In the days since Warren Farha passed away, suddenly, at the age of 70—a man I knew and loved for nearly 35 years—the overwhelming sense-impression that floods my memory is the way he used to hug me. Now before you imagine that I’m already giving way to teary sentimentality here, you should know that these hugs weren’t simply the classic bluff, manly, three-slaps-on-the back embrace. No, Warren’s hugs would have made a chiropractor proud: the man’s upper body strength was astonishing. In the moment I always did my best to return the favor, but here as in so many other things I fear that Warren was always far beyond my capacity.
I should mention that they were also nearly always sweaty hugs—not because Warren suffered from some condition causing abnormal amounts of perspiration but because nearly every time we embraced he had been lugging heavy boxes packed to the gills with books. Our hugs were “hail” or “farewell” as Warren was unpacking or packing up his traveling road show, the glorious array of titles that still goes by the name of Eighth Day Books. For two decades, Warren traveled to the summer workshops I ran in both the desert southwest and New England. But I would also encounter him at many other events across the country.
I have no idea how many miles he put on those book vans, how many times he broke down by the side of the highway, how many suspensions had to be replaced because he loaded down those poor, overburdened vehicles well beyond the manufacturer’s specifications. I could be speaking at an event in Texas or Michigan or attending a conference in Indiana and Warren and his books would be there, like a mendicant friar traveling far and wide to offer reading that nourished mind and heart—but instead of the mendicant who begs for alms, he poured out his abundance on one and all.
The book tables he provided at these events often took up entire rooms. The sheer act of delivering, unpacking, arranging, and displaying the books took nearly superhuman energy. Often he would work alone through the night so that attendees woke up to rows and rows of tables artfully arranged by topic and genre, complemented by displays of religious icons. At the workshops I ran, people quickly noticed what kind of effort was required and in subsequent years a group of volunteers would be on high alert for the arrival of Warren and his vanload of books. There was to these moments the spirit of a barn-raising, a communal effort, a sweaty festival of love. To see these helpers swing into action—sometimes numbering nearly a dozen—was to sense in a visceral way the kind of loyalty and affection that Warren Farha generated among those who knew him.
Of course, Warren wasn’t always on the road. Our friendship began when I came with my family to Wichita, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, in the hope of building both a literary nonprofit and a quarterly journal. And there was Warren at Eighth Day Books. Thinking back to those two years makes me wish I could go back in time: I would have spent many more hours hanging out with Warren than I actually did. But even early on when we were probably fairly shy with one another we recognized one another as kindred spirits. When we had to leave Wichita a couple years later—nonprofit-building being an ever-precarious business—the friendship had been firmly established.
What I couldn’t have fully understood in those early days was how closely our stories—and our vocations—paralleled one another. In 1987, he had lost his wife and unborn son when they were killed by a drunk driver. He later wrote that at that moment: “I felt that my life had also ended, and that I had to start over.” The intense religious search that he had been on for years—a search that ranged over a wide range of theological traditions, including evangelicalism—ended up with a renewed commitment to the tradition into which he had been born: Eastern Orthodoxy. Books had been at the heart of that transformative journey and it was to books that he would give his life.
In the same year that Eighth Day opened its doors, I was busy preparing the first issue of a literary/arts quarterly journal, one that would feature contemporary art that engaged with—and sought to renew—the religious traditions of Western culture. That project had grown out of my own personal crisis, one that was far from as devastating as Warren’s, but which still required its own form of self-reinvention—or, better, self-discovery. Destined from an early age to be an active player in the conservative intellectual and political movement, I found myself increasingly alienated from the Right and determined to walk away from the destructive nature of the culture wars in favor of a longer-term effort to nurture the imaginative and religious roots of culture.
Even the sources of our theological inspiration were similar: as an Eastern Orthodox, Warren drank deeply—and directly—from the early church fathers; I came at those same mystics and theologians second-hand through the Ressourcement school of theology in twentieth-century Roman Catholic circles. For both of us this meant a way of thinking rooted not only in liturgy and sacrament, but also in a faith that favored presence, mystery, and mercy over legalism, moralism, and politicization.
Starting out, neither of us had much by way of fame or capital or wealthy patrons. As Warren later wrote: “There came a time when I knew that I could not not do this thing. Whether or not I sold a single book, I knew that this was the thing that I had to do.” In situations like this—at least where the basic product in question genuinely partakes of the good, the true, and the beautiful—there is only one decisive factor that is the difference between success and failure. And that is incessant, even fanatical labor. Warren wrote “This attic is where I live about seventy hours a week.” I started out in a basement and eventually worked in a carport.
Here I need to pause because in writing these words I face an insuperable obstacle. In drawing parallels between Warren and myself, I inevitably risk falling into vanity and self-congratulation. Or worse: what the psychologists call “projection.” In order to adequately praise him I commit the sin of trying to make myself look good. It’s a moral paradox straight out of a Graham Greene novel.
But even in the face of that problem what I want to tell you is that Warren Farha was a kinder, gentler, humbler, sweeter soul than I could ever dream of being. He is the kind of man who could write to me:
I am struck, now and then, not by just distinct acts of generosity, but by your generosity as a sustained way of life. I have noticed this for many, many years. You have shone a light on countless artists and writers (and booksellers), a way of life that inevitably, necessarily requires sacrificing your own time for personal works and words. Please just know—at least once—that it doesn’t go unnoticed: this quiet, kenotic form of living.
I love you, man. Now and always.
warren
If those words are true of me in even the smallest degree—and I pray to God they are—they were true of Warren Farha ten-fold.
This was the kind of man who could write to me—anticipating our meeting at yet another conference: “I’m sure I’ll be awestruck and clumsy-tongued when I see you, and all the other luminaries on the roster. But my embrace at least will be unhesitating and sure.”
To which I could only clumsily respond: “I look forward to your spine-compressing embrace, old friend.”
This was the kind of man whose email address was simply books at eighthdaybooks.com.
This was the kind of man who, though he loved God with all his heart, loved whiskey almost as much.
This was the kind of man who came increasingly to resemble figures in the icons he cherished.
This was the man to whom I once wrote: “As long as we can stumble toward eternity arm in arm, I will be a happy man.”
And now I have lost the support of that arm and I am bereft.
Still, even in my grief (which cannot compare, of course, to that of his family), I can draw on the power of memory for strength. It was my habit—after getting the breath squeezed out of me by Warren’s embrace—to say to him, in the manner of desert monks seeking wisdom from their spiritual masters: “Abba Warren, give us a word.” And I know, without any shadow of a doubt, that from his place in the communion of saints—his new life on the Eighth Day—that when I ask for a word, he will give it to me with the same joy and generosity and shy smile that he did so many times before.
