In my young adulthood, it was the 80s and I read every top business and self-help book the NY Times could promote. It was a time of optimism and materialism and life was good. We had all of the answers.

Then coming up to my wedding, my father found out he had cancer and over the next 6 months, amid the joy of our getting married, I met death face to face and it shook my world. I realized I was trapped in a world view that lied and wasn’t real.

It took twenty-five years to get out. And what I found on the far side wasn’t a better argument. It was an older way of seeing, one the Church had been carrying the whole time, quietly, while I looked everywhere else for it.

These three books are my attempt to hand it on. Today the last of them arrives, and the trilogy is finished.

The Way Series is one pilgrimage in three movements. The series carries a motto — see differently, live differently, become different — and each book is one of those verbs.

The Galilean Revolution comes first. It is about what is true. Before you can live inside the Christian vision you have to believe the ground will hold, and for a modern person it doesn’t, not really, not underneath. So the first book clears the ground: it shows that the worldview which made the faith sound like superstition is the one that can’t actually stand up.

The Simple Way of Christ is the practice. Presence. The Jesus Prayer. The unglamorous daily work of noticing you’ve wandered off and coming back, and wandering off again, and coming back again, which turns out to be most of the spiritual life. [⟶ Optional: one line on a practice that actually cost you something, or took you years, or that you still can’t do well.]

And The Sign of the Fish, out today, is about seeing. It puts a compass in your hand and has you draw — in about five minutes, at your own kitchen table — the figure that the whole faith comes into focus through. Two circles. The almond where they cross. It has been sitting in plain sight since the first page of Genesis and most of us walk past it our entire lives.

You can start anywhere. Most people will pick up whichever cover caught them first, and honestly that’s fine; the others just won’t read the same way afterward. They’re all here: thesimplewayofchrist.com.

So what is this newsletter for.

The books are done. The way isn’t. Reflections on the Way is where I keep writing — some weeks a few lines about one thing I noticed, some weeks something longer that grew out of the work. If you’ve read this far, you already know whether it’s for you.

I wrote this series to share what I learned was already there - and I have tried to make it more approachable for more people who like me struggled with how the faith was presented. I pray that you find it helpful… and if you do, share it with someone you care about.

God bless,

Alan