David A. Holness did not set out to write a memoir. The project began with an experience he could not easily dismiss: a moment of listening that brought an old, unfinished matter back into view and sent him looking across more than seven decades for the connections he had missed while living them.
The result is God Does Not Make Robocalls, a memoir about a life lived at the intersections - faith and science, technology and people, work and purpose, discipline and improvisation. Holness revisits joining IBM as a teenager, navigating corporate systems, entrepreneurship and Xerox, doctoral research into pharmaceutical labeling, years in higher education, a lifelong relationship with music, family, marriage, fatherhood and grandfatherhood, and the adventures that periodically placed him well outside his comfort zone.
The book does not pretend that every experience can be reduced to a neat explanation. Instead, it asks what we do with evidence, memory, grace, responsibility, and the things that continue to call for our attention. Photographs, documents, professional artifacts, and links to music extend the story beyond prose and make the memoir itself a record of a life in motion.
At its center is a question that reaches beyond one man's story: If He calls, are You listening?
