Start Books. Maybe Finish Them.

on lack of completion as a spiritual practice

I mentioned in a recent article that I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and one of you commented that you couldn’t wait to hear my thoughts on this lovely book when I finished it.

That same day I received an email from a friend who was having a hard time making it through the book. It’s really lovely, he said, and on a topic I deeply resonate with, but it’s a bit of a slog. How about you? 

I admitted that yes, actually, I was getting a lot out of it, but was also finding it hard to get through. In fact, I was only 40% through the book when the library loan expired and it was abruptly yanked off my iPad. When I went to reserve it again, I saw the holds list was months long. Eh. 

The Braiding Sweetgrass ship has sailed. But maybe that’s OK.

This is not a post about the merits of the book, which are great, nor the skills of the author, which are considerable. Rather, I want to talk to my fellow completists out there, which I’ve always been temperamentally but no longer am in reality, just like I’m a punctual person at heart but am somehow always running 2-3 minutes late (but I will text you with my ETA). My life is a bit too fulsome at the moment to finish everything I start.

On a Pod Save America podcast back in December, the hosts were sharing their New Year’s resolutions. Jon Lovett said his goal was to start more books. Not finish them, START them: “It’s like if you’re making every flight, you’re going to the airport too early. If you’re finishing every book, you’re not taking enough chances out there. I want to start stuff and know if I don’t finish, it’s OK.”

The airport thing was a joke–I think?–but otherwise, this feels right for my Year with No Goals. Lovett is extolling the virtues of dabbling: of starting a bunch of stuff in a spirit of wonder, knowing that not everything will come to closure. Of taking a risk on a book or an idea or an activity that might really challenge you. And hey, maybe you do get it done, and what a feeling! But also, going into things knowing you’ll leave a lot of them unfinished is a powerful antidote to perfectionism. 

In fact, could a lack of completion be a vital spiritual practice? It gives us a chance to make peace with messiness, ambiguity, and open-endedness. You may argue that we don’t need more chances to embrace these things–the world foists them upon us every day. But perhaps starting small develops our muscles to face the big stuff over which we have no control. I’m learning this in the opening weeks of a new pastoral call: there is so much potential, so many good ministry ideas, and it’s gratifying to be able to move the ball down the field. But there’s also a lot left undone. There will always be stuff left undone. 

While writing (and living) the book that would become Sabbath in the Suburbs, I realized I needed a way to make peace with the unfinished chores and work during our weekly sabbath rest, otherwise the laundry sitting in the dryer or the half-written email would taunt me mercilessly. I remembered the old Looney Tunes cartoons, in which a hungry character would look at their prey and see a juicy steak where the head is supposed to be. Or when the guy who’s down on his luck finds a singing frog and begins to see dollar signs. “Rather than looking at an unfinished task and seeing what we’ve failed to do,” I wrote, “I picture what that unfinished task represents: namely, something important that we have done. So when I look at our cluttered garage full of broken rakes and household items we’ve discarded but haven’t yet gotten rid of—some of which have been with us for years—I try not to see our failure in getting the garage cleaned out. Instead I see all those times [our young kids and I] pedaled bikes up and down our street, gasping to reach the top of the steep hill, then soaring down to the bottom again.”

Similarly, recovering completists are invited to look at that half-watched documentary on the HBOmax landing page or the abandoned book with the sticky note poking out of the middle of it and respond not with feelings of failure, but… something else. Curiosity. Kindness. Acceptance, perhaps gratitude, for a full life with so many opportunities, relationships… gratitude even for responsibilities. The alternative is chilling to contemplate.

I can hear the objections now. (Are they coming from you? Or from my own head?) The problem with our world today is a lack of commitment! We’re easily distracted, quick to judge, slow to follow an argument through to its conclusion. And there’s a consumerist dimension to all of this. The basement storage in our home is clogged with the detritus of a thousand bygone pursuits: beer brewing, candle making, those bikes I mentioned. Our planet suffers under the weight of the artifacts of all those abandoned efforts. Thus, good stewardship is essential.

So yes. It’s possible some of you need the exact opposite message today: to love the book you’re with. To find one small thread amid all your pending loose ends and tie it off. (Years ago I coached a writer whose goal, after many years of research and dithering, was to “just finish the damn book already.”)

Or maybe–and here’s the messiest truth of all–we need both spiritual practices at different times. Completion, and lack thereof. How do we discern what’s needful, moment by moment? Grace can be our guide, because there are two sides to grace. 

One side is what pastor William Sloane Coffin would charge his congregation with on Sunday mornings: “...may you have grace never to sell yourself short*.” Do the hard stuff. See the thing through. 

The other side is in Mary Oliver’s invitation to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” The world is hard. Be exceedingly gentle with yourself.

Steady on.

~

Link Love

One of the ancillary joys of not finishing things is realizing that other people can fill in those gaps. For those interested in diving deeper into Braiding Sweetgrass, Erin Jean Warde is making her way through the book: 

pop, slide, and clatter (erin jean warde)

Also, please give what you can to earthquake relief. This week our congregation designated funds to be sent to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Project HOPE, ShelterBox, and Doctors Without Borders.

*Coffin’s full benediction is: 
May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short; 
Grace to risk something big for something good; 
and Grace to remember the world is now too dangerous for anything but the truth,
and too small for anything but love.