Books — The Inner Work
Maps for the inner life.
Contemplative nonfiction and daily practice: the self under pressure, a year of reading as transformation, and a forthcoming book that begins in open water. The poems have a room of their own.
Books — The Inner Work
Contemplative nonfiction and daily practice: the self under pressure, a year of reading as transformation, and a forthcoming book that begins in open water. The poems have a room of their own.
§ 01 · Forthcoming
The Gift of Becoming Nobody.
Years ago, in open water, Chad nearly drowned. What he was holding onto could not hold him; what saved him began with letting it go. This book starts there and stays under a while: with the self we construct to stay afloat, the moment it fails, and the unexpected buoyancy on the other side of surrender.
Contemplative nonfiction — part memoir, part meditation — drawing on the desert tradition, the Enneagram, and a working life spent among writers. For readers in the season when the first-half self stops working. Publishing through Crossroads Press.
§ 02 · The Enneagram Under Pressure
Big Self Books · 2023 · Foreword by Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes
Burnout isn't a vibe; it's a system failure — of bodies, teams, and the stories we tell ourselves at work.
Shock Point maps how each Enneagram type and subtype breaks down under acute stress, adapts under chronic stress, and returns to effectiveness with specific, type-matched practices. Not another self-care pep talk: a field guide for doing the work without losing yourself in it — and for recovering the self that the overworking buried.
"It's essential reading for recovering our hearts, our minds, our souls." —Jerry Colonna, author of Reboot
Read the full foreword → PDF Get the book →§ 03 · The Daily Practice
Big Self Books · 2020 · 436 Pages
We read to find something we didn't know we were looking for.
A year of daily practice: 365 quotes, the books they came from, and a question or two for meditation with each. Built on the conviction that reading, taken seriously, is a discipline of transformation — designed to bring clarity, not clutter, and to give a year of mornings somewhere true to begin.
Get the book →§ 04 · The Big Self School Shorts
Three concise field guides, published with Big Self School in 2020: one skill of the examined life per volume, each small enough to finish and sturdy enough to live by.
How to Build Self-Knowledge: Discovering Who You Are — Self-knowledge is a skill, not a trait. The self is a wilderness; this is a way in. Get it →
Desire: How Do You Want to Feel? — Desire may go dormant inside the ready-made roles of adulthood, but it's there — steady as a heartbeat, ready to be resuscitated. Get it →
What Do You Expect? How to Discover Deep Calm — A calm mind is an ordered mind. Tools for deep calm, and for the resilience and wisdom on the far side of it. Get it →
§ 05 · Editor & Publisher
Alongside his own books, he has built the rooms other writers' books come through.
As Publisher and Editorial Director of C&R Press for eight years, he published forty titles in literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The anthologies he co-edited — Evensong and Breathe: 101 Contemporary Odes — live with the rest of the poetry, in a room of their own. Today his books, and a careful list of other people's, come through Crossroads Publishing Group.
Visit the press →