What are you looking for?

Last winter when we first played with the crazy notion of holding a Rabbit Room conference, we had no idea where it would lead. We didn’t even know if anyone would sign up. We prayed we could talk fifty people into registering. Would people really travel from all over the country merely because they shared our unique interest in music and storytelling, art and faith? Surely not–but maybe, just maybe. So, fearfully, we plowed ahead. And to our surprise, you came. You came from as far as California and as near as the house down the street. Painters, writers, moms, dads, bankers, teachers, thinkers, and wanderers, you came. And, miraculously, through a weekend of discussion and fellowship and good, good food, people were nourished, rekindled, and moved. The Spirit, in his wistful and mysterious way, slipped among us, and we heard his whisper as he passed. So let’s do it again. If you’re willing, we’re ready. So what’s in store? First of all, we’ve added a day. We wanted to give people more time to relax and get to know each other without having to rush from one event to the next. And adding that extra day has allowed us to add meaningful content as well–things like small group discussions with a variety of artists across a number of disciplines, common interest groups which will allow you to meet and talk to other people who love the same books, music, or arts that you do. We’ve doubled the number of sessions and will have speakers to talk about a far wider range of issues. We want to maintain an intimate atmosphere, so, yes, we’re keeping it small. Registration is limited to 100 people, just like last year. And then there are the concerts and special guests. We’re not quite ready to make those announcements yet, but I think you’ll be as excited as we are. To get the full scoop, visit the Hutchmoot 2011 website and check out the schedule. I think you’ll like what you see. If I had a gavel, a black robe, and a pair of rabbit ears, I’d don the frock, walk briskly to the lectern, perk my ears up straight, pound the gavel, lean forward, and proclaim in a deep, portentous voice: “Convene the Hutchmoot!” Sadly, I haven’t the proper costume, nor lectern, nor gavel, so you’ll just have to imagine it. Nevertheless, a convening there shall be. We’ve listened to your suggestions and made adjustments. We’ve added some things, taken others away, invited new people, involved new artists, and finally we’re ready to make the announcement. On September 22-25 the Rabbit Room will convene the 2011 Hutchmoot at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, Tennessee. Coffee be brewed and food be eaten. Songs be sung and stories told. A fine weekend be had by one and by all. So be it.

Mid-February morning, silent house, a steaming cup of fresh brewed coffee, and a rare quiet moment to myself in the stillness of the early hours. I need this moment. Peering through the blurry condensation on the kitchen window overlooking my lumpy and weed-riddled Nashville backyard, it is evident that my labor yesterday pruning low-hanging walnut, hackberry, and poplar branches successfully opened the understory, offering a newer, wider and brighter perspective on the whole. It is my hope that in doing so, adequate sunlight will at long last bathe the threadbare ground, offering what little grass is there the fighting chance to thicken, spread, even thrive. As a result of the low trimming, we were obliged to relocate bird feeders along with a tin-roof birdhouse of kitschy Elvis motif to alternate locales. Wanting to keep them as close in view as would be comfortable for the birds, if only for the gift of being able to casually witness their avian pecking, flitting, chirping, and occasional disagreements. These tiny, alert, and nimble reminders of living abound amid shared black-oil sunflower seed and suet offerings. Repositioning one feeder near its original hackberry perch just outside the back room window, we hung the tin-roof dwelling and a moldy suet feeder along the northwestern corner of our home within the forked boughs of a leafless crepe myrtle towering above a sleeping bed of perennials. The final feeder we hung in a young redbud on a branch admittedly far too flimsy, too near the ground, and much too easily accessible to pillaging squirrels and preying cats. A herd of Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, white-throats, cardinals, and the occasional lollygagging mockingbird, each in their naturally miraculous custom, have quickly ascertained this new location and source of food. This particular feeder has not been in use since we first moved into the house four years ago. It, like so much of natural creation, has been reclusive in hibernation, avoidance, and generalized hunkering down. How wildlife adjusts with such brisk seamlessness to the blunt, enigmatic realities of winter, to unrequested change, to honing in on new and plentiful sources of sustenance with such talent and determination remains a source of great wonder to me. My observation point this morning, a child’s wooden chair — short but sturdy, a veritable Lilliputian throne – accompanies the matching two-foot-tall multi-purpose table where my children eat, drink, spill, play Star Wars, color, sort beans, and carve Play-Doh. A giant in this seat, my knees uncomfortable at near chin level, I hunker down and peck away at vowels and consonants in an attempt to summon words out of the world. Parula blue skies overhead – a psychological balm during winter’s morose lordship – the sun’s dawning light bounds and multiplies off the neighbor’s already golden yellow exterior paint causing me to wince at unexpected brightness. Squinting my eyes, the crow’s feet gather at my temples. Winter’s slow but resistant recession has begun, and every part of me approves of the transformation. Robins know, too. They sing differently in this air. With more intent, their warbles cascade with less timidity, more gallantly, with greater vigor, more musically sweeping. They know. I listen. I myself become blurred, an unreasonable facsimile of myself beneath winter’s monochromatic gravity: graying eyes, dimming mind, exiled frustration, pent-up cabin fever, hands aching to labor, to feel soil within the creases of my palms, on fingertips and beneath nails once again; all tell-tale signs of my desire to undertake the creative act, to relocate wish and aspiration from the boughs of mere hope to that of deliverance. This longing to act, to construct, to build, to be in motion — even to fail miserably in the attempt — wells up in me, and the innate desire to work, to create, to bow before natural miracle, somehow resurrected and rekindled in a new locale among newfound sustenance, is a bounding source of bright illumination. I welcome the opportunity to wince at its presence, to relocate entombed ambitions and goals, to awaken from the slow pulse of hibernation, to exhume myself from the isolation of hunkering down, and at long last to listen, and to summon the world out of words.

Some may recall that Andrew Osenga used to be a member of a band called The Normals. He’s not normal anymore because he only has nine toes. Tragic. We’ve got a few of The Normals Coming to Life CDs in the store. Here’s one of my favorite songs off the album. It’s called “We Are The Beggars At The Foot Of God’s Door.” Long title. Long song. Not normal, yet undeniably awesome. We Are The Beggars At The Foot Of God’s Door We are gathered in cathedrals on a Sunday We are shrouded in our pride and lust’s despair We have heard that you said to go to where your hearts once were Trusting we’d arrive to find you there We have known the empty senses of a funeral We are haunted by the promises of death We have asked to see your face and noticed nothing But a well-timed honest smile from a friend Oh we of little faith Oh you of stubborn grace We are the beggars at the foot of God’s door We have grown cold to the kisses of our lovers We have rolled the windows up and driven through The forests of the autumn, the innocence of snow The metaphor of Jesus in the dew We have known the heated passion of the cold night We have sold ourselves to everything we hate We’re hypocrites and politicians running from a fight We’ve cheated on a very jealous mate Oh we of little faith Oh you stubborn grace We are the beggars at the foot of God’s door We have known the pain of loving in a dying world And our lies have made us angry at the truth But Cinderella’s slipper fits us perfectly And somehow were made royalty with you We are the beggars at the foot of Gods door And you welcomed us in

Note: Yesterday I sat at a table on my back deck with Jason Gray, Pete Peterson and Jonathan Rogers and declared that I never wanted the Rabbit Room to be one of those blogs that always lists things, (i.e., “Four Ways to Make Your Life Awesomer”). Then I had to go and find this on my hard drive. I don’t remember what publication I wrote it for, but I offer it here in case it’s helpful to any of you. 1. Write—This is the most basic, and most important. There’s quite a market out there for books on writing. I know this, because I supported it for a while by purchasing the ones with the coolest covers. Those books aren’t necessarily bad, but I don’t think they teach you as much as you’d learn by just writing. If you’re going to read one of these books, look for the one’s that are more about the why than the how. (Four good ones: Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O’Connor, Walking on Water, by Madeline L’Engle, and The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield.) 2. Read—I don’t mean reading books on writing. I mean reading books that feature good old fashioned excellence. Fill your brain with beautiful language. It’s okay to read a popular novel for fun (I do it all the time), but try temper it with reading a classic now and then. C.S. Lewis said you should read an old book after every new one. He was pretty smart. (If you’re a songwriter, listen to good music–and you should dig into music you may not prefer. I decided several years ago to find out why Bob Dylan was such a big deal, and MAN I’m glad I did.) 3. Write—This may seem like I’m trying to be funny. (“Oh, so he’s repeating the first one for emphasis. That old gag.”) That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. After you’ve read an old, stirring work of art (see #2, above), I bet you a Barnes & Noble gift card you’ll be in the mood to write. When that mood arises, latch on and don’t let go, because the mood will be gone before you can say “Facebook status”. 4. Community—You need people around whom (a) you respect, (b) who respect you, and (c) who will tell you the truth in love. Art begets community, and community nurtures art. It may take a long time, but if you’re working in earnest at your craft, you’ll encounter others who are doing the same. Meet with them once in a while and talk about story and song. Talk about what you’re reading and listening to. Muster the courage to let them read your work and then (gasp!) make them critique it. You may be a good writer, but you aren’t a great one. You should aspire to be a great one, and the only way to do that is to discover your blind spots by listening to instruction. And by remembering point five: 5. Write—Look! I repeated numbers one and three for even greater emphasis! I’m hilarious! But seriously. After you’ve stopped laughing, wiped the tears from your cheeks, and taken a deep breath, lean in close and hearken unto me: Whether you’re a songwriter or an author, a basketball player or a preacher, there’s no way to improve your craft except by practicing. After you’ve stopped reading how-to books and begun to write, after you’ve read great books and listened to great songs, after you’ve written some more, after you’ve gathered a community of songwriters or writers around you and raised the artistic bar, you keep working. Write terrible first drafts (thank you for that advice, Anne Lamott), ask the Creator to help you create, and get to work. Shed light.

