What are you looking for?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the artistic process as much as by an artist’s completed work. Whether it’s interviewing a musician about her craft or reading an essay about the writing life, I’m consistently drawn into the thought process, the equipment used, the joys and frustrations. When I recently came across a Dave Eggers column (which is not recent) about his own writing process, I knew I was in for something worthwhile. I first read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius back in 2000. His memoir is tragic, manic, hilarious, disconcerting, and emotional. It’s also my favorite book. I’ll never forget the impact of that first time through an Eggers novel, and it’s a journey I’ve taken several times since. A Heartbreaking Work, winner of the Pulitzer for non-fiction in 2000, was the first of several celebrated releases by Eggers. What is the What won the Prix Médicis, Zeitoun won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and his latest, A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He wrote the screenplays for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are, and he also founded McSweeney’s, which if you don’t know, is a source for wonderful literary things of all shades. I write all of this not only because I greatly admire Eggers, but because he’s a remarkable writer. This is important because to read his take on “the writing life” is to get a glimpse into something rather unremarkable. Despite the awards on the bio, a peek behind the curtain reveals an ordinary man with an ordinary routine sitting at an ordinary work space dealing with ordinary struggles. In short, Dave Eggers is human. Here’s the article. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And here is where I spend seven or eight hours at a stretch. Seven or eight hours each time I try to write. Most of that time is spent stalling, which means that for every seven or eight hours I spend pretending to write—sitting in the writing position, looking at a screen—I get, on average, one hour of actual work done. It’s a terrible, unconscionable ratio. Click here to read the rest of Eggers’s piece. #DaveEggers

I had an email from a friend this morning who saw something in my life and felt called to point it out. It was about how Gina and I parent our kids. I am not always good at receiving this kind of feedback. It’s embarrassing. It makes me feel weird to think people are watching, noticing things. This is so often the avenue of judgement and accusation. Many people don’t understand that the name “Devil,” means “Accuser.” It comes (literally) from the idea of throwing stones. On the other hand, both God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are described as our Advocates. It is a Trinitarian task to advocate on behalf of those who are in Christ. Loving people includes loving confrontation. If I hate my children, I fail to confront them with their rebellion and sin. This is the case even—no, particularly—when what they are doing comes naturally. That’s what sin is and Christians are called to die to sin in order to live. Failing to correct, refusing to say the same thing God says about our sin, is a way of hating our children, and hating each other. That being said, are the fellow Christians speaking into your life more like Accusers or Advocates? An Advocate will call you to come clean and do right, but keeps coming back to making an argument on your behalf. An Accuser can’t see past your sin. An Advocate can see who you’re becoming. An Accuser can see the worst of what you’ve done. An Advocate sees the long story of your life. An Accuser says, “I know you’re guilty.” An Advocate says, “I’m on your side.” That email I mentioned was from an Advocate. He couldn’t wait to share with me things he saw in our home life that were beautiful to him. He was eager to heap praise and to point out what God was doing. I needed that. Because, as I wrote to him: “It’s easy enough to believe only the mess of imperfection that we can see of our lives, and be blind to the good things God is doing. Thanks for seeing that and for taking the time and energy to point it out.” I don’t want to condone and celebrate sin. I want to avoid hitching a ride on the bandwagon where rebellion and death are celebrated. But I want to be an advocate for my brothers and sisters in Christ. I want to see more than sin and the sinner. I want eyes to see also the emerging (and already-positioned) saint. I want to be an ally, one who isn’t surprised at seeing sin in others, but one who is quick to extend grace. My categories of Advocate and Accuser are not air-tight by any means, but here’s my question: Would you more easily be described as an Accuser, or an Advocate? I’m not entirely comfortable with how long it takes me to think about how to answer that. So, onward…toward grace. And a beautiful place to start is with our children. —–   —–   —– This post originally appeared at Story Warren.

I knew this would happen. We flew from Nashville to Stockholm on Tuesday, arrived in a fog of half-sleep, ate some pizza for comfort more than hunger, and collapsed as though we might sleep for days. But then this. This tossing and turning in Sweden’s summer midnight, which is never totally dark, this weary awakeness in which I’m so tired I can’t sleep, where I’m obsessively and compulsively working out what time it is at home, working out how many Swedish crowns equals a dollar so I’ll know how much I really paid for that pizza, a head game made all the more irritating because of my ineptitude at math. I’m not cranky, truly. Just jet-lagged. I couldn’t be more thankful to be here, safe and sound, with my sweet wife and three sweet kids in this little borrowed Stockholm flat, all four of them sleeping much better than I can right now. And so I give up on rest this first night of our adventure, and my thoughts turn to what led me here. There’s a long version and a short version, but I’m going to give you the ultra-short version: sometime late last year I realized that I was exhausted. There’s no better rest for me than being alone with Jamie and the kids, so we kicked around the idea of making this Sweden tour a family affair and trying to book enough concerts to pay for all of our plane tickets this time (this is my seventh tour over here).  We realized furthermore that Aedan will be 15 this year, which means we’re running out of time for a trip like this. Well, one thing led to another, and we decided that if we’re crossing the dadburn Atlantic we may as well make it count, which led us to booking concerts in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In addition to the shows (fifteen of them, I think), I’m trying to finish The Warden and the Wolf King while I’m here, and I’m really hoping that walking these ancient lands will season the story in the best way. “So much for rest,” I hear you thinking. But just having the family close by will be for me like riding the eye of the hurricane. The trip only began yesterday, but I’ve already learned so much about life and the Lord and how faith might work. See, I’ve wanted to play in the U.K. for more than a decade, but it’s never worked out. I’ve wanted to bring my family to Sweden since my first visit ten years ago, but it’s never worked out. This year, though, we felt such urgency about the trip that we decided not to wait for the concerts to show up. Rather, we looked at the calendar, chose a window of time, then told as many people in the U.K. and Sweden: “We’re coming this summer and we’re looking for help.” Not, “We’d love to come, but we can’t unless we get X number of gigs.” Not, “Let’s wait and see how this pans out, and maybe it’ll work.” We just decided to make our plans as if it was a done deal. This isn’t a blog about how to book a tour in Europe, of course, because what worked in this case might not ever work again, for you or for me. But now that I’m sitting in the half-light of Stockholm at 4:56 a.m. listening to my family sleep, I think back to a meeting with my manager and booking agent in January in which we decided that we weren’t going to wait for this to happen. We were just going to do it. It felt like Indiana Jones and the leap of faith. I know some of you guys have always wanted to write a book. You’ve always wanted to ask that girl to marry you. You’ve always wanted to actually build a friendship with that neighbor, or start that ministry, or right that wrong, but things just never worked out. You’re waiting on the Lord, when maybe the Lord is waiting on you–he’s not waiting to bless you; he’s already done that and will continue to, regardless of your zeal. And he’s not waiting to “show up,” because he’s already there. I mean, what if he’s waiting for you to have a seismic shift in your understanding of what it means to be his child, what it means to  trust him, to finally realize that the sky’s the limit–like the father of the prodigal son saying to the self-righteous one: “All that I have is already yours.” Finally, I want to ask you to pray for us. In sixteen years of touring I’ve never left home for two solid months. Nashville never seemed so beautiful than the day we left, and I had to resist the urge to hug random strangers on the street. Leaving for this long is an awfully romantic notion, but in the end I’m really just a homebody who travels for a living. And if this is as crazy of a trip for me, imagine how crazy it must feel for Jamie and the kids! Crazy, indeed. So yes. Pray for us. Pray for the audiences, for safety, and most of all please pray that we would be ever mindful of the great love of God as we carry that love to everyone we meet. That’s what I’m thinking about here in Viking land today. Or tonight. Wait, what time is it in Nashville? Aw, forget it. (Skye’s face in this picture is hilarious, by the way.) If you live in Sweden or the UK and you want to know where we’ll be, click here. If you want to follow me on Instagram, where I may or may not post pictures from time to time, click here.

[In Story Warren‘s most recent and peaceable incursion here upon the hallowed shores of la Chambre de Lapin, Alyssa Ramsey taught us to sing. Here, she is showing us a magic trick. The trick of seeing magic. –S.D. “Sam” Smith] —–   —–   —– “Are there real fairies in the world?” I looked up from the mushrooms I was chopping to study my five-year-old daughter’s face. The cock of her head and squint of her eyes matched the skepticism in her voice. Not long ago, a Christian man who my daughter loves told her that fairies don’t exist. She’s been afraid to believe ever since. She was waiting for my answer. “I don’t know,” I said. It was the truth. *      *      * Our little family has been watching the BBC’s Planet Earth series. It is chock full of stunning photography, incredible facts, and fascinating creatures. We cannot take our eyes off the screen, except when the fascinating creatures start eating each other. At those times my daughter and I always become engrossed in some important task like picking lint off the couch cushions. One thing I’ve learned from Planet Earth is that I know next to nothing about the natural world. The more discoveries we make, the more deliciously mysterious and miraculous the world becomes. My favorite moments of the series are when the narrator says things like, “No one knows why,” or “We aren’t sure how.” I have nothing against good science that studies the world’s processes and phenomena. My father retired from a career in science and now teaches it to middle schoolers, so I grew up in a home that respected the natural world and encouraged learning about it. But I’m instantly skeptical of anyone who says, “We’ve got this completely figured out.” Or “We know everything there is to know about this.” Or, if you like, “Fairies don’t exist.” I think a more honest response to learning about the world around us is to say, “I know enough now to see that the world is more miraculous than I ever imagined. I wonder what else might be out there.” (The last thing I want to do is suggest that wonder has any meaning apart from its proper faith-direction. S.D. Smith wrote beautifully about the dangerous “mirage of Godless Delight.” I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already —  its truth underscores everything written here.) Holding onto that kind of wonder takes some effort. It takes humility. It helps to hang around children. Children have a gift for pressing us for the why until we come to the inevitable conclusion: “I don’t know. It just is. God just made it that way.” I think it’s good to be stumped. It’s a way to peek through the wardrobe doors, to open our minds to powers too terrible to understand, to remember how small we are. It’s a way to reawaken wonder. I also think it’s good to return the favor. Ask a child what light is made of. How is it made? Ask her why she craves it so. Ask a youngster how the 17-year cicadas know that seventeen years have passed. Did you know that the water in a typical cloud weighs more than a whole herd of elephants? So how do they hang in the sky? How can a spider spin silk so fine that it floats on the slightest breeze, and yet fiber for fiber is stronger than steel? Have you seen the waves and the sand glow at night with the light of tiny creatures? How do they make their light? At the moment of conception, how do those two cells know what to do? How do they know to multiply and cluster and form into complex organs and tissues? And 22 days later, how does the cell cluster that has decided to be a heart know that it’s time to start beating? Humans like to give names to these phenomena. Some we call instinct. Others are chemical, electromagnetic, or atmospheric events. But naming a thing, studying it, and even understanding something of how it works does not diminish the miracle of it. What makes it work the way it does? What and where and when is the source of its power? You know the answer. It’s the same answer the Lion gave to Lucy to explain how he was alive again after she had seen him die: Magic. Not magic of the dark, sorcerous, forbidden variety, but of the “Let there be light” variety. If I were from another world and walked through a wardrobe to find myself on Planet Earth, I would be convinced that I had discovered a magical place. I would marvel at the sparkling, frozen crystals falling from the sky, no two of which are the same. I would wonder why the sea reaches for the moon and what prompts a caterpillar to build a cocoon. I would let the world’s magic carry me away into wild imaginings, into dreams of what other delights and dangers such a place might hold. I would write a song, or a story, or a poem. But I was born here. I have learned the names that humans use to tame the world’s wondrous phenomena. If I’m not careful, I can quickly grow accustomed to the magic around me. Then I read about Narnia, and I long to step into such an enchanted place. I peek my head into wardrobes standing in dusty corners of antique shops, straining my ears for a distant horn blast. Or for the roar of the Lion. Admit it — you’ve done it, too. But in all our trudging along, wishing to be swept up into a wondrous world, have we ever stopped to think that maybe we’re already on the other side of the wardrobe doors? *      *      * The world is full of living things that feed on light without consuming it, that drink the dew, that adorn themselves with opulent colors and intoxicating scents, that brighten gardens and bewitch lovers, that cover the earth with golden sneezing powder, and that send out their wispy-winged children to float on gentle spring breezes. Are there real fairies in the world? I don’t know. But I’m not going to stop my girl from looking, because in her wide-eyed search for hidden wonders in the world, she’s sure to find some magic. Photograph by Doug Perrine, Alamy

