Unanswered Question: A Spiritual Newsletter

“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,

Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.”

– from “The Sphynx,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s not been a full forty-eight hours ago I set up my Unanswered Question spiritual newsletter at Substack.

It’s meant to be different than my blog, which is scattershot and filled with mind bubbles, and no doubt aptly named Monkey Mind. I enjoy it thoroughly. I think it is helpful. And at seventeen years and change into the project, I intend to continue it as long as Patheos and I remain happy with each other.

Unanswered Question is a place I envision where I can share the deeper spiritual questions that drive my heart as I wrestle with them. More the stuff of what appears in my books. Driven mostly by my Zen life but also informed and profoundly by Christian mysticism and the nondual as I encounter it in various religious cultures, tempered by a naturalistic and rationalist sense. My path. And it turns out a path resonant with a fair number of others in our time and our place. Dancing at the edge of the Kali Yuga…

What has surprised me is that in these forty-eight hours since I started Unanswered Question forty-one people have signed up, and, more surprising still, is that twenty people have becoming paying subscribers.

I’ve never written for money. Which turns out to be a smart move, because, well. I’m paid in pennies for my books. And my blog generates about fifty dollars a month. I say to those who ask, it pays well enough to take Jan to dinner once a month if no alcohol is involved. As of the moment it rather looks like the newsletter will double that income.

So, not shifting to the expensive stuff. But it is gratifying. My old friend and companion the Reverend Walt Weider once said “Ever since the Mesopotamians (or whomever) invented it, there’s been no better way to say thank you, than with cash.” I get that. And I’m feeling a bond with my subscribers that feels sure and honest. Trust is there. And I intend to honor it.

Anyway.

If you enjoy my blog, if you’ve been helped by my books, if you’ve heard me preach or speak sometime and found it useful, you might consider signing on for my newsletter.

We can dig into the deeper matter together…

Unanswered Question

Thanks!

James