The Rabbit Room

Josh Ritter Strikes Again. With Construction Paper!

If you're not familiar with Josh Ritter's music, here's a piece I wrote about my discovery and ensuing fandom of his songwriting. He just released a new EP of lullabies called Bringing in the Darlings, and this video from one of the songs was fairly mind-blowing. Here's what one of the folks at Etsy.com had to say about the making of the video:

What Is Love? Part III – Suffering

What Is Love? Part I - Definitions What Is Love? Part II - Gethsemane Jeanne Guyon wrote, "You must see the wisdom of God's plan in allowing . . . troubles to happen . . . There are two ways of handling little children. One is to give them all they want when they want it. Another is to give them only what is good for them so that they will grow up into maturity and not be spoiled. Your wise Father chooses the best way for you." (Intimacy With Christ) If we are parents, giving our children a strong sense of being loved through attention and affection is the foundation. But it is also imperative to allow appropriate suffering into our children's lives. Without it they cannot grow; without it they will be left without empathy, compassion, self-discipline, respect for authority, and will not accept responsibility for their actions.

Lent: Book Recommendations

Some people take on the spiritual discipline of reading a Christian book during Lent. I have been asked what books I would recommend. Here is a short list of titles I would suggest folks consider. If you have a book you would recommend, comment and let me know.

Non-fiction

The Prodigal God, Tim Keller Abba's Child, Brennan Manning The Prayer Life, Andrew Murray Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen The Cross of Christ, John Stott

Fiction

The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis Silence, Shusaku Endo The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene Gilead, Marilynne Robinson [Editor's note: Also great for Lent--our own Russ Ramsey's Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative.]

Hutchmoot 2012: Registration Opens March 1st

On September 20-23, the Rabbit Room will convene Hutchmoot 2012 at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, Tennessee. You're invited to come and enjoy a weekend of live music, great food and conversation, and a series of discussions centered on art, faith, and the telling of great stories across a range of mediums.

More information is available at the Hutchmoot website. Registration opens next week! At 7:00pm CST on March 1st, all 100 Hutchmoot tickets will go on sale. We considered a number of different ways to make tickets available, but in the end we feel the best, simplest, and fairest way is to announce the sale date and offer them on a first-come/first-served basis.

Oxford Chronicles: The Tutorial

Oxford may produce cool-minded academics, but I think most new students are all jitters at the first tutorial. The system of learning here is different, individual, and oh so intense at first. There are very few lectures and even those are optional. Almost all learning happens in once a week, one-on-one meetings with a professor who is an expert in your area of interest. During the tutorial hour, the student reads aloud a previously assigned essay, hears the professor's critique, and is given a reading assignment for the next week.

The day of my first one was chill and bright when I set out. A week before, I received an email instructing me to find my way to Dr. so and so's rooms "in college," on "this day week." I left far too early, but this was grace, for I was swiftly lost. I wandered at least two wrong lanes in my hunt for the right college. Oxford is a series of narrow cobbled streets threaded twixt creamy, high stone walls. Massive oaken doors etched by iron studs rise every block or two amidst the stone, and behind these, like tiny, hidden cities lie the colleges.

Christmas Through The Lens of Easter

One of my greatest joys as a writing pastor is that every year I am obliged to spend several weeks focusing on the two most earth-changing events in history--the birth of Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection. You cannot make sense of one without the other. I'm currently working on a Lenten Narrative to follow last year's Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. With the season of Lent starting this week, I thought I'd offer here a chapter from Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative that looks at the incarnation of Jesus through the lens of his purpose for coming: to defeat the death I deserve and raise me to newness of life with him in his resurrection. Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative Chapter 24: The Hearts of Many Revealed

The old man was a member of the old guard, the last of a generation of faithful ministers in Jerusalem’s temple. He was something of a fixture—the kind of man who seemed to have always been there. It was hard to say whether Simeon smelled like the temple or the temple smelled like Simeon, but the minds of those who passed him in the street would often drift to notions of smoke and blood and a guilty resolve to attend to their worship more regularly.

