What are you looking for?

One of the duties that proved most difficult for me (after creating sixty-two works of art, of course) was writing about why I did it all. I found myself sitting in the gallery the morning of the opening of the exhibit, staring at the walls which bore several months’ worth of my life. My brain, empty. “Influence of place,” my comrade and curator, John, said to me. Influence of place. The following paragraphs flowed out of my fingers/brain/heart within a half-hour’s time. My mother grew up the daughter of a wheat farmer in the middle of the eastern plains of Wyoming. The vast, lonesome, blustery landscape with its blues, greys, golds and greens captured my heart from a young age. These scenes saturate my senses and I could forever portray the colors of ripe grain and stormy skies, rusting farm equipment and the deep nighttime spilling out millions of stars. More than any other artist or medium, this earthly place has been my most meaningful influence. The family photographs I have employed in some of my work are from our personal family archive, yes, but I believe they speak in quiet tones about larger themes. They serve as icons of a simpler time and convey a sense of strength, solidarity, faith, and abiding love of the kindred. My work is at once light-hearted and nostalgic, sparse and rich. At least eight years’ worth of weathered boards, rusty hardware, old tin cans, vintage buttons and time-stained hymnals await me in my studio. In each piece that I produce I seek out the opportunities for nuance and connection between the painting and any of the found objects that lie scattered about. Some pieces that I find stay with me for four or five years before they find their final homes. The portions of lyrics you see in these works have come from a well-worn hymnal that belonged to my grandmother Hazel. That book is simply titled, Awakening Songs. I have always had a profound love for the relationship between written word and imagery; exploring this connection was a significant step in the process of creating this body of work. My fascination with those who have gone before, my love for the lustre of age, and my belief in these time-honored missives of hope and peace have served soundly as my inspiration. The well is deep.

On the southwest corner of my front yard stands a double-forked black walnut tree. Its height of some forty-feet is ample enough to cast a belly shadow across the front porch of the house in the peak of summer. For that I am exceedingly grateful. By early October however, if not sooner, it becomes a skeleton of its formerly buoyant self. Its alternate compound leaves will have, by-and-large, fallen to the ground along with the slender brown tendrils to which the leaves clung, brittle and piling up like a Milton Bradley game of Pick-Up-Sticks on the droopy fescue lawn. The tree, I suppose due to summer drought, becomes awkwardly and prematurely barren of most vegetation with the exception of its enormous quantity of fruit dangling overhead like a million blunt swords of Damocles. Living beneath the tree this time of year is an equally precarious, if not epic, affair. Mowing the lawn, I run the risk of getting pelted in the head by cascading walnuts or enduring their violent, revolutionary decapitation within the blade housing below. Often, they fall in single, lonely thuds to the ground. Other times, they fall in rapid-fire clusters. Occasionally, and thankfully less often, they fall on the roof of the house with a clumsy rap. But if the wind picks up, or scrambling squirrels jostle the branches just right, a series of green golf ball-sized fruits plummets to the ground and pavement below as if in an embarrassingly poor juggling act. And that’s when things get dangerous for perusers like me. With each ominous pass beneath its boughs, I am certain that I will be knocked unconscious by one of the blunt spheres, waking up to find that several Rip Van Winkle hours have passed with only a tender knot on my skull as proof of any botanical villainy. Aside from any Newtonian peril, walnut trees entertain the natural world with a biochemical process known as allelopathy, a method of Darwinian survival. The tree secretes chemicals into the earth that prohibit other plants and trees, even its own kind, from growing near it. Essentially, it monopolizes the ground it inhabits, and, in that respect, I am no different. Much like my caution beneath raining walnuts, I find I am afraid of most everything involving the unknown, the future, and anything outside my domain of control, which is to say everything. It is no simple fear, instead, a near-paralyzing comedy of capitulation, that although lonely, cold and brittle, is vital enough to cast its own belly shadow across the sphere of my world. I discover inside me anger — at the world for being the liar that it is and always has been, and at myself for believing those terrible, fear-mongering lies. In my own allelopathy, I have for years welcomed the deepest demons by pretending the space I inhabited was and always would be mine, a gift I believe I rightfully deserved. I kill off any honorable Christ-inhabited humility by decaying the Root from which it springs. I fend off those who try to care, those who seek to lean in, those who invade my territory, by poisoning their atmospheres with my own mechanisms of defense. I am joy’s thief. Christ, where there is hope left to pluck from the living boughs, pray, reveal yourself before this fool has claimed an entire realm for his own crown. There is too much poison, too much anger, too much sadness, too much listless memory to pulse through the veins of any single soul. Beneath the burdened branches of this far-fetched, far-reaching, irrepressible hope, be merciful, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and remind the Triple Life inside me that the sweet birds will one day return to nest, roost, sing and play in the boughs created long ago with only so much as a single, spoken word. May the Triple Life return with that same whispered word.

Hopefully in the next year or so Russ Ramsey and I will publish an Advent book loosely based on the Behold the Lamb album. You may remember Russ wrote a series of Advent pieces for his church (and for the Rabbit Room) last year. Well, he’s expanding those writings a little, we’re adding Evie Coates’s artwork, and part of my job was to write the foreword. In light of the release of the special edition of Behold the Lamb of God (which is hot off the press), and the upcoming 10 year anniversary of the tour, I thought I’d share the foreword. Many of you have seen this concert and heard me talk about this more than once, so this post may bore you to tears. But for those of you who haven’t, the following tells the story of how this tour was born. —————————– I was sitting at a table with Ben Shive, someone who probably knows the musical ins and outs of Behold the Lamb of God better than I do, and Sara Groves, a songwriter for whom I have the utmost regard. Sara asked me, “So what was it like writing these songs? How did they come about?” I nodded eagerly and took a sip of coffee, settling in for a long, insightful discourse on the creation of this work–and was stumped. I sat back from the table a little embarrassed, wishing I had some colorful anecdote or spiritual insight. But after those few awkward moments passed the conversation turned to something more interesting (like the color of the carpet or the turkey sandwiches), and I was left wondering why I couldn’t think of an answer. It would be easy to say these songs wrote themselves. But that’s not true. They didn’t come easily, and they didn’t come overnight. My first clear memory of all this was singing “Gather ‘Round, Ye Children, Come” for Fernando Ortega backstage at one of his concerts in the Fall of 2000. He listened graciously and made a few suggestions that vastly improved the song. I remember almost nothing about writing “Passover Us”, or “Deliver Us”, or “It Came to Pass” or “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” except that I knew I couldn’t perform the songs alone and that I had serious concerns about whether or not my hare brained scheme would work. What was the idea? At its core, it was to present the story of Christmas in a new way. I wanted to reach deep into the Old Testament and sing about the Passover, and King David, and Isaiah’s prophecies. I wanted to capture with song the same thrill that captured me in Bible college when the epic scope of the Gospel story first bowled me over. But I didn’t just want to dwell on what came before Jesus’ birth. I wanted to sing about what came after. His crucifixion and resurrection were the reasons he was born in the first place. You can’t have Christmas without Easter. So there was a lot of ground to cover with a handful of songs, and I had my doubts. I didn’t doubt the caliber of musicians on the tour. I didn’t doubt the story that was being told. I did, however, wonder whether the idea was a good one. The band Silers Bald, with whom I had played several shows, agreed to join me, my wife Jamie, and my friend Gabe Scott on the tour even though none of us really knew what we were getting into. I remember when they arrived in Nashville they wore looks of amused confusion, and after a few days of rehearsal were only a little less confused. “The concert has two parts,” I told them. “First, we’ll break the ice by playing in the round. You do a few songs, I’ll do a few songs, we’ll tell stories and let the audience get to know us. Then after the intermission we won’t talk anymore. We’ll just play the songs.” Now, if you’re familiar at all with concerts by Christian artists, you know that if there’s one thing we love, it’s introducing songs. Sometimes the introduction is several times longer than the song itself. Sometimes this is good, most of the time it’s bad. For the Behold the Lamb half of the concert, though, I was resolved that the songs should do the work of telling the story. I wanted the audience to lose themselves in the story (which, by the way, is a good picture of what our response to the Gospel ought to be). Let me tell you, that was a scary thought. To play ten songs in a row with narry a word between meant there was no way to gauge the audience, no way to change songs mid-set to accommodate a lukewarm crowd, no way to break the ice with a good joke. We had to trust that the story was good enough. And, of course, it is. That first tour in 2000 was an act of faith on the part of the promoters who brought us in. It was an act of faith for Silers Bald, who drove to Nashville to rehearse a bunch of songs that hadn’t even been finished. And every night we took the stage it was an act of faith that the audience would listen close, connect the dots, and open their hearts to a new telling of the old Story. It was a rough tour in many ways, but to our great relief, the idea worked. The audiences got it. The next year I wrote “Labor of Love”, “So Long, Moses”, and (with help from Laura Story) “Behold the Lamb”, which more or less completed the song cycle. Again, I have only a vague memory of writing these songs. I thought “Labor of Love” was too simple, and I thought “So Long, Moses” was too complex–but the band liked them and they served their purpose in the narrative. Again, we took the stage and prayed each night that the audience would connect. And, even with all the feedback and the wrong notes and the odd structure of the concert, they did. By the end of the second tour in 2001 I was convinced that the songs were ready to be recorded, but there was a problem. I was under contract with a record label. I didn’t think they’d let me record the album without seeing the show first-hand, or if when they saw it nobody showed up. So I invited some special guests, artists who would draw more of a crowd than I ever could alone. I called the great Phil Keaggy, Fernando Ortega, Ron Block, and Jill Phillips and Andy Gullahorn, a couple whose music I had long admired–and to my amazement they all said yes. I also asked a graduating Belmont student named Ben Shive to arrange a string quartet. Looking back, I’m grateful beyond words for the friendships that grew out of that night. The crowd was amazing, the inclusion of these artists made the show more beautiful, and we were all glad to be a part of it. But the label wasn’t sold. For two more years we performed the concert to increasing audiences, fine-tuned the arrangements, invited more special guests and hoped the label would let me record it, but they didn’t–to my eternal gratitude. In 2004, after I was released from my contract (read: dropped from the label), I was able to record Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ. Part of the reason I’m grateful to the label is that those five years of touring this concert were basically pre-production for the album; the arrangements were fine-tuned, lyrics were tweaked, screws were tightened. The album is better for it. But the main reason I’m glad for those five years is that I began to discover the blessing of an artistic community. You see, by then I no longer felt ownership of this project. I considered myself blessed to be a part of this Kingdom work, this culmination of the gifting of so many people–drummers, violinists, writers, singers, producers, sound technicians, and guitar players. But it wasn’t just the sonic side of things. I also met graphic designer Roy Roper, who skillfully assembled the packaging, and Evie Coates, the artist responsible for the beautiful images in the CD booklet and now finally showcased in all their beauty in this book. Both these people had seen the concert more than once, were moved by it, and thus poured themselves into their work. Evie listened to the songs again and again as she collected old wood, odds and ends, throwaway scraps, rusty artifacts, and in another rich metaphor for the work of Christ, made the broken beautiful. So many artists dropped by the studio to sing or to play, many of them free of charge, and the same is true of the concerts. We’ve been honored to be joined over the years by the likes of Alison Krauss, Stuart Duncan, David Wilcox, Pierce Pettis, Randall Goodgame, Bebo Norman, Buddy Miller, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, Mindy Smith, and two-thirds of Nickel Creek, and not one of them cared a hoot for how much they’d get paid. They did it because of the story we were telling, and because it was a community telling it. Derek Webb sang “Deliver Us” better than I ever could. Ben Shive, who has become one of my best friends, brought his formidable musical gifting to the string arrangements, piano and production. Andrew Osenga’s passionate voice and guitar playing still gives me goosebumps. Jill Phillips’s performance of “Labor of Love” still makes me cry. How could I in good conscience call this an Andrew Peterson album? It’s not. It’s the fruit of many peoples’ work, and I got to be the lucky guy to pluck it from the vine. These humble souls have gathered with me for a decade now each December to sing this story again and again; wives and children have kept the home fires burning; churches across the country have opened their doors and prayed that people would come with ears to hear–all for the glory of Christ. Is there any higher call for an artist? For anyone? Once again, God proves to me that he knows what he’s doing. And I think that’s why I can’t answer Sara’s question. I don’t know how I wrote these songs. God zapped me with the blessing of amnesia, probably to keep the swagger out of my step; he knows I’m prone to take credit where credit is not due, and so he’s keeping me from more temptation than I can withstand. When I’m asked about writing these songs I can only shrug and say, “I don’t really know. Would you pass me a turkey sandwich?” What I do know is this: not long after I finished recording my second album I was given a burden. I was compelled to tell Jesus’ story with the gifts he gave me–the biggest of those not being my songwriting at all but the community of the Kingdom itself. And telling that story hundreds of times has changed me. I love the Gospel more for it. If you’ve been to one of these concerts you know I can hardly make it through a night without a lump forming in my throat (something that makes my voice go terribly flat). It usually happens when I look out in the audience and see someone with tears on their cheeks, and I realize that, by God, that dream I had ten years ago has come true: the story connects. The Spirit moves. The apostle says in John 20:31, “But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” However the songs were written, I remember well the reason for the writing, and that was so that men, women, and children would believe that the stories are true, and that by believing they would find life in Jesus’ name.

