I love my wife. I love my kids. And I love the call the Lord has on my life to proclaim His word in the context of the local church.
Seriously, I feel like I’m getting away with something. I am one of the richest people I know, and I’m grateful for it. Time with my wife nourishes me in ways time with no one else on this earth can. Time with my children brings to me a sweet mix of untold joy and sober reverence when I think of who they are and who I hope they become. Hours spent at my work reminds me again and again how precious and rare it is to be a man who is blessed to work at something I love.
As it happens right now, my work has called me away from my wife and kids, geographically, for a season. One of the weird struggles I didn’t anticipate is the work of navigating how to explain why I am here apart from my family, without it sounding like a full-on plea for sympathy, or worse, a complaint.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve written here– busy and filled with a lot of transition in my family’s life. We are in the process of relocating to Nashville, and we’re super excited about it.
I want to tell you a story—a true story.
I’m no dummy. I know I run a certain risk in plugging a two volume commentary on the Gospel of Matthew here in the Rabbit Room.
A big, global thanks to all of you who took a minute to reply to our recent 
Hey, Rabbit Room. It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, but wanted to take a moment to highlight a new development in the cybersphere. Earlier this year Andrew Peterson 
Vincent van Gogh put the barrel of his pistol to his chest and pulled the trigger. Earnest Hemingway, three weeks shy of his 62nd birthday, used a shotgun and aimed about a foot higher. Heroine and cocaine took Belushi and Farley. It appears, at least in part, that small armies of sycophants with the power to prescribe presided over the waning moments of the lives of Michael Jackson, Anna Nicole Smith and Elvis Presley.
Back, back, back. Back before the compact disc, back before the personal computer, back before the existence of the mini-van, there was a public library in Tipton, Indiana with a brand new laser disk player, complete with about seven film choices.
I grew up in rural Indiana, in a small town where the only kids around who had long hair usually had reputations as trouble-makers as well. And there weren’t many of them. Back in Jr. High I decided I wanted to play electric guitar, and found inspiration from the glam metal bands popular at the time. I was a big 
A.S. Peterson has crafted a work of compelling historical fiction which begs the question, “Can this really be a debut novel?” With dogged fidelity, Peterson captures the spirit, manners, and social conditions present during the American Revolutionary War. We meet colorful, credible characters who navigate the high seas of life and love, dependence and independence, war and peace, truth and consequence, and despite forays into dark places, The Fiddler’s Gun is beautiful, lyrical, and redemptive.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea.
I am not a fan of Civil War literature; in fact, I have always thought of it as one of those weird sub-genres for obsessive types. They’re almost like Trekkies with their re-enactments and maniacal devotion to detail. It’s just not my thing (although I’m secretly jealous that they get to dress up and shoot cannons).
A Randall Goodgame song is like a great independent movie. Characters deliver lines like they were lifted from a break room, a truck stop, or a downtown diner. Seemingly incongruent scenes are juxtaposed and plot isn’t obvious; in fact, narrative–a good story–is often more evident than linear plot lines. An indie movie, like a Randall Goodgame song, seems to tell itself. Rather than being rudely yanked by a chain through a sequence of contrived events, with a Randall Goodgame song, I have the sense that I’m being allowed a willing, but vicarious sneak peak into the real lives of his real characters.
Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up.
I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul - my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder.
11-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute.
I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson.
Eric Peters’s body of work addresses a diverse range of topics, but hope is a recurring theme that gently percolates in the midst of it all. And yet, somewhere between the 2001 masterpiece Land of the Living, and Scarce, the flavor of hope that Peters’s work emits has evolved closer to a tone that is more resolute than what came before. And though the complexion of hope has a broad range, the lyrics from Scarce–while intermittently contrite and timorous as in previous efforts, are now strengthened and bolstered by roots that have grown deeper, radiating an underlying grit and security.
Having read The Great Divorce many times over the years, I’ve found this classic from the great C.S. Lewis to be full of startling clarity and depth on the differences between Heaven and Hell. The only thing both have in common is that both begin in the human will; we can either let Heaven enter us and rule in us to blossom into love and goodness, or allow Hell to infect and reign in our hearts by the daily refusal to submit to Heaven.
Even if you haven’t heard Room to Breathe, its still likely you’ve heard Andy Gullahorn. He’s what I’d call a heavy lifter by trade. He writes lyrics, plays guitar, arranges vocals and adds production help to the work of artists like Jill Phillips and Andrew Peterson.
Allow me to preface this by telling you that I am a great despiser of gushing reviews. I’d much rather write (or read) a scathing dismemberment of the latest Brett Ratner film or Terry Goodkind book than suffer through four hundred words of overblown hyperbole about even the best of things. But when asked to write some thoughts on Frederick Buechner’s Godric, no amount of distaste for high praise was able to intervene. I hope you’ll take what I say with the understanding that I do not say it readily or lightly.