What are you looking for?

My little sister and her husband are painters. They’ve dreamed of careers in art since they were children. And it’s with much more than a sisterly bias that I can say they are both extremely talented. With an enviable ardor they packed up and left everything they had ever known not six months after they were married to go and study at the legendary Art Student’s League in New York City. There they managed to get into a class taught by one of the world masters of realistic painting, a class which usually has a waiting list years long. And so, living happily and simply in a tiny apartment, working part-time jobs and prowling the Met all they can, they pursue what they love every single day. All under the banner of their indefatigable motto: Hard Work and High Spirits. I have never had the slightest doubt that my sister would succeed as a painter. I know her—her drive, her zeal for true beauty, her precision and skill and devotion. She’s never been afraid of the work involved. She’s never retreated before the scorn of critics who were too enamored with the new and edgy to appreciate the divine, ‘old masters’ look of her paintings. But it has always taken me off guard to be reminded of her confidence in me as a writer. She was the one who listened with shining eyes to those first fanciful, overly-eloquent stories and loved the bit of my soul they revealed. And she is the one today who treats me as a fellow artist, and views my scribblings and yearnings with the same gravity as she does her own portrait work and gallery pieces. Introducing me to someone at a party once, she said, ‘This is my sister, Lanier. She’s a writer.’ In one moment, in one small sentence, she declared her faith in me. I was so overjoyed I wanted to hug her on the spot. She had called me what I had been afraid to call myself, and it somehow made it true. I was a writer—not because I had published books or won awards, but because the unique stamp of God’s image on my personality was ‘the pen of a ready writer’. Because I wrote. She told me that night without a word: “You want to be a writer? Then the first person you have to convince is yourself.” It was Liz who finally persuaded me to make my writing a daily part of life. A priority of the highest order, not a treat to be relished when every other possible task had been attended to; a ritual as regular and dear as my devotions and my homemaking. But it was her husband, Marshall, who first suggested ‘The Contest’. Part of the self-generated ‘Art Revolution’ that he and Liz were championing in their own lives involved a minimum of thirty minutes’ drawing per day. Focused sketching for the purpose of honing the foundation of their painting. Recognizing the natural human tendency to strive for excellence when the stakes were high, he made me a proposition the summer before they left for New York. If I would write for half-an-hour a day, he would sketch for the same. At the end of the month we would tally up our hours, and the winner would be entitled to a favor of any description from the loser. I laughingly accepted the challenge. But at the end of the first month—during which I had written more than all the past several months put together—I was amazed. As Marshall said, “It really is surprising how prolific you can become with even a short daily commitment.” He was right. And with those faithful, daily doses, goaded onward by the spice of friendly competition, writing had become the priority that I had always wished it to be. No more dreaming of some magically uncommitted time in my life to hole up and dash out the next great novel, but real, integral writing intentionally squeezed into a full life simply because I couldn’t not do it. We exchanged all kinds of daring banter that summer. Marshall laboriously glued back together some impossibly delicate demitasse cups of mine. I toiled over a pair of dress pants tailored to his specifications. Early on in our challenge Liz reminded me of the great motto emblazoned over the door of the Art Student’s League and they became my standard: Nulla Dies Sine Linea. Not a day without a line. The prerequisite for the artist’s life. Before they moved away, Liz and Marshall took a week-long camping trip with my husband and me in our 1962 Airstream trailer. It was a precious time made all the more dear by their impending departure—looking back it seems I savored the best moments with a lump in my throat. In the late afternoons we’d settle in our camp with the sunset gathering beyond House Mountain to the west and spilling its radiance over the temperate corner of the Shenandoah Valley we were privileged to call our own for the week.  Enveloped in a silence so perfect it seemed enchanted, we would give ourselves over to artistic pursuits. I remember typing madly in my sling back chair, a cup of tea close at hand. Liz was beside me committing her own thoughts to paper and Philip was stretched out in the trailer with Walden or a notepad of what Liz dubbed ‘life thoughts’. Marshall set up his easel facing the beloved view that greeted us each morning: the old barn, the vegetable garden bejeweled with tomatoes and peppers and tasseled with golden corn, the winding drive with the willow at the bend. I will never forget the sweet compatibility of those hours as we strove together for expression in words and in paint. Silently minding our endeavors as darkness fell; an almost holy pause before the hilarity of the evening ensued, when sparks would fly heavenward from our campfire and laughter would ring out upon the uncanny stillness of the night.  It was a solitude of perfect unity, a joyful seclusion in the haven of true understanding. It hardly seemed possible that such harmony could exist this side of heaven. Not long after we returned I went over Liz and Marshall’s apartment to help them pack. It was so awfully surreal to be wrapping their wedding presents and books and stashing them in boxes for a destination I couldn’t even picture. I fumbled about for words to tell them how proud I was, how much I admired their faith in their calling. But I kept tripping over how dreadfully I was going to miss them. “Don’t!” Liz warned me, catching sight of my brimming eyes. I swallowed hard and started bundling paintings in towels and sliding them into long boxes. But there was one painting that I couldn’t package with the others. It was a small one, six by eight, of a tin-roofed barn, a garden tossing with corn, a bend in the road and mountains beyond. I was still holding it rather hesitantly when Marshall came in. He grinned. “That’s one of Beetle’s favorites.” ‘Beetle’ is his term of utmost affection for my sister, and I remembered plainly how she had appropriated that painting when it was hardly dry, mounted on an easel in the Shenandoah Valley. “You still owe me one—for August, you know.” I held the painting a little closer. “Call it even?” Marshall shrugged and looked at Liz. “It’s up to Beetle.” Liz stopped piling clothes in a box and frowned slightly. “Permanent loan,” she decreed. “Until he can replace it with another one.” I was happy and carried my little painting home in triumph. I propped it on the bookshelf, where I’d see it more often than any place else in the house. That was almost five years ago, now, and Liz and Marshall each have distinguished themselves with a résumé of awards and scholarships and residencies as long as their respective arms, not to mention a body of work literally heartbreaking in its beauty and humanity. But their challenge rings just as true as ever: the bone and marrow of the artists’ life is lines. Words, notes, brushstrokes. One after another. Every single day.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Psalm 23:4 “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.” Frederick Buechner Do not fear. Those three words are at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Before he enters into our wrecked lives we have good reason to fear. Before his grace restores us we are a ruin, a foggy graveyard in the dead of night. We’re too lost even to ask for direction, too feeble to beg for help. We may be wealthy, successful, beautiful, even happy–but we know that our deepest heart is a wasteland, a vast, black emptiness of stone and sorrow. To know that emptiness is to be afraid, and that fear is good. That’s the kind of fear that leads to humility, the kind of helplessness that leads to repentance. But once we’ve heard the Lion roar, once we’ve felt the earth tremble beneath his feet as he strides through the valley of death to gather us up, when we have looked into his loving eyes and seen the forges of heaven there, when we have finally stopped running, when we have given up and have at last let him heal us where we’re truly broken, everything changes. The wasteland is green. The graveyard is a garden. Our senses sometimes tell us otherwise, and it’s hard to believe, but faith gives us eyes to see his invisible face, ears to hear his silent voice. Those walking in darkness have seen a great light, said the prophet Isaiah of Jesus’ triumphant arrival. Here is a great mystery: that very light lives in us. In the streets of our Bethlehem, a child has been born. On the hill of our sin a man has been crucified. In the garden tomb of our hearts that man has risen and proved that he was also God all along. What have we to fear? Nothing. Yea, though I walk through the grief of my loss, through the confusion of my suffering, through the powerful sadness of getting out of bed when all seems lost, I will not fear, for he is with me. As I walk through the city, as I struggle to follow, as I pay my bills, as I fill my tank and feed my children, I will not fear. Though enemies plot, though the bombs are tested, though the nations rage, though all Hell break loose–I will not fear. He is with me. Of all the gifts he came to bring–forgiveness, restoration, love, purpose, beauty, mercy–the one that defines our daily life in him is peace. Peace. We have nothing to fear. The maker of all things dwells within us. That idea is too wonderful, too mysterious for one sentence to contain, so it bears repeating: God himself–somehow–inhabits us. Why should we cower behind locked doors? Why should we fear men? Why should we let anxiety steal our joy? When the angel appeared to Mary it said “Don’t be afraid.” When they appeared to the shepherds they said, “Don’t be afraid.” At the transfiguration Jesus said, “Arise, and do not fear.” When the angel appeared at the tomb it said, “Do not fear.” Again and again God tells us the same thing: fear not. Rest. Hide if you like. He’ll find you. Cower like the apostles after Jesus’ death. They locked the doors and drew the shades and trembled in the dark–and who can blame them? But deadbolts are no trouble for Jesus, who walks through walls. What were the first words out of his mouth when he dropped in on his old friends in that locked room? “Peace be with you.” And then, after he showed them his scars? “Peace to you.” What did he say the next Sunday when he surprised Thomas? “Peace to you.” It’s as if, fresh from the tomb, toes still wet from his walk through the dewy grass, there was one thing he couldn’t wait to tell them: “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Of anything, ever again. Rest easy, children. It is finished.”

