The Blank Page

Near the end of many of the interviews for this book, I handed the person a blank page and a pen.

Not a form. A blank page, and a question I wrote for them, shaped by whatever they had just spent an hour telling me. The card on top of the photo above asks what they hope the world feels more of. Others asked something closer to that person's own story. Then I got out of the way and let them answer in their own handwriting.

I did not do it every time. Some days I was so far inside the conversation that I forgot. So what I have is not a survey. It is a small stack of pages from some of the people in this book, each one answering a different question.

The pages came from a wildlife rehabilitator who hangs mutilated dolls in the trees along his driveway and wakes every three hours through the night to feed orphaned raccoons. From two people who call themselves Satanists and spend their actual energy on food drives and religious freedom. From a woman who has shown up at the same Tulsa mission on the same mornings for nineteen years. From a woman who puts cameras in the hands of girls in East Africa. From a woman who has spent decades teaching newcomers how to belong in this country.

Line up what these people believe, side by side, and you would find plenty they would argue about long after the coffee went cold.

They never compared notes. Most of them have never met. None of them knew what anyone else had written.

Different questions, so of course they went different places. One woman wrote about what it takes to call a new country your own. Another wrote about a hundred dollar bill that has been through a lot of hands. Every answer was its own.

And still, in very different handwriting, across three states and two countries, the answers kept circling the same ground. Compassion. Kindness. Understanding between people.

Two of the answers landed especially close. A member of the Satanic Temple wrote compassion towards all living creatures. A wildlife rehabilitator, in block capitals, asked people to be kind to wildlife, because like most of us they are just trying to survive in a tough, often cruel world.

I did not plan that, and I try to be careful about how much I make of it. A handful of pages is not proof of anything. But it is the part of this year I keep coming back to.

I spent a year being shown, in a lot of different handwriting, that the label was the least true thing about the person wearing it.

Resonance: The Quiet Revolution of Compassion is out today.

Twelve chapters, and every person in them read their own before you could. They could correct it, question it, or ask for something to come out, and when they did, it came out. That was the arrangement from the first phone call. It is the only reason I trust what is in here, and it is the thing I would want you to know before you read a word of it.

Where to get it

Signed copies, direct from me. These are cheaper than retail, shipping is included in the price, and I sign every one. United States only for now.
Signed hardcover, $55
Signed paperback, $38

Everywhere else. Hardcover and paperback are both live at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart in the US, Booktopia in Australia, and Blackwell's in the UK. All of it is on the Resonance page.

If you would rather ask your library or your local bookstore to carry it, that helps more than buying it from me. The ISBNs are 979-8-9995167-2-5 for the hardcover and 979-8-9995167-3-2 for the paperback.

Thank you for being here for this part. It has been a long year and a good one.