My new friend (and art patron), Kim Watkins, wrote a while back and asked for this recipe, said she was intending to serve it for dinner when her in-laws came for a visit. I do love to hear who these recipes get served to, what words they might use to describe what they taste, and how many times they lick their fingers — I take joy in those little pieces of everyday extraordinaryness, the vision of someone’s mess-faced children bellied-up to the supper table, smearing their chubby fingers across an earthen plate to sop up that last spicy, treacly goodness.
Since I had this written up I thought it might be sharing time again. Here’s the best semblance of August 7th’s tomato jam recipe I can come up with — I had it in mind for weeks (months?) theoretically, but totally concocted it on the fly. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the conclusion of a series of posts about money, art, commerce, and the Kingdom. It’s not so much about money, but a closing thought about the artist’s calling.
The Great Nashville Flood of 2010 was devastating. People died. Homes were lost. We watched our neighborhood street turn into a muddy river. On one of our walks down the hill from the Warren to see the flood’s progress we spotted a family of field mice who had been forced to higher ground. Then we saw two or three moles. We and a few neighbors gathered them up and moved them to safety.
Later, in the woods, we found a drowned baby rabbit, soaked through and pitiful. Their warren had flooded and it was too small and fragile to escape in time. I imagine its mother pulled it out with the others and this was the unlucky one. I have a thing for rabbits, you see, so it gave me pause. A few minutes later I heard my son Aedan screaming through the woods. I ran. Our dog, a huge Great Pyrenees named Moondog, had found another baby rabbit, this one still alive. Before Aedan could stop him, Moondog’s instincts kicked in and he attacked. Rabbits scream like humans. Aedan saw it all–and heard it all–as Moondog bit and shook the rabbit till its back broke. When I found Aedan he was weeping in the mud with the little bloody rabbit cradled in his hands. It was awful. Read the rest of this entry »
I so appreciate all the discussion. Your comments have been moving and encouraging and have pushed me to think deeper about these things. Here’s the recap:
First: wealth is a burden. Poverty is a burden. As one of my Bible college professors Twila Sias (hey, Twila!) pointed out in last week’s comments, Proverbs 30:7-9 sums it up beautifully. In the words of good ol’ overlooked Agur:
“Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Read the rest of this entry »
In part one I talked about the burdens of poverty and of wealth, in part two I laid out some of the nuts and bolts of what it costs to make an album–just one of many ways an artist can use his or her gift to shed light. Before I wrap this up I want to respond to a few comments.
Thank you all for your thoughts. I’m a people-pleaser, so it’s always hard for me to throw out ideas like these for public scrutiny. I know better than any of you just how deeply wrong I can be about things, which leaves me with two options: I can keep quiet for fear of wrongness, or I can write out my thinking in the hopes of gaining a better understanding.
A few of you bristled at some of my comments about Rich Mullins’s singleness. My point wasn’t that marriage is necessarily better, nor was it that single people have no responsibilities. Obviously, if you’re in Christ your responsibility first and foremost is to God, and his will should be sought in any decision. I thought that went without saying. But a married man or woman with children has a far different set of responsibilities than a single person. There are lots of options available to a single person that aren’t available to married folks, and vice versa. For Rich, identifying with the poor and living a somewhat vagabond lifestyle was an option he took as a single man (under God, of course) that he wouldn’t have been able to take as a married man with children. In fact, had he chosen to marry and have children and still live in his truck and go barefoot and smelly, he would have been a picture of selfishness–though I suppose there’s a slim chance he might have married a woman who was similarly called, and they might have lived in a van down by the river with their smelly barefoot children. I’m being silly. It occurs to me now that I’ve met lots of families blessed with the astounding courage to live on the mission field or in inner cities, which is probably what someone like Rich would have done. Still, that’s a picture of living simply, not in poverty. Living out of a truck (literally) would no longer be an option, at least with children in the picture. Read the rest of this entry »
Hutchmoot was a beautiful quilt, sewn together with the ties of common bonds and uncommon love. Like a homemade quilt, lovingly crafted from swatches of familiar patterns, and recycled from classic old dresses, I witnessed a living and breathing piece of art.
There was the memorable material known informally as Andyland (the Andrew Peterson Message Board). I finally met Allison and Gaines at the Counting Stars concert. They are a young couple with whom I’ve felt a special spiritual bond watching their family grow in the cyber world. How odd that this was my first real meeting of these delightfully kind and sincere young people, and yet I have long felt the compulsion to pray for them routinely.
