Starting Something New: Spiritual Direction for Your God-Given Dream
(InterVarsity Press; 2015)
By Beth Booram
You have a great, secret idea; a dream that won’t let you go. Is it just some crazy, wild notion…or a God-given inspiration…or both?
Author and Spiritual Director Beth Booram’s latest book is a delightful guide and companion to those of us with a “secret stirring within”. Booram believes that there are many people harboring a creative, Spirit-inspired idea, but who lack the knowledge and courage to nurture it into being. With this book, she takes us by the hand and walks with us along the path of discerning, defining and acting on our dreams.
Booram speaks from experience, and weaves her own story of realizing a dream through each chapter. Booram, with her husband David, is co-founder and director of Sustainable Faith Indy, an urban retreat centre in Indianapolis. She opens her heart and reveals the doubts, despair, lessons and joys of birthing this initiative. In one chapter, Booram writes: “When I began to take my dream seriously, I experienced my own internal protests. I felt inadequate and foolish to think that this idea could ever become a reality through my efforts.” Later, when faced with what looked like certain failure, she wrote in her journal, “God has plopped himself down in the centre of the path of our life as a stumbling stone. He is not budging. I think that death – death of our dream – is inevitable. …I can kick against the goad or try to go around it, but it’s useless. I choose to surrender. I choose to die.” Reading these honest feelings that Booram shares from her own circuitous path to fulfillment was actually quite reassuring.
Booram also interviews fourteen other people who found the boldness to live out the dreams, and presents their stories at the start of each chapter. Each story documents the real life ups and downs of starting something new, such as creating a neighbourhood legal clinic; starting an adoption agency; establishing a film school in Africa; training youth-at-risk in automotive repair; and founding a coffee company that employs adults with developmental disabilities, to name a few. These stories are not only instructive, but also hugely inspiring and entertaining.
Each chapter then goes on to describe a “stage” in the gestation of a dream: with chapter headings such as Conceiving, Brooding, Welcoming, Naming, Shaping, Changing, Waiting, Dying, Resurrecting, and Sustaining. The wisdom and practical instruction Booram imparts is like taking part in a “kingdom-business incubator”, as she gives concrete advice and warnings about common pitfalls. There are also carefully designed exercises at the end of each chapter, with pointed, constructive reflection questions to move us forward, similar to those a good spiritual director might ask. As I contemplate my own long-held dream (writing a novel – there, I’ve named it!) I found these questions to be powerful and helpful.
Another treat is all the wonderful quotes that Booram includes in the book. As a fervent quotation-lover, I can’t stop myself from sharing a few of my favourites:
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. (Herbert Alphonso)
Although it may be frightening to trust our desires, they are always fundamentally spiritual. In fact, they are often the most direct access we have to the subtle movement of the Spirit within our own spirits. (David Benner)
As we enter the passage of emergence, we need to remember that new life comes slowly, awkwardly, on wobbly wings. (Sue Monk Kidd)
God gives us a vision and then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision… (Oswald Chambers)
If we want to accomplish anything substantive, both as a nation and as individuals, we need to embrace inconsistency when it is called for, support contradiction when it makes sense, and celebrate flip-flopping when it results in a positive change. (Michael, a high school student)
I’m sure that many will find this book as engrossing and as valuable as I have. Booram has much well-researched guidance to give us – and also provides plenty of food for thought. Near the end of the book, she remarks on a trend she has noticed among many faith-filled dreamers of dreams:
Beth Booram
“Through my interviews and interactions with people in my community and from around the country, I’m aware that God is up to something in these small beginnings. I notice a trend where countless individuals are feeling the nudge of God to give birth to small things. These aren’t typically large world-changing mega-businesses, corporations, organizations or churches. They are infant-size initiatives, often with a small reach. What I sense is that God is in this day of small endeavours, and perhaps through these micro-initiatives, he is weaving a web of care that will span the globe.
Small has captured me. In the past, I’ve been part of large organizations and mega-churches. During those times, much of my energy was given to “big”. I worked hard to create large venues and gatherings, spoke at and organized those venues where large portions of resources were invested. Not so now. I am investing my life quietly, in the small, in the few.”
Through this intimate and very hopeful book, Booram is investing in God’s creative work in all of us.
Visit www.bethbooram.org
