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I’m kicking off a series called “What’s Your Favorite Song?” where we all get to share our favorite song of a particular topical genre. As a songwriter, there are certain songs people expect you to write. For example: sooner or later someone is going to ask to hear a love song. But my feeling was why add another love song to the pain of the world :-). Maybe I’m jaded, but I mean it’s been done so many times – how could you ever hope to offer anything original that didn’t feel derivative? And with so many songs distorted by maudlin sentimentality at best or narcissistic self-centeredness at worst, it can leave me feeling like the last thing I want to hear is another love song, let alone try to write one. And yet… and yet… There comes along once in a while a love song that awakens deep longings, and makes your heart ache with the beauty of it, and you believe again (cue the love theme from Titanic here). You know, the kind of song that might make you want to stand outside the window of that special someone, raise your boombox up over your head like John Cusack in Say Anything, and hit play. But what song would you play? All kidding aside, I’m talking about the kind of song makes you ache with something like joy and want to love better. So I wanted to start my own “On The Table” thread and asked some rabbit roomers what their top three favorite loves songs are and why. I also hope to hear from other posters as well! Please tell us about three (or more, or less) of your favorite love songs and why we should love them as much as you do. (There are subcategories of love songs like heartbreak songs, break up songs, love lost, etc. So with this one I’m specifically thinking of love songs that speak to the beauty and longing of it, even the wishing for or gratitude of it.) Alright, I’ll start! The line-up is ever changing, but right now I think my top three are as follows: 3. “I Want You To Be My Love” – Over The Rhine I just like the way it feels and the beautiful simplicity of it. (Listen to this song and watch a really cool fan video by clicking here) 2. “Take It With Me When I Go” – Tom Waits “…in a land there’s a town, in that town there’s a house and in that house there’s a woman. And in that woman there’s a heart I love I’m going to take it with me when I go…” (Listen to “Take It With Me” by clicking here) 1. “The Luckiest” – Ben Folds I think a part of why I fell in love with this song is because it came from such an unexpected source. It is perhaps one of the most tender love songs I’ve ever heard and it comes from one of the most crass and smart alecky artists I know. Because of this, I think it comes as a gift – unexpected and therefore able to get past my heart’s best defenses. I love, too, that the lyric could sound creepy coming from anybody else (verse 2). The song is so unguardedly sincere, original, and startlingly tender. Folds knows that the usual well where love songs come from has been nearly exhausted and that if it’s to mean anything, he has to come up with another way of saying “I Love You”. I think he pulls it off: (verse 2)…What if I’d been born fifty years before you In a house on a street where you lived? Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike Would I know? And in a white sea of eyes I see one pair that I recognize And I know That I am… the luckiest I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties And one day passed away in his sleep And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days And passed away I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong That I know That I am… the luckiest (Listen to “The Luckiest” by clicking here) 1. “Sky Blue and Black” – Jackson Browne This song strikes me as a beautifully sad love song. 2. “Rock of Your Love” – John Hiatt One of my favorite choruses in all of musicdom. 3. “Let My Love Open the Door” – Pete Townshend God bless the 80’s with its seemingly-lost art of hook writing and the 2-1/2 minute pop song. This song still feels so very good to me, even 20-something years after its initial release. I recommend the “E. Cola mix” version on his “Best Of” album. I know it would sound cooler if I name-dropped living legends, classic rock or cult status artists, but I’m not really cool at all. So I have to go back to the time when I did believe I was cool and pay tribute to the greatest love songs circa ’80s hair metal. 1. Winger – “Seventeen” Key Lyric: She’s only seventeen/ Daddy says she’s too young/ But she’s old enough for me 2. Bon Jovi – “I’ll be There For You” Key Lyric: I’ll be the water when you get thirsty, baby/ When you get drunk, I’ll be the wine 3. Sheriff – “When I’m With You” Key Lyric: Baby ooh I get chills when I’m with you oh Boy, lemme see here… First let me say that I’m not a big fan of favorites lists simply because mine are always changing depending on what’s going on in my life and what I’m listening to. With that in mind though, here’s what I narrowed it down to (oh boy, this is gonna be harder than I thought): 3. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon and Garfunkel Although it’s old and everyone’s heard it a million times, it’s just so heartbreakingly beautiful and ageless that I just couldn’t pass it by. My favorite part of the song is the verse that generally gets skipped over, the third. Sail on silver girl Sail on by Your time has come to shine All your dreams are on their way See how they shine If you need a friend I’m sailing right behind Like a bridge over troubled water I will ease your mind I love that verse not only because it’s the climax of the song, but because it’s an acknowledgment of the fact that loving a person means that sometimes you have to let them go on without you while assuring them that you still love and support them. 2. “Song of Songs” by Pierce Pettis This song is steamy. No really. Don’t let the kids read this: When your garden is wet with the morning dew I will lie in the naked grass with you I’ll fill my head with nature’s thick perfume As the blushing sun throws its scarlet hues Across the sky And all creation groans See what I mean? My favorite is the last verse though: So who is this like rosy dawn Moving softly like a rising fawn Trailing starlight as she runs Fair as the moon bright as the sun She is my bride I’ve come to take her home And I will sing to her my song of songs. If I had a wife, I’d sing that to her…actually, nevermind…I can’t sing and it’d just come out creepy. After much deliberation I’m giving my number one spot to… 1. “In the Garden” by Van Morrison – This song just pulls it all together. It’s sensual, it’s spiritual, it’s intimate. It’s an amazing picture of two people in love and allowing the Lord to be a part of their union. And as I touched your cheek so lightly Born again you were, and blushed And we touched each other lightly And we felt the presence of the Christ within our hearts In the garden And I turned to you and I said No guru, no method, no teacher Just you and I and nature And the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost In the garden Wet with rain Awesome sauce. And because I’m a horrid list-maker, here’s a few runner’s-up: Springsteen’s Secret Garden (perfectly captures that mysterious thing about women that perfectly baffles me), Falling Slowly from the Once Soundtrack, North Dakota by Lyle Lovett, and Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (the long, dramatic, Diana Ross version…and that version only). Being a huge fan of these two artists for at least the past 25 years, here are two of my favorite love songs: “Something in the Way She Moves” – James Taylor. A song that centers on the almost metaphysical nature and subtleties of human love. And the for longing side of love: “A Case of You” – Joni Mitchell. That’s James Taylor on acoustic guitar, by the way. “Home Within Your Heart”- David Wilcox, from Underneath. I love it because it is a love song about fighting. And it’s beautifully composed. It opens with this: “Too tired to sleep, too angry to pray, too far down to get back up, too lost to find my way. Who knows what happened, I’m too confused to say, and too far gone to turn back now; it’s too late anyway. I don’t need a clever confidant to try to soothe with hollow words, I’ve heard them all. What I need is just to know I have a home within your heart.” “Hold Up My Arms”- Andrew Peterson, from Clear to Venus I love the side-by-side image of marriage captured in this one. “Hold up my arms like Moses in the desert when the battle went long. Hold up my arms. We can go at this together when my arms aren’t strong.” The reason this is on my list is because I recently heard Andrew sing it to a room full of grade-school kids. He was there for a reading of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and they asked him to play some songs. This one was a special request, and the teacher had taught the kids the chorus. So when he got to the chorus, every kid in the room started belting out the chorus along with him, and I have to tell you, it was quite powerful hearing just Andrew with his guitar and the voices of those children. I heard it in a new way and it made my list in a big way that day. “No Place Closer to Heaven” – Charlie Peacock, from West Coast Diaries, Volume 2 Always has been ever since I first heard it. Thanks for a great topic, Jason. It should be noted of course, the futility of this kind of project, distilling utmost pinnacle in a veritable forest of pinnacles. As a life-long lover of music which has consumed my personal and professional life for over forty years, this is a daunting task, for sure. The only hope I have of completing such an assignment is to shift my mind into random mode, with a little help from my iPod, to cherry pick the ripest musical fruit, which just happens to fall from the tree. 1. “Beauty” – David Mead It’s haunting, lovely in an aching, melancholy way. Like most favorite songs, it’s personal. It illustrates my life long quest for beauty in all forms–music, movies, books, nature, even marital bliss–all of which, in the end, leave me to one extent or another (sorry to say) longing: “Beauty, where to find it, Can’t be far Beauty, where you’re hiding, Tell me, I’ll go where you are I’ll go where you are.” The bridge is the pivot point: ‘Cause every tear your silly eye bleeds Well never fear, you may never see worse than this I want to find a beautiful place But maybe I forgot about today, now, here It’s a reminder to graciously embrace beauty, with the realization that each beauty–each life, each love, each moment, however wonderful–is a mere reflection of that which is to come. To me, that’s concurrently very happy and very sad. 2. “Woman” – John Lennon At once–lyrically and musically–harvests gratitude and unspeakable love through the vehicle of regret. It’s too trite to call this song an apology, though ostensibly, that’s what it is. I distinctly remember typing the lyrics out, as a prelude to my handwritten apology to my wife, after one of my early, long forgotten marital offences, from the early days. 3. “True” – Glen Phillips On the surface, a prosaic ballad, but every line just so happens to characterize the primary relationship in my life. The double-entendre of the phrase, “I’ll be true,” with meaning that encompasses the respective meanings of honesty and faithfulness elevates the song into something more. My soul shreds into a million pieces when I remember those times when I haven’t been true, a million more pieces when my wife tells me that it’s okay anyway.