A few questions were raised about the Counting Stars pre-order tiers we sold here, and about the pricey $20 Rabbit Room mugs. If a few people were brave enough to question it by commenting, I’m sure there were even more who kept quiet. There are a few more of those patronage plans on the horizon so I figured it would be a good time to explain our thinking.
Years ago I played several shows with a few members of the Kid Brothers of St. Frank. Remember them? It was the unofficial pseudo-Catholic order started by Rich Mullins in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, and included a few younger musicians like Eric Hauck, Michael Aukofer, Mitch McVicker, and Keith Bordeaux (who wasn’t a musician, but who was on the verge of moving to Arizona to serve however he could before Rich died). I was as big a Rich Mullins fan as you could imagine, so in the years after his death I was honored and a little frightened to find myself occasionally doing shows with those guys.
Eric in particular embodied the spirit of the Kid Brothers. He was hilarious, gentle and kindhearted, had a long biker goatee, a braided ponytail, smelled a little funny, drove a motorcycle, and played cello. You read that right. He played cello, and he played it well. Also, he never wore shoes. The only time I saw him with footwear was in the airport (because the FAA requires it). When they stopped him from boarding the plane Eric pulled out of his grimy backpack a grimy pair of flip flops to appease them. He was perfectly content to bounce through life without anything to tie him down, money least of all. Read the rest of this entry »
The power of story. The beauty of community. Those, I would say, encapsulate the dominant themes and conversations from the initial Hutchmoot gathering. Both are sexy. Both require work.
The common bond between so many convening around the Rabbit Room these days is a love for story and a feeling that God has given them a story to tell in the process. I met several burgeoning songwriters and authors over the weekend who mentioned they felt empowered to create what was within them. The community at Hutchmoot provided the impetus needed for these works waiting to be brought to life. And that’s a wonderful thing to be celebrated.
But Hutchmoot is temporary. And the Rabbit Room is digital. We have certainly found inspiration and encouragement to this point (or else we wouldn’t be here), but a longing emerged from those present at Church of the Redeemer for a deeper level of artistic community. The friendships between various songwriters and authors were highlighted and then prodded, “How do I form what you have formed?” Read the rest of this entry »
Rewind one week. Hutchmoot 2010, there is much bustle and chatter in the sunshine-yellow kitchen…Saturday evening’s Moroccan Spiced Chicken, not to mention many other tasty foodly items, would not have come off in as timely or seamless a manner if not for one…(kindly insert lively drumroll)…Redhead Kate.
Our acquaintance began with a string of emails about baking ingredients and an offer of a suitcase full of sweet potatoes. “Good thing I’m traveling Southwest!” she said, since two pieces of luggage are allowed, bless that airline’s heart. I knew I liked this girl, a real thinker, expeditious. She works for her family’s sweet potato company in North Carolina and brought with her quite a large box of the beauties as well as a deep, wide knowledge of the product. She laughed as she watched the gems get run through the dishwasher before roasting. Nothing but the best, cleanest sweet potatoes for our guests. Read the rest of this entry »
As I sling imperfect measurements of flour and brown sugar into a big enamelware bowl this morning, as I sip my coffee out of the Swede coffee cup (”you can always tell a Swede but you can’t tell him much”), as I drag my brushes through the vibrant liquid colors and commit them to the paper, my grandma is with me in the kitchen today. Hazel was my mother’s mother. Her middle name was Fern.
She loved her family and was a consummate homemaker. She loved the nothingness of the Arizona desert. She loved the pink, cloudy evening skies of the West. In her opinion, the Tetons were God’s most extravagant gift to his children. She was an artist and took painting courses by correspondence. She had a real gypsy spirit and didn’t mind moving around, wherever the winds of opportunity blew her and her family. She was a rascally tomboy when she was young, and kept a healthy portion of that feisty nature as long as she lived. Read the rest of this entry »
My friend Russell Moore (I guess you’re friends with someone once they’ve bought you a Johnny Cash t-shirt) had some great thoughts in response to the furor over Anne Rice’s comments about Christianity. You may remember our own A.S. Peterson wrote a review of her newest books, which aren’t about vampires but about Jesus. Here’s a bit of what Dr. Moore had to say:
“Yesterday the Internet was abuzz with news that Anne Rice has renounced Christianity. The best-selling vampire novelist, who professed faith in Christ several years ago and has since written several books about Jesus and her conversion, publicly quit Christianity on her Facebook page. There’s a real opportunity here that hinges on how we respond to this, or, rather, how we respond to her.
