Hello and welcome to Field Notes!

This is a weekly newsletter with exclusive essays about faith and spirituality, occasional devotional series, community conversations, book recommendations, and so much more.

If this is your first time popping by, I hope this post answers a few of your likely questions like, “who is Sarah Bessey?” and “what does she write about?” and “what do I get with a subscription to Field Notes?” and “how much does this cost anyway?” I’ve also linked the top ten posts to give you a good sense of Field Notes. Let’s get started!

Who writes this thing?

It’s me! Sarah Bessey here, nice to “meet” you. I’m the founder of this newsletter. Field Notes has been around since 2014, but we made the move to Substack when it was a pretty fledgling new platform in 2019. Since then, Field Notes has consistently been in the top ten faith and spirituality newsletters. It also remains one of the most popular on Substack.

Please allow me the moment of earnestness to tell you how grateful I am for this work and that you are here, helping to co-create one of the kindest comment sections on Al Gore’s Internet (do kids today even know that joke??). The folks here are forever reminding me, in a sea of hot-take noise and zero-sum chaos, that a quiet, wordy, thoughtful oasis like this can exist for all of us. It means the world to me that folks trust me with their embattled inbox, their tender and resilient hearts in this difficult age, and their precious time. I never take any of that for granted. It is always one of the great honours of my life to be alongside folks in this small way every single week and I hope you know that I’m grateful.

I’m also the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed books Jesus Feminist (2013); Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith (2015); and Miracles and Other Reasonable Things (2019). My collaborative book, A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal (2021) was a New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and Globe and Mail Bestseller. I also served as its editor.

My latest book was Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith which was a USA Today, Globe and Mail, Publisher’s Weekly, and Indie bestseller. There is a