Cozy Book: Adorning the Dark

Don’t you love cozy books? How about cozy nonfiction books? (I know, head explosion!)

A nonfiction read (personal essay, memoir, “random thoughts on life” book) becomes cozy when it causes you to:

Mark up practically every page with underlining, asterisks, smiley faces, and “yes!”

Stare at the end of a paragraph to reflect on your life.

Be surprised at how fast the end of the chapter came up on you.

Force yourself to read only one chapter at a time to savor the longevity of your read.

Cheat and read two chapters because your kids were quiet and your cup is still filled with hot tea.

Follow the author on social media and then go to their website to see if you should go backward in their portfolio or read their latest book next — and hope and pray they don’t disappoint you.

Also, while seeing their photo online, squint your eyes as you whisper to yourself, “You better not be a jerk in real life.”

Occasionally analyze the book’s cover and think about how the design and choice of color really encapsulate the book’s meaning.

Read an excerpt to your spouse and when they respond with just “oh, that’s good,” sigh loudly and wonder what’s wrong with them.

Yep, I actually did all of that with my latest book.

(Now there are other great nonfiction books, but they’re not cozy nonfiction. Informative or investigative non-fiction books such as The Coddling of the American Mind keep you hooked and saying “right!” over and over, but they are not cozy. They also typically make me anxious.)

Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson was that cozy book for me. I finished it early January which was perfect timing as I was reassessing my goals and writing for the new year. Oh, and that “oh, that’s good” husband is reading it now.

I am not a big book review person (just give me a few reasons I should/shouldn’t read the book), so here are just some of my favorite excerpts that made me feel understood on this creative journey:

“I wish I could order my thoughts and follow them to their ends. I wish I could track an idea to its logical or illogical conclusion the way C. S. Lewis did. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I can’t learn without doing; I won’t know the story until I write it down. As long as the idea stays in the conceptual realm it withers” (12).

“I’m pleasantly expendable, delightfully unnecessary. We’re not invited into this because God needs us, but because he wants us” (33).

“Over the gateway of Self is a sign that says, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter.’ It is a hellish, helpless place. Die to self. Live to God. Let your words and music be more beautiful by their death in the soil of worship, that the husk of your own imperfection might fall away and germinate into some bright, eternal song only God could have written. We must resist Resistance” (45).

“It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool’s hope may be the best kind” (123).

“Maybe the song you’re writing is for one specific heart-broken soul who won’t be born for another four hundred years. Maybe you won’t meet him or her until the New Creation, and they’ll thank you for opening yourself to public scrutiny, for striving to arrange words just so, for learning about what makes for a good melody or tight phrasing. By God’s grace, those little differences may be the bursts of wind that carry the song across the sea of time” (142-143).

There’s a lot more but copywrite issues and stuff like that.

Overall, it was a wonderful read I can see myself going back to again and again when the enemy pangs methodically on my heart that “my thoughts are incorrect, or silly, or so obvious they aren’t worth saying” (14).

We are all “creatives.” How will we adorn the darkness in the Grand Story?