This post is inspired by a recent blog entry from Seth Godin. I love Seth’s blog although it’s outside my realm as he’s a marketing/business guru and I’m a lazy pastor who hates bringing anything corporate-looking into my own ‘establishment’. Still, I’m fascinated by his observations. The recent post (which you should read above) focused on the biz idea that some people are better than others to focus upon. Some people spend more than others, so he gives tips on finding ways to locate such people and then focus on them. It’s a way of honing your marketing efforts to those with deeper pockets and it makes perfect sense. As I read Godin’s thoughts, I felt both fascinated and sorrowful. The reality is that I’ve seen the church falling for this mentality time and again – and even myself as an oft-misguided disciple. As church leaders, I’ve heard numerous other pastors tell me personally, write it in books or even speak such things at conferences that it’s a great strategy to reach the movers and shakers. Go for the leaders. Influence the influencers. I’m not sure why the church has veered this same way. Well, actually I can see why we naturally respond that way as humans. I guess what I find so disturbing is how the church actually condones or justifies these actions. When did the gospel ever place value on reaching certain people over others? When did proper business strategies become the best way to spread the gospel message? Last time I checked, it was a few high school aged kids who flunked out of proper Jewish school and had to resort to their various family trades that became the chosen twelve. And even then, the early additions to the movement were literal enemies of the culture around them–the unclean (prostitutes), the oppressive (tax collectors). Somehow that’s been translated to golfing with the mayor and chasing after CEO types in order to get the proper resources into our church’s storehouse. Perhaps this is preaching to the choir, but I found myself inspired to vent after reading Godin’s post–much as I agree for the business world. The reality is that the beauty of the gospel provides a place where there are no “better people.” It’s there that humanity is truly valued not for anything we’ve done but just because we’re all created in the image of a loving God.

Near the end of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors: Blue, the central character of this masterpiece of French cinema, Julie, played by Juliette Binoche, encounters another woman who is responsible for a grievous betrayal. In a moment that takes your breath away, instead of retribution or hatred, we see in Julie a picture of grace and forgiveness in the flesh. And not just run-of-the-mill grace, if there is such a thing, but extravagant grace, grace far beyond what one could even hope for. What struck me about the scene the first time I watched it is that the perpetrator of the betrayal is not surprised by the grace shown to her. With a shy smile on her lips, she says, in effect, “That’s the kind of person your husband said you want to be.” “The kind of person you want to be.” Not, “The kind of person you are,” but, “The kind you want to be.” What does it take to get from the first to the second? I hesitate to call this Don’s best book, the phrase that most reviewers are parroting, if only because it is difficult for me to rank his books that way. I have enjoyed all of them, particularly Blue Like Jazz and To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father, and find they accomplish what any good memoir should: by remembering and examining chapters of their own life, the memoirist provides a space for us to do the same. As Frederick Buechner reminds us, in a phrase oft-quoted here at the Rabbit Room, “The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” A Million Miles in a Thousand Years begins with a phone call and subsequent visit from two guys, Steve and Ben, who want to help Don turn his first book, Blue Like Jazz, into a movie. Only there’s a small problem. “Your life is boring,” Steve tells Don. If people were made to watch a movie where the book was directly transferred to the screen, “I think they’d stab each other in the necks with drinking straws.” Steve went on to explain how they could use some of the elements of what makes a good story to craft the screenplay. A Million Miles is the tale of Don deciding to take those principles and intentionally craft a better story for his real life. For example, after watching Lance Armstrong ride in the Tour de France, Don decided he wanted to ride a bike. He writes: “So I started riding a bike. Actually, I didn’t really start riding a bike. I just kind of lifted my legs a little and made a circular motion with my feet while sitting in a chair watching the Tour de France. I made believe I was winning. Like I said, I live in daydreams.” It wasn’t until they reached the point in writing the screenplay where they needed an “inciting incident,” something that would force the character to choose between something easy and something he really wanted to do, that Don realized just wanting to ride a bike wasn’t enough. So he went out, bought a bike, and got a group of friends together to ride in the Portland Bridge Pedal, providing the needed inciting incident. He goes on to write about hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu–the inciting incident there being what has inspired many a man: the pursuit of a girl–and tracking down the father he hadn’t seen for twenty years. And that first bike ride with friends led to him participating in a bigger story, the Blood: Water cross-country bike ride, raising awareness of the need for clean water in Africa. Step by step, he was writing a better story. Here’s one endorsement for the book: It has already prompted several discussions with friends and family. And isn’t that what any good book should do? A criticism a friend raised in one of those discussions, if it can be called a criticism, is this: “Sure, I agree with Don that you aren’t creating a good story for yourself by sitting around watching TV all day, but I can’t run off and hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu or go on a cross-country bike ride. What can I do to live a better story?” It’s the small steps that matter, the little changes we make in pursuit of crafting a better story. Could it be that we become the kind of person we want to be by being the person we want to be? I want to cook more and have friends over more often to share in the miracle of each other and great food, so I sign up for a CSA. I want to create space in my life where I intentionally engage with art and beauty, so I sign up for a membership at the local art museum, I check the calendar on the Symphony’s website. I want to be a servant, someone who can be relied upon, so I help serve meals down at the rescue mission. I find out where I can help at my church. Do all of these meet the desires of the moment? No, most definitely not. They’re not the easiest thing to do, either. But that’s why we must be intentional about creating these moments. Otherwise, for myself at least, I’m afraid I would sit in front of the TV and eat nothing but pre-cooked, tasteless meals, shut off from anything that will challenge me, that will require something of me. I’d live a story not worth retelling. So we return here to our opening question: Who do you want to be? Getting back to the book, here is one of my favorite passages, something Don has spent a lot of time talking about over the last couple of years, a message unfortunately contradicted by many of the books that will be sold on the shelves next to this one: Growing up in church, we were taught that Jesus was the answer to all our problems. We were taught that there was a circle-shaped hole in our heart and that we had tried to fill it with the square peg of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; but only the circle peg of Jesus could fill our hole. I became a Christian based, in part, on this promise, but the hole never really went away. To be sure, I like Jesus, and I still follow him, but the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie. It’s basically biblical theology translated into the language of infomercials. The truth is, the apostles never really promise Jesus is going to make everything better here on earth. Can you imagine an infomercial with Paul, testifying to the amazing product of Jesus, saying that he once had power and authority, and since he tried Jesus he’s been moved from prison to prison, beaten, and routinely bitten by snakes? I don’t think many people would be buying that product. Peter couldn’t do any better. He was crucified upside down, by some reports. Stephen was stoned outside the city gates. John, supposedly, was boiled in oil. It’s hard to imagine how a religion steeped in so much pain and sacrifice turned into a promise for earthly euphoria. I think Jesus can make things better, but I don’t think he is going to make things perfect. Not here, and not now. What I love about the true gospel of Jesus, though, is that it offers hope. Paul has hope our souls will be made complete. It will happen in heaven, where there will be a wedding and a feast. I wonder if that’s why so many happy stories end in weddings and feasts. Paul says Jesus is the hope that will not disappoint. I find that comforting. That helps me get through the day, to be honest. It even makes me content somehow. Maybe that’s what Paul meant when he said he’d learned the secret of contentment. #AMillionMilesinaThousandYears #DonaldMiller

I’m no dummy. I know I run a certain risk in plugging a two volume commentary on the Gospel of Matthew here in the Rabbit Room. It isn’t that we don’t like to think around here. Of course we do. And it isn’t that our regulars aren’t interested in what the Bible has to say. I believe a great many of us are. In fact, I have reason to believe we have many readers here who are actively involved in some sort of Biblical teaching– pastors, Sunday School teachers, and other students of Scripture. The problem, as I see it, comes down to book covers: some book covers are awesome, others are boring. I think we can all agree on that. However, every, and I mean EVERY Biblical commentary book cover is boring. And both covers of Dan Doriani’s wonderful two volume commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew are no exceptions. See. (This is Volume 1. Volume 2 looks a lot like Volume 1 Dr. Doriani was one of my first seminary professors, and one who invested in my learning more than I can say, and I’m sure more than he knows. Commentaries, as you might know, are verse by verse, chapter by chapter or thought by though expositions of the various books of the Bible. They are among the sort of book most probably don’t sit down to read from cover to cover, but rather selectively when you’re studying a correlating Biblical text. That’s my method, anyway. The thing I like most about these volumes, and the reason I recommend them, stems mostly from my own personal experience with the teacher who wrote them. Or maybe another way of explaining myself is to say this: you should have Doriani’s Reformed Expository Commentary on Matthew by P&R because the author is a sound, wise, winsome and careful handler not only of Scripture, but of students too. As a way of recommending his books and also paying some honor to my teacher and friend here in the Rabbit Room, allow me to relay a few lessons Dan has taught me in the years I’ve known him: -Interpreting Scripture correctly takes work , but it isn’t indecipherable. God did not give us His word to confuse us or conceal Himself, but to reveal Himself. Nevertheless, it is still God we’re talking about, so we should expect to have to work at it with consistency and humility if we are to grow in it. And we should expect this to take a lifetime. -As you grow in your understanding of Scripture, you might change your mind concerning how you have traditionally interpreted certain passages. If Scripture is inexhaustible, and over time you continue to learn more, you should expect the Lord to use your learning to inform and sometimes even correct your understanding of passages you thought you knew cold. -There is a rich “earthiness” to Jesus’ ministry recorded in the Gospels. Doriani does an excellent job of taking students out of the metaphysical fog of over-spiritualizing Jesus’ life and times by taking you to a “boots on the ground” historical vantage point. When I hear Dan teach the Gospels (he was my “Gospels” professor in Seminary) he guides me away from regarding these texts as fables or “Middle Earth,” but rather as real events in real time and space– which is what they are. -Anecdotes. Dan uses anecdotes to teach as well as in these commentaries, but they are rarely if ever cute little one-liners meant to make you squirm over the use of a clever pun. His stories are engaging, almost always new to your ears, and often don’t go where you were expecting– making them potent. -Once in class, when a student asked which Commentary Series young ministers should have on our shelves, Dr. Doriani suggested we not buy commentaries by the set. We should buy individual volumes from a variety of different series because some from some series are better than others. Ask around and buy individual commentaries on the recommendations of people you trust who have used them. (I’m putting that little nugget of wisdom to work here.) By the way, I have worked with Doriani’s Matthew commentaries, and they are really great, easy to use, super informative and rich in detail. If you are a handler of the Word, you’ll come back to Doriani’s Matthew Commentaries again and again over a lifetime of ministry. -And speaking of anecdotes, I’ll leave you with one of the most memorable early lessons Dr. Doriani taught me. It was early in my first full semester of Seminary and the workload was piling up. It seemed like each professor thought we had all the time in the world to read 100 pages a night. Doriani’s afternoon New Testament Class was letting out and he gave us some big pile of stuff to do over the weekend. Now, being that we were all Christians there, we thought the Christianly thing to do would be to explain to our esteemed professor something he could not have possibly known– we had other classes with other homework. Maybe he could lessen our assignment a bit. Christians are to be merciful, right? So a group of us explained our situation. He listened to every word. And then with five words, he sent us home not only rethinking our weekend, but what in the world we were doing in Seminary in the first place. In a reminding voice, he said, “Gentlemen, this is graduate school.” Oh. Right.