“You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows this well.”  – Psalm 139:13-14 I watched the ceiling tiles pass overhead as the radiology nurse wheeled my gurney into the room where she would perform my echocardiogram. I remember thinking the dimly lit room felt familiar. This was my first echo and I knew I hadn’t been in this room before. But I had been in one like it. More than once, too. But when? And then I remembered—my babies. My wife and I have four beautiful children. During the doctor visits leading up to each of their births, she and I were taken into rooms just like this one—peaceful, spacious, warm, and clean. We’d take our places—she on the paper-covered bed, me in the chair beside her, both of us wide-eyed with nervous excitement waiting for the doctor to come in and show us something we could hardly believe was possible—a live video of our unborn child kicking away in my wife’s womb. The first time we went in for an ultrasound I remember being surprised that the equipment wasn’t larger, given the task it was built to perform. The sonogram machine stationed next to the bed didn’t look like much more than a low-profile computer cart with a few unfamiliar accessories neatly resting in their places. Surely a wonder like the one we were about to experience would require my wife to be squeezed into some sort of giant hi-tech tube. Or if not that, shouldn’t there at least be a luminous belly-shaped dome on a large mechanical arm controlled by a technician behind a wall of glass? This room had neither. There was just a computer, a display screen, a moon-shaped wand, and a squeeze bottle of warm lubricating gel. I’ll never forget one particular visit late in the pregnancy with our first child. The doctor pressed the jelly-covered magic wand against my wife’s side and we saw our baby’s face as plain as day. We saw two eyes, a button nose, puckered lips, and wisps of hair swirling in the amniotic fluid. Next the doctor showed us tiny little legs and arms, knees and elbows, fingers and toes. Then, with a bit of flourish, she showed us the evidence of our baby’s gender. This little stranger was my son. This was too much to absorb. A son. My son. What would he need from me? Everything. What could I give him? Not nearly enough. But there in that room, in that moment, a confidence arose in me that whatever this little boy needed I would find a way to get for him. I was going to have a son. Everything was happening so fast I wanted to stop time. But the doctor resumed her tour of our son’s still forming body and showed us something I can even now close my eyes and see. She showed us his heart. We all stopped talking for a sacred moment and watched it fluttering away there behind his little ribs. The chambers pumped in such a precise rhythm that it had to have been made and set in motion by a master clock-maker—one little heart beating in the womb just inches away from another beating in his mother’s chest, keeping him alive. What a wonder. *** Long ago Jesus said, “As the sower sleeps and rises night and day, his seed sprouts and grows and he doesn’t know how.” (Mk 4:26-27) I had no idea how my son’s heart knew to beat. But it did. It looked so meticulous yet so fragile. If it stopped, who could start it again? When did it start to begin with? Seeing my little boy’s chambers and valves keeping time to some mysterious cadence no ear has ever heard awakened a new kind of reverence in me for the Author of Life, and with God as my witness that reverence remains. *** I heard the door open behind me. Someone else was in the room with me now. The radiologist came around to the foot of my gurney before saying hello. She had a kind face and a motherly way about her. She asked for my name and birthday. These were the two questions every nurse, doctor, or staff person were required to ask to make sure they had the right patient. The correct answers, of course, were written on their charts. They were also on my armband. We both had cheat-sheets. I thought it was funny that these routine questions were two of the most profound, existential, and eternal questions one human being could put to another: “Who are you?  When did you come into this world?” But I knew she wasn’t asking for my hope and dreams here. She just needed a name and a date. I said, “I’m Russ Ramsey and today is my birthday.” “Really? Well, it is, isn’t it?” she said looking at her chart. “Happy birthday then. What brings you here on your birthday?” I’d been running a fever for three weeks. For the first ten days I assumed it was a virus. But after the standard seven-to-ten day lifespan of a virus came and went, the fever remained as strong as ever. A few days later I made an appointment with my doctor but couldn’t get in for another week. When my appointment eventually came, my doctor listened to my story with a look of concern. He told me no one should have a fever that long. When he checked my vital signs, he discovered that I had a heart murmur. He asked me if I knew about it. I did. Doctors found it during a routine physical when I was in High School. Back then they weren’t too concerned. I had a misshaped valve but my heart seemed to be working fine. Overall, I was a healthy seventeen-year-old boy. But that was twenty-two years ago. My doctor explained that it was a rather pronounced murmur and was concerned that one of my heart valves might be providing a place for a blood-born bacterial infection to grow. The human body is designed to be an inhospitable place for pathogens, but in those places where our physiology decided to break with the norm, as with, for example, a misshaped heart valve, bacteria can sometimes find a place to hang on and multiply. My doctor sent me over to the lab to have enough blood drawn to run some cultures to see if this was what was going on with me. Those cultures came back positive, meaning I did have bacteria in my blood. As soon as he saw the results, he called and told me he wanted me to go to the ER. I needed to be admitted to the hospital because an infection like this could only be treated with IV antibiotics. That was what brought me in to the hospital. What brought me in for the echocardiogram was another story. In the process of going through all the tests and physician consults, my doctors—a team which had quickly grown to include representatives from internal medicine, intensive care, infectious disease, cardiology, and, to my surprise, cardiac surgery—shifted their focus from the bacteria and fever (which they were now successfully treating with IV antibiotics) to that murmur everyone wanted to hear. My hospital was a teaching hospital—one of the best in the country. This meant I was in the hands of some of the best physicians around. It also meant I rarely if ever saw just one doctor at a time. Usually four or five of them would come in together—residents and attending physicians. They’d take turns listening to my heart—often two at a time—and almost all of them would say something like “Wow. That’s quite a murmur.” as they stepped aside to let another sortie of stethoscopes come in for a landing. On the third day of my hospital stay, a small team of cardiologists came in to see me and broke the news that there was a possibility I might need heart surgery. If that bacteria had attached itself to my heart valve, it might have done some damage. They wanted to have a better look. That was what brought me in for the echocardiogram. *** I am a pastor. I spend time tracing my way through the old, old story of God’s redemption—from the foundations of the world to where I and the people I minister to live today. I pray. I study Scripture and try, by God’s mercy and help, to communicate what’s there in such a way that it hides itself in the hearts of the hearers. I counsel people. And I administer the sacraments. A sacrament is an outward physical sign of an inward, spiritual reality. I can think of no better word to describe what happened there in that radiology lab than to say it was sacramental. *** The nurse covered the wand with the warm gel, like a priest preparing the elements. As soon as she touched it against my side the sonogram screen, which up until now had been blank, filled with indecipherable swirls and streaks of gray. Then, as though coming into a clearing, we saw what we had come to see—my heart beating in real time right there on the screen. Neither of us said anything. She made some notes and took a few measurements and I just watched in amazement as it pulsed away with clock-like precision. I could see the distinct chambers on the right side of my heart contract and relax. I watched the tricuspid valve open as my aortic and pulmonary valves shut. Then, as quickly as they shut they opened again as my tricuspid closed. This was what my heartbeat looked like. The valves worked in perfect union, each functioning in their intended role to draw blood from my lungs and send it through the rest of my body. I doubt I will ever forget the wonder of what I saw on that screen. The radiology nurse stayed on the right side of my heart for what felt like a few minutes measuring and taking notes before moving over to the left side. That’s when I saw what had brought me in to see her. I saw my mitral valve—the valve that lets the oxygenated blood into my left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber. Once the left ventricle is full, the mitral valve is supposed to close up tight to keep the blood from regurgitating back into the heart. That’s what is supposed to happen. When we saw my mitral valve, my nurse stopped taking notes and measurements, and we both just watched it in silence. My mitral valve looked nothing like the others I had just seen. Those looked like tiny little gates opening and closing to a metronome. But my mitral valve looked like two pieces of spaghetti flapping around with no apparent purpose or design. This wasn’t right. She knew it, and I knew it too. I said, “That’s my murmur, isn’t it?” She kindly rebuked me. “You know I’m not supposed to read this for you. That’s for your doctor.” The force of her response was an overreaction to what she was seeing and we both knew it. I told her, “I’m not asking you to read it for me. But you and I both know a murmur brought me here and all I’m asking you is if that’s it.” She eased up, “Yeah. That’s it.” “It’s sacramental,” I said as she went back to her measurements and notes. *** The physical reality there on that screen told me two things: there was a problem with my heart and there was nothing I could do to fix it. I thought about the spiritual parallels. If I left my heart alone, who could say what would come of me. But to fix it I needed help, someone who understood the heart, how mine worked, how it was meant to work, what specifically in mine was broken and what of it could be redeemed. I thought about how the Psalms say we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderfully, our bodies are filled with redundancies that keep us alive when parts of us are failing. After he had a chance to look over my echo, my cardiac surgeon told me I might as well not have a mitral valve for all the good mine was doing. My other chambers and valves were working four times harder than normal to make up for it and they were under constant pressure, stretching and squeezing to compensate. But they were getting the job done, and probably had been for years now, he said. Might for years to come too. Maybe. Fearfully, we’re also fragile. My particular blood-born bacteria latched on to that misshapen valve and chewed it up. One doctor, while talking to me about how active I should be until surgery said, “You need to understand that the heart you have now is not the same as the one you had before you got sick.” I said, half-joking so I could digest what he just said, “Wow. If this had happened a hundred years ago…” “You’d die. No question.” he said, finishing my sentence. *** But this is not a hundred years ago. This is today, and today I live a few miles away from one of the best hospitals in the world with a team of physicians and surgeons who have seen guys like me come through their operating rooms many times. They tell me that while it is major surgery for me, it is very routine for them in the sense that the surgery I need is one they perform often. Still, to think that I with my failing heart can fall as I did into the hands of someone who not only understands how to fix me, but then has the courage to dare to open up my chest and do it is a fearful and wonderful sacramental thought that points me to the unmerited grace of God and reminds me that this has been done for me once before.

A few years back, I taught woodworking to teenage boys. They’d come into my shop with big ideas about the table or the bookshelf they intended to make and they’d start cutting wood and hammering nails and glueing boards and as they went I’d see a growing sense of dissatisfaction in their faces. That crestfallen look was there because the final work wasn’t as pristine as the glimmering idea they’d walked in the door with. So I’d help them. We’d backtrack and talk about drawing workable plans. I’d introduce them to important tools like the tape-measure because “No. You can’t just guess.” I’d show them the importance of structural support and strong, solid joints. Later, rather than sooner, most boys would end up with a functional version of their original vision. But in the end, a table (or a bookshelf) is a lot more work than a teenage boy envisions. Without any doubt, though, there was always one part of the process that was the hardest to teach: Sanding. In woodworking, sanding is something that is almost impossible to do enough of. It’s also tedious. Trying to get a teenage boy to sit down and sand a board thoroughly is a trial. Heck, trying to sand thoroughly is hard even for me. It’s just not much fun. But a fine job of sanding will elevate an acceptable piece of work out of the swamp of the hobbyist and onto the higher ground of the artisan. In writing, we’ve got another word for sanding; it’s called revision. For the past month, I’ve been knee-deep in editorial work for The Molehill Vol. 2. I’ve read a lot of great essays, short stories, and poetry. I’ve also written a lot of notes and letters about what needs to be sanded down, refined, reinforced, and polished. Revising is a skill, and it’s one that anyone who writes needs to spend time learning, because revision is the abrasive force that rubs the burrs and imprecisions out of a piece of work so that its texture, grain, and natural beauty can shine. The following are a few notes on things that I, as an editor, find myself repeatedly trying to sand away. I hope they’ll be useful to anyone who wants to look more critically at their own writing. 1. Writers’ Tics: Most writers have certain words, phrases, and sentence constructions that they unconsciously lean toward. Over the course of an entire work these “tics” can become repetitive to a reader, though the writer may not notice them at all. For instance, one of my own “tics” is that I often lean heavily on the use of a “series.” In other words, I tend toward constructions that list, delineate, or present multiple examples, arguments, or iterations that will support, reinforce, or underscore my point. Other people may just use the word “really” a lot, or “dappled,” or “blackness.” The important point here is that none of these things are wrong taken alone, but when they evolve into patterns, they become distracting. Learn to recognize your own “tics” and cull them. 2. First Sentences: This one usually applies to essays. Often the first sentence is clearly the writer trying to get himself into the work by telling himself what he’s writing about. This is fine if it helps you begin the process of writing, but don’t forget to go back and delete that sentence once you’ve finished. Example: “Well, after last year’s topic, I thought it would be fun to go ahead and write something different. It occurred to me in early May that cicadas might taste good with ketchup.” I’m not sure that sounds like a winning essay (or maybe it does) but it certainly doesn’t need that first sentence. It’s nothing more than a ramp the writer has built in order to propel him toward what he really wants to say. No problem. But once the essay is done, take down the ramp. We don’t need it anymore. 3. Adjectives and Adverbs: First let me say that I’m not quite as militant about these as Strunk and White are (if you haven’t read The Elements of Style, get thee to the Rabbit Room store and buy a copy without delay!). However, a writer needs to consider each and every one of them with suspicion. A sentence is usually not enhanced by the addition of a bunch of modifiers. Choose yours carefully. Above all, though, be sure that your descriptive words and phrases are not getting in the way of the meaning of your sentence. If in doubt, try removing all your adjectives and adverbs; strip your sentence down to its most basic subject and verb and see if it’s making sense. I sometimes see writers getting lost in their own labyrinthine constructions. And if the writer is getting lost, you can bet the reader is too. 4. Subtext: This is where revision becomes your best friend. When we write, we often end up saying exactly what’s going on, exactly what characters are thinking, exactly what characters mean. We explain the importance of events or symbols or metaphors. We do this because we, as writers, often need to remind ourselves what we mean while we are in the act of writing. But it’s of utmost importance that during revision we go back and cut out all of those reminders. If we’ve done our jobs properly, reminders won’t be necessary. The meanings will all be planted firmly in the subtext, between the lines. The reader will intuit what the writer has left out—and that’s a mark of good writing. Simplified example: “Mary glared at Tom. She was angry at him but all she said was “Thank you.” This example is greatly simplistic, but if the imagined scene leading up to this sentence is well written, all that is required of the sentence is: “Mary glared at Tom. ‘Thank you,’ she said.” Or potentially even just “‘Thank you,’ she said.” Good writing doesn’t tell the reader how a character feels. Good writing shows the reader how a character acts and reacts, and then the writing gets out of the way. Trust the reader to infer the subtext. In addition to all these things, remember that editors are fallible–even me–especially me (as anyone who’s sent me an email about a typo knows). So if you’re working with someone to revise your work, be bold, be confident, stand up for what you’ve created, but don’t defend your work merely for the sake of pride. Think carefully about why you’ve made certain choices—you may be right, but there may be a better way. Think carefully about why an editor may disagree—he or she may be wrong, but may also be sensing an issue that needs to be addressed. Every minute you put into these considerations is a minute well-spent. It may be tedious—sanding usually is—but if you’ve taken the time to create something, it’s worth taking the time to love and refine it as well.

