image by striatic

It’s time for another Sunny Way Book Club! This time we will be discussing Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. This book first caught my eye a few months ago, when I read about it in a comment thread on Worldchanging.

I was intrigued by the title—how often do we look at the world through a lens of suspicion, when the fact is that we are custom made for this planet, and millions of events go off without a hitch every single second? On this site, we talk a lot about reframing our view of the world to be creative and positive, so I thought Pronoia would be a perfect fit for us. And I was right!

Leafing through Pronoia, I catch myself alternately laughing and closing my eyes to ponder certain ideas. This book is not only an introduction to the concept of pronoia—it’s also a manual/workbook through which we can learn how to live pronoiacally, with our eyes on sacred creation and silliness instead of doom and gloom.

Our last book club, on Aldous Huxley’s Island, was a lot of fun, and we were really able to dive into the story and pull out some profound elements. However, I will be the first to admit that it was pretty unorganized. There was no schedule, which made it harder for folks to participate. So, this time, I am going to be a little more methodical about it.

• We will have a post each week for 6 weeks, on Thursday. The book is about 300 pages, so this ends up being about 50 pages a week.
• We will choose one or two brief articles to focus on each week—this book is non-narrative, made up of short pieces, and 50 pages is a lot to get through in a week, so focusing on one or two articles should make it easier to keep up.
• For the first post (tomorrow’s), we will focus on “Glory in the Highest” (page 4) and “Evil is Boring” (page 27) with some possible diversions along the way.
• You can click the ad to the right or the Pronoia link above or right here to get to Amazon and get yourself a copy.

So far, I’m finding this book to be funny, sweet, vigorous, and thought-provoking. I hope you’ll join in the discussion!

Here’s a quote from the first chapter to get us started ...

Some people argue that life is strife and suffering is normal. Others swear we’re born sinful and only heaven can provide us with the peace that passes understanding. But pronoia says that being alive on the rough green and brown earth is the highest honor and privilege. It’s an invitation to work wonders and perform miracles that aren’t possible in any nirvana, promised land, or afterlife.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew the truth: “Earth’s crammed with heaven.”