Cosmo and Me:
A Seeker's Journey from Religion to Spirituality
(208 pp., over 40 photos)​
​by Jim Willis

There is no doubt that America has changed and evolved
considerably since the 1950s. The post-war years when
the middle class found a haven in the manicured lawns of 
suburban homes  quickly gave way to social unrest in the
1960s and ’70s. This was followed by the “Decade of
Greed” in the 1980s, disillusion at the turn of a century,
and the sea change caused by the internet, social media,
and threats (perceived or real) to the American way of life.

Christian minister, musician, teacher, and spiritual explorer 
Jim Willis takes readers on his personal path of growth
and reflection that in many ways parallels the journey of
America. Join Willis as he grows from a shy boy in the
Detroit suburbs to professional trombonist to minister and
preacher to explorer of Buddhism and shamanism. You’ll
hunt game and fish with him in New York’s woods, try
dowsing in South Carolina, and seek the truth about life
as Willis comments on everything in our society from 
Muppets to the drugs culture  to the state of religion in 
America. Willis questions and reevaluates America’s sense
of values in this  thought-provoking memoir by an 
adept and entertaining raconteur.

About the Author

Theologian, historian, and musician Jim Willis earned his Bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music and his Master’s degree from Andover Newton Theological School. An ordained minister for over 40 years, he served as an adjunct college professor and guest lecturer in comparative religion, cross-cultural studies, and contemporary spirituality. His background led to his writing more than 20 books on religion, the apocalypse, spirituality, and arcane or buried cultures, specializing in research bridging lost civilizations, suppressed history, and the study of earth energy, dowsing, and out-of-body experiences.

Learn more at jimwillis.net.

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BookLife Review

Willis has lived many lives through the years, as pastor, jazz musician, teacher and writer. In Cosmo and Me, he shares the quest he has been on the whole time—for the Holy Grail, to “experience God,” and what he found. As he is chronologically one of the first Baby Boomers, Willis’s story parallels much of contemporary America’s story, from his time as a youth helping build an early shopping mall to his avoidance of Vietnam through a teaching job to entering the 1980s and a midlife crisis even as the country seems to be going through its own crisis. In his retirement, Willis moved to the wilderness of South Carolina and found what he was looking for—God—in nature.

Willis has faced a lot of pain and beauty in his life, from beloved teachers lost to suicide to the beauty of nature experienced with close friends to a very full career in and out of religious institutions. In Cosmo and Me, he shares the “flowers” of these experiences, including some bold conclusions. While the level of personal disclosure is often high, Willis doesn’t dig too deeply here into some practicalities of his search for God, such as its impact on his children and wives, though he does include several photos which help put faces to the stories that he tells. Willis closes the stories of his life with a deeply thought out “theory” of just who God is, what the universe is and who people are —even though he warns that these passages may seem to be “a sudden turn to religion or philosophy,” they cohere well with the rest of the text by fleshing out what has been made implicit earlier. However a reader may feel about the specifics of Willis’s spiritual theory, it is well worth considering as hard-won the wisdom of a true seeker. Readers willing to appreciate the experiences of the past will learn much from Willis’s story and spiritual insight. 
Takeaway: A seeker’s engaging quest for God over the course of an American life. 
Comparable Titles: Ervin Laszlo’s Science and the Akashic Field, Itzhak Beery’s Shamanic Healing.