What are you looking for?

Do people everywhere say they covet prayers? I have heard a thousand people say that they coveted my prayers, or the prayers of everyone. I’m glad there’s nothing in the Bible against coveting your neighbor’s prayers, because man would we need a lot of repentance in the south. Do not be deceived, people of the listening audience; this post is all about the craft of writing (or singing, clogging, etc.) and not about prayer coveting. But is there a parallel in the world of writing? Let’s force one through, shall we? You shall not covet your neighbor’s writing? OK. Let’s go with that, I guess. I usually chafe a little beneath the bridle of our popular culture’s religion of selfish rebellion, with all its focus on originality and uniquity. Uniquity is defined (by me -because I think I just invented it –original!) as a sinful preoccupation with your own uniqueness. Witness the fad of denying the sufficiency and inerrancy of the Scriptures and the rush to express and encourage private, personal, non-binding, accommodating, and feckless meanings (which just happen to be fashionable). But it can also be a humble approach to aim to express your own gifts. If we see them as that –gifts- then we should not be tempted to take too much credit for them. Nor will we be too surprised when the way we express ourselves as writers (or painters, or banjo pickers) is different from others. Maybe we’ll also be better prepared for criticism. Bonus. Imitation, they say, is the highest form of flattery and I’m sure there are cases when it’s appropriate. But if you are a gifted writer, then be yourself. We do not need another C.S. Lewis. If we did, he would still be here. But we might need you. Clones are boring. In my youth (and adulthood as well) my wise father frequently quoted from that great fount of philosophical wonder –the Tooter the Turtle cartoon. In this show’s conclusion Mister Wizard would invariably remind young Tooter that his desire to be someone else (a knight, a baseball star, etc.) was misplaced.  He argued for contentment, and his exhortation to use your own gifts and be your own self is folk wisdom in a grand, glorious gulp. “Always, always I tell you, Tootor. Be just what you is, not what you is not. Folks what do this has the happiest lot.” Sounds good to me. Now, about actually doing it…

“I don’t want to analyze a story. I don’t want to find hidden meaning. I just want to escape from the real world for a bit.” I’m guessing you’ve either heard some variation of those words or said them yourself. Books are for “escaping.” Stories are for entertainment value. A page-turner is all we want – something that will help us to “veg out,” to leave the day behind. Authors: Mindless Entertainers, or Careful Artists? I can’t begrudge someone entertainment. I like entertainment. I watch a few TV shows just for the mindlessness, and I watch others because they make me think. But a line often gets crossed in this type of thinking, which goes something like this: “Authors don’t have imaginative keys to their works. They’re not keeping secrets. You’re just looking for a ‘Da Vinci Code’ or something. You’re looking for some secret gnostic meaning.” The reason I think this crosses a line is that the one who quickly dismisses, out-of-hand, that books have deeper levels of meaning, claiming that authors just writing exciting books for the profit and fun of it all, is insulting the craft of writing. Why is it the default assumption that authors don’t have imaginative keys to their work?  Why is the author, by default, put in the role of mindless entertainer, instead of careful artist? Escape to More Permanent Things The real “gnosticism” in this discussion is not the artist who builds a story on an imaginative key, but one who thinks that books provide some “escape” from the “real world,” and that this escape is a good thing. Tolkien wrote, Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in a prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? For Tolkien, the pejorative use of “escapism” was married to the false belief that current trends define Real Life – the electric street lamp, for example, is nowhere near as permanent as Lightning. But most of us know more about the lamp, because it’s more relevant to our daily existence. The fairy-tale takes us to the lightning, the “more permanent thing.” This also answers the person who thinks that escape is simply a mindless, page-turning getaway, a vacation in your own armchair. The Escape is most certainly a delight, a joy, and a “break” from the daily mundane activities of life, as well as the more prison-like aspects of our existence. But it is an Escape that puts us in contact with themes and symbols and a cohesive, magical world from which we should not return unchanged for the better. And if this is what Escape is, why would the careful artist not deliberately choose her imaginative key, what Michael Ward calls the kappa (or secret) element? Tolkien believed that the true escapist, or the “fugitive spirit,” will be drawn by the “oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death.” This “Escape from Death” is at the heart of the best books – the ones that stir our hearts, give us deeper understanding of our pain, and glimpses of joy to come. Adapted from the post “Escape Into the Perilous Realm,” which applies these thoughts to J.K. Rowling’s books.

I just finished Roald Dahl’s short autobiography Boy: Tales of Childhood, which was a fine gift from Russ Ramsey last time I saw him. I closed the book with a greater belief than ever in the work God has given me. In the last chapter, after Dahl tells the story of his funny, delightful, and often painful childhood, he says that he worked for a few years as a businessman. “I enjoyed it, I really did. I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours and a fixed salary and very little original thinking to do.  The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman.  The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer.” I wasn’t expecting to read a paragraph that encouraging when I started this book. I suspect a businessman would read that paragraph and wonder what all the fuss is about. It might sound awfully like complaining. But it isn’t. I sighed a weary, happy sigh because Dahl assured me I’m not as crazy or as wimpy as I’m afraid I am. The same can be said for songwriting too. God has arranged the process (for me, at least) in such a way that after every song is complete, I get amnesia. I think, in the fast-fading thrill of having written a song, that I’ve finally unlocked the secret formula, discovered the missing number, solved the timeless mystery of how to write a song. I have answered for myself the question of whether the music or the lyrics come first! And the answer is–er, wait, I had it a second ago. What was it again? And it’s gone. Even as the last note fades to silence, amnesia sets in. I can’t remember how it works. So the next time I pick up the guitar or open the notebook, I do so with fear and trembling, unsure how to proceed. It’s a wonder anything ever gets written. It made me wonder, why did he write at all? Dahl confesses a disbelief in God based mostly on his abuse at the hands of several wicked men of the Church–and it’s hard to blame him. It’s struggle enough to believe, even without a priest beating you with a cane. Then why did he suffer the long toil of the written word? Where did that urge come from? That he wrote books for children makes me think that the suffering of his own youth softened his heart toward the young. Perhaps he hoped to give them some light, some escape, some comfort in their own fear. He was beaten by wretched men at boarding schools, made to bleed, made to grab his ankles and weep while they hit him, sometimes while the Headmaster quoted Scripture. It’s fascinating that this poor boy grew into a tough man who would work to spin fantastical stories for children. I’ve never been a big fan of his stories, though I do appreciate his whimsy. But in this book especially his descriptions of people and of the beauties and horrors of his childhood were vivid. Dahl remembered what it was like to be a little boy. And he remembered that it is terrifying. It reminded me how vital it is that Christians bend low and speak tenderly to the children in our lives. These boys and girls at our churches, in our schools, down the street, are living a harrowing adventure. Every one of them falls into one of two categories: wounded, or soon-to-be-wounded. The depth and nature of those wounds will vary, but they’re all malleable souls in a world clanging with hammer blows. The bigger they get, the easier the target. I get a lump in my throat every night I sing “After the Last Tear Falls” (which I co-wrote with Andrew Osenga), when I get to his line, “After the last young girl’s innocence is stolen…there is love.” It’s because I’m certain there are people in the audience for whom that line must bring a terrible memory. I sing the final chorus with all the ache I can muster because I want them to believe that love outlives all the pain that ever was. Those of us who write, who sing, who paint, must remember that to a child a song may glow like a nightlight in a scary bedroom. It may be the only thing holding back the monsters. That story may be the only beautiful, true thing that makes it through all the ugliness of a little girl’s world to rest in her secret heart. May we take that seriously. It is our job, it is our ministry, it is the sword we swing in the Kingdom, to remind children that the good guys win, that the stories are true, and that a fool’s hope may be the best kind.

