We Become What We Normalize

“A carefully considered and curated collection of ideas that push back against the waves of despair that might otherwise overwhelm anyone who is in any way immersed and sinking into a world that increasingly feels overwhelmingly treacherous. This collection of writing is a real generosity, a light flickering in the midst of darkness.” –Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“Essential reading right now. Beautiful writing combined with sharp discernment as Dark calls readers to reflect on our all-too-common fear and shame-based reactivity to change. In a rapidly shifting world Dark models for us all what it looks like to face our own demons with grace and rigor.” –Lisa Sharon Harper, president and founder of Freedom Road, and author of the critically acclaimed The Very Good Gospel and Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World–and How to Repair It All

A brave, relatable, and disarmingly intimate book, by turns confessional and convicting, anecdotal and aphoristic, and full of the wisdom drawn from an unconventional canon that Dark has constructed to inform his work–one that has room for figures as diverse as Patti Smith, Octavia Butler, William Blake, LeBron James, Fred Rogers, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.” –Chrissy Stroop, senior correspondent, Religion Dispatches, and columnist, openDemocracy

David Dark is an American writer and public intellectual. A frequent speaker and podcast guest, he is the author of several books, including The Sacredness of Questioning Everything; Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons; and The Possibility of America. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Pitchfork, Paste, America magazine, The Christian Century, and Religion News Service. Dark teaches in incarcerated communities and at Belmont University. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, singer-songwriter Sarah Masen.