Rabbit Room readers–as well as Pete’s mother–will know that Andrew isn’t the only creative Peterson around these parts. Our beloved Pete Peterson–Andrew’s brother–is about to publish his first book entitled The Fiddler’s Gun. It’s the first in a two-part series, a Revolutionary War tale that’s “not a children’s story,” as Peterson explains. Here in our latest Rabbit Room interview, we go inside the independent publishing process, the story line of The Fiddler’s Gun, and the hidden classic known as Burger Wars. Rabbit Room: What’s the timeline on the book’s release? Pete Peterson: The official release date is December 1st, 2009. I’ll be shipping out orders to my patrons as soon as I receive the books from the printer, which should be a bit sooner. RR: Let’s start with the basics of The Fiddler’s Gun. Can you tell us the genesis of the idea? Pete: About 10 years ago I made a bunch of treasure chests, filled them with presents, and buried them on my parents’ farm. Then I hand drew maps for everyone and sent them on a treasure hunt to dig up their presents on Christmas morning. It was a blast I started writing the book on New Year’s Day and by the end of that year I knew Fin’s story. She was an orphan from outside of Savannah, Georgia that grew up to fight in the American Revolution and even became the captain of a privateer ship (some would say a pirate if folklore is to be believed). It’s funny because I’ve never had any particular interest in the Revolutionary War but I found myself writing a novel about it, not because it was the story and setting that I chose but because it’s the story that chose me. I know that sounds like some kind of writer’s cliché but it really is the most accurate way to describe the experience. RR: Has that happened to you ever before–this idea of the story grabbing you? Pete: I guess, now that I think about it, it’s not the first time. I’ve always had a sort of cinema running in my head, and in the past I’ve written down notes and ideas but but then never really followed through on them or devoted the time to them that they might have deserved. So yes, stories do come to me but they usually just hang around for a few days and run off. This was the first time I decided to chase it down and catch it. Which is probably a good thing because half the ideas I have are preposterous. I once had what I thought was this brilliant idea for a story about a guy that was being hunted by McDonald’s assassins because he’d invented the perfect burger and refused to sell out to them. I’m really glad I didn’t spend eight years working on that one. It was called Burger Wars...of course. Ugh. RR: I think there’s a market for that, although I hear it’s not a glamorous one. Do you have plans to take this story–The Fiddler’s Gun–even further? Or is this a stand alone? Pete: This is the first of two books in the Fin’s Revolution story line. I originally envisioned it as a single book but I got to a point in the writing when I realized that for length, thematic, and dramatic reasons, that it made sense to split it. This first book is about getting lost, the second, which is about half-written, is about finding your way home. RR: How do you handle hopes and expectations when it comes to the self-publishing aspect? Pete: I don’t really like the term self-publishing. It comes with a lot of baggage and it gives the impression that the book was created in a sort of vacuum, which definitely isn’t the case. I think it’s more accurate to call what I’m doing “independent publishing”. To make a music analogy, I think of independent publishing in the same way that I think of independent music, or film for that matter. It might be made without the help of a big record contract but there is still every possibility that the quality of the work is just as high, if not higher. Self-publishing on the other hand carries a connotation similar to that of a record made by a guy in his bedroom on an old four-track with little outside input, advice, or polish and we all know how badly those usually turn out. When I decided to go the independent route, I built the idea around selling a thousand copies. I thought that if I could do that, and break even financially, I’d be able to call it a success. I expect that making that happen is going to be a lot of work and, because I don’t have the option of distribution to chain bookstores, I expect that it’ll take quite some time to meet that goal. I’m excited about it, though, and I’m in it for the long haul. My hopes, on the other hand, are obviously that it will generate some word of mouth, and eventually begin to sell itself. I’m not naive enough to sit back and wait for that unlikely scenario to happen, though. RR: When you say you’re in it for the long haul, have you thought about what you will have to do to sustain your own spirit and drive? Pete: That’s a great question. I think there’s a perception by a lot of people that a novel is something that you write in a couple of months and then hand over to an editor and a few months later a book magically appears. That might be the way it works in my dreams, but the reality is that it’s a process that is in itself years-long before anyone ever even gets to hold the book in their hands. At the beginning of that process I struggled a lot with calling myself a writer, thinking that it was a title I couldn’t claim until I’d reached some hidden benchmark, like selling a million copies. But over the years, through the edits, and rewrites, and searching for a publisher, and all the work and emotional capital I’ve spent on it, I’ve learned that writing, storytelling, is just as much a part of who I am as my own name and I’ve every right to call myself a writer after all.  Why? Because it’s what I do, it’s what I long to do, and it’s what I’ve done all my life without realizing it. So when I say I’m in it for the long haul, what I mean is that I’m comfortable wearing the writer’s mantle and the burden that comes with it is one I’m ready to carry. I’ve reached the point in my understanding of myself that I’m ready to fail, and being ready and willing to fail is, I think, the first step on the road to being successful. A lot of people never write, or sing, or create art because they are afraid of failure, they’re afraid others won’t like what they’ve created and so they live their whole lives wishing they could create something as beautiful or meaningful as those people they admire for doing so, when the truth is that those people that they so admire probably started off in mediocrity at best and failure at worst. I hope The Fiddler’s Gun is a wild success, but I’ve come to my own terms with it. People with either like it or they won’t, and either way, I’m still a writer, and I’ll go on creating stories, and hopefully some of them will rise above mediocrity and maybe in time, one or two of them will even be found beautiful by someone. RR: Speaking of people who won’t like it, you’ve said that this is not something for children, correct? Pete: That’s correct. I think there is some misconception out there that because Andrew’s books are aimed at children that mine are too and that’s not the case. I don’t mean to give the impression that the story is full of things that aren’t fit for kids, but it definitely does follow characters into some dark places physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The Revolutionary War is a big part of the book so death and violence are things the characters face and have to find ways to deal with. I’d say it’s a book that a parent should probably read first if they have children younger than 13 or 14. If your child isn’t ready to read The Red Badge of Courage or The Lord of the Rings, then they might not be ready for The Fiddler’s Gun. —————————————– For those interested in being a patron for Pete’s book, check out the following post. And don’t forget to check out the website for The Fiddler’s Gun here.

When I was barely 22 years old, I moved to Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Ambridge is a small former steel town on the banks of the Ohio River just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the home of Trinity School for MInistry, where I was beginning seminary. I had just graduated from the University of Texas, and had moved directly from Austin to Ambridge. I had never owned a car in Austin. I lived close to campus and rode my bicycle everywhere. However, when I got to Pennsylvania I discovered that I was going to need to buy a car. I lived on one side of Pittsburgh but had found a job as a youth minister on the other side of the city. There was simply no way I was going to be able to do that job and not drive. So I started to look for a car. I went across the street to the lot, and I was met by one of the Ombres brothers. Mr. Ombres was this big guy with a full-sized Pittsburgh look to him. He had a thick mustache that hid his mouth beneath a fountain of dark, wiry hair. His off-white shirt was unbuttoned a bit too far, and he wore a gold chain around his nick. He looked pretty much what I expected him to look like. I shook his hand and explained my situation to him. I told him, ”I’m a student at the seminary. I’m also a youth minister at a church over in McKeesport, and I need a car. I need the cheapest car I can find, really. I just need something to get me from point A to point B. I don’t care what it looks like. I just need a good, reliable car to get me across town.” He said, “Oh, I have the car for you.” He took me down the rows until we came to a Dodge Colt. This Colt was a stubby, brown thing. The upholstery inside was worn thin, and the body had several small rust holes near the wheels. I have no idea what year it was, but it was this small, incredibly ugly little beast. He said, “I can give you this car for $1,800.” I said, “Wow, that’s great. But I don’t have $1,800.” He said, “That’s okay. We can finance it here on the lot. Don’t worry about that.” I said, “Well, you know it’s kind of rusty.” “Oh yeah, it’s Pittsburgh. All the cars are rusty.” “Okay.” I said, “Where is this car from, how old is it?” He said, “Oh, it was driven by an old lady who kept it in her garage. She just drove it back and forth to the grocery store and to church, and she passed away recently and we took it upon ourselves to sell it. This is a really great value on this car.” You may have heard kind of line of bunk at a used car lot before, or maybe you think it’s so silly no one would ever use it. I’m here to testify that, at least at this lot in 1993, the tale was still in use. At this point, I need to tell you something. I had never shopped for a car before. I had never even bought anything expensive before. Not a house, not a TV, not anything. I had no idea what I was doing; and Mr. Ombres could smell it on me. He could smell my incompetence, my inexperience. So he said to me, “Tell you what, I’m going to give you a piece of paper. You just go across the street to your seminary and get someone over there to sign it. The paper says you’re good for the money, and we’ll finance this car for you.” I said, “Oh, that’s great Mr. Ombres. Thank you so much.” So I left Mr. Ombres and I went across the street to the school. I found the office of the Director of Development, the Reverend Admiral Bruce Newell, U.S. Navy, Retired. Admiral Newell had been in charge of the nuclear submarine fleet of the U.S. Navy before he became a priest. He was, like Mr. Ombres, a big and impressive looking older man. LIke Mr. Ombres, he seemed to know what he was talking about. Frankly, he was about as intimidating as anyone I’ve ever known. I came to his office and I said, “Bruce, I need to buy a car from Mr. Ombres. He told me I had to get someone over here to sign this piece of paper, so I’m hoping you can do that for me.” Bruce took the paper from me, looked it over for a moment, and said “this is asking me to cosign a loan for you at 14 percent interest.” I had no idea what any of those words meant, so I nodded my head. He put the paper on his desk, removed his glasses, looked me in the eye, and began to ask me some questions. Admiral Newell: “What year is this car?” Me: “I don’t know.” Admiral Newell:”What’s the mileage on this car?” Me: “I don’t know.” Admiral Newell: “Have you had this car checked out by a mechanic?” Me: (shrugging) “No.” Admiral Newell: “How does it drive?” Me: “I don’t know.” Admiral Newell:”What do you mean you don’t know? When you test drove it, what was it like?” Me: “I didn’t test drive it.” Admiral Newell: “You didn’t test drive it?” Me: “No, Mr. Ombres didn’t say anything about test driving it.” Admiral Newell: “Did you even turn the engine on?” Me: (looking down) “No.” Admiral Newell: “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to take this piece of paper and I’ll get back to you. Come back tomorrow.” I said, “Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow.” So the next day I came back into Bruce Newell’s office. He sat me down and said, “I’m not going to cosign this loan. Not because I don’t trust you, but because that car is a piece of garbage. It won’t last, and it may not work at all. They’re trying to rip you off. I want you to call your mom and dad, and tell them you need a car. If they won’t help you buy one, I will. I will go to the lot with you and we will find a car. I will give you a down payment, and I will cosign the loan. But first talk to your parents.” I said, “Thank you, sir.” I never went back to the Ombres’ lot, and I never test drove the Dodge Colt. It wasn’t that I was upset with Mr. Ombres, it was more that I was ashamed at being such a sucker. I followed Bruce’s advice, and my mom and dad helped me out. My mom found a used Nissan Maxima for $4000 in Ohio, and she bought it for me. I drove that car for 100 thousand miles before selling it for $2600 years later. This story illustrates something important about power. It is the story of two men who had power over me, and the decisions they made about how to use that power. Power is simply the ability to affect someone’s life. Sometimes power comes from someone’s position. Parents have power over their children, you boss has power at work, a policeman has power when he pulls you over. Power can also be based in having something that someone else needs, like knowledge. Mr. Ombres had power over me because I didn’t know what I was doing. He recognized that and decided that he was going to use his power to manipulate me for his own profit. He decided that the best use of his power was to gratify himself. Admiral Newell, on the other hand, also had power over me. My inexperience and incompetence gave him the ability to influence my life. Unlike Mr. Ombres, Admiral Newell decided to use his power to help me, to put himself out for me, to try to enter in to my life in a positive way. Power is a factor in practically any relationship, from long term ones (like parents and bosses) to short term ones (like salesmen and their customers). Power is neither good nor bad, it simply is. However, power can be used in good or bad ways. You can use your power to gratify the self, to make yourself feel better, to take something that you want, to make something go your way. Power can also be used to care for someone else, to respect the dignity of another person, to build another person up, to love them. You can either use people with your power or you can love people with your power. It’s impossible to do both at the same time. All of us have some degree of power. We have power in relationships. We have power in our jobs. We have power at home. All of us have power and all of us have people over us in power. Power is part of the human condition and it is never going away. The way we use our power, for love or for self-gratification, is within our control. Consider two examples from the Bible in which men have power and use it. The first is the story of David and Bathsheba. It is a familiar story, and is found in the Bible in 2 Samuel chapter 11. King David is often seen as a hero of the Bible. How many preachers have used him as an example of great faith or great courage? Children read of his exploits in Sunday school, and his victory over Goliath is one of the most famous tales in scripture. In this story, however, King David is seen as a man who uses his power over and over again to please himself. Verse 1: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab and with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.” In the time when kings go out to war, David stays home in his palace and sends out his general. While other kings are putting themselves in danger, leading their followers into conflict, David is hanging out at home. The ability to lead an army is power. Sending someone else out to do your dirty work is an abuse of power. Verses 2-4: “One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful.” David discovers that she is married, but still he “sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her . . . then she went back home.” While David’s general is out doing his job for him, David has time and leisure to spy on women from his roof. He sees this woman, finds out that she is married, but summons her to come to him. The ability to see an attractive married woman and then have her brought to you so you can sleep with her is a display of power. It is also a terrible misuse of the trust and authority that belongs to the king. David’s misuse of power only continues. When he finds out Bathsheba is pregnant, he decides he doesn’t want her husband to know what he had done. He brings the husband back from the front lines and then tries twice to get the husband, Uriah, to sleep with his wife (verses 6-13). When that doesn’t work, David orders his general to have Uriah killed by the enemy (verse 15) . Once again, summoning soldiers and then ordering them killed reveals both David’s power and his misuse of that power to satisfy his own selfish motives. When messengers report that Uriah is dead, David uses his death as a rallying point for his general. He uses the news to encourage his army to press harder, turning his own crime into motivation to strive harder against the enemy (verse 25). This displays a deep cynicism on David’s part. David is no hero in this story. In fact, every action that he takes in this chapter is heinous. He simply goes from one sinful act to another, all in the name of personal pleasure. In this story of David, I hope we see ourselves. We are not kings, we don’t have David’s level of power. However, if we’re honest with ourselves we recognize that we have sent other people out to do our dirty work for us. We have treated people as objects for our lust. Some of us have broken marriage vows. We have avoided responsibility for our actions. We have used our authority at home or at work to cover up our bad behavior. We have let others take the fall for our mistakes. We have used the authority given to us to please our selves. When we compare David to Jesus, when we compare ourselves to Jesus, we see that we fall far short. Consider the kind of power that Jesus had. In John’s Gospel, chapter 6, he has the power to take a small amount of food and turn it into enough to feed an entire army. In that same chapter, he has the power to control the weather and walk across a body of water. Imagine if Jesus had chosen to use these abilities to make war on Rome. Imagine an army in the ancient world that could be fed with practically no supplies, that could travel with perfect weather, that could walk across rivers and lakes. Imagine an army in which the dead could be brought back to life, diseases driven away, wounds instantly healed. Such an army could have conquered the world. It is no wonder, therefore, that the people who witnessed Jesus’ actions wanted to make him King (John 6:15-16). But Jesus was not interested in using his power to please himself or his followers. Rather, he came to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28). He used his amazing power to “preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus never used his power to care for himself but only to love those around him. We have two completely different examples of the use of power. On one hand we have King David’s use of power, Mr. Ombres’ use of power. This is the kind of power that says, “I’m going to use what I have to get what I want.” On the other hand, we have Jesus’ use of power, Admiral Newell’s use of power. This is the kind of power that says “I’m going to use my authority to better those around me, to build other people up, to bring those who are lower to a higher place, to love and serve others.” We have before us two different options, two different ways to live. At this moment in the essay, I have the power to do something. I could say, “Therefore let us take Jesus and Admiral Newell as our examples, and use our power to do good. Let us be good, like them, and not bad like King David and Mr. Ombres.” I could say that, and we could all nod our heads and give thanks for this excellent example of goodness that they offer. That’s what I could do. If our religion was about being good, that’s what I would do, but it’s not. While it is better to be like Jesus than King David, while it is better to be like Admiral Newell than Mr. Ombres, the essence of the Gospel is not to found in acting in good or bad ways. Let me share with you what the essence of the Gospel is. In Matthew, chapter 1, beginning in verse 1 we find the genealogy of Jesus. In that chapter, the Holy Spirit of God speaking to the Universal Church through Saint Matthew tells how it is that Jesus came into human existence. He follows the story of Christ’s lineage, beginning with Abraham. “Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob, etcetera, etcetera,” through the generations. We see how God is at work in human history to bring forth His Messiah, how he is putting everything in place by bringing families together, by keeping the line going. Then, in verse 6, this happens. “And Jesse became the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” Wait a second. David misuses his power. He’s corrupt. He’s sinful. He takes a woman. He gets her pregnant. He kills the woman’s husband to cover up the crime. This woman, Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, is also sinful. She goes along with what David is doing. She does not warn her husband. We have no indication that she objected to anything the king did. Once Uriah was dead and her official mourning period was over, she married the man who had killed her husband and went on to have children with him. We have these two people who have done these atrocious things, and out of them, out of that union, comes Jesus Christ. Out of one of the most sinful, dark, relationships you can imagine comes the bloodline that saves us all. Why? Because God redeems the fallen. That is the Gospel. The Gospel is not “be good, not bad.” The Gospel is the news that God has come to us and become our Redeemer. In the midst of sinfulness, God is still at work. In the midst of darkness, the Holy Spirit is still doing things. David had acquired Bathsheba and murdered Uriah through a despicable misuse of power. But God used the coming together of David and Bathsheba to bring forth the Savior of the world. Centuries after David died, Jesus Christ would be called by the honorary title “Son of David.” (Matthew 9:7, etc.) Even though David and Bathsheba deeply sinned, God redeemed their union to offer salvation to us all. I ask you, therefore, this question. If God can do that, what can He do with your brokenness? Think of your sin, your darkness, the mistakes you’ve made. Consider your regrets, your failings, the things you wish you had done differently. Is it possible that God can not only forgive you, but he can even use your failings to bring forth good? If in the midst of all of David’s ugliness, he can bring forth the Christ, what can He do in the midst of all your ugliness, or mine? The message of the Gospel is that God in Christ can bring forth great good even from our most miserable failures. His redemption is abundant. It is infinite. It is powerful. It is incomprehensible. It is beyond our understanding. It is beyond our choices. It is beyond our power. The redemptive power of Christ is so great that not only can your sins be forgiven, but beauty can come from ashes. Glory can come from suffering. Good can come from what you and I meant for evil. That is the Gospel and that is the redeeming power of Jesus that He showed forth by dying for us on the Cross and by being raised again, by ascending to heaven, and by promising to return. Each of us has our own burdens. We bear scars in our bodies and in our minds. We bear the burdens of the past. What the God in his Gospel says to us today is, “I can take those burdens from you, and I can do miracles with them.” Jesus is still in the redemption business. Yes, it is better to use your power to treat people than to treat them poorly. But when we don’t do right, Christ is still here to redeem, as he did with David. You are invited to come to Christ in prayer. Thinking of your burdens, you can say to him “will you please do something with this because I can’t.” Let him do his work in you. That’s what he longs to do. His love for you is so great that He will bring forth redemption from whatever circumstances you have found yourself in.

