What are you looking for?

Follow me a bit further, if you will, down the road I started in my previous post about the woman who anointed Jesus on that Wednesday evening of that first Easter week. Mark writes, “While Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.” (Mk 14:3) John tells us she used about one pound of this “nard.” First, some context: What is nard? Nard is an oil-based perfume that is extracted from spikenard, a flower that grows in the Himalayas of China, and also in the northern regions of India and Nepal. In Jesus’ day, it carried both medicinal and hygienic value. As a perfume, it was intensely aromatic and of a thick consistency, sort of like honey, only oily instead of sticky. In our convenient world of electrical sockets and running water, we take for granted our ability to take a shower when we stink. This wasn’t available in Jesus’ day, so people often masked their offensive body odors with oils. This is where you get references in scripture that talk about men putting oil on their heads. (Mt 6:17, Lk 7:46) It was a customary sign of hospitality to offer perfumed oils to guests in your home, like we might offer someone a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. With this context before us, let me invite you to imagine the results of this woman’s actions after the dinner was over. What happens when a woman pours a pound of thick, richly aromatic oil-based perfume on the head of a man who doesn’t shower every morning? He takes that scent with him when he leaves. It coats his hair. It eventually trickles down his neck and onto his back and chest. It gets in his pores. At rest, he is a walking diffuser. When he scratches his neck, the scent is agitated and released into the air like a scratch-&-sniff sticker. So what if… What if the scent that filled the room at Simon the Leper’s house also filled the Upper Room the next night? Can you think of a reason it wouldn’t have? I can’t. What if, as Jesus wound through the narrow city streets of Jerusalem, the scent of that perfume lingered mysteriously in the air like a spirit after He had disappeared from sight? And what if, after His arrest, as He was stripped down for the cat of nine tails, the scent of this Himalayan flower was released into the air with every blow, filling the courtyard with an aroma that made everyone ask themselves, “What is that fragrance? Is that nard?” And what if the scent followed the cross to Golgotha along the Via Dolorosa? What if as Jesus hung on the cross dying, every time He pushed Himself up for a breath, the nard came to life again? That would have to be one very expensive application of one very intensely aromatic perfume. Even a year’s wage worth. Imagine that as the Man of Sorrows died on that hill outside Jerusalem, surrounded by Roman soldiers, confused disciples, grieving friends and self-righteous men whose entire lives were one big exercise in missing the point, imagine that the scent of extravagant opulence hung in the air. It would be just like God to do this. Why? Because the cross is the most extravagant example of opulence ever offered, and because the scent of the opulence of His gift of life still hangs in the air today. Where? In His people. Paul puts it this way. “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16) Easter is more than a story. It is a present reality. My Redeemer lives. And He calls me to a new life, not only in the world to come, but even now. May we never forget what the opulence of God makes of us.

(I’ve included the primary Scripture reference for this meditation at the end of the post.) The first several days of the first Easter week were filled with tension and anger from Jesus’ opponents and unflinching resolve from Jesus. He had been on the move, juggling His time between Bethany, Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Words had been His currency, and He had spent piles of them opposing the self-righteous and preparing His disciples for what He had been telling them about for a while now: “that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Mt 16:21) How confusing this must have been for them. But by the time Wednesday rolled around, Jesus was still. He went to the home of Simon the Leper, a man known for what was wrong with him. They shared a meal together and afterward settled in for a time of conversation. As they sat, a woman with an alabaster flask approached Jesus. Though Matthew doesn’t tell us her name, we not only know who she was, we know a little something about that flask too. John tells us this was Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’ sister, (Jn 12:3) and suggests she had been saving this perfume, which was worth a full year’s wages, for this very occasion. (Jn 12:7) She began to pour the perfume on Jesus’ head and feet, which Mark tells us she did by breaking open its container. (Mk 14:3) With this fracture, there was no turning back. Breaking open that alabaster flask was like popping the cork on a $20,000 bottle of champagne. She was not acting on a whim. She offered Jesus everything she had. What drove her? She somehow sensed that what He was about to give was for her. The perfume was a response to what He was in the process of giving to her. The disciples reacted like many men often do. They considered the value of her perfume and regarded her actions as though she might as well have been burning a year’s wages in a bread oven. But they dressed their indignation up in the noble auspices of concern for the poor: Think of the poor people who could have benefited from the sale of this perfume. (cf. Mt 26:8-9) But this is not how her actions hit Jesus. He comes to her aid. What she is doing, He tells them, is beautiful. Appreciate the doctrinal principle here. Though the perfume could have been sold for a year’s wages, what is perfume for? Is it merely a commodity Mary should have held on to in the event that she needed to cash it in? Is this how God would expect her to regard this valuable resource? Apparently not. Perfume is meant to be poured out and released into the air until it is gone in order that it might fill a room with its beautiful and startling aroma. So Mary breaks open the jar and the scent electrifies the senses of everyone present, and Jesus says it is beautiful. Everything in creation testifies to a Creator who delights in beauty for beauty’s sake. So many things that are beautiful didn’t need to be. And it was God elected to make them that way. He opted to make autumn a season saturated with bold, changing color. He didn’t have to make the setting sun the spectacle that it is. But He did. Why? One reason must be because beauty pleases Him. And another must be in order to arrest people by their senses when they’re otherwise just plodding along, heads down, learning to live within the economy of pragmatism. What Mary did was beautiful and Jesus wanted His disciples to know it.She was preparing Him for burial. Jesus sees a great kindness and honor in her gesture. So He returns the honor by saying history will never forget her act of beauty. And as it is, this act of gratitude has been recorded in over 150 languages around the world for over 20 centuries. J.C. Ryle wrote, “The speeches of parliamentary orators, the exploits of warriors, the works of poets and painters, will not be mentioned on that day [of God’s coming Kingdom]; but the least work that the weakest Christian has done for Christ, or His members, will be found written in a book of everlasting remembrance.” By the Wednesday of the first Easter week, Jesus is placing everything in the context of His pending death. Here in this intimate setting with dear friends—with all their quirks and flaws and reputations—the scent of redemption fills the room. Matthew 26:6-16 6Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, 7a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table.8And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? 9For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” 10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. 11For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.12In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. 13Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” 14Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.16And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Some months ago I had a friend redoing my basement after it flooded last May. During his time at my house he mentioned he had been designing the set for a movie being shot at Grace Chapel’s big old barn out back. He told me some of the plot line, which I found intriguing, being the me that I am, and I mentioned, off the cuff, that if they needed any music for it to let me know. It wasn’t long before my friend told me to come over and meet the folks shooting the movie. So I became involved. Never having done anything remotely like this, I had no boundaries or “ought-tos” in my head. I also had no idea of what to do except proceed. One of the things that helped me greatly was the time crunch. The film The Nothing was accepted for the Nashville Film Festival, which put my deadline at the morning of April 6th. We pulled an all-nighter and pushed through. From a human perspective, offering to do the music was a completely stupid thing to do on my part. With no training, no experience, I opened my big mouth and made my committal. I had my studio, and my instruments, but that was all; I was to make sounds that brought tension, fear, relief, hope, anger, sadness, redemption, and I had little idea how I was going to do it. The end result was that I learned something experientially; that in composition, as in any other area of music, art, or life, the best stuff happens when caution is thrown to the wind, rules are bent, and we refuse to listen to the voices in our heads saying, “It’ll never work!” or “What will so-and-so say?” We step off a cliff edge in faith knowing God will cause us to fly.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TheNothing.mp3 From a spirit-view, this was the best thing I could have done for myself. It is easy to spin our wheels holding to old paradigms, other people’s perceptions of us, and especially our perceptions of other people’s perceptions of us. These manifestations of the false self tie us down, shut our mouths, and put the light of Christ in us under a bushel. In some areas of my life I’ve allowed this to happen, especially in the past few years. But none of that matters. In fact, nothing matters but faith expressing itself through love, utter reliance expressing itself as a wholehearted committal of one’s entire being to a particular project, a particular person, a particular God. We are to create as children create, taken up in the thing itself, not bothering about whether so-and-so will think it is good, burning with the fire of creation, the passion of purpose, the thrill of bringing an idea into manifested, tangible reality. I don’t mean simply creation of art. I mean any kind of creation – the creation of a marriage, of a family, of a job, of a friendship where only enemies had existed before. In the end doing this project was an eye-opener. I had real joy in the process, a spontaneous faithing that was nearly continuous, and some ridiculous ideas that actually worked. The Nothing premiered at the Nashville Film Festival April 14-15. It was a good test run. There’s still work to go on finishing details.

Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday. Is there a more ambivalent day on the Christian calendar? “Hosanna!” shouted the people lining the streets of Jerusalem. Literally, “Save us!” Save us, they meant, from the Roman oppressor. Jesus did come to save them, of course, but not from the Romans. Over the next few days, the crowd would come to realize that Jesus wasn’t on board with their agenda. By Friday the very people who shouted “Hosanna!” were shouting “Crucify him!” So it has always made me a little uneasy to commemorate the shouting and the palm-waving on Palm Sunday. Does praise count as praise when the people are that confused and, as it turns out, that bloodthirsty? We have baptized all our children on Palm Sunday. The first was more or less accidental; the Sunday that was convenient and available happened to be Palm Sunday. We held our boy in his long white gown and the children came down the aisle with their palm branches and the big organ rumbled and we sang, All glory, laud, and honor To Thee, Redeemer King To whom the lips of children Made sweet hosannas ring. Immediately we understood that Palm Sunday, traditionally associated with the faith and praise of children, was the perfect day to recognize and celebrate a child’s place in the Covenant. So we baptized our other five children on Palm Sundays too. We came to think of Palm Sunday as our family holiday and were a little sad whenever the day came around and we didn’t have anybody to baptize. It may be my imagination or selective memory, but Palm Sunday seems always to be beautiful–sunny and bright after the long, gray nastiness of a Nashville winter. Yet Palm Sunday has still troubled me. What, exactly, are we celebrating? My friend and pastor Russ Ramsey preached yesterday. He helped me see that we celebrate on Palm Sunday the same thing we celebrate any time we baptize a baby. He summed it up in a sentence: “Jesus is always doing more than you think.” We expect Jesus to deliver us from Romans or fears or insecurities or money troubles or addictions or heartache or loneliness. But Jesus came to deliver you from troubles that go much deeper than any of those. “I am doing a new thing here,” he is always saying. “You have no idea.” On that first Palm Sunday there wasn’t a soul in Jerusalem who understood what Jesus was up to. As the scripture points out, even “his disciples did not understand these things at first.” They were as ignorant of his purposes as a little baby at the baptismal font. When it comes to that, if I’m any less ignorant myself, it’s through no merit or wisdom of my own, but only by God’s grace. Yet Jesus did what he came to do. He continues to do what he means to do, requiring neither our permission or our full understanding. I don’t wish to suggest that our will and our understanding don’t figure into the equation. I do wish to suggest, however, that this business of sin and redemption is full of mysteries, and our grasp of things isn’t as important in the end as our willingness to believe God even as we inhabit the mystery. And I’m thankful for a day to commemorate Jesus’ unflagging determination to rescue people who had no idea how badly they needed to be rescued. Hosanna! He is always doing more than we think. Russ Ramsey has put together a series of daily readings he calls “Easter Week in Real Time.” They walk the reader day-by-day through Holy Week, showing from the Gospels what was happening each day between Palm Sunday and Easter. You can find “Easter Week in Real Time” here at The Rabbit Room. I’ll be reading them this week, and I commend them to you.