[I first met Alyssa Ramsey through The Rabbit Room. Pete Peterson read an essay of hers at Hutchmoot one year and it blew everyone away. She’s a wonderful person and writer, and I’m grateful that she’s one of our contributors at Story Warren. This essay is one reason why. –S.D. “Sam” Smith] My kids and I saw quite a sight at the library the other day. It was an impressive display of mimicry and showboating by a rather cocky young fellow on the rooftop patio. He strutted around with his chest puffed out, trying to impress a girl. He was unabashed in his affection for her. She was playing hard-to-get. Undeterred, he preened and posed and rattled off every pick-up line he had ever heard in rapid succession. He was a mockingbird. I could tell he was a city bird because his song was a masterful blend of police siren and multi-tone car alarm. He was just doing what he was born to do: imitating a song that had already been sung, adding his own voice, and making the song his own. Mockingbirds aren’t the only mimickers out there. Here’s a video of an Australian lyrebird imitating everything from magpies to power tools. Such masterful mimicry can sometimes be troubling. Some folks found a similar lyrebird in the wild—the wild!—doing a perfect rendition of a chainsaw. It turns out he had learned the sound from a group of foresters whose work was approaching his home. So this remarkable creature, capable of mimicking any number of sounds, was singing the song of its own habitat’s destruction. People are mimickers too, of course. Babies learn to talk by imitating sounds. Children learn social behavior by copying their siblings or peers. Every act of creation we do—whether it’s making a meal, or decorating a nursery, or writing a poem, or saying a prayer, or constructing a Lego castle—at some level everything we do builds on what we learned from someone else. Our contribution, then, is not so much to write new songs as it is to add our voice to old ones. And hanging on our every word are little people who don’t know how not to go astray. By what they hear from us, they are finding the notes and rhythms for their own song. And the song they will hear most clearly from us is the one we sing with our everyday lives. What do my kids learn about love from the way I talk to their Daddy? The way I do their laundry and cook their meals? What do they learn about God from how I discipline or comfort or enjoy them? What story am I telling with the things I don’t say? These are the songs that will sink down deep inside them and frame their very souls. And soon they will add their own voices, repeating the themes we have written in their hearts. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” – Eph. 5:1-2 Must we be perfect, then? Not perfect, but truthful. That means telling the truth even about our mistakes. It means singing of forgiveness even in our failure. It means declaring restoration and not destruction. Because Truth tells us that we were made for more than the song of the chainsaw.

“Little by little, one travels far.” —J.R.R. Tolkien When we launched the Rabbit Room back in 2006 (was it really that long ago?) we had no idea where it might lead. It began as an ugly little WordPress blog that was an invite-only affair. Almost no one seemed to care about it, not even those of us writing the content. But by tiny steps, it grew. In 2007 Andrew took a risk and had a much more fully featured blog designed. He invited a few more writers onboard and took it public. If you’ve perused the archives, you’ll see that that’s where their humble beginnings lie. By small steps, the community grew, and so did the website. The store was born—initially just a few of us selling used books we found around the country, primarily to justify the amount of time we spent lurking in musty book stores. Then there were podcasts, then the Rabbit Room Press, then Hutchmoot, then a Rabbit Room office because running things in the basement was getting more and more difficult, then The Molehill and more Hutchmoots and well, here we are. We’ve always wanted to keep the Rabbit Room simple and focused on things we love, so we’ve been against any sort of advertising on the site (banner ads and the like), but all those little steps have had huge costs attached, and thanks to the Amazon economy of zero margins and free shipping, it’s getting harder and harder to stay competitive and meet those costs. People often ask how they can best support the Rabbit Room, the work we do, the content we create, and the people involved. The first and best answer is to support the authors and musicians that we feature. By purchasing their work through the Rabbit Room store, you can be sure that the artist is receiving the lion’s share of the profit, and the rest goes toward operating expenses of the Rabbit Room itself. Many people, however, have asked how they can contribute in a larger way, and that brings me to the next small step along the way: Rabbit Room membership. Let me tell you what Rabbit Room membership is not. First, membership is not necessarily a way to save money and get free stuff (a la Amazon Prime). It’s our intent that membership provide a way for those who wish to help support the Rabbit Room to do so in a clear, simple, and direct way, and for us to be able to offer some material thanks in return. Second, it’s not an effort to create exclusivity. Yes, there will be a few things (like t-shirts) that will only be available to card-carrying members, but we aren’t interested in creating exclusive content. We aren’t interested in leaving people out. That would run contrary to everything we’re about and, trust us, we aren’t moving in that direction. So what is a Rabbit Room membership? What does it cost and what’s included? Primarily, membership is a way for those interested in supporting the Rabbit Room to be able to help us continue doing the kinds of things we do, like Hutchmoots, and Molehills, and podcasts, and Wingfeather Sagas, and N.T. Wright concert/lectures, and more than a few other things we’ve got up our sleeves. It may also be a great gift for a friend, or a way to introduce a family member to the community. It’s a way to be involved and invest in the community. So there you have it. That’s my pitch. We want to keep on taking these small steps. We want to see how far the road leads us. If you’d like to join the fellowship, we’d love to have you along. Membership runs from the date of purchase until May 1st, 2014. The price is $80, and it includes the following benefits: —A free t-shirt available only to members. The designer is still working on the shirt, but trust us, it’ll be cool. —15% off all purchases in the Rabbit Room store. —Two free used books (of our choice). We’ll grab a couple of good ones off the shelf and surprise you. —A free copy of The Molehill Volume 2. We’re busy editing it together right now and it’ll debut at Hutchmoot 2013 (ships to members as soon as it arrives from the printer in late September or early October). —Official Rabbit Room membership card (which bears your super-secret membership code for savings in the store). —Free access to certain Rabbit Room events. This will not include Hutchmoot, but it will include some stuff that we have yet to announce. We’ll notify the membership whenever we’ve got something cooking. If you’d like to become a certified Rabbit Room member, click here.