In the first part (which has Latin in the title, and which you can read here, even here, I say) of this random, semi-coherent series about why I write fiction I made an inexhaustive effort to answer a basic question of legitimacy in the minds of some folks I come across (usually with good intentions) who are afraid fiction is at best a waste of time, and at worst an evil distraction from truth. I think I also took a firm stance against run-on sentences. Having thus preached to the choir, I continue on with the following answer to the titular question. Why do I write fiction? Because I love and believe in the value of stories as powerful means of expressing the deeply human. Francis Schaeffer talked a lot about the importance of seeing “man as man,” and “the mannishness of man.” I think there is almost always a quality in the things we find in creation that can be explored and displayed as intended and that this will almost always be a good thing. We must remember, as Lewis has reminded us, that God invents and the Enemy perverts. Things were made right, but were subject to corruption because of our father Adam’s sin. So there is a proclivity toward sin in what we do. Things are messed up. When things become perverted, bent and twisted we are certainly in trouble. But the bentness of most art we are presented with does not argue convincingly against the joys of sub-creation. I feel a great passion to see the “thingness of things.” So I write partly in an effort to do a thing well. Whether I am successful in this pursuit might be irrelevant to the validity of the point. I think it’s a worthy goal. I believe in common grace. I can think of many experiences I have had in receiving art where I was able to look past the artists to the Creator who made and gifted them. Frequently these folks cannot seem to turn around themselves –for a million reasonless, suicidal reasons. But their art speaks to the beauty realizable in the world God made. Nothing makes sense without a world God created -not reason, or beauty, or love. Are these gifted and witless artist’s efforts often so bent that they are not worth seeing, and are actually harmful? Some will argue this, but I think that “Of course” is the obvious response. Without wandering into the murky grey of where to draw lines (which we all do, somewhere), I want to focus on the question. I write to express joy, to display beauty, to invoke laughter, to inspire truthful thoughts, and many other things. These can perhaps best be summarized this way. I want to tell stories that resonate with people on a level which invokes a proper sensibility toward God and the world God made. I write because people are hilarious, because pride is universal and destructive, because there is something around the corner to surprise. (It may be death, or light, love, or destruction.) I write because the Christian story is so comprehensive, coherent, and beyond belief. I write because God is sovereign and profoundly good; because I am grateful, because I am made in his image, because I am struggling with the bentness of things in myself and in my culture.  I write to relieve and direct pain, to be precise, to say enigmatically what is inscrutable. I write to say that there is that which is inscrutable and that which is so plain it takes years of deluding education to confuse us about it.  I write to belly laugh at that kind of folly. I write because this is my Father’s world. I write for the thingness of things. I write for the mannishness of man. I write for the glory of God and service of my fellow man. Frequently I think and write things that are very stupid. Maybe this is one of those times. I’d love to hear what you think. I think of this kind of post as more of a foray into unsettled territory and less of a definitive, final analysis. Be patient with me -I am learning here. So if you have suggestions for improvements, or contradictions, or a good recipe for chicken salad, please do us all the honor of speaking up. Wait, I need to add some Latin for effect. OK, here goes: barba tenus sapientes. Referring to mineself, of course.

A few years back, some friends–Boris and Martha–asked me to give the charge at their wedding. Here’s part of what I said… The old wedding ceremony from the Book of Common Prayer says that Christ “adorned and beautified” marriage “with his presence and first miracle that he wrought in Cana of Galilee.” You know that story. The wine had given out, so Jesus turned six big stone pots full of water into wine. A hundred gallons of wine. When they served it out, the guests were astonished—not because Christ had turned water into wine (they didn’t know that), but because it was better than the wine the host had served first. The steward marveled, “But thou hast kept the good wine until now.” Richard Wilbur wrote a poem about that miracle. It was a wedding toast for his son and daughter-in-law, and the two middle stanzas go like this: It made no earthly sense, except to show How whatsoever love elects to bless Brims with a sweet excess That can without depletion overflow. Which is to say that what love sees is true, That the world’s fullness is not made, but found. Life hungers to abound, And pour its plenty out for such as you. In one sense, the miracle at Cana isn’t as outlandish as it seems. God turns water into wine every day. I’m not speaking metaphorically here. I’m speaking as literally as I know how to speak. The rain falls to the earth by God’s grace, and it travels up the vine to plump the grape. And then, by some process that none of us understands, the drop of rain is translated into a drop of wine, that maketh the heart glad. The miracle at Cana is a picture of God doing what he does all the time. And yet, there’s no mistaking that on that wedding day, the grace of God was multiplied to an extravagant, an almost embarrassing degree. A hundred gallons of good wine! And the deliberate, sometimes slow process by which God blesses was foreshortened into a single, transformative moment. *** I heard about a man in Nashville who had the floor of his study covered in Moroccan leather. Can you even imagine that kind of extravagance, that kind of luxury? The very ground the man walks on is Moroccan leather! But it’s no more extravagant than what the two of you are doing. By taking the vows you’re about to take, you’re declaring that the very foundation of your life together is a promise more precious than any Moroccan leather. The ground that you walk on, the roof over your heads, the walls that surround you—the raw material for all of it is a love that is both rich and enriching. It’s an embarrassment of riches. If you don’t believe that—if that sounds like gross hyperbole—then what are you doing here? Why are you standing here in front of God and everybody, putting all your eggs in this one basket? “Forsaking all others.” Why would you do that, unless you really believed you were moving from glory unto glory—from good water to a hundred gallons of good wine. No, you must believe it. Martha, Boris, I don’t know what you deserve. You don’t either, by the way. But if marriage has taught me anything, it has taught me how little deserving has to do with it. Love is a kind of grace: the worthiness of its object is never what matters. No, worthiness is a poor basis for love. Rather, the worth of the beloved is revealed in the mere fact of being loved. Ahead of you stretches a whole lifetime of learning what it was that made you love one another. Maybe you think you know already. If you do, you’re the exception. None of us knows what lies ahead. I don’t know what kind of trouble and heartache lie ahead for me. But I know there’s a balm. And she’s the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, the last thing I see before I go to sleep at night. That is an astonishing thing to think about. If life offers any richer blessing this side of heaven, I surely don’t know what it is. By standing here and taking the vows you’re about to take, the two of you are putting yourselves in a position to lay hold of more happiness than you deserve. Not everybody gets that chance. Plenty of people have the chance and they blow it. So here’s my charge to you: Live in the grace you’ve been given. There’s not much hope for a person who won’t live in the grace he’s been given. “Life hungers to abound / And pour its plenty out for such as you.” But life doesn’t usually force its plenty down your throat. If you would rather have your own way than be happy, life doesn’t mind shrugging its shoulders and saying, “Okay, have it your way.” Martha, Boris, I hope you won’t clutch so tightly to your own agenda, your own idea of the way your life ought to be, that you don’t have a free hand to scoop up the blessings that are being poured at your feet. Marriage is a state of grace. And it’s a great mystery. And Christ adorned and beautified by  his presence and first miracle that he wrought at Cana of Galilee—by turning good water into good wine, that maketh the heart glad.

It’s poker night. It’s 9pm and several of my friends are upstairs having a great time.I imagine there’s at least one cigar being smoked, a few potent potables sitting around on coasters, and a good deal of laughter. Meanwhile, I’m at the kitchen table with my laptop, it’s quiet, I’m alone, and I’m writing. There’s a big part of me that would much rather be upstairs. I’ve heard a lot of accusations in the last few months that I’m antisocial because I don’t go out to fellowship with the other guys very often and instead choose to spend those evening hours writing. It’s not a matter of being antisocial, though. It’s a matter of self-discipline. Whether the subject is Bill Gates working on computers for hours a day as a young boy, or Mozart composing a wealth of mediocrity before ever writing a timeless note, the story is that they’ve all done their time. Success at a skill requires practice and persistence and a minimum of ten thousand hours before you can expect to see the fruit of your labor. That got me thinking that I spend every minute of the day getting better at something. If I’m brushing my teeth for two minutes, I’m getting more efficient at it. If I’m building a table for three hours in the afternoon, I’m learning how to be a better carpenter. If I’m sitting on the couch watching TV, I’m getting better at doing that too. So what is it, I ask myself, that I really want to get better at doing, and why am I not doing that instead of practicing my channel surfing form. So every evening when I get home from the day job, it’s time to get to work doing what counts. It’s time to write. It’s time to get better at what I love to do. It’s time to tick off a few more of those ten thousand hours. The side effect is that the people around me have come to expect it of me just as much as I expect it of myself. Sometimes that expectation comes in the form of an encouragement or a reminder, but more often it comes in the shape of an accusation that I’m being antisocial. So be it. That’s something I can live with.I’m willing to let my poker skills wane in the short term because I’m betting my chips on the future.I’m refining my skills, I’m defining myself in my true occupation, I’m challenging myself, I’m creating something that I believe has an intrinsic worth far beyond that of an evening on the town. So here I sit, metaphorical pen in hand, practicing my craft and watching the hands on the clock tick ever closer to the hour of mastery.