Smack on the corner of the busiest street in Asheville, North Carolina, scrunched between a rickety old neighborhood and the black snake of the freeway is a health food store. I know this because Asheville is one of my favorite towns in the world and when, in my travels, I can snatch a day or two in its tree-guarded streets, I do. There is a gracefully decrepit old bed and breakfast that makes a cozy base for my many rambles up ivy-tangled streets. By dawn and dusk light, I prowl old roads and woodsy dead ends, steeping myself in the cool, mountain quiet that comes so rarely in my busy days. Several visits back, I got hungry one night after a long evening walk and forayed out in search of a homemade treat. The locals pointed me to a natural foods store for the best desserts around. I found the shop just before it closed, whizzed my car into a spot and was in a mighty hurry to snatch my snack. I walked through those doors, took one look, and stopped still. Weathered wood floors and bins piled with homegrown vegetables met my eyes. Bread in wicker baskets, and that fresh, growing smell of countless green things tumbled together greeted my nose. I walked slowly in, amidst flatbeds of seedlings and bins of grain hunkered next to stands of fresh, local fruit. I wanted to stop, right there in the entrance, to take all the toppling beauty in, for that store jolted my soul. Some sleeping part of my heart that once lived, and loved, much closer to earth and plant and sky came suddenly awake. Though I am thoroughly ensconced in the suburbs at present, I did spend quite a few of my young years as a country kid. My grandmother had two-hundred acres of scrubby, cedar pocked land which I spent countless hours exploring. There was a stubborn orchard that bore bright, stunted apples, and a beleaguered garden in which we daily battled ferocious bugs to cull a few, ruby-sheened tomatoes. But all of it was my delight, all of it a new world for my taking and my just-wakened little soul was keenly aware of every whisper and scent of the earth as it sidled up to greet me. The musty damp of a barn corner, the heady green scent of fresh-mown grass, the scratch of cedar, the fragile perch of a butterfly in my hand. I couldn’t have said it out right, but some hushed corner of my heart knew that my outdoor world was rife with wonder, with growth that never ceased, colors that waxed and waned, scents that came to me as if from another world. I hunger for that in my modern, streamlined life. Sometimes, amidst a day of car and concrete and computer, I yearn for earthiness with something akin to homesickness. One step though, in that Asheville store, and I was back in the tumbled, gorgeous world of my childhood, where every corner of creation whispered a secret I yearned to know. That night, I shook myself back to reality and unearthed a chocolate cake to rival few I’ve yet tasted, but I walked out slowly, sad to leave this small world of a place in which the wonder of my childhood greeted me at the door. The next day, on the way to the airport, I hurried in to grab a snack for the airplane ride home. I was looking for some vitamin or other when I suddenly turned round and saw… well. I saw something that grew a poem in my head right there. The sight I saw compounded all the old mystery I felt, all the remembered savor of earthy things into a few words of wonder. This is what came: Grocery store corners and neat row Lines and price-point signs For cabbage, cakes, and bursting Grapes in hurried hands of people In a speed of modern harvest for Their nightly feast, the slap-bang Grab of sustenance before they Sleep, I pitter past, list half done, Check one item more, I bend down, snatch my prize Stand up and Stop. One jar of red like cardinal’s wings One sapphire stack of cornflower Sheaves, and one jar labeled Horehound leaves. Caldendula, mint, cranberries; Holy basil, lemon thyme, All glassed and jarred in grinning Lines, three sudden shelves of rainbow Jars, I’m Eve, flashed back into a Garden world where leaves were healers, Roots were keepers of the dim, Sweet secret forces formed To spark our blood Alive.

Florida State University film student, Patrick Gines, approached me early in 2010 about writing a commissioned song for his film thesis project, When The Waters Rise. Randomly, I was scheduled to play a concert at his home church in Tallahassee just a few days after his initial email. (“Random” never seems quite an accurate enough word for these sorts of occurrences.) Patrick (director) and I met at the show where he handed me an early draft of his script. With another couple of Florida concerts that weekend, I read the script and, in a Sarasota hotel room, wrote “Don’t Hold Your Breath.” Returning to Florida a few months later, with only a brief window of time to shoot, Patrick and I (mostly Patrick) made a music video – my first ever – in which a homeless man named “David” unequivocally steals the show. DHYB will be on my new album, hopefully releasing in 2011. Until then, I hope you enjoy. [Song recorded & produced by Andrew Osenga] Don’t Hold Your Breath by Eric Peters from Patrick Gines on Vimeo.

(Last year I wrote this series of posts in response to questions about the meaning of my song, “More Like Falling In Love”. With the re-release of the song on my current remix project, Song Cycles, I thought it was reason enough to revisit, revise, and repost them.) It ought to be More like falling in love Than something to believe in More like losing my heart Than giving my allegiance Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now It’s like I’m falling in love… When I first got the idea for this song, it seemed like an obvious enough truth that God prefers passionate devotion to cool intellectual assent; that he desires the kind of worshipful obedience that overflows from a relationship with him instead of the obligatory obedience based on fear and our misguided attempts at self-sufficiency. It seemed like Christianity 101 to me, maybe almost too obvious if anything. And yet I’ve been surprised to receive more push back on this song than any other I’ve written. Since its release there’s been a steady stream of criticism that the song is, as one person said, “based too much on love” (which is a remarkable statement in my opinion, but that’s probably a topic for another post). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily bothered or threatened by any of this – by and large the majority of listeners have embraced the song and I’m grateful – but I’ve been perplexed by the number of people who have expressed concern over it since it seemed like one of the “safest” songs I’ve ever written. I never saw it coming. I know that I’m not infallible and that of course there may have been another way I could have written the song that might have been more clear, so I don’t mean this as a defensive missive to silence critics. But everything being equal, it’s given me an opportunity to be curious about the different reasons it may have sparked the response that it has. For starters, I suppose a lot depends on the predisposition a person brings to the song based on what the words “falling in love” mean to them. I can understand their concern if they assume that the kind of love I’m talking about is based on emotionalism – warm, fuzzy feelings about God, reducing Him to a cosmic boyfriend/girlfriend. Maybe they think what I’m talking about here is the same kind of thing our culture tries to pass off as “love”: self-centered, hormone induced, emotionally driven romantic Hollywood “love” that is soft on commitment, sacrifice, or backbone. Somebody recently asked my wife in casual conversation if she still felt I was her “soul mate” or if she wanted to “switch it up” and see if there was someone else out there for her. I don’t think this person was maliciously trying to undermine our marriage, but the question revealed how much our culture has distorted the meaning of “love”, reducing it to a matter of selfish fulfillment instead of a life-long bond meant to daily ask of two people to die to themselves and serve the one they have chosen to be bound to. Our very own Andrew Peterson once said that marriage is God’s way of helping husbands die a little each day to our wives because He knows we aren’t man enough to do it all at once. The same could be said for wives, perhaps (I wouldn’t want to disregard their sacrifices). When we allow ourselves to fall in love with someone, we are in a sense choosing the person that we will die for. Of course that means more than simply taking a bullet for them. As heroic as that may be, it is in some ways easier than the more difficult business of a lifetime of hourly dying to our own selfishness and pride, our need to be right, to have the upper hand, and even the instinct to withdraw and protect ourselves from hurt instead of living open-heartedly toward another. All this to say that if the word “love” conjures up images of sappy Hollywood rom-coms instead of the idea of a call to radically give ourselves away, I can see why some might be troubled by a song that champions salvation and discipleship as something more akin to “falling in love” than anything else. But I can’t help but think that if these same people were to give me the benefit of the doubt and consider that I’m reading the same bible they are, they might just as easily assume that I’m talking about love as scripture defines it, where, among other things, we are told that there is no greater love than the kind that would move someone to lay down their life for another. Assuming this context, we might understand “falling in love” as the ignition of a fire that will consume our whole life while it lights up the dark, a wonder as terrifying as it is beautiful. But there were some who, even if they didn’t have an issue with the word “love”, still took me to task for the decidedly romantic language of phrases like “falling in love” and the image of being “swept off my feet”. I get it, I really do, but c’mon – it’s a pop song. We’re already stretching the medium by asking it to convey theological assertions. Besides, the language still works for me – it serves the breezy light-hearted nature of a pop song about love, but it’s also theologically meaningful for me. “Falling in love” and being “swept off our feet”, in my mind at least, imply a loss of control, a sense of being overcome by love. And I wonder if this is closer to the heart of the issue for some who have taken offense with the song. Many of us (myself included), though we long for it, are threatened by love and have found a thousand little ways to flee from it. For love – rightly understood – is dangerous. Like no other force, love will cut us to our core and peel back even the thorniest of our self-protective layers – exposing the depths of our hearts, revealing what it wants to heal, all the while asking us to trust, and drawing us out of our hiding places. We are defenseless against a Love that won’t stop until it sets us free. And freedom, of course, is nearly as terrifying as love. Most of us have been prisoners so long (since the day we were born perhaps?) that we become like inmates who grow to love the predictability of the walls of their prison cell. Freedom is disruptive and represents a new way of living that is beyond our control. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if control is what’s really at stake here. In order to love and allow ourselves to be loved we must give up control, we must become vulnerable. My wife shared a poem with me recently called “The Man Watching” by Rainer Maria Rilke about a coming storm. Here’s part of it: What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names. When we win it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestler’s sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this Angel (who often simply declined the fight) went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. Love is the greater thing that wants to defeat us, the “magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God” as Frederick Buechner says. Could it be that by insisting on the legalistic and intellectual terms of our religious inclinations we are trying to maintain control of the relationship – making our salvation, sanctification, and redemption about what we do? Are we refusing to be defeated by Love? Are we refusing to be set free? It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Galatians 5:1-6

