The Resurrection of the Dharma Bums

A Pilgrimage Through the Spiritual Stages

Most of us sense it long before we can name it.
The quiet ache beneath success.
The feeling that life has become efficient—but not alive.
The suspicion that we are busy, connected, informed… and somehow still asleep.
In The Resurrection of the Dharma Bums, James Stroud traces a deeply personal—but widely recognizable—spiritual journey through faith, career, marriage, pilgrimage, grief, simplicity, and awakening. Grounded in Christianity yet unafraid of silence, paradox, and mystery, this book explores what happens when belief is no longer enough and the soul begins asking for something deeper.
Part memoir, part spiritual reflection, part modern pilgrimage, this is not a guidebook or a system but more meditation. It offers no formulas and no guarantees. Instead, it walks alongside those who feel caught between worlds—between belief and experience, noise and stillness, the life they’ve built and the life quietly calling them forward.
Written over several years, this book does not chronicle arrival, but recognition—the moment when one realizes that waking up does not end the journey, but finally makes it possible.
Drawing on ancient Christian mysticism, everyday work, off-grid living, travel, and the often-uncomfortable process of awakening, Stroud invites readers to reconsider what it means to live deliberately, to listen inwardly, and to recover a faith that is not merely practiced—but inhabited.
This book is for those who feel restless in a world that never stops moving.
For those who sense that the answer is not more effort—but more awareness.
For those who are no longer content to sleepwalk through a life that could be lived awake.
This is not a destination.
It is a threshold.
This book ends where most would only begin.