My family regularly attends children’s storytime at the Nashville Public Library where Library Pete, The Professor, and Mary Mary regale attendees with stories, rainbow drawings, singing, and the continuing puppet adventures of Cedric the Dragon, Spanish Fox, JJ the Lamb, and Tommy Dog. Beyond all the puppeteering aimed at the kids, though, the proceedings are layered with witty banter intended for the parents as well. I like this. At one point, the Professor juggles colorful rings while singing a song and Ellis, our oldest boy, immediately took to this.  He returned home to find a frisbee-like juggling ring of his own and promptly informed us that he was the “perfeshor”, complete with the final act of placing the ring on his head all crown-like. Once we picked up on what he was doing and saying (he still spoke Babel-like at the time), we were astonished at what a one-and-a-half year old was able to comprehend and retain. Since I’m anxious to relate to — and impress — my son, my wife gave me a juggling set for Christmas, complete with a how-to guide, colorful practice handkerchiefs, and three beanbags. I took up the challenge and quickly advanced to a daily regimen of juggling (by which I mean repeatedly dropping) beanbags.  With a few minutes of practice each morning, I slowly got the hang of it. At the very least, I can keep the three balls moving through the air in something resembling a circle, if only for a few seconds at a time (a veritable eon, in the hands of a novice). The best part is that Ellis excitedly joins me by throwing around the “han-ker-chips”, as he calls them, in playful mimicry. This, I truly enjoy. The same monotonous repetition required to learn a new skill is currently swamping my life. My ever-present acedia wants nothing to do with the “rinse, clean, repeat” cycle of being an exhausted and exasperated father of two very young children. You parents will, no doubt, understand these mundane rigors. I become apathy at its personified best — or worst. I wake in the early morning and glance in the mirror at the bags under my reddened eyes and realize, with grudging acceptance, that this day will likely be as utterly predictable as the one before.  It will be no less riddled with repetition than either yesterday was or tomorrow is likely to be.  It is a drug of drudgery that hardly elicits an “hurrah” from the shambles of my spirit. Wake me up when today is over, I grumble. And so it goes with acedia, that devil-god laying claim to my shoulder, neighbor to the self-righteous chip. Repetition surrounds me the way a rolled-up rug encases a poor soul run afoul of the mafia. Though I wiggle, squirm and fight, I cannot escape. I imagine there is an abundance of beauty and living art in our daily monotony, as Kathleen Norris observes in her insightful book, Acedia & Me, but I have yet to discover anything abundant in it save frustration, or anything lively save my own resistance. Practice and repetition are neither glorifying nor pleasurable, just ask any athlete. But perhaps the glory is never meant for the individual doing the repeating. Like juggling, it holds less enjoyment than frustration for me, the practitioner, but its greater fame is that of bringing something pleasant to the beholder, to those who witness the feat. In the case of my learning to juggle, my son invariably grins and seeks to mimic the act with the aforementioned handkerchiefs. Glory be, we learn together. I find myself, perhaps foolishly, selfishly and naively, wishing the current days away as if they were curses instead of blessings. Longing for what I don’t have is classic covetousness. It is a blanket of ingratitude that is all too human in its near-sightedness. As my pastor has been hammering into my head the past few weeks, we revel in the unseen promise of tomorrow at the cost of today’s grace and beauty, we give testimony to the revelation of things to come, and curse our proclivities for mistrust and false identities which have become “normal” or “everyday” in our hearts. In the ordinary, monotonous, and acedia-ravaged days to come I hope to pray a more perfect prayer.  May repetition be the means through which God, in his ironic clearinghouse style, continually unveils our daily need of Him. May Self surrender to that ever-unchanging will. May rote rehearsal reveal glory in the gift of every new day.  And may my beloved son see grace in the hands of a fumbling juggler.

C.S. Lewis famously warned us of the dangers of chronological snobbery, and he is right on. My own snobbery begins in my mind with this sentence, “I used to…” I try to stop it from coming out of my mouth, but don’t always succeed. Of course I want it stopped in my heart, and don’t want to be satisfied with merely not saying the wrong thing (contrary to our cultural dogma, social skills do not cause sinlessness). There is of course a sense in which a believer being sanctified by the Holy Spirit will be changing and so “I used to…” will not be an uncommon thought. But we must guard against the encroachment of self-righteousness. We must believe the actual Gospel, not Christ-languaged Moralism. We all strain against the fact that we have nothing to offer God but empty hands and a cry for help. The surrender is the victory. This is a pitfall for which artists seem to have a particular proclivity. Snobbery should be something we despise, not an avenue by which we despise others.

While I was on vacation I got an email from my editor and sat back to consider it with suspicion.  I was worried that it might contain good news and let’s face it, nothing is worse than good news.  Allow me to explain. It’s easy to look around and find ten people to read your work and tell you it’s wonderful, or gosh-wow great, or really, really nice but none of that is terribly useful.  On the other hand, try to find ten people to give you a thoughtful critique and offer suggestions on how to improve your manuscript.  The latter is the more difficult feat by far. One way to find good criticism is a regular writer’s group.  I try to meet with a small group of other writer’s whenever I’m home in Nashville.  I’ve unofficially dubbed us The Rabbit Room Writers’ Fellowship for the sole purpose of getting the library to let us meet in their conference room.  We’ve met probably half a dozen times over the last year and those few, small gatherings have been a well-spring of wisdom and learning for me.  The thing that makes it work is that we know each other and respect each other enough that we don’t need to pull punches.  If I write something that doesn’t work, they will tell me.  That’s a valuable thing. When I made the decision to publish The Fiddler’s Gun independently I was confronted with the reality that I wouldn’t have the benefit of a team of editors and copy-editors poring over my manuscript deep into the night to ferret out every misplaced comma, character inconsistency, and thematic indulgence.  Instead, the responsibility was all mine.  So I screamed in panic and hired a freelance editor. Kate (my editor) and I had already known each other for some time and I knew something of her work and trusted her editorial eye.  But once I had hired her I began to worry that I’d receive her edit and see something happy and terrible like, “It was really great! Don’t change a thing!” And thus did I eye her email with trepidation and suspicion. I squinted at the screen as I read it and then let out a long slow sigh of relief.  She hates it!  Hallelujah!  She hates it!  Okay, I exaggerate.  There was no hate.  She did however explain that she was working her way through the manuscript and offered a detailed critique of several thematic issues and plot points that she wished me to consider (or reconsider) while she continued her work. Even though I didn’t agree with all of her points, I couldn’t have been happier with her feedback.  Since then I’ve been chewing over things in my brain and working on how to solve the issues she brought up.  I’ve always felt that no matter how strongly I feel about my writing that I have no business arguing with a trusted reader.  The reader is the boss and if the boss isn’t happy then I need to change something.  So even though my initial reactions to some of Kate’s ideas were defensive, the more I think about them, the more I feel she’s probably right on the money. An objective critique is a valuable thing, especially when it hurts to hear.  I have no doubt that I’ve learned more about the craft of writing from painful criticism than I ever have from praise and compliment.  The former makes me want to do better, the latter makes me think maybe I’m good enough.  It’s easy to see which of those feelings is more productive. If you’re interested in how the book is coming along, be sure to check out the website at TheFiddlersGun.com.

I recently came back from a conference featuring pastors/authors Rob Bell, Peter Rollins and Shane Hipps called Poets, Prophets and Preachers. It was an inspiring time and I left filled with more hope and promise for our local ministry – The Mercy House – and my own personal dreams than I have in a long time. And while I bask in the glow of a pastoral pep rally, this seems the opportune time to work through some thoughts. I It can be maddening. Painter friends of mine wonder why the canvases labored over remain unsold while older, much less technical works are the ones that sell. Musicians often speak in interviews of being surprised by the legs of a last-second addition to an album while the other “sure-fire” tracks never garner any radio spins. No matter the venue, sometimes our most valiant works go unnoticed or even refused while the half-hearted, there’s-no-way-this-will-work efforts receive all the praise. Thus, the artist, the preacher, the writer, the potter are all left in a precarious position. Of course, this is no excuse to rest on your laurels, but it also removes the longing to hold out expectations for something you cannot control. As Rob spoke, I wrote a note that I’m not sure how much was a quote and how much was my own mind working around what was being mentioned. But in that moment, I simply jotted down “…so the most you can offer is a grounded, focused, truthful effort.” There might be other, even better, descriptors, but that’s what struck me in that moment. It’s an inner calling to make things excellent, no matter what the turnout or response. And there’s also a beauty to realizing I’m turning in a less-than-stellar assignment only to receive a gracious “A”. It keeps you humble, or at least it should (rather than being lazy), and it keeps the ego in check in thinking it all depends on you. Has anyone else found this concept to be true in their own lives – their own masterpieces being ignored while watching other unexpected pieces finding themselves on center stage?