This post has been brewing for a good long time. Ten years, as a matter of fact. What follows is something of a personal retrospective, probably not of the least interest to anyone but me. Truthfully, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written—how to confine an important decade to a few paragraphs?—and more than once I’ve nearly given up the attempt altogether. As it is, I’ve refined it to death, wrestling over that balance between candor and abstraction (and taking myself far too seriously in the process). And for all that, who knows but that in the end I’ve succeeded at nothing more (or less) than an egocentric ramble. That’s not my intention; what I long to do is memorialize what God has done in my life, to mark this passage with an altar of remembrance and observe an epoch with deep attention and gratitude. Love compels me to try, while joy tugs, colt-like, against the reins of my limitations. At any rate, I’ve given it a go. The very fact that I feel obliged to open with such an accounting may serve as warning enough of the wanderings to follow… It was ten years ago this Maytime that God started something in my life from which I’ve never recovered—and never want to. Anniversaries are important to me, and this May I’ve been blessed with ample time to take a long, backward glance. To remember where I’ve come from; to measure my charts and check my course against where I’m going, where I want to go. For three weeks I have lived by the sea—really lived, in the way I first began to dream of a decade ago. I have put countless miles on my trusty Schwinn (Holly Golightly’s the name), traveling daily the same beloved paths, stretching over a gold and green salt marsh or winding beneath moss-hung oaks, each one a familiar friend. Kingfishers have been my comrades, and snowy egrets, and red-winged blackbirds with their liquid music like flutes coming through water. I have worn my hair in a ponytail and the same gorgeously-comfortable, perpetually-sandy, linen cargo pants (except on the days when I’ve donned my favorite, lucky writer’s frock: perfect shade of sailboat blue and works well on a bike) and I’ve pedaled off with a laptop in my backpack and my wicker bicycle basket stuffed with books and blanket, seeking some sunny refuge where I might warm the bones of my soul and weave a few words into the bargain. (I’ve literally followed the sun all over this island and I’m brown as a nut in consequence—all but my face, which I slather daily with SPF 20. Yes, I’ll admit, it looks a bit odd. I’ve also mastered the art of riding a bike with a tall Darjeeling in hand, for what it’s worth. What would we do without our cups of tea?) And at the end of the day, we’ve stretched on the sand, my husband and I, or on a sun-gilt verandah in rocking chairs, sipping cocktails and reading books—or talking of books and the dreams they have kindled. What is it that Thoreau said—“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?” I certainly can. I have often thought that God all but placed a book in my hands that He wanted me to read, something that would unravel a bit more of the fabric of unexamined belief about Him and the world and other people—and myself. But ten years ago this May, I know He did. It was as if the Holy Spirit propelled me bodily towards the bookcase and pried open my fingers to receive a volume off the shelf. It was a book that had been sitting there for four years, ever since Philip and I had been married, and it was the story of a great love. But one of the lovers did not survive the book. This much I knew. And I did not want to read it. When God gave it to me, however, I did. (We did, rather, for I firmly believe that this is not a book to be read by one spouse and not the other.) And it completely changed my life. It broke my life wide open, broke my heart with joy and beauty, breathed a brisk wind into the sails of my deepest, most intrinsic, most instinctive longings. The book itself is so precious to me I can hardly bear to write about it. I feel so jealous over it, so careful for the pure, golden-hearted rose of friendship it extended to both of us—indeed, a sacred thing. It represents beauties to me which I could never articulate to another living soul but Philip. And that’s all right. I don’t need to in order to tell this story. But ten years ago, A Severe Mercy brought me to my knees—I type the very title with a catch in my throat—and from that low place, I looked upon Love itself. I was in the midst of a real crisis of faith—though I didn’t know to name it such at the time—spiraling into a blackness of anxiety and depression such as I had never experienced my life. I think in my naivety I even doubted such a place existed for a lover of God—such deadly innocence!—though I had the whole counsel of Christendom at my back proclaiming otherwise. But to know of something is not to know it, and it was not until I felt the cold shadows creeping around me that I understood just how terrifying and unavoidably real a “dark night of the soul” could be. Looking back, I can see how the strain of too many years of perfectionism primed me for such a descent, how an accumulation of grace-less ideas about Grace had burdened all the “first, fine careless rapture” out of my walk with Christ. I was exhausted, body and soul, from striving to be and do and think and believe and say and exemplify everything that I was supposed to. Early in my teens, an older woman had extolled me for the example I was to the younger ones behind me, roundly exhorting me to “keep it up.” I know she meant well, dear heart, but I have always remembered those words with a strange sinking of the heart, a chest-tightening reflex of panic, expressive as it was of the pressure to perform that began to circle round me as a teenager—and threatened to choke the life out of me as an adult. At twenty-eight years old my health was breaking; anxiety was uppermost and fear had me by the throat. I was afraid of everything—of life; of my own desires; of love itself and its deathless grasp. When it came right down to it, I was literally afraid of God, in the unholiest sense. All that great, swirling sovereign power—and what might not He do to chasten these competing loves from my heart? So, there I was, my scared, rabbity soul shivering in the darkness, almost too ashamed to ask for help. Almost—and, thank God, not a whit more. I cried into that void, and, instead of accusing, echoing silence, there came a strong hand to clasp and a presence so precious I had never known anything like it and a little gleam of light that made even the darkness dear—because it was Jesus Himself. Jesus like I had never known Him; Jesus, not mad at me for my brokenness, but sitting right down there with me in the middle of the mess. It was into this “horror of great darkness” that A Severe Mercy entered my life. And here is what God began to say to me, by way of that book, in addition to the thousand other sweet influences that were wakened by it, all converging in a glad shout that echoed through every hall and chamber of my heart: You cannot, you simply cannot love “too much.” Man or beast or life itself—it isn’t possible. Love cannot be contained or measured. It simply is and it is entire! Love madly, love with abandon, loved one. Open your heart to the ‘pain of too much tenderness’ and the sting of your own frailties. Only don’t exclude Me—that is all I ask—by your fears or your principles or your careful weighing of consequences. Ground your very human love in my great, boundless one, and do not be afraid. He said much else that I’ve kept and pondered in my heart ever since, but this was the inciting flame—this freedom to love and this fury to live without fear. It changed the inner landscape of my life and would gradually affect the outer one, as well. I literally began to laugh for joy—right there in the midst of my pain—at the outlandish dreams that started to take shape: the things I suddenly knew I had always wanted to do, but had become too hagridden with convention to seriously consider. Dreams of books written and read; of studies and travels; of boats and music and poetry and the footpaths of England; kinships, liturgy, and a livelier life in Christ! Dreams more remembered than devised, it seemed, though I had never thought of some of them before. And in that deep remembering, I found something I had lost along the way, something so precious it had captured my heart with the love of Christ in the first place: namely, desire points. Beauty beckons beyond itself. Longings, whether attainable or not, are sign posts to safe haven, the inconsolable sehnsucht that lures our hearts to the Love we’re made for. There are a lot of traditions out there that imply (or outright teach) that the desires of our hearts are not to be trusted; that anything originating from the inmost being of man is wrong out of the gate and should be subjugated without question. I honestly had come under that persuasion myself, thanks to some fundamentally flawed perceptions of grace—though it took the demolishing of an ideological stronghold for me to realize how dark and tall and menacing it had become, like one of the infernal towers in The Lord of the Rings, casting an unwholesome shadow over the innocent pleasures of life. (I personally think that one of the most radiant moments in that whole trilogy is when Merry and Pippin are sitting amid the flooded ruin of Isengard, drinking plundered beer and smoking pillaged tobacco, celebrating the fact that if the darkness had not yet fallen utterly, it had taken a serious rout.) I do not believe that Scripture teaches or the character of God supports the notion that our desires are bad simply because they are ours. Of course, there are evil desires, desires bent on selfishness and cruelty, but that is not what I mean when I refer to the “desires of our hearts”. Even the most malevolent has some hook, buried howsoever deep, upon which that unseen line of joy can twitch. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is irrevocably drawn from the comforts of his respectable life into the adventure of a lifetime by nothing more or less than the song of uninvited dwarves, circled round his fireside of an evening. It was an ancient song, a song that roused latent ancestral longings he scarcely imagined to possess. “Then,” Tolkien writes, “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and carry a sword instead of a walking stick.” For once in my life, I could identify with Bilbo’s yearnings and conflicted amazement. A holy restlessness had captivated my heart and unsettled all my calculations, and I began to wonder if I would ever know a moment’s peace again. All of these multitudinous channels of longing, broken loose by beauty’s light touch and running free towards an ocean of abundant living! “What on earth is wrong with me?” I asked God, in a tumult of amusement one morning. We had just hatched our Airstream dream: a gypsy caravan that would make the Open Road our own. And I was amazed. The whole thing had been my idea—and I didn’t even like camping. Or so I thought. Something Tookish is waking up inside you, God said, laughing back into the silence of the room. And I laughed with him. It was too late to do otherwise. (Incidentally, we did chase down that Airstream, a 1962 TradeWind, dreamed up that summer and purchased that autumn for a song. And it’s in that very 24 feet of silver-sheathed simplicity we’ve made house so merrily all these weeks by the sea.) In addition, my ideals of domesticity, already ingrained, were deeply refined through all that sifting of light-pierced darkness, though it took a while to manifest in visible ways. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if it has manifested visibly, for much of my day-to-day life looks the same as it did before—only I don’t let my worth as a woman get muddled with how clean my floors are, or how many times I’ve vacuumed the refrigerator coils (never). And I leave stacks of books all over the house. A subtle, though fundamental, shift in perspective began to move beneath the surface of things ten years ago, an uncovering of identity from out of that broken place, and as perfectionism loosed its stranglehold on my life, I learned to breathe a new air, to embrace my home and the work I did there with a new significance. Increasingly, my work was not so tangled with image as it was dictated by love, which changed everything. It meant that I could leave certain things undone as freely as I could take up others. That one task was not ‘holier’ than another simply because it fit nicely into the groove of an accepted standard. It was just as valid, I saw, to hammer out words on my laptop for people I would never meet as to give an entire day to preparing a beautiful meal for beloved friends. I gave myself permission to write, not for a few hours a week, but a several hours a day. Interminable chore lists languished, trumped by the lure of a poetry book or a garden sketch. I was a homemaker, in the truest sense of the word, but not only that—and this little clause was vastly, wildly, magnificently important. I began to realize that my “deep gladness,” the gift I had to give to the world, was at once simpler and more complex than could be confined to one blanket term—simpler because there was suddenly no need to align myself with one narrow definition or another; more complex because I was, to my growing astonishment . . . more. As much scribbler and wayfarer and dreamer of dreams as housewife, sacred as that calling is to me. Early in our marriage, I wrote an essay in which I attempted, most sincerely, to express the deep joy and satisfaction I felt in the making and keeping of a home. It was undoubtedly earnest, but, as most things seen at nearly a decade’s distance, wincingly flawed. I cringe now to think of some of the blithe assumptions, the poor word choices and slight know-it-all edge to my voice. (Oh, friends. When I’ve sounded like I have all the answers over the years, or even some of them, please forgive me. I don’t.) It’s not that I take my vocation any less seriously or hold my young passions in contempt—I’ve just lengthened my tent stakes, enlarged my thinking to make room for ideas and contingencies I hadn’t considered before. I no longer equate homemaking with the essence of my wifehood, but see it as an expression of it—one among many—and that’s a terribly important distinction for me. Philip and I are co-heirs, co-laborers in this vision of our lives, co-adventurers. And while I refuse to attach any moniker to this wider calling (not sure there is one), I will swear to my dying day that there are no sweeter words in the English language (or any other) than husband and wife. What’s more, I don’t assume that the essence of my personal obedience to God is so much expressed in how I love Him, as in the fact that I do love Him, practically and openly. And if my way looks different from everyone else’s way, and theirs from mine—well then, perhaps we’re getting somewhere. The words of poet Kahlil Gibran express beautifully the way I’ve grown to view my home and the lives lived in it: Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast . . . You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night. Flying and roosting; hangar and runway: these metaphors work better for me than long commentary to express how our home—and, consequently, our lives—look and feel these days. I’m less concerned with appearances than I am with experiences: encounters with God and the with holy, shining wonder of other souls. Loosening my death-grip on the control of my environment that I might embrace the unseen realities—and essential adventure—of the everyday. Less dogmatism and perfectionism and any other ism, for that matter; more starlight and mystery and birdsong and paradox. And less fear. I’m not afraid now to say that Brideshead Revisited is one of the top three favorite books of my adult life as I once was (crazy as that seems), or that I love a good gin and tonic almost as much as a stout pot of tea. Ten years ago I could not bring myself to tell anyone but my husband and my sister that I was writing, much less fling my words far and wide like scattered seeds. I can admit that I have a temper to rival Anne Shirley’s and that I believe to the very marrow of my soul that animals will be in heaven. These things may seem trivial (all but the bit about animals), but they represent a massive overhaul of grace in my life, a work-in-progress that continues to spread like a fresh, southerly breeze over the country of my heart. It’s been a long gestation, this broadening of personal borders. And that’s just the terror (and the blessing) of letting your words out into the world: over time, other people get to see your stretch marks. Interestingly enough, it’s the occasional denigration I’ve encountered that has helped me refine some of these growing realities, which is gift upon gift, even though I am mortally afraid of criticism. But it’s the overwhelming kindness of people I’ve never met, people who take the time to listen and whisper that they understand (you, in short, whoever you are, reading this, God bless you), that gives me courage to keep creating and processing, scratching out one word and trying another. My heart has been in your hands again and again, and you have been so kind. I salute you with the profoundest gratitude and a deep, floor-sweeping curtsey. And so, that plunge into darkness and the light that I found there was an experience I mark time from. Reading A Severe Mercy gave me back my Christianity as high romance, as beauty and longing and pilgrimage along which love might goad my heart with gladness. It helped me recover myself from a rubble of accumulated expectations, helped me see that my soul is more gypsy than I’d imagined. Most importantly, it convinced me that what I’m really longing for in all I love is Christ himself and that a life of love for him could be one of such adventure that the fairy tales of my childhood pale in comparison. “Love God and do what you will,” wrote Augustine so famously. I began, finally, to dare to believe that the two were not mutually exclusive. All these glowing coals a single book stoked and stirred and breathed upon, and, afterwards, we read nearly every book mentioned therein—at least, the ones we hadn’t already, such a company of old friends! I bought and devoured books by Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, Chesterton and, of course, Lewis, branching later into Evelyn Waugh and T.S. Eliot, as a matter of course. My mind expanded in pursuit of my leaping heart, chasing all these soaring themes of Christian thought which bore one unmistakable family likeness: God is not only as good as you’ve hoped—He’s better. I saw it everywhere, from the substitutionary love imaged in Williams’s novels, to the romance of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, to the steel-bright shrewdness of Eliot’s poetry. Such a spangled web of holy kinship! Years later, when I discovered the lectures of Peter Kreeft and the writings of Thomas Howard (our “American C.S. Lewis”), I was not a bit surprised to learn that these two men were chums of our old friend who started it all, Sheldon Vanuaken, author of A Severe Mercy. One night last week we took a long walk along the shore. It was the most enchanted evening imaginable: little shreds of clouds in a star-scattered sky; a slice of moon lending a silver haze to the purple shadows; low tide, and not a single soul in all the world. We walked so far, with the waves lapping at our ankles and the lights of a neighboring island shining out across the way, that, suddenly, we were at the northernmost point, standing on the very peak of the land, as it were. To the right, lay the sound and the estuary flowing into it, with the bridge—my bridge, the bridge that carries me over all that water to the home of my soul—its lovely, graceful arches atwinkle against the dark sky; so familiar, so loved. It seemed to represent—seems even more so now, looking back—all that is dear to me of my past, where I have come from, the influences that have contributed to who I am. The experiences that have shaped my dreams, refined my hopes, and which I always seem to recover when I return to this place. And to the left—the sea, limitless, unknowable, black but for the specks of light shining on the far horizon. Those who go down to the sea in ships . . . I saw hopes we’re gathering courage for: the wayside poems, the lure of unlost islands, the mountainous ambitions, and the hearthside songs of adventures remembered. It all was so keen, there in the wind at the edge of the world, as though we stood upon the shoreline of a tangible hope. I have no idea what it will look like in a practical sense, even as ten years ago I had no idea where the influences then beginning to stir in my heart would take me. If anything, I have less answers and more questions, which is rather exhilarating than otherwise. But it’s been a grand adventure, a hoisting of sails and a breathless scanning of new horizons. I glance back over a wake of faithful Love; I inhabit the present with wonder. And I look to the future with awe, and a (characteristically) crooked smile. The goodness of God staggers my heart; His mercies have stolen it utterly. [This post originally appeared on Lanier’s blog: LaniersBooks.com. A Severe Mercy is available here in the Rabbit Room store.] “Here’s, Hail! To the rest of the road!”