Have you ever been enamored of a book because of who wrote it? The story may be good, excellent, even, but the sheer force of the personality behind it lends the book an extra “star” or two or whatever is your cosmological equivalent of a good rating. Such is the case for me when it comes to Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series, which recounts the epic struggles of good and evil between rats, mice, stouts, weasels, cats, badgers, moles, hares, and other woodland creatures in the land of Mossflower and beyond. Think The Lord of the Rings meets The Wind in the Willows. Now, in my self-imposed literary “reeducation” process (in which I forego the literature that makes me look and sound smart and instead find enjoyment, once again, in a darn good yarn), I stumbled upon Redwall. My curiosity was immediately perked by the picture of the author on the back cover. This is Brian Jacques: I know, right? He looks like the grizzled old captain of a whaling ship, not a children’s author. Downright scary. So I did a bit of googling, and found some audio/video of him speaking at a Borders and as a keynote speaker in Liverpool, his hometown, and seriously, if my first choice of which author to have a pint of beer with is C.S. Lewis, a close second is Brian Jacques. A truly infectious personality, he tells bad, corny jokes and laughs at them himself if no one else will (“What creature goes ‘zubb, zubb, zubb’? A bee flying backwards.”); and he’s self-deprecating (“I originally thought all authors had first names of “Sir”- Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- I didn’t realize I could be one.”). He’ll retell the same stories about himself over and over like he’s saying it for the first time. There’s an old-fashioned sense of uncontrolled vitality about him- keen, refreshing, like a good, sharp, chilly Northeasterly wind. He’s decidedly old-school as well. A definite “medieval dinosaur,” as CS Lewis once put it. “My chief delight and satisfaction,” Jacques once wrote, “is annually to desert the world of modern technology.” Delivering milk to a school for the blind, he was eventually invited to read to the students, and noted that publishers used to send books for the kids, and, as he tells it, “I didn’t like those books. Technology, teenage angst. Ugh. They were all about the now. What happened to the books that I used to read? What happened to the magic?” It comes out in his books. Amid the clutter thrown at us in our daily lives, when modern technology seems to yell in a digitized voice that disrupts all quiet conversations over a pint of stout, a Jacques book invites a warm fireside to illuminate its pages, rather than the glow of a computer screen. It sounds quaint (and incredibly ironic, as I write this on my laptop), but Jacques writes the kind of books we need for an “out,” from our daily hustle and bustle. Not, let me be clear, as an “escape,” but rather, like all good literature of its sort, as a “recap,” or reminder of what being human is truly all about: fidelity to friends and family, sharing of food, discovery of purpose, and acknowledgment of the worth and value of those who may be different from you. And as the prospect of becoming a dad begins more and more to fill my everyday reality, it’s good to know that books like this are still being written. “Questing, feasting, singing, and battling to defend good against evil,” as Jacques puts it. What a marvelous concept for a post-modern age. All this from a man, who states, quite simply, that an author is “a person who can paint pictures with words.” [Editor’s note: Today’s guest writer, Greg Pyne, is the author of the Wandering Tree blog located at wanderingtree.wordpress.com. Do yourself a favor and watch the videos below in their entirety.] Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five

A few readers may recall Dawn Marie’s review of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. After nearly three years, she’s back, this time with her thoughts on my brother’s book, Fiddler’s Green. Enjoy.

Last week, the Proprietor and the usual suspects put on a special performance of the Behold the Lamb of God show for the Re:Create conference here in Nashville, and I was reminded once again what an amazing bunch of musicians those guys are. One attendee summed the show up nicely on twitter: “I dreamed that I celebrated Christmas in February while eating M&Ms and being serenaded by the world’s greatest songwriters. Wait. That just happened.” This is one of the songs Andy and Jill Gullahorn sang during the in-the-round portion of the show. Fantastic stuff. It’s called “That Guy” and it’s from Andy’s album Reinventing the Wheel (available today at Song of the Day prices: $10 CD / $7.50 Download.)

My first journal was a yellow legal pad. So was my second. Then came a series of leathers, hardbacks and spiral bounds. The pens evolved from whatever was on hand to a few chosen favorites—mostly black, mostly medium point. Early on, the pages were filled with the prayers of a high school kid who wanted everything and understood little. I wrote in code about the girls I liked and with bravado about the quality of my faith. I’d finish the last line of the last page of one journal, select its successor and keep writing. The journals from this era make a stack more than a foot tall. And then somewhere along the way, the writing slowed. What used to be ten pages per week became more like three. And then what was three pages per week became more like three pages per month. Vincent van Gogh wrote, “In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.” Was the poet in me dying a little more with every unfilled page? Could any day be a good day if at the end of that day its page was empty? Recently, I noticed that I had taken on a strange behavior. If I went too long between journal entries, I would shelve the journal and buy a new one, as if what words that old journal did hold might blow off the pages like dust if I opened it again. A new book would be a kind of do-over. My first entry would always contain an apology to God, followed by a determination to write more. But, inevitably, before long the journal would find itself at the bottom of my backpack, on hand but unused. So now I have two stacks of journals, both over a foot high. In the first stack, every line of every page is filled. As for the second, hundreds and hundreds of the pages are empty. I’ve always carried my current journal with me everywhere I go. I still do. But I’ve hardly written a thing in fifteen months. And sometimes, the sight of that little book no longer filling with words like before embarrasses me, like the truest part of me—the part that prays—is fading. But only sometimes. More and more I’m making my peace with the empty pages. I know the poet is still alive, it’s just that he’s had a tough year. Sometimes he doesn’t know how to say what is in his heart. Other times he does, but chooses not to write it down. Other times, he’s just too busy to carve out the time it takes to sit still long enough to make a record of the moment. Regardless, I’m beginning to understand that those empty pages tell a story too. And an important one. It is the story of following a call with my wife, of raising children, of grieving a farewell from a church and friends I’ve loved more than I can express, of selling a house and buying another, of entering in to a new community, a new church, and a new role in a city we love—along with all the new relationships, challenges and adjustments these circumstances bring. I’m sure your life, like mine, is filled with disciplines abandoned, traditions forgotten and eras undocumented. So we must ask ourselves, is the discipline the excellent thing, or the way to it? Is the tradition itself what is meaningful, or a sign pointing the way? Is an era of life something words can preserve on paper? What are we really losing in the empty pages? Sometimes the words don’t come. Or they come, but they don’t do justice. Sometimes we just have to put down the pen and leave the journal in the bottom of the backpack and let the empty pages tell the story. Listen. When the time comes back around to pick up your pen and write, then write. And write without guilt.  It’s okay.

Note: I read this last night at a February performance of Behold the Lamb of God at a conference for creative-types here in Nashville called Re:Create. It’s from the conclusion of a four-part series I wrote last year called “Money, Part 4: Little Things Matter“. Art, if it can be ascribed value, is most valuable when its beauty (and the beauty of the truth it tells) bewilders, confounds, defies evil itself; it does so by making what has been unmade; it subverts the spirit of the age; it mends the heart by whispering mysteries the mind alone can’t fathom; it fulfills its highest calling when into all the clamor of Hell it tells the unbearable, beautiful, truth that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. None of these songs and stories matter if the beauty they’re adding to isn’t the kind of beauty that redeems and reclaims. That doesn’t mean every song and every story has to be a sermon. Not at all! But the very existence of great stories and stirring music and good art is a sermon itself. That anyone at all in the world would set their sad heart and tired hands to working beauty out of chaos is a monument to Grace. It reminds us of light and high beauty, and it laments the world’s great sorrow. It gives the heart language to rejoice and language to mourn. Creation groans like a woman in labor? Even so. And we know every birth is a tight-wound cord of fear and joy, pain and pleasure, striving and surcease. Let those who can, tell that story. Let those in Christ whose hands paint worlds, whose tongues limn loveliness, whose ears hear astral strains–let them make, and make, and make. And let the made things adorn the dark and proclaim the coming Kingdom till the King himself is come.