As the teaching pastor of a local church for nearly five years now, I find myself repeating certain phrases or going back to various word pictures over and over again depending on the week’s message. And since our church is highly focused on the work (and word) of reconciliation, one of the oft-kicked around phrases is “working our way back to the garden.” But I heard a phrase recently that has thrown me for a bit – perhaps taking me deeper in my understanding of this aspect of spiritual formation. Someone used the term “true selves” in reference to our position in the garden. And I immediately fell in love with it. So much of the teachings and writing concerning the Christian discipleship or spiritual formation is about working toward something new. We are usually called (out of fear) to turn from our old ways, our old man, our earthly self and invited to move toward eternal life or to have our sins forgiven, et al. Growing up, there was a lot of talk about a need to be disciplined to learn these new ways, to become the new man (with the help of the Holy Spirit, of course). And it was oftentimes a frustrating journey of my feeble attempts to grow new limbs and learn to walk again like an infant. Yet with this new analogy or understanding of our “true selves,” I realize now that it’s more than that. Sharing the gospel with someone or training someone in discipleship is not having to learn some new way of doing things or it’s not something to work toward necessarily. Instead, what if it was about calling people back to being their true selves. It’s about teaching them who they were created to be, seeing their place in the grand narrative and realizing that there’s a better way to live – one which they were originally intended to do/be in the first place. There’s a freedom in a perspective like this and it’s something I feel I’m coming alive to myself. And it’s something I hope to add to our vernacular at the Mercy House.

I intended to continue on the Moral Imagination series by referring to portions of Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy-Stories;” but the essay itself deserves its own series of posts.  I’ll start backwards, by reflecting on the latter half of Tolkien’s essay, in which he describes four gifts of the true fairy tale: Fantasy, Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. The term “fantasy” is often used to denote that genre for only very weird geeks who dress up (ahem) like their heroes in wizard’s robes, carry around swords, and go to odd conventions. In other words, it’s usually accompanied with an eye-roll so forceful that there are documented cases of blindness-by-condescension-toward-fantasy-lovers. Fantasy, Tolkien argues, is “not a lower but a higher form of art, indeed the most nearly pure form.” Great news for the geeks among us. But why is this so? Fant Against those who think that Fantasy is a waste of time or even evil, because it creates a “lie” (a story that didn’t happen), Tolkien argues that Fantasy is “a natural human activity,” because being made in the image of a Creator, making stuff is a natural human activity. The Fall may have damaged us severely and causes distortions in creative activity, but our right and inclination to do so is not lost, and in Christ, it may be redeemed. God created a world; Christ created us new; we create secondary worlds. I opened my book, Harry Potter & Imagination, with a quote from a Christian man complaining thusly about the Harry Potter stories and fiction in general: I recommend that people stop wasting their time reading fiction (lies) for entertainment, and that parents teach their children by good example to spend more time reading wholesome nonfiction with literary value (including the Bible) for education. To that, I think the old fairy-tale ending is a sufficient counter-argument, and in line with Tolkien on Fantasy: The Dreamer awakes The shadow goes by The tale I have told you, That tale is a lie. But listen to me, Bright maiden, proud youth The tale is a lie; What it tells is the truth. “They are not lies,” Tolkien said to C.S. Lewis, when the latter used that label for Myths. By “they are not lies,” Tolkien wasn’t saying, “These myths literally happened.” He was saying, “What they tell is the truth.” The traditional folk-tale ending is saying, “Sure, this tale did not actually happen; but it still tells you the truth” – the deeper truths of life about love and sacrifice. Fantasy is a gift of the true fairy-story because the desire, ability, and right to create is a gift from God, and through our creating, we communicate the truth about God.

In the front flap of Peter Rollins‘ new book, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossibles Tales, he writes: “Religious writing is usually designed to make the truth of faith clear, concise, and palatable. Parables subvert this approach. In the parable, truth is not expressed via some dusty theological discourse that seeks to educate us, but rather it arises as a lyrical dis-course that would inspire and transform us. In light of this, the enclosed parables do not seek to change our minds but rather to chnge our hearts.” In the ensuing thirty-three short parables – most averaging less than five hundred words – Pete creates a space for us to encounter Truth through story, to let it infect our own stories in such a way so that they are changed. In the introduction, Pete continues this thought: “A parable does not primarily provide information about our world. Rather, if we allow it to do its work within us, it will change our world – breaking it open to ever-new possibilities by refusing to be held by the categories that currently exist within that world. In this way the parable transforms the way we hold reality, and thus changes reality itself.” I had the chance to hear Pete share several of these stories, in his easy-to-listen-to Irish brogue, when he was in Nashville for a day or two back in March, and hearing his voice when you read them makes the reading experience more enjoyable. Leading up to the release of the book, Pete taped himself reading several of the parables and uploaded them to YouTube, which you can watch here, here and here. I’ve been reading a couple parables a day for the last week or so, letting them soak in. Here is one of my favorites Finding Faith There was once a fiery preacher who possessed a powerful but unusual gift. He found that, from an early age, when he prayed for individuals, they would supernaturally lose all of their religious convictions. They would invariably lose all of their beliefs about the prophets, the sacred Scriptures, and even God. So he learned not to pray for people but instead limited himself to preaching inspiring sermons and doing good works. However, one day while traveling across the country, the preacher found himself in conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. This businessman was a very powerful and ruthless merchant banker, one who was honored by his colleagues and respected by his adversaries. Their conversation began because the businessman, possessing a deep, abiding faith, had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. He introduced himself to the preacher and they began to talk. As they chatted together this powerful man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. He spoke of how his work did not really define who he was but was simply what he had to do. “The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “and in my line of work I find myself in situations that challenge my Christian convictions. But I try, as much as possible, to remain true to my faith. Indeed, I attend a local church every Sunday, participate in a prayer circle, engage in some youth work, and contribute to a weekly Bible study. These activities help to remind me of who I really am.” After listening carefully to the businessman’s story, the preacher began to realize the purpose of his unseemly gift. So he turned to the businessman and said, “Would you allow me to pray a blessing into your life?” The businessman readily agreed, unaware of what would happen. Sure enough, after the preacher had muttered a simple prayer, the man opened his eyes in astonishment. “What a fool I have been for all these years!” he proclaimed. “It is clear to me now that there is no God above, who is looking out for me, and that there are no sacred texts to guide me, and there is no Spirit to inspire and protect me.” As they parted company the businessman, still confused by what had taken place, returned home. But now that he no longer had any religious beliefs, he began to find it increasingly difficult to continue in his line of work. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, rather than a man of God, he began to despise his activity. Within months he had a breakdown, and soon afterward gave up his line of work completely. Feeling better about himself, he then went on to give to the poor all the riches he had accumulated and began to use his considerable managerial expertise to challenge the very system he once participated in, and to help those who had been oppressed by it. One day, many years later, he happened upon the preacher again while walking through town. He ran over, fell at the preacher’s feet, and began to weep with joy. Eventually he looked up at the preacher and smiled, “Thank you, my dear friend, for helping me discover my faith.” #PeterRollins #Story #Parable #PeteRollins #Truth