Congratulations to my little (but taller) brother, Andrew Peterson. The second book in his acclaimed Wingfeather Saga, North! Or Be Eaten, went into the ring tonight to contend for the 2010 Christy Award in Young Adult Fiction and emerged victorious. The Christy Awards honor the best in Christian fiction in nine categories. From the official announcement: North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson In Book Two of the WINGFEATHER SAGA, escape with Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby as they flee north, to the Ice Prairies, where they will be safe from the cruel Fangs of Dang. But first they have to survive the dangers along the way—and the dangers within themselves. Andrew Peterson delivers more breathtaking adventure in this tale for all ages. Andrew Peterson is the author of Christy finalist On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Book One in the WINGFEATHER SAGA, and The Ballad of Matthew’s Begats. He’s also the critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter and recording artist of ten albums. He and his wife live with their two sons and one daughter near Nashville, Tennessee. (Do I smell a nomination for Jonathan Rogers next year?)

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here– busy and filled with a lot of transition in my family’s life. We are in the process of relocating to Nashville, and we’re super excited about it. That season of transition has had a lot to do with my radio silence here. As I’ve thought about starting up the old blog post engine again, I’ve wondered what might flow forth first. Would it be what God has taught me during a major vocational move in my late 30’s? Would it maybe be a celebration of fifteen years of marriage to a wonderful woman? (Love you, Lisa!) Would it be a boast, dressed up in a pre-release review, concerning the fact that I have had Andrew Peterson’s upcoming record, Counting Stars, for a couple months now and I think it is ABSOLUTELY TOP SHELF! (Because it is.) Nope. I just want to ask an honest question about 3D movies. Do you prefer 3D over regular old 2D films when you are given the option? I do not. I have to confess I have driven 15 miles to the smaller theater across town just to see a movie the megaplex a mile from  my house has, but only in 3D. I’m trying to understand what it is about 3D that turns me off, but I’m telling you I really don’t like it. Maybe it is because I have never been a glasses wearer, so the apparatus throws me off. Maybe it is that most 3D films today are ones I see with kids whose heads are just barely big enough to hold those suckers on. Maybe it is the upcharge and I’m just too cheap to get over the fact that the theater has found a way to make the cost of a movie even higher than they’re already asking. Maybe. But in all honesty, I think the problem is that what film companies call 3D doesn’t look 3D to me. It looks layered, like what you used to see through the old ViewMaster toy, but not deep. And I think it does something to my brain that causes me to process the information my eyes are taking in differently than standard 2D. I feel distracted pretty much the entire time the film is playing, as if my mind is trying to process too much information at one time, leaving little margin to really enter in to the story itself. I don’t know. And I’d love to hear your input on this, because as it stands, it seems like half the movies I have been excited to see this summer are coming out in 3D, and I’m sort of bummed about the prospect of seeing “Dawn Treader” in 3D. I think my major issue is that I don’t feel like I need that extra dimension to take in what I’m seeing. Well shot films never leave me wishing I could have seen it with cheap glasses putting that tree I already know is in the distance “actually” in the distance. Our minds learn to fill in what the screen lacks, and I contend that for the most part we take in 2D films in a more genuinely three dimensional way than a film shot in 3D offers. Am I alone? Am I missing something?

My friend Justin Taylor, over at a great blog called Between Two Worlds, recently posted this video about C.S. Lewis, and I thought you guys might find it as interesting as I did. It may be because I’m prone to believe anything if it’s said in a suave British accent, but I really think there may be something to this. Lewis was a man of formidable intellect and education, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to find that he was following a planetary mythology with the Narnia books. If it’s true, there’s something wonderfully boyish about the fact that he kept this undergirding a happy secret, something for his own nerdy satisfaction. In a MUCH less intelligent/awesome way I’ve enjoyed peppering my lyrics and stories over the years with elusive references, internal rhymes, and/or meanings that are only noticed and appreciated by a few people, if any at all. I don’t mind being the only guy who knows. I haven’t read the book, but this little clip makes me want to. Kind of. I wonder if it would be better not to look behind the curtain?

You hear a word, see a color or come across a concept that, for you, is not part of your routine and suddenly you notice you can’t stop noticing it. It is everywhere: on everyone’s lips; on the morning news; now in the story you’ve read ten times before; at the airport on a woman’s handbag. So many people are wearing orange lately. Has it always been like this? Am I just now starting to notice? It’s ubiquitous. Perhaps serendipitous. Carl Jung called it synchronicity.  Everyday psychology calls it selective attention or perceptual vigilance. It sounds like you should seek professional help when you call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Resistance has been the theme running through my life for the past few months and I don’t expect it to cease, now that I’m on to it. When Baader-Meinhof strikes, someone is trying to tell you something and you better take note. It showed up first as a word, then as a concept, then a physical fact and now as a growing appreciation for just how beneficial it can be. It’s been fun trying to spot it—á la Where’s Waldo—but in the fun are those Emmausian epiphanies I’m hoping to catch before the moment is over. “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” It was writ large in my mind through music first, from Muse’s 2009 album The Resistance, on which the title track declares “love is our resistance” against forces trying to split apart lovers. Hmmm … love is resistance. When limiting or otherwise getting in the way of a force, how often am I resisting in love and with love? Music often lays down the backing track for my life, but I didn’t expect an encounter with the cleverly goofy band Everybody Was In The French Resistance … Now to keep pressing the concept of resisting upon me. No songs on their only album to-date specifically address resistance as a topic, but their band’s mission is resistance. As they say, they are “correcting the mistakes of pop songs past” by telling the points-of-view of other characters in some of our more well-known pop songs. Sometimes speaking up for a point-of-view is an act of resistance. A few months ago in the dead of winter, I went into the gym with more dedication than ever before.  About that time I was also reading Adam Gopnik’s accounts of raising his young family in New York City.  He observed the differences between the Running Fathers who jog around Central Park and the Motionless Mothers who sit to get fit in the city’s yoga studios. While turning the two groups into metaphors for a Life Lesson, he tells of a yoga master’s disdain toward all those who are bouncing, dancing and jogging for their health. “All that matters to the body (and, so the hidden corollary runs, to the soul, as well) is resistance. That is what the body is made to learn from, and all that it is made to learn from.” Gopnik remarked, “The theory is impeccable, or at least persuasive. Muscles learn only from failure, like French schoolchildren, and they can be made to fail only by repeated stress slowly applied.” Hmmm … here I am in the gym a few days a week, choosing to stress my body and make resistance situations for it, and then I go home to relax with a book only to read about exactly what I just did. By spring, I started wondering if anything in life was NOT a picture of le resistance? Buds bursting open to keep trees alive. Young robins learning to harness and even push back against an invisible, necessary power swirling all around them. Our 10-year old child asserting herself more and more, with seemingly more dramatic crises per day than even Shakespeare would spread across five acts. The muddle at church on a Sunday morning; the spousal missteps; the way writing-as-work leads to revising, editing and back to more writing. I’ve got to get this all down. It’s too prevalent to ignore anymore and I think it’s doing a good work in me. I’m aware, too, that I resist. As a phenomenon, it isn’t always something that comes to you; you can create it. You can use it for good or use it to block a growth process intended to transform you more into His likeness. In some cases, I am still resisting and that’s not a good thing. One way to resist can be to force disagreements away from you–“clearing the room of argument” as Bono is fond of saying–by both pushing others away and encouraging only the like-minded to stick around. A room emptied of argument arrests the creative energy needed for the lasting works of art, politics and love that will change the world. It’s because of the power and pervasiveness of it that I am starting The Chronicles of Resistance here for not just me, but for anyone who can contribute an entry. I bet I’m not the only one. Andrew, The Proprietor, and I met in Xenia, Ohio. I was his driver. He invited me into The Rabbit Room and I’m happy to be here and am encouraged by what’s going on. (Greetings, fellow warren-dwellers.) I’ll write on other things too under different headings, but for these chronicles, I wonder: How is resistance helping or hindering you in your acts of worship, fellowship, art, family and life? And if you haven’t thought about it lately, just keep trying to not think about it.

