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Before U2 returned to Nashville last week—thirty years having passed since the last time they performed here—Matthew Perryman Jones decided to get some friends together to play some of their favorite songs from the U2 catalogue, a testimony, of sorts, to the witness of four Irish guys, and a way of saying thanks to the biggest band in the world. Nashville author David Dark got things started by telling the crowd, “I don’t know how to explain myself to myself apart from U2.” That sentiment was shared by most of the performers—a lineup that also included Sarah Masen (w/ Bulb), Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, Thad Cockrell, Mike Farris, Stephen Mason, Kate York, and Griffin House. Each artist told us how they had discovered U2’s music in middle or high school, how their songs assured them that they weren’t alone in the world, and how their horizons had been expanded by the encounter. Matthew Perryman Jones told us about the first time he saw them live, on the Joshua Tree tour, and how he walked out of the arena listening to the people around him in the parking lot still singing the last song, and he thought: “So that’s what music has the power to do.” One by one, before singing a favorite song, each artist bore witness to the work of U2’s music in their lives. As is to be expected whenever a group of people are deeply moved by a work of art—be it a poem, song, movie, painting, or anything else—there will be others who don’t understand and respond with rolled eyes or mocking comments. When one artist made the claim that he feels like U2 saves his life about every five years, I saw some in the crowd suppressing laughter and looking annoyed by what they considered hyperbole. I felt differently. As a teenager, I heard people talk about this band called U2. I even heard people say that some of the members were Christians, and that there was something of depth and value in their music. But raised as I was to disdain rock-‘n-roll, it was all laughable because, come on, they used drums and electric guitars, an obvious sign of rebellion against God. I didn’t come to appreciate the witness of U2 until years later in my early twenties. I met a childhood friend for drinks one afternoon and we spent five hours catching up, trying to explain to each other, and to ourselves, where our journeys had led us and how we were attempting to make sense of life and adulthood. We traded books and CDs over the next couple of years and at some point he gave me a mix CD of his favorite U2 songs. The first song on it was “Walk On,” and he introduced it by telling me about an experience during college, an unspeakably hard time for him. Among other things, his parents were going through a difficult divorce, and he couldn’t always see a reason to keep on going. At the end of each day, he would take a walk around the campus, ending up at the bluff overlooking the city, listening to U2 on his headphones. More than once, he told me, the only reason he didn’t take one more step, the only reason he didn’t give up hope and go over the edge of the cliff, was Bono singing these lyrics: I know it aches, And your heart it breaks, And you can only take so much. Walk on, walk on. …Stay safe tonight. [audio:WalkOn.mp3] Today, my friend is a good father to two beautiful girls and a loving husband to his wife, at least in part because of the witness of U2. Even if I had not had similar experiences with their music myself, I would still be grateful to them for my friend’s sake. After the U2 tribute show, I was at home, finishing up work for the evening, and I pulled up U2 in my iTunes and played some of my favorite songs. I listened to “Walk On,” and when it ended I hit play again. Twice. And then I put away my work, turned up the stereo and played it again. Crawling into bed that night, I picked up the book on my bedside table, Ian Cron’s Chasing Francis, a biography of sorts in which a man documents his spiritual journey through journal entries addressed to St. Francis. I opened the book to the page where I had stopped reading two nights earlier and picked up where I left off. Here’s the first thing I read: Dear Francis, A few years ago I went to a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, just three months after 9/11. Most of us in the arena that night probably knew someone who’d died in the Twin Towers; we’d lost three people in our church alone. I’ll never forget the end of the concert. As the band played the song “Walk On,” the names of all those who had died were projected onto the arena walls and slowly scrolled up over us, and then up toward the ceiling. At that moment the presence of God descended on that room in a way I will never forget. There we were, twenty-five thousand people standing, weeping, and singing with the band. It suddenly became a worship service; we were pushing against the darkness together. I walked out dazed, asking myself, “What on earth just happened?” Of course, it was the music. For a brief moment, the veil between this world and the world to come had been made thin by melody and lyric. If only for a brief few minutes, we were all believers. And of course there’s the moment everyone is talking about; after the band took their final bow and was about to walk off stage, Bono noticed a guy holding a sign that read “Blind Guitar Player.” Bono told him to come up on stage, called for his guitar, and hung it around the man’s neck. The blind man wanted to play a song for his wife and started strumming the opening chords to “All I Want Is You” as Bono took the lead vocal. “You say you’ll give me eyes in a moment of blindness,” the lyric goes. At the end of the song, as the guy started to take off the guitar, Bono stopped him and told him to keep it, concluding an unforgettable evening for that man and for the rest of us gathered that night. I walked out of the stadium with my friends, sore and sweaty and tired, but most of all, grateful for the witness of U2.

It’s rare that people pay a first visit to our old farmhouse without asking if we have ghosts. I can hardly blame them; I wondered the same thing the first time I came here. It’s certainly haunted with its own past, standing there under its trees, brooding gently over vanished things like a wise old woman holding tryst with memory. It arrests me every time I pull in the drive. If my husband is present I cut him a sly smile. We love to creep each other out occasionally in the night watches—an impishly easy task, with all these shadowy corners and creaking floorboards—and then laugh at ourselves the next morning. But he knows that I’m not fool enough to tempt fate with a bald-faced commitment beneath the very roof I have to sleep under that evening. Instead, I usually reply with a shrug of the shoulders and an ambiguous, “We-ell…” that could go either way. If I’m feeling particularly sure of my company, I may quote C.S. Lewis by adding playfully that, “if my house is haunted, it’s haunted by happy ghosts.” Indeed, the folks who built this place over a century and-a-half ago were good, God-fearing Methodists, and apart from some serious Civil War action in the front yard, the rowdiest times it’s seen were probably Wednesday night prayer meetings in the front parlor. But any home that’s been around for as long as ours has undoubtedly seen its share of things worth telling. The romance of an old house is its story, and it still happens from time to time that some descendant will show up on our doorstep bearing a thread of the tale we haven’t heard—or, at least, that version of it. Not too long ago, a grandson of the last generation of the original owners came by for a visit and held us enthralled a full summer morning with a running narrative as we wandered over the lawn, down to the barn, up to the house again and through the cool, high-ceilinged rooms. We heard the old, familiar ghost stories, told with such an artful relish that Philip and I couldn’t help exchanging a few grins of genuine glee. There were flesh-and-blood accounts, as well, tales of the men and women who had once been as alive in these rooms as we are today. The old gentleman’s stories made them live once more, if only in the sudden match-flare of the telling. But there was one story I had never heard before. We were standing on the front porch saying our goodbyes when our guest paused and looked at me with an appeal in his eyes. “Just one more.” We fairly begged for it, while his wife tilted her head and shifted her purse on her arm with an indulgent smile. She must have seen that eager boy-light on his face just as plainly as we did. “Well, it happened like this,” he began, with the drawling ease of the raconteur at home in his calling, “back in the old days it’d get so hot in the summer it was just unbearable, and the folks all used to sit out here on this porch in the evenings trying to keep cool. One night my daddy was sitting with his cousin, who’d come for a long visit. They were just rocking and talking and everything was still—it was long about sunset. All of a sudden, my daddy’s cousin jumped up with a shriek and took off running towards the road. You know the old road used to come down right through the middle of your front pasture there,” he gestured with a flourish, not waiting for a reply. “Well, my daddy just sat here watching her with his mouth gaping—he thought she’d taken a sudden fit as he couldn’t see a blamed thing. And when she came back, she was crying like her heart was broken.” “’It was my brother,’ she said through her tears. ‘I saw him standing there right at the bend, but when I got to him, he wasn’t there anymore.’ “That would have been strange enough,” said our narrator, in a voice that sent a cold crinkle up the back of my neck, “but for the fact that they got word the next day that her brother had died unexpectedly, to the very hour and moment she’d seen him standing there at the bend in the road.” The hair stood up on my arms and I felt the goosebumps chilling down my legs. It wasn’t fear I felt so much as awe—a trembling wonder at the thinness of the veil before which we’re all disporting our lives away with so little thought for the mysteries on the other side. I walked along the drive after our guests had gone and stood leaning on the fence, gazing at the spot where so extraordinary and inexplicable a thing had reportedly occurred. A soul taking leave of an absent loved one on the cusp of its long flight? Was it really possible? We sat out on the porch that night, long after dark, watching the fireflies kindle their elven lamps in the trees around the house and along the old, memory-haunted roadbed through the front pasture. I eased my rocking chair back and forth and then tucked my legs up under me in the cane-bottomed seat. “Why doesn’t it happen anymore?” I asked it soft, whispered in the warm gloom, but my husband knew exactly what I was talking about. Why do all such stories seem relegated to the distant past? Why is the average modern life so strangely insulated from the unexplained? Is it because we’re all inside watching TV? “Distracted from distraction by distraction”? Or have we grown too old and wise as a race to admit that there are things in this world—things Scripture is silent on and Science can’t explain—that we will never understand till we shake off this mortal coil? As Christians we are fortified by the promise that we’re peering through a glass on the eternal verities, that God in his grace has given us a view from a window the world can’t see. But it’s a dark glass, and things pass before it that our time-bound vision just can’t distinguish yet. Like a character in a George MacDonald fantasy, we’re all growing into our eyes and learning the meaning of a dual citizenship. We’re learning to see what’s at the end of our nose. I’m no theologian, but my guess is that modern Christianity has lost much of its romance simply because we think we’re already there. We’ve talked the mystery out of it and we’ve slapped a tidy label over the imponderables. Anything that can’t be explained is suspect or tossed on the rubbish heap. We have lost our fairy birthright of the What-If. What if souls were really permitted impossible leave-takings? What if there was life out there in the star-hung heavens, in another galaxy than our own? What if the scrim were really so thin and time so nonlinear that one could experience a sense of place deeply enough to actually share it for one fleeting moment with the ones who had once loved it as they do—or at least catch the rustle of a silken skirt in the hallway behind them? I’m not making a case for ghosts, of course, but for the mere character of a God who can do anything. Who is more fierce, more wildly tender, more untamed and untrammeled than our craziest dreams could make him out to be. Not different than what our Bible so faithfully tells us, but more. We’re all trembling on the brink of a wildness that is terrifying and exquisite beyond anything our earthly experience could prepare us for. But I have to wonder if God doesn’t occasionally drop hints of the surprises he has in store: glimpses of a goodness we couldn’t bear even if we were able to conceive of it. A few years ago I had the inexpressible privilege of watching at my grandmother’s deathbed. I was holding one of her tiny hands, still so lovely and ladylike yet strangely ashen with a marble pallor. My mother had her other hand and Daddy was at her head. I will never forget the peace of that place or the curious sense of joy that kept tugging at my grieving heart. I remember there was an April breeze coming in at the open window, lifting the sheets lightly and fanning wet cheeks, and the day outside was pale and silvery, as if too much sunlight would be an insult to our sorrow. We had been there for hours, noting the least change and talking quietly about the things we loved best about her, when suddenly I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of how beautiful it must be to die surrounded by those who love you so dearly—to be escorted thus from one love to Another. What a crown to a life, wiping away all the ravages of suffering and disease and leaving only beauty and blessing in its wake. I saw the tired features relax; an unmistakable calm came over the dear face that had been agitated by Alzheimer’s for so many years. It was incredible—like a healing before our very eyes. And it was then I knew beyond all doubt and misgiving that there was a Presence in that room: a Glory that would be our undoing if it were fully revealed. The air was heavy with it, yet not oppressed; I looked at my mother and I knew that she sensed it, too. I have heard people speak of such things; I have read of it in books. But I know now what their accounts have been fumbling for. I could never explain it to another. But eternity was so, so near. Or, rather, a curtain was lifted, wavered a bit, and I saw how near it’s been all along. It was an experience that marked me for life and I thank God for such a peep behind the scenes, fleeting and fragmentary as it was. But we can’t dwell in such sublimities, of course, or we’d be no good for the ordinary blessedness of the common hours. To live unceasingly aware would be, as George Eliot so prudently put it, “like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” It is good for me, however, when I find myself too “well-wadded with stupidity,” to be shaken out of my complacent notions of a safe universe and a tame God by a nudge of the incomprehensible. Even if it’s only a bump in the night that makes me think that the lights can stay on upstairs just this once.

