The Place of Fracture
Some fragmented thoughts on the writer's invitation to surrender, threshold existence, irises, seedlings, a song of solidarity, and a boundary that needed to be set
May 25, 2025
Grand Rapids, Mich.
Good Soil was released two months ago.
When you put a book out into the world—or a song, or a poem, or a painting, or a dish, or a sermon, or any creative work, really—it takes on a life of its own. I’ve done what I can with the words, sentences, and paragraphs. Now readers get to do with them what they will, my stories interacting with their experiences and perspectives. I’ve marked a path, and while I might try to draw their attention to this or that, I don’t get to dictate what they notice, or what they feel, or how their feet will fall.
Sometimes the reader understands what I was trying to do. I received a card the other day—an old-fashioned, hand-written card!—from Olive Chan in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. She told me she’s Cantonese Canadian, and not only that— her dad, like my mom, is Chiu Chow, and her mom, like my dad, is Hakka. “Yours was the first book I’ve come across that felt so much like ‘home,’” Chan wrote. Is anything more gratifying than creating a sense of belonging, particularly for a stranger?
Sometimes the reader doesn’t understand what I was trying to do, or wants a book other than the one I wrote, or simply doesn’t like my writing. “Too much god talk,” one reader wrote. “Often I just wanted to yell at Mr. Chu to stop whining or go get himself a good psychiatrist,” another said. A third favorite: “There was a lot of talk of the author’s moral and lifestyle choices that I didn’t enjoy.” All of that is okay too.
But why do you read the reviews, Jeff?
Despite the ardent counsel of some friends, I always read the reviews. I’m just too nosy. I want to know what’s being said, how people are reacting, what works for the reader and what doesn’t, how I might be able to improve my craft. But there’s something else too: To receive whatever comes is a matter of spiritual discipline. Uncomfortable though it might be, it helps me to practice how I want to show up—who I want to be—in the world.
“To be seated in full reality is to be seated also in permeability, interconnection, and compassion,” the poet Jane Hirshfield, a Zen Buddhist, writes. She makes this claim in an essay about poetry’s healing power in a fractured world, akin to what a kintsugi artisan does with broken pottery. But her arguments transcend genre, even medium. “The place of fracture is not simply closed: It remains also an opening,” she says. “It invites us into what lies beyond our first responses, first thoughts, first boundaries.”
This, I think, alludes to an under-discussed aspect of writing and publishing. In daring to offer one’s words for public consumption, the writer also receives an invitation into complex, perhaps unequal, relationship with the reader, which is to say, another human, with all their desires and contradictions. It’s a summons to surrender control and ego; the story isn’t “mine” any longer. It’s a call to radical acceptance and generous curiosity. How will I choose to answer?
The “threshold existence,” as Hirshfield has called it elsewhere, has a gorgeous lightness, a roomy freedom, that I find so appealing. Paradoxically, perhaps, it’s grounded in confidence, not in one’s own self but rather in one’s small place of belonging in some greater truth, some stronger force, that we haven’t yet begun to fully perceive.
My husband and my close friends can confirm I’m not there yet. Still, this is my aspiration and my hope, not just as a writer but also as a human—to stand amid the world with open hands, a humble heart, and feet searching for good soil in which to be planted.
What I’m Growing: The irises in our yard have been so gorgeous this year, and it looks to be our best peony season to date.
Yesterday morning at the Fulton Street Farmers Market, Tristan and I picked up our tomato and pepper seedlings. A few years ago, I made a concession to reality. Our guest room wasn’t the best nursery, and I was not the best steward for seedlings. Liz Kempinski, the heart and muscle behind Clear Bottom Lake Farm just north of Grand Rapids, is much better at it than I am.
I began installing the seedlings in the raised beds in our yard yesterday afternoon; I’ll put the rest in our community-garden plot later today and tomorrow. I love about this part of the growing season for its sense of possibility and potential. Because I have not yet killed anything, because nothing has failed so far, the dreams are unfettered and easy: I see panzanella and caprese, jars of sauce and heaping bowls of egg and tomato over rice, pickled jalapenos and charred shishitos.
What have you planted? How’s the growing season going so far?
What I’m Reading: This horrific story about a doctor in Gaza who lost nearly all her children in an Israeli airstrike. I continue to believe that we cannot kill our way to freedom or peace.