In grade school, my report cards were continually marred with the letter ‘X’ — not that my academic performance was so poor, but that alongside my ‘A’ or ‘B’ effort, each teacher felt compelled to let my parents know that I “talked excessively.” It’s no wonder, then, that I ended up as a writer and pastor. Just when I thought such grading scales were over, I stepped into the world of professional ministry over a decade ago where, once again, I was graded every quarter on my performance. In my first church experience, I’d receive the expected range of comments under “Strengths” and “Areas to Improve” but one always remained: “you’re too personal.” That remark came every quarter in response to my teaching style where they said I shared too many stories of my own sin or failures or messes that didn’t have a nice red bow on the end. I now pastor a church that I started seven years ago, so I guess you could say I’ve been able to set my own rules, so to speak. That’s a rather selfish perk to the job of church planter, but it occurred to me along the way that I wasn’t going to change. I wasn’t going to stop talking in grade school (apparently), and I wasn’t going to be able to stop sharing the interior of my own heart, the stumblings of my own journey, the weaknesses in my own armor. Words like “authentic” or “honest” or “real” have been thrown around since the beginning of pastoring The Mercy House. Perhaps those could be called cultural buzz words and some ministry experts will tell you that certain generations appreciate such characteristics. But I couldn’t care less about those studies and believe that it’s something deeper. It’s the very reason why I couldn’t care less about a slapstick comedy and why I get upset if you’re interrupting the intense, Oscar-winning drama. It’s the reason I choose to become lost in a challenging novel or listen again and again to the gritty songwriter. I read a recent Wall Street Journal interview with Colin Firth concerning his performance in The King’s Speech. Firth describes this very quality when he says, “The reason why people tell stories and read stories and see films is to feel less alone. And if there’s a story that takes everyone through something like this, it’s a way to say to others, ‘Now you live through it and see how it feels.’ And if my profession gets that wrong, we’ve lost that opportunity.” Eminem would back up this point more forcefully than I can (or choose to). While we might get more than “one shot,” the chances we’re given to share that song, that story, that sermon, that journey are too few. On a Sunday morning, I find that moment is a sacred space that I’ve been gifted to share the resonant story of God and the echoes of that kingdom’s glory in my own life — successes and failures. If I get any chance at all to speak with the words given me, I want to speak the full truth — knowing it’s in that complicated, messy tale that walls begin to crumble and hope shines through, because somehow we’re not only communicating our own story but their story as well. It’s healing for me to know that I’m not the only one finding marriage to be a difficult run. It’s healing to know that others’ lives are also barren, hurting, or broken. Not that we remain there in some misery-loves-company sort of way, but instead that we believe maybe one of the people in that place with us will pick us up and help us forward. #Vulnerability

I recorded this the other night for fun in my basement studio with a 1938 Martin D28, playing both parts. The older I get, the more these words resound in my heart; we have a Friend who will never leave or forsake us. I love how the song doesn’t give the impression that the life of walking in the Spirit is about avoiding suffering; it’s about finding redemption and relationship in our trials and temptations. _____________ What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry Everything to God in prayer! Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry Everything to God in prayer! Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged— Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful, Who will all our sorrows share? Jesus knows our every weakness; Take it to the Lord in prayer. Are we weak and heavy-laden, Cumbered with a load of care? Precious Savior, still our refuge— Take it to the Lord in prayer. Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer! In His arms He’ll take and shield thee, Thou wilt find a solace there.

Conversation one: I was talking recently with a high school student, a girl I’ll call Keisha, who lives in a single parent home with siblings and a wonderful, caring mother who has done a praiseworthy job of loving her children and raising them “in the way they should go” — a task, she would tell you, that takes strength and wisdom which she does not possess on her own. Keisha and I were sharing thoughts about the Christmas holiday when our conversation turned to her dad, a man whom she rarely sees and whom she only talks to a time or two a year, despite the fact that he lives less than a couple of hours away. I asked her if she misses not having a father in her life. She does. Enough to tear up at the question. She said that she misses having someone to help her make decisions. She misses having someone come to her special events at school and celebrate holidays and birthdays with her and her siblings. She misses knowing that someone is helping her mom with all that goes into keeping a household, providing for and raising children. She misses a lot. And then she added, almost as an afterthought, that she wished she had a dad to give her a “special nickname.” I’ve never thought of nicknaming as a parental duty or a child’s expectation but, in Keisha’s mind, a daddy-born term of endearment is obviously some sort of treasure lost. It is symbolic perhaps of the countless small things – the shared experiences, the unique language, the inside jokes, the quirks and habits — that make each family different from all the others, and every child seem one-of-a-kind in the eyes of their parents. I couldn’t help but wonder as I listened to Keisha how a dad could ever walk away from a daughter and essentially disown three children. And I wondered what their nicknames might be if their father had chosen to be part of their lives. Conversation Two: Last night, I had dinner with an old friend and his wife. We’ve not visited, at any length, in a couple of decades and had lots of questions about where the years have taken us. He’s a well-known and respected surgeon who is the proud, and very involved, father of three children, two sons and a daughter. She’s a full-time mother and does the work necessary to run a busy household. I asked them about their children. When the dad started talking about his daughter, an eighth grader who is the youngest of the three, he simply could not find words to describe her. “It’s as if she belongs to another world.” I think he might have used the word “angel” a time or two, might have said that her feet don’t touch the ground. His praise of the girl made me want to write her a letter just to remind her how blessed she is to be the object of such a deep affection. Maybe I will. I would imagine he has a nickname for her. And while I am sure that my old friend would be quick to recognize her imperfections, they obviously do not dominate his perception of her or overshadow the good things that he believes to be true about her. The contrast between the two girls, their dads, the realities in which they live and move, could not be more stark. I wish Keisha had a dad who believed in nicknames and who was committed to the hard work of parenthood. For now, I pray and trust that God can and will be the father she needs. And he calls her, and us, by names that only a doting father would choose for his children: beloved, little one, saint, bride, friend. A few nights ago I was tossing and turning about something, something not worthy of sleeplessness but bothersome just the same, when I began to think of how God loves me. I brought to mind some passages that remind me of how, as a loving father, he wants good for me, always good. And as I thought of those nicknames and titles he gives to his children, so help me, the knot in my stomach eased up and sleep returned. I belong to a father who might well tell inquirers that, despite the spots and blemishes, his children “belong to another world.” I pray that you can hear the God of all creation, the one who showed himself to us fully in Jesus, “rejoicing over you with singing” and calling you by name.