(On the eve of the release of the first new song from my upcoming record, I thought I’d get this last blog reposted from a series I wrote about last year’s single, “More Like Falling In Love”. Here are the links to parts 1, 2, and 3.) …it’s like I’m falling in love, love, love – deeper and deeper it was love that made me a believer in more than a name, a faith, a creed falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me “Therefore… continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” Philippians 2:12 I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog series that I’ve gotten emails and notes – many of them respectful and thoughtful (some less so than others ;- ) – from those who have had concerns about the meaning of some of the lyrics in my song “More Like Falling In Love”. And though I run the risk of seeming defensive, I thought it might be good to let some recent correspondence guide our conversation for this last blog about the subject. The two latest comments I received were kindly expressed by people whose concerns, interestingly, were polar opposites – which I suppose can be expected if we understand truth is more often than not paradoxical – it’s DNA made up of seemingly contradictory ideas (the greatest is the least, you lay down your life to find it, work out your salvation… it’s God who works in you…, etc.).  The truth is black and white, and sometimes even seems frustratingly gray, or sometimes even orange, for that matter.  (I’m not talking about relativism here, so don’t get nervous.) On the one hand there is the email from a man who was concerned that I’m downplaying the believer’s role in the saving/sanctifying work of God in our lives.  The line that says, “it’s more like losing my heart than giving my allegiance” is the real stickler for him.  (Okay, maybe I’ll get just a little defensive for a moment and point out that I’m not saying that we don’t give our allegiance, but rather that it’s more like losing our heart to a Person than it is giving allegiance to an ideology of propositional truths.  If the relationship is in place, a passionate allegiance will surely follow.  Blood is thicker than water, right?)  I imagine his concern is that I’m shortchanging the cost of discipleship by encouraging believers to do too little in the “working out of their salvation with fear and trembling…” I mean, c’mon—you can’t just sit there and do nothing, right? On the other hand was the two page hand written note from the woman who is concerned that I give us too much to do and am shortchanging God’s role by making too big a deal of our role in the work where I write “falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me”. Her read on this lyric is that I’ve put the ball of salvation/sanctification in our court, implying that it was my willful act of falling in love that brought about the change in me, that it’s up to me to somehow manufacture transformation by mustering up enough love and devotion for God when the scripture clearly tells us “… it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to his good purpose.” I guess it just goes to show you can’t please everybody. But they both make a good point, and I’m grateful that they’re listening—what an honor to have someone engage a song lyric on that level—and a pop song no less!  I suppose the truth is that there is a real tension between these two ideas, and my lyric—like myself—is probably caught somewhere in the middle.  Maybe that I’ve gotten both kinds of emails is a sign that I was on the right track (or perhaps it reveals a failure on my part as the writer to write with clarity…  nah, I prefer the former.) 🙂 (And that will be my last smiley face.) I will confess that I have passionately believed in the role that I’m responsible to play in God’s work in my life.  But as I’ve gotten older, I also confess that I’ve become just as passionate about the conviction that it’s all grace, all a gift, that even the ability to receive it is a gift, and that my insufficiency can only be met and answered by God’s all sufficiency.  And yet, and yet… We feel the tension—the great mystery of God’s sovereignty and the holy freedom of free will he bestows upon us: the freedom to honor the gift giver or do terrible, terrible atrocities with the freedom that he sovereignly gives us. It’s enough to make the head spin or the scalp go cold.  I’m with Job: “Surely I spoke of things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:3) But even if I’m afraid of diving into the deep end of this great mystery, I think I can at least dip my toe in the shallow end by reflecting on the idea of how “falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me.” There is a sense in which the action of falling in love is my own, I suppose.  I remember when I first saw Taya, my wife, and the way she caught my eye and so absolutely captured my attention.  We were both on a mission trip with our youth groups in our senior year of high school.  She was from Bellingham, WA and I was from Mankato, MN.  Our youth groups converged in Chicago as we partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build housing for the poor there.  It was a grand adventure and each night we would gather to share our experiences of the day.  And here was this lovely young woman who spoke with such depth, passion, and authority!  She was lit on fire with her love for the Lord and when she would share, her words were like little sparks that would set flame to anyone who let themselves be touched by them. I sought this girl out.  It was an act of my will to get to know this girl. I found excuses to engage her in conversation and eventually even got her address and phone number (this was before the days of email, youngsters). I remember a pastor friend of mine talking about how he met his wife, what it was like when he first saw her across the room, and how he then moved towards her to try to make contact.  He was always convinced that it was he who initiated the conversation that led to their relationship, but it wasn’t until years later that he realized that he saw her across the room because she wanted to be seen by him. What humble grace to allow him to think all those years that he was the sole initiator of the relationship!  What generosity to invite him to play such a dignified part in their meeting when she knew what she was doing all along. I remember talking with another pastor friend of mine once as we wondered about when the moment of salvation actually happens—does it happen after you go to the altar and pray the magic prayer?  Or did it happen before the prayer when you were in your seat and the Holy Spirit first quickened the words of the gospel in your heart and you decided to respond?  Or did it happen earlier that day when something in you prompted you go to church and you obeyed that instinct?  Or did it happen somewhere before the beginning of time at the foundations of the earth?  Such a delightful mystery—it should leave us humbled and grateful to be recipients of such grace.  It should ignite a passion in us to work toward being better disciples of the Author and Finisher of our faith. It should make us want to both give more of our lives and receive more Life, to work out our salvation, trusting that it’s God who is at work. No matter how it all went down, the creeds—the intellectualization of it—came after the fact. But at the moment of truth when my heart first surrendered to what the Lord had been doing in me all along, it was love—love that I felt and knew for the first time, love that changed me from the inside out, love that changes me still and is leading me home.

[For a while now I’ve been following a blog called Kingdom Poets, written by a Canadian poet named D.S. Martin, whose writings have appeared in a number of publications including Ruminate, Books & Culture, and Image Journal. He’s the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They’re both available at: www.dsmartin.ca. He tells me his next book will feature poems inspired by the life and works of C.S. Lewis. Mr. Martin agreed to let us re-post occasional entries from his blog, which he describes this way: “The Kingdom Poets blog is a resource of poets of the Christian faith, regardless of background; there is no attempt made to assess orthodoxy, but simply to present poets who speak profoundly of faith in God.” This poem by Betjeman does just that.  –The Proprietor] Sir John Betjeman (1906—1984) was more popular with the British public than he ever was with the literary establishment. His verse did not share the modernist characteristics of his peers, but reflected the techniques of earlier times. He received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1969. He was also appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate in 1972 — a post he held until his death. As a boy he attended Highgate School in London, where he was taught by T.S. Eliot. His school career was less than impressive, though. At Magdalen College, Oxford, his tutor C.S. Lewis thought of him as an “idle prig” who spent his time socializing rather than doing his work; Betjeman ended up leaving Oxford without a degree. Even so, he managed to gain the attention of Louis MacNeice and W.H. Auden, who both influenced his work. Over time, Betjeman became committed to the Anglican church and Christian faith. He said: “…my view of the world is that man is born to fulfil the purposes of his Creator i.e. to Praise his Creator, to stand in awe of Him and to dread Him. In this way I differ from most modern poets, who are agnostics and have an idea that Man is the centre of the Universe or is a helpless bubble blown about by uncontrolled forces.” His poetry often has a satirical tone, and is characterized by references to English localities and particularities of culture that are already becoming dated. Betjeman was public about his faith, although he readily admitted his doubts, as in the following poem. The Conversion of St. Paul What is conversion? Not at all For me the experience of St Paul, No blinding light, a fitful glow Is all the light of faith I know Which sometimes goes completely out And leaves me plunging into doubt Until I will myself to go And worship in God’s house below — My parish church — and even there I find distractions everywhere. What is Conversion? Turning round To gaze upon a love profound. For some of us see Jesus plain And never once look back again, And some of us have seen and known And turned and gone away alone, But most of us turn slow to see The figure hanging on a tree And stumble on and blindly grope Upheld by intermittent hope. God grant before we die we all May see the light as did St Paul.

One Saturday morning in February, I was reading through several old essays and detected a couple of threads where certain themes held together. I began printing and grouping and by the time I finished I’d come up with an outline for what might be a book of essays. There was one piece in particular, an unfinished one from over a year ago, that I began to see in a new light, a possible vision for the whole thing. It was an exciting couple of hours, until I realized that only a third of the actual writing was complete. Since then I’ve stumbled quite a bit on the path toward a finished product, yet the further I go, the more clearly I see the obstacles. The most obvious one is that I have never written a book before, and while this is a valid concern, my guess is that, for most writers, each new book feels like the first. Having one book tucked under your belt does not necessarily mean you feel equal to the task of writing another. It’s no accident that I used the word “task” just now, because that’s what writing a book is. No matter the romantic notions I have regarding my name on a spine, writing is work, and this work requires discipline. Like running a marathon, or building a house, writing a book takes a certain amount of work, each and every day. Now, I can’t tell you the last time I lived through a week where I could actually take two hours, at my leisure, every day to sit and write; it has been quite a while since I’ve have that kind of freedom. I’m married, and we have three children, and my husband is currently enrolled in seminary. His income provides what we need, but it doesn’t allow me to hire a short-order cook, personal shopper, or housekeeper. So around here, my days fill up pretty fast. I’m not complaining, it’s the season of life I’m in. At the end of the day it’s far more important that my family is loved and cared for than that I transfer a thousand words from my brain to a computer screen. However, I could find the time to write every day if I planned a little more carefully. If I made myself go to bed on time, set my alarm to get up before everyone else, and immediately opened documents rather than checking Facebook, I could easily get an hour’s worth of writing in before my children needed my complete attention. In the evenings after dinner, or perhaps right around nine o’clock, I could sit down and crank out a few hundred words. I could also turn on the TV less, and read my Bible more. I could choose exercise over dessert and creative thinking over status updates. All it would require is a little bit of discipline, organization—and a complete personality transplant! I’ve never been much of a planner, ask any of my planning friends and family. I drive them all crazy. I prefer to live more like Julia Roberts’s character in Pretty Woman: “I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kinda gal, moment to moment—that’s me.” I hate wearing watches and setting alarm clocks. I secretly think “list” is a bad word. I don’t think ahead, and I am usually unprepared. It’s called being a free spirit, right? And isn’t that what makes me a creative person to begin with? Strike that. I know these silly things are not all true, and I recognize the need for structure. I just don’t know exactly how to do it, and what’s more—I don’t really like working on things that I’m not yet good at. And that’s why I must cultivate discipline. It’s not something that happens over night. I was hoping it was something I could make happen in forty days when I made my Lenten promises, but alas, it was a rather unsuccessful attempt. Would that I could change the internal hard drive setting of my spirit from apathetic to driven and watch as the file folders multiplied, but I’m finding that personal habits will only be altered by means of those human parameters known as time and commitment. The one encouraging discovery I have made is this: the more I write, the easier it is to write more. Yes, that may seem a rather obvious finding, but let me tell you that I don’t care. It’s exciting to see that I’m writing faster and my flow of thought is smoother and easier to translate these days. It’s exciting enough that I can smile at the fact it’s taken me so long to catch on. Who would have thought? Training leads to triathlon. In her book Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris says of her work: “The world does not care if I write another word, and if I am to care, I have to summon all my interior motivation and strength.” That’s the kind of sentence that should line the walls and ceiling of my bedroom so it can be the first thing I see every morning when I rise and shine. Maybe a mantra like that could drive me to the desk of discipline and transform me into a well-written woman, but real results are far more likely to be the result of daily decision. Just like walking down the stairs and turning on my yoga DVD after breakfast, the choice is mine to make, each and every day.

A week ago I’d never heard of Josh Garrels, but after seeing 1001 people chattering on Facebook about his new record, Love & War & the Sea in Between, I gave in to peer pressure and investigated. I have to admit that the first thing that won me over was the design on the album cover. I’m a nerd for great typography, I’m afraid. Then I started listening to the music–and I just can’t stop. Listen to this song and you’ll see why. Enjoy. “Beyond the Blue” by Josh Garrelshttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BeyondtheBlue.mp3 Download the entire record for free at JoshGarrels.com.