Anne said that she was leaving Christianity because she just couldn’t be “anti-gay, anti-feminist” and so forth. The response was immediate, especially on Christian forums and comments on blogs and on various other forms of media.
Anne Rice is, at best, our sister-in-Christ who is going through a dark night of the soul. She is, at the very least, someone who has encountered something of the light of Christ, is drawn to it, and is now “kicking against the goads.” In either case, she is not our enemy.”
Two reviews for the price of one, and both of them short. The Despicable Me review is almost literally one minute long, and the SALT review is the first OMR to ever feature an outtake at the end. Enjoy!
To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake – even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death – that little by little we start to come alive.
– The Sacred Journey, by Frederick Beuchner
Before Rainbow Dull I had a short lived blog on which I posted only a handful of times. This was about ten years ago, when blogging was just getting going. A couple of old college friends had emailed me links and invitations to their own blogs, so I read several entries and decided it might be something I could do – maybe a way to take all my daydreams and turn them into actual words. Read the rest of this entry »
For the past few months I’ve spent time writing Fiddler’s Green nearly every day. I like to plant myself in the back corner of Pantera Bread (because it rocks), or my neighborhood Starbucks (where they know my name and give me free stuff), or the burrito shop down the road (chips and fruit tea all day long) and once I’ve settled in with something tasty to eat or drink or both, I crack open the Macbook and get to work. Some days it might be an hour, others it might be six or more. And there’s a lot of hand-wringing going on because now thatThe Fiddler’s Gun is in readers’ hands, expectations have been whetted for the next book and the conclusion has got to satisfy.
We wish all of you could come to Hutchmoot next month (and I’m not kidding when I say that) but just because you can’t come, doesn’t mean you can’t participate. We’ll be holding two* panel discussions, one on “Story” and one on “Song” and we’d like to open up this thread for the community to toss out some questions. We’ll pick our favorites and ask them at the Hutchmoot. You’ll get credit of course and we intend to have the panels recorded so you’ll be able to hear the answers when we release the recordings in a podcast.
The panels are:
Story: Andrew Peterson, Pete Peterson, Jonathan Rogers, S.D. Smith, Travis Prinzi, Thomas McKenzie, Curt McLey, Doug McKelvey, Sarah Clarkson, and Chris Wall
Song: Andrew Peterson, Jason Gray, Eric Peters, Randall Goodgame, Ron Block, Andy Osenga
*We decided to combine the “Cinema” and “Story” panels.
A few weeks ago I reposted a blog that my wife, Taya Gray, wrote. It went over so well I decided to post another one! She’s a wise and reflective woman, but very modest about her blogs, quietly posting them and letting who will discover them. But I thought readers here might be encouraged by this and with her permission I’m posting it here. I shared this story of the wrong box of cookies with Andrew (Peterson, in case you didn’t know) late one night at his house a couple months ago and we were both struck, as parents, how even the slightest and most innocent off hand comment can be so consequential… I’ll admit that in that regard it is a cautionary tale that made us terrified, but also all the more committed to keeping short accounts with our kids and most of all, dependent on the grace of God to fill in where we will inevitably fall short. But enough about all of that, there are more significant treasures to be mined here… Rabbit Roomers, a word from Taya Gray:
I really like Girl Scout Cookies. If the truth be told, I can eat an entire box in one sitting. It’s good that I have kids now, so that they can share the burden of eating the darn things. As if that burden needed to be shared. The chocolate peanut butter cookies are our favorites, but Samoas are sneaking up behind. I actually put the Thin Mint cookies in the freezer. It gives them an extra icy crunch that I love! Actually, I love them all, except for the Lemon Chalet Cremes. I don’t care for those, which is strange since Read the rest of this entry »
Folks, I don’t know if you remember Allen Levi’s previous posts here in the Rabbit Room, so I’ll reintroduce you. He’s a southern gentleman from Columbus, Georgia, a singer/songwriter, a lay farmer (if there is such a thing) and is one of my all-time favorite people. In light of Lanier Ivester’s recent post about work and art, I thought it was appropriate to steal this post from Allen’s blog. (Also, since I happen to know Allen’s at least 12 feet tall, that makes the pictured sunflower a freak of nature.)
