Robert Sibley's book signing

My friend Barbara, author Robert Sibley, myself and my friend Debbie

Before heading to see Of Gods and Men, my friends Barbara and Debbie and I stopped by Chapters' Rideau to show support for senior Ottawa Citizen writer Robert Sibley, who had a book signing there on Saturday afternoon.

Robert is a deeply thoughtful, elegant writer on the Citizen's pages and I look forward to reading my signed copy of A Rumor of God. Meanwhile though, we had fun hanging out with him for a while. Please note how accidentally color-coordinated Barbara and I are with the book's cover!

Another little rumor of God perhaps?

Here's a little excerpt from the book so you'll see why I am eager to read it:

It’s all very well to consider everyday mysticism from the high ground of philosophy and theology, but the task at hand is learning “how extraordinary the ordinary is when we rediscover it by way of the mystical”i How do you foster this attitude in the quotidian realities of our lives, particularly in our aggressively secular society? How, in other words, do experience all those “concrete approaches” to the mystery in the humdrum here-and-now? I have already offered the examples of experiences of Munro’s fictional character, and elsewhere I have pointed to the epiphanic evidence of poets and novelists, philosophers and theologians. Perhaps, though, a few examples of people experiencing “moments of being” would be worthwhile.

I’m rather fond of the example of Rev. Mark Roberts, a Lutheran minister in Texas. Roberts recounts how he was waiting in a long line at Costco, and as he stood there he could feel his blood pressure rising. “The more I waited, the more frustrated I became. Words I never say (well, almost never say) filled my mind,” he writes. “Then, all of a sudden, it dawned on me. I had one of those moments of grace, in which God managed to slip a word into my consciousness. As I stood in line at Costco, I was waiting. Waiting! I was doing exactly what Advent is all about. Of course, I wasn’t waiting for God to save me or anything momentous ... But, nevertheless, I was waiting. I was forced to experience something that’s at the very heart of Advent.”ii

Roberts’ epiphany is not particularly profound. I’m sure he would agree that as epiphanies go, it was a modest one. Nonetheless, it qualifies as an epiphanic moment in the sense that Roberts gained a modicum of self-knowledge and, for a brief moment, transcended the ethos of instant gratification that prevails in our society. You might call this a moral epiphany. In any case, his experience also demonstrates another aspect to the practice of everyday mysticism: You become attentive by deliberate acts of attention.