I’m Not the Church Lady | Marketing as a spiritual practice

Marketing as a Spiritual Practice

||| I’M NOT THE CHURCH LADY by ROSIE KUHN |||

I think maybe God has a Bingo cage. You know the kind—the big wire ball somebody cranks around at Bingo Night while everyone sits staring at their cards, waiting to see what number comes tumbling out. “B-12!” People look down. Nope. “G-46!” Someone puts a little marker on his card. “I-7!” And so it goes.

Except I’m beginning to suspect that somewhere along the way I was handed a Spiritual Practice Bingo card. Instead of numbers, my squares say things like Relationships, Money, Health, Aging, Loss, Spirituality—and, apparently, Engagement. I didn’t know that last one yet. All I knew was that lately, somebody up there kept cranking the cage and calling numbers that seemed suspiciously related to MARKETING.

Oh, for God’s sake. Seriously? Apparently so.

Welcome to Bingo Night
At Bingo Night, nobody tells me how the whole game is going to unfold. I get one number. B-12. That’s it. I don’t know what number is coming next. I don’t know whether B-12 will eventually lead to Bingo. I don’t know whether the woman beside me is going to win first, causing me to smile graciously while secretly thinking, Oh, for God’s sake. I have B-12. So I put my little marker on B-12. That’s it. Jeesh!

But this isn’t how I generally operate. Life says, “B-12,” and my mind immediately says, But what if B-12 leads to I-19, and then G-52…and what if I share my Substack post and people start reading my work, and then more people subscribe, and then they expect things from me, and then I don’t have any time to myself, and then I lose my peaceful life, and…

Whoa! Back up, Rosie. B-12. Just B-12. Now, put the marker down!

I’ve been perfectly happy with meditation, prayer, solitude, contemplation—sitting quietly in the woods pondering the nature of existence. These all seem appropriately spiritual. But marketing? Instagram? Posting my YouTube videos? Putting a link in my bio? Telling people, “Hey, I made something. You might enjoy it”???

Evidently, at the most recent Bingo Night, that’s what got called. And here’s the thing about Bingo: none of us gets to choose the numbers. We only get to notice what happens in us when they’re called.

Marketing? Really?

I’m really good at creating stuff. Currently, I write a weekly post for the Orcasonian and Substack. I co-host a radio show at KIXP.org, called I’m Not the Church Lady. I recently returned to YouTube starting a new series called I Want to Be a Better Writer. I’ve written more than fourteen books, created hundreds of videos and written hundreds of blog posts. 

Creating is not my problem. I can whip out content until the cows come home. Then, apparently, I wander happily back into the field of creativity and start making something else. For years, I’ve called what I do “sharing.” I write something and publish it. I create a video and put it on YouTube. I write a book and self-publish it. See? Sharing!

Except lately I’ve been discovering that there may be a difference between making something available and actually extending it toward another human being. EEK!!!

There’s creating. There’s making something available. And then there’s, “Hey. I made this. Would you like to see it?”

Oh.

Somewhere in all of this, I realized something: Marketing isn’t actually the square on my Bingo card. Engagement is. Marketing is simply today’s B-12.
JEESH!

Engagement? Really?

This changed the question entirely. Marketing may simply be my willingness to participate in making what I say I want possible. I say I want my work to reach more people. Fine. What am I willing to do to make that possible? Not to make it happen. I can’t control that. But what am I willing to do to create the conditions in which it could happen?

And that requires engagement.

Here we go again!!!!

Engagement isn’t necessarily my Wahoo. I’m a Goddamn introvert. I value solitude, tranquility, privacy and time in nature. I love people. I just don’t necessarily need a whole lot more of them. So, I can make my introversion a perfectly reasonable explanation for why I don’t engage more. And perhaps sometimes it is. But perhaps sometimes it’s also a handy scapegoat. Just sayin.’

The more interesting question became: To what degree am I willing to engage in order to make what I say I want possible? And almost immediately another distinction becomes important. I don’t need to become more engaged. I need to engage only enough for what is mine to share to actually leave my hands.

That’s different.

I can want my work to travel farther without agreeing to become endlessly available to everyone who encounters it. Allowing my work to be available doesn’t mean making myself endlessly available.
Engagement can have boundaries. Good to know!!

Thank God!
What Am I Actually Here to Do?
This is where intention becomes critical. In marketing circles they talk about discovering your “big why.” I’m not fond of that language, but there’s something important underneath it. What is my pure intention? What am I actually here to do? That’s the big why? For me, the answer is remarkably simple: My work in the world is to share what I know, the way I know to share it.