A great memory from my last birthday was getting the chance to listen to and ask questions of my Dad for a few hours. I got to hear, in more detail than ever, the story of his life in the Army—from his enlistment (he volunteered during Vietnam, wasn’t drafted) as a private, to his honorable discharge a few years later as a lieutenant. I had to drag many of the facts out of him, because he’s more reluctant than most men to talk about himself. But after some persistent inquiry, he would tell it to me straight. There are several scenes that fascinate me, tales of danger and distress (told always in my father’s subdued, under-glamorized way). There are lots of things I’d love to share. But I’ll get to a particular theme of the over-all story. Dad enlisted and went to basic training. Sometime in the first months of his training, he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He was offered an appointment to West Point. While Dad underplayed this detail, barely mentioning it as he moved on, this was a real honor for an enlisted man. This would not only advance his career, pay, and prestige, but would actually have kept him out of the war. But he had volunteered during wartime. He wanted to be a combat veteran. He also wanted to get married. He was engaged to my mother and at West Point you could not be married. That was a deal-breaker. He declined. It astonished his superiors and baffled (and perhaps infuriated) some veterans in our family. He went instead to Officer Candidate School. He would go on to become an officer, go to war, and become a distinguished soldier. In Vietnam he served as a platoon leader in Delta Company and later as the XO (and briefly the acting Company Commander). He never lost a man though, before he arrived and after he left, this was not the case for those who commanded his platoon. His command was a rare interval of grace. He was considered unusually competent and lucky/blessed. His men called him “Luke,” short for “Cool Hand Luke,” because of his easy calm in the middle of danger. When one of his men pointed his gun at the sergeant and it was reported to Lt. “Luke” Smith, he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. The kid was scared, he thought, so he walked up to the young soldier and held out his hands, silently demanding his gun. The soldier gave the gun up and Dad gave it to the sergeant and they carried on in the field, the rebellious soldier marching through the jungle with no weapon for a week. He never had any problems from that soldier again. The errant soldier could have been seriously punished, his record spoiled and his path marked. But Dad, though a believer in total depravity, has always been eager to see people at their best, to believe they will come around if given a chance. He has, it must be admitted, been wrong on that score many times. But his errors are usually on the side of grace. When his tour was nearing its end, he was offered an opportunity to become a captain and have a job stateside if he would reenlist for only one year. Once again, there was an opportunity to increase his pay, his prestige, and enhance his career. Again, he declined. There were lots of reasons. He had accomplished what he wanted to. He wanted to be a combat veteran in the Army, then he wanted to be home. They offered him a post in Kentucky, but it was not quite close enough to home. He wanted to go hunting, go to West Virginia football games, get a job, and teach Sunday School. He wanted to be a regular guy again. He came home with a resume made for leadership. High school class president, captain of the football team, distinguished officer in wartime (having led hundreds of men in battle). He applied at the nickel plant and was offered a job in management. He had no desire to manage people. He’d done that. He wanted to not be in charge. He literally would rather be the guy sweeping the floors. He declined again, would not be a manager. He got the job he wanted. He wouldn’t avoid leadership for long, and would be drafted into leadership again and again in life, as he always had been. He has never been one to seek it out, but it has always found him and thrust him forward. But among the many things I took away from this opportunity to listen to my father, this theme was clear. He declined a lot of opportunity. He chose things that seemed less important, were less lucrative, and led to a quieter life (in a sense). His life has been characterized by a genuine preference for reluctance, followed by simple confidence and high performance. In school, in football, in basic training and Officer Candidate School, in Vietnam, it was the same story. At the nickel plant he was a very reluctant president of the union (where he was told he was “just way too honest to be effective”) for a short period. He led as a missionary pastor in Africa, coming to a wounded church and being a bright spot in between two tragic failures. He started a Zulu church, taught and trained men. He is a pastor now. He’s been a good man, a good husband and father. His life has not been wasted. God, for his own glory, has used Dad in –I say this with careful thought– thousands and thousands of lives for good. He has been, and continues to be, a herald of the Good News of Jesus. He is a quiet teacher full of grace. He still loves simple things like gardening, yard work, West Virginia sports, studying, reading, and spending time with his family (including twenty grand kids). He still sweeps. I guess my conclusion is simple. Many people, by many standards, would probably see my Dad as a kind of failure, as a person who failed to achieve all that could be achieved. He did not, in one sense, grab life by the horns. He never earned a college degree (though he was and is certainly smart enough to teach college–and actually has). He’s not the poster child for the american dream of achievement. But he’s the best man I know. He’s been an exemplary father and has served people of many colors and languages on several continents. He is a beautiful man. How many High Achiever stories have you read with the tragic footnote that the person lost their kids and ruined their families? Too many. I’ll take my Dad. I’ll take him, receive him, for what he is and has been: a gift from a far better Father.

[Editor’s note: Please welcome our latest guest writer, Josh Shive. We’ve been pestering Josh to write for us for quite a while now and are delighted that our merciless pestering has finally paid off. You might recognize his last name, but then again, you might not. Either way, check out his review and welcome him to the Rabbit Room.] “Clementine” by Carousel Rogueshttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Clementine.mp3 When I was in high school, Sixpence None The Richer and Fleming and John were two of my favorite bands. In many ways, the groups could not have been more different from each other. Leigh Nash’s vocals were ethereal, angelic whispers; Fleming McWilliams’s sometimes sounded like they should have been delivered from a flying trapeze, for all of their emotional swings (sorry, folks, the jokes don’t get any better). Sixpence’s lyrics were introspective and poetic; F&J’s could be downright goofy. Matt Slocum played Fender guitars; John Mark Painter played Gibson guitars. (I could do this all day.) For all of their differences, the two groups were alike where it mattered most. Each featured a strong female presence at the microphone, catchy melodies, and enough electric guitar candy to choke a sixteen year-old Josh Shive. This brings me to Carousel Rogues. “I will still come home/’Cause I can’t leave well-enough alone,” Caitlin Nethery Anselmo confesses in “Fishtail,” the third track from Carousel Rogues’ self-titled debut. The album, a collection of gorgeously-arranged alternative rock and stargazing pop, explores the ways relationships bind and set us free. It’s easily the most promising debut I’ve heard all year. In 2009, Caitlin, a graduate of Hood College’s music composition program, wrote a song inspired by Andrew Peterson’s book, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. She sent the song to Andrew, who played it for Andy Gullahorn and Ben Shive (no relation to the author, except that Ben is my brother). Andy G. listened to Carousel Rogues’ demos on MySpace and suggested that Ben consider producing the band. Last year, the group (vocalist/guitarist Caitlin Nethery Anselmo, vocalist/guitarist Zach Anselmo, vocalist/keyboard player Dan Wiley, and drummer Patrick Fulford) recorded the album at home in Maryland with Ben at the controls. When members of Carousel Rogues visited Nashville last summer to record vocals, the band played a surprise set at a Square Peg Alliance show. They released the finished album in February 2011. At the center of Carousel Rogues’ sound are the lead vocals and harmonies of Caitlin Nethery Anselmo and her husband, Zack Anselmo. Caitlin’s voice is expressive and powerful, with a warm, breathy tone that brightens as it enters its upper registers, as it does in “Little Ones.” Zach’s voice is lighter, an unassuming tenor with a natural falsetto that shines in “Chin Up” and “We Should Meet.” The twelve songs on this record are handmade puzzle boxes, intricate constructions featuring melodic electric guitar work from the Anselmos and jigsaw-cut piano parts from Dan Wiley. In “Chin Up,” Zach’s strummed acoustic guitar rides shotgun to his voice on a past-midnight drive under a sky thick with stars and radio interference. “Little Boom Boom” is a musical infinite loop built on a repeating electric piano figure that dead-ends in a swirl of programmed drums and synthesizer-generated waves. In the album’s closer, an Eisley-meets-Fleming-and-John showstopper entitled “Little Ones,” drummer Justin Levy’s snare stutters until it reaches the chorus, a rambunctious groove that slows to take a breath at its midpoint before crashing ahead again. This is an album full of songs that reward repeated listens—hummable after the first play, eye-opening by the third. One of the things I love most about the record is the interplay of Caitlin’s and Zach’s voices. I mentioned previously that the two are married; this record feels like the document of a new relationship, with all of its joys and complications. In “Clementine,” a slice of summertime power pop (complete with electric harpsichord), Caitlin and Zach trade lyrics until they end up finishing each other’s sentences. In the song’s second verse, the duo stand at a graveside and look forward to a restoration of relationships: “And there beside you I will rest, together-tethered/And from the dust, we’ll rise up free of blame.” Here’s wishing for many more years for Caitlin and Zach and many more records from Carousel Rogues. Carousel Rogues is available in the iTunes store.

The other day my sister, a teacher, was trying to help a student fill out some form or other. The form asked for Date of Birth. The girl knew her birthday, but the idea of a birth date, a specific day of a specific year, had her baffled. “The day you were born,” my sister said, a little exasperated, “what year was that?” The little girl was exasperated herself. She gave my sister a squint and, teeth clenched, said, “A little baby don’t know what year it is.” When I sat down to write The Charlatan’s Boy, the first sentence I wrote turned out to be the first sentence of the finished product: “I don’t remember one thing about the day I was born.” Grady, the narrator, is grappling with the same epistemological dilemma that was troubling my sister’s student. Anything you think you know about your birth, your origins, is something you got second-hand. Somebody has to tell you where you came from and how you got here. Grady’s troubles stem from the fact that the one person he knows who might be able to tell him anything about his origins is a liar and a fraud. The seed from which The Charlatan’s Boy grew was a story a friend told me some twenty years ago. His grandmother grew up in California to a Scots father and a German mother. She was pretty typical California girl, but there was one unusual thing about her: she dreamed of kangaroos. She had never seen one in her waking life. There were no kangaroos in the wilds of California, of course, and there was no zoo in her little town. Did she see them in books? Perhaps–except that the first time she saw a kangaroo in a book, she recognized it from her dreams. When the girl had grown into a woman, she learned some secrets about herself. She wasn’t a California native. As it turned out, she was born in Australia. And her mother wasn’t her mother. The “mother” had been the girl’s nanny in Australia. When the little girl was only two or three, the nanny ran off her employer (a Scotsman who had immigrated to Australia with his wife), and they took the girl with them. They started over in California, telling the girl nothing about her origins. She dreamt of kangaroos because she had seen kangaroos in an earlier life she couldn’t remember. That story fascinated me from the first day I heard it. The girl had a clue to her origins, but in the end she couldn’t really know where she came from unless somebody told her. Identity isn’t just something that comes from inside us. We get our names from somebody else. I pondered this business for many years, and eventually my ponderings became The Charlatan’s Boy. Bonus Story: My grandfather, Abe Ross, Jr., used to say that his parents didn’t name him. They called him Abe Junior until he was old enough to talk, then they asked him what he wanted to be named. “Abe Junior’s fine,” the toddler said. “I’ve been answering to it all my life anyway.” [Editor’s Note: Today is Audience Participation Friday over at Jonathan Roger’s blog and he’s looking for a few star-crossed Feechiefolk to write some Feechie love poetry. Here’s a sample: She smells just as sweet as a mud turtle’s feet. Her hair is as soft as a possum. Once I walked by her side, but she knocked me cross-eyed. It took me a week to un-cross ’em. Visit the blog to add a stanza of your own.

One great delight of having a composer for a brother is the fact that he passes the best of his studies on to me. Joel explores reams of classical music that I could never find on my own, and every time he’s home from school he loads my iPod with a few of his newest-found gems. At Christmas this past year, he gave me hours of music, as glad to pass on his beauties as I was to get them. But the rush of winter and spring swept my listening hours away, and it wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I finally managed to taste the new songs. I was on a road trip through Texas, adrift amidst endless miles of flatland with my sister driving, so I stuck in my earphones. Night was just coming on as I relaxed to the first song and closed my eyes, expecting to snatch some sleep along with the music. But the first notes struck me wide awake. Like sunlight on closed eyes, the music glimmered into my sleepy mind, blazed into my ears. First the throaty hum of a cello and its rise into a chorus of violins. Like open hands lifted to catch the sunlight, the instruments formed a cup into which a choir poured its song. A simple choral piece was all it was (I later noted that it was Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna: Introitus), but to me the music was light, it was hope. The song was one of those beauties that arrest you with a clear wordless truth; God is real, grace is a hand that holds you through every change, goodness follows all of your days. I could hear it in the music. A great relief came to my soul, as if I had been holding my breath through the work of months, striving to endure the battle of life. The fear that is always with me, of failure, of pain, fell away before the song just as the night flees, grieved and dark, at the onslaught of dawn. In that odd Texas moment, just for an instant, I was smacked with the full joy of heaven and it was real as the breath in my throat and beat of my heart. But then I opened my eyes. It was an accident, a reflexive blink, but what should I see but a chain of billboards for a famous outlet mall. Gaudy letters blazing an invitation to get vast amounts of new somethings for nothing. I glanced beyond the boards at the glare of a dozen fast food signs. Cars whizzed by, frantic, red-eyed machines in the brooding dusk with frenzied humans at their wheels. And the hope I knew in the music was shattered. The song seemed actually to fade in my ears as the sight of concrete, commerce, and human striving met my eyes. I thought of the million and one tasks I needed to do, the money to be made, the deadlines to be met. Something like grief grew in my throat and the old fear came back. My brain filled with the incontrovertible fact of daily need, of machines and commercialism and a world that never slows down. It was a moment of hopeless juxtaposition–the whisper of a transcendent beauty against the pragmatic chorus of survival.  My whole life seemed torn between those two realities. I felt again the heat of all my deadlines, and with it the fear that I could not do enough, be enough, make enough. The old doubts I bear about my life as a writer joined swiftly in. The old wrangle my heart carries on with my head, “what good is beauty?” began again. In the face of need and sickness and the demands of a fast-paced society, what good is the making of one little story, the writing of a poem? Why hunger after dreams when money must be made, bodies fed, and futures built? Surely God himself scoffs at the little dream worlds in which I live. But then, as if my own soul shouted down my brain, a thought came, crisp and commanding to my mind: “None of that craziness is an ounce as real as your music. Grace is the real thing.” I was astounded at the thought. I sat up straighter, ready to consider this claim of my heart. I closed my eyes and the music roared back to life in my ears, filling my brain so that the strife of the outer world seemed, in its turn, flimsy as a child’s dream. Which world was true? I stared ahead into the Texas sunset, thinking hard until I suddenly remembered something I knew as a child and had almost forgotten. Beauty tells the truth. Since I was a tiny lass, I have called my experiences of beauty “knowings,” because I felt that those encounters communicated something true about the world. I first discovered this in Celtic music; I remember one particular song I heard as a child when I tasted an exultation beyond anything I had ever known. Amidst the rise of a fiddle, the keen of a penny whistle, and a beat like that of many hearts throbbing together, I was filled with an image of all the world in a dance, of many peoples joined in one great movement of joy. And I knew that it was true, that someday just such a dance would happen when all the struggle of earth was ended and the feast of heaven had begun. I am convinced that somehow, in that music, I was able to grasp a picture of the someday world to be. I think most of us have these “knowings.” C.S. Lewis called them “joy,” the great gladness that startled him into his faith. L.M. Montgomery (author of Anne of Green Gables) called them “the flash.” Tolkien called them “eucatastrophe,” the unexpected grace of a happy ending. But all of them mean the same; the taste, in an instant of beauty, of a joy beyond anything we know in this world. A certainty of some good that dwells beyond the limits of what we can see. We know, bone deep, even if only for the instant of song or sight, that there is a joy to outlast all sorrow, a grace that justifies our fight to overcome the darkness in which we all strive. Beauty really is truth and that was what my heart was telling my brain in that odd Texas moment. To dwell in an instant of beauty is to stumble into a pocket of eternity as it bubbles up in time. A song like the one I heard exists half here, half in the realm of the eternal. Time is suspended because that one sustained note, or a leaf in a crimson-edged turn, or the happy ending of a story bears a truth that will live beyond the moment in which you taste it. The knowledge that comes to me in a moment of art or song is a truth from outside the circles of time and decay. This is why I hunger for beauty, why I sense it to be a “realer” thing than much of the hurry of modern, daily life. This is also why I write. To capture even a hint of that sure loveliness, to embody that elusive, certain grace in what I create, this is my work. To present the beauty I have found in a story of my own is to offer my time and people the most precious thing I have ever found. This is no waste, no child’s dream. This is a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven as it invades the world. I suspect most artists sense this as they work; a hint of redemption at their elbow as God speaks into their work from outside the circles of pain, striving, and blindness. My own “knowings,” are just one glimpse of God’s far country. But to tell of that world beyond this earth is the work of God’s own kingdom, because the beauty is his. The joy is his love. The life is his own holy self, throbbing through all of creation, calling us back to the wholeness for which we were made. I finished my song that night. Savored the last of the notes and opened my eyes. This time I didn’t panic. I looked out on the frenzied twilight world of the Dallas suburbs and knew that the beauty I had tasted both transcended it all, and yet was also the promise of its redemption. The song was not a dream of hope that would fade, it was the promise of a hope that never ends because beauty tells the truth. And I believe it.

