Why Pilgrim’s Bookshelf?

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my dressing room in Kent, Washington when it hit me. I was reading This Isn’t Happening; Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century. It’s a fascinating book that captures the mood of the world when Radiohead released Kid A. As an aging rocker myself, I grokked with all of the feelings that swirl around a band that has been around a long time. The music makes you experience the present and the past all at the same time. My first instinct was to write about it. The literary life for me is like breathing. I read books and get inspired (which literally means breathe in). Then I exhale through writing. But where? How?

One of the sources author Steven Hyden used for the book was an online journal by Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien. Just like happens when listening to a favorite song you haven’t heard in years, I was instantly taken back to a different time. Maybe not all the way back to 2000, but somewhere in between then and now. Maybe around 2011, when being online meant something different than it does now. That was probably the last year of my blogging heyday. Somewhere around there, I zigged when I probably should have zagged. I decided that since everyone was on Facebook, that’s where I’d take my writing. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, but as the years have gone on, the quirkiness of the blogosphere has given way to whatever social media algorithms have given us. It’s not even that we are all seeing the same thing or the wrong thing. I rarely, if ever, even see other people unless I’m deliberate about it. I like hiking, so Facebook gives me hiking posts. Apparently one time I took a little bit longer looking at a picture of a snake, so Facebook thinks I like snakes. So my feed is literally full of snakes these days. 

Lately I’ve found myself wanting a different kind of internet. A slower one. One with books and stories and rabbit trails. A place for thoughts about faith, music, creativity, and the long road home. Enter this blog. This is going to be my home base moving forward.

So where did the name come from?

There are actually a few overlapping reasons behind The Pilgrim’s Bookshelf. One thing I’ve noticed from being around a long time is that people don’t really stay in one place. Over time their interests and their entire public persona evolve. Everybody does it to some degree or another. Some of my favorite artists like Neil Young, U2, and Bob Dylan made careers out of trying on different personas. I think everyone is trying to get a little closer to their real selves, so that over time their trajectory takes them home. For me, it’s a journey to an authentic relationship with God. So I would consider myself less of a wanderer and more of a pilgrim.

So there’s the pilgrim part. But what about the bookshelf? If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you might remember a couple of years ago I had a semi-regular livestream called Live From the Bookshelf. I just set up a webcam in my office, which happened to be full of books, and talked about whatever was going on in my life, singing a song or two as the spirit led. It was an absolute blast, and something I hope to revisit at some point. Unfortunately, my family is living in a small townhouse these days so there’s not really the room to do the livestream. Maybe I can do some livestreams from other places – who knows? 

Also, there’s the obvious. I love books. Being the son of a school librarian, I have read books for as long as I can remember. And a lot of my favorite authors from when I was a child, such as C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle, have continued to delight and inspire me as an adult. 

And there’s a community aspect to it. When Third Day was first starting out, one of our favorite things was to go to the Christian bookstore. Of course we’d go to the music section and check out the latest offerings from our favorite artists like Jacob’s Trouble and The Prayer Chain. But we’d also find books by amazing authors like A.W. Tozer, Oswald Chambers, and Henri Nouwen. This is also where we’d find out about local concerts happening in our area.

So as this blog unfolds, I expect it to be a mashup of all of the above. Music, faith, books, creativity, and my own writing about those things. And I hope it ends up being a community of fellow pilgrims like myself. In a world that keeps getting faster, maybe there’s still room for a bookshelf. There’s only one way to find out. Thanks so much for stopping by.