I don’t want a guru.

A weird and personal reflection on Jeff Chu’s gorgeous memoir, Good Soil.

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The following is a weird and personal reflection on

Jeff Chu 朱天慧

’s beautiful memoir, Good Soil for our Embodied Book Club. I’d like to meditate with you on a few of Jeff’s powerful quotes from the first half of the book. Together, we’ll consider why the content and soul of Jeff’s story holds strength for people like me and maybe like you, asking hard questions and longing for grace.

And (!) in a week and a half, on August 21 at 6pm MT/8pm EST, we’ll get to discuss Good Soil with the author himself.

Jeff Chu 朱天慧

will be joining us for a Q/A, by video. I’ll be sharing the link/instructions for joining here.

**The full post is for paid subscribers, where we can gather and share with some privacy in a smaller group together. If you’d like to be part of this month’s Embodied Book Club but can’t afford it, send me an email at kj@kjramsey.com and I’ll help you out.

And for everyone, as a thank you for your graciousness while I have been too sick to write as regularly here, here’s a discount for 30% off of your subscription for the next year. (It works for both monthly and annual subscriptions.)**

Alright, if our book club were in person, complete with wine and bougie cheese, here’s what I might try to summon the gumption to share:

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I’ve been in a dark place.

For a couple days this week all I did was stare at my electric cobalt bedroom walls and wonder where did my self go? will I ever find her again?

My life, it seems, is hell bent on giving Griever rather than Guru. Most of the time, I’m proud of that.

I don’t want to be anyone’s Jesus Trauma Therapist Barbie™️.¹ I am not plastic. I’m pained. I am considered a mental health expert. And my expertise has not proven to be an escape hatch from hurting so deeply that sometimes I feel trapped in a hollow box of bad thoughts, my cries never quite loud nor strong enough to resound past the pinprick air holes at the top, millimeters from where the rest of myself might still be, unreachable.

I felt like a fraud this week. I couldn’t access perspective, couldn’t lift the lid on my toolbox of supportive resources. It’s been a hellish month with my health and that plus some dumb-but-important work stress pushed me over a ledge, into what my friend

Scott Erickson

would call the low.²

“We spend time in the Low,” Scott says, “because we’re human, not because we’re broken.”

Well, apparently, I am very, very human.

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I think that’s what moved me the most about

Jeff Chu 朱天慧

’s new memoir, Good Soil. Jeff shows us his humanness.

He reveals not just wisdom, but the weakness from which it grows.

I’m so tired of gurus. We get it. You found the greatest freedom of your life and it’s all because of Jesus. Or maybe EMDR. Or methylating tryptophan into serotonin. And we only need to buy your book, follow your Instagram, take your exclusive course, and do as you do and we too shall become as smiley and soft and strong as you! FREEDOM!

This past week I tucked myself inside the pages of Good Soil again, re-reading it as a refuge while my own words have been sparse, all my creative energy directed toward enduring rather unpleasant chest pain, crushing fatigue, and symptoms that I’m not mean enough to give you mental images of in this moment. I first read Good Soil when it published this Spring. At the time, I was groundskeeper in a jungle of what I might unkindly call weeds—let’s be clear, this is a metaphor and I was taking a machete to my own memoir, hacking away many thousands of words into a book you might not DNF³ because it’s just too much. My editor had worked on Jeff’s book too and recommended his memoir as an example of excellence to inspire me while I edited, and I was already planning on reading it anyway, because Jeff—well, Jeff can write.

His writing is elegant. His metaphors are evocative. His chapter transitions deserve an ovation.

But what I found most refreshing about Good Soil was that Jeff presented himself as a person-in-process.