled for release in September or October 2025. If you think the process is baroque, slow, and complicated, you are correct. But roughly 18 months between when my book was put under contract in spring 2024 to publication in fall 2025 is just about the norm in the publishing world.
The evolution of this book has been unexpected and enjoyable. I had another book project on my plate for my Fall 2023 sabbatical (that one is currently being considered by a literary agent)–A Year of Faith and Philosophy was, truth be told, a “warm up” writing exercise in summer 2023 to get me in the zone for my “real” sabbatical project. But as these sorts of things go, Big Bird had different plans. In its current form, A Year of Faith and Philosophy very well may be my favorite of all of my books–it undoubtedly is a more direct expression of me as a spiritual being and a person of faith than anything I have ever written. My hope and prayer is that it will of service to others in their spiritual and faith odyssey.
Many writers will tell you that the introduction to a lengthy article or a book is generally written last. That certainly has been my experience. I thoroughly revised the introduction to this book over the last couple of days. Here is the brand new final section of the introduction that I wrote yesterday. The introduction is titled “Prelude and Preliminaries;” this final section is called “Before we begin . . .”
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In the syllabus for every course I have taught over the past twenty years, I have included this: “My job is not to tell you what to think. My job is to get you to think.” The same applies to this book. My own understanding of the texts under consideration has evolved over the decades; there is no reason to believe that this evolution will not continue.
Still, there are common themes throughout this book that reflect where I currently find myself as a person of faith. These themes include an emphasis on the humanity of Jesus, a commitment to open-endedness and a suspicion of claims to certainty, the conviction that the divine way of doing things often turns our assumptions and traditions on their heads, and embracing the idea that God’s decision to become human, the Incarnation, continues in those of us who seek to follow Jesus. As amazing as it may seem, God has chosen human beings as the primary vehicle of bringing the divine into the world. Barbara Brown Taylor said on a podcast a few years ago that
God decided long ago in Christian understanding to trust human beings with the gospel message. God decided to risk trusting the humans. This is the central claim of the incarnation—that God trusted flesh and blood to bring divine love to earth.
It is a risky strategy, but one that demonstrates both God’s love and God’s respect for us. We will be engaging with this remarkable story frequently as we proceed.
One final preliminary consideration before we proceed to Advent: Practice being open to surprise and mystery rather than falling back on familiar and comfortable interpretations. Many of the stories and texts from scripture are so familiar that we are strongly tempted to think there is nothing new to be learned or experienced, forgetting just how wild and untamable the texts often are. We are strongly tempted to simplify mystery, as Sarah Bessey describes in this passage:
There are a lot of weird stories we’ve tamed over the years: floods and rainbows, burning bushes that are not consumed, healings, prophets, talking donkeys, fish with money in their mouths, and widows with inexhaustible oil to sell, the dead rising . . . The number of weird and wondrous happenings in the Bible is staggering. But we’ve removed wonder to turn God into a manageable deity, a force understandable to our minds and our methods and concerns. We’re all seeking to tame the wonder because non-knowing is scary to us.
For persons of faith, it is important to remember that, first and foremost, God is mystery. The best responses to mystery are wonder, open-endedness, and resistance to premature closure and certainty. With that in mind, Advent calls.
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