The Spirituality Level

I’ve tried to go a long time without saying this, but maybe I’d better, just to make things clear: We Picked Up is meant to be a spiritual book without saying, “This is a spiritual book.”  I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? For me, the characters’ every step takes on spiritual dimensions. It’s a book about wholeness; it’s about where mind, body, and soul intersect. That’s the channel I attempt to keep the story dialed into. So much of how we live our lives (me included)  is done with smoke and shadows. We build ourselves a giant iceberg of experience, but through fear, only show the tip to ourselves and to others. Only a small percentage remains visible. Ask any actor—it’s really tough to “be yourself.” This story tries to show there are no limits to Self. It intends to reveal all—the quest, the revelation, the desire, the fear, the fulfillment, the heartache; the whole bounty of life. But it does so while staying connected to God and oneself. Rev. Paul Rademacher, author of A Spiritual Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Universe, says in an online interview that on one level, "Spirituality is about intentionally trying to reconnect with those parts of ourselves that we have pushed off.” That nails the aim of We Picked Up. That’s why the narrator says early on, “Call it what you want: sowing our oats, testing the waters, going for the gold, letting it all hang out, whatever. We wanted to do something big, and it had to be now—in this lifetime.” There’s a presence I’m trying to generate, a sense of “now” which equates simultaneously to vulnerability and openness. But when you’re seventeen, you don’t describe it in those terms. The characters explore their own internal worlds by traveling cross country and back. They’re looking more inward than outward. As Rademacher would say, I’m trying to show there is no difference between the dichotomy of material world and spiritual world—that the former is completely infused into the latter.