“At the same time that he lost everything—the very direction of his own steps—he won the thing he’d held so precious he wouldn’t approach it in words.” An ending and a beginning. Welcome to the discussion of the final part of Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome—“The Raratogans”. As always, feel free to share any passages that were significant to you, or to pose additional questions. Pop quiz (no cheating and no looking back): List all of the literary references from the book, as well as where they were mentioned. 1) What is the significance of “The Rarotongans” (and why was this chapter named after them)? “What I’d have given for a dream or vision now, like Glendon had of Blue—in wavering times, a vision’s what you want! Instead I confess to the most unrefined and selfish longings. I wanted to walk with Susannah and be solid and foremost in her eyes. I wanted Redstart to discover from its roots upward this place where I might be of use.”—p.250 3) What was the gap between the “dream or vision” that Monte wanted to have and the longings that he actually had? “If she [Blue] loves me back, it deepens what I owe. There aint no parity in that arrangement. That’s what I did not see coming.” Glendon—p. 274 4) What did Glendon mean? Do you agree? 5) What three words would you use to summarize the final picture we have of Siringo? Glendon? Becket? 6) If you were to choose a theme song for So Brave, Young, and Handsome, what song would it be? 7) What questions would you like ask Leif Enger about the book? 8) What are your final thoughts on the ending of the book? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

Today is Memorial Day, so it occurs to me that this may be an appropriate memory to haul to the surface. I resubmit it for your perusal. It seems like pirates in are in the news every time I turn around these days. But when this story popped up a while back it really caught my attention: USS Dubuque Seizes Ship Captured by Pirates. You can probably imagine my interest in the report but my association goes deeper than simply being an author who writes about pirates. Almost twenty years ago, you see, I was U.S. Marine Sergeant “Pete” Peterson and I served on the USS Dubuque for a while. Luckily, the time I spent on the De Puke (as we called it) was almost entirely taken up by sleeping, playing Spades, and reading Michael Crichton novels rather than fighting pirates or saving the free world. I remember a tattered copy of Jurassic Park making the rounds from jarhead to jarhead throughout the berthing area and it ignited all sorts of lively debate about how well Steven Spielberg had (or hadn’t) interpreted it. Crichton was considered high literature to us in those days. If I remember correctly, a copy of Congo was being passed along not far behind it. This was in the early to mid-90’s and there seemed to be a new war or conflict springing up every other week. Young as we were, we were anxious for pirates to fight, or an embassy to evacuate, or a “peacekeeping mission” to join. Day after day, we’d run through our drills and study our battle plans and then we’d stand outside the hatch at night smoking our cigarettes as the sea rolled past. Standing outside on the ship’s walkways at night was an explicit violation of the posted and oft repeated rules, but we did it anyway because it was so much easier than wandering through a mile of dark corridors to the authorized smoking area in the fo’c’s’le (that’s pronounced foke-sull, short for forecastle if you’re wondering). Those nights were the darkest I’ve ever seen. In the middle of an ocean there is no hint of a man-made light source. There’s no streetlamp, no spotlight, no glow on the horizon from the city in the distance. It’s pure unblemished night, a beautiful thing, and haunting. It was while standing in that wholly natural dark that I first saw the ocean shine. Below me, in the curling whitewater of the ship’s wake, dull green swells of light shimmered, rolled, and faded away. Bioluminescence is a miraculous thing. It’s an effect caused by millions of microscopic sea creatures that are invisible to the naked eye until their tiny lives are disturbed by something like the passage of a warship. When the ship passes through large groups of them, it sends them whorling and seething in its wake and the violent motion causes them to give off light. In some parts of the world the sea can glow with this “living-light” as brightly as if it were lit from below like a swimming pool. I rarely saw it so spectacular, though. Usually it was nothing but a dim glow, faint ripples and swells in the darkness, scarcely more. In the presence of this natural wonder, we’d toss our cigarette butts to the wind and grumble about the absence of a war in which to prove ourselves and let our talents shine. One night (I think we were off the coast of Myanmar) we were awakened by something that sounded like a jack hammer rapping on the hull. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. We sat up in our racks confused and baffled, looking at one another as if to say, “Did you hear that?” Then the ship’s intercom whined and whistled. “General quarters. General quarters. All hands man your battle stations. General quarters!” This wasn’t a drill. Here, at last, was some adventure. Was it pirates? Were we under attack? Was this an act of war? Whatever it was, the sad truth is that aboard a ship, a marine’s battle station is in his berthing area; while sailors rush to the control rooms, the armory, the flight deck and sickbay, we few, we proud, we stay in our beds and grumble. So we listened as the footsteps of the crew pounded through the corridors above us. We listened to the alarms and announcements chattering over the intercom. We heard our Cobra attack helicopters spin up and launch and fade into the distance and then, of all things, we went back to sleep. In the morning we learned that it had been a local fisherman who’d been spooked by the sight of our ship and fired at us in a panic. That’s the story they told us anyway. I guess machine guns are basic equipment on fishing boats in that part of the world. In the end, no missiles had been launched, no boat sunk, no pirates captured. We were disappointed that it had all been resolved peacefully and we went back to our racks and our Crichton novels and we wondered when we’d get to see some action and have some of that adventure we’d left our homes to find. For me, the action never came. I remember thinking, near the end of my service in the Marine Corps, that the whole thing had been a waste. Except for a few boring days of flight control during the Bosnian conflict, six years of preparation for war had gone totally unused. I was what they call an Air Support Operations Operator. It was my job to coordinate and control fighter planes and helicopters during troop transports, bombing runs, and med-evacs. I’d spent untold hours in training and here I was leaving the Corps without having seen or done any of the things I’d so foolishly hoped to. No battle had been fought, no war was ever joined. I had no shining moment of valor to tell my children of in years to come. What a shame, I thought. When I saw the news report of the old Dubuque last week it plucked a strange chord inside me. I was glad that the Marines had reclaimed a ship from pirates. I was glad that, like those tiny creatures in the midnight sea, they had a chance to shine. I was even more glad that due to their long hours of training, the whole affair was accomplished without a shot being fired or a drop of blood being spilled. But most of all, it made me glad that I spent my own time in the service doing little more than reading Crichton novels and dreaming. I don’t have any telling scars or combat decorations. And I don’t have memories of distant wars won or lost. Instead, I remember the thousand colors of a Mediterranean sunset. I remember the white stone bastions of Malta and the fruited jungles of Thailand. I remember swimming in the Phillipine Sea hundreds of miles from land. I remember waterspouts in the mid-Atlantic dancing together, four and five at a time, like white ribbons hung from the belly of a thunderhead. I remember the deep, sapphire blue of pacific island bays. I remember the Aegean Sea lying flat as a looking glass while Orion and his starry host sauntered through its ageless deeps. By grace, none of these memories are overshadowed by the passage of war, and that is a blessed preservation. War is no adventure; it’s an erasure. Thank goodness for the sailors and marines of the USS Dubuque and all the many others. But all these years later, when I recall the midnight sea roiling in bioluminescent heaves, I thank God that I never did live in that moment of shimmering, swirling chaos. My time of service was undisturbed, only a faint twinkle, never shining. It’s a gift, this dimmer glow, and in the stillness that follows there is a blessing in which to live, and sleep, and fondly dream.

Note: If you’re running behind schedule on your reading, no worries. Feel free to comment on prior posts as you catch up. There’s no reason the conversation can’t continue! Welcome to Week 5—“The Fiery Siringo”—In which we witness a showdown. “And so it came down to a farmhouse. As it so often does.” Siringo and Becket have a complicated relationship.  They are simultaneously archenemies and closely-tied traveling companions. 1) In what other stories is there an antagonist who reminds you of Siringo? A protagonist who reminds you of Becket? Archenemies with similar dynamics? After exposing Becket’s lack of attention to detail when they encountered the boy (whose father had promised to take him to the ocean) in Ingersoll, Siringo chides, “Well, heavens, Becket! No wonder your medicine’s all dried up.”—p.166 And then in the following paragraph, Becket proceeds to describe in great detail the plants, homes, and people he encounters in the town. 2) What do you think Enger was trying to achieve with the juxtaposition of Siringo’s comment and Becket’s astute observations? “That’s the failure of most people,” he declared. “They don’t want the bad news. Everything’s got to be good news! So they’ll subscribe to the Proverbs, which feel nice and hopeful, and ignore Ecclesiastes, where old Sol is wiser than ever and has finally figured out what all those instructions of his are actually worth.” Siringo—p.166 “All the same,” I ventured, “since we haven’t a choice but can only make the best of things as given, I would rather live among people who try to uphold the Proverbs.” Becket—P. 177 3)  What do you make of Siringo’s take on Ecclesiastes? Do you think it’s accurate? 4)  How do these two viewpoints set up an important dichotomy between Siringo and Becket? Do you see similarities between the two men? “Most men are hero and devil. All men.”—p.190 5)   Where do you see both hero and devil in Siringo, Becket, Glendon, and Hood? Can you think of a believable story in which this principle isn’t accurate? “Twenty people are enough to make a legend.”—p.210 6)  Where in the book does the presence (or absence) of a crowd become relevant? What other factors contribute to making a legend? Bonus question: Where did the title “So Brave, Young, and Handsome” come from? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

Jellybean Highfive stood in front of the back of a room, his back to the front of the wall. Directionally near to him sat a youth pastor on a stool. “It’s going to be epic,” the youth pastor said, raising his eyebrows, which were thin and trimmed and raised. “Really?” Jellybean asked interrogatively. “Fo’ sho’ bro,” he said, grinning sideways and scrunching up his eyes beneath a wide-brimmed hat featuring a baseball logo of a baseball team called the Yankees. Jellybean nodded, thinking about what the experience might be like. Would there be dragons? Would there be maidens saved and heroes made? Would people escape fire and doom and hellish fear to be released into light and love and hope and happiness? He imagined himself in an epic, with long hair and a glorious but slimming beard. A battle-axe-shaped sword in one hand a sword in the other. A shield and a bow and mighty feathered arrows from the slings of Mount Fountain, a lucky emerald amulet of burnished gypsy, and a dream the size of seven hairy kingdoms. “I am the epic,” Jellybean said, accidentally out loud. “Totally,” the youth pastor said. “I feel you.” Jellybean re-noticed he was not in an incredible epic but in a room with a huge number of posters featuring men in skinny jeans and expensive euro-lady-punk haircuts. “Why will it be epic?” Jellybean asked, eagerly like. “Cause we’re gonna have pizza!”

Here follows week 4 of our discussion of Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome. A cowboy doesn’t ask for much, that’s my observation. A flashy ride, pretty girl, momentary glory – for a day or two, I’m glad to say, Hood Roberts had them all.” – p. 145 Not a bad recap of “The 101”—equal parts legend, tragedy, comedy, and tall tale, sprinkled with a dash of romance. I thought my question might be a dangerous one – who doesn’t dread what God might be up to in our pivotal moments?” – p. 109 1) What have the pivotal moments been in the story thus far? How have the characters changed as a result? Now comes the distressing part of the story, and not just because Charlie Siringo shows up. As Glendon said later, Charlie had to show up – it was necessary for Charlie, for Glendon himself, and even, finally, for me, that Siringo wash into the Hundred and One on the edge of the coming deluge. . . No, the distress was all Hood’s.” – p. 126 2) How was Siringo’s arrival on the scene “necessary” for Siringo himself? For Glendon? For Monte? 3) Given that Siringo was pursuing Glendon, why was the distress “all Hood’s”? 4) How is Darlys DeFoe pivotal in the story? My wife got so she couldn’t see me anymore,” said an old man in a corner. “She could see everyone else. Just not me. . . It’s the truth. I walked into the house one day saying Darling it’s me, and she couldn’t hear nor see me. If I touched her she’d see me again, but pretty soon, out I’d fade.” – p. 137 5) The quiet, exposing confession of Siringo seems out of step with his character. What do you make of that? 6) Why do you think Monte stays with Siringo? Bonus Question: What’s the history of the real “101 Ranch”? What aspects of the story seem to be true to life? Where in the life cycle of the actual 101 Ranch does the story take place? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

