When an orator wrestles words into text, is all the art lost? On the contrary, maybe the artist has to be found. I have always loved playing music into words.

I am now going to break the cardinal rule of Christian publishing. Rule number one, you never tell people God told you to write a book. Well, I’m sorry….

After a wonderful foreword by Paul Wagenast, Principal of Encounter Earth, I open Clairvaux Manifesto with three scriptures:

The Master said: “You have everything backward! You treat the potter as a lump of clay. Does a book say to its author, ‘He didn’t write a word of me’?” (Isaiah 29:16, MSG)

This is the message Jeremiah received from God: “Write everything I tell you in a book…” (Jeremiah 30:1-2, MSG)

Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day. (Psalm 139:16, MSG)

I didn’t spend the last year without a dime in the bank, having visited the food bank six times as a family, to argue with God now, about the road traveled. The end of my preface states,

Currently, I am in one of the deepest and most reflective places of my life. Like a concert pianist sitting down at the keys in the ruins of a bombed out concert hall, God is bringing me down to bare wood, returning me to the harmonic of that one pure tone. Starving artists starve because they won’t serve Mammon; they co-create life, imago Dei.

Darlene and I are not rich, as some define it. Yet, I know in my heart that over the past number of months, I have written this book from a place of spiritual strength. It sometimes seems like I am missing something, but in reality, I have everything I need.

With that, I welcome you into my story.

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