Soul Boom is a practical book, in that it makes the case for how faith and spirituality, when practiced seriously, can raise happiness through those benefits he listed for me. The idea that we are more than our bodies, and that service to others is the highest form of worship.” Also, he added, “potlucks.” Wilson told me how faith-including traditional religions in which adherents worship the divine (whom he calls “The Notorious G.O.D.”)-gives us what we all crave: “The bonds of community. Read: Dwight Schrute wants you to get the day off for Election Day He offers readers this path through a world beset with all the same problems he suffered. In this new book, which is part metaphysical autobiography and part spiritual how-to guide, Wilson writes about how faith saved him from a witch’s brew of anxiety, despair, loneliness, depression, and addiction. (By that time, I had a part in my own absurdist drama, running a think tank in Washington, D.C.) Wilson’s background also planted the seeds of his belief in the power of religion and faith, which is the subject of Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. We were both raised in very religious homes: I as a Christian, and he in the Baha’i faith.įrom this odd cultural stew emerged Wilson’s offbeat comedy, made famous by the character Dwight Schrute in the hit absurdist television comedy The Office. We were both serious classical musicians, specializing in maligned instruments-he played the bassoon I played the French horn. We both had parents who were professional artists. Over lunch in Boston in April, we discovered that we had weirdly parallel lives: With less than two years separating us in age, we grew up a few miles apart in lower-middle-class Seattle neighborhoods. That last version of Seattle is the soil from which the actor Rainn Wilson sprang-as did I.
In the ’60s and ’70s, it was a remote, rainy city dominated by Boeing, albeit with a vital arts community and a lot of spiritual seekers. In the 1990s, it was a cool destination for countercultural 20-somethings who liked grunge rock. Today, it is known for Amazon, Microsoft, fancy coffee, and enormous fortunes. Seattle has gone through several big transformations in the past few decades. Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.
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