As a fan of old school record packaging (I miss vinyl and the tactile experience of holding large artwork, pulling out the sleeve, and reading every inch of it), I always want to include liner notes with all my records.  And even though everything is moving to digital, I’ve still insisted to Centricity that we include a digital booklet for all downloads.  Come on, I have to have somewhere to write my liner notes! With my newest release – a remix EP made for core fans – it seemed imperative to include a written piece in order to help give people a context and help explain the concept behind this little labor of love. Since liner notes seem like the kind of thing that rabbity folks would dig, I thought I’d share them here as well as another one of the remixes for you to hear.  For your consideration: As a music enthusiast (read: geek), I’m endlessly fascinated by songs – the seed they spring from, the process of their birth, and especially the different ways they’re able to escape the confines they were born into and take on a life of their own. Songs represent a holy kind of magic, or maybe grace is a better word.  Either way, I’m grateful that I get to participate in the mystery of it in my own modest way. Song Cycles is an invitation for whoever might be interested (read: a geek like me) to eavesdrop on the songwriting process. We wanted to pull back the curtain a bit to show the journey of a song – from the work tape we record to capture ideas as we create them, to the demo I turn in to my label for consideration, and finally the defining moment when it becomes the song that you hear on the record. But there are also the rare occasions when a song breaks free and finds another life, independent of its author – and that’s when things really get fun. So we thought we’d nudge these songs out of the comfort zone of the little nest they were born into and see if they could fly on their own (with a little help from someone other than me). Which brings me to the best part of this project: Derek Webb. Derek is one of my favorite artists whose music never fails to challenge and invigorate. His work is always asking listeners — both lyrically and musically — to reassess things we think we know to see if there might be more to be learned from chapters we’ve presumed closed.  He excels in the art of asking us to reconsider, to think again, further, and deeper. It seemed perfect, then, to turn these songs over to him to reconsider and re-imagine them from top to bottom.  As a fan, it’s a great honor to hear Derek’s artistry on display in my songs as he breathes new life into them and takes them to delightfully unexpected places. I’m so grateful for his participation in this project and I believe that you will be, too. Thanks to fans for listening and caring about these songs, and for being interested enough to spend some time with me in the creative process of working out these songs with fear and trembling in hopes that they find a home in people’s hearts. Thanks also to Taya, Kipper, Jacob, and Gus who love and support me though it costs them.  Thanks, too, to John, Steve, Guy, Jeff and the rest of Centricity/Eaglemont for helping me conceive and deliver this project. Special thanks to Derek Webb for being that rare combination of excellent and kind. Derek Webb’s remix of “Jesus Use Me, I’m Yours”http://bashful-building.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/JesusUseMe.mp3

First of all, what is the good news? What exactly is the Gospel? Is it that Jesus paid my sin debt so now I can go to Heaven? Well, Heaven is part of the Gospel trip, but there’s a lot more to what Christ accomplished. The Word of God says I died with Christ, the old me. It says I rose again as Jesus rose, as a new me. It says Christ lives in me, and the life I now live, I’m to live by the faith of the Son of God in me. These and many other identity truths form the beating heart of the Gospel of power, not merely forgiveness. That all sounds good, but how does it work out practically? It starts by agreeing with God, recognizing our identity as he states it. That’s the background. We have to know who we are; we have to ask God to show us the difference between soul and spirit, between how I feel and who I am. Relationship with God and deriving our sense of identity from who he is and what he says about us – these things are always primary. We’re to practice faithing in our identity, practice recognizing the continual presence of God. But let’s get down to brass tacks with a specific example. Let’s say someone hurts us; they say or do something that causes us inner anguish. We feel an inner reaction. Incidentally, anger is often just self-protection for the hurt we feel. We’ve got to accept our reaction, our feelings; in short, we’ve got to accept that we are human. Cut my hand and I bleed. Cut my soul, and anguish in some form gushes from the wound. Some people think Christians are supposed to live in this cherubic place where nothing ever bothers or tempts them. As nice as that would be, that’s not the case. We live in a fallen world. Our human minds are subject to temptation, to believing lies, to fear, and a host of other ills. An unkind word or action slices us. Sometimes in the initial soul-bloodletting it is optimal to get away fast. This depends largely on the size of the cut versus the size of our faith. The relevant question is always, “Who am I?” If we have been raised with Christ, died to sin, died to self-effort, and are now indwelt by the Creator of the Universe, is that Being more powerful than any hurt? What it comes down to is choosing the truth even when we don’t feel like doing it, or even when our feelings seem more valid and real than the Facts in the Word of God. Some questions to ask ourselves when hurt by another: Precisely just what am I hurt about? What about this hurts me? For instance, if some friends snub you, what precisely is the sting in that? For me it would be the sting of not-belonging, of feeling on the outside. For an analytical mind like mine there would be the extra added bonus feature of spending a lot of time wondering what exactly one had done to merit such treatment, coming up with a list of possibilities, mentally voting on which scenario is the most plausible, and then going over it all again and again, always coming up with different answers, spinning wheels in the mud, which is mostly just a fixer trying to figure out a way to fix a situation. Isaiah 50:10-11 says, “Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. Look, all you who kindle a fire, who encircle yourselves with sparks: Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled—This you shall have from My hand: You shall lie down in torment.” Ever spend the night there, in torment from a flame created by the sparks kindled by your own effort because you’re not trusting the Lord in the darkness, instead trying to see, trying to fix, trying to walk by the light of your own fire? But let’s move on and deal specifically with the feeling of being left out, of feeling on the outside. It is a feeling, not a Fact. I am not my feelings. I am much more than how I feel. I am on the inside, on the inner ring, with the Creator of the universe. He died for me, and caused me to die in him, and rise in him, as a new creation, so that I could take part as a co-operator in his kingdom. He has given me everything I need for life and godliness. He claims he is one spirit with me, that I live by the faith of Christ in me. In other words, my feelings come and go. But the Fact of me remains, the Fact of who I am, who God has made me, how his Spirit lives in me, making me into who I am meant to be. I am Spirit, clothed in a soul and body. Sometimes clothes get dirty and need to be washed. I think we need to treat ourselves like we would treat a little child, to hear our feelings and recognize them for what they are – feelings. Feel them. But then look underneath the feelings to see the “Why?” And then deal with the “Why?” So back to the snubbing. I feel shoved outside. I feel rejected. Am I outside? With so-and-so, maybe. With God? No way. I am in Christ. I’m on the inside with the most powerful King in the universe. How much more inside can I get? Am I rejected? By so-and-so, maybe. But not with God. God has accepted me in Christ, totally, completely, forever. Satan is attempting to trick me into getting my identity from people. Maybe he even tricked me for a little while. But I am going back to trusting God, right now. Once I basically re-cognize my identity in Christ I’m freed to recognize an essential fact in dealing with people: Since God is love, and God lives in me and claims he is one spirit with me, I am love for the other person by virtue of Christ living in me. In fact, in reality, I am not here for myself; I am here for them. Was Jesus rejected by men? Yes. Yet because he knew his oneness with the Father who is love, he despised the shame of it, and because of the joy set before him – you and I – he endured being tortured and executed, faithing that he would rise again. With that same Spirit in us, we can take it. In fact, to go even further, Jesus called Judas, “Friend.” He said that the coming torture and execution were “My Father’s cup.” It was an opportunity to manifest the life of the Father to the world, and by that life redeem the world. These situations of temptation are our opportunities to manifest the life of God to others. God is actually using that other person in our situation to fix us more firmly in the truth of our identity. “The devil is God’s devil,” said Martin Luther. Maybe that snubbing is just one more of God’s chess moves to get me off of thinking I need to be liked or esteemed. Maybe, also, he is giving me something valuable to say which will benefit someone else. That’s our model. That is how we take up our Cross and follow him. That’s how we “fill up the measure of his sufferings.” We’re to live by faith and not by the appearances of things. We’ve got a God who is working “all things after the counsel of his own will” and working “everything together for good to them that love God…” I used to think I had to wrestle my false self to the ground and “get victory.” But I am beginning to see that all I need to do is turn my attention to my real self in Christ. Turn on the lights, and darkness disappears. Where does it go? The darkness is still there potentially, waiting, if the lights go out. But it has to disappear if the lights are turned on; darkness has no choice in the matter. Which of course is why so comparatively few of us know our real identity in Christ; it’s the dark side’s game of hiding the light switch.