“The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne – everything – to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is – it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every Story in the Bible whisipers his name. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle – the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture. And this is no ordinary baby. This is the Child upon whom everything would depend. This is the Child who would one day – but wait. Our Story starts where all good stories start. Right at the very beginning . . .” So begins The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. You may remember that passage if you’ve been to one of the Behold the Lamb of God concerts. Andrew reads it at the opening of the show and it sets the stage perfectly for the musical story to follow. When we sat down to discuss who we wanted for a guest speaker at this year’s Hutchmoot, Sally Lloyd-Jones was one of the first names to come up. Her melding of story, art, and the coming of Christ is a central theme in the Rabbit Room and something we hope will be the subject of much lively conversation this September. So earlier this year, we extended our invitation to Sally, and now we’re delighted to be able to announce that she’s accepted. Born in Kampala, Uganda, raised in East and West Africa, and at a boarding school in the New Forest (Manor House), the first book Sally ever remembers reading all the way through was The Complete Nonsense by Edward Lear, and she says “Things have never been the same since.” She was educated at Sherborne, went to Sussex University and Paris Sorbonne IV (where she studied Art History), and worked in children’s book publishing for several years (Oxford University Press in Oxford, Octopus Books in London, Joshua Morris in CT, and Reader’s Digest) before leaving in 2000 to write full-time. She’s written many books for children including the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller How To Be A Baby: By Me, The Big Sister (a hilarious “manual” on the behavior of babies by the elder sibling), one of only six children’s titles selected by The New York Times as Notable for 2007. She’s a world-renowned writer with a unique understanding of the power and beauty of storytelling, and we couldn’t be more excited to be hosting her as our keynote speaker at Hutchmoot 2011. Be sure to visit the Hutchmoot website to check out the suggested reading list. We’ve added The Jesus Storybook Bible and a few other topical reads. Look for more to be added as sessions and speakers are announced.

Lake City, MI is as fine a place as any to witness the kingdom come. Throughout the course of my thirty- days at a Young Life summer camp, the faint revelation occurs every Wednesday evening just as the night’s burger-themed dinner is winding down. Tangibly speaking, it has all the trappings of a drive-thru restaurant, minus the automobile exhaust and roller skates. Yet the unmistakable aroma of gifted myrrh and heaven’s grace permeates the room the way a perfume awakens a forgotten memory of a forgotten soul. This unpretentious setting is as placid and unassuming as it is dangerously rife with Habsburg wedding than it does an American 1950’s-era grease joint At first glance the scenery, characters, and homemade props are innocuous. But like the curtain going up on the final act of a play, I see something more everlasting, the true scope of the moment. As the evening progresses and the scales fall from my cynical eyes, this benign vignette trumpet-screams with sacred peals that make me wilt. The event’s zenith takes place after the dining hall work crew, comprised entirely of high school volunteers, serves the final embellishments of dinner. They clear plates, cups, and silverware and then discreetly retreat into the kitchen. Amid the general playfulness of the room, no one seems to notice the servers’ subtle disappearance. The vast dining hall is decked out in all the vestments of a pre-60’s America, from the red-and-white checkered tablecloths to the shimmering streamers and paraphernalia draped festival-like overhead. Everyone, campers included, is bedecked in period garb: rolled up white-sleeve t-shirts, pomade pompadours, resplendent bouffant dos, and painted lips and eyes. The girls and boys serving on work crew are a forty-person team: beautiful, handsome, and hailing from all points of America. Suddenly, era music (á la Chuck Berry) blares over the loudspeakers, and the previously sequestered dining hall servers simultaneously burst back into the room parading with one another and dancing a choreographed bit. As if on cue, they fan out into the seated, gawking crowd of teen-aged guests and proceed to select dance partners from among them. In many instances I witness attractive work crew girls taking the hands of some not so worldly-handsome, or “lovely,” high school boys to dance with them. By the looks on some of their scarlet faces, I imagine it is probably the first dance for many of these gents. As I witness the boys’ delighted, silent pride at being handpicked for the occasion, I empathize with their sweaty palms and gut full of nervous butterflies. (My own memory of being shy and scared-to-death-of-pretty-girls is still fixed vividly and awkwardly in my mind. Some inadequacies are slow to erode.) But they dance, and it is at this moment when the noise of earth – our longing for acceptance and approval – is drowned out by the melee of a welcoming heaven in its unconditional melody. I see illustrated before my eyes, like the intentions of a renowned playwright, the glory of the lovely seeking out the unlovely, rapturing them, revealing to them in so few words that the heart is, after all, the thing that matters most. Traversing all points past and future, the canvas vigorously paints itself before me, reminding me of my own final and glorious Reconciliation: the first dance shared by the long-separated bride and bridegroom. In short, it is a brief snapshot of an eternal kingdom, of a good and merciful heaven, that final resting place of flesh, bone, hate, hypocrisy and perception masquerading as truth. Can you see it? It is the lone lamb missing from the fold, resting now in the lion’s arms, unscathed, un-fearing, cherished beyond rational comprehension. The question is not whether we get lost. The question is whether or not we allow ourselves to be found in our unloveliness. Most days I spend veiled in some desperate form of vanity, basking in rabid self-centeredness, unable to see heaven revealing its secrets to me like a prolific victory garden. I am thankful that once a week, at least during my double fortnight here, I am allowed to witness this playful, harmless, innocent scene. I must excuse myself from the table and from the dining hall because the holiness whirling about me is more than my presence can bear. I quell tears at the sight of homely children waltzing about the room in the hands of lovely and handsome members of the opposite sex, many of whom may not fully comprehend, this side of heaven, the full implications of their small act of restoring value and worth to a fellow human being. On this night of metaphor, the pairing of human dignity and God’s habitual love is clothed in purple royalty. At epiphany’s dawning I realize it will one day be me doing the dancing: the unlovely, ragged creature of earth taking the hand of incarnate beauty, dancing about the halls of heaven as if that luminous venue had been reserved for me from the beginning. It is a dance I long for.

When the recording of my next full length album got pushed back in mid-2010, we started to wonder about releasing an interim project for the fans who were early adopters and have been waiting for something new for a while now. The original plan was to try and do a covers project with Derek Webb (something I still hope to do in the next 12 – 18 months :- ) in the Fall or early Winter, but it quickly became clear that our schedules wouldn’t allow for it. Kind of… A remix project is less certain to sell than a cover’s project, so my label had to scale back the budget, hoping to earn back their investment. The new budget would allow us to do only four songs with Derek, but limitations can often be creativity’s best friend. As we wondered about how to make the most of what we could of these remixes, the head of A&R at Centricity, John Mays, proposed we turn this project into an inside look at the journey of a song, incorporating the work tapes that I record into my laptop when I’m working out ideas, to the little homemade demo I turn in to the label as we wonder about which songs are worthy of inclusion on a record, to the album version, and then finally to Derek’s remix. This concept got me really excited. As far as I know, this kind of project has never been done before. I fell in love with the uniqueness of the idea as well as the opportunity it gave me to let people have an up close and personal experience with my recording process. For instance, in the work tape of “More Like Falling In Love,” if you listen close you can hear my 4 year old boy, Gus, singing along with me (before he drops what must have been a Lego creation on the floor and yells, “dang!”), and in “Jesus Use Me I’m Yours” you can hear a bit of a completely different version that I had been working on before abandoning it to try a fresh approach with my friend Matt Hammitt (of Sanctus Real). You can also hear Matt and I fishing for melodic ideas for the bridge and the (sometimes awkward) progression as the song finally starts to take its final shape. I love hearing Matt’s voice on this, too. You can also hear Joel Hanson and I as we discover the outro for “I Am New”. Considering the vision of this project, Derek Webb was, of course, the perfect fit. Centricity (my label) wanted us to focus on the two singles that had performed well at radio this year, but I got to pick “Blessed Be” and “Jesus Use Me I’m Yours” – both important songs from my live show that I thought would lend themselves well to being re-imagined by Derek (I think “Jesus Use Me, I’m Yours” is my favorite of the remixes). I imagine it may not be a project for everybody, but it was made specifically for the fans who have graced my work with their attention and enthusiasm and I hope they enjoy the peek behind the curtain of my creative process. It has been a joyful little project for me to work on (mostly because Derek did most of the work ;- ). We made a limited run of only 2500 copies and after that it will only be available digitally. The new full length record is coming in September! But until then, I give you Song Cycles.http://bashful-building.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/MoreLikeRemix.mp3

