An Invitation to Sacramental Hope (Come Along)

You can read the ENTIRE first chapter of the new book in this newsletter!

One of my favorite photos of Amber: An indicative of Joy.

In the Ozarks, the mornings have turned. It isn’t quite cool yet, and the leaves are still throbbing with chlorophyll, but you can sense the shift in the air. The fires of summer are beginning to smolder; autumn is opening up her robe.

This autumn is an especially important one for Team Haines for two reasons. First, after years of trying on different homes and discarding them like second-hand clothing, we’re finally completing construction on what I’ve called “the home I’ll leave in a casket.” Second, and more germane to readers of The Examine, Amber and I are releasing The Deep Down Things: Practice for Growing Hope in Times of Despair on October 17.

Amber and I never dreamed we’d write a book together. In fact, we’d put stakes in the ground, said we’d never collaborate on a project, particularly because so many husband-wife books are about marriage and we are hardly experts on the topic. Twenty-four years deep into marriage, all my advice can be summed up this way: Love each other the way you’d want to be loved. That’s not enough fodder for a poem, much less a whole book.

The Deep Down Things is not a marriage book, though it puts a magnifying glass on a particular season of our marriage. I’ll name the season: the winter after Amber’s work with an abusive priest.

Is the book about church abuse? I guess. It’s also about our move into the Catholic Church, I suppose. But it’s about so much more.

It’s a book about enduring the darkest seasons in belief. It’s about the practices that gestate belief, that bring it to fruition. It’s about finding ways to move forward when life has beaten you like a porch dog.

It’s Joseph, looking up from the bottom of a well and seeing the starry night.

It’s Daniel, looking up from the den and seeing a sliver of morning sun.

It’s Mary, full of life, knowing what’s to come, yet still fixing her eyes on the star.

It’s about facing today’s shadows believing in tomorrow’s goodness.

Where You Come In—A Launch Team

Launching a book is difficult work. After months of bleeding on the page (and yes, we really bled for this one), you’re tasked with too many marketing meetings. There are interviews, podcasts, magazine articles. There are articles to write, signings to host, cards to mail, things upon things to do. And none of it can be done without an army of true believers.

That’s where you come in.

If you’ve pre-ordered the book (or if you preorder it before next Monday, September 18), we’ll invite you to join the Deep Down Things Launch Team. (Let me know in the comments below so I can make double sure you’re in!) This launch team will help spread the word in the days leading up to the book’s release date, a job that’s too big for one author (or even two in this case) to do alone. There’ll be perks for joining, of course, and a bit more direct interaction with Amber and me throughout the initial launch of the book.

We’re asking you to pre-order The Deep Down Things and consider joining the launch team (details next week) because we believe in this book. I’d like to think it’s some of our best writing, some of our most mature writing. And to show a bit of my appreciation to the monthly subscribers, I’m sharing THE ENTIRE FIRST CHAPTER BELOW.

Thanks again for reading my words here. You make it possible for me to keep plugging along in this writing life. I couldn’t be more grateful.

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The Deep Down Things
Chapter 1: Know the Hope of Saints

Seth: Eat the Flowers

In the beginning, there was dust. And the dust strained and stretched across the great swath of the central Texan plains dappled and dotted with scrub brush, mesquite trees, and white sheets flagging on the clothesline. In the silver morning, the mist rose from the grass, greeted the fathers on their way to the freight docks and factories, comforted the mothers and their dreams of equal work and equal pay, cocooned the children as they devoured bowl after bowl of Cheerios on the back porch. In the beginning, the mist rose against my own naked knees, my five-year-old cheeks, my closed eyelids, my ravenous hunger. These are my first memories of the beginning.