———————
I’ve been scolded for returning to my old pattern of website delinquency and hope you’ll forgive my absence from the blog. Simply stated, summer has been perfectly wonderful and I feel like I’ve achieved the desired balance between indoor/outdoor and mental/physical work. I’m still writing and recording for several hours on most days and am on schedule to post some new songs in August. Just this past week, I finished my wood shed and I’m eager to dig in to the chicken coop project soon. And everyday there is something garden-related that keeps me locally fed, mostly tomatoes and okra of late. It’s all good.
I taught Sunday School this morning for the high school class. It was me and one student, a bright and inquisitive 10th grader named Kiana. We talked about heaven, in keeping with our lesson text from 1 Thessalonians. Read the rest of this entry »
My little sister and her husband are painters. They’ve dreamed of careers in art since they were children. And it’s with much more than a sisterly bias that I can say they are both extremely talented. With an enviable ardor they packed up and left everything they had ever known not six months after they were married to go and study at the legendary Art Student’s League in New York City. There they managed to get into a class taught by one of the world masters of realistic painting, a class which usually has a waiting list years long. And so, living happily and simply in a tiny apartment, working part-time jobs and prowling the Met all they can, they pursue what they love every single day. All under the banner of their indefatigable motto: Hard Work and High Spirits. Read the rest of this entry »
You hear a word, see a color or come across a concept that, for you, is not part of your routine and suddenly you notice you can’t stop noticing it. It is everywhere: on everyone’s lips; on the morning news; now in the story you’ve read ten times before; at the airport on a woman’s handbag.
So many people are wearing orange lately. Has it always been like this? Am I just now starting to notice?
It’s ubiquitous. Perhaps serendipitous. Carl Jung called it synchronicity. Everyday psychology calls it selective attention or perceptual vigilance. It sounds like you should seek professional help when you call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s an aspect of writing that I often struggle with in which I find that my own style is reshaped by whatever or whomever I happen to be reading at the time. I’ll write a passage one day and when I peruse it the next I’ll discover that, like the skin of a chameleon, it’s taken on the rhythm, structure, or vocabulary of someone else.
For instance, I began writing The Fiddler’s Gun almost immediately after reading Frederick Buechner’s Godric and in the end I had to completely rewrite the first few chapters because they had the same archaic and often yoda-like sentence structure as Godric. It was fun to write but it certainly didn’t fit the tone of the book. It wasn’t really my writing–I was parroting, riffing off of a better author. I find that this sort of thing happens to me all the time and often wonder where the line is between influence and imitation. Read the rest of this entry »
The following is an email conversation I had with Ben Mace of the Smyrna/Clayton Sun-Times in Delaware in support of a recent concert I did there. I thought readers here might enjoy it!
BM: How did you get “discovered”? What was the break that led to being signed with Centricity Music?
JG: Well, Tom Hanks is said to have told an audience of drama students who asked him what the secret of his success was that for him, it was not quitting - that if you hang in there long enough, you’re likely to get noticed. I guess that’s my experience - I’d been doing music independently for years and over time had crossed paths with enough people and nurtured enough relationships that it accumulated to bring me where I am now. I’d known John Mays, director of A&R at Centricity (my label) for years and we’d always talked about working together, and I guess the right time to do that presented itself. Labels are looking for artists who don’t need them, or in other words have their own momentum. That’s who they prefer to partner with, and I think they saw in me an artist that already had the ball rolling a bit and fit with the personality of their label. But it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t developed relationships years earlier with the people there. I really feel like God opened doors over the years, and I just did my part to walk through them. So it was less a “break” than it was a steady faithfulness, in the same direction. Read the rest of this entry »
The Fiddler’s Gun, A Review: Making History Come True
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.
Shive Arrives: A Song by Song Commentary on The Ill-Tempered Klavier
One listen to Ben Shive’s debut The Ill-Tempered Klavier will provide obvious evidence of why this young man has secured the respect of peers and colleagues on the inside of the Nashville music community. With The Ill-Tempered Klavier, Shive’s skills are now planted in the public garden.