Sometime about eight years ago, I discovered that I was a Springsteen fan. I didn’t become a fan, mind you, I simply found out that I was one. I never really paid much attention to him during my formative musical years in the 80’s. I saw the “Born in the USA.” video on MTV plenty of times and remember watching it in something like morbid fascination. Who the heck was that scruffy, gravelly-voiced, apparent red-neck and why did he sing about being born in the USA when he clearly didn’t sound like he was enjoying the experience? Not my kind of thing at all, I’d think, as I waited for the next video and hoped it would be Def Leppard or Whitesnake. A decade or so went by to the tune of more Springsteen anthems than I could count. They always stuck on the back wall of my subconscious but never really connected, due in large part to that fact that I was suspicious of anything that seemed too popular and this guy they called “The Boss”, well, he fit that bill. I didn’t want anything to do with him. Def Leppard, now there was some healthy counter-cultural rebellion. Not popular at all, those guys. It’s thoughts like that that make me so very glad to have finally grown up. I think it must have been while watching Jerry Maguire and hearing “Secret Garden” that I realized that this Springsteen guy might be a genius. It took me years to plumb the depths of that realization. First with the Grammy winning folk album The Ghost of Tom Joad and then, going back into the past, I discovered and rediscovered those old anthems I’d always heard and never known: “Jungleland“, “Badlands“, “Born to Run“, “Better Days“. Songs about perseverance, and hope, and finding beauty in places I’d never thought to look for it like American backstreets and alleyways and the working class people that build them, walk them, live and die on them. I realized that all those songs I’d taken in over the years were much more than a redneck and a rousing chorus. I still can’t get enough of them. Then I found the other songs. Fiery, slow-burners about hopelessness and broken dreams and despair that somehow managed to capture the struggles of my own life. Songs about people whose lives didn’t turn out the way they dreamed they would. Songs like “The River“, “Atlantic City“, and “The Promise” are memorials to lost and broken people that’ve come to their wit’s end. People who, by virtue of having lived, deserve to be remembered but aren’t. All those songs about being lost aren’t the end, though. Answering those shattered dreams, darkened roads, and lonesome days are songs like “Land of Hope and Dreams“, “The Promised Land“, and “The Rising“. Songs that acknowledge that there is more than just the struggle, more than all the pain, and despair, songs that remind us that for those that have faith, there is reward. That is why I am a Bruce Springsteen fan. I don’t know what his religious beliefs are, but I know enough to tell you that he brushes up against Truth when he writes lyrics like “I believe in the love that you gave me. I believe in the faith that can save me. I believe in the hope and I pray that some day it may raise me above these Badlands.” That’s good stuff. After years of coming to love such a massive collection of work, I finally got to see Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band live last week in Nashville. Watching him perform is something that you have to see to understand. Even at the age of 58 (59 as of Saturday) he is a wellspring of contagious energy and conviction that’s enough to ignite passion in the thousands come to watch. The Boss came on stage and asked the audience, “Are you ready to be transformed? Are you ready to be reborn? Let’s get to it.” That’s a beautiful thing, an invitation to transformation. What followed was three hours I’ll remember for the rest of my life. There is something epic about Springsteen’s music. Something elemental that thunders across the arena, shaking things loose inside me. Whether it’s the volcanic intensity of Nils Lofgren’s solo in “Youngstown” or the anthemic cry of the thousands of souls of the audience, each feeling they are born to run, the music transports you to a country that is wholly Springsteen. During one song, he tells the story of how as a boy he saw an electric guitar in a store window and sold his pool table to buy it. He set himself to learning how to play and got used to his father, tired of the noise, shouting up to his room, “Turn down that God-damned guitar!” He heard those words again and again over the years but eventually, through perseverance, practice, and faith, that shout one day became, “Turn down that God-blessed guitar!” Transformation. Later he quiets the screams of the crowd, a finger to his lips, “Shhhh. I’ve got to tell you something,” he says and a lady down the aisle from me is answering, “Tell us, Bruce.” “Sshhhh,” he says until the arena is calm. “I have to tell you something. There’s a river out there. A River of Life, and I’m gonna to go down to that river, and build me a house, and I’m going to get me some life!” He goes into full tent-revival mode. “There’s a River of Faith, and I’m gonna go down, and build me a house on that river, and get me some faith! And I want you to come with me because I can’t get there on my own.” That’s the gospel of Bruce Springsteen. It’s good stuff and I love his conviction. As I said before, it brushes right up against the truth, but it’s not the whole story. The real Truth is that he’s right, there is a River of Life, I’m going down to it and I hope he goes with me, but I can’t build me a house there. It’s already been built. I want Life out of that River and he’s right, I’ll never get it on my own but the fact is, I don’t have to go get it and I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. It’s already been given, all I’ve got to do is accept it. That’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love me some Springsteen even if I disagree with his works-based philosophy. At least he’s pointing people in the right general direction. I wish more singers on the world stage asked as many questions as he does and gave as many good answers. On the drive home, my brother and I wondered where the Springsteens of this generation are. We couldn’t really come up with any candidates and that’s a sad thing. I don’t hear popular music these days inviting people to make adventures of their simple lives, I don’t hear any new voices on the radio calling out for a transformation of government, or of thought, or of soul. When the management changes, who’s going to be the new Boss? I don’t know but until then we could do a lot worse than Bruce Springsteen and his message of hope and dreams. If you’re interested, click here for the set list and lyrics of the Nashville show.

