Divine Alignment: How GodWink Moments Guide Your Journey, by SQuire Rushnell. 249 pages, $19.99 in hardcover from Howard Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York. Available at Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven and online at Amazon.com.
SQuire Rushnell (no, that’s not a typo) is not your average guy.
For one thing, there’s the name. Mr. Rushnell capitalizes the first two letters of his first name. So he stands out on an Island where ginning up offbeat first names has become an art form.
And for our purposes today, there’s his background as a network television executive, an industry not particularly known as a breeding ground for spiritual thinkers. To be fair, Mr. Rushnell was not your average TV exec. He shepherded Good Morning America to the top, and contributed to the creation of Schoolhouse Rock, which shared 75 Emmys with The ABC Afterschool Specials and other children’s programs.
While TV programming generally searches for the lowest common denominator (OK, OK, not Downton Abbey), Mr. Rushnell has turned to writing about the highest common denominator (a.k.a. God) to great effect.
His literary epiphany was first discussed in his 2002 book When GOD Winks: How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life, about a term he coined that posits that those coincidences we all experience in life are not random. His belief is that they are part of a communication process between God, as we understand Him or Her, and us. He describes a “GodWink” as “an event or personal experience, often identified as coincidence, so astonishing that it could only have come from divine origin.”
Mr. Rushnell and his wife, comedian Louise DuArt, travel extensively from their Island home, providing inspirational talks and lectures on GodWinks and the plan behind them.
His most recent book on the them, Divine Alignment: How GodWink Moments Guide Your Journey, provides a manual for living in accordance with a divine plan in place for your life. Its nine chapters, or steps, if you will, focus on living harmoniously and well by virtue of connectedness to the “Navigator,” as Mr. Rushnell describes God. Mr. Rushnell describes these steps as “GPS” tools for living.
His thesis involves belief in prayer, God, the Bible, the existence of heaven and hell, and the general precept of the golden rule. He cites scientific studies that show people of faith live longer lives than people of no faith.
Mr. Rushnell’s approach to his subject matter has intrigued me for some time, because spirituality and religion are emotional wild cards in American society of the second millennium. Americans, polls show, enjoy the notion of spirituality a lot. But they also enjoy the notion of formal religion in far fewer numbers than past generations did. Ironically, he is writing from a base in New England, by far the least religious region of our country, despite its rock-ribbed founding religious beliefs. A GodWink, perhaps?
Mr. Rushnell’s approach, it says here, is the key to the success of his message. The term “GodWinks” is folksy, has a touch of humor, and makes the notion of God accessible even to the godless. It’s also right on target for a growing horde of believers in synchronicity.
Approachability really is a key to acceptance in these matters, and that may be evidence that, perhaps, we do get what we need.
Mr. Rushnell presents a self-effacing voice in his book, acting as a messenger. He reminds us frequently that he is a guy “who specializes in simplicity. It is my job to study what smart people say, then report it.”
Mr. Rushnell also knows that his audience is increasingly technocratic, holders of a pragmatic belief system that asks one question: Does it work?
The bottom line is that human beings are only capable of doing things that we believe are good for us. It’s how we’re wired. With a million books in print, Mr. Rushnell has figured out the wiring.