Andy Osenga hopes the force is with him. Or perhaps he’s boldly going where no songwriter… you get the picture. In case you haven’t heard, the talented songwriter/producer is making a sci-fi concept album and asking you to blast off with him. And if you think that sounds nerdy, you haven’t even scratched the surface. The beauty of Andy’s latest project is that it’s a sign of an artist confidently creating out of his own identity and asking a community of people to join him to that end. To this writer, it’s a glimmer of the life to come — a place where truth, beauty and community all take primary seats at the table together under the banner of a glorious God. It’s artists like Andy, who follow their admittedly nerdy hearts to the places they’re called to, who serve as important guides challenging us to do the same. To the communal end, Kickstarter is the central hub for all who want to support Leonard, The Lonely Astronaut. Whether you’re in it to support the arts or to own a piece of backyard aeronautical history, everyone at the Rabbit Room believes it a worthy endeavor. Q: Let’s start with this idea of inviting the community to be a part of the recording process or to fund it. Was that a difficult decision at all or was it rather easy? A: The last couple of records I’ve done have all been very fan community oriented going all the way back to The Morning record which was in 2005. There was no Kickstarter back then, but I funded that record with pre-orders. Ever since then, I’ve done that with every project, so Kickstarter was an obvious choice. It was a much better looking version of what I was already doing. It’s a little easier to use and navigate and it’s also more legit rather than sending me money and trusting you’ll get something in eight months. So I’ve had this record in my mind for a couple of years and I finally thought this was the year to do it. I think it’s great that people can get involved at all levels. People can sign up for different things and I can offer things like songwriting sessions, pieces of the actual recording or props that are involved. It’s just a fun way to involve people in a community. Q: What does the Kickstarter project look like? Is it weird to think about, ‘If someone gives this amount of money, then I’ll give them this?’ A: I was up late last night figuring that stuff out. [Laughs] ‘What do I have to offer and how much is it worth?’ But it’s actually a lot of fun, because it frees you up to do some fun things. You can create extra songs for people. You get to honor someone or allow someone to believe in your project at an amazing level like $500. That’s a crazy amount, but if someone wanted to do that, it gives me the chance to do something amazing for them. It’s an honor to get that opportunity. Q: So what are people buying into? What’s this space concept? A: The record has a backstory. It’s a concept record set in the future in space about a guy named Leonard who loses his wife in an accident in the midst of a divorce, so he’s already sort of lost it. He’s this lonely, angry guy. He takes a gig on a long distance space freighter, so he’ll be alone in space for a year. When he comes back home, because of relativity, everyone he knows will be old or dead. So it’s about him saying to the world that he’s done with it all. So he brings along some antique recording instruments, which just happens to be the stuff that I own. So I’m going to play him and actually build the interior of a spaceship like a movie set and then move my studio into it and then record the whole thing in uniform. [Laughs] Q: [Laughs] So what is the genesis of this idea? A: I’ve always loved science fiction and just love literature. I love a big sweeping story and I think good sci-fi is up there with that stuff. I love how it just removes you from the context. You can put something in a completely foreign context like being in space 500 years from now. The preconceived notions of who the good guys and the bad guys are go away. It gives you a freedom to go places and ask questions that you don’t otherwise get a chance to ask or that you’re too biased to even know to ask. So the genesis of it is that I’m a nerd. When I can’t sleep, I just lie awake and wonder what kind of spaceship I would have. [Laughs] I’ve developed this mindless way of slowing myself down when I can’t sleep, so I’ve always had this in my head. Then I just started building a story around it and suddenly I’m writing songs around that story. Then I made the mistake of telling Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive one day, ‘Um, I kind of have this idea.’ They said, ‘Dude, you’ve got to do that!’ That was a couple of years ago and I kind of pushed it off, but you eventually have that realization that you’ll be 75 someday and will have never built that spaceship. [Laughs] So I’m going to do it. Q: Why go to the external trouble to build something that won’t tangibly make it onto the recording? A: There will be a lot of video involved, and I think we’ll even have some short films. But primarily the reason is that it just sounds really fun. My little kid makes forts all of the time, so it’s just a big version of that. I love the idea of putting myself in a place that feels different and where the things I’m looking at are not the things I’m usually looking at when I’m working. It’s just being in that different environment to see what happens. It’s also for me to be able to walk in and know that I have six weeks in this place and then I have to tear this down. This is my moment. I already know that I will be really sad about it. Then again, there’s also the marketing aspect to it of, ‘Dude, this guy built a freaking spaceship.’ [Laughs] I’m hopeful that helps it get heard. That’s not my initial intent, but I can see as I talk to people that it probably won’t hurt from a marketing standpoint. Q: Do you know how you’re going to build it? Have you strategized that? A: No, I’ve just started to talk to designers and folks here in Nashville to give me pointers. So I’ll be working on that over the next couple of months, but I won’t be building it until the fall. I’m actually going to host a weekend for the building, so anyone who wants to come can be involved. I might have to cap it if there’s too many, but if we can get 40 or 50 people to just come over and bring a hammer, that would be great. I’ll play a special concert and we’ll make a whole special weekend out of it. I think that will be grand. Q: Have you already pitched this to some fans and friends who you think will help you? A: Yeah, I’ve got about half of the songs written at this point, so I’ve started playing some of the songs live. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. That’s not something I expected. I figured people would roll their eyes at me a bit more, but everyone has been saying, ‘Man, that is awesome.’ [Laughs] A lot of people have said they want to come and help out. I love it. Q: On a philosophical level, does this affect your thoughts as an artist of following convention versus following your heart? A: I think it even comes from a slightly deeper place for me. It is obviously the fruit of a lot of conversations that I’ve had about identity and how that’s rooted in Christ and that I am made specifically to do and enjoy certain things. When I was in junior high, I hid the fact that I played music because it wasn’t cool. I tried to play basketball and ignored the fact that I took piano lessons because that wasn’t cool. But I love music and I love books. But I hid my love of books and hid sci-fi even longer. [Laughs] But that’s what I’ve always loved even since I was a little kid. So the chance to not only enjoy it but create something that’s real and deep and honest out of that is some of my best work. It’s also very personal. I feel like it’s just a matter of saying, ‘I can’t let myself be defined by what I want you to think about me. I’ve been fearfully and wonderfully made and I just have to embrace that.’ I know there will be people who won’t get it, but I hope there’s enough people who can at least help me fund it on Kickstarter.

It’s 2:15 a.m. Tomorrow morning I’m getting on a plane and flying to Sweden, the land of my forefathers, with Ben Shive and Andy Gullahorn. This will be our sixth (seventh?) tour in Sweden, where the coffee is black, the ice cream is plentiful, the engineering is sleek and tasteful, the breakfasts are delicious, and the people talk nothing like the Swedish chef on the Muppet Show. Really. Another reason I’m excited about the trip is that just this morning I sent my final, FINAL edits for The Monster in the Hollows off to the press. That, ladies and germs, frees up a lot of mental RAM. And emotional hard drive space. And time. And that means I’m going to read, oh, nine books or so on the flight across the Atlantic, guilt-free. (The Passage by Justin Cronin, The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, Looking Before and After: Testimony and the Christian Life by Alan Jacobs, and Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King.) This is what my brother and Stephen King call “feeding the gnome”. After pouring so much into the writing of The Monster in the Hollows, it’ll be nice to take a long, cool drink of some good writing. If you live in Sweden, we’ll see you in a few hours. If you live in the States, we’ll be back soon. Thanks for reading!

When the first printing of The Fiddler’s Gun surprised me by selling out in early December, I jumped at the opportunity to revise the book rather than merely reprint it. There were several aspects of the first edition that I wasn’t happy with, and I was anxious to set them right. So I hunkered down in January and worked through a fresh edit of the book. As soon as people heard there was a second (and improved) edition in the works, they started to ask what was new. The answer is: a lot–and not so much. If you are wondering whether there’s a different ending or new scenes or characters, I’m sorry to have to disappoint. The new edit was primarily to address some pace and flow issues at the sentence level. The result is that this edition will be a much cleaner, more compelling read for the first-time-reader. Although there are some scene changes and rewrites, you’ll not likely see much difference unless you have a keen memory. However, I’ve also taken the book formerly known as The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters (previously only available digitally or as a limited printing of 100 copies) and added it as an appendix. These seventy-five pages of extra content contain a sundry collection of letters and ships’ logs that, taken together, illuminate sections of the primary narrative from the first person perspective of Fin Button and a select few other characters. If you’ve ever pondered the vast conspiracy surrounding the Brandenburg Strudel or wondered who the Boot Snuffler is, these letters contain valuable insights, and more than a little humor. The careful reader may also wish to pay special attention to the expanded glossary–it’s positively indibnible. We’ve also given the book a facelift so that it matches the quality of Fiddler’s Green. The colors on the cover are more vivid, we’ve added cover flaps, and the interior typesetting is more appealing. All in all, I think it’s turned out wonderfully. It wouldn’t be complete, however, without a beauty mark. Much like a certain mole on Marilyn Monroe’s lip, I’ve added a delightful typo to the first page (entirely on purpose!) that does a marvelous job of accenting the beauty of the book as a whole. Be sure to snatch up one of these specially flawed copies. They are true collector’s editions. If you don’t believe that story, well, there’s always the third edition to look forward to. The second edition is also available on the Kindle (sans appendix) for just 99 cents. Why? Because I’m out of my mind. The iPad version is on its way. The Fiddler’s Gun (second edition) in the Rabbit Room Store. The Fiddler’s Gun in the Kindle store.

I’m in the throes of writing a biography of Flannery O’Connor. Since I’ve been working on this project, I’ve talked to a good many people who feel that they are supposed to like (or at least appreciate) Flannery O, but they just don’t see what there is to like or appreciate. Just the other day I was talking to a guy (I won’t tell you his name, but I will tell you he’s planning to build a spaceship in the fall) who said something to this effect: “I’ve read Flannery O’Connor, and I just don’t get it. People are always saying how great she is, but her stories are so dark, I can’t see any hope or grace in them.” People like that are the audience I picture as I write this book: intelligent, well-read people who just aren’t feeling the love for Flannery. I’m out to win some of them over. I suspect there are a good many of you among the readership of this august website. So, would you do me a favor? In the comments to this post, would you ask some specific questions about Flannery O or her work? Or try to articulate what you don’t get about her? I want to know: What’s your problem with Flannery? By the way, I’m not offering to address your remarks today in this forum. I’m covered up with book-writing. But your questions and remarks will help shape this little biography of Flannery O’Connor. Thanks in advance for your willingness to take part.