…wouldn’t you want to? I certainly would. He may have died long before I was born, but his books came to me like letters from a kind and witty and child-hearted godfather. Narnia companioned my childhood. Cair Paravel became a home within my thought that I roamed in imagination. The Pevensies were comrades in my play and challenged me to bravery. Talking stars and valorous mice and dryads peopled my dreams. When my siblings and I rigged up the oak tree in our front yard and called it a ship, it was the Dawn Treader I considered myself to be sailing. And it was Aslan’s country I desired to find. Ah, Aslan. Bold and beautiful, never tame. Who can fathom the power of a story in which Christ bounds in, unfettered by the usual assumptions and in a form so wondrous and wild? I loved Aslan. And even as a little girl, I knew it was God I was learning to love through him. When I grew up and began to wrestle with the reality of that God, again Lewis (and the old picture of Aslan) came to my rescue. I have read letters that Lewis wrote to his actual godson, and the kindly, bracing advice, the take-yourself-lightly tone and the urge to throw one’s whole self into the loving of God were familiar to me. I had already encountered that eminently insightful voice in Lewis’s spiritual and apologetic works. Like the kindly godfather he was, he walked me through doubt, assuaged my frustration; his words pulled me back from the brink of disbelief. And the stories that came from that vivid imagination of his taught me to hope that every longing of my heart would one day find its home. So yes, if Lewis were anywhere on earth, I’d trek my way to him, shake his hand, and say the thanks that’s been years in the making. I can’t wait to do it in heaven. But I can make a down payment on that thanks right now. And I simply have to tell all of you about this rather momentous opportunity. I know this is a place where C.S. Lewis is greatly loved, so… perhaps you’d like to join me? C.S. Lewis is about to get a memorial in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. This is immensely exciting. I’ve written about Westminster before, and the impact its many heroes had upon my heart. For Lewis to be honored there is to add him to that great company, to affirm his works of creation, imagination, and instruction as something heroic. It means that thousands of people will encounter him when they visit, remember his works, or maybe discover them (and Aslan) for the first time. But it’s a project that needs support. You can visit the website to read this invitation: On 22nd November 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s death, Westminster Abbey will be unveiling a memorial stone to Lewis in Poets’ Corner. A two-day conference and a thanksgiving service will be part of the memorial project. The Dean of Westminster has kindly given his permission for this memorial, but the Abbey itself does not finance such projects, and so we invite your support. If you have valued Lewis’s writings and personal example and would like to contribute, please give generously. The total cost will be about £20,000. A list of donors’ names will be deposited among the papers of the Oxford Lewis Society in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. I intend to accept the invitation and I decided to share it with you. I thought a few of you might feel about Lewis as I do. Perhaps you’d love to be part of honoring his legacy, affirming his influence upon the spiritual imaginations of countless people.  After all, he taught us to live our own stories awfully well. So, you can visit the official website here: Lewis in Poets Corner. You can donate to the memorial here. And just for the fun of it, you can also leave me a comment with some of your favorite Lewisian quotes. I’ll start: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” – C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey

One of our favorite records of the past year is Matthew Perryman Jones’ Land of the Living, produced by Cason Cooley. (If you saw the Behold the Lamb of God tour last year you may remember Matthew as one of the special guests.) If you haven’t listened his new record, go with great haste and do so. If you’ve already fallen in love with it, enjoy this short making-of film. If you’re still on the fence, this might be just the push you need.

[Zach Franzen is frequently seen arguing for a culture of gratitude over at Story Warren. Here he is rallying us all to that cause with the irresistible call of poetry about the smell of ironing. He includes his own old-fashioned illustration to pair with Dorothy Aldis’s charming poem.  –S.D. Smith] I recently read an article urging Christians to be more countercultural. By countercultural I think the author meant that Christians ought to get arrested more often and sing “in your face” anthems at their parents and/or capitalists. Of course, we know that a protest culture isn’t precisely counter to our culture. It’s as mainstream as a discontented child screaming and grasping in a Toys-R-Us. Still, Christians ought to be more countercultural, and certainly this extends to our artistic and creative offerings.  One way to push back at our culture is through the simple elevation of gratitude. Christians see gratitude as essential to happiness, but in our Freud and Marx influenced culture, gratitude is the undignified badge of surrender. Dissatisfaction is seen as the way to rally the masses to overthrow corrupt Western power structures and bring in the Utopia. Gratitude (much like a Norman Rockwell painting) is perceived as an obstacle for vital social change. But it isn’t. Gratitude frees us from a preoccupation with self and makes us take pleasure in the good gifts of our Creator. Furthermore, it gives shape to our desire to help the oppressed. One could go on, but the point is that gratitude is a necessary element to human happiness, it pleases God, and is underrepresented by our culture. Let me give you an old-school Dorothy Aldis poem written for children in the 1950s that assumes the pleasure of gratitude. See if the assumptions in this poem don’t strike you with a pang of rightness. Aldis assumes that the reader treasures the smell of flowers and the smell of cookies, then she suggests that the reader make room in their circle of gratitude for ironing smells. If I may steal a theme from Chesterton, it is magnificent to look at the world through a telescope but it is also magnificent to look at the world through a microscope. Tolkien tempered his orc battles and giant spider threats with meditations on the Hobbit’s love of good tobacco and food. Lewis tempered his fantastical never ending winter with the domesticity of the Beavers’ tidy house.  Jane Austen novels, The Little House on the Prairie books, Henry and Ribsy, The Moffats, Frog and Toad; all these stories assume the pleasures of gratitude, and the reader gets to enjoy them by proxy. Thankfully, these books are still widely available, and if you want to provide your children with an emotional affirmation of the statement “be grateful,” then you might think about importing these values from earlier literature. That’s not to say they are totally absent from contemporary writing, but they are mostly absent. I guess what I’m trying to say is that a poem that zeros in on the appreciation of ironing aromas and the glory of domesticity elevates gratitude. Gratitude is essential for children who will one day build and preserve a society. It is absolutely unessential for those children who wish only to deface society.

I went to the doctor yesterday for the first time in years. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been sick; it means I’m the kind of stubborn fool who doesn’t like to take an ibuprofen for a headache, the kind of crank who would rather walk around squinting and snappy than to take the blasted aspirin. I just don’t like medicine. I prefer sweating it out, however inconvenient that is for the people around me. So after ten days of coughing and sniffling and whining I finally decided it must be a sinus infection. I have a show in a few days, and I can’t afford to be sick. So I bravely did what any man in my shoes would do: I asked my wife what to do. She told me which doctor to visit and I drove to the offices with a steely resolve. The nurse behind the sliding glass window handed me the clipboard with the dreaded New Patient Paperwork, and then the thing happened that made me want to write this. The questions began. “Do you have any allergies?” “Do you drink caffeine?” “Do you use tobacco?” “If so, how often?” “Do you exercise regularly?” “Is there a history of heart disease in your family?” “Have you had any surgeries? I realized as I answered each question that my impulse was to pad the answers. I had to force myself to be completely honest. For some reason I didn’t want to write down that my dad has type two diabetes or that my grandfather had three heart attacks before he died. No, ma’am, I come from tough stock. No problems at all in the Peterson tree. In the end, I told the truth. I answered “yes” to the exercise question, because it’s true. I do exercise. But then it asked “How often?” Well, that depends. I jog three or four times a week—if I’m home and the weather is nice and I’m not too busy and I’m in the mood. So, sort of often. But I rode my mountain bike twice last year, does that count? “Do you use tobacco?” No. Never. That stuff is gross. But every now and then I like to puff on a pipe, Bilbo Baggins-style, when I’m visiting my dad in the country. And I guess I smoke it when the weather is nice in the spring and my dude friends come over. And on Wednesdays. And Thursdays. Then came the one that really bugged me. For some reason the questionnaire asked, “Have you ever been to counseling?” My pen hovered over the paper. Why is that any of their business? It would have been easy to skip the question, or to lie. But I could see how that answer could give them some insight into high blood pressure or anxiety-related problems. I still think it’s weird that they wanted to know (maybe some doctors out there will shed some light on it), but what was even weirder was how reluctant I was to answer. And even when I answered I wished for space to make disclaimers and justifications. I’ve only been a few times. I’m not like a regular or anything. Why was I trying to distance myself from people with Real Problems, as if I didn’t qualify? By the time I saw the doctor and she prescribed my antibiotics, I was laughing to myself about the disparity between who I imagine myself to be and the person I actually am. I imagine that I’m a person who’s never sick, never needs medicine, has no vices, comes from a healthy family, and is so spiritually and emotionally balanced that he never needs help. The person I actually am is more than a little out of shape, is probably a candidate for heart trouble, enjoys a scholarly pipe smoke a little too much, and has several times been so beset with spiritual and emotional trouble that he needed serious help from a counselor. It’s official. Hello, Doc. My name is Andrew, and I’m a person with Real Problems. I sat on the papery hospital bed thinking about how uncomfortable I was that the doctor knew more about the “real” me than most people. I have always been a private person. The irony is that my whole career is about sharing some of the darkest (and brightest) moments of my life with perfect strangers. That’s what all my records are about, more or less. When I run up against some old sin or doubt or habit in a way that derails my train, and my wife and friends act surprised, I want to hold up a CD and say, “Why are you so shocked? It’s all in there. It’s in almost every song I write. When a lyric says, ‘I’ve got voices that scream in my head like a siren,’ it’s not just poetry or exaggeration. That’s me. That’s what’s really going on.” I don’t have a hard time sharing that stuff from the stage. Then why was I so tempted to pad my answers in the medical questionnaire? There are a lot of possibilities, but one that comes to mind is this: I have control over what I put in a song. When I’m on the stage I can manage what I reveal about myself, I can put a funny spin on it or sugarcoat the real depth of the sin. But when I’m anonymous, answering questions in a different context, I’m confronted with an awful truth: I am not who I think I am. Nor am I who you think I am. I’m much, much worse. I’m much more lost, much less disciplined, much more screwed up than I allow myself to admit. Years ago I read a great op-ed piece in Entertainment Weekly about Netflix. The author talked about how seldom he feels like watching the DVDs that come in the mail, prompting him to wonder what he was thinking when he added them to his queue weeks ago. His conclusion was that he’s two people: the movie watcher he wishes he was, someone who enjoys sophisticated, artful fare like A Trip to Bountiful and Tree of Life—and then there’s the movie watcher he is, who, let’s face it, would rather turn off his brain and watch Die Hard and Terminator 2. It’s true of all of us, isn’t it? I love good books, and count Frederick Buechner, Wendell Berry, C. S. Lewis and the like as my favorite authors—but I read those as a discipline, because I know they’ll be good for me. Yet there’s this other part of me that would rather just burn through sci-fi/fantasy novels that have no more literary value than an episode of CSI. I want to be a healthy eater and I truly love sushi; but man, I can down a deep dish Jet’s Pizza in a way that would shock Marlon Brando. So who am I? That’s the question. Am I the sophisticated art consumer or the brain-dead entertainment glutton? Am I a singer/songwriter with self-control, insight, and integrity or am I a broken man with bad knees and worse habits? The answer is probably more complicated than space allows. In some mysterious way, the answer is both. Maybe the person I wish I were is a projection of the Holy Spirit, calling me upward. Discipline is good. But it’s dangerous to forget how much I need Jesus. It’s like budgeting. Whenever Jamie and I run out of money before the end of the month we always throw our hands in the air and say, “Where did it all GO?” Then we look over the bank statement and remember that we ate out several times, had a few doctor bills, fixed the transmission, bought that one thing that we needed for that other thing, and suddenly it’s clear that we were living beyond our means. It’s easy at the beginning of the month to ignore the awful truth that we are not zillionaires. But at the end of the month, there’s a reckoning. (Of course, in this analogy God’s mercy settles the account. Every time.) But you see, the story we tell ourselves is skewed. There comes a time when we need to sit and take account of how we’re spending our lives, like at the doctor’s office or with the budget, and be reminded that we are not who we think we are. We need Jesus more than we allow ourselves to admit. We are not really so much better than the people around us whose lives are so obviously messy. In fact, we’re not better at all. They may in fact be closer to the heart of Jesus because they are humble enough to admit to themselves that they need help, humble enough to answer the hard questions about their weakness boldly. And humility is a way of dying; it is the crucifixion of our false selves. Humility and death go hand in hand. It is exemplified in Christ, who humbled himself even unto death on a cross. I saw the great Garrison Keillor at the Ryman Auditorium a few years ago when A Prairie Home Companion came through town, and was struck by how comfortable he was in his own skin. He has one of the most recognizable voices in radio history and has been entertaining us for decades—but he has, as they say, a face for radio. He’s not an attractive man. His eyes are bulgy, his nose is a little too small, he’s gangly, he hunches, and though his speaking voice is magical his singing voice is about as plain as you could imagine. But when he steps out onto the stage in his suit and bright red sneakers, he shines. He dances around as awkward as a goose on stilts, singing badly and looking odd—but he’s so joyful, so clearly doing what he loves to do, that he doesn’t care how weird he looks. He doesn’t care about his shortcomings. He’s delighted to be alive and doing something he was made to do. I looked around at the audience and saw that his joy was contagious. Every face was smiling, enjoying the beauty of someone who had made peace with who he was. At some point he may have cursed the way he was made, but now he celebrated it and we celebrated with him. Jesus is making us into something. C. S. Lewis wrote that God is making us into “little Christs.” We all ache for the day when we’ll be free of our sins, our bad habits, our bitterness, the things about us that we think ugly or undesirable. But perhaps the road of sanctification will be an easier one when we recognize in ourselves the sin of self-consciousness, the sin of reputation management, the sin of lying to ourselves. To live our lives with a pretense of self-sufficiency, strength, and have-it-togetherness is to diminish the visible work of God’s grace. One of your greatest blessings to the community around you may be your utter brokenness, it may be something about yourself that you loathe, but which Christ will use for his glory. When Jesus is Lord of our brokenness we are free to rejoice in the mighty work he has yet to do in us. We are free to enter the stage in the face of the devil’s accusation, “You’re not good enough.” The Christian’s answer: “Exactly!” And we dance. (This was first published on NRT.com’s website a few months back.)