From time to time I am asked about why I write stories and novels when there is “no spiritual value in it.” I disagree with the idea that there is no spiritual value in literature, both in and of itself, and as a furrowing force for the later harvest of truth. Here I want to focus on the latter. May I present some guy you’ve probably never heard of, Dr. Martin Luther: “I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.” Martin Luther, Letter to Eoban Hess, 29 March 1523. Werke, Weimar edition, Luthers Briefwechsel, III, 50. HT: Justin Taylor So bouncing off of Luther’s quotation, and in an effort to directly answer the charge that love of literature is an attack on the sufficiency of Scripture, I write. Scripture is sufficient. Preaching is needed for people to hear. If someone is deaf, they cannot hear. Since the Bible is in words, we need to develop ears to hear by understanding the use of language, words, and meaning. Reading good literature cannot help but aid this. The Bible is not one long letter written in outline form with footnotes. It is made up of multiple genres and replete with figurative language and creative literary expressions. Reading widely has many benefits, and helping us to understand the Word of God on a few different levels is only part of those benefits. The fostering of wholesome imagination alone is a deeply beneficial spiritual blessing. Bathed in test-tube modernity we chart and graph truth until it is a mere set of facts with no power, no beauty, no glory. The truth is that we are saved by a story–by news. It is an unbelievable story from the hand of the sovereign Author of life. Am I saying the Word of God is not important? No. It is infinitely important. It is the Book of books, God-breathed, inerrant. But it is a book. Books are read. By people who can read. And reading to understand usually requires extensive and wide reading. Am I saying the illuminating work of the Spirit isn’t necessary? No. The Holy Spirit illuminates his Word, but he uses our faculties as he does in so many other of his actions. Can he overcome our ignorance of poetry and allow us to understand and teach well the Psalms? Sure. But I don’t think willful ignorance of helpful resources is his prescribed method. Can God heal? Yes. Does he usually heal every ailment directly by miracles? No. He usually calls doctors and others to serve, and they learned how to do this by engagement. We must engage with words–stories, literature, poetry, figurative language, etc.–if we are to properly understand, appreciate, and help others to love God’s Word. Is there a danger in our post-modern culture of over-emphasizing the value of stories? I think so. Particularly if we are so obsessed with ourselves as the point of view characters that we lose sight of the Authorship (and Authority) of God. If we inflate the importance of our own finite perspective and correspondingly diminish the authority of the Word of God (which, sadly, is a very fashionable fad right now) then we are on the wrong street going the wrong way. But let us not be guilty of the very problem this post-modern fad has succumbed to and that is the problem of overcorrection. Stories do matter. They matter deeply. And we benefit greatly from expressing stories to one another, both wholly invented and parabolic. Let us do both. Let us love the Word. Let us also, for the glory of God and the Gospel of Christ, love words. The Bible is in words. When we love literature (different genres, as in Scripture: poetry, songs, wise sayings, letters, narrative, etc.) we become better equipped to hear. It is discouraging to hear “biblical” teaching from a man who has read so little and understands language so poorly that he falls into trap after trap of understanding which just a little reading would aid. Is it essential to be widely read? No. God in his mercy can superintend. But if you are handling words (the Word of God especially –and we are all called to this) then it is wise to have a more than surface understanding of how that works. In my view Christians ought to love books, love words, and love expression. This is how truth is conveyed. Art enables this. In other words, as with justification by grace through faith, I agree with Luther. Thankfully for him, Luther isn’t down here to be frightened by my agreement. That’s my two cents worth. Anyone have some insight to add? I would love to hear what you think.

Nashville, TN (AP Wire) Eight Nashville-based singer-songwriters, collectively named The Square Peg Alliance, recently uncovered the rare fossilized bones of a Cretaceous vodka-swilling winged super-raptor during a two-day run of concerts in the American midwest. Casualties were reported. Andrew Osenga, evidently springing to his nine-toed feet in a spontaneous sprint to the bathroom, accidentally tripped over one of his own guitar cables during a St. Louis, MO concert featuring himself and the other seven ego-centric artists. According to Andrew Peterson, a svelte, maelstrom of a man by most accounts, Osenga’s antics resulted in a large and terrifying hole in the church stage. Artists Randall Goodgame and Jeremy Casella, seated nearby at the time of the incident, immediately fell through the hole into earthen depths beyond the furthest reaches of light and hope. Neither have been heard from since. SPA President Andy Gullahorn, speaking through tears, issued this statement mere minutes after the melee: “I am and always will be a fan of vodka. And super-raptors.” Upon further inspection of the riddled breach, Jill Phillips, the lone SPA female, sliced her shoulder on one of the uncovered fossilized talons while reaching and wailing down into the depths for her alleged friends. Jill survived the ordeal, thanks in part to the quick thinking of Christian songwriter and master gardener Eric Peters, who used the paper cheat sheets containing his lyrics to stanch Phillips’ bleeding. A hero to some, still a violent bore to others, said Peters, “I’ve been meaning to wean myself from the cheat sheets for years now, anyway.” St. Louis police officer, Reggie Pride, was the first to respond to the scene of the incident. His closer investigation revealed what appear to be the perfectly intact wing bones and skeletal remains of one of history’s most lethargic creatures ever to roam the pre-homosapien earth. Though it possessed wings and razor sharp teeth, Majora Rubyopterix supposedly rarely left its home, opting instead to remain idle in its typically low to the ground nest so as to avoid any exertion of energy. It survived by catching and eating bugs or smaller herbivores passing in front of its nest. Pianist Ben Shive, a hobbyist in paleontology, attested to the raptor’s affinity for apathy and distilled, fermented potatoes. “Those particular raptors had it made,” stated Shive. Osenga, simultaneously a hero to the paleontology world and a villain to the church whose sanctuary is now a federal excavation site, remains obstinate about the incident and subsequent historic discovery: “I didn’t ask to discover anything except for maybe new, heretofore undiscovered musical notes. I just wanna play my Gretsch and rock out. Is that so wrong?” Federal, state and local authorities, in conjunction with songwriter’s guilds, are posing their own separate investigations and audits of the event. Meanwhile, reports have it that the various Square Peg Alliance artists’ CD sales and concert bookings have more than tripled in the aftermath. Purchase Eric Peters’s garden music now before it is sold out.

I’m dragging today, and am fighting my daily bout with the post-lunch lethargy (a good reason my friends call me “Pappy”) as Ben and I are up at the studio adding touches to a song called “I Had To Tell You”. The A/C is on today, and we give thanks. I’m struggling to stay focused and to engage myself in the process of listening closely and contributing ideas. I’ve avoided the computer until now so as to force myself to actively participate. It’s not that I’m disinterested, but that these hot summer afternoons absolutely zap what little energy I already possess. Must. Keep. Eyes. Open Ben is overdubbing more hammer dulcimer over a piano part he played a few moments ago. We’re going for a Raggedy-Andy sort of sad to prop up the lyrics that include these lines: I’ve had chains wrapped around me for the last seven years I crowned myself Messiah since Messiah was not near I shook my fist at heaven, I told God to go to hell There was so much that I had to say, but had kept it to myself These are potentially expensive words. I see how they could easily be misinterpreted or taken out of context without knowing the story’s backdrop. Hence, they may be expensive in that customers might want their money back after purchasing a “Christian” album expressing such sentiments. I have no idea how the song will be received, as it is hopefully as honest in its narration as the true story on which it is based. The reality of humanity is that we owe to grace as great debtors. In our worst moments, we curse the blessing of our own skin, our own breathing in and out, the universe and Maker alike. In our best moments, we remain desperately in need of that which is beyond our frailty or capacity to bring anything good to the Mercy Table. I struggled for weeks (and still do, to an extent), in the process of writing it, to allow the main character the red-blooded freedom to tell God, “I hated you that day.” That is not the sort of cheap, plastic, pre-fab line that floats easily upon the waters of this industry. I am trying to be as honest as I can, since I so personally and closely related to the story of my friend’s losing and losing, while in the midst of such tremendous anger, hostility towards God, loss of income and business, found himself spewing those very words with all the venom and bile his hard, tired heart could muster. And in the process, God still showed up with all the mercy and hope He ever possessed. And redemption occurs like fire through the open windows of a dry and brittle house. So it is with beggars and new beginnings. The story of any one of us is, in some measure, the story of us all. These are the stories I hope to tell you.

When I first launched the website for The Fiddler’s Gun one of the things I wanted to do was to find a way to flesh out the world and the story for people even though they hadn’t read the book yet.  What I came up with is a feature I call “Letters to Peter“.  The idea springs from a portion of the book in which the heroine, Fin Button, is away from home and has the opportunity to write letters to her childhood friend, Peter LaMee. So for the past couple of months I’ve been imagining what those letters might have said.  It’s been a ton of fun for me to be able to write about my characters in a new voice and in a new format.  In addition to letters written to Peter I’ve been keeping it all fresh by creating letters and documents from other people and places that illuminate other aspects of the story.  A mystery of sorts has slowly been revealed and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. If you haven’t yet stumbled onto any of Fin’s letters to Peter, go check them out at The Fiddler’s Gun.  I hope you enjoy reading them half as much as I enjoy writing them.

Carolyn Arends is one of my favorite writers (not to mention one of my favorite people). Here’s a snippet of a great piece she wrote for Christianity Today this month: “At a concert in Erie, Pennsylvania, I sang a song called “In Good Hands.” Afterward, the church’s custodian stopped by. “When you was singing that song about Jesus’ hands,” he said, “the sun was In these tough times, I worry that violins and stained glass and folk songs may become extraneous. Many people are in a state of financial frostbite; just as blood flow to the extremities is restricted to save vital organs in a case of hypothermia, resources for less essential items must be diverted during an economic crisis. Who’s going to buy tickets to a film festival, ballet, or concert when there isn’t enough money for groceries? What business do I have writing songs when there is practical work that needs doing? Do the arts matter? Are they expendables or essentials?” Read on and take heart. .