Once upon a time I was riding in a car full of working men (funny how that has a totally different connotation with girls) and the subject of what to listen to on the radio was being hotly debated. It quickly became clear that the majority of the car preferred music of the country variety to which I replied, “Oh, I’ve got one for you. Check out this song by Andy Gullahorn. It’s all about country music.” So I plugged in my iPod, played the song and waited for the laughter. It never came. Each of them sat and listened with suspicious and curious expressions until the song was over. “It’s funny, see? Don’t you get it?” I said. They all looked at each other and shrugged and frowned at me as if I were the one on the outside of the joke. As if to offer me some comfort, the guy sitting beside me said, “I don’t know, man, but I sure like that part about the workin’ man.” True story. I swear. “Workin’ Man” by Andy Gullahorn

From Screwtape: “The enchantment of unsatisfied desire produces results which the humans can be made to mistake for the results of charity. Avail yourself of the ambiguity in the word ‘Love’: let them think they have solved by Love problems they have in fact only waived or postponed under the influence of the enchantment….” “The erotic enchantment produces a mutual complaisance in which each is really pleased to give in to the wishes of the other. They also know that the Enemy demands of them a degree of charity which, if attained, would result in similar actions. You must make them establish as a Law for their whole married life that degree of mutual self-sacrifice which is at present sprouting naturally out of the enchantment, but which, when the enchantment dies away, they will not have charity enough to enable them to perform. They will not see the trap, since they are under the double blindness of mistaking sexual excitement for charity and of thinking that the excitement will last.” “Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as ‘one flesh.’ He did not say ‘a happily married couple’ or ‘a couple who married because they were in love’, but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes ‘one flesh’. You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of ‘being in love’ what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call ‘being in love’ is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy…In other words, the humans are to be encouraged to regard as the basis for marriage a highly-coloured and distorted version of something the Enemy really promises as its result.” From George MacDonald: “While one is yet only in love, the real person lies covered with the rose leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person. A thousand fancies fly out, approach and cross, but never meet. The man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity. But though at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, their contact points are the merest brushings, as of insect antennae. The real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true . . . to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being! They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitness of temperament, be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.” “The negative and positive relation we live daily causes us to emerge from beneath the rose leaves and penetrate each other so as to have really seen and be seen. It takes the negative to arouse each of us from our sleep . . . But the miracle of love that comes to birth each time forgiveness appears is truly the kiss of the spirit.”

There was this guy, and he cared about the environment. He never threw mostly-empty paint cans in the trash when he was finished with a painting project. “Paint is bad for the environment,” he said. “It goes in the landfill, it ends up in the groundwater.” So he put his old paint cans in the shed to await the day when he could carry them to the paint disposal place across town. All his friends said, “Listen—all you’ve got to do is to throw your old paint cans in the trash, put some garbage on top. The trash men will carry them right off. They’ll never know the difference.” The guy said, “You like drinking paint, do you?” “Pardon?” his friends said. “You like drinking paint? That’s what you’ll be doing if everybody throws their paint cans in the trash. It gets in the groundwater, you know.” His friends went away chastened. The years went by, and the guy repainted rooms, touched up the shutters, re-did the trim. The paint cans piled in his shed—a dozen, two dozen and more. “You’re crazy,” his friends said. “Just throw these paint cans in the trash—a few this week, a few next week, a few the week after that. They’ll be gone in no time.” “I’m not a polluter,” the guy said. “Then take them to the paint disposal place,” his friends said. “Who wants old paint cans taking over his shed?” “I’m going to take them to the paint disposal place,” the guy said, with a firmness that quailed his friends and cheered his heart. More years passed. The pile of old paint cans grew ever higher, so great was the guy’s conviction. In the fullness of time, the guy sold his house. Moving day approached, and he thought of the mountain of old paint cans in his shed. “I am not a polluter,” the guy said. “In all these long years, I have never thrown a paint can in the garbage. Not one!” His voice trembled with more conviction than ever. “I am a busy man, and a good one. I am moving, for crying out loud! And the paint disposal place is many miles away.” So under the cover of darkness he loaded all the paint cans in a borrowed truck and placed them—quietly, quietly—in the nearest construction dumpster.

There’s an aspect of writing that I often struggle with in which I find that my own style is reshaped by whatever or whomever I happen to be reading at the time. I’ll write a passage one day and when I peruse it the next I’ll discover that, like the skin of a chameleon, it’s taken on the rhythm, structure, or vocabulary of someone else. For instance, I began writing The Fiddler’s Gun almost immediately after reading Frederick Buechner’s Godric and in the end I had to completely rewrite the first few chapters because they had the same archaic and often yoda-like sentence structure as Godric. It was fun to write but it certainly didn’t fit the tone of the book. It wasn’t really my writing–I was parroting, riffing off of a better author. I find that this sort of thing happens to me all the time and often wonder where the line is between influence and imitation. Last week I started re-reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. It’s a magnificent western with a very distinct style and voice that I suspect only McCarthy can rightly pull off. Yet in the last couple of days as I’m writing a section of Fiddler’s Green that takes Fin on horseback through a desert country, I find that it’s almost impossible not to fall back on inspiration from McCarthy. Here’s an example: McCarthy (from Blood Meridian): “In the evening they came out upon a mesa that overlooked all the country to the north. The sun to the west lay in a holocaust where there rose a steady column of small desert bats and to the north along the trembling perimeter of the world dust was blowing down the void like the smoke of distant armies. The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.” The Chameleon (from Fiddler’s Green – first draft): “Through the night they rode on. Fin nodded in and out of sleep. At times she awoke to the lunatic yap of jackals that moved like grey wraiths flitting between the rocks as the horse stepped sidewise and rolled its eye in fear. Once she started awake thinking she heard the low roll of drums and to the south she saw, lit by a sliver of moon, an endless congregation of antelope that moved across the nighted plain raising a cloud of dust behind them that swallowed the stars and turned the moon paler yet and rusty brown as a scrape of ruined iron. Near dawn, in that fabled darkest hour, she raised her head again and saw to the north the passage of sails. They hovered over the deep like a parade of phantom cavaliers tilted upon hellish steeds. Razor-tipped lances plowed the way before them. They passed in waves, ranks upon ranks of ghostly warlords bent toward the coming dawn as if to impale the sun itself and set it atop a spike in the blackened sky.” See what I mean? I could do the same thing with passages from Tolkien, Milton(!), Buechner, Wangerin and half a dozen more. During the editing process I have to go back through passages like this and trim them, reshape them to make sure it’s A.S. Peterson who’s writing and not just some aspiring Cormac McCarthy imitator. I tend to feel like an idiot when I see this happening but then I look around and realize that it occurs in other disciplines as well. Andrew has songs that clearly invoke other artists like Marc Cohn and Rich Mullins. Filmmakers like Tarantino have made stunning careers out of paying homage to those who have come before. I suppose it’s true that to varying extents we’re all “standing on the shoulders of giants.” This illustrates plainly, I think, the great importance not only of reading but of reading well. What would my writing look like if I spent my downtime blowing through Twilight, or The Lost Symbol instead of Paradise Lost, The Book of the Dun Cow, the poetry of Wendell Berry, or the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. If the authors I read are going to have such a shaping effect on my own work, then by all means let it be the greats I’m reading rather than the penny dreadfuls. So the key is in finding a balance between what you are creating and what inspires the creation. Rely too much on the latter and you are left with a hodge-podge of imitation rather than a work of your own. But hopefully, during the process one finds a synthesis that enables a new tapestry to emerge from old thread. Does anyone else experience this sort of chameleonism? How do you combat or embrace it?

