Wanting to Slash Someone's Tires During Advent
And the radical transformation brought by patience and trust
You know those low-grade anxieties that rarely step out into the light? They’re sort of like the shadowy figures in old detective movies, the ones watching from just outside the halo of the streetlight. The kind of worry you rarely look directly at, but it’s still there.
I have one of those shadowy anxieties these days.
It has to do with our book shop in January; namely, what will we do when the holidays pass, and the city quietens in the dark, cold days of January? Will people still buy books? Will everyone forget about our little shop on 112 N Prince Street? Will we be able to pay our bills?
The interesting thing about these seemingly unobtrusive anxieties is that, because we often don’t recognize or acknowledge them, they can have an out-of-proportion affect on our moods, our choices, and the ways we interact with the world.
For example, my unacknowledged anxiety about January at the shop had me contemplating slashing someone’s tires.
Let me explain.
Back in August or September, construction began just up the street on an apartment building, one that will eventually have 70 units plus some retail stores at street level. It’s a massive project, especially for our little city, and when it’s finished it should be really good for our shop.
So that they could work on the building, they closed the sidewalk, cutting us off from the rest of Gallery Row. They added a crossing to the north side of the construction zone but no crosswalk back to our side, which means people have to cross over before they get to our shop and then can’t cross back to our side unless they go all the way down to the intersection, cross there, and then come back up the street. And they often put up a sign at the south end of Prince, warning people the sidewalk is closed. Cross over. Don’t go this way. Seriously.
In other words, this construction project has completely obliterated the number of people who pass by our store on any given day, something that has had a major impact on our sales.
Then, yesterday, I got a call from Maile. She was pissed. And let me tell you from 25 years of married experience that Maile is mostly a sweet and lovely human mammal but you don’t want to be on the wrong side of her when she has fire coming from eyes. The construction company had parked not one but TWO huge trucks in front of our store, one of which wasn’t even in a real parking space, so now you couldn’t even see our store when you drove past.
It’s hard enough running a little book shop these days, with Am*zon selling books under cost (in order to put book shops like ours out of business), and so many people expecting free delivery that arrives 37 seconds after they press the order button. Now the city and a construction company were conspiring against us!
War!
Chaos!
Destruction!
When I arrived at the store later that morning, I eyed the two trucks with contempt while crossing the street and walked in between them to get to the front door of our shop. And as I passed, I thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if any of the security cameras on the street would notice if I slashed their tires.”
As the day progressed, Maile and I got caught up in a maelstrom of self-righteous indignation, vehemently strategizing how to address these problems . . . but perhaps in a less illegal way, one that wouldn’t end with my mugshot in the local paper. Send a hyper-vigilant email to the parking authority? Text our landlord about it? Complain loudly to the company? We were a whirring engine of aggrieved business owners, ready to avenge not only our store but small businesses everywhere.
Time passed. It actually ended up being a very busy day at the shop.
Later, I asked Maile if she had ever sent that message, that text, that email. She looked at me rather sheepishly.
“I had a change of heart,” she said.
“Henri Nouwen wrote of the spiritual work of gratitude: To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment.” Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
I have been reading Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness in the quiet, dark hours of these December mornings, when our two high schoolers move around the dimly-lit rooms, trying to wake up for school. This quote leaped off the page recently:
“The quick-fix mentality that dominates our impatient world serves only to distract us from the lifelong journey toward wholeness. And the self-help methods so popular in our time, the bests of which offer us support for that journey, sometimes reinforce the great American illusion that we can forever go it alone.”
Ah, the quick fix. That’s what I’m looking for when it comes to the construction situation outside our book shop. A quick fix. An instant change in circumstances. A miraculous cure.
But I’m starting to feel like my response to this construction is emerging primarily out of my anxiety about January and also this cavalier sense that I have to do this alone. I have to sort it out. I have to fix the problem.
Which is nothing more than what Palmer refers to as the great American illusion. What if the better response is born from something different? Something that looks like patience, trust, and perhaps community?
“Tell me more,” I said to Maile in the backroom of our bookshop. “What changed your mind?”
“Well, it just didn’t feel right,” she said. “I was stewing about the construction and the trucks and feeling more and more worked up. But the Spirit keeps inviting me to trust.” She shrugged. “Just trust. Keep doing what we know to do to sell books. And this thing will work out the way it should.”
And peace filled me at her words. It was like she was giving me permission to care about what really mattered. And I thought back to Parker Palmer’s words in my morning reading. What if the road to wholeness is paved with patience and trust?
“The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise.” Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
What if the journey of me and my writing, the novels published and not yet published, is not meant to happen in microwave fashion, but as a slow and faithful journey over a lifetime?
What if the story of our bookstore won’t completely unfold today, or this week, or even in the next year, but over a much longer time, during which we are invited to trust, invited to wait?
Now, I’m certainly not saying we should just let this culture do whatever it wants to us and the vulnerable around us, that we shouldn’t protest injustice, that we shouldn’t stand up for what’s right. We should do those things. But the truth about this construction situation is that there have already been numerous conversations (many before we arrived on the scene), decisions were made, and, fair or not, this is the hand our little bookshop has been dealt.
We could build up enough angry momentum and sprint up against the brick wall . . . and collapse, damaging ourselves in the process. Or we could turn all of this energy into love for our neighbors, take all of this energy and use it to create a book shop that’s a safe haven for our community, a place to find rest and peace. I don’t think we will be able to create that kind of place if our hearts and souls are dwelling in a space of angry, bitter vengeance.
I also realized, at some point, that much of what I was feeling was simply the fruit of my anxiety about owning this little book shop in January. That worry, unbeknownst to me, was looking for some way of resolving itself.
But those words keep circling in my mind.
Trust. Patience. Wholeness.
Maybe that is the way forward.
If you’d like to support our little book shop, click the book links in the post. They all take you to a bookshelf I’ve created on Bookshop.org called “Books that Promote Patience and Trust in the New Year.” Our book shop receives a generous portion of all books you buy there using our bookstore, Nooks, as your preferred local bookshop.
And you can always order books directly from us—just email the titles you want to hello@nooks.gallery. You all are the best. Thanks!
Finally, be sure to subscribe to our Nooks Substack!
This certainly strikes a chord of resonance — the shadow anxieties that come out in other ways, the constant pull toward that American ideal of going it alone, the beautiful quote about the pilgrim leaving what’s nailed down. Thank you for the simple but rich vulnerability and wisdom you shared here, Shawn.
Cheering you on from Wisconsin!