We watched this at the Centricity Music retreat this week, and it touched me profoundly. Spend a few minutes appreciating the story of how this artist came to know Christ. Beautiful.
Andrew Peterson
Pete Peterson
Jason Gray
Eric Peters
Evie Coates
Randall Goodgame
Matt Conner
Curt McLey
Russ Ramsey
Jonathan Rogers
Ron Block
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.
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.
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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.
Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again.
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.
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).
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.
How personally profound.
I have not been able to paint for about 5 years, not at least with any inspiration.
I too will seek the word as this gentlemen has and seek Him
Thanks for sharing, God meant for me to see this.
Great video, Andrew. Thank you for sharing.
The music in the video is all by one one my favorite bands, by the way - Hammock. http;//www.hammockmusic.com/ Check them out if you haven’t heard them before.
http://www.hammockmusic.com/ , even. Messed up the URL.
I’ve been thinking about John 4 and how it seems to me that Jesus was telling the woman that He wanted to change her nature. Its very natural to thirst. How unnatural to never thirst again. Yet that is what He was promising. Great video and yes it speaks to us on an unnatural level. It seems natural to want to fill ourselves with the things of God yet very unnatural to allow Him to do the filling.
Besides being really well made, I agree Andy, it is profoundly moving. I had a big lump in my throat from about the first minute in, and the rest of the way through. I’ve been thinking about this topic all week, so the video smacked me particularly hard. Pastors, teachers, leaders, artists—any Christian that spends time on “stage” or in the public eye—are particularly vulnerable in this area, though we are all susceptible. We run the risk of being modern day Pharisees—or at best, hypocrites—that are consumed with looking good, maintaining a godly image (mechanical, going through the motions), than simply living in Christ. I am a cripple of my own design, until I “empty my buckets.” It’s a beautiful thing, so simple, and yet we make it so hard.
Nice… Comes to me while reading through a book my dad told me I have to read by William P. Young…yes, it is right next to me so I could include the “P”… Called “the Shack.” How differently we perceive the Maker of all that is good and how He fits into our everyday occurences… Now back to reading the book… I have to…the next “Wingfeather Saga” isn’t written yet!
Not to get too far off subject but I would love a Shack review by someone here at the RabbitRoom.
Barliman…I’m sending this link on to my wife. She heads up a arts academy at our church. It fits her mission.
Did this artist ever exhibit his Gospel of John paintings? It reminds me of a collection put on last Easter — local artists submitted paintings related to “The Stations of the Cross.”
There is a lot to be teased out here, but I’m just absorbing the testimony of this man. Awesome! However, you were at a retreat, so I’d be curious as to some of the thoughts that came from the audience of aritists there. Give us a recap or have some of your compadres post out here.
P.S. I agree with Mike, it would be good to have ‘The Shack” reviewed here.
After I posted, I was reminded of something I recently read in a book called “(Re)Thinking Worldwiew: Learning to Think, Live and Speak in This World” by J. Mark Bertrand. In a section entitled “The Engine Is Stalled and Flooded” the author has this to say:
“Too often, rather than developing critical perspectives that empower expression, evangelicals evolve systems that restrain and channel it into tightly prescribed outlets. But what is witness if not unrestrained expression; a desire to share what one knows without regard to setting or propriety?
Bearing witness has more in common with creativity than criticism. While criticism delights in analysis, creativity is, first and foremost, an urge to tell. … I’m an artist more than an intellectual, more comfortable with fiction than nonfiction, and every word I write reveals the gaps in my knowledge–or, more precisely, the vast empty deserts of ignorance that connect the occasional oases of understanding. When you bear witness, you expose yourself in a way that the careful critic never does.
I shouldn’t be too hard on the critical perspective, though, because I’m a big believer in that kind of detached, measured thinking. But we must draw a distinction between healthy and unhealthy criticism, and the difference in their fruit. Criticism is healthy when it supports creativity, wisdom leading to witness. It is unhealthy when it inhibits cultural contribution, either by stigmatizing it or by failing to equip us with the necessary tools and mindset.
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When creativity is encouraged, it is often not accompanied by the kind of rigor necessary to make a successful contribution to the larger culture. … What we need, both personally and corporately, is a healthy critical outlook that organically blends into creative contribution.”
This video seems to be an appeal to creative expression as a way to bear witness to Christ. Did your session at the Centricity retreat lead to that type of dialogue? That is what I had in mind in my last post and I think the above passage was what prompted it.
On a side note, I do think the Rabbit Room is place where a “healthy critical outlook…organically blends into creative contribution.” It is my prayer that our time here leads to many “successful contributions to the larger culture.”
Thanks, once again, Barliman (a.k.a. Andrew Peterson, The Proprietor, AP, etc., etc., etc.) by starting up this site, you have done a very good thing indeed!
“The Shack”…with this video makes quite clear the relationship we attempt to have with God…or lack thereof…along with causing a person to question who he or she considers God’s role in this world to be. Special note is made to the fictional line of the book rather than the real life version of “The Version of Art.” Though one may be able to read this book in a short amount of time, like the watching of the video presented here, to the artist’s mind, pause is made during the process to absorb the complexity created with every stroke of key or brush. Okay, you gotta read it…
This video was simply amazing. I loved the part where he said his original approach to art was for the eye and not the heart. But then God showed him differently. If I could approach the rest of life that way as well. So much of my life is approaching how things look to other people, or how easy things will be for me to get through life and not truly looking at what my heart says or what God is showing me. I have seen this guy actually work and while the video was great at explaining, it may be even better to see what happens as he works. How pictures and themes are uncovered as the time progresses. How God reveals through the hands and paint of a simple man, just trying to talk about what God has put on this guy’s heart.
I wonder where I could find a print of that painting…