. . .because I’m about to post about the Twilight Series! When you are finished gasping please note that no, I haven’t actually read them. No, I probably won’t. And no, I don’t have a hugely literary opinion upon them other than knowing that every person I know who has read them has nothing to say in their defense. My checkout girl at Whole Foods yesterday leaned across the counter and whispered the fact that she was reading them. Couldn’t admit it out loud. I even heard of one guy who put the book down three pages before the end because he just didn’t care. Can you imagine? What I am going to say about these infamous books is that gazillions of girls (and grown women) are a bit gaga over them, and it is this phenomenon upon which I will opine. I read a Christian review recently that attributed Twilight’s popularity to the fact that all women have a selfish lust for worship, and that Twilight played to this want. Edward, a “god-like” character, and his love or “worship” of Bella, was supposedly what made girls all swoony over this series. I know I’m probably overreacting here, but whoa. Let’s stop right there and talk about this, because that sort of response from the “Christian side” is one I find to be all too familiar. It is a wholesale condemnation, not just of the books, but of the people who read them. At heart, it is simply provocation; the only response it can elicit from a girl who loves those books is defensiveness at best, total antipathy to Christians at worst. Entirely lacking in compassion, that review misses the fact that often, it is gaping, unmet needs of the heart that drive the appetites of a culture. While I agree that these books manipulate the volatile emotions of teenage girls, I don’t think its lust for worship they exploit (though I’m sure there’s plenty of teenagerly swooning). I think its desire. This could get tricky, but that review convinced me that we God-lovers sometimes have a hard time knowing the difference between a sinful hunger and a sacred one. We are tempted to treat any strong, romantic (or otherwise worldly) desire as bad because we are (rightly) intent on keeping ourselves pure from an all too sinful world. From what I understand, the Twilight books portray a shallow, self-centered view of love between a man and a woman. Sure, we can debate that view, but if we are quick to attack the girls enamored of it, we will miss a deep insight into their hearts. We are so quick to judge, we miss the point that not all desire is wrong. God made love and romance, beauty and food, laughter and laziness. We humans are made in such a way that we will literally die without community, touch, fellowship, and affection. Our want for these things is in keeping with the soul of our Creator. I believe that if we approach myriads of teenage girls as lustful, despicable sinners because they bear these needs, we’ll drive them straight away from the God who is longing for their hearts. Thing is, I know, and rather adore, quite a few teenage girls. I remember being one (and have moments when I feel like one still). And I can guarantee you that most aren’t harboring a dark desire to be worshiped by a man. What they do want very much is to be loved. Are the lot of them boy crazy? Pretty much. And I’m sorry, but isn’t that part of how God made us? Sometimes I think we criminalize teenagers for having desires that God gave them so that, good grief, they’d get married and have kids. The problem is not that these girls like a boy. The trouble is that there are thousands of girls, millions, who don’t have fathers, families, or homes to fill the gaping want in their heart or show them a holy way to have it filled. Fooled by a culture shaped by casual sex, isolation, and divorce, girls look to flirtation, to the swooning moonlight farce of self-centered infatuation portrayed in Twilight instead of the deep, self-giving love that comes with marriage, and the God who created it. They fill a sacred desire with a cheap, confusing satisfaction that will leave them hungrier than ever. Yet the original desire for love remains a holy thing. I wonder if we underestimate the sacredness of desire, its power to speak to us of a God in whom all things are right and good. After all, every sin, every false desire, is only a degradation of an original good. In his allegory of heaven and hell, C.S. Lewis portrays a man who struggles with lust, and the man’s sin is pictured as a lizard perched ominously on his shoulder. When the man finally defeats his sin and casts the lizard from him, it becomes a snow white stallion that bears him deep into the new heavens and earth. The force of wanting for love in that man had been corrupted by sin. But when it was purified, the desire became what it was meant to be: a force to carry him straight to the heart of God. I wonder if its the same for most of us, and for the gazillions of girls whose desires are corrupted by a promiscuous culture. Do their desires, do ours, need purging? Of course. We are all tainted by sin, frayed at every edge by need. Are teenage girls inherently selfish? Probably. I know I was. Am. Are they often misled by their emotions? Yes. But the answer is not to beat them over the head with condemnation. It’s to point them, and any seeker, to the God who will fill, heal, and answer their deepest desires with a goodness that will never destroy. A goodness that purges us of sin, enriches us with beauty. Delight yourself in the Lord, says Psalm 37, and he will give you the desires of your heart. So. I still don’t know about those Twilight books, but I do know what I think about the girls who read them. What they need is a love that will never fail them. I know a Man for them. And I’m ready to make the introductions.

Mason Jennings. My favorite lately. His voice has an earnest, genuine, conversational tone. He manages to pierce the film that usually separates me from the recorded person. There’s a thrust and a glottal to his vocals that I can’t explain except to say that he has charmed me. I have several of his songs in my repertoire, just here and there from different records that have a similar, homespun sense. There’s an immediacy, a comforting echo in most of the productions of these albums. This song (track 4) which I had never heard (from a compilation project) popped up on Pandora yesterday and his lyrics here have cast the same sort of sweet spell. He digs deep. And I dig it. Deeply. Like he digs. Like the river is deep. Or is it really so deep? Or…oh go on. [audio:HowDeep.mp3] How deep is that river? How deep is that river? I don’t wanna know where it’s coming from I don’t need to know where it’s going to Before I place my trust in You I just wanna know, how deep? God said to me what He said to the tree Singing, how deep is that river? How deep is that river? I don’t wanna know how fast it flows I don’t need to know if it’s safe to swim Before I put my trust in Him I just wanna know, how deep? God came down in the cool of the day Stirred up the waters and began to play Before He knew it, man was on the land With a thought in his head, and a gun in his hand God saw that man was just a little too rough So He gave him a heart and filled it up with love Singing, how deep is that river? How deep is that river? Yes I don’t wanna know if it has a name I don’t need to know how to cross it yet Before I get my spirit wet I just wanna know, how deep, alright A few years back I had lost my way I was deep in the woods, I began to pray I came to a river and I sat on its bank It was cool and clear, I have Jesus to thank I drank that water, yes, I drank it up Now every day I come back and fill my cup Singing, how deep is that river? How deep is that river? I don’t wanna know if it’s yours or mine I don’t need to know if it’s safe to swim Before I put my trust in Him I just wanna know, how deep? I just wanna know how deep I just wanna know how deep

Hey, folks. With the release date for Counting Stars just six weeks (or so) away, the promotional machine has ignited and is rolling down the Please-Buy-My-Record Highway. Here’s the first of a few (I think) videos we’ll be happily bombarding you with, starring the gregarious Andy Gullahorn, the hilarious Ben Shive, and the nefarious me. By all means, send the link for this video to everyone you know.

This Tuesday’s Song of the Day is the title track from one of my favorite records of the year, Melanie Penn’s amazing debut Wake Up Love. Have a listen but don’t just sample it, be sure to listen for the amazing finale of the song. I’m not sure but I think Ben Shive (producer) may have hired the cast of The Lion King for that ending — monkeys, wildebeests, Poomba and Timon, the whole Serengeti. Best listened to loudly, whilst driving, with the windows down. Perfect summer music.