Okay, so the record label wanted a new bio.  The bio gets an update every time a new record releases, because press people and websites and concert promoters use it for blurbs and such.  Well, they wanted me to take a swing at writing my own, just to see what might happen.  This isn’t the bio we’re using (Kierstin Casella, a very capable writer, did an excellent job on it), but I thought I’d share it here anyway, in light of the questions about Resurrection Letters, Vol. II. ANDREW PETERSON INTERVIEWS ANDREW PETERSON (Though he realizes how very strange that is.) INTERVIEWER: First of all, Andrew, I’d like to thank you for sitting down with me.  I’m a big fan. SONGWRITER: Oh, you’re very welcome.  I’m a big fan of yours, too. INTERVIEWER: Really? SONGWRITER: Oh yeah.  I like your hair. INTERVIEWER: Really. SONGWRITER: It’s so poofy.  And brown!  There’s not much brown hair in the world, is there?  I’m glad yours is brown. INTERVIEWER: Well, for the record, I hate my hair.  It’s always been so thick and unruly there’s nothing I can do with it.  You know those kids in junior high with the surfer cuts? SONGWRITER: The ones with the bangs hanging in their eyes? INTERVIEWER: Yeah.  And they hold their heads kinda sideways, and flip the hair out of their eyes.  It’s so cool. SONGWRITER: Yeah, that’s pretty cool.  You can’t do that? INTERVIEWER: Nope.  I tried growing my hair long, but it just gets poofier and poofier— SONGWRITER: But not a good poofy? INTERVIEWER: No.  Frizzy poofy.  It doesn’t hang.  If I tried the hair flippy thing my whole wig would just flop around and double in size.  That’s why I usually wear a hat.  Or I buzz my head. SONGWRITER: What does your wife say? INTERVIEWER: She says she likes my hair.  The poofier the better. SONGWRITER: Why not listen to her? INTERVIEWER: I dunno.  Can we talk about something else? SONGWRITER: Sure.  You’re supposed to be interviewing me. INTERVIEWER: Right.  Let’s get down to business.  It says here that you’ve sold eighty million records.  How does that make you feel? SONGWRITER: It makes me feel good.  Would you pass the caviar, please? INTERVIEWER: Sure. SONGWRITER: It makes me feel like—wait.  Did you say eighty million records? INTERVIEWER: That’s what it says. SONGWRITER: That’s impossible.  If I had sold that many records I’d be eating caviar, and at the very least my car would have A/C. INTERVIEWER: But you just ate caviar.  I just passed it to you. SONGWRITER: Well, that was a joke.  We both know I haven’t sold that many albums. INTERVIEWER: So my information is wrong? SONGWRITER: Yeah.  Look again. INTERVIEWER: Ah.  Sorry.  I was looking at a Def Leppard press release.  My bad.  So how many records have you sold? SONGWRITER: I’m not sure.  I used to worry about that stuff, but I’m trying to quit. INTERVIEWER: Why? SONGWRITER: Well, it makes me remarkably cranky.  If I called my manager and asked her how my record sales were doing, whatever the number was wouldn’t be high enough to make me happy.  There would always be someone more famous, more popular, more successful (from a worldly standpoint), and that would take my mind off of what I’m supposed to be doing. INTERVIEWER: Which is? SONGWRITER: To eat caviar. INTERVIEWER: No, really.  What are you supposed to be doing? SONGWRITER: Shedding light.  Making music.  Telling stories. INTERVIEWER: Stories? AUTHOR: Ho, there, lads! INTERVIEWER: Who’s he? SONGWRITER: (Whispering while AUTHOR eats a crumpet.) Oh, that’s Andrew.  He’s an author now, and he’s taking it way too seriously. INTERVIEWER: An author?  Wow.  What was the book? SONGWRITER: It’s called On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, which I think is a ridiculous title.  He thinks it’s really funny for some reason. INTERVIEWER: So it’s a funny book? SONGWRITER: Well, no, not exactly.  It’s a fantasy/adventure story that doesn’t take itself too seriously.  Unlike Mr. “I Wish I Were British” here. INTERVIEWER: (Clears throat.) Andrew, how’s it going? AUTHOR: (Eating fish and chips.) Splendidly, thank you for asking!  Do either of you chaps have a light for my pipe?  I feel the need to stain my teeth and look intellectual. INTERVIEWER: Um, sure.  Here you go. AUTHOR: Many thanks, my boy. INTERVIEWER: So what’s up with the weird hat? AUTHOR: This old thing?  I wear it because my hair is unsightly in its poofiness.  Did someone mention stories? SONGWRITER: Yeah, I did.  This is my interview, not yours. AUTHOR: You’re upset.  Is the smoke bothering you? SONGWRITER: No, but you are. AUTHOR: How rude! SONGWRITER: Well, I thought the interviewer and I had a good thing going here.  The conversation was picking up—I had said some Very Important Things.  And then you show up with your pipe and your hat and your silly accent.  What do you want, anyway? AUTHOR: I just thought I’d stop by for a moment and say hello.  I have another pipe if you’d— SONGWRITER: I don’t want to smoke a silly pipe, C.S. Lewis. AUTHOR: I’m not C.S. Lewis. SONGWRITER: You can say that again. AUTHOR: You don’t have to be so mean about it. SONGWRITER: I’m just being honest. INTERVIEWER: Are you two finished?  I have some questions for both of you, actually. SONGWRITER: Really? AUTHOR: Really? INTERVIEWER: Yup. AUTHOR: Delightful! SONGWRITER: Fine. INTERVIEWER: So this question is for the songwriter.  What’s the latest project? SONGWRITER: It’s called Resurrection Letters, Vol. II. INTERVIEWER: Wait—I don’t have anything in my notes about a volume one.  Has that been released yet? SONGWRITER: Nope. (Pause.) INTERVIEWER: Okay.  Is there…anything you’d like to add to that? SONGWRITER: Nope. INTERVIEWER: Okay. (Pause.) AUTHOR: Oh, bother!  Would you stop being so enigmatic?  Stop acting like it’s not a trifle confusing that you’re releasing volume two before volume one. SONGWRITER: But I like being mysterious. AUTHOR: No one likes a show off.  Just tell the man what he wants to know. SONGWRITER: If I do, will you stop bothering me? AUTHOR: Perhaps. SONGWRITER: The reason I’m releasing this album as Resurrection Letters, Vol. II is that when we were in the middle of the record— INTERVIEWER: We? SONGWRITER: Me and my musical compadres, the Captains Courageous. AUTHOR: He’s being enigmatic again.  Their names are Ben Shive and Andy Gullahorn. INTERVIEWER: Thank you. AUTHOR: Think nothing of it. SONGWRITER: Anyway, when we were in the middle of the record, we realized that these songs dealt with the second half of the story.  They seemed to find their unity in the idea that they touched on the effects of Christ’s resurrection on our own lives.  These are songs about what happened in the wake of that day. INTERVIEWER: And what happened in the wake of that day? SONGWRITER: Are you serious? INTERVIEWER: Indulge me. SONGWRITER: Life happened.  True, abundant life.  Life touched by a freedom and grace that those in the Old Testament only dreamed of.  See, the Resurrection—that moment when Jesus drew a breath in the dark of the tomb and his flesh and blood and bones reanimated—real flesh and bones, mind you—that moment changed the universe.  It was the climax of the long crescendo that marked the change of the song from minor to major.  Or from simple to complex.  Or from darkness to a spray of refracted light. AUTHOR: Now you’re talking. SONGWRITER: Our lives are still difficult, of course.  The world still needs fixing.  But the Fall, the great brokenness of the world, began to work backwards after that moment on Easter Sunday.  God gave us his Holy Spirit so that we could partake in the long work of pushing back the effects of the Fall.  God said to Death, you may come this far and no further.  And the flood waters began their recession.  Am I making sense? INTERVIEWER: I think so.  You’re saying that this album isn’t so much a story album, but a collection of songs that are all touched by the idea that Christ’s resurrection is a part of our lives today. AUTHOR: Well said, Chumblythorpe!  Another way to put it: Resurrection is at the heart of the story God is telling. SONGWRITER: Right. INTERVIEWER: So are you planning on writing volume one? SONGWRITER: Well, yes. AUTHOR: That’s where I come in.  May I? SONGWRITER: Sure. AUTHOR: I’m working on a book (also called Resurrection Letters) with a Bible scholar friend of mine.  It’ll be a companion to the albums, one part meditational, one part commentary on the events surrounding Easter Sunday.  The album got its title from a series of meditations I wrote last year during Holy Week.  Someone on the website forum called them “resurrection letters”, and a light went on in my head.  I knew that I wanted this album to bear that title.  But when it came down to it, the songs, as he said, didn’t deal specifically with Christ’s resurrection. INTERVIEWER: But they did deal with the theme of resurrection.  A general resurrection as opposed to the specific Resurrection, right? SONGWRITER: Exactly. AUTHOR: In the process of arranging and writing the book, we’re laying the groundwork for volume one.  It may take a long time.  In fact, another album may release before volume one is written and recorded.  We’ll have to see how things pan out.  But the prospect of using these floppy, guitar and piano-playing fingers to make music that tells the story of Christ’s passion is perhaps the highest calling a musician can aspire to. INTERVIEWER: So there’s going to be a book, and the writing of the songs will come from that.  Is that what you’re saying? AUTHOR: Yes.  We think.  Who knows, really?  We’re making this up as we go. INTERVIEWER: And in the meantime you’re releasing volume two as an album unto itself. SONGWRITER: Yes. CLOWN: Dingle dongle dippity doo! INTERVIEWER: Who is that? SONGWRITER: Oh, that’s Andrew.  Ignore him, or you’ll encourage more strangeness. CLOWN: (Somersaulting across the floor.) Jangly fangly frimp dee dooooo! INTERVIEWER: What’s he doing? AUTHOR: He’s working on another song for kids.  He does that sometimes.  Don’t look at him!  Just keep talking. CLOWN: Borp?  Pribb!  Zeeebert! (Skips away in parakeet costume.) INTERVIEWER: That was odd. SONGWRITER: You have no idea. INTERVIEWER: So he writes songs for kids. SONGWRITER: Yeah.  He and his friend Randall Goodgame released a children’s record a little while back called Slugs and Bugs and Lullabies.  It did really well, and opened the door to a fun partnership between them and the folks at Big Idea, Inc. AUTHOR: They’re the ones who do the VeggieTales videos.  So far, the Goodgame/Peterson team has written three of the Silly Songs with Larry. INTERVIEWER: That sounds like a lot of fun. SONGWRITER: Oh, it is.  He loves it.  Shh!  Here he comes again. CLOWN: (Playing an orange ukelele.) Gleep!  Zazzamarandabo! INTERVIEWER: There seems to be a lot going on these days.  You have three kids, right? SONGWRITER: Yeah.  Three amazing kids.  Jamie and I have been married for 13 years now. INTERVIEWER: Congratulations.  Speaking of Jamie, she used to sing with you, right? SONGWRITER: For the first five years of my career.  She really liked to sing with me, but she never really aspired to be a Singer.  She was a schoolteacher for a few years while I finished college, and now she homeschools our kids.  She loves it. INTERVIEWER: What else is on your plate? SONGWRITER: Other than the caviar? INTERVIEWER: The imaginary caviar.  Right. SONGWRITER: Well, now that Resurrection Letters, Vol. II is wrapped and ready to release, I’m taking some time off. AUTHOR: And I’m finishing my next book, by jove. INTERVIEWER: So the two of you don’t work at the same time? SONGWRITER: No, there’s not enough room in this town (points at head) for both of us.  It’s hard to think about music when you’re working out the internal conflict of the main character in chapter 49. AUTHOR: And I can’t get a thing done with all that guitar racket banging around.  Would you pass the hot tea? SONGWRITER: For crying out loud, knock it off with all the anglophile business. AUTHOR: I can’t help it.  It’s the hat. SONGWRITER: Then take it off. AUTHOR: I can’t.  My hair’s too poofy. INTERVIEWER: You guys are pathetic. We’re done here. CLOWN: (Dismounts unicyle.  Hugs INTERVIEWER.) INTERVIEWER: (Runs away.) SONGWRITER: (Shrugs.) AUTHOR: (Moves to Oxford.)

It began with a dream I had in which a huge angelic archer, flying above a city alongside me and the rest of our soaring army, drew his bow and shot an arrow, which curved around and cut a wide and exhilarating swath through the approaching enemy lines of the demonic horde. The dream intrigued me, and soon I’d bought a compound bow, with a sight and all. But lately I’ve retrogressed to a recurve and instinctive shooting – and I love it. One of the reasons, I suppose, is when I play music I often love to fly by the seat of my pants and play instinctively, improvising, soloing by the feel of the moment. It’s exhilarating when all goes well. But I’ve quickly realized a commonality between archery and music; faith is not only a necessary ingredient – it’s the very channel through which mastery flows. In improvising a solo during one of our tunes, I have to make the choice to believe, against all the times I’ve missed the mark (even if a moment ago), that “this is the one.” I’ve watched Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski do this with their singing and playing; I’ve seen Jerry Douglas do it constantly, and Barry Bales, though he doesn’t solo, has the same faith-attitude as well. If they fall off slightly for a moment they jump right back on it again. It’s a letting-go of what is past and straining toward what is ahead. “This one’s going to hit dead center.” Confidence. Assurance. Faith. The same is true in shooting a bow. Hitting the mark is determined by the level of concentration, the way in which we block out all but the spot we’re aiming at. When I aim generally and don’t concentrate well, I hit generally. When I aim specifically at that little X, and really believe, deeply faithe that this arrow will hit that spot, my shots in the center go way up. While I don’t hit the X every time, I hit a lot closer around it. A key component in concentration is faith. The choices of faith bring an attitude of faith which causes the action of faith; that internal choice changes what happens in the external world. The body conforms to the inner choice, and with the practice of faith, we get better and better at music, or archery, or whatever it is that we love. Now, this faith is not presumption. A person can’t just pick up a bow and nail the X every time just because he believes it. As with any sport, or music, or our walk with Christ, technique must be built. But faith, as we practice, causes our soul/body to progressively conform to the inner desire of the spirit. A friend and I were shooting baskets the other day, something I haven’t done in years. I was terrible, lost a game of Horse in short order – until I began to faithe. My shots improved drastically as I set aside the past (“I’m no good. I’ve not played in years”) and took an attitude of faith toward what was ahead. Before each shot I’d will it to go in, believed it would – exercising my faith-will. I didn’t make every shot, but the difference was remarkable. That’s a common link between those who perform at a high level. And a musician, athlete, or artist with that attitude ends up going a long way toward hitting the mark. Phil 3:13-14, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Faith pushes on, forgets what’s behind, takes forgiveness as a ‘given,’ moving on into the abundant life Jesus promised us. Faith knows I am dead to sin. Faith knows I am dead to having to be holy by my own steam. Faith knows a life of holiness, of love-for-God-and-others, is possible, and relies on Christ to hit the mark. Faith looks in the mirror before a Bible study, a concert, or in the morning before making breakfast for the kids, and knows  Christ lives in me and will change lives today through me. As we exercise that faith, continually forgetting what is behind and living in that Now moment, we gain sufficiency. We take aim, faithe, and release that Now arrow. Hamartano, “missing the mark,” begins to give way to hitting it more consistently. We see Christ come through us again and again, and begin to come closer and closer to the mark, instead of always missing it by a mile. 2Cor. 3:18 says “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” When we practice faith in the power and love of Christ within us, seeing Him in the mirror, He progressively changes us into His image. By one sacrifice He has perfected forever (because His perfect life is in us) those who are being made holy (by this process of faith in that indwelling Perfection). That’s faith. It’s fulfilling, fun, and many times through adverse circumstances is tough and gritty work. But it’s the only way to a high sufficiency in Christ. Those who faithe are those who grow.