I don’t remember ever pretending to be a princess. Not even once. I wasn’t the sort of little girl who asked for plastic dress-up shoes or sparkling makeup sets. I didn’t have a closet full of pink tulle skirts. My daydreams never bothered with being held captive in some high tower, waiting for a tinfoil man-child to bring me life and liberty. Instead, I arm-wrestled boys and won. I played shoot-the-Russians, and read thick books, and made useful things out of wood. I roused nests of naked baby mice tucked into hay; wooed doodlebugs out of dried dung piles; and stole luna moths from the cold, wet, night grass. To this day, I rarely experience the most delicate communions of my soft kind. The pink she-vim, with all of its birdlike chatter and clatter of fragile things remains more foreign to me than China. I would rather be outside digging in dirt making things grow, or taming something wild, or learning something difficult. When I was seven, my bedroom window opened to the branches of a massive crabapple tree. Every spring, it would hymn its gnarly, old arms into an unbridled explosion of light; and for several weeks, I would live in a sky blown full of perfection. Perhaps it was too perfect, because it has made me unsatisfied. Handmade pinks are just too “ish”. Too sticky. Too sweet. Too trying-to-be. I remember what this color should be, and I haven’t seen it since. Nothing second-best will suffice. I paint sometimes, and it seems to me that God has given mankind access to the pigment realm of handmade blues, and greens, and perfect ochres. Yet the Maker must have kept supreme pink to Himself, because the color I was given by that crabapple tree was pure, delicate, alive. It was kissed with undertones of butter-gold, and it flushed like the cheek of an infant; but it was light as down. Every petal danced in the wind, as if it were made for no other purpose than my delight; and I did delight in that singular way that only little girls and very old ones can. Those days were slow and simple, and my imagination had not yet become defiled. I was young enough to let beauty work the fullness of its gospel over me. “Behold, little one. Behold! Hear these thousand tongues sing! Your heart unfolds like flowers before Me! Such a shade of joy will burst your very soul!” Well burst, then. For I was too young to know the fear of it. When night stained the sky, my tree would whisper promises from all the best story books. She assured me of things I couldn’t dream in the light. With those thousand moon-silvered tongues she blessed two rock-skinned knees and bruised legs scabbed with scratched mosquito bites. Like a sylvan godmother, whispering sacred words across my soda bottle glasses and uncool clothes bought at Goodwill, beauty spoke. She told me that I was the daughter of a great, artistic King, trapped (momentarily, mind you) in the lanky flesh of a prepubescent Giacometti. A kissed toad, waiting, tossed into this blushing wonderland. The truth tickled the hairs on my arm with a shiver of night air. Crickets recounted the songs of orphans made princes. If my heart would calm its pounding, I might hear the approach of a milkmaid named something like Pertoppety or Faithful Bess; and she would recognize my noble brow and see the royal blood. She would call me forth from the cinders and the scratches to become what tremored in the voice of the first Muse who spoke, “Once upon a time.” She would pronounce my new name. When I was eleven, we moved away from that house, and my reflection began to change. In the morning light, I would stand with my fingertips pressed into the softs of my cheeks, considering how very much there was that I was not. I lacked, and so I fought, using the strength of my own arms to defy the gaps. I reasoned, sweated, resolved, studied, proved, and strove. I wrestled with angels and with prophets; but my strength was never enough. Each flexing muscle packed guilt and fatigue into the empty spaces of my soul, and each new failure confirmed my deepest fears. I was ugly, unlovable, rejected. Decades were wasted. Perhaps it is a sort of mortal sin to lay aside all of our first stories — to unbelieve the best tales told around the early fires. What if these stories are composed and recomposed because something inside our blood knows them to be nearly true? For it is possible that the earth was Art-made to whisper hymns over us while we sleep. And it is possible that we were made with the capacity to listen. We grow cynical, battered, beaten, fought. We live sore from the pigments of imitation. We expire in the winters of our trying. Yet Spring is rising, and there is a King. Each new day declares the poetry of His paternity. He still sends the gospel herald pulsing pure and free through the arms of the earth. His warmth offers to make us daughter-beautiful, dignified, whole, new. It is ours to be young enough again to lie still. It is ours to bathe in the waters of the cherished. It is ours to drink up the sweet milk sap of our new name, and fall asleep with its abundance bubbling white from the corners of our lips. It is ours to be kissed children walking in wonder, trusting, faithing*, dancing in the dew grace of royalty. Galatians 3:3 Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? *Particular thanks to Ron Block for sharing his insights on several of these concepts.

I haven’t posted here for months as I’ve been working on my new record, so I thought I’d make up for lost time by making my first reentry a long one. Sorry. I have misgivings about writing this post, mostly because I imagine people might be tired of hearing about the controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins – you know, that it’s already become passé. After all, this topic is sooooo last week. But I’ll risk it anyway believing that fashionable doesn’t always equal relevant, contrary to the zeitgeist of blogging culture. I wonder if there’s still an opportunity here for the Spirit to speak to us. Besides, I haven’t even read the book yet and it’s not really the book that I want to talk about anyway. At present I’m more interested in talking about the accidental topic that Love Wins has raised, which concerns the way we conduct ourselves as Christians in public conversation. If you missed it, Rob Bell set off a blogging maelstrom a few weeks ago with comments he made about his upcoming book, Love Wins, where he turns his formidable spotlight on some of the left of mainstream ideas out there concerning Hell – what it is, how you end up there, and whether Dante was right about the sign posted above Hell’s gates saying “abandon all hope ye who enter here”. Are our short 80 years (give or take) on earth really the absolute and final testing ground that determines an eternity of punishment or bliss? What do you do with the problem of the souls who’ve never heard the gospel? How can a loving Father condemn people to a place of eternal punishment with no hope of correction? Or is Hell a place we choose for ourselves because we prefer it to Heaven? Are the gates of Hell locked from the inside? These are not new questions, nor are most of Bell’s musings (from what I have gathered so far) either as unorthodox or as progressive as some would make them out to be. Even C.S. Lewis asked similar questions in his discourse on the afterlife, The Great Divorce, offering up a different lens through which to imagine what Hell might be all about. To risk being even more unfashionable, I’d like to make another pop culture reference that we’re all probably weary of: Charlie Sheen’s recent headline making behavior. But it’s as good an example as any of the kind of thing I believe Lewis and even Bell are getting at. Watch the interviews with Sheen and you will see a man who is so clearly choosing the ideals of Hell – consuming lust with no hope for intimacy, prideful self-justifying un-forgiveness, a relentless denial of help from others… All of this he called “winning”, but those of us who know the joy of intimacy, humble forgiveness, and community recognize it for what it really is: Hell on earth. Charlie Sheen may be a good example, if Lewis is on target, of a person who can’t stomach the virtues of Heaven and who, even in his suffering, prefers Hell. But I digress… Bell’s book raises questions that understandably rattle the cages of modern Evangelical Christianity.And in truth, the book may very well be revealed as being, at the very least, theologically soft.But aside from all that, the unintended question it has raised for me has to do with the tone of Christian conversation and whether the church has fallen victim to the contentious and self-righteous spirit of the age. I bowed out of watching political television programming some time ago because of how dehumanizing it can be, whether you’re from a blue state or a red one. It’s rare that anybody is actually “heard” in what passes for political dialogue. I experience it more as an ideological kind of blood sport where mutual understanding is sacrificed on the altar of a kind of “winning” that only serves to assure everybody that they’re right and everyone else is wrong. The tone is so polarizing and, though it can be morbidly entertaining, I’ve grown weary of it. And yet I know I’ve often been guilty in my own way of the same kind of thing. Too much of the time I have loved being right more than I have loved mercy, loved winning a fight more than I have loved the person I’m talking to. This impoverishes me. The day that Rob Bell’s comments hit the web, the reaction was swift and strong by those who felt that his theology was dangerous at best and downright heresy at worst – and this was before anybody even read the book! One of the most famous critiques came from my fellow Minnesotan, Pastor John Piper, who could hardly have been more dismissive when he tweeted three words: “Farewell, Rob Bell.” I’m about as interested in taking John Piper to task as I am in defending Rob Bell’s orthodoxy, so I’ll move on quickly (you can read this as me hoping to avert the wrath of you Piper enthusiasts out there). It is, however, this kind of tone in public Christian conversation that seems worthy of our evaluation. Piper’s comment and others like it seem to me to fall short of genuine conversation and instead engenders a circling of the wagons that is long on self-righteous defensiveness and short on respectful listening. Bell’s detractors might argue that such “heresy” deserves our contempt and dismissal, but even so, might there be another way to conduct this conversation, especially with the rest of the world eavesdropping on us? Why did passions boil over so quickly on this one? Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m learning to see what’s happening in my own heart when I react similarly. A while ago I started to feel like the Holy Spirit was inviting me to pay attention to my defensiveness and anger – what activated it and why? Most times I only get defensive when I feel threatened, whether directly or vicariously by way of something I cared about being challenged. Defensiveness is a natural response to feeling threatened, but is it always the best response? I believe the Holy Spirit began to invite me, every time I felt defensive, to be curious about why and if there might be more redemptive responses to choose from. I started to wonder if feeling threatened all the time was really a symptom of misplaced identity and trust. Here’s what I mean: if my identity is firmly rooted and secure in Christ, if I am defined by my belovedness to Jesus, should I feel as threatened as often as I do? I began to see how often my defensiveness arises from a desperate need to prove myself – less because of arrogance than because of how hard it is for me to believe and rest in the sufficiency that Christ won for me. Reformed Pastor Tim Keller (and contemporary of John Piper – so, you can’t completely dismiss me as a liberal) says the default mode of human instinct is self-justification.As an unbeliever, one way to do this is by always trying to tell ourselves that we’re good people – especially compared to Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and [insert name of your favorite villain here].As believers we’re often guilty of the same sin of self-justification, though it’s harder to diagnose. Here’s what I began to wonder about myself (I’ll leave it up to the Holy Spirit to prompt you if you should wonder the same about yourself). How many times has my defense of the truth been merely a veiled attempt at self-justification – my need to be right, to be on the right side, to prove myself, to be honorable, the hero, etc. I also started wondering about my assumptions about the nature of my relationship to the truth. Charles Spurgeon – another hero of reformed theology – once likened the Truth to being a Lion. “Who ever heard of defending a lion?” he asked. “Just turn it loose and it will defend itself.” This compelling understanding of truth relieves me of the responsibility to come to the rescue whenever I’m afraid that Truth is under attack. Does the truth really need me? This is a simple question that I believe can help change the tone of our conversations. Of course there is a time to defend the Truth, to guard it as Paul exhorted Timothy, but I think the dynamic changes when we understand that defending the gospel is maybe more of a privilege than it is a responsibility. Does that make sense? I know there is great risk of being misunderstood here, but I pray you will give me the benefit of your doubt for a moment. Trusting that God’s Truth is all sufficient and can stand on its own without needing me to come to its rescue takes the anxious hand-wringing out of my “defense” of it. It’s big enough to take care of itself without me. Furthermore, I’m not responsible for the hearts of those that I would defend the gospel to – meaning it’s not all up to me to persuade or convert those I find myself in conversation with. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. When I trust that the Truth doesn’t need me, and when I trust that I’m not solely responsible for the fate of those around me, it takes a lot of pressure off. I can relax a bit and I can even enjoy the conversation. And it’s here that I begin to see that some of my so called defense of the gospel may have been more about my need to be right – my default instinct of self-justification – than it’s been about love of the gospel or especially love for those I’m in conversation with. If I trust the sturdiness of truth, if I trust that God is in charge of drawing people to himself, and if I trust, too, that God is ultimately in control (which, by the way, are all ideals celebrated by people of the reformed theological tradition like John Piper), it sets me free to do something radically loving: listen. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in marriage. When conflict arises and a conversation must be had, we have to choose: will we fight to be right, to be heard at all costs, thus failing to listen to each other because of our defensiveness? Or will we lay down our weapons for a moment and really hear each other’s hearts? Which is more honoring? Which produces better fruit? Which choice leads to death and which leads to life? I think this might be worth consideration: We are told in Genesis 3 that the consequence of sin entering the world for Adam and all those who come after him is that through painful toil you will eat food from [the ground] all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you… By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food… There is a sense of futility here, that our efforts will be frustrated and we will be plagued by feeling that no matter how hard we work it will never be enough – that we will never be enough. This pretty much sums up the human experience as we know it: our days dogged by a deep sense of inadequacy – as spouses, as parents, as workers, even as children of God. Which can lead to the temptation to prove ourselves. I would propose that most if not all of us carry around a deep sense of futility and inadequacy that puts us always on the defensive. Bring this dynamic into public discourse and our conversations can quickly degrade into dismissive, defensive, un-listening self-justification fueled by fear and the need to be right. It is all the more insidious when you bring Christianity into the mix because of the way this brokenness hides behind the virtues of “defending the gospel” and “standing up for Truth and Righteousness.” (for a glaring example of this, watch Martin Bashir’s unlistening and bullying interrogation of Bell here.) Please don’t think that I’m saying there’s never a time to passionately speak out for what we believe. John Chrysostom, one of Christianity’s Early Church Fathers, said: “He that is angry without cause sins, but he who is not angry when there is cause sins.” If I give Pastor Piper the benefit of the doubt – which I believe is a pre-requisite to fruitful conversation – I would imagine that his comment on twitter came from the heart of a pastor feeling protective over his flock, concerned that ideas like Bell’s pose a threat to their spiritual development. A commendable instinct perhaps – there is, of course, such a thing as righteous anger. I’m just afraid that most of us are generally too quick to assume our anger is righteous when in fact it may just be self-righteous. There is a simple antidote that I think can help. What if we examined the motives of our hearts by being curious whenever we feel defensiveness or anger rise up in us: “Is this legitimate or is this a symptom that my identity isn’t firmly rooted in Christ, or that deep down I believe the salvation of the world is some how up to me?” Asking ourselves this may spare us from being ugly and reactionary. Jesus himself models passion under control. One of my favorite discoveries in scripture is the moment when he goes to rid the temple of the moneylenders. At first glance it looks like he’s swept up in a moment of righteous indignation, turning over tables like a man consumed by his passion. But a closer look reveals that Jesus is responding with intentionality rather than reacting emotionally – John 2:15 shows us that before driving out the moneylenders, Jesus “made a whip out of cords.” It starts to look less like a heated moment of passion when you factor in the time it must take to braid a whip. I fear that to the outside world the face of Western Christianity looks scarred by all of our precious dividing lines of theological parsing. When our conversation is marked by reactionary rhetoric, I’m afraid that we fail to show the world that we are disciples of Jesus “by loving one another” (John 13:35) and that love loses. I will confess that much of my own line drawing has been driven by fear and a failure to rest in my identity as Jesus’ beloved. If I could believe I’m already approved, I wouldn’t feel such a need to prove myself. And If trusted God is in control, I could relax a bit more and honor others with my listening. Who knows, I might even learn something I otherwise wouldn’t on my own. Is Rob Bell so persuasive a writer that he can dismantle evangelical Christianity with one book? Is he or any one else the author and finisher of our faith? Are we so afraid of being deceived and ruined as though a lie – perceived or genuine – can have the final say over our lives? I know there are times to speak up and stand our ground – and some may feel that this is such a time – but for me, personally, it’s good to ask myself these kinds of questions before I go crusading. [Editor’s Note: Please keep your comments germane to the subject of Jason’s post. Comments will be tightly moderated if necessary.]

