Back to Color, Back to Life: Behind My Book Sacred Curiosity By Britney Winn Lee 

By Britney Winn Lee 

If you’ve noticed fewer fireflies lately, you’re not imagining it. The beetles that create those summer flashes of light are disappearing, victims of shrinking habitat. What fascinates me isn’t just their vanishing act, but how they work: a substance in their bodies mixes with oxygen to  produce light without flame, without burning anything up. They communicate in cold heat when they have the space to do so. But for some time now, we’ve been destroying the ecosystems that support light. 

I, myself, have felt like I had become a product of diminished light when I walked into my counsellor’s office one gray afternoon. 

The rain had started, and I hadn’t brought an umbrella—a small failure that felt enormous given everything else. I cataloged the year’s accumulated wreckage: fertility treatments that ended in nothing but bills, jury duty for a murder trial, a child’s funeral, my friend burying her mother, workplace toxicity, strangers sending hate mail, churches fracturing, war on every screen, among the daily grind of groceries, homework, and trying to keep going. 

“Everything’s dead or dying,” I said. “Everything’s gray. I can’t remember color.” 

She sat quietly for a moment. Then, without alarm, offered, “There’s a book I’m reading about awe. About how wonder can meet us even in grief and fear. I wonder if curiosity might be a way  back for you.” 

Not a diagnosis. Not a prescription. Just a breadcrumb. 

I’m a faith writer, seminarian, and ministry supporter who’s spent years talking about means of grace—those practices that create space for God to meet us. But I’d never thought of curiosity as being one. It seemed too simple, too optional, too much like a luxury I couldn’t afford when I was drowning. 

But I was desperate enough to try. And it was accessible enough to move toward. 

That’s what my book Sacred Curiosity explores. It’s my attempt to map the territory I stumbled through, to offer what I discovered about finding light in gray seasons. Not as someone who has it figured out, but as someone who experienced how the question itself can be a lifeline. And here’s what I’ve learned: when we stop the conversation with declarations and certainty, we stop hope’s pulse. But when we keep asking—of ourselves, of each other, of God, of love itself—we keep something alive. Something that can lead us back to color, back to connection, back to life. 

What unfolded over the following months of musing on curiosity changed me. I began to notice things, like how a question could soften a hardened conversation, how wondering could slow me down just enough to breathe. I learned that curiosity doesn’t require anything I don’t already have. It asks for attention, not perfection. For openness, not expertise.

I discovered it could shift me from judgment to connection. It makes room for things I’m often too rushed or too certain to notice. The rhythm of ordinary days began to feel less like an obligation and more like an invitation. Small moments—a walk, a conversation, a pause—began to hold possibility again. Exploring wonder and how it leads to wholeness challenged my shame, loosened the demand for certainty. It made space for not knowing, for experimenting, for trying things that might not work. It gave me permission to be a beginner again and to follow the breadcrumbs where they lead. 

Most surprisingly, it connected me to people I’d been sure were too different, too difficult, too far gone. Because curiosity changes the question from “How do I defeat you or outlast you?” to  “What if I understood you?” It keeps conversations alive when certainty would have ended them, and divisions would have ended us. 

Slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice, I started seeing color again. Not because my circumstances improved—many didn’t. But because I’d found a different way of moving through them. Less disdain and distrust for a divided world; more capacity to hope, even when hope felt  foolish. 

I think about the fireflies when I think about this deep dive into curiosity—their cold heat like the bush that burned but was not consumed. What my counselor offered me wasn’t just a therapeutic technique—it was an invitation into a different kind of communication, one that  creates light without destroying what it touches, one where a pause and a breath can help us meet one another where we are and get to where we need to go together. 

Here’s what troubles me: we’re losing habitat for this kind of exchange. Our culture treats curiosity like it’s weak or naive, something only people with too much time can afford. We’ve built echo chambers and outrage cycles, spaces where pausing to wonder feels dangerous,  where questions get interpreted as doubt or disloyalty. 

Our nervous systems weren’t built for this much certainty, this much defensiveness, this much combat. 

But what if we could rebuild? What if we created communities—in our homes, our churches, our neighborhoods—where curiosity wasn’t just tolerated but cultivated? Where wondering aloud wasn’t weakness but courage? Where questions could coexist with conviction? 

The fireflies need the right conditions to flash their cold light. So do we. I have begun to trust that we have everything we need within us to create those conditions, one curious question at a  time. 

—

Britney Winn Lee is an author, editor, and United Methodist pastor living in Shreveport,  Louisiana, with her creative husband and big-hearted son. Her latest book, Sacred Curiosity: 

Wondering Our Way Toward Wholeness, comes out from Broadleaf Books on Feb. 17, 2026.  Her other books include The Boy with Big, Big Feelings; The Girl with Big, Big Questions; The  Kid with Big, Big Ideas; Rally: Communal Prayers for Lovers of Jesus and Justice;  Deconstructed Do-Gooder: A Memoir about Learning Mercy the Hard Way; and Good Night,  Body. With a master’s degree in nonprofit administration and her local pastor licensure, Winn  Lee has worked for over a decade in faith- and justice- based, creative community-building. She  writes to make room for all people of all ages. 

Website: britneywinnlee.com 

Twitter: @britneywinnlee 

Instagram: @britneywinnlee 

Facebook: @britneywinnlee

Sacred Curiosity: Wondering Our Way Toward Wholeness  

Curiosity slows us down, tunes us in for transformation, pushes past shame, activates awe, and rewrites with hope.

What if our most accessible resource for healing and transformation is ready and waiting to be harnessed? When everything feels gray and hopeless, curiosity emerges as an unexpected path back to color and life. Sacred Curiosity explores how the simple practice of remaining open to wonder can become a powerful force for personal and communal renewal.

Through personal stories, spiritual reflection, and practical ideas, Britney Winn Lee reveals how curiosity slows us down when life feels overwhelming, builds bridges across our deepest divisions, pushes past shame toward liberation, and rewilds our domesticated spirits. Neither a theological treatise nor a scientific study, and yet somehow a wonder-filled blend of the two, this book offers a heartfelt exploration of curiosity as both grace and practice. Lee writes as a fellow pilgrim who has experienced curiosity’s transformative power firsthand–hating and fearing less through its freeing and connective guidance.

With reflection questions for individuals or groups, the book invites us to experience curiosity not as a luxury or personality trait, but as an indispensable value for navigating our complex world. It’s an invitation to follow breadcrumbs of wonder toward a more generous, hopeful way of being. For anyone seeking renewal amid exhaustion or connection across difference, this book suggests that God–and healing, wholeness, and resurrection–might be found not only in being correct, but in being curious.

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