Paul Simon’s latest record, Surprise, (already more than a year old) is aptly titled for me. As a huge fan of all of Simon’s work, I had picked it up the day it came out, but only spun it a few times. I liked it fine, but it didn’t immediately connect with me the way his earlier work does. Some of it was maybe because of the songs, some maybe because of the more modern production value by Brian Eno (this isn’t your dad’s Paul Simon album!). One of my favorite records of all time is The Rhythm Of The Saints, so I guess I prefer my Paul Simon records to have an international flavor. Well, enough about all that… The point is, in hearing Eno’s distinctive sonic thumbprint on Coldplay’s new record, it made me want to revisit Paul Simon’s collaboration with Eno, the album Surprise. And what a surprise it’s been for me! It’s all I’ve listened to for nearly 6 weeks. Every time I try to branch out, I’m unsatisfied and go back to what has become a gem of a record to me. The record is sonically daring as you might expect from the artist who took us around the world from Africa to New Orleans to South America on his seminal records of the 80’s, but it’s daring in different ways. Just like Simon blended old world ethnic genres with new world pop sensibilites on previous efforts, here with Eno he blends modern sounds with the oldest questions that mankind has been asking for millennia. You see, as adventurous as the production may be, the lyrical themes Simon tackles here are even more so. This is a record about the BIG questions, and Surprise finds Simon singing that it’s “time to sit down, shut up, and think about God and wait for the hour of my rescue.” It’s clear from the start that Paul Simon intends to bring his incredible gift to bear upon the mysteries whose names usually start with capital letters. I guess it’s all a part of getting older, and that is in part what this record is about, too – the questions, fears, perspective, and wisdom that come with age. “Who’s going to love you when your looks are gone?” Simon sings in “Outrageous” and his delivery of the question makes you want to smile and cry at the same time. Of course it is one of the greatest of human fears: to outlive your usefulness, to grow old, to be alone with your youth and vibrancy all but spent, afraid that maybe nobody thinks you have anything to offer anymore. “Whose gonna love you when your looks are gone?” Simon asks and it makes you laugh because it’s a funny thing to ask. And then he even offers an uncharacteristically sincere answer: “God will, like He waters the flowers on your windowsill.” In “How Can You Live in The Northeast?’ Simon is exploring, I think, the nature of why we believe what we believe. Is faith inherited? How can we swallow the pill that religion ask us to swallow? “How can you be a Christian, how can you be a Jew, how can you be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu?” Then he writes: “…we enter life on earth. Names and religion come just after date of birth. Then everybody gets a tongue to speak, and everyone hears an inner voice. A day at the end of the week to wonder and rejoice…” and then there’s the mysterious and penetrating question: “if the answer is infinite light, why do we sleep in the dark?” But it’s “I Don’t Believe” that I think offers the most pointed lyrics and observations about the nature of faith. “Acts of kindness, like breadcrumbs in a fairytale forest Lead us past dangers as light melts the darkness But I don’t believe, and I’m not consoled I lean closer to the fire, but I’m cold The earth was born in a storm The waters receded, the mountains were formed “The universe loves a drama,” you know And ladies and gentlemen this is the show” I’m inclined to interpret the next lyric as expressing the sense you have when your worldview is shaken and the belief (whether religious, atheistic, etc) you’ve held dear all of a sudden appears bankrupt: “I got a call from my broker The broker informed me I’m broke I was dealing my last hand of poker My cards were useless as smoke Simon’s questioning continues as he ponders what many of us have wondered about the nature of life and whether it continues after our last breath: “Oh, guardian angel Don’t taunt me like this, on a clear summer evening as soft as a kiss My children are laughing, not a whisper of care My love is brushing her long chestnut hair I don’t believe a heart can be filled to the brim Then vanish like mist as though life were a whim Maybe the heart is part of the mist And that’s all that there is or could ever exist Maybe and maybe and maybe some more Maybe’s the exit that I’m looking for…” I identify with Paul Simon’s temperament here with his growing list of maybe’s and how “maybe” itself can become a philosophy in and of itself (or perhaps an escape hatch or “exit” from the hard work of looking for a more definitive answer? I don’t know if that’s what Simon is saying, but that’s where my thinking went) It’s not all so dreadfully serious, however, and this record is full of Simon’s signature brand of lyricism that is whimsical, poetic, curious, intellectual and that in the end deliver an emotional punch. From “Sure Don’t Feel Like Love”: “A tear drop consists of electrolytes and salt. The chemistry of crying is not concerned with blame or fault” One of my favorite moments on the record is towards the end of this same song where Simon seems to reluctantly admit: “wrong again, I could be wrong again” It sounds like a humble confession until Simon’s wit shines through and he seemingly must reach way back in his memory to cite the precious few moments he was wrong: “I remember once in August 1993, I was wrong and I could be wrong again…” From “Beautiful”: “Snowman sittin’ in the sun doesn’t have time to waste. He had a little bit too much fun, now his head’s erased… yes sir head’s erased, brains a bowl of jelly. It hasn’t hurt his sense of taste judging from his belly” From “Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean”: “Once upon a time there was an ocean. But now it’s a mountain range. Something unstoppable set into motion. Nothing is different, but everything’s changed…” And: “when will I cash in my lottery ticket, And bury my past with my burdens and strife? I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden And make every lover the love of my life…” And the last two tracks are my favorites, with Simon singing in “That’s Me”: “I never cared much for money, and money never cared for me I was more like a land locked sailor, searching for the Emerald sea…” And then musically you feel this next lyric perhaps even more then you understand it: “Oh my God. First love opens like a flower…” And here we see Simon’s brilliance, moving from a relatively obvious metaphor (love opening like a flower) to a more mysterious one: “A black bear running through the forest light holds me in her sight and her power. But tricky skies, your eyes are true The future is beauty and sorrow…” The most accessible song on the record is also the most sentimental (and my early favorite). It is a lovely song from father to daughter: “And though I can’t guarantee there’s nothing scary hiding under your bed I’m gonna stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever And never leave you til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head… I’m gonna watch you shine, gonna watch you grow… There could never be a father who loved his daughter as much as I love you” This same song has this beautiful lyric: “If you leap awake in the mirror of a bad dream And for a fraction of a second you can’t remember where you are Just open your window and follow your memory upstream To the meadow in the mountain where we counted every falling star…” Stunning. Paul Simon writes the kind of lyrics the rest of us wish we could write. Simon’s songwriting is unconventional and invigorating, and the more I’ve listened to Surprise the more I’ve fallen in love with the musical production of this record, too. Eno’s work is always evocative and beautiful, but never sentimental. He loves simplicity but is obsessed with complex sounds that create texture. The production isn’t overly clever (with a few exceptions in my opinion) but is full of sounds that tickle my ears in places that until now had been untouched. It’s fresh, buoyant, and original. Eno’s mastery of using discord is always perplexing to me and makes me wonder how his brain works (check out the discordant acoustic guitar parts in “Father and Daughter”). There’s a wonderful moment in Daniel Lanois’ movie “Here Is What Is’ where Brian Eno is lost in his excitement over a weave in a rug that he bought in Morocco because of the unusual combination of threads and colors that ought not go together, but they somehow do, and in that moment I gained a better understanding of Eno’s work and enthusiasms. From the first sounds of track 1, the musical and “sonic landscape” of Brian Eno’s induced sense of modernity is indeed a surprise. But even more surprising is the aplomb, sensitivity and whimsy with which Paul Simon tackles some of the most challenging ideas to ever trouble mankind (and to ever trouble a Paul Simon record). In the end, everything about it, as Simon says, is a love song and Surprise proves to be full of surprises as rhymin’ Simon shows us that he’s still crazy after all these years and that not only does he still hear the spirit voices, but the old boxer can still land a solid punch.