This thoughtful examination of male friendship by Sam Graham-Felsen in The New York Times Magazine. Friendship is a theme that has come up again and again during my tour. I’ve wondered aloud whether, as with so much else in our modern lives, we’ve come to expect friendship to be easy and convenient. But as this piece notes, it demands attention and investment.
This reflection on hope and despair by Hanif Abdurraqib, writing in The New Yorker. I offer it with no further comment, because it stirred up many different things in me that I’m still processing, except to note that it touches on suicidal thoughts.
What I’m Listening to: When I was talking with my friend Lanecia Rouse a couple of weeks ago, I realized I totally forgot about the Good Soil playlist I made. So here it is on Spotify, and here it is on Apple Music.
These are songs that have been meaningful to me, that I returned to again and again as I wrote, and that resonate with the book’s themes. Like the book, too, it ranges widely—some Dolly Parton, some Mavis Staples, Sigur Ros and the Killers, and perhaps some artists you haven’t come across before.
I’ve been pondering one song in particular—“Fais-Moi Une Place,” written by French chanteuse Françoise Hardy and sung by Julien Clerc and Vanille. “Make a place for me in your emergencies, in your audacities, in your confidence,” it says (according to my rough translation). As imagined by Hardy, it’s a love song. But it needn’t be confined to romantic love. To find our place amidst another’s emergencies, audacities, and confidence is the kind of solidarity I’d hope for all of us as humans.
Something has arisen on book tour that’s worth mentioning here: One of the best decisions I made before embarking on tour was to take questions by text message. It’s an act of equity for introverts who would never dream of grabbing the microphone. It saves us all from the dreaded “this is more a comment than a question…” It also allows me some agency.
At almost every book event for Good Soil, indeed at nearly every single speaking engagement I've done in recent years, I've received endless questions about Rachel Held Evans: What was she like as a friend? How did we meet? What's your favorite memory of her? Was she the same in private as in public? What did she mean to you? What was your favorite of her books? The emails land in my inbox regularly too, often with some variation of the line, "Writing to you means getting as close to her as I can."
I get the curiosity and the longing. Rachel made a difference in people's lives. She mattered to so many. Indeed, she mattered enormously to me—and I willingly took on the task of finishing Wholehearted Faith. But it's time for me to draw a clear boundary.
Attentive readers might have noticed a conscious choice in Good Soil. There was no way to avoid mentioning Rachel's friendship or her death, which happened during my last month of seminary. But I never used her last name, which was irrelevant to the story. She was simply my friend Rachel, whom I loved—and still love—dearly.
While some readers filled in the blanks, they did that, not me. I will no longer answer any questions about Rachel nor will I discuss her or our friendship publicly. I've said everything I wish to say. Thanks for your grace and your understanding.
Upcoming dates: This week, I’m heading to Minnesota. On Saturday afternoon, May 31st, I’ll be in Park Rapids. On Sunday in St. Paul, I’ll preach both services at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, where my luminous friend Jodi Houge serves as associate pastor. And on Monday evening, I’ll be at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis with my friend Chris Stedman.
In mid-June, I’ll be visiting Pennsylvania: Willow Street on the 16th, York on the 17th, Chambersburg on the 18th, Lancaster on the 19th, and then Philadelphia on the 22nd. All links to those dates can be found on my website.
Hope to see you there—or in Arkansas, Nebraska, Michigan, and Arizona in the fall. More details in due course!
My gratitude to those of you who have already read Good Soil. Of course I’d love to know what you think. For signed copies, Malaprops in Asheville and Schuler Books in Grand Rapids had some in stock last I checked.
Well, that was a lot of book-related stuff. Here, apropos of nothing, is a picture of me with a very good boy named Seamus who lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
What can I remember in my prayers on your behalf? What else is on your minds?
All my best,
Jeff
Always a joy!!! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with all of us!! Keep up the great work, and blessings to you and Tristan!!
My irises are also beautiful this year! I just finished reading your book and signed up for your ‘Notes of a Make Believe Farmer.’ I have lived in NJ all my
life and completed a post-doc and later sabbatical at Princeton Univ. So I wanted to read about your time at Princeton seminary and was surprised to learn about the Farminary. It sounds like a wonderful addition for those who avail themselves.
There was just the right amount of ‘God talk’ as I could connect with both the strictness/non acceptance of your life choices and your need to accept love from others, especially God. I enjoyed your writing style and felt connected with you. Thanks for sharing your life.