Nerd alert: the following post is about drawing/painting pictures with hobbits, wizards and dragons. Thus, I dig it. Justin Gerard, probably my favorite illustrator, joined in this discussion with several visual artists about the ways each of these works sizzle their creative juices differently. As a reader and writer, I like Lord of the Rings better, but I’ve never wondered which would be a deeper visual well. Justin’s answer is insightful. If you’re like me, pictures like this tickle the story muscle in your brain. Few things make me feel boyish like a well-drawn picture from an adventure story. It makes me want to pack my things and hit the hobbit-trail. Nobody’s ever asked me about it, but the bridge of the song “Little Boy Heart Alive” is a true story: I met a kid at the railroad tracks He had a stick and a nylon sack I ran to the house to pack I wanted to follow Down at the tracks near my house I saw this teenager with a walking stick and a bag slung over a shoulder. I was fascinated. It was like he had stepped out of a storybook and onto my street. I don’t remember much of our short conversation, but I remember him telling me vaguely that he was “just walking”, and he gestured down the track. He was a little bit dirty, but he seemed happy, even without an Atari 2600. I rode my bike home thinking I’d throw a few clean pairs of undies in a book bag and slip into the viny Florida wilderness. When I got back, the boy was gone. But I’ve never forgotten that kid, nor the trembly feeling I had while I pedaled to the tracks with my bag of Underoos (Captain America, if you’re wondering). The Brandybuck in me was wide awake and kicking, and to tell the truth he’s never stopped. I couldn’t be happier about being a dad and a husband. The romance of the open road has lost much of its power over me, and I have come to learn that there’s just as much (if not more) adventure in staying put. Each human I interact with is a universe of mystery, and my wife and children are often God’s clearest voice in my life. The pictures Justin paints nudge the sleeping boy awake. The stories Tolkien and Rawlings and Enger and Lewis wrote knock on the door and swing it open. Art is a kind of daybreak. It wakes me up and reminds me of the Kingdom at hand and the battle worth fighting. I digress. The reason I’m linking this post is that these artists work hard to capture some of that waking wonder. And for me, it works. I nerd out reading about their approaches to creativity, story, and the things that light up their circuit boards.

Donald Miller’s teaching on life-as-story has been so good for me over the years. Stephen Lamb reviewed A Million Miles in a Thousand Years here in the Rabbit Room a little while ago, and the ideas in that book still come to mind on a regular basis. At some point almost every day I ask myself, “Am I living a good story?”  Most of the time the answer is no. I’m working on it. But it doesn’t stop with asking myself about my own story. Stories intersect. Another word for that is relationship. And it is in relationship, kinship, and community that the Kingdom lives and breathes. Here’s part of what Don wrote on his blog: ——————————– A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. So next time you meet A CHARACTER THAT WANTS SOMETHING: 1. Why did you come to America? 2. What drives you? 3. What do you hope for for yourself and your family? AND OVERCOMES CONFLICT: 1. That couldn’t have been an easy transition to America. What was the most shocking thing you endured? 2. Was that a lonely journey? 3. Did you ever think it wasn’t going to happen for you? TO GET IT: 1. When did you realize you were happier than the average man? 2. If there could be a moment in the future when you’ll realize that you made it, what would that moment look like? 3. When the credits roll, what do you think is most important in life? If you ask these questions, I promise, you will be entertained for the next hour. Not only will you hear stories, but you will watch as a person truly reflects on their life, and you’ll learn a great deal about what most people find important. You’ll be amazed that most people don’t really care about money or prestige, they care about love, about weddings and funerals, about children, about dignity and integrity. ——————————— Read the rest here.

Faith has to be connected to something – an object. Every human being operates by faith everyday; I may believe intellectually that a chair will hold me, but I faithe in the chair when I sit. Faith is based on the nearest thing to a certainty. Then we leap. “Most chairs have held me. Therefore this one will.” We don’t yet know this one will hold us, not until we sit on it. But we leap. Such faith we don’t even have to think about, because it becomes a spontaneous, subconscious assumption. We learn this faith in many areas as children if we grow up in a safe and loving environment. If not, we end up assailed by many fears, insecurities, a sense of inadequacy. God in Christ gives us an anchor for faith, a chair that will never break, a foundation that will never crumble. That is why “The people of God shall be strong and do exploits.” That gives us the ability to step out in faith in everyday situations and do the impossible and unexpected. Unfortunately most of us don’t live in that kind of Christ-reliance in all areas of our lives, myself included. But that’s really what the life of being progressively conformed to Christ’s image is all about. Faith is a growing thing. We get good at it by doing it. This is one reason we can’t judge by a person’s behavior. We have no idea how they grew up. We have no concept of their fears, the terror, the lies that have penetrated their soul. We cannot know what strong faith they may already possess because we are likely unaware of what they’ve already overcome. When renovating a house, furniture is taken out, carpeting is torn up, walls are broken down, entire rooms demolished. We look at one of God’s human houses and say, “What a mess this guy is. He needs to read more, pray more, give more. He needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If he was, he wouldn’t look like such a mess.” In other words, “He needs to have it all together, like me.” By judging we prescribe our own medicine – Law, self-effort, and works – rather than trusting in God’s working in and on the man, and speaking encouraging truth in love. We miss the fact that God is doing major surgery through the man’s troubles, struggles, and even his sins (this is not to blame God for sin, but that He uses everything in a believer’s life for His own love-purposes). But God works on a man how He chooses, and doesn’t really give a rip what people think about it. What he is looking for is for us step out in faith in what He says in the Word. Here’s what he says about the Christ-indwelt person: “You are holy.” What does it look like to put our full weight in that chair? “You are loved.” How does that show in our attitude when we stand on that Rock? “If any man is in Christ, he is (not ‘will be’) a new creation.” What does it look like to be a totally new person, I mean, if we really believed it? Would it show, like our faith in a chair results in the chair holding us? We can’t flip-flop this and “try to behave” without first replacing our unbelief. I can beat on my vacuum cleaner all day to get it to behave according to the manufacturer’s specs, but it’s not going to happen until I plug it in and turn it on.

I should have posted this yesterday but I was busy being mugged. But, although Memorial Day has come and gone, it’s never too late to post a great song, especially when that song is about a used pair of pants. Listen to Randall Goodgame’s “Susan Coats’s Pants” then hug a veteran (as long is it isn’t me). Randall’s War and Peace album is available at a special price today ($10CD / $7 Download) and each order comes with a free Randall Goodgame T-shirt (CD only, not downloads) (let us know if you prefer a men’s or a women’s shirt). (Random Trivia: BDU stands for Battle Dress Uniform which sounds a lot cooler than it is.) (Random Trivia (cont’d): This is also the album featuring Randall’s brilliant tribute to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoon.)