You can call me Jacob today, for I intend to wrestle with God. Sometimes, there is no other way to know him. Sometimes I must grip him with the hands of grief or I will not be able to grasp him at all. This fight has brooded long in my soul, this struggle has grown like a storm on my horizon, for I have had a year of confusion. This has been one of those seasons in which every thing I thought God gave me to do fell through. The doors I thought he opened slammed shut. The grace I thought he gave turned to grief. Today, after a week in which three specific, long-held prayers were flatly denied, I have come to my quiet time with fight in every atom of my soul. God seems to have fooled me and left me in a bitter cold and I want to know why. How, I sputter as I settle into my quiet time chair, can God claim to love me and then abandon me to this desert? I open my Bible and turn to the story I have claimed as my own these days; the tale of Jacob’s fight with God. There is something about Jacob’s life, his grapple for favor and love, his frailty, his bargaining with the Almighty that reminds me of myself. I don’t find this flattering, but it is an odd comfort. Despite all Jacob’s foibles, despite his fight and fear, God stuck with this stubborn man. That gives me hope and sets my face, because today, like Jacob, I am at an impasse. I’m stuck in a desert of circumstance with fear and confusion crouching in wait for me just as Esau camped on the desert horizon the night of Jacob’s great fight. Jacob went out into the desert that night to plead with God, to beg his help and rail at his absence and he ended up in the arms of God himself, pounding out his anger, his fear, his need for God to hold him. Well, here I am to do the same. I close my eyes and open my heart. Let the battle begin. I fight my own self first, there in God’s arms. Dry as the bottom of the ocean drained of all its water, the desert of my life stretches around me. Is it of my own making? It could be. I have a trickster’s soul, like Jacob, a heart that thinks it can outrun pain and outwit the upshot of all my fearful and faithless hours. Maybe it is my pride that moors me in this dry, dark place. The brave choices I would not make, the love I would not give. I know my decisions are often faulty, my schemes for friendship or finances full of holes. Frailty runs in my blood, the awful inheritance that none can stem, and I feel it as I writhe in God’s hands. Is all this my fault? Then I wrestle pain. For I know this night is not of my making alone. I am imperfect, but I am persistent, and I have loved God and made his ways my own with every ounce of resolve I could muster. My wisdom may be scant, but my choices have been made in prayer. Knowing this, my fight is anguished and my hands come down harder on God’s silent arms. I am suddenly Eve as well as Jacob; Eve when the world was stripped of beauty, when the first stab of grief rent the air. What is this pain? Where is my God? My heart has never acclimated to sorrow, I still feel shocked when I am broken. Surely it wasn’t supposed to be like this, surely loving God should protect me. I wasn’t made for this disappointment,  this loneliness, for prayers that seem to die like mist in the great, broad air of God’s silence. Finally, I wrestle with God. My existence is his fault. He said he loved me and I believed him. Now I strike him with my pain as hard as I dare, trying to reconcile his love with the fact of a world still broken. I stretch and strain in the darkness, trying to grasp some sense of his care, something to help me believe he is the father I so need him to be. His hushed holding of me as I struggle is a strangeness I almost cannot bear. I long to escape him, to finish this fight, yet I know that he is the cause, the opponent, the peace I need all in one. Every question, every strike is to and for him, no part of this darkness can be explained apart from his troublesome existence. The only thing I hope to win is the working of his hand. He is my opponent, and he is my prize. My enemy, and the lover I yearn for with all of my soul. Whatever shall I do? If I follow Jacob’s story, then I will cling to God until I am blessed. I will clutch at his arms until he claims me as his own and gives me a name as his child. But I am afraid to end like Jacob, for the tale of his fight is a strange one, and the ending of it, more than I understand. Of course, God won. Jacob could not out-wrestle the one who made his own muscles, nor out-argue the one who gave him speech. God lamed Jacob in the end and perhaps the laming was mercy. For I think that Jacob might have struggled to death in his anger and fear. But Jacob clung even beyond that breaking, clung until God himself yielded a curious prize. The prize was a name. God’s trophy to his child, his challenger, was a new identity. The trickster Jacob, even with all his lies, his stealing of birthrights and striving for everything beyond his reach, would become the first of a mighty and holy people. God confirmed his choice of Jacob as the father of Israel by giving him the name that would define the nation. But what a name. If I were God, naming the people who would reveal me to all the earth (and I had just finished wrestling a particularly stubborn one), I think I’d give them an identity laced with command. I’d call them simply “faithful people,” or “humble ones,” or “those who do everything God asks,” or maybe even “the perfectly obedient followers of Yahweh.” But out there in that wild desert night with the stars in a whirl and the air thrumming with Jacob’s savage fury, God named his people something entirely different. God blessed Jacob, and all the holy people after him, by giving him a name that meant “those who struggle with God.” The name “Israel” basically means “those who fight.” Those who struggle and strive. Why would God call such trouble on his poor, holy head by giving his people the identity of scrappers? Why, I ask myself today, as I grapple with the hard way God leads, would God want little old me to be a struggler too? The name does ring true. My life since the day I “asked Jesus into my heart,” has been one long battle. Oh there is brightness to hearten me, and beauty to keep me in hope, but it’s been one long fight. Against sin and self, against the niggling of daily life on a broken earth, against the times, like this, when God is maddeningly silent. Yet every bit of it has been my offering of love to this God who saved me. And suddenly, as I look at the story of Jacob, look at the fight in my own life, I see something I never did before. God blessed Jacob for his struggle. He was proud of Jacob’s penchant to fight. God’s naming of Jacob smacks almost of a fatherly pride; “look at him go, he’s definitely mine.” Never did God condemn or disqualify Jacob for his fight; instead, God passed on that scrapper’s spirit to an entire nation of holy people. Finally, I begin to see. God loves those who struggle with him. God loves the fighters, the ones who grapple with faith and refuse to give up. When I struggle, my heart is alive. If I truly accepted God’s absence, acquiesced to pain, decided that darkness was all I could ever expect, then I would have no reason to wrestle with grief. God loves those who will not settle until they touch his goodness. He delights in those who hold fast through every doubt, cling harder with every seeming evidence of abandonment. Why? Because every lover of God must fight. I just never understood that before. I was blind when I began; I thought that loving God meant an end to all my troubles. What I have had to learn is that this is the broken place, a world scarred by sin and grief and from it, there is no instant escape. The problems I have right now? They are part of my story in the fallen world, a place in which loneliness and sorrow still reign. God’s love is absolutely true, his grace ever-present. But I will experience it in what C.S. Lewis called “the shadowlands.” I will be disappointed. Life will let me down, pain will pock my way until I am finally safe in the new heavens and earth. God acknowledged this reality when he gave Jacob, and through him all God-followers, the name of “strugglers.” To accept that identity is to understand that no one is exempt from fallenness or pain, from the ravages of sin in this world. But it is also to hold, with tears, yes, with a wrestling of heart, the belief that somehow God triumphs in the midst of it. Have you ever noticed how many times the word “overcome” is mentioned in the New Testament? Jesus, on the night before his death, told his disciples outright that they would have lots of trouble. “But take courage,” said Jesus, “I have overcome the world.” John heartens his readers over and over again with the promise that our faith overcomes the darkness. And in Revelation there is that haunting promise “to him who overcomes, I will give the kingdom.” God would not have called us to a fight he did not intend to win. The greatest wrestler in the world was Jesus. He came down into the gritty pain of our fight, he fought beside us, and he was the one who finally overcame the darkness by laying down his life. This is the hope to which we cling and this is what redemption really is. Redemption is not the zapping away of all that’s wrong, it’s grace turning all pain backwards into joy. By holding fast to God, even if it means we must fight, we enter God’s grand, slow battle to make all things new. It’s a slow triumph. But the promise of God is that nothing is outside the realm of redemption. Many things may hurt us here in the broken place, but evil may never overcome us, and in the end, even evil will be turned backward into grace. Our Jacob-like fight is is just one part of this glorious battle. As God lovers, we struggle toward light. We fight to keep faith alive. We don’t curse a faceless universe and stay alive out of spite, we have a goal, a marvelous light, an unceasing love that exists beyond the touch of any darkness. Toward that, we fight. For that good, we will grapple. For the proclamation of that reality, we will fling the whole of ourselves into the furious struggle to believe in the goodness of God. We will believe in a kind, laughing face whose gaze is fixed upon us, whose kindness holds us through the darkness and leads us, finally, beyond it. So call me Jacob. Call me “the one who struggles with God.” It’s not the name I would have chosen, but it’s the identity I’ll accept and the fight I’ll join. And with the help of that great wrestler Jesus, I believe I will finally overcome.

Several years ago my web store, the homespun operation which was to become the Rabbit Room, was run in my luxurious garage. Right next to the garbage can, over by the hot water heater, next to the rakes and the bikes and the folding chairs, I had a little workbench set up with a postage machine, a bunch of yellow, padded envelopes, and stacks of CDs. Almost every morning I’d head out there to fill orders in either my pajamas or, in the winter, a coat and scarf. Sometimes when I was on the road a lot, Jamie and the boys would fill orders for me—and “fill orders” doesn’t just mean stuffing envelopes. It means emailing people whose packages were lost in the mail, it means calling to order more CDs and/or books, it means refilling the postage machine and driving to the post office and ordering more packing materials. When I had a new CD release we’d sometimes have 1,000 CDs to mail, so Jamie, Aedan, Asher (Skye was just a baby), and I would make a game of it. The kids dove in with gusto and rammed CDs into envelopes, stamped the envelopes with either MEDIA MAIL or FIRST CLASS while Jamie and I threw packages into bins. What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s a lot of work. When it got to be too much we hired my friend Hitoshi “George” Yamaguchi, then Paul Jones, then Stephen Lamb to help out, and finally Eric Peters managed the store for a while. All those guys will attest to the headache it can be. I should also point out that there’s a lot to enjoy about it, too. It’s fun to recognize repeat customers (who are basically helping us keep the lights on) fun to have the occasional exchange with someone who likes your music, fun to be so closely connected with the process of literally sending the songs into the world for ears to hear. Years ago, when I was on the road a lot more than I am now, Jamie called me from home to tell me she’d just been reprimanded by someone. Her voice trembled. In between diaper changes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she had trudged out to the garage in the freezing cold to fill orders in my absence. Someone wanted to expedite shipping and Jamie sent a sweet email back saying that she didn’t know how to do that. Well, the customer replied with some pretty harsh words and told her how lame it was that our website didn’t offer shipping options, and how they were used to professional websites and thought ours was a giant hassle. She cried. I got home, read the email exchange, and was ready to crawl through the modem, emerge into this person’s living room as an Obi Wan hologram, and challenge him to a duel. I couldn’t imagine why someone who liked my music enough to order it from my website would then proceed to chew out my wife for not being web-savvy enough. (I’m still surprised by it, to be honest.) So I cracked my knuckles, rolled my head around a time or two, slammed back a shot of sweet tea, and typed a scathing email. I told the person I didn’t appreciate their tone with my sweet wife, I didn’t appreciate their insensitivity to how hard we were working to amend the situation, I told them I was shocked at their insolence, at their brazen belittling of my wife, and—and—well, you get the point. My mouse hovered over the “Send” button, just long enough for the Holy Spirit to tweak my heart a little. I shrugged it off and sent the email anyway. I stomped back into the house feeling a little guilty and a lot justified, informed my wife that I had just sent the guy an e-whooping, and refilled my sweet tea. I felt good. Except for the part of me that felt kind of dark. I sauntered back to the garage to finish filling orders and checked my email. The person had emailed me back immediately. I opened the email, ready for a fight, and it was immediately clear that the person hadn’t read my e-whooping. The person had sent an unsolicited and sincere apology. They were repentant and kind, and expressed gratitude for Jamie’s hard work. The person had been having a very stressful day, and goofed up. I felt terrible. I was horrified by the knowledge that any second that person would read my angry words. The Spirit tweaked me again with what must have been a holy “I told you so.” Then an error message popped up. “Message not sent,” it read. “Server error.” (Server error, indeed.) It seemed as though God had reached into the internet, grabbed my boneheaded email, and flung it back into my computer, sparing the other person quite a bit of pain. Ever since that day, which we’ll call Huge Sigh of Relief Day, I’ve tried to wait days, even weeks, before replying to an email that provokes me. I also try to let someone else read it too and offer feedback. Many times after a few days I realize a reply isn’t necessary at all. The world spins on and the rebuttal that once seemed so vital to the maintenance of my honor turns out to be rather dishonorable instead. A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 19:11

One of the best things about walking into the Hutch these days is hearing the occasional snippet of a new Ben Shive song as he works on his upcoming album next door in the Bee Hive. There are some wonderful things coming through the walls lately and I can’t wait to hear them all put together. While I wait for those Cymbal Crashing Clouds, though, I’ve got great songs like this one to hold me over. It’s called “Out Of Tune” and it’s about a piano, mostly.

A few years ago there appeared a post here about The Jesus Storybook Bible. That post was my introduction to the writings of Sally Lloyd-Jones. I don’t know what Sally’s writing process is like—if she tucks away in the corner of a coffee shop or spreads out at her own kitchen table, and I don’t know if she types her words into a computer or writes them by hand on a yellow legal pad. What I do know—and what is obvious to anyone familiar with her work—is that she is a disciplined, careful, whimsical and dead-serious writer of children’s literature. Not too long ago, she posted the following quote on Twitter: “Albert Einstein quote for today: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’” Einstein’s proposition here reveals one of the most confounding objectives for any artist: how to communicate to an audience truths that are, by nature, grandiose and unwieldy enough to inspire that artist to go to their medium to create. Sally Lloyd-Jones operates in a strange industry—Christian literature. This post is by no means offered as a critique of that industry, but I am going to mention one point of criticism I notice because it frames the context for what I’m hoping to express about her. Here it is: often it seems the goal of Christian writing is to take the mysterious and unfathomable in Scripture and distill them down into the plain and comprehensible—as if it is possible to do this and still remain faithful to the Biblical narrative. There are lots of books promising five easy steps to mastering life and faith, as if the mastery of these things comes through the simple process of accumulating more information. As for Sally, she displays a consistent habit in everything I’ve read of hers and that habit is this: she allows for the mystery and beauty of the Gospel story to remain mysterious and beautiful, even as she works to tell us what’s there. That said, I am certainly not taking anything away from her careful fidelity to what the Bible actually says. Sally is an excellent teacher, and she gives her little readers more detail, explanation, and context than she is obligated to provide. And she treats the continuity of the Biblical narrative with such respect and intentionality that one can’t help but understand the content of Scripture better, having read her books. The evidence for this, of course, is seen in how many grown-ups read The Jesus Storybook Bible as devotional literature—and how they often get teary when they try to read it aloud. (Cough, Andrew Peterson, cough.) But today, what I am writing to call broader attention to in her work is how she never seems to be simply about reshaping the extraordinary so that it might come down to her readers as ordinary. Or as Einstein said it, she works to make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler. I am thankful, thankful for the way Sally Lloyd-Jones takes the story of God’s “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love” and makes it simple, but not too simple. And I am thankful for the way she illustrates the processes of learning, grief, struggle, doubt, and growth by only ever offering us one Hero in the story of Redemption. And I am thankful for the way she tells these stories from Scripture as though they are her own story.