Heretofore, there have been unsubtle hints: Andrew Osenga pronouncing Shive as his favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson naming him as producer of The Far Country, his ubiquitous presence as a studio piano ace on a wide range of mainstream CCM records, Sara Groves choosing him to produce her next record, and the majestic arranging of the strings for Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God, The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ. Like a fast growing wildflower, Shive seems to pop up everywhere, though always in the background. Now, the secret is out. Raise the curtain on Ben Shive.
I just stumbled on a copy of O’Connor’s complete short stories at a used bookstore here in Nashville and listed it in the Rabbit Room store. Years ago a friend bought me this same edition and I read it with a sense of creepy amazement; it was like nothing I’d ever read. I knew Chris Slaten was a big fan of her work so I asked him to write a recommendation for the book. We only have one copy, so if you click here and can’t find it, someone beat you to the punch.
———————-
This collection is essential to both long time fans and first time readers interested in the work of Flannery O’Connor. My first time to read a handful of her short stories I was helpless to interpret them. One would expect that reading the 1950’s work of a female “Christ-centered” southern fiction writer would be a simple, modest or at least predictable experience.
Several people in the last few weeks have commented to me about how glad they are that they discovered Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow here in the Rabbit Room. It really is a remarkable book, and I still can’t recommend it highly enough. It won the prestigious National Book Award when it was first published in 1978, and was only the beginning of Wangerin’s career.
I just stumbled on his most recent novel, Saint Julian, and was so captured by it that it bumped aside the other four books I’m reading. Last Sunday afternoon–a perfect Spring day–I sat on my front porch swing and read the last half of the book, savoring the careful prose, the pastoral tone, and even the look and feel of the book itself. The cover illustration fits the epic, vivid quality of the story perfectly, and the fonts (I’m a sucker for a great font) added just the right atmosphere.
RELEASE DAY REVIEW: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
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.
But once a year the Sea Dragons sing just off the coast of Glipwood. With their song, life reasserts itself in the hearts of Skreeans who have long since learned to numb themselves:
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).
Arkadelphia from Randall Goodgame: Music in Motion
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.
Walt Wangerin is a name I’ve seen in print many times. My dad had Ragman and Other Cries of Faith lying about at home for years and I remember thumbing through it at Christmas or Thanksgiving, reading bits here and there, and being intrigued by the style of writing; the words on the page had a canter to them, and a sparseness that gave them strength.
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.
Do you have any CD’s in your collection that will be forever associated with some event or season of life—like the soundtrack to your last high school summer or what you listened to over and over again on that one road trip to wherever it was?
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.
This is the conclusion of a series of posts about money, art, commerce, and the Kingdom. It’s not so much about money, but a closing thought about the artist’s calling.
I so appreciate all the discussion. Your comments have been moving and encouraging and have pushed me to think deeper about these things. Here’s the recap:
The power of story. The beauty of community. Those, I would say, encapsulate the dominant themes and conversations from the initial Hutchmoot gathering. Both are sexy. Both require work.
My friend Russell Moore (I guess you’re friends with someone once they’ve bought you a Johnny Cash t-shirt) had some great thoughts in response to the furor over Anne Rice’s comments about Christianity. You may remember our own A.S. Peterson wrote a review of her newest books, which aren’t about vampires but about Jesus. Here’s a bit of what Dr. Moore had to say:
A few weeks ago I reposted a blog that my wife, Taya Gray, wrote. It went over so well I decided to post another one! She’s a wise and reflective woman, but very modest about her blogs, quietly posting them and letting who will discover them. But I thought readers here might be encouraged by this and with her permission I’m posting it here. I shared this story of the wrong box of cookies with Andrew (Peterson, in case you didn’t know) late one night at his house a couple months ago and we were both struck, as parents, how even the slightest and most innocent off hand comment can be so consequential… I’ll admit that in that regard it is a cautionary tale that made us terrified, but also all the more committed to keeping short accounts with our kids and most of all, dependent on the grace of God to fill in where we will inevitably fall short. But enough about all of that, there are more significant treasures to be mined here… Rabbit Roomers, a word from Taya Gray:
You hear a word, see a color or come across a concept that, for you, is not part of your routine and suddenly you notice you can’t stop noticing it. It is everywhere: on everyone’s lips; on the morning news; now in the story you’ve read ten times before; at the airport on a woman’s handbag.
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.