Notes from the Road: STL
I promised I would take you along with me on this journey, and I haven’t done a good job keeping up with my blogging. I begin now my attempt to rectify that situation and record some memories for posterity…or something.
Amy’s friend, Diane Guevara, and friends at The Novel Neighbor book event in St. Louis
After an amazing book launch at Community Church of Honolulu on October 3, I lugged my 3 (!) suitcases to the Honolulu airport and boarded one plane, then another, to land in Saint Louis, MO. While this sounds perhaps like a strange place to begin a book tour, for me it was the perfect place. Dear, dear friends of many decades live in STL, and poor Diane has read multiple iterations of “Beautiful and Terrible Things” over the years. Diane helped me learn how to be a mother to human children, and she has been a midwife to this book.
But before we ventured out into book readings and signings, my first priority in STL was spending time—as I have all year long—with the amazing congregation of St. Peter’s UCC in Ferguson. Along with my Invested Faith colleague, Rev. Alisha Gordon, we had the opportunity to preach Sunday worship and share the trailer of a documentary film we’ve been collaborating on all year long. The film tells the story of St. Peter’s, a story many congregations who thrived in the middle of the last century are currently living. St. Peter’s has the incredible facility to think and act creatively with its assets, and the relationship we’ve built around the work of Invested Faith this year is one I treasure. Thank you, St. Peter’s for welcoming Invested Faith for another visit; we’ll see you again in January for the first-ever in-person gathering of Invested Faith Fellows in STL!
Rev. Patrick Chandler and Rev. Amy Butler at St. Peter’s UCC in Ferguson, Missouri
Rev. Amy Butler and Rev. Alisha Gordon at St. Peter’s UCC in Ferguson, Missouri
We also got to visit New Roots Urban Farm, to catch up with Invested Faith Fellows, Antajuan and Mina, and their incredible work–always one of the best parts of visiting STL.
Pastor Amy and Invested Faith team members, Anita Flowers and Alisha Gordon, visit New Roots Urban Farm
Invested Faith team member Alisha Gordon and Mina Aria of New Roots Urban Farm
The days that followed offered two amazing opportunities to talk with folks about my book. Here’s the confession I have to share with you all: I don’t know how to do a book tour; I’ve never written or launched a book before; and I hate (more than anything) not knowing how to do stuff I have to do.
With two trial runs under my belt (Charleston and Honolulu), I was a little less nervous…but not much. Reading one happened at an incredible local St. Louis bookstore called The Novel Neighbor. The team there was tremendous; the group that showed up engaged really great conversation; and I made it through my first reading in an actual bookstore.
Pastor Amy answers questions at the Novel Neighbor in St. Louis, Missouri
The next night I was welcomed by the community at The Mansions, a group that came out of curiosity and maybe a little peer pressure from friends. That was a beautiful conversation and it happened right in the middle of the terrible news of the Hamas bombing and attacks on Israel.
I felt distinctly…silly…talking about my book in the face of such horror and fear and violence—pollyannish. “Beautiful and Terrible Things” is a book about the unnavigable chasms that separate us from one another, from healing and wholeness and relationship that can change the world. In the book I talk about what I believe: that starting here and now, in our own lives, to bridge and heal and cross those divides—that’s what we can do to change the world.
Can my stories about people who have changed my heart have any impact in a world where bombs and kidnappings and violence and generational hatred are the headlines? I don’t know. But it’s what I had to offer that night and in the nights that follow. And what I’ve experienced along the way are groups of people so different from me who have had the grace to read my book and hope along with me that it can move us—if infinitesimally—a little closer to peace, to justice, to healing…to each other.