A big, global thanks to all of you who took a minute to reply to our recent “Hey! Where You At?” post. After a record 290 replies as of 7:00AM on November 1, I thought I’d take moment to compile some results. First, as best as I can tell, for around 125 of you, this was your first time to post a comment here. Welcome! Please feel free to chime in on anything any time you want. It’s a big room and you never need to dress up for us. Second, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a special shout to all you long, tall Texans out there making Lyle Lovett proud. Though many of the regular Rabbit Room contributors live in the Nashville area, at the time of this writing, Texas had the same number of replies as Tennessee. To the rest of you non-Texans, let that serve as a reminder. You don’t mess with Texas. Hook ‘Em, Horns. And God Bless the TNG. Third, I’m working on a theory as to why the following connected states– Utah, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota– were collectively silent. It is just a theory though. And I’m gonna keep it to myself. Still, the radio silence is curious. Which brings me to Canada. Oh, Canada. I know the Rabbit Room has some loose connections to Andrew Osenga and I know he has written and delighted in performing a song about you, but I can assure you the views expressed by certain independent, and I might add, generous songwriters are not necessarily those of the Rabbit Room. (It is a good song, though. Eh?) Alberta (1), British Columbia (1), Ontario (3) and Manitoba (2), you’re represented by those who have replied. But to New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon and the fine folks of Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territory, here’s what we’re going to do to let the healing begin. I’m going to assign one Rabbit Room Ambassador specifically to each of your provinces, and we’re going to open the lines of communication. From here on out, any comments you might wish to make, you can direct them to the following people and they will be happy to answer your questions, address your concerns and say good things publicly about your homeland. – Prince Edward Island, address your comments to Evie Coates. She’d love to hear from you. And I think she’d like to visit sometime. – New Brunswick, you get Randall Goodgame. He’s worked with Osenga quite a bit, so he could be very insightful about that song. I’m not sure Osenga mentions you. You may be wondering why. – Newfoundland, Curt McLey has a special place in his heart for you.  He remembers the original Foundland from back before you were established. – Northwest Territories, Jason Gray is, I believe, our northern-most contributor, so you will find much in common with him. He is very familiar with, for example, snow. – Nova Scotia, you get Matt Connor. I believe he’ll even come out and meet with you face to face if you cover his costs. – Yukon, your name sounds like an adventure, and Eric Peters is all about adventures. Drop him a line. Like Matt, he’ll come to you. – Quebec, you get Ron Block because if you say his name really fast, it sort of sounds like Quebec. – And finally, Saskatchewan, I’m assigning Jonathan Rogers to you because he is a professional writer, and probably, of all of us, has the best shot at consistently spelling your name correctly without looking it up. You’ll like him. He has a nice family, and that says something. Now, before we get to the USA, how about a summary from the rest of the globe? We’ve covered Canada. Here are the other international replies we got: Germany (4) Singapore (4) United Kingdom (3) South Africa (2) Sweeden (2) Mexico (2) Brazil (1) Belgium (1) South Korea (1) Jamaica (1) Switzerland (1) Morocco (1) France (1) Turkey (1) Romania (1) Ireland (1) and Indonesia. (1) Now, on to the United States of America. First, the silent states. If you are from one of the following states, you can still become the first to represent. Alaska, Hawaii, Deleware, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Again, I ask, where you at? For those we did hear from, here are your results: Tennessee (29) Texas (29) Nebraska (17) Florida and North Carolina (12 each) Missouri and Indiana (11 each) Ohio (10) Virginia, Georgia and Minnesota (9 each) Colorado and Pennsylvania (8 each) Michigan (7) Alabama and California (6 each) South Carolina and New York (5 each) Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and New Jersey (4 each) New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wisconsin (3 each) Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia (2 each– although after initially compiling this draft, SD Smith, who has access to unposted entries, saw this ranking and staged a late rally among his West Virginia constituents through his personal blog, raising that number from 2 to a whopping six. You leap-frogged Oklahoma, Wisconsin and New Hampshire and grabbed for yourselves Alabama kind of numbers. Well played, West Virginia. Well played.) Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Louisanna, Mississippi, New Mexico and Washington (1 each) Still, as we tell our kids at the dinner table, “Its not a contest.”

