The Stillness Is Trying to Say Something

A dog, a pond, a woman I'm falling in love with. Also: a half-written book, a stubborn kind of faith, and (maybe) your own quiet ache to feel again.

Is this space starting to feel like a kind of sustenance. I hope so. Or better yet, you’re finding your own ways to stay fed. Maybe writing has become one of them. Maybe you’ve started to notice that creativity does something to your body—that when you write, or move, or pay attention, something in you softens. Maybe these stories have helped you feel less alone in that. Or maybe they’ve just kept you company for a few minutes. That’s good too. If you stick with me, there’ll be more of that. But first, I have to begin with Tommy again.

Tommy has become completely obsessed with the koi. I’ve written about it before, but it’s taken on new depth. Here in the west, he might really deserve to

Maybe you long to kneel beside the Mystery for no damn reason at all? Or because you know on some unconscious level that there is a part of reality that we stop feeling when we are running errands at the strip mall—but then the Reality under the Reality comes rushing back into our consciousness the second we collapse onto the couch at home with our shopping bags spread all over the floor. You look at those bags confusedly, as if you have zero consciousness that you were ever at a store at all.

be pathologized by somebody in a white coat. (I’m being facetious.)

These days, he spends twelve to fifteen hours a day at the edge of the pond, sometimes standing nose-down and motionless, sometimes lying flat on his stomach with his snout practically touching the water. The fish swirl beneath him in slow arcs. At times they gather in front of him as if they’ve been summoned. I tell Hasita I think they’re communing. That Tommy sees them. That they see him. He’s grappling with the great riddle of existence—why are they down there and he’s up here? Why the split? The duality? Why not unity? Isn’t it all one?

Maybe you’ve gone down the rabbit hole into existential obsession yourself?Watching a tree shimmer in the afternoon light, or the way your child or friend stares into the distance as if they’re remembering a place they’ve never even

seen. Maybe you long to kneel beside the Mystery for no damn reason at all? Or because you know on some unconscious level that there is a part of reality that we stop feeling when we are running errands at the strip mall—but then the Reality under the Reality comes rushing back into our consciousness the second we collapse onto the couch at home with our shopping bags spread all over the floor. You look at those bags confusedly, as if you have zero consciousness that you were ever at a store at all.

Tommy’s vigil by the water reminds me of that. His stillness feels ancient. Maybe your stillness does too?! Maybe you’ve also been pacing between rooms, looking for the baling wire that ties your inner life together. Maybe you’ve been trying to write something that resists coming out onto the blank page yet. Or maybe you’re simply trying to stay present to the moment, awake in your body, and loving to your people. That’s holy.

Hasita laughs at my wild theory and explains matter-of-factly that the fish are expecting food. They’ve learned that when a creature looms near the edge, flakes fall from the sky. I tell her this is interspecies telepathy. This is mystery. I even tell her I want to write a children’s book about it. She raises an eyebrow. I love Hasita, and, thank God, she can be as impractical as me much of the time. She’s deeply connected to the mystery—which is one reason I love her. And yet, when I express some of my ideas, she seems to want to tether me to the ground like someone holding onto a rope holding down a helium balloon. And it’s probably a good thing she does this. I don’t mind.

But the truth is, I’ve grown skeptical of neat explanations. I’ve lived long enough to see how often the rational answer is a placeholder, an approximation we settle for. The map, not the territory.

Science has its place. I love science. It gives us tools and frameworks and new technologies. But it doesn’t touch the living pulse, the ground of being. It doesn’t explain why a dog would spend half his day locked in silent devotion to a school of fish. And I believe devotion is the correct word here.

I like to think about theories like morphic resonance, the idea that patterns of form and behavior repeat across space and time, that our memories live in fields that stretch outside our bodies, across miles (and even light years!), and not just inside our brains. I know that Tommy and the koi are tuned to something beyond present-day science understands. I can feel it. It’s something to sit beside, to listen to.

Mystery doesn’t ask for you to resolve It—It asks you to participate! It’s your companion!

The writing—my next book, has come slowly during this trip. I sit down with good intentions, but the sentences scatter. I get up, rinse dishes, water plants I already watered yesterday, take Tommy out, come back in, open the laptop again, and close it. The book is near; I can feel it hovering,. But it hasn’t settled into form. Not yet.