Note: Travis Prinzi loved the Lost finale. Others didn’t, for reasons illustrated as only S.D. Smith can. –Pete Peterson Jellybean Highfive stood at the entrance of the house called Diffident Manor. He walked in reluctantly, stood in the doorway in an unassuming fashion. He had been invited here by invitation. ‘Place looks odd,’ he thought inside his mind, with his thoughts. “Hello, stranger,” a voice said from in front of him. The voice belonged to a woman–a curvaceous, vivacious, hellacious woman. “I’m Vivica Hellen,” she said, drawing on her cigarette like a smoker, “but my friends call me ‘Curvy Vivica Hellen.’” “Because of the…?” Jellybean began. “…curves,” she finished. “Yes. Because of that.” “Why are we here?” Jellybean asked, looking around at the quaint, humble insides of Diffident Manor in an uncertain way. “I got me an invitation, I did,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “Me too,” Jellybean said. “Mine was a little odd. It said…” and he showed it to Curvy Vivica Hellen. Come to Diffident Manor. Stop. Great riches await you. Stop. Why am I writing this like a telegram? Stop. I just can’t seem to stop. Stop. “Mine says the same thing,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “Mine too,” Jellybean Highfive said, drawing out a cigarette from his pack of cigarettes. He lit one with fire, began to smoke it cheerfully. “Mine too,” he repeated, this time with extra rasp. “It’s a mystery. Why are we here?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “You’re here,” a voice boomed, “because I invited you, by invitation.” Jellybean looked around, but saw no one. He thought how weird that was, then remembered all the ways voices could be projected into the room with a person not present. “Yeah,” Jellybean asked. “But why?” “Because we need you,” the voice boomed again. “We need you to save Diffident Manor in a desperate sort of way.” “How desperate?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “On a scale of 1 to 12, how bad off is the Manor?” “10.5, easy,” the voice said. “Maybe 11. I’m so serious. I’m not even lying.” “That’s high,” Jellbean said. “Yeah, so…” the voice paused, then continued, “…can I count on you?” “Sure.” They said together, at the same time. “Jinx,” Jellybean said, “Jinx.” ____________________________ Ten hours later they stood in the sitting room, having each committed various atrocities combined with acts of goodness. “The Manor must be saved and it must be by you,” the voice said. “Then you will have a reward of gold.” “Nice,” Jellybean said, “but who are you?” “I will tell you who I am,” the voice said, “when you solve the mystery and rescue the Manor and get the reward.” “The reward of gold?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “Yes. That one.” “OK,” they both said together, but it was far too pivotal a scene for Jellybean to say ‘Jinx.’ ‘Not this time,” he thought. ‘But it is tempting,’ he also thought. ______________________________ Then there was a tumult in Diffident Manor. The entire building began to shake with shaky shakes. Into the room came six ugly giants. Their names were “Essential,” “Important,” “Serious,” “Central,” “C.S. Lewis,” and “Nimrod.” Essential spoke. “This is Important,” he said. “Nice to meet you,” Jellybean said. “No, you idiot,” Essential said. “What I’m about to tell you is Important.” “I knew that,” Jellybean said. “Hear me and you might live,” Essential said. “Maybe. Go to the bottom of the house, the basement. There you will find three keys. The middle key must be used in the chapel closet, or doom will follow doom.” “What kind of doom?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “Certain. Doom,” Essential said. Then Nimrod did strike Curvy Vivica Hellen on the head and she did die. Jellybean felt her pulse and it did not exist. In fury he killed Nimrod with a look, and a gun. “It’s all right,” Serious said, “I’m kind of a wizard. Go to the cupboard and fetch me a pail of water.” Jellybean ran, fetched a pail of water. “Pour it over her head,” Serious said. “Really? Are you…” “Serious? Am I Serious?” Serious said. “Of course I am.” “Do it,” C.S. Lewis said. Then he left, muttering “I have to get to the shed or the whole Manor will fall down at the end.” “OK,” Jellybean said. He dashed the water on her head. Curvy Vivica Hellen revived. She asked for a cigarette. They smiled and wondered, ‘What kind of a place is this?’ __________________________________ Three minutes later they were all in the kitchen, except some others had disappeared. There was Jellybean Highfive, Curvy Vivica Hellen, Essential, and Serious. Nimrod was dead. “Essential,” Jellybean said. “Why didn’t we fetch a pail for Nimrod?” “Because he got what he deserved,” Essential said. “But all Nimrod did was kill some one for a little while. Now I’ve killed Nimrod forever.” “It’s what Diffident Manor wants,” Essential explained. “It’s what Deuteronomical Max wants.” “Who is Deuteronomical Max?” “It will be told to you in twenty minutes.” “What happens in twenty minutes?” “You mean other than you finding out who DeuteroMax is?” “Yeah.” “The Manor of Diffidence will change forever, and we have to stop her.” Essential said. Then he walked into the refrigerator and disappeared in the light. “Where’d he go?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “I don’t know,” Jellybean said. “But he was the shortest giant I have ever seen.” “And a good friend,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “A good friend.” “Well, one thing’s for certain,” Jellybean said. “What’s that?” “I’m going to find this Deuteronomical Max.” “Why?” Curvy Vivica Hellen asked. “So I can kill him.” “I don’t think that’s what Essential meant,” she said. “Before he disappeared behind the mayonnaise he winked at me and whispered, “‘It’s so cold.’ What could that mean?”” “We’re about to find out,” Jellybean said. “We’re about to find out.” ____________________________________ Four hours and twelve seconds later Curvy Vivica Hellen and Jellybean Highfive stood in the chapel. They thought about the keys, but not very much. “I’m so glad we’re here,” Curvy Vivica Hellen said. “So glad.” “Me too,” Jellybean agreed. “Me too.” Then all the giants came in, smiling, reading books. Nimrod looked up from a Nancy Drew and ambled over. He gave Jellybean a hug. “Sorry about the, um, unpleasantries earlier.” “Me too,” Jellybean said. “Me too.” Curvy Vivica Hellen said, “I’m the one you tried to kill.” “True,” Nimrod said. “True.” They were all smiling. With their teeth. But also…with their… …hearts. The End

I want to tell you why I love the new record by Jarred McCauley, but first I need to tell you about my love for a lost movie genre: The Western. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of being forced to sit and watch ‘old’ movies despite my repeated groans and protests. My misgivings were rooted in the perceived lameness of anything my parents thought warranted “family time” (often these perceptions were well-founded…Lawrence Welk?). In my mind, the surest sign of a hellish evening of forced entertainment was the appearance of a black and white title card on a snowy UHF-band station. These title cards were often followed by equally onerous names like James Stewart, Gary Cooper, or John Wayne. Ugh. Ugh, I’d say. Do I have to, Dad? Can’t we watch Manimal instead? In hindsight, it’s obvious that these under-duress movie nights were instrumental in my life-long love of cinema and storytelling. The first time I realized that black and white film didn’t necessarily equal nap time was while wondering who really shot Liberty Valance. I recall Dad ordering me to sit and watch under threat of some vague unpleasantry and I was determined that I would not like it. I’ve still only seen the movie that once but strangely, I think about it all the time. I was baffled when the movie ended. “So who shot him?” I asked. Dad just shrugged and smiled. One day I need to watch it again to see if it presents a definite answer. I hope it doesn’t because that was a watershed moment in my understanding of how stories worked and what they could do. Today some of my favorite stories are those that end with a question mark. And then there was The Magificent Seven proving that bald could be cool, and Rio Bravo (dragging Dean Martin over from Lawrence Welk thereby imbuing Welk with a modicum of cool by association), and How the West was Won, and Big Jake, and The Sons of Katie Elder, The War Wagon, True Grit, and Rooster Cogburn. Man, what great titles. They’re bursting with the implication of heroics and adventure. Dad was, heart and soul, John Wayne’s man. But I was Clint Eastwood’s. I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly every time it was on and never missed a chance to see Hang ‘Em High, or The Outlaw Josey Wales, or A Fistful of Dollars. I was also anxious to see  Any Which Way but Loose but after I did I hoped someone would advise Clint to go back out west where he belonged. My love of The Western culminated in parallel with my maturation as a high school senior. The year was 1989 and the western was Lonesome Dove. Every western since has been a bit of a let down. There have been great films, of course, especially Unforgiven (where I finally got my wish for Clint), but after Lonesome Dove ended and Augustus McRae was gone, those that came after seemed to be missing some magical ingredient. Perhaps in Lonesome Dove, The Western was perfected. Those six hours captured all the language, wonder, romance, and confident humility that I’d dreamed about in my childhood and the world thereafter could muster only a scant chase in pursuit of that fleeting dream. The great Westerns had a mythic quality to them that was irresistible to me as a young man. The western hero embodied something that thrived in the dreams of boyhood, a spirit of adventure, of self-sufficiency; a boldness that isn’t afraid to fight for family or land or honor, a hunger to be oneself in the world and live like a ‘man’ in the archaic sense. The prophets of Israel went into the wilderness to receive the word of God, but a cowboy? A cowboy lived in the wilderness. And when a cowboy came across bumbling easterners and city folk with their bowler hats and shaven faces, you knew at once who’d seen the mystery on the frontier and who was merely passing through on the way to San Francisco. Sometimes the mystery burned them and turned them hard and callous, but others came back wizened by the desert sun, vagabond prophets having seen, as Woodrow Call would say, a “hell of a vision.” In adulthood these mysterious ideals have faded behind a mist of practicality and community and civilization. But when I’m surrounded by traffic signals and ringing phones and coffee on every corner I often feel the tug of the wild. I can’t escape the longing for the frontier, the pull to seek the mystery and find out if I’m equal to it, to discover whether I’m a grizzled prophet of the badlands or just a wandering traveller through parts unknown. When I dream, I dream of the West. So on this fertile plain falls the music of Jarred McCauley. His album “Giants Among Men” (produced by Andrew Osenga) is a Western. It’s a Western in the classical sense. Its narratives remember the purity, and simplicity, and wonder that made a boy dream of the high country. It makes me want to go to the wilderness to sit and listen for the voice of God. It makes me remember things that I once thought I’d never forget. It recalls in me the dream of boyhood. And in that dream, I was a cowboy. [audio:IWasACowboy.mp3] Do yourself a favor and pick up “Giants Among Men” on iTunes, it’s less than $7. I was a cowboy Chasing down outlaws Across mountains in the yard My eyes were clear and hard Riding stick horses I’d shoot away evil Out there I was simple and clean Out there I was wild and free And it made sense to be young To write my name in stars above From Arizona Up through Montana I’d ride deserts dry and old ‘Cross canyons filled with snow And it made sense to be young To write my name in stars above Out there Oh, out there Out there I shot my first gun Out there I kissed my first girl Out there I took my first drink Out there I wrote my first song Out there I built my first home Out there I saw God’s face Out there I was a cowboy Chasing down outlaws Out there