My favorite book I’ve read this year was initially only a curiosity piece I perused while killing time in a Barnes & Noble. I had recently bought Unchristian – a book that offers an insightful look at how outsiders of the faith view the church – by David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons, but decided I needed a mental break and started looking for something a little lighter. I’m not inclined to reach for humor books, but the cover of a book featuring a man dressed in Old Testament garb and looking earnestly heavenward with the ten commandments in one hand and a Starbucks cup in the other proved irresistible. I picked it up, thumbed through the pages and found myself laughing out loud in the aisle at Barnes & Noble – another uncharacteristic behavior for me. Who knows? Maybe it was my tour induced exhaustion, or maybe it was the Vietnamese food I’d just had for lunch with a few friends, but for whatever reason I left the store with a hardcover of The Year Of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow The Bible As Literally As Possible by A.J. Jacobs tucked under my arm (after paying for it, of course – thou shalt not steal, you know). A.J. Jacobs is the editor of Esquire Magazine and the author of Know It All: One Man’s Humble Attempt To Become The Smartest Man In The World, a book he wrote chronicling his experience of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. He is also a self-proclaimed agnostic who decided the only worthy book to follow the Encyclopedia Britannica project would be the book of all books: the Good Book. Much to the surprise (and concern!) of his friends and family, Jacobs set out to live according to the letter of the law of the bible for a full year. This would mean no lying, no wearing of mixed fibers, and no trimming his beard (among hundreds of other things). It also meant he would have to do things like stone adulterers. Yup, that’s right. Stone adulterers. As you can imagine, how he manages to fulfill his quest without being locked away makes for an amusing read. There were a number of reasons he chose to embark on this adventure of biblical proportions. Jacobs, also a secular Jew, confesses that a part of him wanted to show how crazy religious people are, but another part of him was genuinely curious if immersing himself in the bible would help him as an agnostic finally encounter the God of the Hebrews and Christians that he’d never been able to bring himself to fully believe in. Also at play here is that as the father of a young boy, Jacobs began to question how to raise his child to be a good human being. Having children has a way of bringing into sharp focus the fact that faith has implications beyond being just a matter of personal belief. And so Jacobs enters the world of the bible with excitement and a good share of fear, wondering if he’s putting himself at risk of becoming the kind of religious nut that he hoped in part to expose. What if he goes native? “It’s impossible to immerse yourself in religion for twelve months and emerge unaffected,” he writes. “Put it this way: If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they’d get along OK, but they’d both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, ‘That guy is kinda delusional.’” He goes on to say “As with most biblical journeys, my year has taken me on detours I could never have predicted. I didn’t expect to herd sheep in Israel. Or fondle a pigeon egg. Or find solace in prayer. Or hear Amish jokes from the Amish. I didn’t expect to confront how absurdly flawed I am. I didn’t expect to find such strangeness in the bible. And I didn’t expect to, as the Psalmist says, take refuge in the bible and rejoice in it.” What’s wonderful about this book is the purely outsider’s perspective you get of religious faith, but with no hint of a religion bashing agenda. I braced myself to be embarrassed or irritated by the religious people he would inevitably encounter and hoped that he wouldn’t find too many reasons to be hard on “us”. But Jacobs is surprisingly very gracious and seems almost sympathetic. I guess he kind of became one of “us” in this weird experiment, with his long beard and observance of commandments setting him apart, making him seem freakish to friends, family, and the average person who would stare at him on the street (that beard did get unruly). Even when he made his way down to Jerry Falwell’s church he was refreshingly fair and gracious – more so than I might have been in his shoes. In fact, the most moving part of the book is when he becomes friends with a Pentecostal snake handler in Tennessee. I won’t ruin it for you. In fact, I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll remain vague and only say a couple more things about insights the book offers (whether Jacobs intended it to or not). One of the more faith affirming aspects of the book to me is how as an agnostic outsider he still comes to many of the same conclusions about the message of the bible that insiders do. For instance, not too far into his quest to follow the letter of Old Testament law, he says he begins to realize how absurdly flawed he is. Of course Christians believe that this is what the Old Testament law was always intended to do – to lead people in the discovery that it is impossible for a person to be righteous on their own and thus set the stage for Christ. Later, after months of observing rituals and the law as zealously as he could, he finds it incredibly hard to give these things up once it comes time to enter the New Testament. And isn’t this the truth of all of us? Of all the claims of the bible, grace is the hardest to give ourselves to. We’d much rather cling to our own efforts of righteousness than trust in Christ who came to be our righteous for us. He also confronts the temptation that many of us face of reducing the bible into a mere self help book, a text intended to make us better people, to help us think of others and serve in soup kitchens instead of playing video games all day long. He realizes that to make it a self-help tome may be to miss the point entirely. The Year Of Living Biblically is, of course as expected, very funny too – funny and poignant (the scene that finds him having to learn how to pray to a God he’s not sure he can believe in is as beautiful as it is hilarious). But I was grateful that the joke was never on “us”. If anything, the joke is on obsessive compulsiveness, since that’s exactly what it takes to observe mosaic law. Towards the end you sense the conflict – his desire to jump in the deep end of faith at war with his profound reticence. Does he ever just surrender and give himself to it? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out. And you should read the book. I said earlier that I opted to read this book over UnChristian, but in a lot of ways it’s the same book. However, it not only offers a view of our world through the eyes of an outsider, but introduces this familiar world to us in ways that will refresh and surprise. It’s a little like meeting your best friend or spouse again as if for the first time, given a chance to be reminded of what you fell in love with in the first place. The chief virtue of the book, though, is that it made me laugh – laugh at myself and my own flawed attempts of living biblically; laugh at how absurd the bold claims of Judeo/Christian faith look not only to outsiders but insiders, too, half the time; and most of all laugh with God at the high and holy joke of how He uses the least likely and most unexpected people to reveal who He is. Of course, that means you, me, and even the editor of Esquire magazine. And this kind of laughter, as the writer of Proverbs might say, is good medicine. One final thought: It occurs to me that the beautiful irony – the holy punchline if you will – of Jacobs, an agnostic outsider to faith, stepping into another world of people he suspects of being charlatans and fools, remarkably mirrors the very bible responsible for bringing him there and it’s story of the One who left His world to come to ours in order that we might have a high priest who understands us.

This is an email exchange with someone who wrote to me on my site. It’s good food for thought and heart if you’ve got a few minutes. I’ve been told this is a little bit like “Who’s on first?” but there’s a lot of light that can be generated by thinking about this idea. His question: “I have a fair grip on the concept that independent self is a lie, but notice that Norman Grubb and others maintain that I/we must choose to believe either the lie or that we’ve been made perfect, etc. Question: Who is this “I” that chooses? If Christ, I would never be deceived. If false self , I will always be deceived. Looks like insofar as choosing, there is some independence there. Any thoughts?” Answer: I do believe in a inner chooser. But an independent “I” that must try to be good or that can do evil in and of itself, no. I’m the manifestation of what I choose to rely on; “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” So there is a self, a human spirit, a chooser. But it’s not an independent self that can act autonomously; it can only manifest the life of another. This takes us from being intrinsically good or bad and makes us neutral in and of our human selves, not evil except as the manifestation of Satan’s evil; Jesus said, “You are of your father the Devil, and his works ye shall do.” The Pharisees didn’t perform their own works; they did the Devil’s. Satan was reproducing himself through them, his quality of life. On the other side, Jesus said, “I can do nothing of Myself,” meaning His humanity was a neutral vessel, incapable of doing good or evil. And He went on to say, “The Father in Me does the works.” Likewise, for us, Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling (sounding like it all depends on us), for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good pleasure” (recognizing that it all really comes from Him). We make these faith-choices daily. For instance, with my family: Am I going to trust that Christ lives in me, that He will Father my children, that He will Husband my wife through me? If I am harsh with them, the reason is not that I’m bad or evil; the reason is that I am not trusting Him, relying on Him, and instead think that I have to control the situation with “my own” thinking, reasoning, emotions. But really that independent “I” is a lie – there is no “my own.” It’s Satan or God; if I am going to trust “myself” I’m really falling for Satan’s lie of independent “I” that can choose to be an originator of good or evil. This faith-choice is our only real action. It is an inner choice that then manifests itself in our outer actions. We connect either to Christ within ourselves (believers) or to Satan shoving his thoughts into our heads. We follow Christ, trust, rely, and so manifest His life – or we do it “my way” which is really Satan’s way. This cuts a lot of bull out of “the Christian life” and brings it down to brass tacks: Trust God, every moment, rely on Him – and if you choose against that, you’re trusting not ‘you’ but Satan. Because there is no independent ‘you’ that is capable of goodness – or evil – in and of your human self. Like a lamp that can plug into Light Power or into Dark Power – it has to plug in in order to have power. But it chooses which power. Jesus in Matthew 6, after giving what is known as “The Lord’s Prayer” contrasts the two different ways of seeing, one satanic, the other godly. When you fast, don’t fast like the hypocrites, letting everyone know what you’re doing (the satanic self-righteousness, wanting to appear good); instead, fast in secret, and the Father shall reward thee openly. Don’t lay up treasures on earth (the satanic desire to have security in an idol, something other than God); instead, lay it up in heaven; Paul said in Colossians 3,, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” Wherever your treasure is (in Christ, or in Satan’s way of thinking), there your heart will be also. And so we make Christ our treasure – by choice, by faith, by reliance. And then Jesus says this: “If the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness.” C.S. Lewis wrote in The Silver Chair that “you are most under the power of an enchantment when you do not think you are enchanted at all.” We can be operating totally under fleshly effort, the satanic mindset, and have no idea that we are doing so. The light of the body is the perception; that’s why we’ve to “renew our minds” (Rom 12:2), because in seeing things God’s way we are transformed from glory to glory. Jesus in Matthew 6 is telling us to use God’s way of thinking and allow no other. That’s choice – faith-choice. And when we make that choice, to one side or the other, God – or Satan – flows. Why is all this important to know? Call me crazy, but if more Christians knew this there’d be a lot less sin. It’s not as fun when we realize that we are giving our minds, souls, bodies over to Satan temporarily when we sin, and that it’s really him doing the sin through us. Not possession, but puppetry. And when we express righteousness – love for God and others – we are manifesting the nature of our indwelling Husband, our Captain, our King – and our Father, so spiritual pride that Satan attempts to shove into our minds after doing something good becomes a non-issue.

There are times when I’m driving home from a friend’s house, from an evening filled with good food and wine, laughter, great conversation, and friendly competition in boggle or speed scrabble or dutch blitz, and I’m almost overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness, of aloneness. I’m always surprised by it. It makes me wonder what I was hoping for, what I wanted from that night. Last week, my friend Andy Osenga wrote a blog post after seeing the new Batman movie, about how it revealed to him (again) that he was putting his hope in the wrong things. He wrote, “Was I really putting my hope in some movie, you might say? Hoping it would do do what? I don’t know, honestly, but I do know I was disappointed that I wasn’t different after watching it, that it hadn’t changed me. Which means, at some absurd and obviously flawed level, I was putting my hope in a movie. And this is something we all do. Whether it’s Batman or the new Coldplay or U2. We can put our hope there. Or we can put it in our pastor’s sermons or our small group’s honesty. We can put our hope there. We can put it in the girl that got away or in making love with the one we married. We can put our hope there. We have some bit of hope that it will change us, make us better. Or we’re trapped in some cycle of secrets and habits we can’t escape. Maybe this thing will curb our appetite for the sins that we feel define our secret selves, or at least it will let us not think about it for a while. Or at least it will make us feel. We’ve been so numbed for so long, for some unknown and hated reason, that we can’t feel anymore, and maybe this thing will connect us, revive us. And at some point we’ll have to look at this thing, this movie or relationship or feeling, however truly good it may be, and say: “is this all?” read the rest of Andy’s post here When I read that the other night, this quote from C.S. Lewis came to mind: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Eric Peters has been one of my favorite songwriters since I first discovered his Scarce album a few years ago. This is “Long Road to Nowhere ” and it’s just one great song off an entire album of great songs. Right now (possibly at this very moment) he’s hard at work recording his next album with the ubiquitous Ben Shive. Check out the blog for the new record and stop by his website where you can get involved with the making of it.