A couple nights ago, as I was in the throes of carving our family’s final jack-o-lantern – feverishly cutting out the stripes of Charlie Brown’s shirt (we usually fashion our pumpkins into Peanuts characters) – Taya gave a gentle, reflective laugh. “I love what you’re doing right now”“What?” “I love how you’re really digging into that pumpkin” “Remember when we were first married?” she asks, and then brings our boys into the conversation. “When we were first married, you guys, your dad wouldn’t allow us to have pumpkins, dress up, or even have candy to give out.” “Really dad, how come?” Taya continued, “As I recall, you didn’t even let us have a Christmas tree that first year.” She said with a soft and gracious smile, remarkably without a note of accusation or contempt. “Why?” one of the boys asked again. I was having to put my elbows into it now, hollowing out the flesh of the pumpkin so the candle would better show through the carving. “Ahhhh, you guys…” I said with a tone of regretful concession… “I grew up in a pretty legalistic environment where they believed Halloween was the devil’s holiday, and if you participated in it at all, you were guilty of devil worship. And then because of some obscure verse – in Jeremiah or Isaiah I think – about bringing a tree into your living room… well, because of this I wouldn’t let your mom get a Christmas tree either. Sorry.” I said with an apologetic smile, addressing Taya. Returning to the work at hand I said, “I’m glad you hung in there with me.” I guess you could say my convictions on these kinds of things have taken a different shape over the years. There are those from my legalistic past who might say I’ve softened, but in fact it actually feels like my theology on these things has sharpened, maybe even enough to divide soul and spirit, “judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” For this is where, in my opinion, what’s really at stake comes to light. This post would take much too long to definitively defend and document all that could be said about Halloween, and I’m writing this less as a comprehensive manifesto than as a humble perspective that I hope might make for enjoyable reading and maybe even aid in a grace-full observance of a holiday that comes with some baggage and leaves some of us with mixed feelings (you know who you are). And it’s not hard to see why, what with all the images of death and darkness that go along with the day. But in my case, most of my personal hang ups concerning Halloween came from the same place that all my legalistic leanings come from: fear. Fear has always distorted the way I see the world and caused me to be reactive, to circle the wagons and take a strident, defensive stance. Fear shrinks my world and can even make me doubt grace and it’s hold on me. Fear that if I listen to secular music, my mind will be darkened and I’ll become a sex crazed reprobate. Fear that if I have a sip of beer I’ll become an alcoholic. Fear that if I enjoy something it must be inherently bad. Fear that if I go trick or treating with my kids or put up a Christmas tree I’ll inadvertently cast us headlong into paganism. And so on and so forth. But fear is what love intends to cast out, because to act out of fear is very different than to act out of love. If fear is reactive, maybe we can understand love as being pro-active. One of the more humbling and awe-inspiring theological traditions is the idea that we are called to be co-creators with Christ. Of course we can’t create like God did, ex nihilo, out of nothing, but God has called us to re-create with what he’s already made – and there isn’t anything that exists that wasn’t made by him. Bent and broken as a thing may be, there is the possibility for its redemption. And we get to play a part in the unfolding drama of this ongoing redemption. At least that’s how I read it. In this way, I believe that as co-creators with Christ we’re also given the task to be co-sanctifiers, or “little Christs” as C.S. Lewis might say – participating in Kingdom Come, reclaiming what otherwise might be lost, bringing it into submission to Christ. Maybe you remember the worship wars in the 80’s and 90’s when there was much debate over things like whether or not you could have drums in a sanctuary and everyone was arguing about which style of music was God’s favorite? Well, at some point we had to realize that music is more often than not what we make of it. Heavy metal or easy listening, both or neither can bring honor to God – it depends on what intention of the heart is driving it. It was the human heart, after all, that lusted for the forbidden fruit. It was with our hearts, more than our hands, that we reached to take the fruit, ushering in the Fall. And it is still within the human heart where fates are determined and identities revealed. Food sacrificed to idols is not necessarily evil when placed in the hands of the true worshipper of God. Purified and repurposed in the heart and conscience of the believer, it is restored to its original state of being simply food. If it’s the heart that defiles or purifies food (1 Cor. 8:7), I guess I came to believe that it’s also the heart that defiles or purifies a certain day of the year. And if it was God’s will for me to play a redemptive role in all this, I wanted to start trying out for the most beautiful part available to me. Much of my religious formation took place in a milieu of shame, fear, and guilt, leaving me at once affirmed in my self-righteousness, alone in my sin, and burnt out on the holiness-works-guilt treadmill as I tried to prove my devotion to both God and myself. Into that milieu, God visited me with a grace awakening several years ago through authors like Brennan Manning and Frederick Buechner as well as a renewed filter through which to read my bible – texts that once barked their austere demands at me slowly began to whisper and hum with secrets of a Love so outlandish and scandalous that I could hardly take it in. Books like Galatians and of course the gospels came alive for me with colors and notes I’d never noticed before. And slowly, ever so slowly, the bondage of fear began to break and the world was given back to me. The difference between legitimate and imagined ideas of sin and devotion began to come into focus, too. In the matter of Halloween, I began to see that my own reservations about the day had more to do with my own baggage than that of the holiday itself. What I suppose I should mention here is that I take evil and the occult very seriously. A part of my history that I don’t like to dwell on is the fact that for many years I lived with a stepfather who was deeply involved in the occult. I could tell you stories, but I’ll spare us both. Suffice it to say that a lot of what gets passed off as “occultic” or satanic has very little to do with the real thing. Much is made of Halloween’s ties to the occult, though further research reveals that a lot of its association with the holiday might be more a matter of hype, opportunism, and aesthetic than anything else. Do distasteful and evil things take place on Halloween night? Regrettably, I’m sure of it. Is it really the devil’s holiday? I don’t think so. It could be, if that’s what you want to make of it, but to say October 31st is inherently evil is maybe to give more power to a day than is warranted. Some of Halloween’s roots come from the Celtic “Festival Of The Dead” – a day to mark the end of the harvest season as well as the months of extended light before heading into the darker months. It was also a time to remember and even honor the dead. It was believed by the superstitious to coincide with a time when the barrier between the physical and the spirit world was thinner, leading to all kinds of bizarre notions of dressing up in fearsome masks in order to scare away any evil spirits that might have broken through. So it’s not my intent to diminish the reality of Satan and his work – I’m sure the devil is pleased when we don’t believe he exists. But I imagine he is equally pleased when we are distracted by distorted and misguided notions of who he is and what he’s doing. I’m not convinced that Satan is as determined to recruit worshippers as much as he’s content to influence us to worship ourselves – the very thing we are the most eager to do. The temptation in the Garden, if we remember, was that we would “be as gods”, that we would be central and in the driver’s seat. Are there those who devote their lives to actual devil worship? Yes, I’m sure. But let me suggest that when we are persuaded to serve ourselves – when we are self-centered – we serve Satan’s agenda and participate, intentionally or not, in the work of the devil. All the hurt, war, poverty, dissension, and deceit that are born of our selfishness has brought more hell on earth than the relatively small number of sincere Satanists, whose religious identity seems more or less driven by a desire to be counter-culture and empowered, which in the end is more about self-service than genuine religious devotion anyway. Marilyn Manson is less a devilish threat than he is a pitiable attention seeker. In other words, it’s probable that my misguided attempts at taking a stand against Halloween, rooted in my own fear and self-righteousness, may have done more to distract myself and those around me from the more legitimate and potent works of the devil. One thing I do know for sure is that they didn’t do a thing to make the gospel look beautiful. They probably just made me and my faith look foolish. And this brings me back to the matter of carving jack-o-lanterns. When Taya and I were first married, I forbid such pagan practices in our home assuming there to be something inherently sinister about carving a face in the flesh of a pumpkin. When kids would come to our door, I’d awkwardly explain that we didn’t have candy because we didn’t participate in Halloween (until I couldn’t stomach it anymore and just stopped answering the door). And though it pains me greatly to admit this, I will confess in the interest of truth telling that one year I even handed out some gospel tracts to trick or treaters. I’m sure the kids really appreciated that! I’m sure they couldn’t wait to find out more about this stingy Jesus who doesn’t let his followers hand out candy to kids. Score one against Ol’ Scratch, right? A lot has changed since then, and these days my guiding conviction is that my job as a co-sanctifier with Christ is to take what is broken and do my part in reclaiming it, perhaps even making it beautiful, by God’s grace. My earlier attempts of disavowing Halloween were neither redemptive nor beautiful. At best they might have been neutral, but I suspect they did more damage than good. And all the while my poor Taya suffered from my misguided religious zeal! That is, until we had kids. And then she put her foot down. My resolve was beginning to crack by that time anyway, and my first venture back into the world of trick or treating was timid (though I had loved it as a kid). Our twins were two and we dressed them up as Charlie Brown and Linus (it was awesome!) and went to the Barnes & Noble Halloween party where they toddled around asking workers for candy. It was fun, and I even made it through the experience unscathed by guilt! Since then, Halloween has become one of our favorite holidays in the Gray household. We try to avoid “the appearance of evil” by eschewing costumes that strike us as “dark” or otherwise distasteful, choosing instead to hit the streets as a whoopee cushion, bottle of ketchup, or a ninja warrior, walking the two blocks of our street freezing in the late October chill. When the twins were little and their hands would get cold, they’d each slip them into my gloved hand to warm them up as we’d walk door to door. It’s one of my most cherished memories of all time. Then I’d stand back as they would timidly take the steps of a neighbor’s house, knock, and with little voices say “trick or treat” and then “thank you”. Taya would stay back at our house to greet trick or treaters, handing out copious amounts of candy (everyone knows us as the “gospel singing family” and she wants to build a reputation of generosity for us. Perhaps she’s also making up for the “lost years”…) Over time it has grown into a Halloween party where we invite friends over and Taya makes cookies in the shapes of fingers and eyeballs, and we laugh and enjoy each other immensely. You see, these days I’m more interested in reclaiming things and repurposing them than I am protesting. All this to say: I’m excited about our Halloween plans this year. I’m excited to have friends and family to our house to laugh with and enjoy. I’m excited to spend time in my community with my neighbors. I’m excited to hold my little boy’s hand in the warmth of my glove when his gets cold. I’ve even come to value the opportunity the spookier goings-on of Halloween affords us to face our deep rooted fears of mortality and to even poke a little fun at death. It could be that hidden beneath the ragged clothes and garish make-up of our zombie costumes is the universal hope that death doesn’t really have the last say over us… And I’d be lying if I didn’t also say that I’m excited about finger and eyeball cookies. Of course Paul reminds us that all things are permissible, though not everything is beneficial, and it’s true there is hardly a thing under the sun that we aren’t able to justify if we put our minds to it. Whether Halloween is permissible or even beneficial for you is ultimately a matter to be worked out in your own heart. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, with friends and family and costumes and candy this October 31st.

This is one of those scribbles that starts off in the toilet then proceeds into heaven. “I hope,” he says, scratching his beard. There is a bathroom a certain man frequents. When this man first enters the dark and private chamber the lights do hesitate, and then do come on–even while the baffled first-timer gropes along the wall for the usual trigger. Having found none, he thinks to himself, “Ah, automatic lights. What would Jules Verne think?” And he proceeds to enjoy the meaning of lighted, lavatorial convenience. Later this same man is fooled only a few more times in the ritual, and he no longer gropes along the wall for the on-switch–-there is no such switch, only a sensor–and he relieves his mind of that duty and skips this formerly ingrained step. Later still he anticipates with confidence what will occur moments after he enters the darkness and, in jubilation, he snaps his fingers in concert with the burst of light. He feels a little bit like God. That man is me. I remembered, of course, that I wasn’t God. It actually served as a little goad to good-thinking. God, like the tale spinner he is, speaks and the world he imagines breathes, blinks, and gets flat tires. He is all-powerful and his words are alive. “Light,” he says and there it is. My pretended pretense does, however, make me think of all the genuine pretense I engage in. How I pretend sovereignty in many rather insane ways. For instance, I grumble about my health. I react with disgust when my selfishness is rebuffed. I complain when modern conveniences are a little bit slower than they should have been. I believe insane political ramblings about what I’m entitled to. I sit in a culture rich beyond the imagination of almost every person who has ever lived (and is living) and I complain about circumstances, the “economy,” and my rights. When I am like this I am a humanist. That is, I see man as the center of the universe and, if he is included, God is included in the same way he is a popular name to drop at the end of the imbecilic, political speech. Here is a familiar, non-threatening, accommodating grandpa whom no one takes seriously anymore. But I don’t think that’s true, so why do I act like it’s true? We can wrap up a product of the restroom in a gold-plated treasure-chest but it doesn’t do much to change the product in question. It is what it is. Belief is more than intellectual consent. If I believe the Gospel (which is a particular batch of good news), I do not just affirm it in my mind. Enemies can do that. Believers believe with more. We live by faith. Abraham took Hagar. We all stumble in many ways. I am thankful that God lovingly reveals the idols we often unwittingly allow to dominate our hearts while he is wrecking everything to love us. So die, damned humanism of my heart. What does faith in Yahweh look like? I believe that faith in Yahweh is full of thankfulness, and not jealous of claimed “rights.” I believe that faith in Yahweh is astonished at mercy, not eager for personal justice. I believe that faith in Yahweh is abounding in grace, not miserly and hoarding. I believe that faith in Yahweh is patient in affliction, not outraged at the loss of what was a gift to begin with (like health, wealth, position). I believe that faith in Yahweh is humble, not preoccupied with status. I believe that faith in Yahweh sees suffering and does not cry out to God “This is unfair,” but instead cries out, “Oh God, you have been merciful to me, can I be merciful here?” I believe that faith in Yahweh is astonished that anyone receives mercy, increasingly so as the reality of our offense becomes clearer as we grow closer to Jesus. I believe faith in Yahweh issues in love (in that order), not that somehow “loving everybody” gets you standing with Yahweh. This is something very simple we pray in our home because we need a lot of mercy, want to be thankful people, and we want grace real bad. And we want to look to Christ, and have life. “Oh God of Abraham, please give us humble hearts. Oh God of Isaac, please give us thankful hearts. Oh God of Jacob, please give us faith. Let us see Jesus.” Understanding that these are gifts, and not entitlements, ought to go a long way in answering the prayer for humility.