So surrender the hunger to say you must know, Have the courage to say,’ I believe’. For the power of paradox opens your eyes, And blinds those who say they can see. ~Michael Card We were driving through downtown Atlanta, off on literary pilgrimage in the wind and sunshine of March. Just she and I, a sisters’ spree, making holiday in the middle of the week for a day trip to Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia. I think I was already feeling intimidated, haunted by the great one’s ghost, as it were, for as I threaded the umpte-eleven lanes heading south out of the city and fiddled with the AC, I kept prattling nervously about ‘my little manuscript’. It seemed so absurd to call it a ‘book’, even to her, who knows my own soul. Flannery wrote books. I scribbled things in secret. “Would you stop?” I cut my eyes over at Liz in surprise. In the middle of I-75? “Drop the ‘little’. It’s your manuscript. You wrote it. Quit putting it down.” Her words went to the quick: stung, ‘hurt good’, as a wise friend is wont to say. They touched upon a nerve already tender from the Physician’s gentle prodding and forced me to face my old, old foe. Yet again. Fear. The giant Apollyon that halts me in my tracks and sneers down all my hopes and aspirations. The paralyzing dread of failure; the horror of being misunderstood that stifles my voice and freezes my fingers above the keyboard. Fear of man’s opinion. Fear that when I open my heart’s treasures to the world, the world will be unkind and trample them underfoot. That morning I felt ill at the thought—I often do. But that’s exactly what it is: a feeling. My desire to write, to communicate and create, is not a feeling but a God-given passion; a relentless yearning that, quite frankly, at some times I rather wish would lie still, but in sublimer moments overspreads my life with the gilt and purple of love’s ambition. It took me a long time to admit of my vocation, though I’d carried it around with me for as long as I could remember. It was hard to make peace with the extravagant expenditure of time which serious writing demands. I longed to do it; I didn’t balk at the work. But I halted over all the officially sanctioned Christian duties I ‘ought’ to be putting my hands to instead of tapping out words in solitude. I read somewhere that it takes ten years to learn to write a book. I don’t know how true that is across the board, but I felt certain it would definitely be something like it for me. It seemed too sweet a thing to be indulged in. (I know—sounds crazy. Right up there with the fear of imagining God better than He is.) I prayed and prayed for direction; if not for outright heavenly affirmation, at least the quiet sense of God’s hand resting in favor upon my head. I ‘felt His pleasure’, as Eric Liddell so poignantly put it, when I wrote—when I really got cooking and lost my head among the stars. And yet the doubts still rose like a creeping poison: How could I dare to think I’d have anything to give to the world? How could I lavish so much love and energy on a project the world may never see? I needed to know. I needed, so desperately, to hear God say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a way that I would not be able to forget. Nothing dramatic; just an answer to my endless question: Do You really want me to do this? The answer came on an April evening, ordinary but for the Arcadian loveliness of spring’s wild greening and the profligate sweetness of breezes laced madly with jasmine and honeysuckle. We were sitting in the yard, my husband and I, sharing a pot of tea and a chapter in our latest read-aloud, Under the Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. In it, our friend Van was describing the directive he had received from God to write A Severe Mercy (our favorite book of all time and the only context of our friendship with him: he’s one of the first compatriots we’ll line up to meet on the other side). He wrote of the blinding and unmistakable sense of calling, such as he had never known in his life. Of the months, from January to May, that he planned out his book and prayed and thought constantly, and of the upcoming long vacation during which he intended to make a start—never dreaming then that he would finish it in seventy-eight days. I recall no process of thought or decision, certainly no Voice or Presence. The intention, calm, clear, firm, was simply there—a fait accompli—and thirty seconds before it had not been. That is all I know. But I believe as I believed then, that God had commanded me to write the book. It was, precisely, a vocation. In the Afterward of A Severe Mercy I put it thus: Beyond knowing, I believe (and did then) that, having been recalled to the Obedience by the nudges and, finally, by irresistible (or, at least, not resisted) grace, I was now commanded to write: vocatio. ~Sheldon Vanuaken, Under the Mercy My heart burned within me as I heard the words in my own voice: “Beyond knowing, I believe.” Vanauken made it clear, both from the setting and the usage, that this was no optimistic “I-deem-and-suppose” kind of believing. This was an “I-believe-in-God-the-Father-Almighty” conviction he was talking about. Not a confidence in oneself, such as to rival the supreme allegiance due only to God, but an expression of that allegiance. A living out of the wild impracticability of faith. As Christ-followers, we have to take everything at His word; there is very little we can claim to know, experientially and unambiguously, at least at the outset. But we have something better than knowing—we have faith. Rock-solid stone upon which we can build a house that will last and a life that will count for eternity. Belief is the gateway to the knowledge of God, not the other way around. It’s true, ultimately and superlatively, in our salvation. But it’s also true—interwoven into the very fabric of our identities—in the inexplicable summons of our vocation. In that blazing moment, I had my answer. My desire—so much a part of me—was the call. And the reply could only be made in faith. Art exults in its own implausibility; it is mystery and miracle awaiting the collaboration of a human handmaiden. It is a plunge in the dark; a walking on water. If St. Peter had been looking for a firm place to set his foot before embarking across the waves, he never would have gotten out of that boat. And neither would I. Faith is the only antidote to the fears that I face every day when I open up my laptop. It is the lodestar towards which my barque is bent and the lifeline when I’m mired in the mully-grubs and think I’ll never write anything of any value to anyone. God has had to bring me to this place again and again, down to the point of pain. For if I believe— radically, riotously—that this is my Obedience then what have I really got to be afraid of? I used to have a secret codename for writing—so secret that no one knew about it but me. “Stuff around the house” was what I’d volunteer when someone asked me what I was up to on a given day. I’ve long since seen how silly that is. It was only recently, however, that I recognized the inherent sinfulness of it. It’s a fear that is rooted in pride and it’s deadly to both faith and works. The Lord put His finger on that and it seared me to my back collar button: it was pride that was keeping me from telling people what I was doing with my writing. Not pontificating on the nuts and bolts, of course. That would be a different kind of pride. But the fact that I was doing it. Up until that point I would rather have died than confess to most people that I was writing a novel because, well, I mean, what if I failed? Miserably? And then they would all know about it! It is the fear of failure, masquerading as some kind of artistic modesty and propriety that has kept me from saying, “With God’s help I’m doing this crazy thing of writing a novel.” And then if it gets done, He gets the glory. And if it doesn’t? Lanier is that much more humble (I would hope) and honest, with herself and with others. And—I have to believe this—in some way that only He can fully valuate, God still gets the glory. T.S. Eliot whittled it down to one line of exquisite poetry: For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. I don’t want to fail. I want to sing the songs of Eden to a tired and homesick world. I want to write of beauty and truth and goodness, unashamed; I want to spin words and weave stories that will make other people know they are not alone. But even this ambition, sweet as it is, comes short of the mark. For if I truly believe that in attempting to write a book I am being obedient to something that God has placed within me, then His pleasure is the final word. It will not matter in the least whether I succeed in the temporal sense or fail utterly. In the words of the immortal Rumpole, it will be “a matter of indifference bordering on the supernatural”. Supernatural, indeed. For only faith’s vision can incite a recklessness of that ilk, that caliber of abandon that has made the disciples of Christ stand out from their kin like stark raving lunatics from the first Year of our Lord until now. God help me to be among them. The Apostle Paul called us ‘fools for Christ’, and I’ve always imagined he said it with a lopsided grin, a little dazed by the gorgeous insanity of it all. We are ordinary men and women aflame with immortality and moonstruck mad by a grace we can scarcely fathom. We believe crazy things and we do crazy things as a result. We are loved outrageously, beyond all wisdom and reason, and we can’t keep the joy of the joke to ourselves. The love of God has wrung all manner of impossible things from of the hearts of His people since the world began. And how much lovelier is the world because of it. It’s embarrassing to admit how often I need reminding of these things. I smarted under my sister’s sweet reproof for days. When I told my writing partner what Liz had said, she was all over it. (Bless her heart, she’s had to put up with enough of my insecurities as it is.) “I’m going to hold you accountable,” she declared. She didn’t have to wait long, for scarcely a week later she heard me pull the same stunt at a dinner party, fawning and halting about my ‘lowly book’. I felt her eyes on me from the other end of the table; saw that arch tilt of her chin. “Liz would love to hear you say that.” I looked back at her, shamefaced. And then I did the only thing I could do—the only thing such a clownish fear deserves. I laughed. Right in its ugly face. And I can’t help thinking that God laughed with me.

“Everywhere I go I see you.” Rich Mullins Lately, when people have asked “How are you?” I’ve been tempted to alter the usual “Fine” to “Finite.” That’s just how life’s been in recent months, a bit of an exercise in appreciating limits. I’ve been reminded again and again that some of what I’ve held on to with both hands has been more like sand than solid rock. Like the old cartoons, I have thrown high my rope, climbed it hand over hand into the sky, only to find there was nothing up there. Like the cosmonauts who went to space and announced that they had discovered God wasn’t there, I have looked in the wrong places. Or looked the wrong way. Our brother Jack Lewis said the cosmonauts might as well have looked in Hamlet’s attic for Shakespeare. Are you there God? It’s me, Boris. You know, the one with the beard. Where is God? God is invisible, but only in a certain sense. He is active, present, vocal, and, well, obvious. In Romans 1, Paul makes it plain that men are accountable because the truth about God’s presence, power, and provision is clear. This is why not being thankful is like rebellion, which is like witchcraft. It’s a perverse response. It’s one I’m frequently guilty of having. God can give water to his children from a rock, but more often he uses faucets. Still, it is no less from him. I’m not saying I understand all this, but I’m getting more comfortable with the presence and provision of God in what our modernist minds have called “natural,” or “ordinary” places. Is any place ordinary? Is fog or moss ordinary? Life is magical, charged with glory and light. No amount of indoctrination can fog that up forever. The true Story will escape. Again, Romans 1 talks about what you have to do to ignore the hand of God. You have to hold it down. Actively. You have to suppress it. It will bubble up through every hole unless you run around like mad plugging here and stepping there, scheming, stomping, working like crazy to keep it down. Though we are finite, God is providing for us everywhere we turn. In major ways. In minor ways. How can we be blind to it? Maybe you, like me, need to be reminded. Maybe we need wizards, not so much to put a spell on us, but to remove one. Sometimes it’s books or songs that tear away at the carefully crafted shackles we have allowed around our wrists, the bonds that blind us to the evident wonder of God’s great provision. Sometimes it’s a holy encounter with a saint. Sometimes it’s math, basketball, corn dogs, Victoria Falls, making love, babies, adoption, a painting, a person failing well, a fancy car, poetry, or water, or bread, or wine. Speaking of wine and bread: The sharp point of God’s provision is celebrated by Christians everywhere in these two gifts. Bread and wine. It’s in the cross that we see the greatest provision for our greatest need. Jesus is the sharp point of God’s provision. But it’s not only there, it’s everywhere. Ask for eyes and then look around.

Have you ever looked at an actual Rembrandt? I mean really looked? I have. And it is exhausting. Why? Because Rembrandt was a master. If you are willing to look, he will show more than you can take in. This is what masters do. The Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) is widely regarded as the greatest painter Europe has ever produced. Even while he was alive, people called him “the master.” Eager, rising artists would study under his watchful eye in his studio. They wanted to learn how to reproduce his technique and form. German art historian Wilhelm von Bode joked that the unintended consequence of this sort of mentorship was that “Rembrandt painted 700 pictures. Of these, 3,000 are still in existence.” The Adoration of the Shepherds Aside from his technical skill, Rembrandt was also a masterful visual storyteller. Every inch of a Rembrandt is filled with intentionality. His use of light to show you what matters (like the radiance coming out from the manger in The Adoration of the Shepherds) and his application of shadows to raise questions (like the dark figure in the upper left corner of his Return of the Prodigal Son) is often imitated, but never quite duplicated. His ability to capture furious motion a single frame (like in The Storm on the Sea of Galilee) plays like an optical illusion. I’ll leave you to discover the great Dutch master on your own. For now, I want to focus on something Rembrandt said: “I can’t paint the way they want me to paint and they know that too. Of course you will say that I ought to be practical and ought to try and paint the way they want me to paint. Well, I will tell you a secret. I have tried and I have tried very hard, but I can’t do it. I just can’t do it!” Rembrandt knew he was a great artist, no question. But he also knew he wasn’t limitless. And one of his limits (a limit we all share) was his inability to be what people sometimes wanted him to be or to do what people sometimes wanted him to do. This must have been very frustrating at times. Surely there must have been days when he would have loved more than anything else in the world to be exactly what others wanted him to be. I have those days. Return of the Prodigal Son He was so incredibly gifted and for this history will never forget him. But when he tried to train his hands to create another man’s vision, he just couldn’t do it. Neither can I. Neither can you. He was destined to paint Rembrants and Rembrandts only. He had to train his hands. He had to have started somewhere. It’s hard to imagine, but surely there once existed some pretty terrible Rembrandts. Early works. False starts. Work where he was clearly trying too hard. Too self-indulgent. Undisciplined. What’s not hard to imagine, however, is a solitary figure in a lamp-lit room mixing his oils, preening his brushes—thinking and painting and thinking and painting. For what? For mastery. And why? For joy, because the mastery of something leads to a greater enjoyment of it. Singers, musicians, painters, writers, athletes, and artists of every sort know this. The harder we work at something, the more we are able to enjoy it. Rembrandt knew this too. He said, “Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.” Annie Dillard said it another way: “Who will teach me to write? The page, the page, that eternal blankness.” The Storm on the Sea of Galilee All Rembrandt could do was paint and paint and paint. He couldn’t be a different painter. Only Rembrandt. And this is what he sought to master. For this he trained his hands. When I stand before a Rembrandt, my senses come alive and I know I am in the presence of greatness. I am a fool if I don’t at least try to understand the joy that comes from mastery. I’m a fool if I don’t regard myself as his student in those moments when we’re in the room together. His slow patient work of mastering a skill brings me joy. How much more joy must it have brought him to not only stand in front of one of his paintings, as I have, but to then also know that he was the one who created it. A couple hundred years after Rembrandt’s death, there came another student of the Dutch master, the poor and lovely Vincent van Gogh, who said, “Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. Rembrandt is truly called a magician… that is not an easy calling.” Mastery doesn’t just produce stories. It considers how to tell them, and occasionally even provides new language when there are no words. The canvases Rembrandt left us do so much more than illustrate scenes. They are like the picture of the Dawn Treader that sucked the Pevensies and Eustace into an adventure whose goal was to reach the end of everything in the hopes that beauty would be all that remained. What are you mastering? What are you practicing in order to make clear what you don’t yet know? If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you reach points where you begin to wonder if it might just be easier to plateau. And if not plateau, then quit altogether. Don’t. Please. This world is short on masters, and consequently short on joy too.