If you’re a writer, admit it. You have always wanted a “writer’s hut.” According to a source close to me, a writer’s hut is a little structure set apart from the bustle of home life, dedicated to eliminating distractions and focusing the efforts of the writer’s mind on the business of writing. So, it’s a lot like Facebook in that way. The writer’s hut is small, often spartan, and does not, in most cases, include a Wii. It looks much like the micro-machine version of a house. The picture above is George Bernard Shaw’s hut which he called “London.” This was so his staff could, without falsehood, tell annoying callers he was away “in London.” I call my bed “Work” for the same reason. The idea of a writer’s hut has always been a romantic notion for me, right up there with a fire, a pipe and…oh yeah, I almost forgot…a book in print! (Small details.) I’m sure if I did have a cool writer’s hut I would transition from failure to success as fast as you can say Henry David Thoreau likes Ralph Waldo Emerson and self-mandated, adult time-outs. Acclaimed children’s author and hutless coveter Jennifer Trafton pointed out this site which features several famous writer’s huts. She referenced it on Twitter with the statement, “I want one.” She succeeds, no doubt, in producing the selfsame envy in others. ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s writer’s hut’ means nothing to acclaimed children’s author and hutless coveter Jennifer Trafton. Nothing. Here’s Roald Dahl’s hut. Spiffy. I assume he spent most of his time in there learning to spell his own name. Remember when we helped Evie name her studio/workshop–“The Hatch”–and then that same studio was featured in famous (and as far as I know, hutless) radio sensation Jason Gray’s video? That was fun. What would you name your writer’s hut? Not like, if you owned a writer and you kept the writer in a hut–like a kidnapping kind of situation–what would you name the hut. I mean if you were, or are, a writer and you had a hut to write in, what would you name it? I might buy the house next door. This is not a lie. It has a hut and I might write in it and you might end up having named it. Aaaaaaand . . . I might write the great American novel in there (or a really funny tweet) and wouldn’t you feel special if you named it? Yes. Yes, you would. So, what’s a good name for a writer’s hut? Arthur? Do any of you have such huts and can you share pictures and names with us? (I’m just going to go ahead and say–cough, Aaron Roughton–that Pizza Hut doesn’t count. So don’t even try it.)

Yesterday at breakfast, my oldest son had the sniffles. Prone to drama, and with the energy and vigor expected of a sinewy seven-year-old boy, he doubled over and raised up with every sniff. Repeatedly, he threw back his head and collapsed on the table with a force that could incapacitate a grandparent. In short, he was fine. But he sighed and groaned and slouched and barely picked at his breakfast, and his ten-year-old sister Livi said, “Mom, Jonah needs to go to the doctor.” My wife replied, “Oh, I know he’s feeling lousy. You’re sweet to look out for him, but I think he’ll be fine. He’s just waking up.” Jonah gained courage by his sister’s concern. The sniffles became powerful inward blasts, punctuated by more pitiful prostration. And after another moment, the ten-year-old said again, this time with strength, “MOM, Jonah NEEDS to go to the DOCTOR.” Amy and I looked at Livi, and then at each other. Of course, Jonah did not need a doctor. The ten-year-old, having realized that she is old enough to understand some things, had forgotten that she is still a child. I gape and shake my head in wonder at her presumption, because I forget that is exactly how I am with God. I would do much better to recognize the kinship I have with my children in this matter. It would help make me a more patient parent and a more willing child of God. It is so easy for someone with the advantage of age to see the silly mistakes of the young, and that truth makes me shudder at the fierce clarity with which God must see my life of misadventures. How much more ridiculous must I seem to God, having deceived myself, so much more than a ten-year-old, with my shallow wisdom and understanding. But that brings the teeth to the tail, because even at my most foolish and peacocky, God loves me perfectly. He has come to me and has made his home in me. He puts his feet up and gets comfortable and waits for me to listen, like a father waits for his child.