This is the eulogy I read at my grandmother’s funeral on November 29, 2010. Evelyn Dowdy Ross was born May 10, 1918 in Pitts, Georgia, a tiny little town in Wilcox County. She was raised mostly in Fitzgerald. She was one of eight children in a loving and lively family that worked hard to scratch a living out of South Georgia’s sandy soil. There were two older brothers—Carl and Oliver—and then six beautiful girls: Leone, Aline, Irene, Judy, Evelyn, and Audrey. Evelyn was the one with flaming red hair—a slip of a girl with a ready smile and blue eyes that were quick and kind. The story of how Evelyn learned to play the piano tells quite a bit about who she was and where she came from. On her eighth or ninth birthday her brothers—who had gone away to Florida to seek their fortune—sent her a little money for her birthday. She spent it on a correspondence course to learn to play the piano. This in spite of the fact that her family had no piano. But Evelyn loved beauty, and she believed as firmly in things she couldn’t see as in the things she could.  When the correspondence course arrived in the mail, she found a plank and measured and marked the 88 keys of a piano—the white keys and the black keys containing every musical possibility there is…but only in the imagination of a little girl who heard music where others heard silence. Every day she pounded away on that plank, as faithful to the work as any concert pianist. And every day she prayed that God would give her the gift of musicianship, that she might give the gift right back to him for his glory. In time her father, seeing how hard his daughter had worked, figured out a way to buy a used piano on installments, and little Evelyn filled that dusty farmhouse with the hymns of the faith. She was never a great musician, but she was faithful to her promise. She gave her gift back to God, serving for years as a church pianist. The brothers convinced their parents to move with the girls to South Florida, where the Land Boom of the twenties was creating more opprontuities than there were people. It was a short sojourn in Florida, but it was eventful, and Evelyn often told stories of that time. She told, for instance, of their move from Georgia. The family’s household goods were piled in a pickup truck, and she was perched on top of the pile like Grandma Clampett, facing backwards as the truck drove southward. Trundling through one little town, she waved at the locals as if she were the Rose Bowl Queen and the piled-up pickup were her float.  The locals waved back and smiled. As they got further down the main drag, the people waved more enthusiastically. Evelyn stepped up her waving, pleased at the townspeople’s reception. A few locals started waving with two hands. Some pointed, some laughed, and some yelled something to her, but little Evelyn couldn’t understand what they were saying. Sensing at last that something was amiss, she turned around just in time to duck beneath a banner stretched across Main Street (it was advertising a Tomato Festival or something) that the townspeople were trying to warn her about. Evelyn loved to tell that story. She didn’t mind being the butt of her own joke, as long as it was a good joke. While in Florida, Evelyn was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean. She also spent a night in jail. (Now is not the time to keep secrets). They hadn’t been in Florida very long when a terrible hurricaneblew through–the still-famous Hurricane of 1926. She was staying with a cousin whose father was the sheriff of the little town. He decided the jailhouse was the safest place to weather the storm, so he sent his family there along with little Evelyn. As far as I know, it was the only night she ever spent behind bars. I love to picture that little girl having these adventures so far from home. The Florida adventure didn’t even last a year. The Dowdys were Georgia people, and farmers, and the prosperity of the Florida Land Boom was no match for the hardscrabble comforts of kith and kin back home. Her next big adventure was college—as far-fetched a scheme as the piano lessons. She got accepted into Norman Junior College in Norman Park, GA, but it wasn’t at all clear how she was going to pay for it. Some of the money she borrowed from the bank, but every term it was an adventure figuring out how she was going to pay. Her sister Judy paid some of her tuition. Leone made the clothes she would need. She scratched and fought to go to college. When she got there, however, she was terribly homesick. “If I could have just seen a yellow dog I recognized from Fitzgerald,” she said, “I would have cried for joy.” It wasn’t long, however, before she settled in.  She made friends at Norman Park who remained her friends as long as they lived. From Norman Park she went on to Tift College in Forsyth. She started her teaching career in Fitzgerald in the 30s. That first year she lived in a house with three other young teachers. The four of them remained close for the rest of their lives. You may notice a pattern emerging. Everlyn had a gift for deep and abiding friendship. She wasn’t just personable, though she was certainly that. She was a true and faithful friend.  She was genuinely interested in other people and she genuinely hoped the best for them. She was generous with her time, generous with compliments and good will. She made everybody feel better about themselves, especially men. Anybody who came into contact with her thought, “Well, maybe I’m more lovable than I realized.” Which is to say, Evelyn was truly an agent of grace. She was eager for everybody she met to know that God loved them unconditionally, and she treated people in a way that it wasn’t so hard to imagine that it might be true. One Sunday in 1940 or 1941, a young man Evelyn had never seen before came to her Sunday School class. He was new to town, a salesman for a meat packing house. His name was Abe Ross. They married on December 12, 1941, just five days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Evelyn taught school that day; she also made the chicken salad for the reception. She was an outlandishly faithful wife to Abe. He was a big-hearted man and one of the funniest. Evelyn lived to serve him. I don’t suppose he ever saw the bottom of an ice cube in his tea glass from the day they married to the day he died. That marriage was a picture of grace if ever there was one. Surely Abe wondered every day what he had done to deserve such beauty and such devotion. The only answer, of course, was that he didn’t. Nobody could. Together Abe and Evelyn raised three children—Betsy, Dan, and Nancy—whom Evelyn never spanked. Having taught for ten years, Evelyn took ten years off to be at home with the kids while they were little. In 1955 the Rosses moved to Warner Robins, Georgia. I think it might have been the best thing that ever happened to Warner Robins. Evelyn taught for a year at Thomas Elementary, then she settled in at Lindsey Elementary. She taught there, mostly third grade, for twenty-three years, until she retired in 1979. For the rest of her life, it seemed, every time she went to a restaurant or any other public place in Warner Robins, somebody stopped her to say she taught them in third grade. For her family, it is always a pleasure to hear “Your mother (or grandmother) taught me in third grade.” We never fear what the person might say next. Evelyn had a gift for handling difficult students. She always gave the hard ones a job to do and praised them for handling their responsibilities so well. And soon they were great friends. As a former student told me at the visitation, Evelyn was never punitive, but she always communicated to her students what she expected of them. And they always met her expectations—eventually. I’ve also spoken with more than one former colleague who said, “Evelyn taught me how to teach.” She was as generous to her peers as she was to her students, and they loved her for it. Evelyn made everything seem easy. But things were never as easy as they seemed. Abe ran a sausage plant on Ignico Drive and later on 247 near the banks of the Eecheconnee Creek. That was a hard business, and at times it seemed all the money Abe made had to go back into the business. Many were the days when Evelyn got up, got the kids off to school, taught a full day of school, came back to the sausage plant to work a few hours, cooked and served supper, put the kids to bed, then graded papers. Not to mention the Wednesday evenings when she had to play the piano for choir practice and prayer meeting. But she never complained. She never looked harried. She carried on with that almost otherworldly serenity that came from a deep and abiding faith in a God who loved her and had a good plan for her life. She was truly graceful. I mean that literally. Her life was full of grace—grace received and grace extended. Evelyn scattered beauty wherever she went, and everyone she knew was better for it, whether they deserved it or not. She had a dignity about her that had nothing to do with her outward circumstances. Whether times were hard or relatively easy, she was just Evelyn. She dressed beautifully even if she had to make the dresses herself, and she always wore her lipstick—and strongly recommended that the women she was close to wear theirs too. She had the same ready smile and gentle laugh; her beauty seemed to deepen as her red hair faded to white. Even as her body declined, she never lost that dignified bearing of hers. And she never failed to honor the dignity of others. Evelyn had seven grandchildren and nineteen grandchildren, each of whom had reason to believe that he or she was her favorite. Every one of us was her sugar baby, as she told us every time she saw us. She never failed to tell one of her children that she loved them every time she saw them. She loved well, and she was well-loved. Evelyn was the last of her generation. Her brothers and sisters all went on before her, along with their wives and husbands. Abe died in 1983; his five brothers and sisters and all their wives and husbands have died too. Evelyn loved that wild rumpus of a family, and they loved her. But they were all gone in her last years—every one of them. For twenty-seven years she was a widow—twenty seven years! Shortly before I got married myself, she told me, “It’s a hard thing not to be the most important person in anybody’s life.” She never quite understood how much she meant to so many people. But look around. This room is full of people to whom Evelyn Ross was exceedingly important. And, by the way, she thought you were exceedingly important too. For ninety-two years Evelyn kept reaching out beyond herself. She never grew tired of loving people. If she was physically able, she was in church every time the doors were open. She was traveling all over the country with her roving band of tourists until not very long ago. For nine years, well into her eighties, she taught English as a second language in Central Baptist’s language school. She always had time for anyone who needed her time and attention. She was a joy to the very end of her life. As her body failed, she could have gotten grouchy and no one would have blamed her; but she never did. Evelyn Ross was a woman of deep faith and remarkable faithfulness her whole life. She was always that little girl who took piano lessons without a piano. She lived by faith, not by sight. But she doesn’t live by faith any more. Now her faith has become sight.  And things she only glimpsed in a glass darkly she now sees fully and face to face. Yes, she was faithful, but as she knew all along, what really mattered was God’s faithfulness in Christ, who has now received her into his rest. The work he began in her long ago is now complete. After twenty-seven years of widowhood, Evelyn is a bride again, feasting at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And her beauty here is nothing to her beauty there—where the beauties of her youth combine with the beauties of her old age and beauties that we can’t even imagine yet. Her hair isn’t white there, but red again, blazing with the brightness of a dozen suns. As Frederick Buechner said, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.” What a joy it is to think of Evelyn reunited with those she had lost—her parents, her sisters, her husband Abe, her son Dan, all those friends. After so many goodbyes, there she is, waiting to welcome us into the Long Hello. Halleluiah.

While living in Umeå, Sweden I worked occasionally (when I was bored with window shopping, reading and writing) at a cool place called Kafe Station (pronounced stah-SHOON, not STA-shen). Moving right along. A local church turned an old fire station into this cafe and it stands as a major component of their ministry, staffed and managed by the church and used as a really neat gathering space for concerts, meetings, minglings and such. When I had just barely acclimated to the new pace/language/wonder, Maria and I went shopping one morning for organic lavender for our morning baking. Curious, I thought, as we shuffled through the snow to the shops down the street. We found a medicine and herb shop where we purchased a little plastic pocket filled with teeny purple buds. This was going to be both fun and educational. Once back in the little green-tiled kitchen and with the local radio playing songs in a language I could only scarcely grasp, we tied on our aprons and started mixing a dough for the day’s skorpor (Sweden’s answer to biscotti). My job was chopping chocolate chunks off a good size block and running a knife through some toasted hazelnuts, both of which would eventually be folded into the soft mound of sweet dough, along with the aromatic lavender. Just enough to perfume the biscuits, though, not enough to render them soap-like. They baked, nestled in their long, perforated baguette forms, while we cleaned our workspace. When they came out, fragrant and golden, we quickly sliced them into inch-thick pieces, laid them out on sheet trays and slid them back into the oven for their second and final baking. We retired to a cafe table for fika and enjoyed the tiniest cups of the darkest coffee with the cutest spoons. Soon the sweet, floral, nutty scent settled into air of the warm, sunlit room, quiet save for the clinking of said cute spoons, the hushed murmur of the lilting, sing-songy language, and the occasional squeal of a beautiful, rosy-cheeked Swedish baby in her stroller. Skorpor were taste-tested, naturally (my tongue can still remember the foreign but marvelous combination), slid onto trays and then into the lighted case, ready for the day’s dunking.

In my daily Frederick Buechner a few days ago, I read about the time he received his first book deal, only to immediately hear about a classmate’s dissimilar misfortune. And as he walked away, his joy could not fully withstand the grief of his friend. “There can be no real joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all,” he wrote. And isn’t that the way it is with everything in our broken world? One man’s fortune is another man’s burden. The same hill means one man’s climb and another’s coasting descent. Sometimes in the effort to encourage the pursuit of simplicity, proponents point to the joys of letting go of consumer values, to the shame of living for cheap, monetary thrills, to the true cost of our endless appetites. I believe in that joy, and in that shame, but I forget sometimes, that while there can be great reward for making sacrificial changes, those changes very often feel like loss. Change is never without a feeling of loss, even happy change. A wedding is a great beginning, full of hope and the promise of a timeless friendship, but it is also an end. Isn’t it a common story for a best friend to spend much of the wedding grieving over the forever-changed nature of their friendship? Or a child is born and amidst the parents’ joy, they are quickly adjusting to the sudden demands of their new charge, likely without the indulgence of previous comforts like sleeping in or a simple cup of coffee. When we leave one thing behind in order to gain something better, moving on into joy is part of the story, but the other part is loss. Whether it’s moving across the country, signing a book deal, or giving up Netflix (I know . . . it’s a doozy), we must give ourselves the freedom to grieve the fear or loss we feel. Because regardless of how good the change may be, the pain it brings along the way is real. I love Eric Peters’ song that I posted for the new year. “So much to be thankful, so much to be forgotten. Gonna cry when I need it, smile when I need it, laugh when I need it. Good-bye denial, good-bye. Good-bye.” Pursuing a more simple, focused life is a common response to the rampant consumerism and disposability of our time, and I believe an appropriate one. And when I am visited by the longing for what I have left behind, I must see it, name it, and then remember that I have not so much given up what I had gained as begun to hope for something different. To pursue the life-giving habits that depend less on accumulation, and more on expression, enrichment, service, is for many of us a hoping for the day when there is joy without sadness, for us all.