In a recent post, a reader asked why so many people here in the rabbit room were so enthusiastic about author/novelist/theologian Frederick Buechner, so I thought I’d start a post that would let people discuss what it is they love about Buechner, or even why they don’t get what all the fuss is about. I’ve found that Buechner’s writings are a love it or hate it affair, and I understand people who find it too difficult to climb over his eclectic fence given the strong flavor of his work and the way he nudges the envelope of orthodoxy. But for my money, there’s no writer who brings the story of the bible to life for me the way Buechner does – especially the characters who inhabit those stories. Through Buechner’s eyes, characters like Jacob, Job, Pilate, and even Jesus himself jump off the Sunday school flannel board and break through the confines of the morality tales we’ve tried to make of their lives. They become unpredictable, dangerous, sweaty, and human. Whether I’m reading Buechner’s telling of the Jacob narratives in his novel “The Son Of Laughter”, or his short biographical sketches of familiar biblical characters in “Peculiar Treasures”, or even the way these characters show up in his other books like “Telling The Truth”, these people we think we know so well and that we’ve often reduced to pietistic symbols and straw men all of sudden come alive. Pilate feels dangerous as he regards Jesus through the haze of the smoke of his cigarette. We see Sara’s toothless smile as she doubles over laughing at the announcement that she will soon bring Laughter into the world from the geriatric ward with medicare footing the bill. We smell the sweat and feel the spittle as Jacob wrestles with the Angel by the river Jabok. We ache to be the one who places a pillow beneath Jesus’ head in the stern of the boat. Somehow in the way he dusts off these old biblical friends we always thought we knew so well he helps me not only pay attention to their lives, but calls attention to my own life, and in the process I too am dusted off and come alive in ways that are dangerous, unpredictable, and human. For this alone I would love him, but there’s also his sharp wit and uncommon observations that defy convention and provide an endless fount of wonder. But of course his greatest gift is in telling his own story so courageously and truthfully that it invites us deeper into our own stories and ultimately connects us to the grand story of God’s redemptive work in our lives. I could say more, but I’m more interested in hearing from you. But let me close with this thought. Though some find fault with some of his conclusions, and even though I myself don’t agree with everything he writes, the truth remains that at a time in my life when Christianity looked so shabby and untenable to me, when Christian belief seemed so unbelievable and void of vibrancy (all this because of a toxic church environment that I was in), God brought Buechner to me and in his writing I rediscovered my love for Christ and passion for walking out a faith that is alive and full of wonder and holy mystery. Many years later my wife and I had an opportunity to hear Buechner speak at Calvin College. He simply read some passages from his books, but as I looked over at Taya, I found that like me, her face was wet with tears. Note: Three of Buechner’s works, “The Magnificent Defeat“, “The Sacred Journey“, and “Godric“, are currently available in the Rabbit Room store.

“Dreams” — this is my favorite song off of the Slugs, Bugs, & Lullabies album. Why? Simple. It’s got pirates, mad killer bees, and Zorbians. Yo ho ho. Any questions?

I’ve spent a lot of time lately feeling unwanted, unknown, and unloved in general. I suspect a lot of other singles deal with such feelings and I have to remind myself often that I’m not the only person that feels and fears these things. Usually it’s an annoying tickle in my mind that nags at me, reminds me that when I get home no one’s going to care how my day was, no one’s going to be around the house to talk to, no one’s going to care whether or not I have a good night. But for the past week, the usual empty echo of singleness has been magnified. I’ve just moved into a new town and on top of all those other struggles, I feel out of place, awkward, and often plain useless. I wrestle with feeling abandoned sometimes by friends and often by God. I sat down to write this evening, wanting to express some of that struggle, and was interrupted in the middle of it because I wore my green shoes. As I sat in Starbucks, minding my own business and looking for some inspiration in Buechner’s Whistling in the Dark, a young man approached me, told me his name was Monday, and asked for a moment of my time. He was nicely dressed and groomed and very polite but as soon as he begged my pardon, I knew what he was up to. He was a proselytizer. Ugh. There needs to be a better word for these people, something meatier, something like ‘busker’, after all isn’t this the spiritual equivalent of busking? Whatever you call them, they get on my nerves. On one level, I’m glad they’re out there. I’m sure there’s good that comes of their effort and I’m always polite when they approach me but my point of irritation begins when I tell them that that yes, as a matter of fact I will go to heaven if I die tonight and I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and that doesn’t satisfy them. They persist as if my confession can’t be taken at face value. This drives me nuts. I will admit however that there is another part of me that secretly admires these people for engaging in a zealous sort of evangelism that I think any of the apostles would have cheered about. I especially admire those street corner preachers that are mad as hatters and stand on their boxes all day shouting the gospel (or their version of it) to the masses. Isn’t that, or something very like it, what the prophets of old did? So there I sat, and there stood Monday, both of us knowing how awkward the other felt. Then he said something that threw me. “I’m on a treasure hunt. Do you mind if I sit down and ask you a few questions?” Despite my irritation at the interruption, I smiled and assured him that he was welcome to ask. He sat opposite me, placed a book on the table, and opened it. Oh great, I thought, he’s going to start quoting scripture at me. He didn’t. The book wasn’t a bible, it was a journal of sorts. He had the date written at the top of the page and listed below it a small jumble of words that I couldn’t read. “I’m on a treasure hunt,” he said. “I ask the Lord to give me clues and I write them down then go out to look for the treasure.” Alllllrighty then! At this point, it’s all I can do to keep from laughing and rolling my eyes. I’m in pure patronization mode. “So what clues can I help you with,” I ask. “The first thing I wrote down today before I walked in here was ‘green shoes’ and I see that you’re wearing green shoes.” I was, and agreed with him that it was so. Then he read off a few more of his clues. “Does the name ‘Alex’ mean anything to you?” he asked. It didn’t but this was getting more entertaining by the minute. He continued scanning his list of clues, occasionally asking me about one or another until we got to the end and determined that none of the rest of his clues had anything to do with me. Monday scratched his head and said, “I guess it’s just the green shoes then.” He closed his book and apologized for having taken up my time. Then he said something that caught me completely off my guard. “God wanted me to let you know that you are a great treasure and he loves you very much.” The genuine way in which he said it, the lack of agenda, the humility with which he spoke, the undeniable timeliness of the message, it all converged on me so thickly it was dizzying. I was dumbfounded, I couldn’t speak, I could scarcely breathe, and it was all I could do to hold back tears. Not five minutes earlier, I had been struggling to make some sense of the loneliness and anger I was feeling. I felt unloved, unknown, useless and abandoned. Then, in walked a stranger who sat down and told me I was a “great treasure.” “Do you know Jesus?” he asked me and I told him that I did. “Thank you for your time, brother.” He offered his hand, I shook it, and he walked out. Today the Creator of life took time to reassure me that I’m not alone, that I am loved, that I have not only value, but great value. Who am I to argue. Thanks for noticing my shoes, Monday, and may God bless your treasure hunt.