A friend muttered an under-the-breath comment the other day about the infrequent nature of my writing. That part I know of myself, that trait I don’t like very much, and that I try to press down under the water so that people can’t see the struggle’s splashes, was ushered right up to the surface for a big ol’ gulp of fresh air. It stung more than I thought it should. I suppose you could say that I’m in that “do I live my life or write about it?” stage these days, so it didn’t come as a surprise. I notice things like the bright orange yolks in the eggs I have for breakfast, like the sturdy little beginnings of trees that are springing up from the whirlybirds that fell from my maple tree into the soil around my strawberries, like the heady scent of honeysuckle and the lush, damp green that is closing in on my peripheries and around my little back yard that marks the onset of summer, then I think “I should probably write about that.” But I end up just enjoying those little things in real time and then forgetting that I ever intended to put words to them. Herein lies my own ever-rolling cycle. I know I’m fickle. I know I’m inconstant. The struggle stems from a desire to please, if I had to put a fine point on it. I hate to disappoint. Do I write something that’s not good at all just so that I can say that I wrote something? Or do I not put anything out there until it’s perfect? It’s all pressure I put on myself, I understand this fully. I sure do wonder who reads all this stuff, though, and it begs the question: who do I write for? A dear friend put that question to me a while back and I didn’t know the answer. I wasn’t able to put a finger on who my audience is, and yet I write. They’re all in the mix: friends, family (near and far), total strangers, folks who want to know what I’m cooking on a given day, old flames, hoped-for flames, my dear mom, distant Swedish relatives. Me. Me? Me. When my sister and I embarked on this blog-a-day journey, I don’t think we realized how mundane it would get. I think we live quietly extraordinary lives here, but it was starting to seem otherwise. I think we need to give ourselves a bit of freedom. I’ll keep telling myself that a well-edited tome need not be cranked out each day, and the task will surely take on a lighter, friendlier tone. So I’ll post, not worrying about who is catching all of my sure genius. Dear reader, get ready for a little bit of abstract nonsense from time to time.

The curse comes like the crack of rifle shot. I finished The Yearling two days ago, and my heart is still heavy with it. The book didn’t wound me. The wound was already there. The book gave the wound a name, which is strong medicine. I remember my mother-in-law, who named her dog Jody after the main character of the book, telling me that it wasn’t until she re-read The Yearling as an adult that she realized the yearling wasn’t the deer at all; the yearling was the boy. I had caught wind of the fact that the book was sad, which only made me dare it to sadden me. I went into the story armed with the knowledge of its metaphor and its impending doom. And yet, it caught me unaware. I was a deer in the woods, minding my own business, feasting on the green grass of the story, when the shot rang out. My son, Aedan, was given the book by his Nana as a Christmas present last year. I remember him telling me how much he liked it, that it was sad, and that he thought I’d really like it, too. I knew Rawlings was from my part of Florida, and The Yearling was lauded in Micanopy, a little town 45 minutes from my house, near Rawlings’s home. But I never read it as a kid. If there weren’t dragons, cowboys, or ghosts in a story, I wasn’t interested. My parents tried to get me to read it, but I resisted, and I’m glad I did. My heart wasn’t ready for it. Nor do I believe Aedan’s heart was ready for it. Oh, there’s no harm in reading it at a young age. Rawlings’s descriptions of life in the Florida wilderness are fascinating, especially if, like me, you recognize the Spanish moss, live oaks, alligators, rattlesnakes, magnolias, palmettos, and deep Southern accents she writes about so well. But it’s not a child’s book, strictly speaking. Sure, there’s a terrible old bear named Slewfoot, and a hurricane, and more than one near-death experience—but even these events happen without the usual, conventional drama. There’s not much gut-wrenching tension; things just happen–good things, and bad things. It’s more than 400 pages long, with no real plot. It meanders (or seems to). Its passages creep by as silent and dark as the Suwannee River. From the first page of the book it’s easy to see Rawlings’s great gift as a writer. That’s why you give her your time and attention for those 400 pages. Not only are there small delights along the way, you get the sense that she’s leading you on a journey you need to take. The story is about the loss of childhood. That’s why Aedan only thought of it as a good, sad book and nothing more. How can you mourn the loss of something you haven’t lost? But as for me and my heart, we grieved. I sat on the front porch at the Warren on a rainy day, read the last sentence, turned my head so my children wouldn’t see my face, and wept. I asked God, aloud, “Why must it be so? Why must it be so?” Why must the bright wonder and innocence of youth be shot and killed? Why must the little boy in me pass into the night, gone like a ghost? Why must I spend the second half of my life grieving that boy’s departure from the world, always seeking him, always wishing for a world untainted? Aedan saw me crying and came out to the porch. I tried to pretend I wasn’t crying, but he’s pretty smart. He hugged me, and I hugged him back, no longer grieving my own past, but his future. I thought of all my children, and the loneliness that will dog them all their days, and how I long to protect them from it. But the world is drenched in sorrow. For these precious few days of childhood the Lord grants us a glimpse of Eden, and as we age we are called back again and again to remember what was lost, and to reclaim it, to tell its story. We weep for the death, and hope in the resurrection, when Christ’s Kingdom of wise, old children may walk a healed world unharried by the looming certainty of death and more death. The young deer is a metaphor for Jody Baxter, and Jody Baxter is a metaphor for the loss of Eden. And Eden? It was a real place, but is now the metaphor for the world that was, and will be, and is no more, the world our own world longs for. I walk through fatherhood with a secret grief for my children. They inherit a world teeming with graces and wonders and mystery—and yet they too will come face to face with the bear in the woods, or the dying, bloody gasp of the little deer. They will encounter the rattlesnake in the brush. They will see that this innocence so fine will fray. In the opening scene of the book, Jody steals to a hidden spring and lies there for the afternoon, marveling at its beauty, at the sound of the trees, and the birds, and the water. At the end of the book he returns to the spring and finds the magic gone. He is no longer a boy. That time was a child’s dream, and now he must put away the things of a child. Ah, but Jody! Don’t forget. Don’t forget the bubbling spring that brought such joy. Draw yourself a map and hide it away. Show it to your child when he or she is young, or leave it on their nightstand without explanation. Keep the fire alive. And when you’re old, Jody Baxter, slip through the fronds and scrub oaks, down the bank of the old sandy road, and drink deep of the spring again. Lie down in the hollow and rest in the loneliness that is not lonely. Let the clean, cold water remind you that the magic you believed in was always stronger than the curse that bent you low. I visited Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s home at Cross Creek last year, and took this picture. We have The Yearling available in the Rabbit Room Store.