Author’s Note: The following anecdote first appeared in a comment on my blog. My store of anecdotes is finite, as my long-suffering wife can (and often does) attest. I can’t afford to bury them in, say, the fifth comment on a post about some other subject. That’s just a rookie mistake. In blogging, as in buffet-style dining, one must pace oneself (especially if one has already re-posted most of one’s pieces here at The Rabbit Room). In that spirit, and in honor of the fact that I am writing this on a plane trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, I hereby promote the following anecdote from comment to post. I hope you find it edifying. I went to college at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville was close enough to Charlotte for me to form opinions about that city. They were largely unfavorable opinions. I don’t remember the details of my case against Charlotte, but they were summed up by the bon mot, “I’ve got no use for a city whose goal in life is to be the next Atlanta!” (I had opinions about Atlanta too.) Not long after we married, my wife and I were driving through the Carolinas, and as we approached Charlotte I once again laid out my strong anti-Charlotte position for her benefit. “It doesn’t seem so bad to me,” she said as we passed beneath the shadows of the great glass buildings where bankers were going about their bankerly business. “Pshaw!” I said. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Do you know any good places to eat in Charlotte?” “How would I know?” I said. “I’ve never been to Charlotte in my life!” I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget the expressions on my wife’s face at that moment. A look of astonishment gave way to an angry scowl that shaded into a squint that said, if I read it right, “What have I done? I have just attached myself intimately and irrevocably to a man who speaks very articulately of things he knows nothing about.” I could see the wheels turning as she wondered how many of my other well-considered opinions had no basis in reality. I am happy to report that I have mellowed on the subject of Charlotte, North Carolina. My prejudices were no match for the reality of the place, which is actually quite pleasant and populated by fine people who have plenty of other hopes and dreams besides trying to be the next Atlanta. Incidentally, I’ve decided Atlanta isn’t so bad either. Bonus Fact: Charlotte is the largest city between Atlanta and Washington, DC. Bonus Story Recommendation: In his short story collection Here We Are in Paradise, Nashville writer and Charlotte native Tony Earley has a brilliant story called “Charlotte” that I commend to you. I also commend to you everything else that Tony Earley has ever published.

Superman has the Fortress of Solitude. Batman has the Batcave. The Justice League has the Watchtower. Sherlock Holmes had 221b Baker Street. Bilbo had Bag End. Michael Card has Mole End. It’s my pleasure to announce to you, ladies and germs, the Rabbit Room finally has official headquarters. Quarters for our head. A hutch. A lair. (Can good guys have lairs?) Monday morning I stood in the new office with Pete Peterson, Thomas McKenzie, Jason Gray, Russ Ramsey and our friend Josh Petersen (who was taking the picture) and gave thanks to God for the place. What happens in a base of operations, you ask? Other than plotting to take over the world, it’s where we package and ship all the books, CDs, mugs, and Father Thomas bobblehead dolls. For years now, the base of operations has been in my manager’s basement. It’s been a good basement, as basements go, but even the best basement setup can’t compete with an actual above-ground office. Whoever filled orders had to step over boxes and hunch, not to mention the lack of sunlight makes one cranky (and pasty). If we needed to do any webwork or planning or brainstorming or writing it tended to be in whatever coffee shop we could find. As many of you know, we tried for several months a while back to open a bookstore/coffeehouse, but realized that it’s impossible right now. In the meantime we’ve been looking for a happy medium, a place between the basement and a bricks-and-mortar Rabbit Room store. Enter Ben Shive (a.k.a., one of my best compadres). Ben needed a bigger studio for all his production work. The Rabbit Room needed a lair. Yesterday I signed the lease on an office space that will house both. The Beehive (where Ben does his mad science) and the Rabbit Room will share a space right in the heart of Berry Hill, behind Baja Burrito and next to Sam & Zoe’s coffeehouse. It’s the neighborhood where our uber-talented friends Andrew Osenga, Mitch Dane, Shane Wilson, and a bunch of other great producers and musicians also work and play and eat burritos. It also happens to be about a five-minute drive from the Gullahorns, the Goodgames, the McKenzies, the Ramseys, and–well, you get the idea. It’s in a great spot. Ben will be making fine records in his part of the space and Pete will be in the other, working on things like Rabbit Room Store orders, the website, planning Hutchmoot 2011, and building Rabbit Room Press. (He’ll also probably write his next novel there.) People have asked me what this will allow the Rabbit Room to do that it wasn’t already doing. It’s a good question, and I don’t really know the answer. It’ll be a much better place to fill orders. It’ll be a good place to meet and discuss the overtaking of the world with Rabbity goodness. This phase of the Rabbit Room’s growth won’t include retail sales, so you won’t be able to swing by just yet (though we encourage you to dine at Baja Burrito as often as you pass through town, since food will taste better in the vicinity of our lair). The biggest thing for me is something I learned at Hutchmoot last year: there’s a big difference between existing online and existing in the real world. I don’t mean to overstate, but I think of it as a kind of incarnation. The thing takes on a new life. Years after this whole idea struck, I’m grateful to see it moving forward, building community, and shedding light. Thank you, dear readers, listeners, and encouragers, for being a part of this story. Sincerely, The Proprietor P.S. Shameless plea: If anyone lives in Nashville and has any cool furniture, we’re looking for some. You can see from the pictures that we don’t have much yet, besides the crate Pete’s sitting on. We humbly reserve the right to be picky, but if you have anything you’d like to donate (i.e., bookshelves, floor lamps, club chairs, love seat, coffee table, lava lamp, wooden desk, etc.), we’d be happy to take it off your hands. Shoot an email (and a picture of what you’ve got) to info@rabbitroom.com and we’ll let you know if it meets our impeccable standards.

Normally, I — in this case, portraying a critic – would proceed to try and convince you to read this or that book by using my own words of approval. But I, already too crummy at convincing people to do this or that, choose instead to quote the author’s own characters – two stuffed animals inside a taxidermist’s workshop – to show you my humble appreciation for Yann Martel’s newest novel, Beatrice and Virgil. It’s a harrowing, seeming un-adventure story that builds a slow, awkward tension much like in his previous novel, 2002 Man Booker Prize winner, Life of Pi. Reading B&V, and knowing Martel’s earlier success with Pi, his newest novel, though fiction, seems part autobiography, part fiction, part history, part painting. Though it does not succeed on every level, I find it to be a most-creative attempt to make sense of the dark cruelty that mankind continually inflicts upon itself throughout history from one group to another, from one man to another. That said, I leave you with Martel’s own words via Beatrice, a donkey accompanying his monkey companion, Virgil, during their walking conversation. Virgil: I was thinking about faith. Beatrice: Were you? Virgil: Faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun?

Soon after the release of my latest album, Chrome (2009), I had what business executives–and most normal people–would classify as a bizarre and terrible idea for an interview. Producer Ben Shive humored me, and together we (mostly Ben) pieced together this idea, a self-indulgent mollusk of aural awkwardness. If you didn’t already think I was weird, this should clinch the deal. Please, enjoy this, the premiere (and probably final) episode of Silver Tongue : Golden Voice. Features a guest appearance by legendary tire salesman, Wayne Toosun.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/silvertongue.mp3

From a letter written by Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, to his sister. “…I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was – how to get it out. He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite – was the hand to lay hold on His fulness and make it mine. But I had not this faith. “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.” As I read I saw it all! “If we believe not, he abideth faithful.” I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, “I will never leave thee.” “Ah, there is rest!” I thought. “I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide with me – never to leave me, never to fail me?” And…He never will. Nor was this all He showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fulness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all-root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit. And Jesus is not that alone – He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding too may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ. …it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Saviour, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? or your head be well fed while your body starves? Again, think of its bearing on prayer. Could a bank clerk say to a customer, “It was only your hand, not you that wrote that check”; or “I cannot pay this some to your hand, but only to yourself”? No more can your prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e., not for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His, His members) so long as we keep within the limits of Christ’s credit – a tolerably wide limit! The sweetest part…is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me, for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things, or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases. So if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in places of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that HIs resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