Wednesday night was creepy. After my duties were done in Sacramento I drove north through the center of a wide geographical corridor whose walls were distant mountains. The fields that lay between the ranges were patched with bright green crops, hemmed by fences and torn by brush lined creeks. Except for the mountains, it looked like parts of Kansas I have seen. I had no place to be until about four o’clock the next day, and I was in (for me) uncharted territory. I’ve been to all fifty of our United States, and can easily recall distinctive impressions of each of them—Maine in winter with its sharp blue skies and numbing wind at the Portland Head lighthouse, where a man with a bagpipe played his mournful, majestic tune for the Atlantic; the rattlesnake coiled up on the trail in Albequerque; a field of soybeans in Indiana at dusk, swarming with so many fireflies you could almost drive without the headlights on; a hitchhiker who wanted to be dropped off on the shoulder of the interstate at the border of Tennessee and Alabama, where he said the woods were full of clean streams and thick old trees where a man could live quite happily for the rest of his life. So now it was time to see what Northern California had to say. I had no hotel reservation, no advice from the locals as to what to avoid and what to seek out. The corridor of cultured land ended and my little rental car had no choice but to climb into the green backed mountains. The sun was setting. The towns grew sparser, and fewer exits boasted food or lodging. I started to imagine sleeping in the car, which wouldn’t have been that bad of an option except that I failed to bring my Swiss Army knife on this trip so I wouldn’t have any way to defend myself against the monsters of the wood, human or otherwise. I pulled over at an exit with a motel called the Neu Lodge. “Neu” is fancier than “new”, I suppose. Right next door was a restaurant incongruously named Brewster’s Mexican Café. I rang the buzzer at the olde screene doore and listened. A lady in hair curlers with a cigarette between two fingers poked her head out of the back room, where an equivalent of Donahue prattled from the television set. I asked for a room. She told me the price. I winced. It was about twice as much as I had expected, so I said no thanks. She asked what I had planned to pay. I told her, and she said, “Cash?” All I had was a credit card, so she waved me on, saying that the credit card fees were too high. About thirty more miles up the road was a town called Dunsmuir, where, according to the welcome sign, a traveler like myself could find the best water in the world. I passed a Travelodge, then drove on through the little town to see what there was to see. A few empty bars, a few teenagers trying to look natural while smoking cigarettes in front of the vacant pizza joint, but other than that the streets were empty. It was barren as a ghost town. The town is situated on the side of a mountain, hunkered several hundred yards below the interstate and several hundred yards above whatever river it is that provides that impeccable water. It’s an in-between town. A town in stasis, mocked by the always moving rivers above it and below, the traffic and the water, forever going somewhere while poor Dunsmuir languishes. I decided to stay. The town at night was so odd and quiet that I thought I might check in to the motel and go for a walk before going to sleep. That’s where this tale gets creepy. Around ten thirty I made sure my key card was safe in my back pocket, lit my pipe, and went for a walk, during which I planned to pray, to think, and to work out some song ideas that have recently formed. The main street of the town is bordered by houses for several blocks (much like the mountains that bordered the plains near Sacramento). The blinds were open in many of the windows, and I could see people sitting on couches, silhouetted by light from their televisions. I could hear snippets of conversations. Then, only a block or so down from the hotel, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. A little boy. A toddler wearing nothing but his diaper, standing on the sidewalk, alone, at night. He saw me. I looked up and down the street, hoping to see a parent nearby, but there was no one. “Where’s your mommy and daddy?” I called. He shrugged and pointed down the street. “Where do you live?” He shrugged again. I crossed to the center of street, speaking loudly to him so that anyone nearby would know I wasn’t being sneaky. Finally, from a nearby house, I heard a woman call for the boy. She emerged from the house, marched down the long steps to the street, and swooped him into her arms. “Everything okay?” I asked. “Yeah,” was all she said, and the screen door clapped behind her. I walked down the hill, past the residences and to the town proper. The businesses were asleep for the night, but the prowlers of Dunsmuir were not. A two big Ford pickups blatted by, turned the corner, and disappeared. A white Volkswagen Bus puttered past in the opposite direction, looking for trouble, or love, wondering how it ended up so far from the California beaches where it belonged. The teenagers driving these vehicles slouched in their seats, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that unless they did something drastic they would grow old and die in this little town. I reached the end of the town, still unsettled by the sight of that little boy, and decided to head back. It was at this point that I realized what a Hitchcockian scenario I was in. A traveler, alone, choosing a motel in this purportedly quaint little town for the night, unaware that he would never, ever leave. Suddenly my room at the Travelodge seemed the only safe place in the universe. About halfway back I heard voices. Two drunk men, staggering down the main street calling for someone, or something. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it sounded like a pig call: “Soueeeee!” In broad daylight it might have been funny, but now, echoing through the barren streets, it was unpleasant and even a little frightening. I wondered if I should’ve woken up Jamie to tell her where I was. The drunks staggered on and turned down a steep street that went to the dark river below. The Volkswagen passed me again. A woman appeared, walking toward me and talking to herself. She passed me without a word, without acknowledging me with even a glance, making me wonder if perhaps I was invisible—had any of the town’s residents paid a lick of attention to me? I remembered the mother of the little boy. She had answered me. Good. I wasn’t a ghost, then. When the woman passed, I could smell in her wake marijuana smoke still clinging to her clothes and hair. Then I heard two cats fighting in the distance, an inhuman, garbling screech. Behind me, in one of the dark houses, a baby screamed, and screamed, and the sounds of the cats and the child grated against one another and against my ears, and made the world seem for a moment like it was very near its end. I sped up. I could see the Travelodge sign a few blocks ahead. Then I saw something that once again stopped me in my tracks. Across the street, in a gravelly, abandoned parking lot, something was staring at me. I was not alone. I was being studied. A deer, a buck with a fine crown of antlers nodded its head as if in greeting. He took a few steps nearer, so that he stood on the opposite sidewalk, watching me curiously, as if he expected me to pull a sugar cube from my pocket and offer it to him. One of the giant pickup trucks rumbled by, passing directly between the buck and me. The driver looked neither left nor right, oblivious of the encounter playing out on the streets of his town. We were both ghosts, the deer and I. The sound of the truck faded, and still we stood, regarding each other. The deer trotted across the street at an angle away from me, his hooves making hardly a sound on the asphalt, and disappeared between two houses. I lit my pipe again and strolled back to the motel, thankful for beauty, and for grace, and the way they prowl and glide the dark streets of lonely towns, even those tucked deep in the mountains, dispelling fear and worry, blessing the traveler with the assurance that there is yet a Great Good in the world, unstoppable, unquenchable, lithe as wind and bold as light. Have no fear. By the way, I had a fine omelet at a café in Dunsmuir the next morning. The town was charming, and the water was delicious.

The Photographs album was my first exposure to the ‘other Andrew’ (or would that be the other other Andrew?) and man, I was just blown away. This album has seen so much time in my CD player that it’s finally been rendered unplayable and placed in the frisbee drawer. Never fear, thanks to the goodness of digital media it now lives happily inside my iPod and thanks to the magic of the Rabbit Room Song of the Day, one of my favorite songs off that album, “When Will I Run”, is presented to you right here in all its glory. Cue the music and someone tell Springsteen that he needs to cover this song.

*Pregnant Pause* I just want to let that soak in. I know, I know. Incredible, isn’t it? I can’t believe the audacity of that art teacher. What’s crazy about it is that it was even approved by the principal! How dare he do that! Imagine a teacher wanting to take kids to see art that includes, ahem, nude sculptures. N-U-D-E. Nude. Kids can’t handle that. And then the parents. They all signed permission slips! Every one of the kids who went had a signed slip from the parents. The nerve of those parents, if they can even call themselves that. Who allows their child unfettered access to such disgraceful places that house paintings that could possibly include semi-clothed people, sculptures that show even more, and God knows what else. *End Sarcasm* This country is going to hell. I don’t mean literal hell, as I am leaving spirituality out of this for a second. I just mean that we are shooting ourselves in the foot. A parent in Georgia is calling for a ban of Harry Potter. An art teacher is fired for going to an art museum on a principal-endorsed, parental-permission given trip. The teacher has been teaching for 28 years! She is almost 60! But some kids came back and apparently told mom and/or dad that there were breasts exposed in 3-D form, and then chaos ensued. How did we get to this point? I’m glad these articles aren’t exposing these people as Christians and not making it a religious issue. We have it bad enough. But it leads to me to think about our own inability to just absorb art on a grand scale, even that which we disagree with. Music is so broken down by genres that we don’t have to take in any other forms. Books are categorized in the same way. Movies have not only genres but ratings, and now art is simply doing the same. How long until you have “Nudes” in one room, “Scantily Clad” in another. All paintings, sculpture, sketches that could remotely give me a snippet of an idea of what a male or female might look like without clothes should all be stored up in one closet so that perverts can just be put together, I suppose. When you and I refuse to be challenged or shaped by different political viewpoints, we become closed-minded, dogmatic and really no good to anyone. Does this have consequences in the art world as well? When you and I refuse to listen to the talents of others, to view something that is different, to take in beauty in all its forms, do we miss out on what true beauty really is? I would answer that we do.

If, like me, any of you are Patty Griffin fans, you ought to love this song: “Chattanooga” by Sandra McCracken off her Gravity | Love album. Good stuff, great driving song. Enjoy.

“Certainty is the place you stop when you’re tired of thinking.” I loved this quote when I first stumbled across it. I guess I have always had a problem with people who are so firm on what they perceive as the correct worldview that it’s as if they think God has revealed all mysteries to them and them alone. Growing up, it was a church that was certain about who was saved and who was not. In college, it was professors certain of how the end times were going to work out. In a career in ministry, it has been leaders around me certain that their methods are the best. On the television, it’s no different. News analysts and talk show hosts are certain that the Republican or the Democratic agenda holds the key to our country’s future. Entire shows are built around bringing together two people entrenched on opposing sides of a particular debate and watching them go head-to-head. The winner? It’s certainly not the one convincing the other that they are incorrect. Instead, it’s usually the wittiest one who emerges victorious, the one able to make the other person seem less together or less educated on their topic because the sarcasm from the other “certain” side presented their case better. If it wasn’t for the Spirit of God convicting, wooing, and calling me throughout my entire life, I wouldn’t be a Christian. No way. I wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of religion if I were a complete outsider looking in. To be honest, I’m not sure if I can make much of it even as an “insider.” With everyone so affirmed in their own position which is antithetical to the next guy/girl and their stance, there would be no way to find truth because we’ve all labeled our personal road as the “narrow” one. As a pastor, I say “I don’t know” a lot more than I was told I should. How will things go down concerning end times? I don’t know. Where was God when this horrific thing happened? I really can’t say for certain. Does God really have a perfect will for my life and, if so, how can I find it? I’m not quite sure. The questions come one after the other yet I am increasingly comfortable saying, “I don’t have a great answer for you, because I just don’t know.” Why? I have a sneaking suspicion that other people really don’t know either, and it’s a relief when they finally hear that it’s okay to not know. I don’t have the truth all figured out. I don’t have the ways and things of God hammered down. His ways are higher than my ways. His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I am the created trying to make sense of the Creator. I am the natural making sense of the supernatural. By definition alone, there are things that I, as the ordinary, cannot understand about the extraordinary. So I have to be okay with that. It’s humbling to not have it figured out. Yet, Biblically speaking, I can know one thing for sure–that humility is a good thing. I have to have faith if I can’t fill in the blanks on my own. Yet I can be certain that faith is also a good thing to possess. It seems, then, that the mystery I must embrace is good for me. I am finding that the uncertainty is actually where I’m supposed to live. Instead of frantically striving to understand all things and then declare my supremacy on a specific topic, it seems God is found in the tension of simply shrugging and saying, “I don’t know.” And of that, I’m absolutely certain…

From the record Reinventing the Wheel.  This one’s called “Holy Ground”.  Enjoy.

