This is a book about staying where you are, committing to a place or people, as a way of finding spiritual meaning. In a time and culture that seems to value searching, never bypassing what looks like a new opportunity, and dipping a toe in lightly in lots of places, Lydia Sohn takes a countercultural approach to the spiritual life.
Lydia Sohn is a Korean-American and a United Methodist pastor serving a church in California. At one point, referring to herself, she writes, “Our very names are tied to our lands. Jesus of Nazareth. Julian of Norwich. St. Francis of Assisi. Wendell Berry of Kentucky. Lydia of Claremont.”
She’s had to learn what she calls the “spirituality of staying.” Like most people, her tendency is the opposite. She explains in the introduction, “I am, by nature, a leaver. Once a relationship, job, or any other arrangement requiring commitment gets to be challenging, I fantasize about the next better thing I can dash off to.”
Benedictine spirituality, inspired by the sixth-century Benedict of Nursia, “the father of Western monasticism,” and his groundbreaking Rule for life, is Sohn’s primary inspiration for the importance of stability — which Sohn defines as “standing firm when your restless soul craves another place, person, vocation, or life under the false belief that it will be better.”
