How Will We Bear This World?
On Finding Something New in Owning a Bookstore
A mother follows her toddler through the entrance of our bookstore and back to the children’s area. Later, when I walk through to the backroom, I catch a glimpse of the mother sitting on the floor, back against a bookshelf, staring through the beams of light. She is somewhere far away. The child plays at the table, banging blocks together.
A father sits in one of our chairs, baby wrapped tight against his chest, and the man leans back and closes his eyes for a moment, just one precious moment. Please. They are as still in their exhaustion as a stone.
A woman comes up to the desk, tears welling up, lip quivering, her eyes not knowing where to look, and she tells me she knew Leslie, and Leslie would love this place, and she put off coming in because she knew she would cry for Leslie when she got here, but then, all at once, she knew today was the day, so she came, and she hopes I can forgive her for crying in the store.
for i seek neither punishment nor grace
but new skin
that can bear this world1
The experience of opening a bookstore continues to do its work in Maile and me. Perhaps you are growing weary of reading about it, but if so, you may want to unsubscribe. This is our life now, for the foreseeable future. This beautiful place is where we are growing new skin that will help us bear the world.
Just the other day, on a normal Thursday morning while I was driving into the city to go to our store, I was thinking about how this first week has been beyond our expectations. How many people have come to the store (some multiple times). How well things have gone.
And then, the flea I talked about last week. I thought about how unnecessary books seem to be in the general hierarchy of needs—at least at first glance.
Given the choice, wouldn’t a starving person choose food over a book?
Given the choice, wouldn't a lonely person choose companionship over a book?
Given the choice, wouldn’t a person stumbling through the desert choose water over a book?
A wave of panic washed over me, right there on South Queen Street.
What if this first week of sales is only initial excitement? What if interest fades? What if we’ve made a horrible mistake? What if, no matter what we do, it won’t be enough?
I thought about the shame that would come with failure, the financial devastation.
What if it won’t be enough?
What if it won’t be enough?
What if *I* won’t be enough?
There it is, the thing that lies at the heart of the matter. What if all of this is not enough to stave off inevitable failure?
How important could a book be?
And it’s all true. Art isn’t that important . . . until . . .
“Until,” Ethan Hawke says, “their father dies, they go to a funeral. You lose a child. Someone breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore. And all of a sudden you’re desperate to make sense out of this life.”
I realized, this is what we’re doing.
Booksellers. Book writers. Artists. Creatives.
We’re helping people to make sense out of life.
We’re helping people find new skin that will help them bear the world.
This weekend, on 5/17 and 5/18, we will celebrate at our bookstore, officially, with a grand (re)opening party. On Friday night we’ll have food and drinks and live music and a few fun drawings, from 6 - 8 p.m. Come on by if you’re around. On Saturday we have more fun planned: story time and art at 11 a.m.; authors signing books from 2-6 p.m.; and finally an event with Lisa-Jo Baker in the evening, from 7:30 - 9:00, where she’ll read from her new book, It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping.
Folks, she has written a beautiful book, and it’s an event you won’t want to miss.
Maile and I have been talking a lot recently about what we want this store to be. Not just how much money we need to make or how many customers we need to serve or what volume of books we have to be turning over every week. But what is this place we’re creating? What does it bring into the world? What sorts of ideas and images does it cultivate?
We think it has to do with Creativity, Imagination, and Community.
Come hang out with us this weekend and help us begin to live out the answers.
What recently has helped you to bear this world?
From “Psalm 43” by the Iranian poet SAID, as referenced in Richard Rohr’s Just This
“This beautiful place is where we are growing new skin that will help us bear the world.”
Love this.
Taking on new adventures is so hard and scary. I’m grateful for your honesty in all the many ups and downs, especially as we stare down the barrel of our own crazy adventure and I have my moments of, “What if we’re just insane?”
Joel Miller shared a quote in notes the other day that hit me — “When people do the strange and inexplicable, it’s rarely because they’re stupid or incompetent; it’s because they know something you don’t.”
Perhaps things like buying a bookstore seem strange and inexplicable to some, but maybe you’re doing it because you know the importance of something that others might overlook and you’re willing to take the risk to fight for it.