There’s a form of human despondency that runs so deep, that a man gives up. Such a level of despair is manifest in many ways but most tellingly, we see it in the eyes. These eyes view the world lifelessly. Once we may have noticed the acute acid of pain; now we witness only numb existence. Torpid nothingness has become preferable to the smoky sting of life’s heartaches. Such eyes reveal a petrified heart, a statue without feeling. Such a man unwittingly escapes that which causes his pain by embracing something—anything—that deadens the life within him. As the infectiously optimistic cab driver, Solo, peers into his rear view mirror, he looks deeper than most into the sad eyes of his forlorn passenger, William. Within the first few minutes of Goodbye Solo, the narrative exposition is complete. William requests that Solo drive him to Blowing Rock, a real life destination a couple of hours west of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city in which this movie was shot. He’s willing to pay a premium fare, more than five times the norm, to the first unquestioning cabbie that accepts his offer. William makes it clear that the cab fare is for a one-way trip. He won’t need a ride back. This film is about the nature of friendship. Solo, played gregariously by Souleymane Sy Savane, an African-born French model, intuitively understands that his grizzled passenger, William, played by Red West (once a body guard for Elvis Presley), is navigating rough waters and may be nearing the waterfall. We might assume that Solo’s irrepressible good spirits are extended to everyone. Still, he discerns that William needs a friend more than the average loner and he reaches out with good cheer. The culture in which Solo was raised dictates that young families care for and take responsibility for the older set, which may also, in part, be driving his generosity. But his persistence made me think there was something more. As I watched this movie twice, it was impossible to ignore my own internal tension concerning friendship. Specifically, how do I choose my friends? Mostly, I think, it happens naturally. Like most, I gravitate toward those that mirror my own sensibilities. It’s easy to embrace those with whom we share beliefs and personality characteristics. It fits. It seems organic. Harder, it seems, is to extend the hand of friendship to those we perceive as weird or that exhibit personality characteristics, beliefs, or values that seem somehow off kilter, at least through the eyes in which we view the world. Long ago and far away, I remember coming upon the end of a grade school fight. Tommy had been pulverized by a class bully and he was blinking away tears. He was on the ground, nearing the end of a forced recitation of The Greenie Poem. Tommy had a bowl-cut. When he talked, he sounded funny, a little like what I imagine Owen Meany from John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” sounded like. He had a nervous tic. He didn’t have any friends because he didn’t fit in with anybody. I helped dust him off and invited him to come with me to The Valley Alleys, our local eight-lane bowling alley. We bowled a game or two, which I financed out of my allowance money. I tried to be a friend, and felt like I had done a good deed that day. I’d like to say that Tommy and I became best friends and he turned to Christ because of my influence, but that didn’t happen. After that day, I don’t remember ever speaking to Tommy again. That’s not to say that it was a conscious decision. In fact, I simply don’t remember thinking about Tommy much until this film brought him to mind. And I realized once again, that being a friend, the kind of friend that isn’t so organic, often requires intentionality. Goodbye Solo is directed by the quietly emerging Ramin Bahrani, who was also responsible for two other critically acclaimed films, Chop Shop, which I have seen and recommended here in the Rabbit Room, and Man Push Cart, which I haven’t seen, but have in my Netflix queue. If Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo are any indication, Bahrani is a director who likes exploring people that have been marginalized by society. His narratives don’t follow a paint-by-number screenwriting. His stories venture off the smooth highway with compelling characters that don’t use maps and drive too fast on washboard roads. How nice it is to watch a movie featuring a character that doesn’t know the word cynicism. Solo is the most likeable movie character I’ve seen since Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. In one form or the other, most of us carry an array of masks. How pure and refreshing it is to observe a character that hasn’t learned the art of sophisticated deceit; guileless not in the sense of avoiding white collar crime or robbing banks, but in the sense of being no less than his authentic self. Most of the dramatic tension in Goodbye Solo comes from Solo’s largely rebuffed attempts at friendship. William is a good ol’ boy in the meanest sense of the phrase, who would rather not say anything. He’s settled into a state of uncomfortable numb, which is to say, he doesn’t want to be bothered, even by a man with good intentions and a good heart. If you dare speak to him, you run the risk of cultivating his ire. Like an infected scab, pus and blood will ooze.  In a series of  ignored verbal volleys, Solo finally pushes one too many of William’s buttons and he gets shoved: Who the f___ said you could touch anything that belongs to me? Phew. We had to know it was coming. See, that’s the problem. William is long beyond a desire to be touched. He simply wants to simmer in the analgesic of repressed pain and anguished sorrow, on the backburner of life. We learn that he once had a wife and a son. Like the good ol’ Southern boy version of Scrooge, somewhere along the line, he was changed for the worst. Now, the world must pay. Those that pay the highest price are those that—deliberately or not—awaken the hibernating black bear. And yet, despite all that, and despite William’s own unspoken plan to end it all, we see melancholy flickers of life, like vague radio signals from a distant planet. We catch glimpses of William’s journal, which shows us in black and white, that there is latent sensitivity and something resembling kindness, in this cantankerous old character. We realize that this man’s incisive observations as captured in his journal, belie his outward bluster. William visits a boy, ostensibly his own son, at the teen-age boy’s movie theater job. William speaks kindly to the boy, who doesn’t have a clue that he is speaking to his own father. William details the snippets of their cordial conversations in his journal. It’ll break – your – heart. I’ve seen plenty of good movies this year, but of the movies I’ve seen, I can’t remember caring about two characters more than in this movie. The script is wonderful, and obviously allowed for appropriate ad-libs from these perfectly cast characters. The movie is filmed beautifully with the final scene appropriately shrouded in fog. The last act will give you something to ponder for days. The film may not be easy to find, but I highly recommend it as one worth seeking out. Check your local indie house or art theater. Alternatively, catch it when it’s released on DVD, on August 25, 2009. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. Original, profound, thoughtful, and even funny. Consider it a recommendation, from one friend to another. Here’s a link to the trailer.

We’ve already built an airtight case against Twitter here which some people tried to respond to but all I heard was “Blah, blah, blah I just ate lunch, here’s a picture of it on tinyurl.” I can safely assume that, by extension, the case has been made against blogs, Facebooking, MySpacing, Youtubing, all so-called “Christian” pseudo-alternatives to these social outlets and anything else people enjoy. (Has some one made a “Christian” knock-off of Twitter yet?) By the way, there’s a new program for all the people who join Twitter and then don’t come back after one week. It’s called “Quitter” and it’s the fastest growing trend in trendy Twitterland. And that guy who took my name and never uses it is really irritating as well. So is hypocrisy. And ants. But what about Emoticons? You know…these things: 🙂 😉 🙁 😕 Are they to be rejected as we have so scientifically made the case to reject other fun things? Here follows a bold prediction: In ten years all written communication will be in the form of emoticons. This begs the question: Are emoticons of value? Let’s do what thoughtful people do (for a change) and compile a list of emotipros and emoticons. Emotipros: 1. Cuteness. I am a man, so I’ll stop right there. E-nuff said. 2. I’m pretty sure no one else noticed this, but some of these things kind of look like a person’s face. 🙁  <— frowny face. Look closely. 3. Allows people to make use of that part of the keyboard which does not have letters on it with success. I don’t know about you, but I get lost over there in the land of :;'”<,.>?/}[. It’s confusing. What are you supposed to use for what? The answer is emoticons. That’s what. Emoticons: 1. Anything popular with teenagers is bad. This is a pretty infallible rule. 2. It replaces written communication. Instead of saying, “I feel so sick today,” you get some green little face –which is not better. 3. Most men look from side to side to see if anyone is watching before punching in an emoticon. And they should. So, it’s a shameful thing. Gents, no eye-contact, or hugging. And if you must hug, don’t make eye-contact. 4. They’ve cheapened the “Have a Nice Day” smiley face. It used to mean something. So it’s 4 to 3, and Emoticons lose. Now, stop it. Cheers.