I’m obsessing over the music of Josh Ritter. Last year, Pete and I met Evie Coates at the coffee shop to talk about Hutchmoot 2010. We talked about the program, the menu, the number of forks we needed, then we drove over to Church of the Redeemer so Evie could check out the kitchen. I rode in her fabled old red truck and she asked if I had ever heard of Josh Ritter. When I said no she looked at me like I should be ashamed of myself, then she played me a song called “Another New World” from Ritter’s new album So Runs the World Away. I was mesmerized. The song was about this Ernest Shackleton-type captain, an adventurer who musters a crew to voyage with him to the frozen north because he believes a new world lay hidden, waiting “for whoever can break through the ice”. Ritter’s voice was both intense and easy on the ears, the story the song told was haunting and sad and mysterious, and I wanted to hear it again. And again. But at that point we pulled into the church and planned Hutchmoot instead. Later that day she texted me the two songs I should buy from that album in case I was still wary of getting the whole thing: “Another New World” and one called “The Curse”. I forked my $1.98 over to iTunes and listened to the songs a few times, then one night on the road Ben and I watched the music video for “The Curse”, at which point I realized that–get this–the song was about a mummy who falls in love with the archaeologist who discovers him. And with that, ladies and germs, I was in. I bought the album and listened to it about thirty times, marveling, above all, at Ritter’s lyrics and the stories he tells. If you know me at all, you know I’m a word nerd. I love to read a book in which I can sense the author’s love affair with the tools of his trade. I want to marvel not just at good stories, but good sentences. So I geeked out when I heard Josh Ritter sing these lines (from his tale of the voyage of the Annabel Lee): After that it got colder, and the world got quiet, It was never quite day or quite night. And the sea turned the color of sky Turned the color of sea turned the color of ice. After that all around us was fastness, One vast glassy desert of arsenic white, And the waves that once lifted us, Shifted instead into drifts against Annabel’s sides. Now, before you read on, do yourself a favor and read that lyric again. Read it aloud. If you’re at work, cover your mouth and whisper it to yourself (that’s what I do at Starbucks). That, my friends, is the work of a ninja. That’s the kind of evocative, alliterative, narrative, imaginative, roll-off-the-tongue writing I dream about. Evie has now cost me about thirty bucks, because I’ve since bought Ben Shive So Runs the World Away, and bought myself The Animal Years, Ritter’s previous album, as well as In the Dark: Live at Vicar Street, recorded in Dublin. And that’s rare for me. I just don’t do that. I usually get into a new artist like I get into a cold swimming pool. I’m the guy who orders the same thing at the restaurant every time, not because I’m picky but because when I find something I like I stick to it. If you looked at my iTunes library you’d still see (other than the Square Peg Alliance) mostly Rich Mullins, Marc Cohn, and James Taylor, the three dudes I cut my songwriting teeth on. I just don’t get into new artists easily. That’s why I was excited to discover Josh Ritter. Not only do I love the sound, I love that he’s telling me something, and I get the sense that, whatever it is, he believes it–or at least, he’s willing to ask good questions about his doubts. His songs are rife with Biblical references (enough to make me wonder if he grew up in the church), as well as literary ones, though it’s hard to know exactly where he’s coming from, spiritually. I get the feeling sometimes that he’s mad at the God he doesn’t think exists. Here’s a line from a 9-minute epic from The Animal Years called “Thin Blue Flame”, a song I can’t get enough of: If God’s up there he’s in a cold dark room The heavenly hosts are just the cold dark moons He bent down and made the world in seven days And ever since he’s been a-walking away It’s a bitter and misinformed depiction of God. (The Gospel is basically the exact opposite of what he claims here. God made the world in (six) days, and ever since he’s been interacting with it, flowering it with beauty, redeeming it, calling to his people, and eventually walking not away but into the world itself.) Ritter goes on in the song to sing about the horrors of war, of amputees and missiles as the only answer from above. There’s layer on layer of imagery, everything from Hamlet to Laurel and Hardy, and it builds to a fever of anger and emotion at the state of the world. But at the end of the song, after he’s said his piece, he seems to take a deep breath. He seems to wake from a nightmare and paints, more or less, a picture of heaven: I woke beneath a clear blue sky The sun a shout, the breeze a sigh My old hometown and the streets I knew Were wrapped up in a royal blue I heard my friends laughing out across the fields The girls in the gloaming and the birds on the wheel The raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay Cicadas electric in the heat of the day A run of Three Sisters and the flush of the land And the lake was a diamond in the valley’s hand The straight of the highway and the scattered out hearts They were coming together they pulling apart And angels everywhere were in my midst In the ones that I loved in the ones that I kissed I wondered what it was I’d been looking for up above Heaven is so big there ain’t no need to look up So I stopped looking for royal cities in the air Only a full house gonna have a prayer I think he’s trying to answer all the outrage of the first half of the song with the reminder that somehow a world of beauty, friendship, and peace persists. This last stanza is loaded with card-playing references (notice all the words like “straight”, “flush”, “hand”, “hearts”, and “diamond”), which is cool, even if I don’t totally get it. But then comes the line, “Heaven is so big there ain’t no need to look up”. I get what he’s trying to say, or at least I think I do, which is that maybe our time would be better spent not dreaming of some pie-in-the-sky in the sweet by-and-by. I think he thinks he’s pronouncing some indictment on Christianity, as if God wants us to let the earth go to rot and ruin because we lucky few are going to heaven anyway. Of course, that’s far from true. The Church is called to love, and love, and love; it’s an army embattled with the forces of darkness–forces that do want to see the world burn. But if C.S. Lewis was right (and I think he was), then those of us in Christ will discover in heaven that heaven had, in a sense, overlapped our time on earth. Heaven really is bigger than he thinks, and because of Christ, it’s all around us, making everything sad come untrue (thank you, Samwise and Jason Gray). From The Great Divorce: “But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.” The many good and beautiful things Ritter describes in that last stanza are, for those in Christ, the waves of heaven lapping up on our shores, washing back over our lives here. Lewis goes on to say that those who give themselves over to Hell will find that the same is true: they were already at its dark edges. Lewis: “And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.’” So Ritter is asking good questions. I don’t necessarily agree with his answers, but that doesn’t keep me from being amazed by the songs–and the songs suggest to me that he’s paying attention, watching and listening to the part of his spirit that resonates with a certain secret fire. And if he keeps writing songs this good I think he’s going to have to try pretty hard to ignore the source of all that richness. His imagination and sense of poetry and narrative are a rare gift, and I’m intrigued enough to keep listening. And listening. The same way I listen to Paul Simon’s Graceland. I don’t get every song, and that’s part of why I keep coming back. My hat is off to Josh Ritter. Please keep writing. Here’s “The Curse”, along with the lyric and a video if you want to know more. Buy the song here. [audio:TheCurse.mp3] The Curse He opens his eyes falls in love at first sight With the girl in the doorway What beautiful lines and how full of life After thousands of years what a face to wake up to He holds back a sigh as she touches his arm She dusts off the bed where ‘til now he’s been sleeping And under miles of stone, the dried fig of his heart Under scarab and bone starts back to its beating She carries him home in a beautiful boat He watches the sea from a porthole in stowage He can hear all she says as she sits by his bed And one day his lips answer her in her own language The days quickly pass he loves making her laugh The first time he moves it’s her hair that he touches She asks, “Are you cursed?” he says, “I think that I’m cured” Then he talks of the Nile and the girls in bulrushes In New York he is laid in a glass covered case He pretends he is dead people crowd round to see him But each night she comes round and the two wander down The halls of the tomb that she calls a museum Often he stops to rest but then less and less Then it’s her that looks tired staying up asking questions He learns how to read from the papers that she Is writing about him and he makes corrections It’s his face on her book more and more come to look Families from Iowa, Upper West Siders Then one day it’s too much he decides to get up And as chaos ensues he walks outside to find her She’s using a cane and her face looks too pale But she’s happy to see him as they walk he supports her She asks “Are you cursed?” but his answer’s obscured In a sandstorm of flashbulbs and rowdy reporters Such reanimation the two tour the nation He gets out of limos he meets other women Her speaks of her fondly their nights in the museum But she’s just one more rag now he’s dragging behind him She stops going out she just lies there in bed In hotels in whatever towns they are speaking Then her face starts to set and her hands start to fold And one day the dried fig of her heart stops its beating Long ago in the ship she asked, “Why pyramids?” He said, “Think of them as an immense invitation” She asked, “Are you cursed?” He said, “I think that I’m cured” Then he kissed her and hoped that she’d forget that question For Josh Ritter, Mummies and Shakespeare Are the Stuff of Music from Mike Fritz on Vimeo.