This summer, July 4-7, Dave Trout and Under the Radar (UTR) are hosting their first-ever annual conference/music festival called Escape to the Lake on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. I wanted the Rabbit Room community to know a little more about this Hutchmoot-ish event so I’ve taken the opportunity to interview Dave about it. I hope our conversation will allow you to get to know him a little better as well. EP:  For those who haven’t discovered UTR, what is it that you do for living? Dave:  In short, K-Love (mainstream Christian radio) isn’t for everyone. And Rabbit Room readers already know this, but CCM Top 20 lists are not a really good reflection of the best art being made by Christians. So UTR began about four-and-a-half years ago to discover and share some creative, thoughtful, and truly under-appreciated songwriters who are doing their thing without much support and radio fanfare. We offer a one-hour weekly podcast of “gourmet music”—which also is syndicated on over 225 radio stations every week. But it’s really more of an anti-radio program. EP:  Music is subjective.  Are you trying to get people to buy into your tastes in music? Dave:  Well, I do wish that upon people, but only because of the spiritual effect good art has had on me. Overall, no that is not my intention. UTR is not a pet-project by an indie music mogul. My passion for well-crafted music is really a new thing for me, and UTR is just an invitation to come on that journey. At the time UTR launched, I had never heard of you, Jeremy Casella, Randall Goodgame, Andy Gullahorn, and some of the common favorites between us and the Rabbit Room. But I do remember looking at the Square Peg Alliance page in 2008, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one day I was friends with these people?” I have become friends with these and many others, which doesn’t always happen for radio people. EP:  These days, there are myriad ways to discover new music. So, at the risk of being blunt, how on earth did you find me? Dave:  When UTR started, I knew nothing about you or your music, other than seeing your name as a Square Pegger and as a Rabbit Room contributor. I actively searched out your website in early 2009. I was greeted by a blog post that read more like a cry for help. You had just welcomed Monroe (child #2) into the clan, and the economic crisis of 2008 left you with little to no work. I then sought out some of your music, and looked for other links about you. There were hardly any photos or videos of you on the web in 2009. I asked you to have lunch with me on an upcoming trip to Nashville—I had never made a request like that with a recording artist before. Funny enough, I was there for GMA (Gospel Music Association) Week. In the midst of this frantic world of Christian music celebrityism, I have this true heart to heart with an indie artist, and it was the highlight of that week—a truly defining moment for me. EP:  Ah yes, I remember it vividly. I took you to The Pied Piper Eatery, hoping that you weren’t opposed to greasy diner-esque food. Just recently, you invited me to be a part of a your latest pet project. Care to share? Dave:  Yes! It’s called Escape To The Lake.  It’s basically the K-Love Cruise, except you stay on land, and it’s with indie artists that K-Love would probably never play. EP:  You’re on a roll. Dave:  It actually is an easy analogy for this event. It’s a music fest, but we want it to be more than that. It’s a retreat on a scenic lakefront, but it’s more than that. An easy descriptor could be a “gourmet music vacation.” We want to create a space for people to enjoy nature, take advantage of the campground recreational activities, make new friends—and oh yeah, mingle with and hear performances by some of the best indie/acoustic artists on the planet, people who are “under the radar!” EP:  You almost make it sound a little like Hutchmoot. Dave:  Yes, that’s intentional. I’ve been to the last two Hutchmoots, and even though this event will be primarily music focused, we hope to foster the kind of genuine community that exists at the Moot. EP:  What are some of the things being offered at Escape To The Lake? Dave:  We have a terrific roster of artists. Fellow Rabbits will likely be familiar with Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Nick Flora, Jon Troast, and yourself. We also have The Vespers, Christa Wells, Randy Stonehill, Tim Coons, Nicole Witt, and The Farewell Drifters. There will be some planned sessions, like artist Q&As, some unplugged performances, and the makers of the upcoming Rich Mullins film project will be giving us a sneak peek. I’m sure there will be some unplanned moments too, like sharing a meal, roasting s’mores, or a campfire singalong with a favorite artist. EP:  Okay, we got the What. How about the When, Where, and How much? Dave:  It’s July 4-7 on the beautiful lakefront property at Conference Point Center near Lake Geneva, WI. Registration is open now for as low as a $25 deposit (for folks who don’t have all the money in hand right now). Adult registration is $230, which includes 3-nights indoor lodging, all the meals for 3+ days, campground activities, sessions, and all concerts. Folks can register online here. EP:  Since you are a lifelong Chicagoan, and I share your uncanny knack for eating tasty food, can you please tell us what the best pizza is in Chicago? Dave:  Wow, it’s an impossible task, but I’ll try. My personal favorite deep dish is Gino’s East. Andrew Peterson swears by Giordano’s. And Lou Malnati’s gets a lot of votes as well. Those are the big 3. However, Chicago has some stellar thin crust too, and the best, hands down, is Aurelio’s Pizza. EP: Thanks for your time, Dave. You’re a good man. Thank you for caring about music and the arts, and seeking to encourage artists in their endeavors, and to make known their work(s) to a broader audience. Personally, I can testify to your immense generosity and hard work. I hope folks from around the country will consider joining us at Escape to the Lake! I’m looking forward to it. Visit the Escape to the Lake website for more information.

There is always a line the scoundrel steps across and becomes a wanted thing. Sometimes the line is theater and robbery and kicking the fellow off the bridge; sometimes it’s simply a signed sheet of paper. Perhaps it is fitting that my own line was merely the end of a dock. – p. 51 Thus begins the third part of So Brave, Young, and Handsome: “Jack Waits.” There was so much in this section—too much to cover thoroughly without our conversation feeling like a dozen are taking place at once. Here are a few questions to get us started, but as always, feel free to pose your own and talk about things that stood out to you: “What do you dream of, Becket, at night?” “That I am at sea, or in a snowstorm.” “When I was young I used to dream of escapes, and wake up sweating,” Glendon replied. “Now I mostly dream of captures, and you know what? I wake up calm.” – p.75 1) What do Becket’s dreams reveals about his longings? What is he looking for as he accompanies Glendon on this journey? 2) What do you make of Glendon’s response? 3) Earlier, Glendon had talked about the hard reality of jail. “A jail ain’t nothing but a collection of corners.” – p.63 Does his dismal synopsis of jail conflict with the response to his dream of being captured? Is there significance in comparing the “collection of corners” to the “curved line”? When seeing his reflection, Becket says: “I’d even begun to imagine myself a better individual, one tempered by experience and loss . . . I was just barely me. I used to resemble what I was—a well-meaning failure, a pallid disappointer of persons, a man fading. This fellow looked tired and rough, but—if I may say it—capable. “ – p.76 4) What had changed in Becket? What was the “loss” to which he was referring? 5) Enger uses the imagery of vision (or difficulty in seeing) throughout the book—Fog, night, a man “fading.” Where and how in the story do you see “vision” used? 6) Becket, Glendon, and Roberts are each in a different stage of life. What is each man looking for, and does age play a part? Bonus question: The book draws on classic themes and archetypes of “The Western.” How so? How is it turning the classic Western on its head? Have you read Westerns before? Are you a fan of Western films? Other than setting, what do you think defines the genre. Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Osage Beach, Missouri. Ben Shive is in here, too, working on a string arrangement for the upcoming CALEB record. The weather is chilly, I’m a little homesick, I’m wearing three-day jeans, all adding to a pleasant melancholy brought on by the fact that today something is ending. A story that started last January, which actually started many years before that, about a little kid from Illinois who grew up and lost his way a million times but was found a million more by God himself, is reaching its final chapter tonight. I’m glad. And, as I said, I’m feeling a little blue about it too. I’m glad because singing these songs every night has been painful. I’m sad because the little community that gathered to tell this story has been deeply encouraging and Christ-like in humility. You know, it’s not just music that makes high school kids want to be in bands–it’s brotherhood. It’s belonging. It’s that peace-giving fellowship of locking arms with friends in defiance of something. There are few things so moving as watching a team of people with diverse gifting, temperament, and background working together to accomplish something greater than any of them could do alone. It’s a good picture of the church. Whenever someone says, “I want to join a band,” I try to remember the word “band” is older than rock and roll. I think of Robin Hood and his Band of Merry Men, or Shakespeare and his “band of brothers.” The kid isn’t just saying, “I want to play some songs,” he’s saying, “I want to belong to something.” I was that kid, so I know. And so, I’m sad this tour has come to an end. I’ll miss Michael “Raz” Razmandi, our humble sound ninja. He smiles more than anyone I’ve ever met, and he loves eggs more than anyone I’ve ever met, too. I never heard him say an unkind word to any of the volunteers as he worked harder than anyone else on the tour to set the stage, run the sound, and load the trailer after the show. I’ll miss Riley “Squez” Vasquez, our tour manager, whose job from the time he woke to the time he went to sleep was to serve the needs of our little mobile community. Last night after the concert I was near the front of the stage talking to folks, pretty wiped out after the concert, and Riley appeared out of nowhere with a table, a chair, and a waterbottle. I wanted to hug him. I’ll miss seeing Ben Shive on a regular basis. He’s a great musician and a loyal friend (eleven years and counting!). These days it’s harder and harder to find time to hang out in Nashville, so being on the road is a sure way to have good conversations with him–conversations that quiet those voices I’m always griping about. In the same way, I’ll miss Andy Gullahorn, whose skillful, uber-tasteful musicianship disproportionately raises the level of all our playing. Also, any games we play on the road are way more fun when he’s around. He’s a good man. I’ll miss Julia Chapman, who helped with merchandise and, more importantly, Show Hope. She quietly and diligently worked with Show Hope to build that bright, lovely bridge between the orphans of the world and the families ready to adopt them. I’ll miss the CALEB the BAND guys. Scotty Mills, who’s a really great guitar player, though he ended up playing bass on the tour without a single complaint. Scotty treasures his friends in a way that makes me want to be a better one. Also, he has the best hair in North America. Then there’s Will Franklin Chapman. I love it when someone is so completely themselves that they can’t help but make your life richer. He’s as unself-conscious as anyone I’ve ever met, but it doesn’t end there. He’s others-conscious, too. One night after a hard show, Will was the first to ask me how I was doing, and I could feel his concern from across the room. Caleb Chapman’s humility runs deep, evidenced by the fact that when he’s listening to someone talk he seems to be absorbing their words like a sponge–not to evaluate or to criticize, but to learn. He’s quick to laugh, but his level-headedness is the perfect foil to Will’s passion. I look forward to the day when the world knows about this band, and I shall profusely brag about them being on this tour. One of the elements of this concert that differentiated it from others was the video content. Nathan Willis and William Aughtry of Little Rock, the guys who put together the “Rest Easy” video, interviewed several people in Little Rock about their childhoods and put the footage together into the intro and outro videos. I’ll never forget that rich voice of a guy named Tucker saying, “Oh, morning at the brown brink eastward springs,” reading the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. The people in the video were willing to share some of their pain with a bunch of strangers. Then there’s Christie Bragg, my manager, plus her assistants Andrea Howat (last fall) and Alicia Featherstone (this spring), and the good people at the booking agency, and all the promoters at churches and the volunteers who all worked WAY harder than anyone realizes. All that, and I didn’t even mention the making of the album, with Cason Cooley thrown into the mix, as well as the many musicians and engineers–or the record label! It’s crazy how many people are responsible for that album you download or that show you attend, isn’t it? The humbling thing about all this is that there’s really no way to repay that kind of friendship. You can only be grateful. And in the end you realize that you can only turn that gratitude to Christ himself. I’m humbled by the fact that all these folks could have chosen many, many other things to do with their time, but they agreed, for a season, to help me tell a story. The fact that so many gave so much is a good reminder that it isn’t just my story that was being told. Sure, the details may have been mine, but the themes belong to all of us. Good old Frederick Buechner strikes again: “The story of one of us, in some measure, is the story of us all.” So let this be my resounding THANK YOU to all of you who came to the shows, and to my band of brothers (and sisters) who gave so much to the Light for the Lost Boy tour. At most of the shows you guys may have noticed we had fake trees arranged around the stage. They were quite a hassle for Andrea, Squez, and Raz to load in, set up, and load out, all to try and convey to the audience the feeling that we were all in the forest with the lost boy on the album cover. Well, now that the tour is over and we’ve made it out of the woods, so to speak, we’re going to burn those darn trees. I can’t wait to see the faces of my good friends and traveling companions illuminated by that happy fire. From that little Illinoisan-Floridian-Tennesseean kid in my heart who used to dream of being in a band, I thank you guys for your love and friendship. Here’s a video of us performing “Carry the Fire,” which I here unabashedly dedicate to my tour-mates.