The Last of a Generation, Part 1: Landing The Last of a Generation, Part 2: Ground Transportation The cornerstone by the entrance to the church in Metuchen, New Jersey, where we’re holding Nana’s memorial service reads, “1717.” Think about that. “What am I,” I wonder as I cross the threshold, “the millionth person to enter this building?” I think about those who had come before me. I imagine the stoic, patronizing, agnostic husband coming to church because his wife got religion. He hopes this too shall pass. And there’s the 22 year old young man who is only there because the last time he visited this church he saw her, the girl of his dreams, but just like that, after the service she slipped away. So he returns Sunday after Sunday hoping to see her again. Then there’s the young mother who just lost her husband in the Civil War, locking arms with her husband’s grieving, also-widowed mother. What will they do now? There’s the swaddled baby, the toddler missing her nap, the fresh-faced boy with two pockets filled with living bits of mischief he took from the earth when no one was watching. He’s got plans. There’s the grandmother who, to her recollection, hasn’t missed more than a few Sundays in five decades of worship there. She prays for every new face she sees—earnest prayers. There’s the nervous bride in the sitting room and her groom back in the vestry, on the verge of promising their lives to each other and making it all legal. There’s the potlucks in the yard, the voting booths lining the narthex, and the civic groups planning their holiday fund raisers in the Children’s Sunday School room, sitting in chairs a size too small for their bad backs and large butts. There’s the alcoholics taking their steps to recovery, praying for the ability to know the difference between what they can control and what they cannot. There’s the teenage girl wondering if she should keep the baby, and the boyfriend to her right without a clue, the father to her left about to find out and the mother next to him who already knows because, well, she just knows. She dabs her tears and no one notices. I imagine if this church was built nearly three hundred years ago, then it has seen most any situation that has ever led anyone anywhere to darken the door of a church. Me? Death brought me. Nana’s memorial service was familiar in its unfamiliarity—a collection of strangers bound to one another by blood but separated by time and space, mostly only seeing each other when someone marries or someone dies. Usually when someone dies. We reintroduce ourselves. We all look at bit older since the last time. We try to remember where we last left our conversations. Then we remember we left them at the last funeral. We say we really need to meet on happier occasions, but if we’re honest, we know we’ll probably never make those arrangements. I open the memorial service by inviting the dozen or so gathered to think about any remembrances they might wish to share about Nana. We sing. I deliver a short eulogy, and we open the floor for a few stories and poems. From there, we adjourn to the fellowship hall. As we walk, a distant cousin points out a headstone bearing my mother’s maiden name. Filling the yard to the east of the sanctuary lies a cemetery like every old church used to have. Ghost-white limestone markers dating back before the Civil War stand tall, thin and rounded. One I see actually bears the inscription “R.I.P.” Over the years, as this church’s property yielded to progress, the original sanctuary expanded to add a wing of class rooms, offices and the small chapel where we gathered to remember Nana. When it came time to build a fellowship hall, the land to the west was already developed to capacity. So they built a stand-alone structure in the small field on the east side of the cemetery. The strange effect is that for a person to go from fellowship to worship, they have to pass right through the center of this garden of graves, silent except for the inscriptions of names, dates and titles. No two stones are alike. Not one has a duplicate anywhere under the sun. Yet for every pilgrim moving from the fellowship of men to the worship of the Most High, those headstones, like a choir half buried and half rising up from their Metuchen soil, sing the same refrain: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2) The next day, mom, her sister’s family and I head off to Staten Island to see the house mom lived in as a baby—72 Fingerboard Road. It is the only time I can recall imagining my mother as a baby. From there we drive to the large brownstone building where Nana went to High School. This is the first time I’ve imagined Nana as a teenager. We see maybe five other sites like this and mom comments that we’re the only ones who would ever take this tour. Though rich in history, it is specific only to our family. It was glorious. Toward the end of our tooling around Staten Island, though, I develop a sense of urgency. I have a plane to catch, and I don’t want to miss my departure. Though the GPS tells us the Newark Airport is less than ten miles away, I have spent the past three days learning, if nothing else, that things take time. Also, as Annie Dillard said, eventually “enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.” Listen. I am a man moving through my little colony of fellowship to the Holy eternal presence of my God and King. On my way, I pass through the court of a great cloud of witnesses—some living, some dead. They speak into my life. I hear great wisdom I want to embrace. I see behaviors of deep regret I want to mortify. I see the consequences of lives squandered in fear and folly, warning me to steer clear. I try to listen, but I have enough folly of my own to complicate that sometimes. Even reflections like this can become an exercise in foolishness if I keep kicking away at the plain simple truth that everybody dies as though I am trying to craft a poem out of what we all know is really much more like prose. Sure, we all have extraordinary moments, but just as most of those who entered that church in Metuchen over the past three centuries did so for ordinary reasons, most of life we live in ordinary time. These past few months have taken me from Washington to Tennessee to Texas to Colorado to Minnesota to New York to South Carolina. At last, I am home. I have a three year old named Jane. She’s got her little hands on my cheeks, looking into my eyes. She wants my attention. It is time for her nap. And being Sunday, it is time for mine too. She tells me she is going to get her purple blanket and crawl into my bed to wait for me. She wants to snuggle. With that she departs. One day I will depart this fellowship of the saints I love so much to an eternity of exultant praise in the presence of the Maker and Lover of my soul. My headstone will join the chorus in the land of the living: “A time to be born and a time to die.” And if my little Jane lives long enough, she too may become the last of her generation, outliving her old brother and two older sisters. She might prompt some young father I’ll never meet to reflect on his grandmother’s passing. And like me, he may use far more words than he really needs. Since there is a time for every matter under heaven, that time may come. But the matter under heaven before me now is this: a little girl with a purple blanket is waiting. And she is waiting for me. So if you’ll excuse me.

Out, into the limpid gold of autumn I walked. It was my first walk in several weeks. I looked across at the Colorado foothills and saw the first turning of the leaves flickering across their faces like laughter. There won’t be many days with this kind of joy. We had snow this week; three days of fat, complacent white flakes that seemed to have moved in to stay. But then this day came along, chill, but bright, and chased them away for a while. I had to wander—deep into the mountains. Lately, I’ve been in the haze of a rushed existence that leaves my eyes feeling they can’t focus on a thing. Too much technology, too many careening forays down the freeway. Too little sleep. I hate it when life becomes this jolting chase after something I can never catch. And then I marvel at the sense of kindling that comes over me when I walk out into the woods after deserting them for a while. An irrepressible freshness tingles in my veins, cools my face. The words of the Irish poet John O’Donohue came to me with his insistence that we humans need nature to keep the core of our souls alive. “How good,” he said in the interview The Inner Landscape of Beauty, “to wake up day after day to a world that is as much alive, if not more, than you.” And all about me during my ramble, the earth glimmered, sang, ached with a liveness that struck life back into me. Maybe that’s what I feel so keenly is wrong with modernity, that so many of the substances that surround us are dead. Electronics, manufactured goods, house walls, carpet. We are so insulated from even the slightest touch of the breathing world. But that world is the place where our souls come alive, where we are thrust back into the rhythm of ever-advancing life, even amidst death. Of beauty in the face of decay. Death is coming to the high fields now, cold is settling into the bones of the trees, but their spirits rise up, blazing into their leaves, unvanquished. We are a land of sun and moon in the autumn; the jeweled colors of fall are rare here, our landscape is one of serest gold, and polished silver. The aspens and cottonwoods sing out gold while the wind runs through them like water, turning over their leaves to where a silvered starlight has gathered. The trees ripple like a sunlit river, like rills in a mountain stream. The grass is plaited in wheaten loveliness, the last flowers grow pale in the chill, and I am rich with their beauty. That verse spoken by Peter came to my mind as I walked, though for me, in a slightly different version. Silver and gold, such as the world count them, have I none. But such as I have, sere fields, light like fresh butter, leaves in silver sheen, give I thee. In the name of the Maker of it all, may your soul rise up. May your spirit walk abroad and be strengthened, and may you bear such treasures of light within yourselves.

NORTH AMERICAN UPDATE: At close to 250 responses already, I’m wondering where the good people of Alaska, Connecticut, Deleware, Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, Neveda, both Dakotas Rhode Island, Utah and Wyoming are. And Canada, I know where you are, but… where are you? Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario have thrown out a wave, but what about the other 9 Provinces? So I’m curious. Where do all you regular Rabbit Room readers live? If you read this blog on what you would deem at least a semi- regular basis, would you be so kind as to post a reply with just your loaction– city, state/province, country? I know many of you don’t usually post comments, but maybe just this once? Creating a login is easy, and you don’t have to give us any personal info. I’ll start. Olathe, Kansas, USA

At the Eric Peters Laboratory of Well-Timed Featurettes, I am constantly striving to bring you all manner of entertainment from near and afar. After reading and writing solely about such overblown mundaneities as faith, art, cinema, rechromed bicycles, rabbit coffee mugs, and picking apart such literati as East! Or Be Jostled, let us now turn our attention to a subject more dear to my fleshy heart than the ongoing health-care debate, or even whether Derek Webb is or is not a modern day prophet. I hereby predict three comments without having mentioned him. Now that I’ve gone and casually dropped a minor celebrity’s name in a public arena, that number surely rises to at least four. Today’s topic — or at least until a more reputable post hastily bumps this one down the rungs — is sports, golf to be exact, a bandwagon I gladly hop aboard. Even if you know absolutely nothing about the game, or the age-old argument of whether or not golf can be considered an actual sport, even if you wouldn’t know the difference between a mashie niblick and a putter if they slipped out of someone’s grip and cracked you on the forehead, even if you could care less about stimpmeters, then you will no doubt recognize the name Tiger Woods. He has ruled the golfing world, not to mention the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) money list, for the better part of the last decade or more. Oh man, now that I’ve mentioned his name, my post-post commentary surely spirals to six. Choo choo. I’m one of about fifty-odd weirdos who can and will sit in front of a television for hours on any Sunday just to watch grown men hit little white multi-dimpled spheres around lush, manicured layouts of Poa, Kentucky blue, and bent grasses. If Tiger is anywhere near the leaderboard, I will do anything I can to get out of just about anything else I’m supposed to do in order to watch him perhaps make a late-round charge. This summer Tiger did something he never managed to do either as a touring professional or as a young, svelte amateur prodigy: he lost a tournament after leading 3/4 of the way through it. Oddly, the reason he failed to clinch the deal is due in large part to the failure of his usual strong-suit: putting. If you’ve ever played competitive golf (Imagine the level of my popularity in high school as I was twice selected to captain our woeful Bulldog golf team) then you no doubt realize, and can empathize with, the challenge of calming the equivalent of a legion of swallow-tail butterflies in your stomach as you stand with a mere flat blade in hand and nothing but five eternal feet of Poa annua between you and a 4.25-inch hole in the earth. It is never as easy as it looks. But Tiger has been the master of this domain, reeling in untold numbers of ungodly long and short putts over the years eliciting responses of systemic euphoria from normally stoic, polite crowds, or “Yerg! Why did I have to become a pro now?” thoughts from fellow touring comrades who suddenly found themselves on the losing end of Tiger’s antics. Normally, with Mr. Tiger standing on the 72nd green, either tied for the lead or with a chance to tie or win, with nothing but a yawnful seven-foot putt standing between him and even more legendary status, the odds of that putt falling were nothing shy of a done deal. But in the last of this year’s four annual majors, the PGA Championship, Tiger missed when it counted; often enough to let his lead slip away for good. Sportswriters gave him Hades for it. Eureka! The man is human, after all. People who expect perfection from him have no business doing so, and if they expect it of him, they must surely expect it of themselves. And if they expect it of themselves, they probably expect it of their offspring. So goes the cycle. I have wracked my, by now, out-of-shape athletic mind for a squat-thrust of minutes trying to exhume some sort of spiritual parallel, or at least offer a simple moral to the story. I came up with nothing except this: no two putts and no two greens ever roll the same, most golfers have a favored putter which only occasionally does not feel like a viper in the hands, and if perfection were ever humanly possible, if everything were predetermined, if fate were so predictable, there would be no need for sport, for healthy competition, for gravity, for choice, for an ounce of God, or for one another.

My husband and I recently took a trip to my old hometown. (I went to my first high school reunion and yes I am insane. That’s a topic for another post). I see my mom often for living 12 hours away, but a lot of the time she’s traveling to see us. I hadn’t been to the house I grew up in for over a year and I felt the need to get back. My father passed away six years ago, and though I live with the repercussions of this I am sheltered from many of the tangible day-to-day reminders by living in Nashville. His life was not lived here and that provides some measure of escape. When I walk through my old house and see his picture, his chair, some of his belongings that are still hiding in the recesses of the closets I cannot avoid the truth. The memories of him are there, his things are there, but he is not. Through an odd turn of events my mom recently had the opportunity to go through the belongings of the house her mother grew up in. An uncle who had been living there had to be taken to a nursing home and she was now responsible for fixing it up, clearing things out, deciding what to keep and what to sell. My great-grandparents moved to that house in the early 1900s and various members of the family have been living there ever since. When my mom set foot in the house it was like stepping back in time. No one had changed a thing. The beautiful solid wood record player, the old phone where you dialed the operator, the civil war coat of my great-great grandfather hanging in the closet, the Tiffany lamp and the pottery from the 1800s were all there as if it was 1910 again. It was mind-blowing. My mother’s garage is now full of these things and we spent hours walking around in disbelief as she shared her memories and we tried to imagine what life was like when these things first came to the Willoughby house. All of the family’s belongings were there, preserved for generations to come though they were long gone. It’s a very strange experience and one that immediately brings to mind the old adage “You can’t take it with you when you go”. Things are a big part of my day-to-day life and I would venture everyone’s lives. I often walk around the house feeling frustrated at my inability to keep my house perfect. The playroom was just picked up and organized and is a junk heap today. The old clothes from our closets need to be sorted and given away, and the basement renovation we began is not going to be finished anytime in the next millennium. All of this stuff can occupy my time and my energy, even to the place where it stresses me out. I have made the mistake of occupying myself with my children’s belongings while ignoring their miraculous presence right next to me. This resonated with me deeply looking at the belongings left behind by my father and my other family members. These things are not sentimental in and of themselves–they only carry meaning for me because they remind me of the people who used them. In the end we all know our relationships are our great treasures, not what we’ve accumulated. When my grandfather was on his deathbed last year after living a wonderful full life into his eighties I was haunted by some of his last words: “Daddy was so terrible to me.” An eighty-year-old man reflecting on his life in his most honest and vulnerable state was still mourning his broken relationship with his father. I am emboldened to continue ignoring the pile of unorganized pictures of my son on his dresser when I am spending time with the actual child in the picture. One day they will be neatly sorted and I will look at them and remember when he was two, not just from pictures but from the memories we made together. I will put aside my work when a friend unexpectedly stops by. I will finish my song later when my daughter wants to color. Life is so short. With every day I realize it more and more. I want to learn from Mary who sat at the feet of Jesus while she had the chance instead of being distracted by the preparations in the kitchen. I cannot do a bit of this on my own, so Lord give me and give us all the grace to put importance on the things You find important and to love the things You love. The rest will be left behind, maybe even pored over by some future great-grandchild.