That’s my trajectory.

Marketing isn’t the destination. Engagement isn’t even the destination. Followers, subscribers, likes, algorithms, visibility and popularity certainly aren’t the destination. They may be instruments, information or consequences, but they don’t determine my course. The question becomes: Is what I’m doing serving my sharing, or have I wandered into proving, performing, pleasing, accumulating, comparing or trying to control the outcome?

Knowing my trajectory—my truest intention, helps me distinguish between nourishing discomfort and irrelevant discomfort. Sharing a video on Instagram may make me uncomfortable. I’m extending myself. I’m saying, “Hey, I made this.” But if that serves my intention, perhaps that’s discomfort worth experiencing.

Spending three hours learning everything there is to know about Instagram algorithms may also make me uncomfortable. But if it doesn’t actually serve my intention, there is no spiritual virtue in doing it—for me, anyway. Not every uncomfortable thing is part of a spiritual practice! Good to know!!!

I Want It. I Don’t Want It.

Out of all of this, another question appeared: What might it cost me if I actually get what I say I want? YIKES.

Because I would love more people to read my writing, watch my videos and have my work travel farther into the world. And at the same time, I wouldn’t. What the hell? Of course, this isn’t just about marketing. We humans do this all the time. We want a partner but protect ourselves from intimacy. We want a different career but cling to security. We want freedom but hold tightly to what’s familiar. We want to experience health, but we don’t want to give up eating what we want when we want it.

I want it. I don’t want it = Ambivalence. And perhaps nowhere is that ambivalence more interesting than in our spiritual lives. Just sayin’!

I Want to Know God. But…

I say I want to know God. Okay.

But what if knowing God changes things I don’t want changed? What if my spiritual life deepens in ways that change my relationships, my work, my priorities? What if what I discover asks something of me? EEK!

Suddenly, “I want to know God” becomes: I want to know God—as long as knowing God doesn’t mess with anything I currently want to keep exactly the way it is. Good luck with that.

And marketing is no different. I say I want more people to read my work. But what if they do? What if more visibility means more demands on my time? More emails? More expectations? More invitations? More people wanting something from me? What happens to the tranquility I love? My solitude? My walks in nature? My ability to sit around drinking coffee and contemplating absolutely nothing?

And here’s where something else shifted. The part of me that says, “I don’t want it,” isn’t necessarily sabotaging the part that says, “I want it.” It may actually be protecting something else I want at the same time. I want my work to reach people, and I want spaciousness. I want connection, and I want solitude. I want to be received, and I want freedom.

Maybe the dilemma begins when I believe I have to choose, in order to resolve the ambivalence before I can move.

Maybe There’s Nothing to Resolve

I tend to believe that my spiritual practice should resolve my ambivalence. I’ll become clear enough, healed enough, enlightened enough—or whatever enough—that I’ll know exactly what I want and move toward it without hesitation.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe the practice isn’t resolving I want it/I don’t want it. Maybe it’s learning to abide in the space between them and take the next step from there.

Today, there’s a video I’ve already made. Do I want to share it on Instagram? Yes. And no. Fine!!

Can I share it anyway? Apparently, I can. Click. Done.

And then back to the coffee. Back to the trees. Back to myself.

Look at that. I haven’t been flown off to New York City for a special interview on CBS Sunday Morning. I’m still here. Nobody has confiscated my trailer and my forest. Maybe spiritual practice looks like this more often than I realize. Not certainty. Not fearlessness. Just willingness to meet what’s here, now, and take the next step, when I’m ready. One number. One marker. One moment. Perhaps the resolution of I want it/I don’t want it isn’t found by thinking my way to certainty before I move. Perhaps it’s found in the movement itself.

The Spiritual and the Ridiculous

Which brings me back to God and the Bingo cage.

Maybe a spiritual practice isn’t about getting myself into some appropriately spiritual state. Maybe spirituality is simply my willingness to meet whatever is actually on my card—and respond to whatever number has been called.

Engagement. Relationships. Money. Career. Love. Illness. Solitude. Visibility. Aging. Loss.  Whatever.

Everybody has a different card. And everybody sitting around that Bingo table has squares they desperately hope life will call into play—and squares they’re praying never become relevant. I don’t need to know how the game ends. I don’t need to know what number comes next. I don’t even need to know whether I’ll eventually yell, “BINGO!”

I only need to hear the number that has actually been called, look at my card, and ask: Is this mine to mark?

Today, apparently, the square is Engagement.

And B-12?

Share the damn video.

Oh, for God’s sake. Fine. Pass me the dauber.