Part self-help and part memoir, Here is a short but powerful lesson on moving through life and attaining our goals in a traditional but possibly counter-cultural way.
Essentially, Here is an invitation for us to deepen our roots in God, and in the place He has put us, with the people He has placed around us. Lydia Sohn shares her own spiritual journey intertwined with stories from her childhood and life. That combination makes for an interesting and compelling read.
Sohn starts by admitting she is a leaver:
Once a relationship, job, or any other arrangement requiring commitment gets to be challenging, I fantacize about the next better thing.
Sohn suggest this is because we live in a world that values leaving over staying, pointing out that we have taken journeys to escape the present or move. She suggests we change our mindset.
While Lydia Sohn is an ordained Christian minister and the advice in Here is based on Christian principles, it does also find commonalities with other Christian traditions:
None of the great spiritual traditions teaches us to focus on changing anybody but ourselves.
Sohn reminds us there are no short-cuts (no matter what glossy advertisements or social media might tell us), and encourages readers to look inside themselves at the same time as they look to God e.g. through Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, the lectio divina and the daily examen (both things I’ve only heard about in the last couple of years, despite literally decades in church).
Sohn encourages gratefulness as an antidote to covetousness. She encourages us to grow and flourish in the place we have been planted rather than always asking how we can change our lot. It’s a kind of pilgrimage–an outward journey taken to promote inward growth.
She encourages us to develop social bonds and deepen relationships for happiness and health, and reminds us that we don’t have to leave to be successful, no matter what the world says. She also remains us that we find God in the small things, not the big things.
Sohn encourages us to pursue values rather than goals:
Goals-based living is motivated by external rewards, whereas value-based living is motivated by internal rewards … the practices and habits that naturally spring from our underlying don’t feel like impositions.
Overall, Here is an inspiring and encouraging reminder to consciously thrive where we are.
Thanks to Convergent Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Lydia Sohn
Rev. Lydia Sohn is a United Methodist minister, currently serving as senior pastor of Walnut United Methodist Church, and a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Christian Century, among other venues. She lives in Claremont, California with her husband and three children.
Find Lydia Sohn online at:
Website | Facebook | Instagram
About Here
A Spirituality of Staying in a Culture of Leaving
A contemplative guide to finding satisfaction right where you are, by understanding what it is within us that leads to dissatisfaction and creating long-lasting fulfillment—inspired by the ancient Christian tradition of Benedictine stability.
Lydia Sohn was a serial burn-it-down-and-make-a-fresh-start girl until, when in her late twenties, she encountered the Rule of St. Benedict with its vow of stability, and her world was transformed. Sohn took a pause to consider what she wanted out of life—identity, purpose, community—and had a lightbulb moment: Everything she needed to live the life she desired was already within her reach.
Here pushes back against our age of constant reinvention and the cultural message that we should do whatever it takes to get wherever we want to go. Instead, Sohn’s message is the opposite: stay. Stay and cultivate the immense potential and beauty that currently lies dormant within your circumstances.
Sohn understands the allure of nomadism. A nomadic life would protect us from the stress of relational conflicts that inevitably arise when we’re caught in the intricate web of commitments. But the restlessness, FOMO, and disappointment we’re trying to escape always come along for the journey. That’s because they’re not the result of our circumstances; they reside within us.
Braiding personal narrative and spiritual reflection,Here inspires readers to both embrace and transform their circumstances through commitment and stability—in order that they might find true contentment right where they are.