[Clay Clarkson is a treasure too wonderful to bottle up over at Story Warren. Here’s more on fostering (and equipping) holy imagination in your home from a very wise man. –S.D. “Sam” Smith] Bear with me. This will make sense in a moment. I got a new car this year. Gently used, actually. I turned in the keys to the family van that had been mine, a well-worn 2002 Honda Odyssey. Sally wisely declared that at 61 it was time for me to have a bit more manly ride. My son Joel found the car at a used lot in our little town. It was a good fit, and a quick decision. A late model, dark grey Subaru Outback with 70,000 miles. My car’s name is Gandalf (the Grey). As I drove my “Subie” to my office this morning, I realized that being in a new car has changed my self-perception and outlook on life. When I am in my new ride, I enjoy the trip, listen to great music (like “Light for the Lost Boy” and “Birds of Relocation”), and find myself imagining new books, songs, ideas, and projects. I think about new things. Maybe it was just the change that changed me, and not the car. But reflecting on its effect reminded me of a principle of cultivating creativity in our children that was a fixture in our toolbox of parenting: New things do things. Way back in the beginning of our family, we read an article that argued for investing in tools for making a living, rather than just in static monetary instruments. It was an early expression of the 10,000-hour rule Malcom Gladwell talks about in Outliers. As intuitives and parents, that idea made immediate sense to us. We got it. Rather than always focusing on our money, we would focus on using our money to invest in our lives and our children’s lives. While some parents might withhold big items to be earned or received as gifts, we would very often simply give our children those kinds of items because of a budding interest or area of giftedness. We wanted them to have tools—special books, electronics, software, musical instruments, science equipment, sports gear, special furniture—so they could do what they wanted to do, at the time when they were wanting to do it. We gave them new things without strings. That concept inspired a part of our homeschooling model in Educating the WholeHearted Child. We created “Discovery Corners” throughout our home, specific spaces dedicated to self-directed learning in areas such as music, art, nature, science, cooking, calligraphy, and many others. We made sure each corner was amply stocked with good tools for exploration and discovery. We were investing in their creativity and imagination. Some might wonder if our children became spoiled because we didn’t always make them wait or earn the big stuff, or if some things we got went unused. No they didn’t become spoiled, and yes some things didn’t get used, but they were good investments nonetheless.  Let me fast forward to Joel, my now-26-year-old oldest son and successful car-picker, to illustrate how it worked in one child’s life. We knew early-on Joel was musical, so we always encouraged that giftedness with instruments to try out, books, music, and much more. We kept his life filled with the musical. We tried to get him to take lessons, but he resisted them and insisted on playing by ear. We didn’t think much about that until he decided to apply for Berklee College of Music in Boston. During his interview, since we had failed to make him learn to sight-read music, he was not able to explain some basics of musical notation. And yet he was accepted based in part on an original piano composition he had written that week. This past spring, Joel graduated summa cum laude, was a composer of the year, and was writing forty-piece orchestrations and sacred choral music. Now he is studying for a Masters of Composition at Denver University. Whatever else we did wrong or didn’t do right with Joel, there was one thing I think we did well: we made sure to keep his world, even at a young age, filled with musical tools, resources, and events. And we gave him those things when he needed them, not when he had fulfilled some kind of “delayed gratification” mandate. It was those tools—those good gifts given many times just out of grace—that kept his imagination amply fed and growing. He used them because they were “new things” coming into his life at the right time. New things do things, and I think they did for Joel. So here’s the point: Don’t be afraid to cast your bread (your money) on the waters of your children’s imaginations, hearts, and minds (Ecc. 11:1). It will come back to you. As with any investment, there is a risk (11:6), but I believe the greater risk is in not giving your children all the tools and resources they need, when they need them, to give full expression to the creative imago dei developing within them. And remember that God is a God of new and good things (Is. 48:6, 2 Cor. 5:17, Jas. 1:17), so you will be following the lead of our heavenly Parent. Now I realize your children probably don’t need a Power Wheels Jeep Wrangler, even a gently used one (if there is such a thing). But maybe one of your kids needs a good tool set. Or a violin. Or a computer. Or a camera. Or a digital keyboard. If the time is right, just surprise them with a gift of grace. They will feel loved, not spoiled, and I think you’ll see that new things do things. ——————————————————————- Featured Image courtesy of Rebecca Smith Photography

The choirboys sang at dawn in Oxfordtown, birdnotes chiming from tower’d nest of stone above the mink-brown Cher. I have never heard them do it but by the heart’s hard listening, that fancy-flight of longing that makes an actuality of the imagined, till the real is more dream than the dream. And while I dreamed an inexorable sea away, they sang, white robes ruffled like fledgling feathers breathed upon by auroral breezes, round mouths wide to drink in all that dew of blushing morn and maiden May. The earth is glad once more— their sweet song rouses it with a shout! And I awake, dispossessed of all that happy dream. My morning broods, welling tears of unshed rain, while the green world waits, shuddering at one long, low sob of thunder. Yet the wild roses breathe out a holy incense, flouncing their frills over western hedges and showering a veil of bridal white from the low-sweeping pines. In the breathless orthodoxy of this newborn day that first, wild, young madness of honeysuckle plies an arrow through my awakened heart. And at evening, we sit beneath a windswept sky, remembering how the sun kindled her honeyed face and how the rain silvered the hoary fretwork of her spires. “To England,” he says, lifting a glass of stars, summer wine enflamed by one glance of that great light.

This is week two of our discussion of Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome. Week 2 – “The Old Desperate” In “The Old Desperate,” Glendon and Monte embark on their adventure toward Mexico. Each interaction with the folks they meet along the way—Samuel Cobb of the Globe, Mr. Franco the waiter, Detective Davies and his wife Celia, and their granddaughter Emma—is revealing. Incriminating details begin to surface about Glendon’s convoluted past. His response to being exposed is telling of his character. Monte’s required attendance at the Davies’ dinner party plays a similar, yet more subtle, role in giving us insight into both Monte’s inner turmoil and his deeper longings. “The charges are bigger than you imagine,” he replied. Morever, they are true. There is no forgiveness for me under the law . . .” says Glendon. – p. 40 1) If Glendon had expanded on that statement, what do you think he would have said? Give it a shot—2-3 sentences max. 2) What response did his comment evoke from you? Have you ever been at a similar place in life? I [Monte] smiled and Royal Davies nodded, “You’re doing these youngsters no service, you know . . . You authors, I mean—this world ain’t no romance, in case you didn’t notice.” “So I am discovering.” I replied. It was, I suppose, the expected wry answer, and made my host chuckle, but now I am taking it back. I take issue with Royal, much as I came to like him; violent and doomed as this world might be, a romance, it certainly is.” – p.43 3) How do you think Davies was defining “romance”? How about Monte? 4) Why did Monte default to the “expected answer” both here and in the conversation with Celia Davies regarding the author Boyd Singleton Ample? 5) At the end of “The Old Desperate,” Emma shows Monte a list of her favorite books. He calls it “a peep into her life” and responds by asking her, “Have you a favorite character among all these?” If someone wanted to peep into your life, what books would they see on your shelves, and who is your favorite character? Bonus Question: What shifts in American literature were taking place in 1915? How is the literary environment relevant to the story? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

George Jones died today. When he was a young man, famous for his hard lifestyle of drink and drugs and for outbursts of anger, nobody would have expected him ever to be an old man. But his fourth wife Nancy, with whom he just celebrated his thirtieth wedding anniversary, helped him settle into a more sustainable life and live to the respectable age of 81. Most of us are able to keep our failures more or less private. We make mistakes, but the selves we present to the world are  our better selves. Things didn’t work out that way for George Jones. Any pleasure he took from the adulation of his many fans was surely tempered by the fact that those fans also knew of his personal failings. Everybody knew the story of the time he piloted a riding lawnmower to the liquor store because his wife had taken away his car keys [ed. that liquor store is one block from the Rabbit Room office, by the way]. They knew about the trashed motel rooms, the fistfights, the holes he shot in the floor of his tour bus. An anecdote is just a sad story told for laughs; George Jones was the subject of more than his share of anecdotes. I have written elsewhere about the practice of nicknaming people by their infirmities. Two nicknames stuck with George Jones for most of his life: No Show and Possum—No Show for the many tour dates he missed when he was too drunk to play, and Possum for the close-set eyes and sloping nose that gave him a look reminiscent of North America’s only marsupial. I have often wondered what it would be like to be universally acknowledged as one of the greatest country music vocalists of all time (Waylon Jennings once said, “If we could all sound the way we wanted, we would all sound like George Jones”) and yet still be known as “No Show” or “Possum”–drunk or ugly. I stopped listening to country radio twenty years ago or more. You might say I quit listening to country radio because country radio quit sounding like George Jones. He hailed from an era when country music’s predominant key was hurt. Mainstream country music these days plucks any number of emotional chords, from the various manifestations of romantic love to daddy-daughter sentimentality to swaggering jingoism to a version of down-home country pride that owes more to focus groups than to any time the songwriters and performers have actually spent on tractors or on Main Street. None of it hurts like “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” George Jones’s biggest hit, is easily my favorite country song. In fact, I can’t even think what my second-favorite country song might be. He said I’ll love you ’til I die She told him you’ll forget in time As the years went slowly by She still preyed upon his mind He kept her picture on his wall Went half crazy now and then He still loved her through it all Hoping she’d come back again Over-the-top sentimentality, you say? Emotional manipulation? Oh, it’s worse than that. There’s a lap steel mimicking human crying throughout. He kept some letters by his bed Dated 1962. He had underlined in red Every single ‘I love you.’ I went to see him just today, Oh but I didn’t see no tears– All dressed up to go away, First time I’d seen him smile in years Now comes the string section—a string section!—to goose up the emotion through the chorus: He stopped loving her today. They placed a wreath upon his door. And soon they’ll carry him away. He stopped loving her today And then George Jones launches into a verse of spoken-word with the background singers oo-oo-oohing behind him: You know she came to see him one last time Oh and we all wondered if she would And it kept running through my mind This time he’s over her for good. In short, if I were to make a list of things I can’t abide in a country song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” checks most of them off. George Jones himself reportedly said when he finished recording it, “Nobody’s going to buy that morbid son of a bitch.” And yet this song stops me in my tracks every time I hear it. I stop what I’m doing, look down at my hands, and halfway wish I had some really good reason to feel sorry for myself. I don’t mean any of this as a back-handed compliment. I genuinely think it’s a testament to George Jones’s genius that he made such a moving song out of elements that are so manipulative and obvious as to be almost laughable. Nor am I appealing to a “purer” music of an earlier, less commercialized era. I’m saying that there is something real and soulful in George Jones’s voice that can’t be neutered by all that overproduction and emotional button-pushing. That hurt you hear in this song is real hurt, George Jones’s hurt, hard-earned and genuine. A few years ago my wife was in Bread and Company, a shi-shi bakery and sandwich shop frequented by Ladies Who Lunch. In front of her in line was an older man who turned out to be George Jones. The young man at the cash register recognized him. “Mr. Jones,” he said, “I’d like you to know how much your music has meant to me.” When my wife first told me that story, it hurt my feelings. “My” George Jones should have been hanging out at Bobby’s Idle Hour drinking beer and eating peanuts, not nibbling on a scone at Bread and Company. But now that I think on it, it makes me happy to know that George Jones made it after all—a respectable old man in a respectable establishment where he was called by his real name—not No Show, not Possum, but Mr. Jones.