Give Me Something to Believe In
You were a bit surprised when you saw the cover and title of our newest book, Love, My Neighbor. But you shouldn’t be. Our mission is the same now as before we published our first work: to challenge readers to open their minds, explore and, in some cases, question their world and notions of reality.
If a book doesn’t make you, at times, feel uncomfortable, then the author and the book have failed. And I’m not talking about sending you running for the dictionary to look up an unfamiliar word or two – I’m talking about something deeper than the definition of a word. I’m talking about how you define yourself. How willing you are to have a book raise uncomfortable questions about who you are – or who you think you are. How willing you are to let an author open up the hood and take a spin around what makes you tick. That is what we want to achieve with the books we publish – and that is why Love, My Neighbor makes perfect sense as our latest offering.
Yes, you have no doubt determined that Love, My Neighbor is written from a Christian perspective – but, for me, it is not about any one religion or religious perspective. It is about what makes us believe in anything, most importantly ourselves: faith.
At some time or another in our lives we have – or have had – a crisis of faith: whether it is in “Someone” or “Something” or, again, in ourselves. Moments – some brief, some long – when our faith is so shaken that we are driven from our belief in the same by people, events or some combination. With nothing or no one upon whom to rely we punish inward – or lash outward. If we believe in God, we shake our fist heavenward. If we believe in ourselves and the world around us, we turn that fist, literally and/or figuratively, against the convenient targets.
Occasionally, it’s both. I admit it: I’ve been there.
So, there you are – or I am. Once “there,” though, how do we find our way back “here”?
That is what Love, My Neighbor is about: What does it take to turn things around, to re-discover your faith so that you can believe again? The answer is what makes Love, My Neighbor an important book for me to present to you. It is in no way an attempt to preach, proselytize or espouse anything other than this: Ernest Love speaks for all of us. Without giving away the story, he is an Everyman and Everywoman who suffers “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and takes “arms against a sea of troubles” – only to find that victory is gained by embracing, not fighting, faith.
Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz famously said, “…if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard; because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.” I would argue that the same applies to losing and finding our faith and belief in ourselves – or Someone or Something: we need to stop beating up ourselves and others long enough to realize that it is that which we perceive to be our enemy that is, in fact, our salvation.
I think every one of us has something to learn about the importance of being Ernest Love, because we have all met the enemy – and he is us. If I do say so for Oscar Wilde and Walt Kelly.
