The Monthly Salon: March
Books, news, conversation
Hello readers, and welcome to the March Salon. The green shoots are budding everywhere around here. I hope that applies to you and I too. I am certainly feeling better, health-wise, than I was in the winter, though I am still up and down, and taking things steadily.
Right now, most of my energy is going into completing my Book of Wild Saints, which will be published next year. I have another couple of months to complete it. After that, I hope to be able to unfurl more on here. All being well, I plan to revive the Sunday Pilgrimage and the Scriptorium later this year. There are a few more plans, too. Thank you for reading in the meantime.
As usual, the Salon is your chance to shine. But first, a few bits of news from me.
Okrutni bogowie, and other stories
My book Savage Gods is now available in Polish: you can see the smart new translations, hot off the press, sitting proudly on my desk in the photo above. Savage Gods is a crisis memoir: at least, that’s the closest I have ever come to describing it. It’s my weirdest book - my weirdest non-fiction book, anyway - and every time I look at it I have two simultaneous feelings: that I don’t ever want to go through that again; and that I wish I could write another book like this. Of course, there is a relationship between difficult times and good writing, just as there is a relationship between troubled authors and brilliant prose. Not always, of course, but often. There’s a reason so many of us end up divorced alcoholics, if we haven’t died of TB at 45.
Certainly the strangeness of what I was going through when I wrote that book - a spiritual crisis, essentially, which I was only able to fully understand in retrospect - created the form in which it was written. Savage Gods is so uncategorisable that I couldn’t get any of my previous publishers interested in the thing, and a few of them openly hated it. In the end, I found some small, more adventurous outfits to take it up. I now think it’s probably my best non-fiction book, even though I don’t particularly want to read it again, in the same way that Bob Dylan never wants to listen to Blood On The Tracks. But while I don’t want another spiritual crisis, I would like to access the kind of screw-it-all freedom I felt when I wrote like that. I’ve never managed another book like it.
Anyway, the book is out there now, which means that my crisis is always going on somewhere in the world. You can buy the new Polish edition here. There is also an Estonian edition out there, for all the Estonians reading this. You can also buy the funky-looking American edition, which is on sale from Two Dollar Radio. The British edition is currently out of print, but I plan to remedy that later this year: keep an eye out here for news about that. It’s tied up with an exciting project I have been planning for some time, and am able to start working on again now that I am feeling more human again.
Contra-Machine Army
Speaking of translations, Against The Machine is spreading around the world almost as fast as a sinister AI system. Already on sale in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia, it is now forthcoming in translation in Polish, Dutch, German, Croatian, Estonian, Romanian and - a first for me - both Chinese and Arabic, with some other languages potentially on the way. In the US, the book is approaching 50,000 copies sold and is on its sixth printing, while in the UK around 15,000 have been shifted, and a paperback edition will be appearing this September.
Obviously this is all good news for my monstrous ego (and therefore bad news for my soul), but even important is what it may suggest: that good numbers of people are interested in refusing the spirit of the age - or at least, trying to understand it.
English Pilgrimage, Floridian Feast
I have two events coming up this year, on two sides of the Atlantic, which will both be helping to support charities whose work I’m very happy to promote.
First up is the British Saints Conference, in Walsingham, Norfolk, in May. A gallery of speakers, including yours truly, Martin Shaw, Rowan Williams, Marcus Plested and doubtless some others, will be telling stories about the saints of Britain. There will also be music, art, conversation and a Divine Liturgy on the Sunday. It’s all organised by St Seraphim’s Trust, which I’ve written about here before. I love St Seraphim’s, and I am always very happy to be asked to be involved in anything they do. I think they are doing work that will be very meaningful for the future of Orthodox Christianity in England.
My talk will be entitled ‘An English Pilgrimage.’ I’m going to be wandering through the saints and sites of early Christian England, and looking to the future. Find out more, and buy tickets, here.
Secondly, we have something very different. This winter, I am going to be in the US at an event which will support the work of the First Things Foundation. FTF - no relation to First Things magazine, by the way - is run by my friend John Heers, and it does incredible work around the work in needy communities. You can read about it here. The Art of the Tamada, in Florida this November is a weekend-long celebration, in which we’ll all be learning the art of Georgian feasting and toasting. The little film above gives a taster of what to expect. I’m not quite sure what to expect myself, but it’s going to be fun.
You can find out more and buy tickets here. It’s not cheap, but remember it’s a charity event, and the money will go a long way to help those who need it most.
Founding and Funding
Finally, I’ve just sent out an invitation to the Abbey’s Founder Members to join our first get-together of the year. Founder Members of this esteemed community are entitled to four online gatherings a year, with me and other Founders, as well as a steep discount on my online writing course, and a few other perks too. Why not join us? All the details are here.
In 2026, as you may know, I’m experimenting with a new funding model: all my writing at the Abbey will be free to read, and in return I ask for subscriptions or donations from those who can afford it, to support those who can’t. If you can help keep this experiment alive, please click away:
But enough about me: what do you have to say? This is your chance to start a conversation about any topic you like. Raise an issue, ask a question, seek help, meet each other or ask me anything you’d like. Fire away. And thank you as ever for reading.
Thank you, your writing always reminds me of what’s real and natural during turbulent times of artifice
First Sunday of Lent a few weeks back (RC calendar), I feasted. Big time. Like, i feasted hard. I ate a full bag of chocolate covered strawberries. Later got tipsy on Pontatlier-Anis. Chocolate, strawberries and alcohol are all histamine liberators. What the heck is that everyone just thought? Histamine liberators, when paired in a "perfect storm" of stress, along with underlying digestive issues, let loose a flurry of histamine thru the system that renders one either covered with hives, or wiped out in a state of extreme fatigue mixed with the foggiest of brains. It also maxes out the nerves, the whole system is suddenly wired for panic, mast cells (white blood cells) get busy putting out the fires (especially, it seems, where there aren't any fires to put out), which sends everyone else into a state of alarm too. Great way to start my Lent. The best, actually. Truly. I feel I've been offered a chance to start again. From scratch. Back at ground zero. I've been here before so many times in the last 14 years. But never with legs of faith as strong as this (I say with as much holy terror and humility as I can muster, very aware the false one is listening and eagerly waiting for the right moment to pounce). I do feel hope in a way i never have. 14 years. Most of that time I've been screaming at God, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?? Of course I've been doing it to myself. Working on inner family systems therapy has been a great help. Working on 12-step programs too (I do well with Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families). That's all I have to say, other than to ask for your prayers. Prayers that I only increase in faith and dependency on Him. I would also love to ask what your prayer intentions are. I'd happily lift you up in prayer for whatever you bring to the table.