Publicity

I must be well overdue in devising ways of promoting The Presence. True, I have submitted pieces to the Christian Writer and Mensa magazines, but both reach a limited audience. The internet, radio, TV and local press are obvious targets for me to aim at, but -

What the heck do I say without sounding boastful, sorry for myself - which I am not - or flippant? How do I use the internet to make people aware of my offerings on it, this blog for instance?

Self-publicity is an art of which I have absolutely no knowledge. It can even be argued that self-promotion is positively harmful to the one seeking to be known. Damn it, a large part of my efforts to make spiritual progress is devoted to ending the tyranny of the ego... and yet here I am doing my feeble best to devise ways of telling the English speaking world how wonderful The Presence is, please go out and buy it!

Were it possible to separate The Presence from its author in the minds of those who read it I should find the promotion of the book far easier. Problem. Such a separation will be impossible for the vast majority of its readers, if it sells well enough to be able to speak of a "vast majority". It is also undesirable because, if it is to challenge or inspire anyone, it needs to be linked to a real person, not some abstract being or intellectual truth.

Here, I fancy, I have touched on the substance of the problem. A remarkable conversion experience started me on the road to recovery. I describe that experience to the best of my ability early in The Presence and I have not hesitated to make further references to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit along the way. All of which is fair enough... up to a point.

The point is, that while I have made references to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit I have done my level best to avoid "churchy" and pious language. You see, if I use language I would not dream of using in everyday life there is, I believe, a danger of separating everyday life from spiritual development. This is surely not on as, if my own experience is true, then the more I am aware of the Holy Spirit in my everyday life the more I am alive... and I can't live if I spend the greater part of my life on my knees! I have already spent far too much of it in the horizontal position, stoned out of my mind.

No! I really do believe that if we take Jesus' message to heart and act on it then we may stand up and face the world and its difficulties as free men and women. How we attain that freedom is, of course, something else. How this man, Robert Page, was enabled to start on his way to it is described in The Presence. It is a little book which addresses several of life's big issues along its way. Intellectualism and theorizing have no place in it.

There! I've done it! Just a very small plug... now it only needs someone reads it.

Getting closer

Publication day for "The Presence" is now less than three months away. I am increasingly conscious of the shock many who have known me for some years will experience when they read it. I should imagine reactions will be, "Who would have thought it," or something along those lines.

It is strange that what started out as an exercise undertaken purely for my own benefit should now be the substance of my first book. When I started work I had very much in mind a passage in Fr Henri J Nouwen's book, "The Wounded Healer". Let me quote it:-

"The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. He is able to create space for Him whose heart is greater than his, whose eyes see more than his, and whose hands can heal more than his."

The articulation about which Fr Henri wrote has undoubted value even if it is retained within our own hearts, provided always that it is an open, truthful and, yes, courageous articulation. But, after having started my own recovery from alcoholism in AA a fair time back, I have discovered that to share with others whatever may be weighing on me or whatever means I may have found to overcome a particular problem, without reservation, self-pity or boasting has a value beyond price. So has the ability to listen, really listen, to the experiences of others. It is, of course, always necessary to choose an appropriate time and place for the sharing.

It will be obvious to anyone reading this blog that there are many who know me who know nothing of my alcoholism. You may therefore ask, "If you are so keen on being open with others why have you not already told these people about your alcoholism?" The simple answer is, "Because it is totally irrelevant to that relationship."

However, if I speak with someone who has a drinking problem then I have no difficulty or reluctance in sharing the history of my relationship to alcohol with that person. Indeed, I can say with authority, "I have been where you are; I have experienced what you are experiencing. This is what I had to do to break free of the prison you're in and to begin to enjoy life to the full..."

The curious thing is - or maybe it's not so curious - that since the early days of recovery I have found sharing and listening to alcoholics and non-alcoholics alike to be essential parts of my continuing spiritual explorations and discoveries. I know that for many the mention of anything spiritual is a massive turn-off. It is almost inevitably associated with religion, hymn singing, doctrine, dogma, ritual, false Sunday morning goody-goodiness and, well, add your own labels.

Please, avoid thinking such as this like the plague. If there is one thing of which I have become convinced over the last 30 odd years it is that somewhere deep within us all there is an eternal something that is beautiful beyond description or price. At different times it has been my privilege to stand all too briefly in the light of that something, which, I firmly believe, is - there is no was - the light and fullness of God. This light shines at the very centre of my Being, and at the very centre of yours too: at your very centre. That is the one heck of a claim. You may believe it or not; call me a madman if you will. That is your privilege. All I can say is that you are unlikely to have met the God with whom I long to become one unless you have experienced the darkest and deepest pits of despair and - and - accepted that you were beaten and in need of help.

Way back in the April of 1977 "I need help" was the most powerful prayer I had ever uttered. It still enjoys pole position. It was answered in abundance. My gratitude knows no bounds. But let me tell you: the God who loves me, the God I love, is quite surely not a God bound by creed, doctrine, dogma or anything else. God is God; God is love unlimited. It is as simple as that.

There is much I have learned since that day. There is much that remains to be learned. In fact, I doubt if all that remains for any of us to learn can be learned either here or in the hereafter, wherever or whatever the hereafter may be. For myself I shall be content if I learn simply to be, for when I am not then I am.

