Soul Boom is a master class in these two qualities-Wilson stresses that the key to love, both earthly and divine, is to be available and humble. Both of these qualities are positively associated with happiness: Life is more fun and interesting when we find things to learn, and less stressful when we aren’t trying to defend our prejudices at every turn. As the Anglican minister John Newton wrote in “Amazing Grace,” arguably the most famous Christian hymn of all time, “I once was lost, but now am found, / Was blind, but now I see.” In 1890, the poet Francis Thompson likened the phenomenon to being pursued by “the hound of heaven.”įor scholars, to allow oneself to “be found” relates to “trait openness” (an openness to new ideas and experiences) as well as to “epistemic humility” (the recognition that one might not be right or have all the answers). “Being found” is a strikingly common description in many religious traditions of how transcendence occurs. As the years passed and the misery mounted, he was pulled involuntarily toward the One, with whom he now has a “bone-deep relationship.” As a young actor in New York, he told me, he tried to “escape anything and everything to do with spirituality, morality, religion, and, most especially, God.” He failed in this escape attempt. His own story involves wandering away from the beliefs of his youth until he was hunted down by the divine. But you’d be missing the book’s real power-its observations about the unique nature of experiencing the divine.įirst, Wilson shows, the faith quest is not about finding the truth, but about being found by it. (Wilson backed up his argument by sending me links to research on this topic, such as this survey from the Pew Research Center.) If that were the extent of his argument, you might be tempted to observe that you could get much the same earthly perks from a 12-step program or by joining the local Rotary club.
Soul Boom is a practical book, in that it makes the case for how faith and spirituality, when practiced seriously, can raise happiness through those benefits he listed for me. The idea that we are more than our bodies, and that service to others is the highest form of worship.” Also, he added, “potlucks.” Wilson told me how faith-including traditional religions in which adherents worship the divine (whom he calls “The Notorious G.O.D.”)-gives us what we all crave: “The bonds of community. Read: Dwight Schrute wants you to get the day off for Election Day He offers readers this path through a world beset with all the same problems he suffered. In this new book, which is part metaphysical autobiography and part spiritual how-to guide, Wilson writes about how faith saved him from a witch’s brew of anxiety, despair, loneliness, depression, and addiction. (By that time, I had a part in my own absurdist drama, running a think tank in Washington, D.C.) Wilson’s background also planted the seeds of his belief in the power of religion and faith, which is the subject of Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. We were both raised in very religious homes: I as a Christian, and he in the Baha’i faith.įrom this odd cultural stew emerged Wilson’s offbeat comedy, made famous by the character Dwight Schrute in the hit absurdist television comedy The Office. We were both serious classical musicians, specializing in maligned instruments-he played the bassoon I played the French horn.
The divine office professional#
We both had parents who were professional artists. Over lunch in Boston in April, we discovered that we had weirdly parallel lives: With less than two years separating us in age, we grew up a few miles apart in lower-middle-class Seattle neighborhoods. That last version of Seattle is the soil from which the actor Rainn Wilson sprang-as did I. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was a remote, rainy city dominated by Boeing, albeit with a vital arts community and a lot of spiritual seekers. In the 1990s, it was a cool destination for countercultural 20-somethings who liked grunge rock. Today, it is known for Amazon, Microsoft, fancy coffee, and enormous fortunes. Seattle has gone through several big transformations in the past few decades. Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
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