Welcome, friends, to the new Rabbit Room. Some of you may remember a post from a zillion years ago called “The Suggestion Box,” where I asked you to tell me what you were looking for in an upgrade. You answered diligently, I put the suggestions into categories, and . . . a zillion years went quietly by. Well, thanks to our friend Jonathan Forsythe at Makeshift Creative, we’ve managed to wrangle the new site into the corral. Let me tell you about some of the changes: Prettiness. Jonathan Forsythe is the Verner Panton of web design. Verner Panton is a famous Danish interior designer I just discovered by googling “famous interior designers.” He—Jonathan, that is—bent over backwards to make a site that would resemble the website we would like to visit in our wildest dreams. Sharing. Let’s face it. Twitter and Facebook are here to stay. At least until they’re gone. In the meantime, we’ve entered the frenzy by making it easy for you to share your favorite Rabbit Room posts with your “friends” and “followers,” and also with “total strangers” and “people you only know through social media networks.” Functionality. Remember those tabs? “Story,” “Art,” “Music,” and such? Well, they were a decent idea, but they never did much good. They were, in the words of Eric Peters, “just dead weight, like a big ol’ mole.” So they’re gone. You’ll also notice that you can peruse the archives. At last, you can find that one post we wrote, about that one topic that one day. We’ve been putting up a post almost every weekday since 2007, so there’s a lot of interesting stuff buried in there if I say so myself, on behalf of ourselves. Podcasts! The podcast is finally alive again. We’re hoping to put one up every other week. Today’s features Randall Goodgame and a fun conversation about his seedy early days when he played jazzy versions of Jimmy Buffet songs for the old dudes in Polos at the yacht club brunch. (This is not a joke.) You can still get the podcast from iTunes, or you can subscribe and listen right here. Events. We’ve added a widget to the home page that will let you know about upcoming concerts and speaking events featuring Rabbit Room contributors and members of the Square Peg Alliance. What, you didn’t think the Rabbit Room writers were just sitting around every day reading The Silmarillion, did you? No, no. We’re traversing these United States with our guitars and swords, and we like meeting you guys. There are more little tweaks, but that’ll get you started. I’m sure there are going to be a few hiccups since this is a new baby and all, so have a look around and tell us what you think. If you run into any problems just leave a comment in this post and we’ll do our best to figure it out. When I say “we” I mean “Jonathan.” And when I say “Jonathan” I mean Jonathan Forsythe, the Verner Panton of web design. Speaking of comments, I need to address one more issue: Moderation. While the posts have remained more or less consistent in matters content, diverse though it is, the nature of some of the discussion has shifted. Over the years we’ve managed to navigate some pretty sticky topics with very little moderation; the conversation was civil and respectful and (for me, at least) enlightening. Lately, though, the nature of the comments has subtly shifted in a way that’s hard to articulate, and that shift has led to the moderation (read: deleting) of some comments. It’s also led to repeated complaints via emails and face-to-face conversations from long-time readers of the Rabbit Room, informing us that they’ve stopped reading the comment section altogether. Yipes! So, as the Proprietor of this establishment, I want to set some ground rules. (I also want to repeat the exclamation “Yipes!” for emphasis.) 1) Be sure your comment is gracious. Give the other commenters and/or authors the benefit of the doubt, and speak the truth in love. 2) Avoid nitpicking. If the comment doesn’t add real light to the conversation, or if it derails the conversation from the author’s subject, there’s a chance it could be deleted. (Note: I’m not talking about funny stuff, or lighthearted bandying. That’s all fine, to a point. I’m talking about critical nitpicking.) 3) Try not to overpost. I’m really glad we have such a high level of interaction, but sometimes a lot of comments from the same person can make the place feel like–well, like an Oxford pub where one person is talking louder than everyone else and dominating the conversation. Be content, from time to time, to simply sip your ale and listen. 4) Use good syntax. (Now it’s me doing the nitpicking, isn’t it?) As a general rule, don’t use exclamation points. As an absolute rule, don’t ever use two or more in a row. Check your spelling. Take your time, when at all possible, to make the sentences read well. I know it’s a pain when you’ve submitted a comment and realize too late that there’s a typo. A lot of you guys are diligent about posting a follow up comment with your correction, and whenever I see that I’m happy to sneak around back and fix it for you. This isn’t me saying that every comment has to be crafted out of immaculate, perfectly written sentences–Lord knows, our posts have plenty of errors. But here’s the thing: we’re shooting for excellence. It’s not like this has been a huge problem. I’m just throwing it out there, being the Proprietor and all. 5) Wake not the sleeping giant. What I mean is, if a topic has 98 comments and you read the first few, then scroll to the bottom and raise a bunch of questions, and then your post is moderated, it might be because the points you’re raising have already been addressed and re-addressed, hashed and re-hashed, and it’s just time to close the book. Picture a group of friends in the back room of that same Oxford pub who, having sucked the marrow out of some topic, are sick of it and ready to move on to the fish and chips–only to have some guy or gal burst into the room and loudly opine about the dead topic. I’ve never wanted the Rabbit Room to be a place for argument and debate, but rather a haven for discussion and even a place to experience beauty. That’s why we try not to write negative reviews or critiques (the One Minute Reviews being an exception, mainly because it’s so funny to watch Thomas get riled up over a bad movie); if we don’t like a book or an album, we just keep silent. Silence can be good. Even on a glorified blog. This list isn’t absolute. We may still delete a comment we deem inappropriate or unhelpful (or out of line with the above list in some way), and you may get mad or hurt. You may disagree with our judgment. Please know we’re not trying to be malicious. We’re doing the best we can to guard the magic of this place and follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. Hopefully no moderation will be needed, but we’re willing to if things get weird. Okay. I’m glad that’s over. Now we can get on with the poetry and videos and essays and stories and songs this place was created to foster. Dear Readers, I’m grateful for your kindness, enthusiasm, and support of this experiment in the celebration of beauty, truth, and goodness. Enjoy the Rabbit Room 2.0, The Proprietor

In early March I joined forces with Jason Ingram and Rusty Varencamp, th team that produced Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue, to break ground on my next full-length record. Originally we had planned to record last summer, but with the still growing success of “More Like Falling In Love” it seemed good to let Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue have a little more time to find it’s audience. We were then blessed again to have a good reception at radio for “I Am New” – after 11 years of doing this full-time, I am overjoyed to finally have connected with radio and have been grateful to find a whole new audience for my work. 2011 was a busy touring season for us, too, which left me little time to write new songs for the next record. But any moment I could break away was spent working on songs that I hoped would give shape to a new record and the next season of my ministry. I came into the first day of recording with about half the songs still needing the lyrics finished. Every spare moment was spent trying to find out exactly what these songs wanted to say. In the past, this kind of situation has caused me a lot of stress. But I was surprised at how much peace I had going into this. My mantra (I use that term in the colloquial sense, not as an expression of Hindu practice :- ) went something like this: “God has called me to this work, he’s made me to be a song writer, I’ve been entrusted with the gift of songwriting. God has intended for me to make this record. I trust his plan, I trust the gift and calling he’s given, which means that I trust that as a writer of songs, these songs will be written when they need to be.” Deep breath. Followed by waiting. And eventually they were all written!Sometimes I was working on the lyric up until the very last moment – and in one instance even going back after the fact and re-singing a new lyric – but they were all written, and I’m trusting that they are all what they were intended to be.It was the closest I’ve come to striking that balance of believing that it wasn’t all up to me, and yet working diligently as though it were. That sounds very Calvinist of me, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t mean it to be necessarily; it somehow feels to me both more and less than that. But that’s another blog… I’d like to think that this is my best record yet. Time will tell whether that’s just the newness of it all or a legitimate assessment, but I know one thing: I’ve never been more grateful for a batch of songs. I feel like as a whole they touch deeper places of truth, fear, and hope than any other collection of songs I’ve brought to a record. I was blessed to have the players comment repeatedly about how this project felt different and one night I even got a text from Jason Ingram saying he thought this was going to be a special record and that he was grateful to be working on it with me. Maybe that’s up to you, the listener, to decide, but these kindnesses and encouragements add up and help assure me that we’re on the right track. My modest success with radio this past year has made everybody I work with hopeful and expectant, but we still had to work with a realistic budget, which means that every moment had to count – no room for mistakes or for songs getting away from us. As we wondered early on about what the sonic signature should be for this record, we decided it would be cool to build it around the drums. So we brought in Paul Mabury – my favorite drummer in the business – a day early to be really intentional about beats and the overall drum vibe. He spent the day dreaming up live loops that he would create with stomping and all kinds of other cool sounds and we laid all of that down before the band came in. With the foundation of the live drum loops and textures in place, the rest of the band already had a bit of a road map for what kind of vibe to go after on each of the songs and we set to chasing after it. Guitarist Mike Payne joined us again and we also had Tony Lucido, one of Nashville’s most sought after bass players. With every song, we asked, “what’s your first instinct for how you would play this song? Okay, now let’s not do that and wonder what else the song could be.” They worked hard on every single track to reach for something that felt original and unexpected, and yet not showy in a way that would be distracting. John Mays, the head of A&R at Centricity, made me aware that nearly every song spoke of fear. I hadn’t realized that before, but as I look through the lyrics fear has emerged as a theme, as well as the antidotes to fear, which mostly have to do with trust and allowing ourselves to be loved. More on all of that later… I tried to make a one take video each day to let people hear little pieces of the songs as they were being “born” and I’ve included them here. They’ll probably make more sense when you hear the finished project, but hopefully they give you a little taste of what we’re cooking up for you. The release date is September 13th and the tentative title is “A Way To See In The Dark”. Thanks for listening and caring about my music, Here are the videos: Day 2: The Sound Of Our Breathing Day 3: Remind Me Who I Am Day 4: Good To Be Alive Day 5: No Thief Like Fear Day 6: Nothing Is Wasted

I think there’s a god in the volcanos. Let me explain. I came across a news item recently about the first ever expedition inside a volcano. There’s a National Geographic program coming up about it. I’m setting my DVR, because that is cool. But the article I read starts in an interesting way: Volcanoes have fascinated human beings since the dawn of time; thankfully, now we know enough not to think of them as powerful earth/fire gods, but to understand them as the magnificent phenomena they are. I’d prefer to remove the word “thankfully” from that sentence. In fact, I almost want to replace it with, “unfortunately.” I’m not trying to get you to embrace some kind of weird spirituality with minor gods everywhere, or to start sacrificing animals to volcano gods so they won’t erupt, but I think the loss of supernatural thinking is a detriment to our culture, not something to be thankful for. To be sure, believing in the wrong kind of god is dangerous, for we end up doing things like sacrificing animals – or worse. But not believing there is a supernatural force and energy operating within all physical phenomenon is harmful to understanding reality. We’ve abandoned faith as a way of knowing, which means we’ve abandoned spiritual vision as a way of knowing. A person who believes there’s an angry god in the volcano may not be at the truth, but he’s closer to the truth than the person who thinks there’s no god at all. This is why C.S. Lewis, for example, has no problem bringing wine gods (Bacchus) and fruit goddesses (Pomona) into Narnia. He knew full well that people who believed the gods could throw parties and make apple orchards grow were closer to understanding and knowing Aslan than those who didn’t believe in the possibility of the supernatural/spiritual in the physical at all. Our nominalistic thinking is not something to celebrate. I’m going to stick to my belief that God is in the volcano, and that when crawling through its holes, crevices, and lava pools, we can learn about the work of the Maker, the tragedy of a fallen world, and hope for the redemption to come.