O Dear!

I am reminded that I have been forgetful of this blog since taking the trouble to open it. I should make good the omission. Let it not be said I allowed "The Presence" to die by neglect!

There have been three main developments in advance of publication on 27 February 2010.

The first of these was the result of my search for quality back cover endorsements for "The Presence". Fr Gerard Hughes SJ (author of "God of Surprises" etc); Fr Richard Rohr OFM (author of "Simplicity" etc); and Sr Julian Breitenbach PHJC (Founder of the Namaste Centre for Holistic Education at La Porte, Indiana) have all written about the book in glowing terms. To them I offer my heartfelt thanks.

The second development was the acquisition of an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) for "The Presence". This is 978-1-84694-268-6. You may care to make a note of it. It will make ordering a whole lot easier.

The third happening, a very recent one, was the finalizing of the cover design in advance of producing review copies of the book. This, unsurprisingly, is what you can see above left. The response of the friends and relatives to whom I have shown it can be summed up as, "It gives a sense of calm". I hope that much the same can be said about "The Presence" itself. It contains accounts of personal storms, but it also shows how calm or peace - use which word you will - can be conceived in the very worst times of our lives. Whether or not we nurture it so that it grows and continues growing is entirely up to us and the god we choose to follow. That has been my own experience; I believe it can be the experience of everyone.

"Authority" (?)

Let me get the unwelcome news out of the way first: it looks very much as though the publication of "The Presence" has been put back to 27 February 2010, by which time I will be 75. This is frustrating, but also, in a peculiar sort of way, quite funny. How many authors have had their first book published at the age of 75? It can't be too many.

I have been quite fascinated by the work it is necessary to do to persuade book readers to buy a particular book, in this case my own. A part of this process is for me to find authoritative figures who will read my book in manuscript form and, hopefully, having read it. will feel able to pass favourable comment. This comment will appear on the back cover. The most desirable authorities are, apparently, prominent clerics known to the public, leading academics and other authors with an established reputation. This is no easy task. The most desirable are busy people with little time to spare for reading other people's writing.

Without these endorsements the sales of a book are unlikely to be very great.

The difficulties I have encountered in getting people to read my book with a view to endorsing it have raised two issues in my mind. The first is that of false gods. If we - I include myself in this - will not buy a book unless several people rated as authorities on the subject matter have said good things about it, have we not, by implication, created a breed of false gods? Even though the Bishop of Blogspot and Professor Knowall of Oxford University declare a book to be the best ever written it does not follow that anyone else is going to get anything out of it.

The second issue is that of authority and what constitutes authority. There are many subjects that require long periods of training before anyone can be regarded as an authority on them. Instances which spring immediately to mind are history, geography, medicine, mathematics and the sciences. Where the understanding of personal experience is concerned this is far from being the case.

I will take as a "for instance" of what I mean the experiences I have had as a drinking alcoholic and, for the last 31 plus years, a recovering alcoholic. There is no way I can describe what it is like to crave alcohol or to have the "horrors", better known as DTs. Yet let me speak with another alcoholic and I need say nothing. He or she simply knows.

Strangely, were I to decide to write a book on alcoholism, and if I could find another alcoholic willing to break his or her anonymity, their endorsement of my book would be without value. But let me find a psychiatrist who specialises in addiction who is both willing to read my book and to endorse it then I have an endorsement of tremendous weight. The psychiatrist's word on the clinical aspects of alcoholism might be worth something but, unless he is a recovering alcoholic himself, he will have little of value to say about either the craving for alcohol or the "horrors".

I come now to spiritual authority. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the author of the 1st Gospel says, "... the crowds were amazed at his (Jesus') teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law" (Mt 7:28-29). In other words the teachers of the law spoke from the outside of the law: they were commentators, not livers, of that which they taught. Jesus spoke from the inside, as one who had lived and experienced the spirit of the law about which the teachers spoke. Thence came his authority.

Further on in Matthew (11:25) Jesus is quoted as saying, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things (that is, the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven) from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children." Could it be that the wise and learned were blinded by their own wisdom and learning? that for them anything they could not comprehend with their intellects was not valid? Compare that with the little children, who may be of any age. They understood with their hearts, and still do. Love is a nonsense when examined under the microscope of reason, the All when it is an experience lived in the crucible of a heart on fire.

Who knows God better: the Bishop of Blogspot immersed in theological debate on the plight of the poor, Professor Knowall declaiming on how Christ would have defined poverty, or the little girl offering a sweet to a smelly, shabbily dressed old man sitting on a park bench? But the little girl's endorsement would have no value even though her heart had reached out to the old man in the only way she knew. Not for her the niceties of theology, ontology or epistemology. Just a sweet. Just love.

Introduction

As this is my first post I think I should write a brief introduction. I recently had a book, "The Presence", accepted for publication in December 2009. It is a devotional book dealing with the conversion experience, alcoholism, forgiveness, social conditioning, understanding and much else. There is no theorising in it. Everything in the book is based on my personal experience. At the same time I make no effort to teach or moralise.

I will use this blog to keep a record of various thoughts and ideas as they occur to me. They could provide the basis of a further book. It is not my intention here to expand on the basic ideas presented.

And that, my friends, is it for the moment.