Todd Babiak is a writer, lecturer and publisher. He is the author of 17 books, including What’s the Story, Jesus’ Spiritual Friend?, for the Smithsonian Institute. “What’s the Story, Jesus’ Spiritual Friend?” is the first book of the “Prose Texts to Bypass,” a book series that introduces audiences to the text above, without requiring a specific connection to faith or history.
Ever have an inexplicable sense of
some danger or mystery? Read the story, “The Strangers,” and feel the fear,
but without being haunted by nightmares, guilt or disquieting memories,
as if you could stare at the New York Times obituary and come up with a theory, or you have been told there are spirits, ghosts or spirits—and you will try, on that first night
without success, to prove it. This story is the inspiration for Todd Babiak’s new book, “The Spirits Up.”
The full story behind this title starts by asking, “How many times have you heard that
suddenly, out of the blue, God made you the way you are now?” It’s a
good question. Most us don’t wait to be asked—we say “yes,” then
our minds disappear to the new definition of what made us that way.
Or is there a prophecy in there somewhere?
In 2004, Todd and his wife, Charlotte, read
for their children the second version of “The Good Book,” by Christian Sheets.
What Sheets wrote in this second edition for eleven-year-olds seemed
breath-taking to Todd and Charlotte. He knew He saw something
else. Sheets has gone on to say, “When they finished, I remember
my daughter saying, ‘Wow, Mr. Sheets. Do you really know how much that story
thinks?’ Then I started to wonder about all of those other stories
that seemed like they thought. Would they be more powerful if we gave them
another option? What if we listened to someone’s view of the world?”
Because those stories might be the essence of who we are, Todd Babiak’s latest work “The Spirits Up” reflects the
debate that Christian Sheets asks, if we look at the universe from a new
perspective. That is, if, like Christian Sheets, we believe the universe
is destined for a certain level of event and finally reaches that level,
what sort of creation do we expect, and how far can we push theism
(never anywhere)? The idea of “Spiritualism” is not the belief that there is a Spirit, but that there is a Spirit realm in which we experience an exaltation that makes our humanity greater.
Over the course of 12 chapters, “The Spirits Up”
conveys their journeys to Spirituality, as they learn to think more
spiritually, and learn to ask questions to fulfill their vision.
For more, go to:
Todd Babiak’s book The Spirits Up: Stories of Religious Experience by Christian Sheets, prounced “hereby”
