#023: My Thoughts on "Room for Good Things to Run Wild"
How Ordinary People Become Every Day Saints
This is my review of Room for Good Things to Run Wild by
. Or maybe more of a plea for you to read it, and be transformed by it.Book Description:
Room for Good Things to Run Wild is the antidote to widespread Christian malaise. If you feel like life is happening to you, that your faith has been reduced to trite platitudes, and that no matter how many new things you try, you still end up with a dissatisfying Christian life, this book offers relief from the mediocrity of Christian living through the sacred and satisfying journey of becoming an every day saint.
After spending too many days staring at the hamster cage of his uninspired life through the bottom of a glass of Scotch, Josh Nadeau knew there were only 2 ways left to go: further down or finally up. Disillusioned by his faith and disenchanted by the world around him, Josh chose up out of a desperation to discover the Jesus who had formed the saints of old.
Steeped in literature and doctrine, art and raw daily life and accompanied by original illustrations and living liturgy this book will bring you on the journey back to an embodied theology that understands that we know, not just with our minds, but also with our bodies. From Canada, to England, to Ireland and Spain, Josh follows the Jesus Way, teaching you how to be just as honest about the pain of your life as the pleasure of your life.
Rediscover the full and wild world that God has created for you in the way He has created you to experience it. Room for Good Things to Run Wild is a call into the Holy Ordinary; a new way to see that wakes the soul and satisfies the body.
I was planning to crush this book in a weekend on a family vacation. I’ve been following Josh for a while. I’m a big fan of what he’s up to, his art, writing, and so on. We’ve kind of become digital friends/acquaintances? He’s a stand up guy is what I’m trying to say, and I was really excited to get his first book, Room for Good Things to Run Wild. I planned to devour it quickly, tell him I loved it, and move on.
But it stopped me in my tracks.
Room for Good Things to Run Wild resisted my subconscious attempts to make it a checklist-consumptive act, to make it an intellectual experience by which I feel I’ve grown rather than deeply engaging with the story it tells. Josh’s writing resisted that mentality.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on why that is. And I think know why. Ernest Hemingway wrote,
“A writer’s problem does not change. He himself changes, but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.”
That’s it. Josh captured what is true, and projected it in such a way that I became a part of the experience.
Sure you can blow through this book in a weekend. But you won’t get much out of it. And you’ll feel Josh’s experiences, honesty, and prose resist you in that. If you let it, this is a book that will become an altar in your life, a memorial to what God might say or do, a fork in the road, a before and after moment that you look back on and see how so much has changed. I know it will be for me.
I love the way Josh chose to write the book in narrative form, bringing us along in his experience as hd are learned. It creates this beautiful, literary dimension to the book that is SO GOOD, and feels so perfect for what Josh accomplishes in the book. It’s part of what made me slow down and chew on everything he wrote - all of which deserves deep reflection!
Josh does three things really well: he painfully and powerfully diagnoses the malaise we all feel, he beautiful draws us deep into his own story of working it out, and rather than offering trite, formulaic answers that get nobody anywhere, he does something much worse: he acknowledges the complexity and difficulty of the path we are all called to take, while helping us see the way forward. Josh was once at Rock Bottom. Rather than giving you five steps, he comes and sits with you in yours, tells you his story, helps you get up, and carries the torch for you as you begin to shuffle forward by the Grace of Jesus. He helps you hear what he calls the Hidden Music, Jesus’s voice and resonance, pulling you onward and upward.
By sharing so vulnerably about his experience and journey, Josh gives all of us reading permission to be honest about our own experiences. So many of us feel and are living in the same angst and malaise Josh was without even realizing it, and through the complete package that this book is of beautiful writing, art, design, and powerful ideas/narrative, I felt Josh prophetically (in that forth-telling sense) giving me eyes to see the situation we’re all in - and then offering a beautiful, real way forward that isn’t some simplistic formula, some cheap product. Josh is offering water from a deep well, hard-earned wisdom, truth, and beauty won in the trenches of actually living it out.
There’s another part of this book that felt deeply refreshing, encouraging, and inspiring to me: so much of the conversation in the Western Church has been deconstructive and negative - on both the right and the left. No one has anything positive or upbuilding to say, no one’s casting a beautiful vision for life as a Christian in this moment we find ourselves in. But Josh is! He’s not dunking on other camps or views or deconstructing for likes and shares - though he has his criticisms where they are needed, which I appreciated.
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for sounding the alarm, calling out sin and dysfunction, and all of that. It’s deeply important. But the overall tone of Josh’ book is one of calling people up and to see their lives as imbued with God’s presence and love. Josh is helping give us eyes to see through the smog of this vitriolic, clickbait moment to a deeper, more true, good, beautiful way. Josh isn’t pretending there’s nothing bad happening - on the contrary, he’s very honest about it! But, he’s forcing us to stop wallowing in it. He’s forcing us to move past tearing down and to begin building up. The weeds have been pulled, the chaff separated from the wheat. Let’s start putting roots down, watering the vine, and producing fruit.
And I think that’s why I’ve teared up and felt my heart soar at points in this book, and another reason why I’ve slowed down to savor it rather than crushing it in a weekend. What Josh wrote deserved to be, needed to be, chewed on and ingested slowly.
Room for Good Things to Run Wild cuts through all the polarizing arguments we loooovve to focus on so that we can prop ourselves up by feeling right without having to deal with the real problems and fears and issues, that we use to excuse ourselves from doing the work of becoming an Every Day Saint.
I am deeply grateful for this book. I want to reread it immediately. More, I want to wrestle its ideas and what it points to into my own live experience. Bolstered by the Truth, my heart stirred up with a Beautiful vision for what my life could be, and empowered knowing that Goodness is possible and Virtue is attainable by Grace and Love, I want to orient my life towards becoming an ordinary Every Day Saint.
Thank you,
for writing this book, sharing your story, and calling us all forward into a more ancient, Beautiful, Good, and True Way.GO BUY THIS BOOK NOW! And read it slowly, with your heart and mind open. You just might encounter Jesus.
Hic sunt dracones.
You have peaked my curiosity!
Thanks for writing this! You're an amazing pastor and writer, and I'm glad to have you as a friend.