As for the man: he is about 52, of humble origin (there are still traces of cockney in his voice), ugly as a chimpanzee but so radiant (he emanates more love than any man I have ever known) that as soon as he begins talking whether in private or in a lecture he is transfigured and looks like an angel…In spite of his ‘angelic’ quality he is also quite an earthy person and when Warnie, Tolkien, he and I meet for our pint in a pub in Broad Street, the fun is often so fast and furious that the company probably thinks we’re talking bawdy when in fact we’re very likely talking Theology. —C. S. Lewis He was the one running back and forth from the bar, keeping everyone supplied with ale and good cheer during the weekly meetings at the Eagle and Child (or “Bird and Baby”, to the seasoned Oxonian). He scarcely uttered a word, playful or serious, into which he did not thrust the intense vitality of his entire personality, for better or for worse. Largely self-taught, he couldn’t even boast of a degree (excepting the honorary MA Oxford eventually conferred upon him near the end of his life), though he sat at ease among some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. In terms of elegance and concision he was a terrible novelist and a largely unremembered poet. C.S. Lewis esteemed him among the chiefest of his friends and lauded the deep spirituality of both his writings and his life. The wary Tolkien wasn’t so sure. The readers of Charles Williams are as divided as the Inklings themselves were. To some, his books have been the catalyst to a mind-blowing experience of true Christ-like living. To others, equally devout, they reek of the cockamamie, if not the downright heretical. Dorothy Sayers has said of this phenomenon of polarity that “[Williams’ writing] is so individual as at a first encounter to disconcert, perplex, or even antagonize those on whom it did not, on the contrary, break as a sudden light to them that had sat in darkness.” I heartily concur. I picked up his novel Descent into Hell a few years ago upon the trusted recommendation of one of my favorite authors, Sheldon Vanauken, anticipating, I imagine, the same soaring and lucid sublimities in the one as I had found in the other. If I was looking for the beauty of my faith all laid out in beautiful and logical array, what I found was an (apparently) chaotic jumble of events past and present that seemed to all be happening at the same time and a confusing array of symbols I was not yet friendly enough with my Dante to fully appreciate. In short, I was right merrily kerflummoxed. But it was the merriment, methinks, that took hold and insisted that there was something there worth the trouble of seeing. A merriment not related to content (heavens, no—Williams’ books are notoriously dark) but in the larger sense of commedia: the hell and purgatory one must slough through in quest of the bewildering glories of paradise and the often humorous, often tragic performance we all make of it every day of our lives. I couldn’t help being haunted by it and its suggestion of a larger life than even many Christians dare to dream of (not to mention its sobering conclusion to the rejection of that life). Not long after that I found, quite by accident, the key to many of the riddles of Descent amid the verses and notes of Sayer’s immortal translation of the Comedy (highly recommended!); many, but certainly not all by the least stretch of the imagination. For Charles Williams did not merely reaffirm the tried and respected imagery of the Christian faith, much as he revered it. Dante was his father in many ways, but Williams had a natural predisposition to view his life—and the faith that defined it—as a high romance of pilgrimage, expressing the inexpressible along the royal road with a series of carefully-constructed symbols which he was to call “The Way of the Images”. Nothing was without potential, in Williams’ economy: anything and everything might illumine, in some flashing moment of insight, the character and attributes of the God whom he lovingly referred to as “the Omnipotence”. For Williams, an image was not a snare of idolatry such as the forbidden ‘graven image’ would be (in other words, an image crafted with the intention of reproducing or replicating God) but a sudden, striking, unlooked-for shaft of glory piercing the veil between time and timelessness. Such a likeness noted and looked beyond was an image; grasped after, clutched for, it became an idol. And thus it was that an image of peaceful jurisdiction might leap from the tattered history of the Byzantine empire as easily as one car yielding to another in traffic might provide a practical expression of love at its most basic and fundamental. And perhaps, most earth-shattering of all, the uniquely human experience of falling in love—what Williams called ‘the Beatrician moment’—had the most potential of any image, granting a peep, however flawed, not only into what our love for God can look like, but what His love for us does look like. “This also is Thou; neither is this Thou.” Thus runs the famous (at least among Williamsites) maxim that defined his theology. Any created thing can be a God-bearer to us, translated by an extraordinary grace into a language that our hearts know and understand, a speech transcending words wooing us back to the Lover of our souls. And any image, however incandescent with holy fire, will eventually burn itself out and return to the dust from whence it sprang. The reflection is not reality; the God-bearer is not God. But all this accepting and rejecting of images is only one facet of the gorgeously-textured pattern of splendor that comprises Williams’ theology. At the very heart of it all lies a glorious experiment in holy living that calculates on nothing less sublime than the revelation of Christ in the life of any believer, however sin-scarred and inept. “Christ in you, the hope of glory”—and in Williams’ mind, that glory was not only a promised destiny but an immediate and imminent possibility, sleeping just beneath the surface of the everyday, awaiting only the electric touch of love to set every nerve and fiber thrilling with the life that is truly Life. It’s under such a conviction that he is able to make a heroine in one of his novels literally enter into the sufferings of Christ for another, a friend scarcely regarded before. And to set a fearful young woman before the face of terrifying evil with a fearless smile on her lips—a smile that is the evil’s undoing as much as anything. All of this comes under what Williams would call the doctrines of “exchange” and “substituted love”, and the lesser images of it are cropping up all over the place, from the substitution of a grain of wheat falling into the ground to provide our bread, to the exchange of our hard-earned money to pay for it. (It’s a truly fascinating world of thought and awareness and should you care to read more, Mary McDermott Shideler has written a thorough study of Williams’ writings that will give you palpitations if you go in for that kind of thing. And I trust I’m in good company there.) Last fall, my husband and I read All Hallows Eve, Charles Williams’ last novel and the only one that the Inklings actually weighed in on, with a group of close friends. Friends close enough to disagree with—vehemently—and I was as excited at the prospect of mirthsome debate as I was in finishing the book. “There’s such a hilarity of joy here, such a glorious acknowledgement of interdependence among believers in this book,” I wrote in my journal. “And there is a great and bracing sense of chastening. You get what you ask for—you get what you really want. That is righteously terrifying. Evil is real and at work. But no matter how dark this book got—no matter what places Williams took us—there was always a saint ready to laugh.” What I had found in the pages of Williams seemed strangely—wildly, madly—familiar. I can only describe it as a recognition. Hints of a glory I’d dreamed of. Resounding yeses to things I’d always hoped were true—things I didn’t even know I’d hoped for till the light shone on them and I realized, suddenly, matter-of-factly, that I’d hoped for them all along. Williams through his fantasy showed me that everything matters in the real world—from the slightest inclination to the most valiant deeds—and, oh! isn’t that what we both long and fear to hear? Everything matters and everything is redeemable. The choice between a practical heaven and hell lies open for all of us at every second. Not in terms of a shaky plan of salvation, of course, but in the sense of a moment to moment preference of our souls. To dwell in love is to soar towards heaven with the springing joy of a homing dove. To choose love’s antitheses is to make my bed in hell. Sitting by the fire that night over sherry and coffee, Williams in one hand and the venerable Thomas Howard in the other, we lit in with unmixed civility. And it soon became evident that not a one among us was on the fence. One sat by in a mostly bemused silence, breaking it only with a wry and well-timed remark on some of the characters’ resemblances to the apparently undead models in the latest Anthropologie catalogue. Another was on the edge of his seat, figuratively if not literally, a finger poised between the leaves and senses tuned to the perfect moment for sharing a loved passage or two. “That was the darkest book I have ever read,” said yet another, with a shudder and a wrinkling of the nose. I said I’d never been so accosted by a story. I felt like Williams was dragging me along by the collar, unwilling to let me rest or flag till I had some inkling of this stupendous Love that he was breaking every literary rule to show me. I said much more than that, little that’s worth repeating, and in my zeal received the occasional raised eyebrow from my husband across the room, roughly translated as “let someone else have a go, sweetheart”. But the conversation hasn’t really ended, even to this day. A few weeks ago a dear, wise, well-read friend parenthetically remarked that All Hallows Eve was certainly not a favorite. “It seemed cumbersome to wade through all that weirdness to get any nuggets worth bending the page for.” I imagine Tolkien would lift his glass to that. “I was and remain wholly unsympathetic to Williams’ mind,” he wrote. “We had nothing to say to one another.” To each his own. But in the proper Inklings spirit, allow me to suggest making his acquaintance if you haven’t already. You may not be on speaking terms with Williams at the end of it all, but I can assure you it’ll be one heck of a ride.

Note: This is a short fable I wrote a few days after Hutchmoot. -Sam There once lived several people. These people, the several of them, lived on different corners of a flat earth. One day they each received a letter. This story is about those letters and what happened after the several people got them. The letters were different than the auto-messages they were used to. (The auto-messages came through a series of tunnel-tubes and were sucked into a giant tray by an impossibly complicated pneumatic system. But there was no spirit in the auto-messages; they were mostly regulations and bills and new regulations about bills.) The letters were heavy to hold and tied with a blue bow. It was not a womanly bow, or a manly bow. It was lovely and strong, if you can imagine such a thing. Evanthia received her letter on a Monday. She had heard of such letters, but had never yet held one in her hands. So she opened it, like almost everyone who has ever gotten a letter does. Inside the letter was written, “Come. You are welcome,” in a fine hand. There had never been a welcome for her anywhere. A thrill danced up her back, a lightning ship which at last wrecked on the rocks of her golden hair. Well-used to hurt, she was suspicious. She looked on the back of the letter (where she had heard the sender’s place was to be found) and it said, “Middlehouse.” She looked around to be sure there was no one near. Confirmation came at once, for Absence was her constant and only companion. Then she decided her decision. She set off for Middlehouse, with something like a smile on her face. Wuncellown and Mutch were not alone, because there was the other of each of them. Mutch got a letter, but Wuncellown did not. Wuncellown said, “Go friend.” “I will,” Mutch said, “and you with me.” So Middlehouse-ward they went, laughing as friends do. This kind of thing happened at each kind of place. So it happened that many got on roads and made for Middlehouse. Weary, they arrived at last and stood before the place. It was plainer than many expected, and grander for others, who were poor. “Let’s go inside, friends,” Mutch said. Evanthia’s ears blanched at that word. Friends? Crimson colored her face like a glass of cherrywine. Red and gold, her face and hair. When they reached the door, it opened. In the doorway stood a wizard. (They knew by all the tell-tale signs people everywhere have used to identify such men.) He said, “I am your host. Welcome.” He wished them to doubt he was a wizard, but they knew better. Wuncellown said, “Master, why have you written these letters to us?” “Not to you,” he said, smiling. “I came with Mutch,” Wuncellown said. “And you will leave with more,” the wizard said. Some wrinkled their noses at that, others laughed politely. “Come in, come in. It looks as if it might rain. I have much to show you and more, no doubt, to be shown.” At last Evanthia was the last one outside. Once more alone. Where she had a moment before been a part, she now stood apart. The wizard’s head reappeared in the doorway and he nodded for her to enter. She balked, afraid of the joy that sloshed around in her like an open jug in the hands of a clumsy child. Easily lost, she was sure. “Come, beautiful,” the wizard said. “Come, Evanthia. We’re waiting for you and cannot be what we ought without you. Besides, there’s food in here.” She approached the door, but stopped again. The door almost closed, but at the last moment a hand struck out and grabbed her own, pulling her inside. The door closed on the sound of laughter.