It is always a bit of a mental jolt to discover that one of your best-loved authors greatly dislikes another of your very favorite authors. I felt this way recently as I read an essay by Wendell Berry in which he took great umbrage with the wanderlust of Tennyson’s title character in the poem, Ulysses. I have always loved Ulysses, both the poem, and the man presented in it. I even memorized snatches of Tennyson’s sea haunted poem. When I read those great lines of Ulysses’ longing to “follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought,” I knew his hunger. And when I read that face-down-the-night declaration of his purpose to “drink life to the lees,” and “sail beyond the baths of all the western stars until I die,” well, I wanted to take off for the far ends of the earth right then. Something new was waiting to be found. So, you can imagine my dismay when I discovered that Berry found Ulysses’ adventurous fervor to be just the sort of misplaced hunger that sets people off on adventures when they ought to be keeping the faith at home. I’m a bit of a Wendell Berry fanatic. He answers so many of the questions I ask about how to create fellowship and life in a fast, isolated modern world. He’s all for steady cultivation and faithfulness over long years. How can any community or heritage be built, he wondered in his essay, if kings were always wandering off and leaving their people to the wind when the want for adventure struck? I saw his point. I understood. But I also knew that Ulysses’ hunger was more than a selfish whim to travel. It was soul deep, a hunger for something eternal. Somehow, both views had to be true. At that moment, with two great authors juxtaposed over their view of one king’s adventurous heart, I understood that different souls see different sides of life. Different artists find different beauties. Different writers tell different stories. Some find glory in the adventure of life, the great journey required of every soul born. Some find glory in the quiet, daily growth of home life, the small, rich details that come from life carefully tended and lived. Both speak truth, both offer us beauty. Both offer a glimpse into the richness of God’s mind. I sat with my book in hand and thought back over some of my favorite writers and heroes, fascinated to find them each what I will call either a dreamer, or a keeper. Take St. Brendan, for instance. He was a seafarer. Why? Cloistered, devout, he was just a young monk alive in a world still haunted by the furies of old pagan gods, hemmed in by the pathless sea. Danger abounded in brigands and storms and petulant kings. Yet an old monk mumbled a half-baked dream, murmured of paradise gained, and off sailed Brendan over the wild waters, in resolute search of Eden. Jane Austen was an observer. Why? With a knife-keen wit and a mind to unsettle the wisest, she could have striven to philosophical heights. Instead, she spied on her neighbors, and wove the quips and foibles of dining room drama into immortal tales. Brilliant woman, parson’s child, country-bound spinster aunt, she questioned not her lot, but found it to be a merry drama and was glad. Galileo was a doubter. Why? Taught to believe that the earth was settled perfectly in space, the glorious center of everything, he balked. Believe without question? Not him. He studied and stargazed and flung planets from their thrones with never a second thought. One peek through a telescope, one hunch in a prickle up his spine, and off he ran to prove what had never been seen. I think the people of earth are divided by lines of desire. Dreamers stand on one hand, and keepers sit on the other. Restive and restless-eyed souls are the dreamers. They are the hungry-hearted, with wanderlust thrumming in their blood and eager brains, ever in search of what lies a fingertip just out of reach. Truth or beauty, treasure or friend, they would risk their life to find the unseen ideal. In the annals of time, the dreamers play out like high, bright notes in a symphony. St. Brendan had to find heaven if it could be found on earth. The call of it just beyond him was a song he could not resist. Galileo felt that all was not as he had been told. Ulysses wanted to sail beyond one more star. So it is with all dreamers. They are the explorers, the artists, the sailors, and searchers who ever beat down the walls of the known, intent upon finding what has never been found. The keepers wait to welcome them home. They are the glad-eyed and frank-faced souls, who settle and stay with a faithful joy. The song of the unseen troubles them not; they feel instead the dance of the seasons, the cadence of days as time sings in the here and now. The present reaches a powerful hand from the deep earth and roots them, happy, to their one place in the wide world. They craft and build, they keep what is civil and lovely alive, they master the art of life lived richly. In the symphony of time, they are the rich-throated hum of low violins, the myriad voices who weave the steady, marching song of the earth. Keepers are the good kings who set their hearts to cultivation instead of conquest, the Jane Austens who revel in the merriment of every day. They are the rulers and builders, the farmers and reapers of harvests, the faithful who keep all that is good in place throughout the ages. We are born, every one I think, with some leaning toward dreamer or keeper. In most of us, I’m sure there is a bit of both. But no matter which, we must push the song of our soul to its full beauty. The world needs the good that both bring. Evil is defeated by the dreamers whose souls rise to cry against all that is wrong, and the keepers already deep in the daily, gritty work of pushing back the dark. Beauty is cultivated by the keepers who shore up the world with civility, even as dreamers sail back and forth in search of newer, unknown good. Together, they weave the music of their souls, their work, and their wonder into a joyous symphony of fellowship. And this is the song the whole world was made to sing. So, I’ll keep Ulysses and my beloved Mr. Berry. Together, they paint a brilliant picture of the world I am longing to find and create in my own work. Dreamers and keepers; together they paint the wealth of God’s heart. So, the question is, which are you?

Jellybean Highfive’s unofficial detective business was booming -if booms are what explosions make. Oh, the devastation, he thought. It had blown up in his face, his third case –The Case of the Bulimic Fatty. He had found the truth at the bottom of the case, but had uncovered it in such a way as to cause it to be forever hidden, like King Tut’s coffin. Will they ever find it, he thought. “I wonder,” he said. Probably not, he mused. He wondered this while walking down a street connected to many other roads. He wondered how anyone could call a street “secluded.” All streets met up with other streets, didn’t they? He tried to imagine a street all alone, on an island perhaps, sad and secluded, with only its top five books to read. “All roads lead to Rome, Jellybean,” he said to himself, “and Roman roamers roam them. That’s where I come in.” He smoked on a cigarette, imagining himself to be in a movie called “Jellybean Highfive.” He often did this, even while brushing his teeth. He would look himself in the eyes, half-closing them in a dramatic slit, and imagine a gravelly voice-over voice gravely laying out the impossible odds. “But one man stands in the way…Jellybean Highfive.” His reverie exploded when he realized he was standing in the way –of a pretty blonde who needed to get past him in order to board a bus headed who knows where. “Pardon the interruption,” Jellybean said, not able to move due to the magnetic magnetism of her face. Like a tractor beaming its headlights at a deer, he was lit up by a terrifying attraction. “What are you staring at?” she said prettily. “My destiny,” he whispered, slitting his eyes and cocking his head just so. “Oh,” the woman said, embarrassed. “You should never be embarrassed,” Jellybean said, finally moving to the side and making way for her. He extended a hand to help her up on to the bus, then took off an invisible–nonexistent, really–fedora and made a slight bow. To him, she was the queen of the city just then. It seemed as though the entire street inclined her way. Birds seem to sing, people seemed to hum, and the sun broke through the charcoal crush of clouds to illuminate her lovely face. Then she vomited. She looked around for a moment, then escaped into the bus as the doors closed. The bus lurched forward and disappeared into the maze of interconnected avenues in the auburn autumn afternoon. Jellybean stood there, spellbound. All he had was the memory of her. Then his mind started working, dots began connecting in his mind. He walked quickly somewhere, using his mind to think thoughts. He got out a notepad and made massive checkmarks in it. He stopped and shouted, “I have it!” in triumph. But his triumph turned quickly and his face fell. He stood, looking absently around, like a child from a broken home standing in an outfield, realizing that the one he was scanning the bleachers for hadn’t come like he’d promised. “It’s not the streets who’re secluded,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He noted absently the rushing crush of people everywhere. “It’s the people in the streets. For more Jellybean Highfive click here and say “there’s no place like home” with your heels.

It’s Ash Wednesday. Yesterday my friend Father Thomas, an Anglican priest, burned the palm fronds from last year’s Palm Sunday to make the ashes to rub on people’s foreheads today. “Remember that you are dust,” he will say to them, “and to dust you shall return.” I didn’t grow up observing Ash Wednesday or Lent, but I have to say, at this age it helps to be reminded that I am dust and returning to dust. It’s not just a help, but a comfort. This world is forever demanding that we take it as seriously as it takes itself, and it tempts us to take ourselves too seriously too. Ash Wednesday says, “No, no, no, dear sinner. You’re just dust, living in a world that’s just dust, and you and the world both are returning to dust. And you are dear to God nevertheless.” I love the prayer in the Anglican Ash Wednesday liturgy: Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wickedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. I used to associate Ash Wednesday–when I considered it at all–with self-flagellation. But, as the apostle Paul said, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance–the confidence that God hates nothing he has made and forgives the sins of all who are penitent. For all my ambivalence about T.S. Eliot, there are passages in his poem “Ash Wednesday” that I just love. The lines I love the most in that poem, the lines that most perfectly capture the spirit of the day, are these: Lord, I am not worthy Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only. “I’m not worthy.” True enough. But not the truest thing. The Lord speaks truer things into being every day. So happy Ash Wednesday, you old sinner. You are dust, and to dust you shall return. And God loves you anyway.