I remember writing a letter several years ago, right after I’d finished reading a novel called Speak. The book tells the story of a young teenage girl wrestling with a very specific trauma, and her reluctant journey toward closure and healing. I don’t want to give too much away, but near the end lives a very literal example of drawing beauty from the ashes of tragedy. Either it was a brand new idea for me, or it was simply the first time I‘d seen it illustrated so clearly, but I thought to myself: that’s what I want to learn to do. So I picked up my pen and tried to explain, as only a big sister would, what I had learned to my younger brother. “What if we could do something with our pain?” I suggested. “Use it to write songs and tell stories that would bless other people.” Even as I wrote the letter, I had visions of friends and loved ones some day reading my stories, turning pages and heaving collective sighs as the weariness of past hurts rolled off their shoulders like water off a duck’s back. Could I have been any more young and idealistic? I’m not sure, but I’ll go ahead and confess: though my youth may be sneaking out the back door, those optimistic notions still pop their heads up every now and then. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing, right? I mean, it’s one thing to say “God is listening to me when I pray,” and quite another to reach a hand toward Him as I speak.) And the rubber ducky of healing beauty never stays under too long. In fact, the more life I live, the more sadness I experience, that little yellow gal is steadily becoming a fantastic swimmer, proving to me that the idea, blithe as it may sound, is absolutely true. Beauty can heal you, if you let it. When you allow yourself to enter in to the comfort of a well crafted scene, or believe the whispers of truth in a well told story, beauty seeps into those old wounds. If you can feel the hope in a song, or imagine the reality of the skies in that painting, if you open yourself up to it, art can take up where medication and talk therapy leave off. It’s a little mysterious how it all works, but I could list books upon books and songs upon songs, which have come into my heart and not only taken up residence, but managed to enliven the surroundings. I’m sure most of you here in the Rabbit Room have your own lists of books, songs and movies. Your story may not include therapy and medication, but perhaps many of you already know something I am just beginning to grasp: How art and beauty are a unique two way street where healing may be felt not only by its audience but its performer as well. This idea was crystallized for me a few weeks ago as I sat down to dinner with my daughter, one of my best friends, and Mr. Andrew Peterson just before a solo show he played here in Knoxville. There were two other little girl fans of AP who, along with my daughter, Laney, gave up on waiting for sound check to be over and started eating. Susan and I decided to wait a few more minutes until Andrew could join us. We filled our plates with home cooked fare and sat down with the girls. Susan and I, being Baptist girls raised right, kept our hands in our laps and our forks on the table until Andrew, being a southern gentleman, noticed our hesitation and removed his hat to pray. It was a simple prayer, thanks for the food and the hands that prepared it, followed by grace and goodness, and lastly a request for the concert to be a blessing to all who came to see it. But what Andrew said next caused a half-gasp in my throat as well as a full smile on my lips. Three little words, “and to me.” Later on, Andrew told how he came to write one of his new songs. It was a story fraught with self-deprecation and just before he began singing he said he’d asked God to give him a song from that experience, which was of course the song he sang next. And I can’t help thinking this is how God meant the gift of creation to work. A full circle where art interprets life as life is reinterpreted by art.

“The Last of a Generation- Part 1, Landing” “The Last of a Generation- Part 3, Departure” “You’re the boss, Boss,” Desmond the Concierge said when I asked if I could leave my bags with him at the hotel and pick them up later. Mom and I were headed into the city for the day and wouldn’t be back before check-out. When he handed me my claim ticket, he also gave me a map of New York City’s ground transportation. For that I gave him two dollars. Coming up from the underground of Penn Station, the city opened into a labyrinth of towering stone, glass and steel walls, offering corridors of vision only down the avenues and cross streets where I stood. Before me lay this terrain—at the same time abundant and deficient, absurd and elegant—teeming with its history of bondage and liberty, tragedy and triumph. No one with a simple story has ever walked these streets.  But then no one has a simple story, do they? The paranoid, the newlyweds, the cashiers at Macy’s and the tourists are all pressed in, shoulder to shoulder, beholding the same metropolitan maze, though their interpretations are worlds apart. There’s the poor with their sad tales of the path to poverty, and there’s the rich with their even sadder stories of ascent to wealth. The prodigals of the Midwest are there, living it up in the distant country—some dining at Central Park’s Tavern on the Green, flush with cash, tipping the cabbies and waiters without a thought, others scrounging the dumpsters out back, scheming and begging for enough cash just to get back home. And there’s me. And I’m the boss, Boss. Mom has a plan. We need perspective. So off we go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, 86 stories up. The crowds are negligible so we survey the north, south, east and west at will. She shows me where we’re headed—first north, up Broadway to Central Park, then south by way of 5th Avenue. From Rockefeller Plaza, we’ll catch the subway to Ground Zero and the Staten Island Ferry for a quick there-and-back. The Subway takes us to Battery Park. We join the throngs waiting to board the ferry for Staten Island. To the west, we pass Ellis Island—that in-between port of inspection and admittance into the New World. Marc Cohn sang of the place: As my feet touched solid ground I felt a chill run down my spine I could almost hear the sound of thousands pushing through the lines Mothers and bewildered wives that sailed across the raging sea Others running for their lives to the land of opportunity Down on Ellis Island Appearing as equal parts sanctuary, cemetery, prison, hospital and monastery, devoid of any hint of whimsy, an aura of seriousness hangs over that island. And that’s right. From 1892 to 1954, every soul who set From London to Kalmar, from Wittenberg to Geneva, from Paris to Cologne, for reasons all their own, men and women, young and old, bet it all on a perilous passage across the open sea to this little island of assessment. Clammy skin, runny noses, or bloodshot eyes might be enough to shut you down as you go up the Stairs of Separation under the scrutiny of men with the power to send you back to where you came from. Serious business, indeed. Me, I peel off the tiny bandage the nurse put on my sore left shoulder after my flu shot and I throw it in the trash. I’m fine. And if the labs got the right strains, I should be fine all year. But one day I will take the boat to Ellis Island. I walk the pier and I’ll climb those Stairs of Separation. I’ll see the stacks of abandoned steamer trunks, the rejection papers under glass, the black and white photos of the mustached men in their bowler hats and the women with their parasols. And by the grace of God, I’ll be humbled. I’ll repent of sins I hadn’t known I was committing, forsake idols I didn’t know I was worshiping and thank my Maker for blessings I didn’t know I had. I’ll see the Separation Stairs and I’ll think of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. I’ll think about what it means to be a citizen of a Kingdom I must leave everything to enter. I’ll understand I’m also an immigrant. Over the course of the day I struggle to articulate my impressions of the city. From the Ferry, I see Manhattan all stacked and compressed, like the shoreline is being held in place by an elastic strap cinched tight. When it finally breaks, look out! We all know New York City is big. And historic. And expensive. But that we can get from a fly-over, or the web, or the travel channel. As for me, I’m on the ground. I’m in the thick of it. My senses are popping with the sights and smells and sounds and textures coming at me all at once. What do I see, Boss? This city is a parable—a paradox of stain and polish. Every surface is at the same time worn smooth and covered in grime, both, I presume, from the same thing—us. I walk a sidewalk where the feet of a billion pilgrims have gone before me. I hold a railing smudged by ten billion utterly distinct fingerprints. At the bow of the Ferry, I sit on a bench that has taken the weight of countless others just like me and as different from me as you can imagine. And together we have worn away every surface while polishing it smooth. We’ve picked up the messiness of one another where ever we’ve gone from whatever we’ve touched. And we have also left behind bits of the crud we brought in with us—from the lifeless dust off our feet to the living oils from the pores of our fingers and foreheads. The Steel Worker’s Union may have constructed the city’s frame, but the huddled masses painted it. With every footfall, every scuff of every steamer trunk pulled across every granite floor, every try of a door handle, every tire, horseshoe, subway wheel, rickshaw and hot dog cart has left its mark. You’ll never see it, but I’m certain I left mine. We can’t go anywhere with our leaving either a mark or a mess. And yet, neither can we single-handedly ruin this place. We step out onto the ledge, only to find it worn smooth by a million other fools who have also cantilevered themselves out there only to find that it somehow holds. Tomorrow we’ll head over to Metuchen, New jersey to pay our respects to Nana—a woman of both stain and polish. You don’t make it to 89 without making your share of messes. But she certainly polished away some of my rough edges, too. Tomorrow my parents will officially graduate to the generational position Nana was the last of hers to hold, and I to the one my mom and dad have held since the day I was born. We’re not beginning again. We’re just shuffling up a step in line, treading sacred ground, regardless of whether or not we know it. But that’s tomorrow. First things first. The PATH Train will take us from Ground Zero to the Airport, and the hotel shuttle will take me back to Desmond, who will give me back my luggage. And I will give him another two dollars.

“The Last of a Generation-Part 2: Ground Transportation” “The Last of a Generation-Part 3: Departure” The tires under the right wing touched the ground for a split second before a gust of wind thrust us back up into the turbulence. Manhattan lay to my left, Newark to my right. Prior to landing, the captain informed us that Newark had put us in a holding pattern over the city. The wind had restricted the air traffic to one secondary north-to-south runway. Conditions for all the other airstrips were too dicey for safe landings. So we circled high above in our holding pattern as I peered out my window to the cramped streets and high-rises of the Five Boroughs below. So this is New York? This is where I come from on my mother’s side? Am I really, in a not too distant story, a New Yorker? If you asked me, I would tell you I’m from rural Indiana. That is where I grew up, and my father, and his father before him. Most all my memories are there: my first love and subsequent first broken heart; the first time I saw The Karate Kid, Rocky III and Back to the Future; the first and only time I punched another kid in the head, and the first and only time another kid punched me. Included among my memories there are those of a Subaru Station Wagon covered in the scuffs of New England turning up our gravel road carrying my Nana and PopPop. I remember my nose pressed against our living room window, watching and waiting for that car to come into view so my brother and I could race outside to meet them in the driveway. I must confess the reason we did this was because they always brought us presents, and we figured if we could carry their bags, one of us might spot them. And as any kid can tell you, locating a gift is half the battle to possessing it. Well, last month Nana died. She lived to be 89. In her waning months she went from a strong, proper, educated, former French teacher to a dignified yet frail woman with a childlike manner and appreciation for simple things, like rides in the car and the card game War. Nana was born 4 generations ago at the beginning of the roaring 20’s—a decade punctuated by the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Nana was 9 years old when that happened. She was born before the advent of the telephone, refrigerator and traffic light. Before the band aid, FM radio, and the Model T Ford. Before penicillin, nylon, television and the zipper. She was 11 when the Empire State building was completed and the Star Spangled Banner was named our national anthem. She was 21 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She lived through World War II, saw the civil rights movement, the Korean War and Vietnam. Her life spanned 19 different presidential administrations. But that’s not all. She was also the last of a generation. PopPop died several years earlier. Uncle Gordon before that.  Great Grandma Brown before that. Like a line formed this side of eternity’s gate, when she stepped through, we all took another step forward. Now my kids are the ones with their noses pressed against the window, watching for my parents to arrive, so they can meet them in the driveway to snoop for presents. And I feel for the first time that I can reach out and touch eternity’s door. Cutting through the shifting winds of change, I was inbound to officiate her memorial service—a few relatives and friends gathering at a New Jersey church built in 1717. But I wasn’t there just to oversee the passing of a generation. I was there to explore their city—the Staten Island Ferry where PopPop courted Nana every day on their ride into work in Manhattan, the house on Fingerboard Road where they lived when my mom was born, the Hippodrome Building where my mom and dad met working for Eastern Airlines. My mom had it all planned out. She meant for us to set out on foot to walk the streets of New York. And she meant to give me a gift—details of a chapter in my existence I knew little of. The Holy King of Israel who loves me here in America also had a gift for me—the gracious admonition that while this is my story, it is not primarily a story about me. The story is really about Him, and He is the One telling it. And He is so faithful. This has been a hard stretch. Removing my shoes to walk upon the holy ground of security, I’ve felt suspect and in disarray. I’ve struggled to make my connections. There has been a lot of turbulence. So I’ve been in a holding pattern, circling. Sure, the holding pattern suspends me high above the crosswinds, but for what? I know I can’t stay there. Either the winds will calm or we’ll have to go through them, but one way or another we all know we must land. On the ground, the stewardess suggests we might want to thank the pilot for his skillful landing. We all clap. We all mean it, too. The bell sounds and the cabin lights come on. I sling my backpack over my shoulder, clear the jet way and step out into the city that never sleeps. For this night, she will remain a mystery on the other side of the Hudson. But only for this night.