(In which I revisit the thinking behind my song “More Like Falling In Love”) Give me words I’ll misuse them Obligations I’ll misplace them ‘Cause all religion ever made of me Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet… Verse two of my song “More Like Falling In Love” begins with a statement about words. I have a deep affection for words and language and the truth they reveal as well as the stories they conspire to create, which is one of the reasons why, I suppose, I enjoy my vocation as a writer/arranger of words.And yet the older I get the more I’m aware of their limits. Take for instance the exchange of words in any conversation: there are the words you speak and then there are the words that the other person hears, and they rarely carry the same meaning. I get discouraged about this and try to compensate by painstakingly choosing my words with great care in hopes of avoiding misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict. I do this in my blogs, in my songs, and nearly all of my conversations. It’s a form of control, I suppose – trying to manage things that are ultimately unmanageable. I also have a deep need to be understood that borders on obsession. That’s why my blogs are always so long – I try to anticipate misunderstandings and preemptively address them. But no matter how many words I pile on top of each other, few will read my words as carefully as I write them and I’m bound to get emails or comments from concerned readers who misunderstand my intent. And even if they do read them carefully, they can’t help but bring their own history and life experience to bear upon them in a way that will inevitably color them differently than I intended. So, though I love words, they fail me every time. While it may sound admirable the way I speak of taking such care with the meaning I intend to convey, It can get ugly when I try too hard to control how people will hear my words and even uglier when I try to manage the biases, baggage, and personal interpretations they might bring to them. In my marriage this can look like meaningful conversations degrading into fruitless battles over what was really said or even what certain words mean. “No, that may be what you heard, but that’s not what I said…” is the way that I might try to answer Taya when her feelings get hurt over a misunderstanding. It’s an answer that – even if it’s true – really only serves to clear my name while doing little to make her feel love. My solution has often been to use more and more words to try and clear up the misunderstanding – but more words only mean more opportunities to be misunderstood. A simple apology, willingly validating the other’s feelings and perhaps even absorbing the misunderstanding rather than compounding it, accomplishes so much more. My mentor told me once that when there is misunderstanding, he has learned to say less in hopes of avoiding more of the same. But I believe in words too much! I keep hoping they can save the day! I’ve been thinking about Jesus as he stood before Pilate and said… well… nearly nothing at all. Could it be that Jesus knew that words and well-constructed arguments would not save the day? “What is truth?” Pilate asks. Jesus’ answer couldn’t have been more potent when he wordlessly stands there as Truth himself. Ah words… I love them, but I hate them too. While they are a powerful resource I have for sharing my heart with others, they distort as much as they reveal the truth – and this is the way of it even when my motives are pure! Because of course there are other times when my motives are less than pure. We’re all familiar with the regret of saying things we wish we could unsay. In my anger and hurt I’ve used precious words to wound people. I myself have been wounded by vicious or even merely careless words. Sometimes we wound with the words we do not say. While we know all too well of the obvious abuse of the power of words, there are subtler and I would say even more insidious forms of this abuse, like when we use words to gain power or to hide. The Pharisees were lovers of words, and the words they loved and became skilled in appropriating were the very words of God. They became experts at pressing these holy, precious, and true words into the service of stroking their own self-righteousness, silencing their detractors, and gaining power over the people they were supposed to serve. What’s even more impressive is the way they managed to take these holy words that are imbued with life giving power to lay bare the human heart and twist them in such a way as to hide the wickedness of their own hearts. White washed tombs is what Jesus called them. Indeed, words are easily misused to wound others, distort the truth, and serve personal agendas. Sadder still is how even when we have the best of intentions, our words are still just as likely to distort, wound, and alienate – especially when it comes to conveying love. In my marriage, that Petri dish of sanctification, I can see how often I’m tempted to love my wife with the love of a Pharisee – hanging on her every word, cataloging them, cross-referencing them in an attempt to understand her, to be a good husband and get a handle on what’s expected of me. But just as the Pharisees knew the words of God inside and out but failed to recognize Jesus as the consummation of all those words, so too have I often heard my wife’s words but missed her heart. Ah words… you fail me at every turn. Lately I’ve taken comfort in the notion that maybe even God can relate to my predicament. In the Old Testament God gave us words to live by – ten holy commandments that were to help make us free and come alive.But down through the centuries these words have been misunderstood, maligned, and obscured as more and more words were added for “clarification,” only serving to confuse and leave us more fearful and guilt-ridden than ever. Is this a failure on God’s part to convey his heart? Or merely one more example of the limits of words – the way the meaning of words (even the words of God) can get lost in translation when we hear them through the filters of our shame, guilt, and fear? Generations later Jesus would try to make it easier on us by telling us that really, there are only two laws to really worry about: Love God, and love others (including yourself), and still we’ve managed to misuse and misunderstand even these. It’s comforting for me to think that maybe even God knows something of the frustration of the limits of words. But more than that, it’s inspiring to see His solution. After centuries of words piled upon words, he came up with a new way of speaking, a new language that would speak louder and clearer than all the words that came before. He boiled it all down and spoke a single, living, incarnate Word: Jesus. In the life of Jesus, the Word made flesh, the heart of God and the intent of the law is finally revealed. The Word of God now had hands to carry us.Love became less of a theory and more of a revolution.Or as I’d like to think our very own Ron Block might say, Love became less of a demand and more of a promise (what do you say Ron, would you have said that?). Where written words had alienated us, a Living Word redeemed us. That’s not to say, of course, that we should disregard the written words that came before. On the contrary, Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the law but to complete it. The Living Word – Jesus – helps us to better understand the written word. “Ah, that’s what God meant,” we say in wonder as we see the Mosaic law come alive in the life of Christ. In other words (ha! Here I go again, hoping to mitigate misunderstanding by using more words!), I can use words to tell my wife I love her, but when I add to those the action of living out my love for her in a way that helps her understand what those spoken words mean (like cleaning up after myself :- ), she’s more likely to believe it when I say “I love you”. Love incarnated is more persuasive than love merely spoken. I’ve used a lot of words to talk about the limit of words, but permit me a few more as I close with a parting story. I have listened to the words of many prayers over my lifetime, but there is one that I remember above all the others, and it was prayed over me by my friend Andrew Peterson when I was going through a very difficult time in my life. He listened to my pain and shared some great encouragement from the story of his own life. At the end of several days of conversation, he asked if he could pray for me, and I said yes – grateful but expecting the usual kind of prayer that feels a bit like being preached at. But his prayer was like no other I’ve ever experienced. We bowed our heads and closed our eyes as he put his hand on my shoulder. And then… silence. No words were spoken in his prayer, but I could feel him moving so I opened my eyes to sneak a peak and found Andrew earnestly praying words in his heart that I would never hear, with tears streaming down his face, his head shaking and bobbing emphatically with passion as he contended in prayer over my situation, in earnest conversation with God… It was not a prayer for the benefit of my hearing, but for the benefit of my soul and it reminded me that we serve a God who hears the deep unspoken groaning of our hearts. When he finished after several minutes, he finally said the one word he would speak of that prayer: “amen”. And I’ve never felt more confident of a prayer being heard as I did that one.

What more can be said about the storied career of Alison Krauss and Union Station? Krauss has 26 Grammy wins to her name — the most for any female artist in history — and her colleagues provide the stunning canvas upon which she sonically paints. Each record is equally inspiring, beautiful and haunting, and Paper Airplane, the band’s first studio release since 2004, is no different. Ron Block recently took some time away from dominating Russell Simmon’s Def Banjoetry Slam to answer our questions about coming together once again with Krauss and company and how the process affects him personally. Q: Just to start, can you take us inside the process of Alison corralling the guys back together again? It’s been several years, so do you get a random phone call? Is there a Krauss phone that lights up Batman style? A: No, I have an AKUS chip implanted in my cerebral cortex and she just pushes a button on her cell phone. Actually, I think after a certain amount of time went by it was just time to make a new record. There were schedules to juggle, songs to find, and everything else that goes with recording five people. Q: Why so many years since the last AKUS record? A: It just ended up working out that way. We came out with Lonely Runs Both Ways in November 2004, toured it, then Alison released A Hundred Miles or More in April 2007 and we toured that until the middle of August in 2007. The plan was to then take a year off. Making the Robert Plant record came along for Alison soon after that, with some touring once it came out. When that was over she hadn’t actually been able to take much time off. Once we started in the direction of making a record, it took a long time to find the right songs and make the entire record, so all in all it turned into six-and-a-half years since our last band record and nearly four years since we’d toured extensively. Q: Was it clear that the chemistry had changed in any way after that time apart? A: I think everyone has changed in certain ways, gotten older, more experienced in what matters and what doesn’t. Viewpoints have changed. From my personal standpoint it took me most or all of the record to figure it all out, where we were going, what people wanted, what I am supposed to do, what is my role, what is my place in the band. There have been a lot of shifts externally, too, shifts in Alison’s management and booking, so everything became different and new, and there’s a learning curve in figuring those things out as well. Q: Why do you say it took you so long to figure out what was going on this time around? Was that disorienting? A: Well, we’ve all been apart for awhile. When people are apart they are having separate, differentiated experiences. These experiences can lead them to come to differing conclusions about the things they do in common. If a husband and wife are apart a lot, they are having a lot of different experiences, which may cause them to come to differing viewpoints about reality. For instance, on Paper Airplane there was a shift from thinking of recording as a tracking/overdubbing process to simply doing the best to get almost everything at tracking. It is a move from seeing it as a process of getting a solid track and then painting varied colors and fixing things, to wanting it to be a single, continuous, experiential moment in time. Overdubs were still done, of course, extra guitar added here, lap steel added there. But the overall idea was to capture an entirely great moment in the first place. “Dimming of the Day” is one of the high water marks of this method on Paper Airplane. I have been the last to move from the concept of recording as painting. And yes it was very disorienting for me, having done it so long the other way. I haven’t been out there these past few years making records with various people and seeing a different way; I’ve been doing it the way we’ve done it before. Shifts like that aren’t easy for me. Q: Are those shifts that you’ll carry with you in your own solo work? A: Definitely. This time off we’ve taken, and these shifts in viewpoint in others have caused quite a bit of disturbance in me, and disturbance can be good. It can be a plowing of hard ground to get ready for the future. Q: With such a legacy for AKUS, how much discussion of this goes on within the band? Do you discuss the longevity or influence or platform? A: Not really all that much. Our discussions are usually more about what is happening now, what we are doing in the immediate future — touring, recording. I do feel like we are moving into an entirely new era for the band. Everyone is older, gaining experience, depth, wisdom, and that reflects itself in the music. Alison’s singing has reached an entirely new level with the new record, and Dan’s as well. It has been interesting being in a band this long; I’ve been with AKUS almost as long as I’ve been married, and in many ways the band experience is similar to marriage. Q: Can you expound on that last line — about marriage? A: In marriage there is courtship, falling in love, commitment, and then as that initial in-love phase dies away we must learn to live with one another as we are, to trust God with — and in — the other person, and to know that no matter what happens, no matter what outer or inner circumstances bring, that initial commitment still stands. I feel that way about AKUS, that no matter where our band goes, or no matter where each of us goes individually, I’m committed to the group both as a band and as individual people. I may sometimes kick against the goad of circumstances; I may feel down at this or that, but when the dust clears I find myself standing up with a renewed sense of knowing I am supposed to be in the band; I was meant for it, musically shaped for it. Being in AKUS has been productive in every way, from being musically satisfying, to relationally growth-producing, to financially sustaining, and especially in my spiritual life. Figuring out my place in the band has helped me sort through a lot of junk inside of me. Q: Just in terms of album support, what should fans expect when it comes to touring? A: We’ll be touring essentially from the beginning of June through possible mid-October. The set will likely contain a lot from the new recording but like other tours will also feature many songs from past recordings. Our tour schedule is up and running at Alison’s website.

I lie in bed these sweet few days When the windows yet are open And the weather yet is fine, And love to hear the dead of night Announce its living presence With hoot and croak and creeping vine. I love the knowledge that for years As I have waited on the bench Beneath the juniper tree, And paid such close attention, There is an owl I’ve never seen An owl, I know, who watches me. I love the sound of secret things, I love to hear their nearness, And to feel their wildness, too. (Three days ago we sowed the seeds And every hour I check the dirt For seedlings pushing through.) I lie in bed awake, alert, Aware of the God of the Garden. I sense in the seed a promise, An unfolding resurrection In the furrowed row, in soil And root, in husk and humus. I sense an ancient heart alive Who haunts these moonlit acres, Blessing, bringing life from death, Dawn from darkness, song from sorrow. The night owl swoops, the zephyr sighs; I hear within the tomb: a breath.