Redemption is the common thread that binds them all together. Yesterday morning I drove home from my sister’s house listening to Jill Phillips’ album All the Good Things. When the song “A Lot Like Me” came on, I immediately thought of the LOST finale we’d watched together the night before. I marveled at Jill’s knack for getting to the heart of the matter. Her disarming lyrical candor solidified some thoughts I’d been having about the community aspect of this unique show. I thought how Jack and company had formed a church of sorts in order to survive life on the island and to help each other hold out hope for rescue. They didn’t have all the right answers about how to get home, but they found ways to come together and they learned to care for each other deeply. Then I remembered what Christian told Jack at the end of the episode about the time he spent with this group of people being the most important time in his life, and I stopped to think about the implications of that statement in my life, and my church. Jill’s song challenges me to spend more time listening and less time trying to impress. Take a listen to what she shares, and take comfort that even when you feel lost, you’re not in that ship all alone. Sometimes I think you hesitate to say the way you really feel Like there’s no way that I could understand where you are coming from But if we could tear down these walls of bricks and mortar built with fear I think we’d be surprised to find how small our differences become We’re all in the same boat Sailing on the same old stormy sea If you look real close You’ll find you’re a lot like me We carry different burdens and we’re wearing different battle scars If we both had our own way we would bury them forever They give us different stories, how we came to be the way we are Redemption is the common thread that binds them all together We’re all in the same boat Sailing on the same old stormy sea If you look real close You’ll find you’re a lot like me Something about being vulnerable Makes us think we’re setting ourselves up for pain But you won’t find judgment in these listening ears This is a safe place So sit down for a minute and tell me what’s been going on We’re all in the same boat Sailing on the same old stormy sea If you look real close You’ll find you’re a lot like me

It feels like the days after Deathly Hallows all over again. A great story which sparked a pop culture phenomenon has come to its conclusion: some people loved it, and some loathed it. I’m in the former camp, and for much the same reasons I was in the pro-Deathly Hallows camp: the story accomplished the imaginative satisfaction of ancient human desires. Spoilers below! The biggest mystery of this season has been the Flash Sideways. Is it a parallel universe? Will the two universes cross? It turns out everyone was wrong. The Flash Sideways is a postmodern Graytown (from C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.) It’s like Lewis’s Graytown, because the people there can stay or leave as they feel ready. Consider that AnaLucia wasn’t ready, that Eloise was not prepared for Daniel to leave, etc. But also consider that Christian told Jack that all the castaways “made” the place, because they needed it. And in that case, it’s like King’s Cross. Harry perceives his meeting place with Dumbledore as King’s Cross, because it’s his own perception. What he believes actually shapes the place. In Lewis’s Graytown, the place is what it is and looks like what it looks like. Graytown’s citizens disagree on the meaning of the place, but not its makeup. At King’s Cross, and in this Sideways world, the place looks like what its inhabitants make it in their own imaginations. But all are able to proceed to love eternal when they are ready. As the story ended, the people sitting with me immediately began discussing: So is the Sideways real? I just smiled to myself, being too exhausted to formulate an answer. I wanted to say with Dumbledore, “It was in their heads, but why on earth should that make it not real?” What LOST did was make the statement: what is in your head is real. Imagination vindicated. Faith vindicated. Spiritual reality vindicated. In other words, this was logos epistemology, as I had hoped when watching “Across the Sea.” The light of the world is in every person. We recognize it in each other. We recognize the spiritual reality within and behind the physical world, and it’s in our minds – in our imaginations – that we perceive the truth. Just note the way the show opened and closed: Jack’s eye. And then remember your eye symbolism from Harry Potter. People who wanted mysteries “solved” would have hated the answers. Why? Because these are mysteries unfathomable to the human mind. The imagination is the best hope of perceiving them. The Sideways was more real than what happened on the island, not some fancy or dream that fails to give answers. The Sideways gives all the answers that really mattered. Who cares what the stupid numbers were? The mysteries of eternity find their way into the world in manifestations we just don’t get. Who cares what the numbers are? In the end, there is peace. There is love. To me, this is exactly the kind of bold ending that was needed. LOST was never going for a spooky/creepy ending. This isn’t a Gothic story. It’s not The Twilight Zone. It’s myth. More than that: It’s the best television can possibly come to creating a eucatrastrophe, a “sudden joyous turn.” The reason the LOST finale was bold is because in these days, happy endings are bold. Ken Tucker nails it: “Lost went out in a manner that was refreshingly not like that of so many dramas, which tend to become more dramatic, serious, and bleak in an effort to prove their ultimate profundity. Instead, the longLost last night was a combination of a greatest-hits album and a lively Sunday-school lesson. Everyone was forgiven; everyone smiled.” Other things I loved: -Jack and Kate: It was always supposed to be Jack and Kate. Sawyer/Kate always annoyed me. -Sawyer and Juliet: Kate could never settle Sawyer into the kind of loving person Juliet did. As Evangeline Lilly astutely said, Kate and Sawyer were “good at stumbling together.” Juliet and Sawyer flew together. -Jack, then Hurley: I was skeptical of Arabella’s position that Hurley would be the new Jacob, because I knew it had to be Jack. The way they made it Jack, then Hurley was fantastic. -The symbolism of the church at the end. Deliberate pans to Jesus twice. -Watching them realize their paths and recognize each other in Graytown: Simply amazing. I’ve never smiled or teared up so much watching TV. And it never got old, even after I realized it was coming for every single character. And as I write this, I’m watching it again, and it’s still not old. -No answer for fate vs. free will: the mystery was left fully intact, and both fate and free will worked together as they mysteriously do. I was so afraid they’d end this will a clear and decisive nod in favor of free will trumping fate. They did not. Jack was “supposed” to be the new Jacob, and Jack made the choice to be the new Jacob. It was both a “predictable” choice by Jacob, and an authentic choice by Jack. -Jack and Christian at “King’s Cross”: Because that’s exactly what that conversation was. -John and Ben: “I forgive you.” (Only one thing I hated: Sayid and Shannon. Never believed it, never will.) I’ll have more to say, I think, but I don’t want to say it all here and not leave room for a robust and insightful discussion, so I’ll turn it over to you after one last thought, and then see you in the comments. Here’s the crazy thing LOST did to me. A friend of mine convinced me to watch it by saying that it was all about character studies, and that there were characters named John Locke and C.S. Lewis. A couple seasons in, I told him, “I love it, but not because of the characters. I love the mysteries.” But by last night, it was exactly the other way around. I love these characters. I love that they made their way, flawed and failing, through a messy, mysterious world, and the answer they needed was Love. And in the end, The end is oceans and oceans of love, and love again We’ll see how the tears that had fallen were caught in the palms Of the Giver of love, and the Lover of all And we’ll look back on these tears as old tales. ~ Andrew Peterson, “After the Last Tear Falls”

“Lewis once suggested that literary critics are, and have always been, neglectful of ‘Story considered in itself.’ They have been so focused on themes and images and ideological commitments that they have failed to notice the thing that decisively differentiates stories from articles or treatises. If we then try to consider the seven Narnia stories as a single story, what is that story about? I contend that the best answer is disputed sovereignty. More than any other single thing, the story of Narnia concerns an unacknowledged but true King and the efforts of his loyalists to reclaim or protect his throne from would-be usurpers.” –Alan Jacobs And what are we? We are partisans for the unacknowledged King. We are exceptions to the total, cosmic treason of mankind. But this is from grace, for people who would be rebels. St. Francis of Assisi is widely quoted as saying, “Preach the gospel, if necessary use words.” There is debate about whether or not he actually said this, but my beef with it is more than authorship. It’s content. I understand the intent. Live out your faith, let people see the result of your faith. See the book of James. Yes, yes. Indeed. But the Gospel is words. It is news, Good News. It is not anything, it is something. It is particular information. It is not advice. It is not a “How To” book. It is not, as are the religions of the world, a set of things to be accomplished by you and me for a reward. As some one has said, “The religions of the world are ‘do, do, do,” and Christianity is ‘done.’” That is happy news. The Gospel is the Good News that the battle is won, the king has defeated the enemy, and we are free. True, in a real sense, for now a battle goes on. But this is not the central battle, this is the working out of the result of the central battle. This is chasing the Philistine army after David is holding Goliath’s severed head. The victory is sealed. The Victor is enthroned. Yes, for a little while longer the world is put upon by a pretended sovereign. But the Ruler of All is not surprised by anything. He is not, contrary to popular belief, on the edge of his chair, biting his nails. Our task is faith. If the faith is there, then so too will be the the works. Faith is God’s gift. He is not stingy, so we need not worry, or fear. “We obsess about the future and we get anxious, because anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before it gets here. We must renounce our sinful desire to know the future and to be in control.  We are not gods.  We walk by faith, not by sight.  We risk because God does not risk.  We walk into the future in God-glorifying confidence, not because the future is known to us but because it is known to God.  And that’s all we need to know.  Worry about the future is not simply a character tic, it is the sin of unbelief, an indication that our hearts are not resting in the promises of God.” –Kevin DeYoung Preach the Gospel to yourself. Use words. Believe those words. That is faith. Acknowledge the True King.