Gus, a delicate yellow gosling, celebrated only a few waddling days on the Mississippi red-dirt farm where my mother grew up. Of the few sights the creature saw during its abbreviated life, the final was the inside of a German shepherd’s toothy mouth. As with King Charles I, heads rolled. Gus’s premature death caused great anguish among the Fortenberry children whose loyal affection was reciprocal to his own. Wilton and Lucille, father and mother to two girls and a boy, quietly and loyally resided over their 80-acre domain with much resolve and relentless labor. Wilton, a denim overall-wearing, quiet, and gentle man, was the rare soul willing to shake anyone’s hand. Lucille, an equally reserved woman, spent many waking hours in the kitchen making chicken-and-dumplings from scratch, and simmering garden-grown vegetables in leftover bacon grease the way only a southerner knows how. Homemade pound cake, temptingly stored beneath a clear glass dome, was nearly always available in her modest, yet insufferably hot kitchen. The day Wilton departed the earth, nine years after Lucille, his head of Absalom-like hair was just as dark and full as the day he was born, and the story of Gus, by then legendary, continued to weave its way throughout the broadening family tree as it was passed down from one generation to the next. The Fortenberry residence, a drab brown, unassuming dwelling rested atop concrete cinder blocks and clung to Rural Route 2, east of Tylertown, the county seat to Walthall County. With a rural Baptist church at one end of the road’s length, five homes — all belonging to Wilton and his four brothers — along its unpainted two lanes, a fire watchtower keeping sentinel above the canopy, a parcel of small ponds, and enough hollows and mixed pine and hardwood stands to adequately separate neighbors, the Fortenberrys eked out a nearly impoverished life amid agricultural fields, longleaf pines, dairy cows, white-tailed deer, thieving raccoons, burrowing possums, the usual assortment of farm cats, a lineage of mutts, each named Rusty, and Gus himself, the singular pet gander. A lifelong farmer, Wilton regularly harbored geese on the property to aid in weed abatement. Released into blossoming cotton fields, these geese, Gus’s cackling poultry relatives, furiously consumed juvenile weeds and grass between the furrowed rows, avoiding the money crop altogether. Once the cotton was harvested, the geese, by then fully grown and fattened, found themselves on the losing end of an altogether different consumption. Such is a bird’s life: for the sake of others, disappear. Gus, born to one of these weed-eating dinner-birds, found a different purpose in and among the farm’s workings — that of pet and companion. His presence, though physically tiny, was no small part of my mother’s story. She joyfully recalls Gus’s daily accompaniment to and from the school bus stop, down the pine-strewn lane to visit neighbors, Gus’s loyal presence at her moments of parental discipline, and the everlasting psychological and visual glee of witnessing an innocent cloud of golden down lumbering through tall, green grass, waddling within the protective reach of her heel. Each morning, with unswerving steadfastness, Gus attended the children’s footsteps along the three-pronged gravel driveway from the house to the bus stop at the property’s outer edge where familiar red-dirt met foreign pavement. Each afternoon, expectantly awaiting the Doppler-effect sound of the approaching school bus, Gus withdrew from the shaded protection of his dusty roost in the crawlspace beneath the Fortenberry home, and clumsily and bravely stumbled his way across obstacles of raised tree roots, various ascents and depressions, and lumps of aggregate debris en route, all for the sake of greeting the ones he recognized and cherished most. Every day, morning and afternoon, Gus repeated this miraculous custom. Wholeheartedly adopted early in life by the Fortenberry brood, Gus had only a short time to make a lasting impression on my mother, who to this day can recount his gruesome death and subsequent burial site. On the day of his funeral, Gus’s mangled head and body were reunited, laid side-by-side, inside a makeshift Diamond matchbox coffin. Little Paul, Sally and Janie were so stricken with Gus’s violent end that they would, with alarming regularity thereafter, exhume his remains, cry again over the murdered creature, and rebury the decaying carcass, which was slowly attempting its natural return to dust only to be periodically coerced out of life’s circle in this innocent, yet morose endeavor. Little wonder that children should recognize and give praise and homage to a small, forgotten miracle; the animal did, after all, meet them at the bus stop each day. Such loyalty is hard to come by; it ought to receive praise. Convenience rarely holds loyalty’s hand; one bears suffering amid struggle, the other flees at first sight of adversity. Intimately wiser, may we, like Gus, leave the world a fuller place than when we entered it. May loyalty and perseverance adorn our necks as peculiar plumage, ruffling at apathy, cackling at the monstrosity of fear’s sharp teeth. May faithful authenticity sustain us the way old-growth pines stand together, entwining roots to collectively bear the brunt of wind, drought, fire, storm and one another’s burdens. May we acclaim and recognize those whom God places in our lives just as innocently, filially, and eagerly as the approaching sound of that strangely familiar and welcome vehicle of grace to our path. May we expectantly await the good and faithful Return, attending grace’s heel to and from daily and momentary deliverance along the triple-pronged path pointing the way within us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It’s often the story between the lines that’s most striking — and most surprising. As I’ve prepared for a five-month long teaching journey through the life of Abraham in our church, I recently found myself moved by one of those side notes that seemingly came from nowhere to inform not only my own life but some of the deeper conversations I’ve been having lately. One of the central texts that we often discuss at The Mercy House is the call of Abram from Genesis 12:1-4. The preceding chapter tells of the barren womb of Sarai, a text so strong that Walter Brueggemann calls it a declaration of humans’ inability to create a meaningful future for their own selves. Then God speaks into that barrenness to call Abram and Sarai to a new place, to trust God and obey enough to leave for a far country. Perhaps that idea has been discussed here a time or two before. It’s the next few verses that hit me as I began to prepare for the next sermon. They list the upcoming places along the way that Abram’s caravan encountered and simply note that altars were built in these places. The obvious step is to move on to the next bold heading, the next grand story, the next meaningful event, but like an unexpected gravitational pull, I couldn’t stop thinking about these altars that were erected for no good reason — at least that we know of. I met with a friend named Kevin for lunch the other day. We spoke for hours about the dramatic nature of life and how beautiful it is to live amidst those moments. Then we also shared stories of the struggle to live in between. Kevin graduated from college several months ago, found a steady notable job, settled into an apartment, and is now faced with what was always known as “real life.” I told him the rhythm never changes. It always feels this way, and that grieving the loss of his college community and the constant buzz of events and invitations was okay to do. “How do we live in the mundane?” was the question that emerged. How do we carry ourselves between the grand events? What about the days when we just put in our eight or ten hours? What about the weeknights of homework and bed times and conversations that simply check off the events of the day? Even the artist knows these days quite well, for it’s not every day that an album is released or a tour is launched. It’s not every day that the book is finally finished or the painting finally revealed. The days between are filled with the rhythms of the mundane, the space largely inhabited by the ordinary. The dishes need to be washed. The trash needs to be taken out. No spotlight is waiting and no one is listening. It’s just another city along the way to no place in particular. My conversation with Kevin was illuminated in that moment, for as we asked those questions, I found my own thoughts turning to Abram building altars among the commonplace. Some altars are named for a particular event. Some altars receive commentary on the reason for their existence. Instead of leaving the commonplace common, Abram builds an altar and calls upon the name of the Lord. Perhaps something dynamic happened between Bethel and Ai that we’re not privy to. Maybe Abram was coming off of the high of the God of all creation having identified him personally to carry out his plan, to create a nation through him. It’s possible that Abram had Chia Altar that magically grew with a few drops, so it was really no trouble to build something like that. But as my conversation with Kevin took shape, we realized that the calling of the daily life is to resurrect altars along the way — to recognize the glory of God in the space that we inhabit no matter what surrounds. I believe it’s when we’ve made the habit of constructing altars among the mundane that we see the inspired journey we’ve been on all along.

Last week in the comments, someone mentioned the Old Testament story of Gomer, the prostitute that Hosea married, and all I could think about was how hilarious that name is to me and how deeply ungraceful and unpoetic it sounds. Fitting, I suppose. So thanks not only to Jim Nabors but to my long nurtured appreciation for ridiculous sounding words like Sponch, Fleep, Yomple, and, yes, Gomer, I just don’t think I could ever listen to someone sing that name in a song without snickering a little. What can I say? The ten-year-old in me is alive and well. I haven’t asked, but my theory is that Gomer tickles my brother Andrew’s funny bone in the same way it does mine. So when he wrote a song about Gomer’s story, he managed to do it without ever mentioning her name. Of all his songs, it’s one of my favorites, and I don’t snicker a bit when I hear it. Hosea by Andrew Peterson Every time I lay in the bed beside you Hosea, Hosea I hear the sound of the streets of the city My belly growls like a hungry wolf And I let it prowl till my belly’s full Hosea, my heart is a stone. Please believe me when I say I’m sorry Hosea, Hosea You loveable, gullible man I tell you that my love is true till it fades away like a morning dew Hosea, leave me alone Here I am in the Valley of Trouble Just look at the bed that I’ve made Badlands as far as I can see There’s no one here but me, Hosea I stumbled and fell in the road on the way home Hosea, Hosea I lay in the brick street like a stray dog You came to me like a silver moon With the saddest smile I ever knew Hosea carried me home again Home again You called me out to the Valley of Trouble Just to look at the mess that I’ve made A barren place where nothing can grow One look and my stone heart crumbled It was a valley as green as jade I swear it was the color of hope You turned a stone into a rose, Hosea. I sang and I danced like I did as a young girl Hosea, Hosea I am a slave and a harlot no more You washed me clean like a summer rain And you set me free with that ball and chain Hosea, I threw away the key I’ll never leave [“Hosea” is from Resurrection Letters, Vol. II which is available today in the Rabbit Room store at Song of the Day prices ($10 CD/$7 Download)]

One of the most meaningful moments at Hutchmoot 2010 happened before the event officially began. There we were, huddled in small, safe groups, smelling freshly delivered pizza, holding tightly to the backs of cushy chairs in order to avoid tripping over ourselves. The tension was palpable, at least it was for me. Many of us were meeting for the first time. Some of us had been driving in anticipation for most of the morning. Still others of us were wondering if anyone would notice our absence should we choose to go and hide in the bathroom. “Us” is the group of people, writers, speakers, cooks, organizers, and performers, who worked that weekend to make everything happen. I was scared and nervous. I wanted people to like me. I worried over what to wear, and what I would talk about, and if anyone would even talk to me. We had all looked forward to the day for so long, and it had finally come. Would everything work out like we had planned? Would our participants have a great time? Would it all turn out to be a colossal mistake? But most of all, this group of people who normally took its time when communicating, was now forced into impromptu, off the cuff, conversation. No deleting lines and backspacing over misspellings now. If you couldn’t think of the right words to say, you might have to sit silently, awkwardly. And your awkwardness might cause you to miss out on communicating face to face with the very people you’ve dreamed of speaking with for months. Thankfully, there was the aforementioned pizza to help break the ice. So we all loaded our plates and filled our cups with carbonated, caffeinated beverages–ice cold, liquid courage for this Christian conservative introvert. Finally, Andrew Peterson asked everyone to sit in a circle. He got out his guitar and we all held hands as he sang kumbayah and everything was magically different. We were all greatly at ease and ready for anything. No, that’s not what happened at all, though we did gather semi-circle-like on the comfy furniture. There was a lot of “no, you sit there” met with “please, I insist,” and then we took turns introducing ourselves to the group. I hated this part immensely, and felt like I could not have made a worse impression had I turned up in a three-piece power suit and six inch heels. But it’s all because I’d only been thinking about me, me, me. What will I say? How will I act? How will I be seen? And then, prompted by AP, Russ Ramsey put on his pastor hat and we donned our church faces as he told us a little story about how he had lost a dear friend earlier that week, about how he couldn’t stop thinking of his friend’s first moments in heaven. About how the black and white must have suddenly become color, how the spiritual, heavenly realm had turned into the real world and the two-dimensional stick man was transformed into undeniable 3-D. I’ll admit I got a little teary-eyed as the metaphor took on new meaning for this group of formerly square profile pictures lately changed into fleshy human shapes and steadily beating hearts. But what happened during the next twenty minutes is what truly changed my heart and my outlook for the weekend. We bowed our heads for prayer. Not everyone spoke aloud, but those who did openly shared their hearts with the group and with God. And the desires they expressed were not about how they wanted to say memorable things and teach great lessons on art. They simply prayed for the people who were on their way to this crazy event. They asked for humility and the ability to serve. They prayed for those who were coming to be blessed and comforted by the weekend, by their stay, and by God’s presence. They prayed that everyone would feel at home, that no one would be left out or feel small, and for the love of Jesus himself to be on display, predominant above everything else about to take place. Let Christ’s love be felt and shared in everything we do and say. In Jesus name we prayed, Amen. And in that holy time I saw inside the hearts of the men and women surrounding me, and I remembered the original reason I wanted to be a part of this community. It’s the reason I’ll keep writing as long as they’ll let me and the reason I’ll keep reading posts and buying products and attending events created by its many various members. That reason is love. Love of art, love of man, but most of all, love of Love himself. When the prayer was over, I got to go and sit behind the registration desk for a few hours as attendees trickled in and fragrances from the kitchen wafted up the stairs. Getting to talk one on one with Sarah Clarskon and Jennifer Trafton really helped me settle in behind the scenes of Hutchmoot, and though I continued to have awkward moments and intimidated feelings during the weekend, none of them were caused by anything outside my own noisy head. Everyone I encountered was gracious and understanding. It’s true, there are those of us wallflowers who will always hold some measure of reserve and unevenness, and it’s all too easy to let those internal storms ruin the sunshine of a beautiful afternoon. I can’t speak for the extroverts out there as to what steals the warmth of a room from them, but I believe the cure is the same for both groups: loving the person beside you. Long live the Rabbit Room, and may we all have many happy returns to Hutchmoot!