Earthy Mysticism: Spirituality for Unspiritual People, by Tex Sample

Abingdon Press, 2008  ISBN 9780687649891 
$15.00…now $10.50…30% off until November 1

Tex Sample’s new book, Earthy Mysticism: Spirituality for Unspiritual People, simultaneously says a whole lot and very little about the subject of mysticism. The word “mysticism” itself only shows up in the introduction and the last chapter, bracketing the book with a concept that Sample doesn’t fully define or even directly reflect on the meaning of. That being said, Sample never claims to be writing a scholarly view of what mysticism might be, but instead attempts to show how one can recognize the presence of the holy in everyday life. In this he succeeds powerfully.

The first chapter, perhaps the best one in the book, deserves special mention. Sample shares from his own experience his feelings of helplessness as his son struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for most of his adult life. He holds back no heartbreaking detail as he describes the sleepless nights and continual heartache as his son tries and fails over and over again to get and stay sober. Even in sharing about his son’s untimely death less than a year after he got sober for good, the worst pain any parent can imagine is somehow infused with an abiding sense of God’s presence. Sample doesn’t try to discern why God let this happen to his family, but simply says that God’s grace never left them, showing up in the most unexpected of ways in the least likely of places.

Not all of Sample’s stories are about such extreme circumstances. He also shares more mundane experiences such as his summer job doing manual labor in college, interesting characters he encountered while working for his parents’ taxi company, receiving gifts from others, sharing physical affection with his wife, and having to remove his foot from his mouth after insulting a hymn that carried someone through a difficult time. Throughout his engaging retelling of these stories, Sample doesn’t often use many of the Christian buzzwords many of us are used to looking for to let us know that God is coming into the conversation. Nonetheless, God’s presence is unquestionably real in every situation Sample describes, inhabiting the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and even textures of his everyday experiences.

Sample shares a very powerful story about marching with Martin Luther King, Jr. in protest of the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” incident, where voting rights demonstrators were brutally attacked by police in Selma, Alabama. One would assume that Sample’s experience of the holy in this story would be hearing King preach. And while that is certainly powerful, God shows up in some unexpected ways, as well. While the march was going through a predominantly black neighborhood, the marchers became very hungry and thirsty under the Alabama sun. Out of nowhere a woman appears, passing out sandwiches and Kool-Aid. Sample experiences this simple act of kindness as a celebration of Holy Communion, with the body of Christ in a peanut butter sandwich, and the blood of Christ in a sip of strawberry Kool-Aid.

In Sample’s life—and in our own—God shows up time and again in small yet powerful ways that require us to sit up and take notice of the sacred that mingles amidst the mundane experiences and encounters of daily life. Earthy Mysticism is not so much an instruction book on how to find the holy in your own life as it is a collection of examples of how one person reflects theologically on his own life, and an implicit invitation for the reader to do the same. If you are a fan of Anne Lamott or Mike Yaconelli (or of Sample himself, for that matter), you will thoroughly enjoy this book.