The old guard to which he belonged was on a permanent watch. They were waiting for something in particular, something unique, something wonderful. The years had taught Simeon patience, so he was good at waiting. Still, he felt an unrelenting sense of urgency. He always had. He was waiting for the consolation of his people Israel. He had been waiting a long time, and his people even longer.

How to Make a Record, Part 3: Following Clues

In part one, I talked about the outset of the journey. Part two was a look back at the lack of pattern over the years, which explains the appropriate lack of readiness, which, while uncomfortable, can be very good thing. In this post, thanks to your excellent feedback, I'm going to try and get more specific about the process and try to answer some of your questions. Right off the bat, let me address this question a few of you asked: Which comes first, the lyrics or the music? This question has been asked of songwriters for as long as there has been songwriting, I imagine. The answer isn't very satisfying, I'm afraid, which may be why it keeps coming up. The answer is "Yes." Or, if you prefer, "D) All the above." Sometimes the lyric comes first, sometimes the music comes first, and sometimes they come all at once, like the doorbell and the phone ringing at the same time. When someone claims to have discovered a foolproof method for creating art---other than a willingness to work very hard at it---I doubt either their honesty or their skill. I'd dig into that more, but I want to get us back to the studio. Reading through your questions, I realized the best way to approach this may be to choose a song from the new record and give you a play-by-play of what we ended up doing.

Christian Storytelling, Part IV: The Biblical Drama

Christian Storytelling: Part I Christian Storytelling: Part II Christian Storytelling: Part III In Part III, I proposed N.T. Wright's view of the Scriptures as the first four acts of an unfinished drama as a potentially profitable alternative hermeneutic to the normal ways evangelicals handle the biblical texts. Since I only included a brief paragraph from Wright's thought on this method, I'll take some time today to put some skin and muscle on the skeleton.  I'll note some of his own remarks and push them a bit further myself. Wright quotes will come from his lecture, How Can the Bible be Authoritative? (or PDF, if you'd like). First, let's allow Wright himself to explain a bit more:

One Minute Review: Chronicle

Chronicle is a movie that could easily fly under the radar. All I could tell from the trailer was that stuff flies around and someone is really worried about Andrew. Is it any more than that? The One Minute Review knows for sure.

Leonard the Lonely Astronaut – Live in Space

Note: Two open spots! Andrew Osenga is winding up his work on Leonard the Lonely Astronaut next week. The good news is that you're going to have a whole bunch of great music to listen to very soon. The bad news is that it's time to tear down the spaceship where the album was written and recorded. That's right, the HTV Reveille is being decommissioned and will probably break apart somewhere over Baja Burrito in Nashville when it re-enters earth's atmosphere. But . . . Before it does, there will be a concert. On Thursday, February 23rd @ 7:00pm we're going to film Leonard the Lonely Astronaut Live as an upcoming Rabbit Room videocast, and we need twenty-five hardy travelers to attend. Andy will play solo and perform several songs from the album and, yes, he'll be in full astronaut uniform. But before you suit up and get in the car, consider this: the spacedock (warehouse) where the ship is kept is not heated, and it might be in the 30's or 40's when the show starts. We'll have some space heaters (punny!) but be prepared to shiver. Bring coats and blankets. After all, it's cold in space (so cold we could serve revenge! --oblique Kahn reference). Also keep in mind that this is primarily a short video shoot of 5 or 6 songs rather than a full-fledged live show. Full disclosure because we don't want anyone to drive down from Canada and be disappointed when it's over in 45 minutes. But if that sounds like a fun way to spend a Thursday evening, come on down! Space is strictly limited so we can only take the first 25 folks that sign up. Edit: Thanks for signing up, folks. Please let us know if you need to cancel so we can give someone else the opportunity to come.