We are so used to running from temptation because we are so often unbelieving. We don’t believe in the power of Christ in us, so we cut, run, and hide. Temptation is opportunity. Without it we would live out our little, comfortable lives doing little religious things to make ourselves feel good. But temptation gives us the necessary opposite circumstance; temptation gives us a real, tangible choice: Am I going to trust God in this tempted moment and reverse it? Or not? Temptation is the battle cry of the enemy. And we must engage through faith, reliance, trust – or cut and run. We are told to “flee fornication.” We are told to flee these things: love of money, seeking to be rich. But how to flee? Paul goes on, “But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” (1Tim 6:11-12). We flee by fighting the faith-battle against temptation. Likewise, where we are told to “Flee fornication” we are given the method how to do so: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1Cor 6:18-19). Again, we flee fornication by simply recognizing who (and Whose) we are. Resisting temptation requires a reversal in our self-outlook. Every temptation gets its power by our false thinking: “I am an independent self who chooses good or evil.” We take our little human self as the origination point of good or evil. Big mistake. That’s exactly the view the devil wants us to take. We then attempt to manipulate our circumstances in order to achieve righteousness. We tell our accountability partner to call us every few hours. We put holy lock boxes on our computer or televisions. In fact, we do everything but trust in Christ in the moment to live His righteous, perfect, pure life in us, through us, as us. This Christ-avoidance, this spitting on Christ by disregarding His love and power in us, leads us on the straight path to more and more sin. We must ask ourselves in the moment of temptation: “Does Christ live in me? Am I complete in Him? Do I have everything I need for life and godliness? Am I one spirit with the Lord? Am I weak, but He is my strength?” None of this will appear to be true in that moment when our desires or fears are stirred up. But we say it. “Christ lives in me, through me, as me. Right here, right now. Thank you, Jesus, that You are my righteousness in this moment.” That’s where our only choice originates. Are we going to affirm in faith that Christ within us is our righteousness in every temptation? And then, having affirmed the truth, step out on it and act as though we really trust that it is true? This battle is not just for our growth; it is a fight for the eternal well-being of every person in our lives. The world is watching and waiting for those of us who will stand in who we really are in Christ, for those who really rely on God’s saving power, for those who  don’t merely give lip service to faith. Temptation is our opportunity.

When I was a boy, an old man told me a story that I’ve always loved in spite of the fact that it was almost certainly a lie. He said he was walking across a long railroad trestle one dark, dark night when he heard a train coming. He had come far enough that he knew he couldn’t turn around and outrun the train to the far end of the trestle. He considered running toward the train in hopes of beating it to the near end, but without knowing how far he was from solid ground, that was awfully risky. He decided his best bet was to crawl over the edge of the trestle and hang there until the train passed by. So there he hung by his fingertips as the train rumbled past—the engines, then the freight containers, then the coal cars. Coal car after coal car after coal car clattered over the trestle, mere inches above his head, while he grunted and strained and sweated, praying that his now-numb fingers could keep their purchase long enough for the train to pass. When the caboose finally clackety-clacked by, the man discovered that he lacked the strength to pull himself up. It was all he could do just to hang there, arms extended and straining against their sockets, and not plummet to the ground below. His lantern was long gone, having vibrated off the trestle about the time the engine thundered past. So he dangled there in the dark, waiting for daylight to come. It was a miserable night, filled with terrors both real and imagined. But he held on until dawn, when he was disgusted to discover that he was hanging only a few yards from the end of the trestle. His feet dangled only two or three feet from the ground. The old boy played the story for laughs. But the ironic twist at the end doesn’t change the fact of the genuine terror of hanging there in the dark and the silence, unsure if you’ve got the strength to make it through to morning—and unsure of what will happen even if you do make it that far. The real reason I love that story is that, in spite of all appearances, the outcome never hinged on the man’s success or failure at “hanging in there.” The outcome came from the solid truth that terra firma was right there, ready to receive him. We devise all sorts of strategies for hanging in, holding on, but even the best and truest of those strategies aren’t nearly so true as the fact that God is holding on to us. We grunt and sweat and struggle in the dark—and there’s always the possibility that we will lose our grip and fall—but we don’t dangle more than a foot or two from the palm of God’s hand.

God’s opportunities are always coming our way. Weekly, daily, hourly, we are being handed situations by which God wants to manifest Himself through us. What many believers don’t know is that these situations often take the form of a temptation. Look at Jesus. He was “driven” into the wilderness to be tempted, as Mark says. Satan came to Him and hit Him with the desire for fleshly indulgence, the desire for accolades, and the desire for power. Satan’s basic temptation was “use your power for yourself. Get what you want.” Jesus reversed each temptation, each negative, by turning it into a positive. He reversed the flesh-will in Him by saying, essentially, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” He went from a self-oriented outlook to God-vision. Later He does this by calling Peter, “Satan.” Jesus strengthens His own faith on Peter’s tempting Him to avoid the Cross, reversing the temptation into more faith-power. He reverses Philip’s fear of not having enough bread, culminating in a miracle. He reverses Martha’s fear that Lazarus has been dead too long, and gets her to speak out that reversal for herself, to which He adds, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus “learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” It was the contrary, negative temptations that were His opportunities to press forward in faith. Walking on water. The Gadarene demoniac. Jairus’ daughter. The woman at the well. The adulterous woman of John 8. The prostitute washing His feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. The Pharisees were shocked, and Jesus reversed the temptation to fear man’s opinion by recognizing that the Father in Him was the for-others Life; God was concerned not about the opinion of self-righteous judges, but the repentant woman. To the contrary, the disciples were always seeing at situations, but not seeing through. Jesus continually asks them, “Where is your faith?” They weren’t reversing their fear and using it as an engine for faith. That’s our basic situation in any temptation. We can give it power by cowering, or we can see it as opportunity to advance the Kingdom. If we cower, the outcome is eventually sin and shame, a weakening of our power, a temporary abdication of our kingship and kinship, our oneness with Christ. The power of sin is the Law; human effort attempting to be good like God. The Pharisees were constantly shocked at Jesus’ behavior; they thought He should run away from sin. And so we lose opportunities, not only for growth but the occasion to be bread for others, when we cower in the face of temptation. We lose the opportunity to show forth God’s love and power in us. Or we can use temptation as a handle. Like Jesus, we can reverse it. I can see this when my children are fighting. My temptation is often to rush in there and stop it by using my power, by control, manipulation. Because that’s what fear does in me; that is my particular psychological programming. In that moment I have a choice to either manifest Satan to my children (fear, control, manipulation) or to reverse the fear and see that God has some beautiful thing to teach my children in that moment, not the least that a Father is patient and kind and wise. So I reverse it. I give God my fear, and the desire to control. I say, “Lord, what do you wish to speak through me to my children?” And then I step out in faith that He will do so. Reversing temptation in this way isn’t merely about our growth, though of course we will grow. It’s about others. The way I respond in financial difficulty, whether by fear or by reliance on the One who provides, will affect others. Faith spreads like a good infection. That’s what I want my children to catch. That’s what I want my wife to feel from me. That’s the thing I want to transmit to the world. There is a God. He is faithful. He is kind, wise, truehearted. He indwells the believer, and is readily available in every moment. We can trust Him in each and every situation. That’s the purpose of temptation. Norman Grubb said, “Temptation is God’s calling card.” The devil is only a pawn in God’s school for us – God’s school of faith.