This next book has lived inside me for a long time—years. I’ve had the title for a while, too: The God I Can’t Quite Believe In. It chronicles the lessons learned and stories lived from five decades as a seeker. I’ve always circled the sacred. I was a

Science has its place. I love science. It gives us tools and frameworks and new technologies. But it doesn’t touch the living pulse, the ground of being. It doesn’t explain why a dog would spend half his day locked in silent devotion to a school of fish. And I believe devotion is the correct word here.

teenage Jesus freak in suburban Kansas, trying to stay on the right side of salvation. In my twenties, I gave myself to the Beat writers. I believed in their wildness and thought their ecstatic hunger was holy. I was drawn to the myth but blind to the abuse and mysogeny. Then came journalism. I worshipped it. I believed in tape recorders and transcripts, deadlines and rigor. I thought truth lived in tidy quotes and double-checked facts.

But I now see that I was always searching underneath the surface, looking for something that couldn’t be captured in a soundbite.

Later, I tried to return to Christianity. I went on a 10-week pilgrimage across Palestine and Israel. I walked in Jesus’ steps across the West Bank and soaked in the Jordan River. I went back to church and looked for traces of what had once lit me up. I left that behind, too.

Then came yoga. And India. I sat in temples, listened to teachers, chanted in the

This picture was taken in Varanasi, India, in 1999, while I was on assignment for Wired magazine. I was never the same after that trip, after seeing the bodies burn.

This picture was taken in Kainchi, India, in 2018, while I was on pilgrimage in the Himalayan foothills.

early hours, walked barefoot through ashrams. I definitely touched something real during those years.

But what I want now is a spirituality rooted in my body, in my breath, in what I can experience directly, without needing a particular teaching or guru. Maybe I’m talking about nature.

I don’t want a system. I don’t want steps or prescriptions. I want something ordinary but alive!

I hear the voice of The God I Can’t Quite Believe In when I walk Tommy in the morning and when Hasita brushes past me and rests her hand on my back. But I know it’s just not ready to be written yet.

Yes, some days I miss my old life—the adrenaline of being an adventure writer, the chaos of airports, the tension of deadlines. I miss the moment when I realized I was writing a different story than the one my editor expected, and the strange relief of choosing the true one.

I remember coming home from my assignent trips abroad. The jet lag. The depressions. The way the adrenaline drained and left me empty. Then the deadline, the paranoid thrill of waking up in the middle of the night and realizing the article is due in seven days and I haven’t lifted a finger in the past 21. . The pace, the midnight coffee, the way the words finally came once I put my butt in the chair and surrendered.

That exciting life trained me to work. It gave me focus and stamina.

It burned me out.

These days I’m trying to listen to a different rhythm. Hasita and I are a few months into something that feels strangely solid despite our still being in the honeymoon period. We cook. We walk the dogs. We sit beside each other and learn Spanish. We laugh. We rest.

There is still restlessness in me, but it doesn’t run the show.

I’m trying to stay connected these days.To my creativity, the work, and to you.

Tell me what’s alive in you right now. What brought you here? What keeps you reading? What are you writing about, or wishing you were writing about? What books are stacked beside your bed? What stirs your sense of the sacred? What was your childhood spirituality like? How do you stay close to your deeper self now?

Wow. That’s a lot of questions. Choose one or two!

Write to me in the comments. I’ll read every one. I’ll respond. I want this to be a conversation.

Last, if these letters stir something in you—help you feel a little more connected to yourself, your creativity, or something sacred—I’d be honored if you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber. Everything here stays free, but your support helps me keep going. It helps me carve out the time and energy to write pieces that I hope meet you where you are and remind you you’re not alone in the seeking.

With you,

Brad

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P.S. If you’re ready to explore your story more deeply, I’m teaching a one-day memoir writing workshop in mid-August. It’s three hours on Zoom, followed by a one-hour follow-up session a week later to help you integrate and continue the work. The class is called:

One Powerful Session. One Inspired Follow-Up. A Lifetime of Writing Tools.
We’ll explore memory, meaning, soul, and voice—and begin shaping the raw material of your life into story.

You can read more and sign up here:
https://bradwetzler.com/one-powerful-session-one-inspired-follow-up-a-lifetime-of-writing-tools/

I’d love to write alongside you.

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If you haven’t bought my memoir, Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing, yet, I hope you will.

Here’s what author Hampton Sides wrote about it:

“Brad Wetzler has led the very definition of an adventurous life, but in Into the Soul of the World, he gives an unflinching account of his interior adventures. Wetzler’s soulful quest, by turns anguished and transcendent, will resonate with readers around the world who struggle to find purpose and a sense of the holy in the ambient jitter of the digital age.”