Here’s a song from Jason’s record All The Lovely Losers (available in the Rabbit Room store).  He co-wrote it with one of my favorites, PFR’s Joel Hanson, and those of you familiar with PFR will probably recognize Joel’s influence on this one.  That God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness is a big theme in Jason’s thinking and his music, and this song presents it well. BLESSED BE Words & Music: JG & Joel Hanson Matt 5:1-16 There seems to be a special blessing available only to the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, or in a word: the losers. It’s a shame that most times we are deathly afraid of becoming the kind of person Jesus described as eligible for this blessing. Losers All the lovely losers Who never thought you’d hear your name Oustide Always on the outside Empty at the wishing well But time will tell Blessed be The ones who know that they are weak They shall see The Kingdom come to the broken ones Blessed be Thirsty Like you’re drinking from a salt sea But one day you’ll be satisfied Hungry For the taste of mercy If only you could have your fill One day you will Blessed be The ones who know that they are weak They shall see The Kingdom come to the broken ones Blessed be Not for the strong, the beautiful, the brave Not for the ones who think they’ve got it made It’s for the poor, the broken, and the meek It’s for the ones who look a lot like you and me Blessed be The ones who know that they are weak They shall see The Kingdom come to the broken ones Blessed be

The first time I ever heard Sara play live, it was at the Ryman Auditorium at a Behold the Lamb of God concert.  This was the song, from her album Add to the Beauty.  Hoo boy. (For some reason I feel like I’ve already featured this song on here once. If so, it certainly bears a second listen. It really doesn’t get much better than SG.) WHY IT MATTERS Sit with me and tell me once again Of the story that’s been told us Of the power that will hold us Of the beauty, of the beauty Why it matters Speak to me until I understand Why our thinking and creating Why our efforts of narrating About the beauty, of the beauty And why it matters Like the statue in the park Of this war torn town And it’s protest of the darkness And the chaos all around With its beauty, how it matters How it matters Show me the love that never fails The compassion and attention Midst confusion and dissention Like small ramparts for the soul How it matters Like a single cup of water How it matters

I bought a bunch of lilies at Sam’s the other day. They’re one of the cheapest thrills I know — $8.85 for ten stems is a price tag that I cannot ignore. Each time I am passing by the flower counter I stop, stand in contemplation and scrutinizing, making sure they’re strong and resilient where the heads attach to the stems. Then, upon deciding, I gather up the meant-to-be bundle of promising greenish buds. A lily (the right kind) can scent an entire room with a solitary blossom. It can stand on its own, no fluff of extra greenery necessary (although here they’re shown with fresh fern leaves), and when just a few of them begin to open in a vase together, their petals unfurl and their ruffled edges flirt with the onlooker like sweet little lasses in Sunday School dresses. When cared for properly, stems gently clipped and re-watered, they have been known to last (in my house at least) for upwards of two weeks. Tell me friends, what would keep us all from going straightaway to purchase that sort of long-lasting, heaven-scented luxury for eight dollars and some change? Tell me. So I usually opt for the white Casablanca lilies. They are pure as I can imagine the beginning of this old world was. The white seems whiter than normal, and the scent is heady and nearly indescribable. Only God in his perfect design could dream up this scent. Come to think of it, there is nothing I can compare it to. That’s saying something. The more gaudy, magenta-speckled Stargazer lilies are a bit sweeter-smelling, although lovely in their own right. So when I chose this particular bunch, I looked for the absence of any color in the just-opening pods. Boy, I think I’m so smart. The surprise, here, came when the green and white petals began to gradually peel away from each other, turn themselves inside out, and reveal the dearest blush of pink and fresh centers of pale, lemony yellow. I have been struck lately by such little sweet surprises. God, again in his perfect design, knows that he must speak to me in definite themes. So this is just one more gentle tug at my heart where he is calling me to notice the little stuff — needed kindnesses, good words, tomatoes from the vine still tasting of the sun, earnest touches, winks, generous friends, truly good and inspired music, the early morning’s warmth on my skin, real, deep, tear-inducing laughter. All of these things are vessels of love. It is carried so artfully to me. The stuff that I need but can’t see, it comes to me wearing the skin of sunset-colored lilies’ petals.

Thanks to Trevor Little and the team at his church for putting this together. It’s beautiful. I watched it last night, then I showed it to my wife this morning and got all weepy. Our kids are at the grandparents’ house this week, which didn’t help. Thanks, Trevor!

Like on most Sundays, I attend a local church with my family. This particular day the sun is its normal late morning self, lazy but benignly ruling the sky. The church’s downtown parking lot, littered by the typical urban debris – strewn paper, crumpled plastic wrappers, discarded bottle tops, broken glass, dust, dirt, pebbles and an irregular pattern of infernal weeds poking through the asphalt – is a checkerboard of automobiles. Congregants usher past the surrounding industrial rust and glare of the city into the foyer of the church building, a converted warehouse, now concert venue and coffee bar. We find our seats and listen in as the pastor, Randy, in his usual eloquent yet listenable style, reads from and speaks of, a splice of New Testament passages pertaining to the provisions of God; lilies of the field, wisdom of lizards, freedom of sparrows, numbered hair follicles, manna, rest, fear, these sort of things. The overhead fluorescent lighting beating my brow, I begin to feel the tickle of an approaching headache. I look to the brick walls, veined with gray-steel conduit, for distraction from the lights. There, I notice sundry bores in the walls, exposed cinder block, and a tangle of cables, speaker wires and electrical cords clouding the rafters, all so lifeless. And then I see a bird. It is a summer day, and since our tent of meeting is old, quite unromantic and not at all well-sealed at its uppermost corners, this particular creature, a common female house sparrow, has smuggled her way indoors and is fluttering back and forth in the maze of beams and blown insulation 20 feet above our skulls. I hear its twittering and chattering as it restlessly hops off and on, back and forth, amid the orange steel structural supports, ductwork and rivets overhead. The pastor, at one point, references the sparrows of the field and the hairs, if there be any, on our heads, but I am too distracted by avian shenanigans — that’s the ornithologist in me, so gleefully alert to birdlife. Randy continues to expand on the difficult-to-comprehend notion of God’s knowing, numbering and caring for humanity’s various tresses, and that of a redstart’s business in its day to day operations, flying, fleeing, roosting, singing, no fear whatsoever of famine, death, loss of home or feather. Then suddenly, as one might hope, I awaken to the irony, the chasm-deep irony, of the occasion at hand: a prime and living parable flitting about our very heads in a suitable and appropriate clash of cosmos and breath, story and fable, words and reality, feathers and flight, skin and spirit. I perch on the Providence of the moment. How deeply, foolishly and complacently we live in the damnable small fears – fear of tomorrow, fear of rapture, fear of loss, of success, of failure, of being made a fool or of making one of ourselves, fear of fear itself. We are slaves to the self-worthy, self-sustaining creature life and are absolutely worn out from its burden, grief, shame and cold subjectivity. Fear is a living death, death a living fear. Such a prosthetic sanctuary becomes a hovel, a cold, inhospitable and sterile habitat. Can we honor anyone in this or any other life by being subjects to such small and hollow existences? Does such an existence honor God, the one who abolished the small fears in the first place? Do we honor the One who brought to life the life we killed by refusing the command, “Never be afraid”? Perch on the Providence of your moments, looking not for control, but for submission. To live a day – O, to forge an entire life – that is broad, that is ocean deep, that is gleefully aware of hair follicle number 5008 on our pasty scalps, that is as boundless in bravery as it is trustful of hope. Where courage exists, there is faith nested securely in the fork of that terribly ancient and sturdy Living Tree, honest and pure, as that courage roosts above the domain of earth singing its melody safe and sound at either end of day. No man, no devil, no destruction can rid us of such a perch. “Never be afraid, then – you are far more valuable than sparrows.” (Matt. 10:30-31, J.B. Phillips translation) “(He) might also set free those who lived their whole lives a prey to the fear of death.” (Heb. 2:15, J.B. Phillips)

This was the song that did it.  It was about eight years ago, maybe nine (!), when I first met Randy.  It was at a Compassion International retreat, and it was no more than a hand shake and a “nice to meet you”.  About three months later I was doing a show with my buddy Gabe Scott at the sadly now-defunct New City Café in Knoxville, and Kenny, the proprietor, had Randy’s EP Hank playing over the sound system.  I loved what I heard and bought the CD immediately.  This was the song that made it clear to me that this Goodgame fella wasn’t messing around.  “Charlie Robin” is in many ways a great picture of what Randall does.

In my morning Bible reading I just came to Acts 17. Some of the Thessalonican Jews refused to believe Paul, gathered together, and complained to the authorities that Paul and his converts had “turned the world upside down.” A few verses later, Luke states that the Jews in Berea “were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so.” C.H. Reiu’s translation says, “…to verify this new interpretation.” What is this “nobility” of the Berean Jews? In a word, humility. They realized they could be wrong. They recognized the possibility they could have been taught error, knew that their perception of Scripture might be only partly correct. They knew human perceptions and traditions sometimes get in the way of rightly perceiving the heart, the ways, and the words of God. And they bowed to the God of the Word rather than worshiping their perception of the Word. For many, especially those like me who grew up going to church and reading Bibles, we build a theological superstructure inside our brains that interprets Scripture automatically for us. This means this and that means that – and we read the Bible through in 2002, ripping through it without stopping to ask ourselves the relevant questions: “Am I wrong? Could I have been taught wrongly? What does this passage actually say in a literal sense? And if I take it literally, does that shake up my current paradigm?” Instead, we often go with what seems safe – the interpretations of others. Don’t take me the wrong way. Part of humility is in listening to the interpretations of others. Luther. Calvin. C.S. Lewis. Our pastors. These are people who have studied diligently and should be heard, and they help balance us out. But we need our theological frameworks broken apart once in awhile, and we need to be humble enough to take it. God will shake what can be shaken, so that which cannot be shaken will remain. The Bible is a many-layered document; as we age and read it continually with humility it gets deeper and deeper. We need to be Bereans, hearing a new interpretation and then checking it out ourselves with the Word on a daily basis. And that also means being Bereans with the old interpretations as well, even if Luther or Calvin or ______ (insert favorite author) said it.