Reclaiming Quiet on Election Day?

The irony of releasing my book on one of the noisiest days of the year, and what I plan to do about it...

Double Portrait (The Artist and His Wife), Paul Basilius Barth, 1908

A couple of months ago, my Dutch husband sent me a text: did you realise that your book is releasing on Election Day in the US?

I nearly woke the sleeping baby in my arms. No, dear reader. No. I did not. Nor, apparently, did my publisher.

You hear dates as abstract points in time. 5th of November. And you think, ‘sure, looks like I’m free’. Book releases are arranged months in advance, intricately plotted out to give space and time to the many various titles making their way into the world and the marketing attending that debut. So, though multiple people were already at work on making the launch day for my book, Reclaiming Quiet, successful, none of us had actually clocked that it would emerge into publication on just this particular day of the year.

One of the noisiest days of the year.

I was, I will confess, dismayed.

The idea of wrestling with the entire internet for even a modicum of attention on any day of the year mostly gives me a stomach ache, but Election Day is a different prospect altogether. We tried to change it, but couldn’t. So for awhile, I withdrew into my mind and tried to get my imagination into a place where I could picture competing with the million other posts and articles and opinions being published that day, hawking a book about quiet amidst the cacophony of voices attending one of the great political dramas of our year.

But I couldn’t. To do so would be a betrayal of what this book is actually meant to communicate, a violation of the limit, the trust, the quiet I have been fighting to restore in my own heart and life. Nor did I necessarily feel that it was right to aggressively push people to be quiet on a day when it is important to be part of the human drama, to have a voice in the story of the world.

So I found myself pushed back to some of the first questions I asked as I was writing the book.

What good is quiet in a broken world?

What does it mean to live in the world of action and need, relationship and obligation and yet retain some sense of peace?

What does it mean to be unshaken amidst the upheavals of the world?

I sat in my reading corner, candle alight, dusk blanketing the landscape. I thought about Psalm 46 with its haunting, compelling command be still. I thought about the core realisations I have come to amidst the process of writing and wrestling through the idea of quiet. And in that moment, several ideas came clear to me both about the launch of the book and the state of my soul:

Quiet means trust: in God as the source of every good in our lives.

Quiet is a choice to root myself in the larger narrative of eternity, even as I wrestle out my story in time.

Quiet doesn’t ask me to disengage from the world. It asks me to be rooted in something beyond it.

And in that moment I understood quite clearly that I needed to shape Election/Launch day by the very patterns of attention, wonder, limit, and trust that I write about in the book. I am in all things, launch days and salvation, cradled by God’s kindness and provision. And that’s the whole point of living in quiet. He’ll take this little story where it needs to go. My job is simply to remember that.

For me, that means creating some tangible ways to root myself on that noisy day, noisy because of the election, yes, but also because of all the anxiety and expectation attending a book launch. I, as much as the watching, political world, need to remember that my life is rooted in something beyond this changeful world of shifting presidents and publication dates.

So, this is what I’ve decided to do, and I’m inviting you to join me if you’d like. I’m going to go live on launch day three times:

For a brief version of morning prayer.

For a brief version of evening prayer.

And I’ll broadcast the launch party reception hosted by alma mater, Wycliffe Hall on Tuesday afternoon.

And that’s mostly it. I’ll post once or twice about the book’s release, maybe a celebratory post here for those who want to find it, but I also know there will be a great deal of other posts going out that day too. And that’s all right.

My choice for these set, communal prayers is to remind myself that the success of this book, the flourishing of the world (regardless of election outcome), the grace that sustains my life is entirely gracious gift. The same gracious presence we find in quiet.

A quiet we can trust to sustain us however wild the turnings of the world.

So, if you want to join me for a few minutes of restorative quiet on Election and Launch Day, I’d love it. Whatever you do, I hope your own heart is anchored, as I’m trying, trying to learn for mine to be, in a goodness that outlasts every drama, in a Word that spoke before any voice and will tell the ending of our stories in love.

See you Tuesday, one way or another!

Join me for MORNING PRAYER

Join the live BOOK LAUNCH from Wycliffe Hall

Join me for EVENING PRAYER