The following intro is obviously unnecessary here at The Rabbit Room, but it was included at my website –when I originally posted this there— because some of my readers don’t know that Pete is a wrestling phenom. And by wrestling I mean attacking innocent people who were minding their own business. -Sam A.S. “Pete” Peterson is a Marine Corp veteran and the author of two novels, The Fiddler’s Gun and Fiddler’s Green. He also is a bit of a pioneer in the fascinating modern world of independent publishing. Get Pete’s book right now, or suffer a similar fate. Here’s some questions I asked Pete as an expert journalist and part time wrestler. 1. Fiddler’s Green features some excellent writing. Tell us about your theory and method of sentence-crafting and what it means to you to “feed the troll?” Thanks, Sam. I don’t know that I’ve got a ‘theory of sentence-craft” but words and sentences certainly do sing a kind of music to me that I love to read and therefore love to write. I often find myself having to admit to people that I’m slow reader. I wish sometimes that that weren’t true but the fact is that when I read, I read “aloud” in my head because I want more than just the information a sentence conveys. I want the flavor, rhythm, and sound of it, too. When I read a book I often read sentences and passages multiple times just to appreciate them, especially if it’s a good book. So my love of the sound and mystery of words is such that I find I’m skeptical of people who are quick readers. If a person can read a book in a day, I have to wonder if they are really taking the time and putting in the effort to appreciate what they read. Maybe they do, but consider me a skeptic. The job of any good writer (and I hope to be one someday) is to pay attention to the way words are put together. It’s not just about what the words are telling the reader, it’s about how they tell the reader. Ideally, every word, every sentence, every paragraph should be working overtime to convey more than one piece of information at once. If I can get a single word to communicate character, theme, and plot all at the same time then I’ve found the correct word and putting together sentences and paragraphs filled with those exactly correct words is what the art of writing is all about. I think the end of your question is referencing the term “feeding the gnome” which is an idea that Stephen King talks about in his excellent book On Writing. He suggests that every writer has a gnome in the basement that supplies the writer with his stories. To get good stories from him, you’ve got to feed your gnome well. If you don’t feed him at all he might die. So feeding the gnome is about remembering to refuel yourself creatively. It’s about reading. It’s about watching movies. It’s about hiking through the woods and paying attention to the world around you. And it’s also about doing these things well. I could feed my gnome a steady diet of reality TV but guess what kind of stories that gnome is going to hand back to me? Not the kind I want to write, that’s for sure. My gnome is currently looking a little thin. I’ve just come off finishing Fiddler’s Green and haven’t had much time to feed him. I’m looking forward to fattening the ugly little guy up after the first of the year. 2. What has having a community of artists, readers, and other weird people so close by and connected to you meant for you as an author? Being a part of a thriving artistic community has been invaluable. It’s great to be able to look around and see other people working hard to put beautiful and meaningful things into the world. The best part is seeing the day-to-day reality of it. New artists often have an idealized vision of what it means to live the artist’s life. They imagine it’s having the time and luxury to spend every waking moment pursuing your creation. The reality is that artists are really hard working people–not only working hard at what they are creating, but working hard to support their families, to pay their bills, to survive another month. Very few subsist on their art alone and there’s no shame in having to work a real job. That’s part of the deal. If you aren’t willing to work a nine to five job and pursue your art at the same time then you might be in the wrong business. Being in a community of artists who have worked their entire lives without giving up on what it is they love is a real inspiration for me when I go through periods of feeling like I’m doing it all for nothing. Doing it for nothing is kind of what it’s all about. You’ve got be willing to do it for nothing. You’ve got to love it that much. 3. Describe how your vision for Rabbit Room Press figures into the complex and ever-changing future of publishing and tell us whether or not you’re optimistic about independent publishing? I think one of the areas where a lot of publishers have let readers down is in their failure to brand themselves, and that’s what I really want to see Rabbit Room Press do. In the film industry the analog is Pixar. People will go to a Pixar film simply because it’s Pixar, because they trust that Pixar knows good stories and will not disappoint. I want to develop a press with that kind of reputation, and I think that’s something that today’s incredibly vast market is hungry for. There’s actually too much choice in the market. I think readers are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of product available and they have few ways to discern the good from the bad. The solution to that is to provide an offering of work that’s guaranteed to be good so that if someone enjoys one Rabbit Room Press book, they’ll be comfortable reading another even if it’s outside of the genre they typically read. Twenty years from now I want readers to be able to walk into a book store and head straight for the delightfully English-looking Rabbit Room Press section because they know it’s filled with exotic worlds, and big ideas, and beautiful things. I want the Rabbit Room Press logo on a book’s spine to be an invitation that a reader can’t refuse. Idealistic? Maybe. But it’s always best to aim high. 4. What is your life for? My life is for Taco Bell Chili-Cheese Burritos. I die a little every time I enter a Taco Bell that doesn’t serve them. This is my most desperate hour. Save me, Taco Bell. You’re my only hope. 5. Now that Fin’s Revolution is finished, what’s next for A.S. Peterson, author? Can we get a scoop on some future novel possibilities? I’ve got a few things stewing and I haven’t decided which I want to commit to. One is a sort of middle grade science fiction novel, one is a comedic mystery set in early 20th century St. Louis, and one is an epic western. I’m currently leaning toward the western but I haven’t yet found a way into the story I want to tell. We’ll see. Sounds excellent, Pete. I vote for St. Louis science fiction and according to a commercial I saw, my vote counts. Find Pete at his website. On Twitter. On Facebook. On/At/Behind? The Rabbit Room.

PREFACE: Chrome has been in the public eye for over a year, and though I am grateful for the positive feedback, I get the distinct impression that more than a few songs on the album are difficult to decipher. Though the following may, too, be abstract, it is my hope to offer clarity and insight into one (or more?) of the songs. What follows are my reflections in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, Labor Day, 2008. The resultant song is “Louisiana in the Dark.” (9/1/08, Baton Rouge, LA) Driving south from Tennessee to Louisiana in the pitch of night, several thoughts appeared on my mind’s horizon as the darkness opened its tree-lined jowls and welcomed me into the gut of impending reality. These are no ordinary days, no ordinary circumstances, and it was far from being a casual or relaxing drive into the oncoming path of a history-making hurricane brooding immediately off Louisiana’s shores. As would prove to be the case, I was also driving to a funeral. Pulling into my parents’ Baton Rouge driveway two hours before sunrise, Hurricane Gustav broached the shores of the state by 10am, and for the next 36 hours the wind blew trees older than World War II at 45-degree angles, toppling some, maiming many others, and deconstructing a capital city. My parents went without electricity for six days. Idling generators could be heard up and down streets. We cooked baked beans out on the propane grill as the oppressive September heat offered little comfort during the daylight, and much, much less at night. The rain fell in opaque sheets filling gullies, rivers and swallowing entire street blocks. The tempest quickly turned earth to mud, and so much of which eventually dried out remains forever buried, turning gain to loss. My father-in-law, for many years hampered by a litany of health issues, succumbed to the most treacherous of them all early that Labor Day morning at 3:35am, mere minutes before we managed to arrive and stand at his hospital bedside one final time to kiss his shriveled, bony face, and wish him a final peace and Good Hope away, away from the shrunken fuselage of body and captor Earth. The spirit is always willing. Vehement winds, days of constant rain, the capitulation of otherwise sound, elderly trees, and the deconstruction of life; few tragic-comedies could have been scripted with more accuracy. Tragic in that the gulf-laden skies stumbled across the region with a steamroller effect, comic in terms of the utter preposterousness of kicking someone already down. In the year 2008, my wife’s family suffered the loss of three family members in the span of five dubious months. We exhale something between utter consternation and a wry chuckle when reality persistently kicks at the battered realm. There is no ordinary day, no ordinary darkness, and we are no ordinary creatures who inhabit their space. From dust we came, to dust we return, and though we open our hope-lined hearts to its jowls, reality does its best to deconstruct every ounce of hope in our possession. But we yearn for the light that shines with far more eminence than the thickest darkness could ever swallow, and we hope that the pain of loss and grief will eventually be bearable, habitable, even an altar unto life itself. Like the wandering Israelites finally crossing the River Jordan into the long-awaited Promised Land, we stack stones upon your altar; we proclaim both the blessing and the ache. Remember life as the fragile construction it is, cherishing the ones still present in your life. These are no ordinary days.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/LouisianaintheDark.mp3 [Editor’s note: Eric’s album, Chrome, is available today at Song of the Day prices. $10 CD / $7 Download] Louisiana In The Dark Sleep in peace tonight After a long, slow fight We lost more than sleep More ache than a soul can weep When the daylight shows That all you love is gone And the only thing that’s left Is the tempest’s aftermath In my father’s house The last and lonely sound Is a breaking heart Louisiana in the dark We laid your soul to rest With the earth still wet Some days don’t feel like grace When there’s a hole in a once-filled space In my father’s house The last and lonely sound Is a breaking heart In my father’s eyes Must we say goodbye To a breaking heart Louisiana in the dark No more breaking hearts Louisiana in the dark