Contrary to popular belief (trust me, I’ve polled it), I did not sit down one day and think, “Ah hah!  I shall write an adventure novel of the Revolutionary War and my heroine shall be named Phinea Button!” The real story, if you choose to believe it, is that some years ago I decided to try something different for Christmas.  Simply buying gifts and handing them out wrapped in plaid paper had grown too ordinary.  That’s when I thought, “Ah hah!  I shall build treasure chests and I swear to you that is the truth. So I started building treasure chests in September of that year and as I finished them I did my gift shopping and filled one for each of the families of my siblings and parents (four in all).  I even tracked down some nifty old handmade padlocks to lock them up with. My parents live on a farm of some four or five acres and my plan was to bury each chest in a different spot on the farm and then draw a map that led to each one.  The chest-building turned out to be the easy part of this diabolical plan.  The hard part was drawing the maps.  I hand drew each one with a calligraphy pen using all sorts of local landmarks, and folklore, and inside humor to make them unique and then in the corner of each map I reserved a spot for a small poem of sorts that would eventually lead to the buried treasure. In October and November that year I snuck home four times with a chest in tow and carried it out into the woods to inter it.  Each chest lay near a landmark that could only be identified by following the clues on the map.  One was an odd copse of trees, one was a pair of trees with a rope tied around them, I forget what the third was but for the fourth, I decided to make the ‘landmark’ an old grave marker (a tribute to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). Back in my woodshop, I hammered together a cross out of two crude boards and then sat back to consider what name I ought to carve into it.  It had to sound antiquated and I wanted it to have a distinctly American quality.  I considered names like Cletus, and Hank, and Buddy but my mind finally came to rest on Phineas Button.  I set to work carving it out and when I finished sat back to admire my work. That’s when I saw my mistake.  Like a bad tattoo artist, I’d been concentrating so hard on the actual work that I hadn’t seen the misspelling right in front of me.  I’d left the ‘S’ off of the end of Phineas.  Thus was Phinea born. At first I was angry with myself and irritated at the prospect of having to make a new marker.   But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the name was an interesting one.  The omission of the ‘S’ transformed it and made it feminine and I began to wonder why a woman would have such a name, and who she might have been, and why there was a treasure chest laid in her grave instead of a body. The story grew from there.  All the maps and clues to the buried Christmas chests eventually referred to the vague and long-dead persons of Peter LaMee and “Fin” Button. That Christmas morning when all the presents had been handed out I stood up and admitted to my family that I’d been too poor to buy anyone gifts.   Luckily though, I had discovered four strange maps, each accompanied by a strange old skeleton key and I offered them as gifts instead. The treasure hunt that ensued is one of my favorite Christmas memories.  But even after the holidays had come and gone and the world returned to the sedentary cycle of work and sleep, Phinea wouldn’t leave me alone.  The characters and events of her life became more and more real to me until eventually a New Year’s resolution pact between my brother and I compelled me to set her story down in writing. Though that all happened years ago, each time I visit my parent’s farm I still sneak out into the woods to stand by the old grave marker and smile.  Little did I know at the time that the treasure chest filled with Christmas presents that we pulled out of her grave was the smallest of the gifts Phinea had to give. Check out the website for more information on the book. TheFiddlersGun.com

I was digging through my backpack a few weeks ago when I found a letter someone had evidently handed me after a concert (this happens sometimes, my apologies to previous post-concert letter givers). It was addressed to “TheProprietor”. I was intrigued. Here was someone familiar with the workings of the Rabbit Room. It was written by Janna Barber, and she mentioned her interest in writing the occasional piece for the Rabbit Room. I took her up on the offer and here it is, her first post, about an encounter with the legendary Bill Mallonee of Vigilantes of Love. I hope you enjoy it. –The Proprietor It was a warm July evening and the sun was just beginning to set. I opened the front door and wandered outside, just in case. A cool shuffle of air passed over the grass on the front lawn, and that’s when I heard it: Muriah’s soft strokes Holy mother Mary when the wine gives out and the land is parched, stricken with drought; I’ve never seen it look quite like this before. Yes and ask your Son cause I heard He’s strong He’s got a real good heart and loves everyone. An open heart is always an open door. It was just a warm-up, but for me that’s when the show started. I had been a fan for over ten years, since my husband introduced me to the Vigilantes of Love in college. John and I had just started dating, and at first I really didn’t like the sound of Mr. Bill Mallonee’s voice. Up to that point in my life, music had only been about pretty voices and singable melodies. This daughter of a Baptist preacher from small town Arkansas had NOT been raised on Dylan, and the only Springsteen songs she knew were soft rock radio favorites, like “Human Touch” and “Dancing in the Dark.” Thankfully I was an English major, so although his voice turned me off, his lyrics caught my attention. I began listening more closely. What I found was poetry. What I found were images so real they were there when I closed my eyes at bedtime. Visions of me holding a hammer, driving nails into a tree, my pale arms struggling to swim in a river as big, strong and muddy as the Mississippi, and then there were the skeletons, with their white boned arms and fists that would not stop banging on the inside of my closet door. We decided we needed to see this guy in concert. We drove six hours to Dallas with a carload of friends. We sat front and center at a round table in the Downstairs Café. We saw the long haired, overweight Native American who pounded his table the entire concert. We sang along to every song. We hung around afterward and shook Bill’s hand. We listened to Counting Crows cranked as loud as possible to keep us awake on the nauseating I-30 roller coaster home. We relived the broken guitar strings and the way Bill turned the key in his own door made of air. We wished he would not have hit himself in the head so many times. We wanted to go back the next Friday. John and I were married a year later, and he shyly introduced me to one of Bill’s most controversial songs, “Love Cocoon.” We continued to gobble up every new album. There were so many songs. Songs of love and commitment, of traveling and touring, songs about fathers, songs about sons, and songs of disillusion, depression and freedom. Bill’s heart broke on every album as he tried and failed to find a more commercial type of success. When we moved to Maryland for six years, our concert going slowed down a bit, but we managed to catch a couple of Bill’s solo shows. The first was with Over the Rhine at a college in PA and the second was a house show in Western Maryland, shortly before we moved to Tennessee. My teary eyes matched Bill’s that night when he sang “Apple of your Eye,” though I was barely aware of anyone’s sorrow but my own. The source of my hurt was the end of a pregnancy by miscarriage. The source of Bill’s, we discovered after our move, was the end of a marriage, by divorce. A year passed and we found ourselves getting ready for another house concert, and this time we were hosting. It was an early birthday present for John, and we had invited some friends from church. The concert had also been posted on Bill’s website and John had received e-mail from local fans who said they were coming. We made some snacks and cleaned the house, arranged the living room and waited. John and I, then married for seven and a half years, had talked a lot about Bill’s divorce, how it affected us to hear those old songs, many of them written for his now ex-wife. We also read what Bill had to say, in various e-mail threads, and the follow-up comments made by fans. Some people said they could no longer support him as an artist, but we came to the conclusion that he‘d tried his best to make things right. Although, I had to admit the matter of his new wife didn’t sit well with me, and these juvenile, evil step-mother feelings made me anxious to meet Ms. Muriah Rose. The musicians arrived around six o’clock and we greeted them with sincere smiles and awkward handshakes. As we began to help unload their run down Honda, something rather strange happened. Muriah noticed a tiny hummingbird, trapped in the garage, struggling to get out. She was visibly disturbed by its distress and I was disarmed by her compassion. We all stopped our work and gathered around to watch for several minutes, until someone finally figured a way to get the bird out. John found a long handled duster and gently coaxed the hummingbird down the narrow space of wall between the two garage doors. It was a rather long process and as we waited and watched his quiet work, we whispered about how rare it was to see this fragile creature so close and still. We wondered what in the world had brought it to our door. When the bird was close enough to reach, John cradled it in his hands and walked out to the driveway to release it. We were all standing in a circle around him, now thinking perhaps the poor thing was dead – it lay so still in his hand. Suddenly, the bird took flight. And what a flight it was. It shot straight in the air, way past the tallest oak trees bordering the backyard. Smaller and smaller she grew, until she was gone. It was another long while before the instruments were set up and Bill was ready to start the show, but by the time we finished, no one else had shown up. I felt a bit sorry that it might be just the two of us (six if we included our kids and my parents, hanging out together downstairs), but also thought how cool a private concert would be. We decided to wait a bit longer and eat some of our snacks, so the guys wandered out the deck and Muriah and I sat at the barstools in the kitchen. Unexpectedly, we both began sharing our hearts as if we were old friends, recently reunited. Muriah opened up about how she and Bill were doing as newlyweds. I told her about my heartache the last time we’d seen them perform. We talked about the sadness of failed marriages and unfruitful pregnancies, how hard it is sometimes to see the good in it all. Of course John and Bill got along well, but Bill’s used to sharing his life with strangers. Finally, we admitted defeat and our guests began to sing and play. If it made a difference to them that the living room was empty that night, I couldn’t tell. Bill’s passion came through in every song and he held nothing back from the stories he told in between. Muriah provided the perfect backdrop, and the two seemed to play for themselves just as much as the rest of us. They filled the house that night with more hope than should fit in a beat up, rusty hatchback. Hope we would need for the nine months we had just discovered lay ahead. When they left for the hotel that night we asked about getting together for lunch the next day, but in the morning felt a little less sure of our newfound kinship, and never made the call. We were a little paranoid about looking like desperate fans, so we decided to let the final fragrance linger while we got back to our lives in the real world. Eighteen months passed and John was leading a small group in a friend’s home once a week. We decided to have Bill and Muriah come back, hoping to give them a real crowd this time. The home we chose was much smaller, but the room was filled with many new listeners. Bill charmed everyone that night with his stories and songs and Muriah brought with her the same warm support as before. This time, we did meet for lunch the next day and there was nothing uncomfortable about it at all. At least not from my perspective, but I was a bit distracted, by my one year old and his lovely blue eyes, as he finessed his newly acquired walking skills, gliding from chair to chair.