Not that I’m keeping count, but I believe I’m nearing 1,000 interviews total in my writing career thus far. It’s an interesting affair – to say the least – speaking to so many musicians, filmmakers, authors and the like, digging for the stories inside their stories. Most of the time, I thoroughly enjoy my job. Then again, when your assignment is the 18-year-old emo kid who just released his first CD, lines like “Uh… I don’t know man, I just play music” fail to contribute to any job satisfaction. But an interesting thread has woven itself throughout most of my interviews with thoughtful musicians over the years – the idea of “serving the song.” I’ve heard that particular phrase several times, although it comes in many flavors and descriptors. But the primary idea is this: many artists believe the key to creating meaningful art is to serve the song and not the other way around. Serving the song has no formula. There’s no Serving The Song For Dummies handbook available, nor are there QVC Esteban guitar-like DVDs you can watch to learn. But there is an art to it. Usually it involves some idea of stillness or Sabbath – the creation of space to simply listen and be still enough to allow the art to come or develop. There’s a lack of distractions in this process, a turning off of the cell phones, laptops and Twitter long enough to truly hear what’s out there. The belief that accompanies this, of course, is that great art is “out there” somewhere, waiting to be grabbed. And only those who are clued in to truly seeking after it can find it. After all, every single writer starts with the exact same blank page and each stands equally able to construct the next great work of art in that moment. Of course, it’s what you do after that which separates the meaningful from the shallow or meaningless. Editing is another topic that comes up quite often in these conversations. And usually the words “I don’t” or “I can’t” are also involved. Serving the song involves trusting that first instinct, writing down any and all inclinations from the outset and worrying about whittling down the raw materials later. It’s the willingness to follow the random bird that beckons you toward the window and then asks you to fly alongside it to some unknown destination without worry of packing the right items for the journey. Many, many artists detail truly surprising moments in the open space they create – unable to imagine themselves actually constructing the songs/books/art that they end up with. What makes this even more compelling of an idea is the cross-section of artists that talk this way. Solo artists like singer/songwriter Josh Radin or Sunny Day Real Estate’s Jeremy Enigk both have mentioned this very thing. So have eclectic indie rock artists like Broken Social Scene, Akron/Family and Heartless Bastards. All of those might be foreign names to many, but they’re all buzz bands to some degree in varied “scenes” and they all care deeply about the art they create – even if the audience is much different than an Andrew Peterson crowd. Of course, Over the Rhine mentions this almost every time I speak with either one of them. But who’d have thought that The Verve, Counting Crows, The Cure, The Hold Steady, Old ’97s and Kings of Leon would also say these same ideas? I wish more artists would tap into this idea and give the songs room to truly grow. I wish more artists would trust their initial instincts and leave any notions of agenda at the door. Above all, I wish Christians who were engaged in the arts would stop trying to force certain ideals, morals, constructs or moods from the outset and allow the truly meaningful art to emerge unexpectedly in ways that only the Spirit can illuminate.

That night, I played a concert in a little church in Kalmar, and, try as I might, I didn’t see anyone that looked any more like me than than they do anywhere else (though their fingers might have been of the slightly floppy sort). Still, with a week or so of research I would almost certainly be able to find some distant cousins, mutual descendants of Nils Petersson. The people were warm and kind, and there was an audible response when I told them about my connection to Kalmar. I sang “Lay Me Down”, a song about my geographical roots in America (Illinois? Florida? Tennessee?), and realized, as silly as it sounds, that I need to add this little coastal Swedish town to that list. Then board the plane for home, see yourself in the story your descendants will tell, and kiss the ground where your children play. You are living a life that is not just your own. Your story will be told, by someone, somewhere, in some age. Behind you trails a shimmering strand that weaves among the people in your life, and binds your story to theirs. Before you is the story of your fathers and mothers, and part of your toil is to cling to its light as it leads you down those old roads. But some of us may look into the past and see darkness, or nothing at all. There may be little that is laudable about the choices of our ancestors; they may be dead branches on the family tree. We may be struck with fear that our choices will inexorably be theirs. That is a lie. Evil’s power is destruction, a weak and sloppy thing compared to the music of light and beauty. If you look into the past and see desolation, it falls to you to hover over those waters and sing a new song. The canvas is yours to fashion as you will. Step into the love of Christ, let him clothe you with mercy and equip you with his power. Then in strokes broad and bright, fill your canvas with love and truth–then even your worst choices will only brighten the picture. And that is a great mystery. Look back. Look forward. Then walk with a sense of your place in time and space. Listen by faith for the great cloud of witnesses to cheer you on in the long defeat. In a hundred years, when your grandchildren’s children ask about you, the answer will drip with honey. May they taste and see that the Lord is good.

The ladies from the church dropped me off at my hotel around 4:00 that afternoon, and I had the night to myself. I checked in to my room, put on some warm clothes, and grabbed my pipe. I only knew vaguely where the castle was in relation to my hotel, but I didn’t ask directions. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took to the streets of Kalmar with nowhere to be but the library the next morning. The roads were, again, cobblestone. I sat for a while in the courtyard where the state church stands, then I meandered through the streets past cafés, clothing stores, and residences. I crossed a walking bridge over what must have once been a moat and now was a gathering place for lily pads and swans. I crossed a busy street that seemed to divide the old city from the very old city, and found myself in a lush park. The trail led me through trees exotic and enormous, past garden benches and bronze statues; one was of an old king and another was of two young lovers holding hands, the young lady looking away bashfully with her chin on her shoulder. Then I reached the gate to the castle. It was another tunnel, also lit weakly by sconces on the walls. Beside the gate sat a cozy gate house, and I marveled for a moment at the way the tree roots had overgrown and shifted the stone wall–the same stone wall where the man and woman in my old picture stood, I realized with a thrill. The castle was different from my pictures only in that it had been partially restored. The roof of the central turret was more ornate, and the four corner towers were repaired. But other than that, this castle which was begun 800 years ago looks more or less like it did in its glory. I could hardly believe it, but there was no entrance fee. No guards. No crowds. No vandals. Just an old fortress whose time has come and gone, lovingly protected by the quiet regard of the town’s citizens. It was as timeless a place as I hoped it would be. I stood on the eastern rampart and watched the sun sink into the Baltic Sea, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that I had slipped backwards in time. The next morning I spent three hours in the library archives with Evelina, the youth pastor from the church where I would play that night. She translated old documents on microfilm and scoured computer records for the names Ernst and Karl and Nils Petersson (the American spelling drops an s), names of my grandfathers told to me before the trip by the grandfather of my own children. We narrowed their roots down to a little village called Kindbacksmala, a word which I cannot say three times fast. I rented a car and drove about thirty minutes into the countryside to the village, which wasn’t really a village but a cluster of houses down a gravel road. We rang a few doorbells and were greeted warmly by the locals. They informed us that a certain farmhouse just down the road belonged to some Peterssons for a few generations, but the current residents were out of town. The kind neighbor hopped on her bike and led us down the road, through a cattle gate, and to a humble, beautiful little farmhouse painted the traditional Swedish rusty red with white frames around the windows and doors.

My great-grandfather Ernest emigrated to Boston from Sweden, but I never knew him. I hardly knew he existed. My grandfather was a quiet man and never told me a single thing about his parents. Sometime in high school was the first time I considered how much I liked the idea that I could trace my last name (and a slice of my genetic makeup) to one particular country. And not just any country, but a country with a claim to two things that delight me: meatballs and vikings. Several years ago I was blessed to meet a few guys from Sweden who ended up working really hard to make a way for me to play a few shows there. I called my dad, who was happy to hear I would be singing my songs in the Fatherland. (My grandfather, had he been alive, might have smiled and grunted.) I discovered that my great-grandfather was born in a town called Kalmar. The name was perfect. It sounded like a place in one of the fantasy novels I loved to read when I was a boy, and I promptly changed Tink Igiby’s name. Kalmar Wingfeather was born. That first visit to Sweden was a joy. I was surprised how much the Swedes were impressed by and interested in my small claim to Swedish blood. They often asked where my roots were, and when I told them “Kalmar” they smiled and nodded because they knew the place–a town on the southeastern coast of their country where stands one of Sweden’s old castles. Their next question was always, “Will you have time to go there?” and my answer was, sadly, no. Near the end of that first trip I walked through old town Stockholm, the oldest part of the city, where the narrow streets look and feel the way an old European city ought to look and feel: alleyways, cobblestones, arch-topped wooden doors, stone gates, shingles, foot traffic, merchants peddling ice cream and artwork and little collectible vikings. I stumbled on a store that sold old maps and prints. They hung from the walls and bore the names of Swedish provinces and villages: Warberg, Malmo, Gotland–all written in fine Olde Worlde scripts. It was in this little shop in Stockholm that I first saw Kalmar Castle. I bought two rare prints, one from 1840, the other 1870. Both were finely detailed, softly colored, and depicted a stout, bold castle with its back to the sea. The land around the castle was green and lined with trees and tumbledown stone walls. In one of the pictures a man and woman in 19th century attire stand near a rock wall and converse, probably about harvest time or the fitful weather or the birth of a neighbor’s foal. Those pictures are now in nice frames and hang in my house in Nashville, little shrines to an old way of life, reminders of the land where my forefathers fought and farmed (and, perhaps, set out to pillage lower Europe). Granted, I have just as much Irish, English, and German roots as Swedish, but not nearly as recent as the late 1800’s, and those other ancestors and I don’t share a surname. So if I had to pick one to get excited about, it would be the Swedish branch. Last week I finally set foot in Kalmar. It was my fourth tour of Sweden, and this time my friends managed to book me a show in this little town. I was greeted at the airport by two women from the church who drove me to my hotel–but not before pointing out first the library where I’d research town records the next morning, then just a few hundred yards from the street, the castle. For five years I’ve looked at those 150 year old prints of this place, wondering how much had changed, wishing I could run my hands over those ancient walls. I admit, it feels silly to be so drawn to a place to which I have so little claim. But when I saw it I couldn’t deny myself a grin. “Ah, there it is,” I whispered.

A while back a friend of mine bemoaned the sad fact that an otherwise good song had such a poorly written bridge that it soured the rest of the song for him. “I know I’m weird,” he told me. “But the bridge should be the best part.” I didn’t think he was weird at all. I agreed with him and the conversation got me thinking about the nature of the bridge and what it adds to a song. Because I’m a writer, a storyteller, I considered it in its narrative context and realized what I imagine every songwriter (especially those around here) has known for ages. It’s not necessarily the bridge itself that stands apart, it’s what it does to everything around it. It redefines what the song has already established. It transports the audience from what was, to what is. That’s why it’s called a bridge. The bridge isn’t unique to songwriting, though. It exists in any form of narrative storytelling. It’s the moment of transition, of transformation, the moment when everything changes. It’s Luke Skywalker throwing his lightsaber aside and telling the Emporer, “I’ll never join you. I am a Jedi, like my father.” Before that statement, he’s boy, after it, he’s a man. Anyone who tells a story, is in the business of taking their audience from one place to another and a good storyteller has to be an exceptional architect; we’ve got to lead our audience along on solid ground and ensure that when we ask them to cross our bridge that the bridge can bear the weight and we’ve got to deliver on the promise of a solid destination at the far side. The strength of our bridges will determine just how far the audience will go with us. And that’s what we want isn’t it? We want people to come with us, to trust us, to set aside their certainty that fiction isn’t factual and believe in the possibility that it may be truer than anything they’ll read in the newspaper this week. Bridges work because they transport our audience to a place where they can look back and see that things have changed, that the journey was not in vain. Sometimes the change is for the better and crossing the bridge has reaffirmed our hopes. It’s the dark hour before dawn when the gates are breached. The end seems sure and then: “Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing.” Rohan has come at last. Other times the journey is tragic but the change itself is evidence of the unquenchable possibility of hope. It’s Quasimodo holding Esmeralda high above Notre Dame, crying, “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” It’s Mundo Cani Dog leaping into a chasm to contend with the Wyrm, the horn of the Dun Cow clenched in his teeth, falling, stabbing, marooned in the earth. These are the moments that storytellers live for. They are the reasons that we sit long into the night wrestling our thoughts and pinning them to the page, and the extent to which we sell the transfigurative moment is often the true measure of our success. So yes, I agree, the bridge should be the best part.

Tolkien believed the fairy story provided the reader with the gift of recovery. Recovery is about renewed, transformed vision – “regaining a clear view,” in Tolkien’s words. How does this happen? By traveling to a new world, one which is different from our own, we are able to encounter many of the “permanent things” of our own world in a completely different context. Seemingly trapped in the daily, mundane existence of our own worlds, it’s often hard to see the magic of life. The fairy story allows the reader to travel in the land of Faerie, to go on adventures through the Perilous Realm, and to remember that our world is just as perilous and just as full of magic. It also allows us to see issues in our own world more clearly. When the Pevensies escape to Narnia, they do not escape war. They escape a war with guns and bombs to fight a war with swords and magic. But in the magical setting, they are able to deal with the terror they were sent away from in the first place back in the primary world. So, too, the reader faces, in the pages of fantasy, issues that are often too frightening to face head-on in our own worlds. Why do we need to regain a clear view? Because it’s all about vision. Randall’s recent post reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis about “the seeing eye.” “To some, God is discoverable everywhere; to others, nowhere. Those who do not find him on earth are unlikely to find him in space. (Hang it all, we’re in space already; every year we go a huge circular tour in space.) But send up a saint in a spaceship and he’ll find God in space as he found God on earth. Much depends on the seeing eye.” It’s easy to lose vision of God in our day to day experiences. The true fairy story will shake us back awake and remind us what we’re supposed to be looking for.