I’ve been working my way through Christian Wiman’s memoir My Bright Abyss for roughly a month and a half. It was one of those rare random purchases, a book by an author I didn’t know but was willing to take a chance on with a Barnes & Noble gift card. Upon diving in, I realized this is the sort of book you savor slowly—a wandering collection of thoughts on faith, poetry, death, and beauty compiled over a number of years, “a mosaic” more than a narrative, according to the author. My Bright Abyss chronicles Wiman’s meditations on faith after learning he has an incurable cancer. I wish I could give you a neat little review that tells you what this book is about, but I can’t. It’s about faith and fear, life and death, beauty and sickness, hope and regret. It’s about poetry and creativity in some sense, but so much more than that. It’s the kind of book that I have to pick up in a quiet moment of the day, slowly work through a chapter, then put down and think about for a few days before starting back in again. It’s exactly the sort of poignant, urgent book a poet might write through years of staring death in the face. In his stories and observations, Wiman challenges us to live, really live, fully connected with life in its brevity and wonder. Though maybe it’s not the main point of the whole book, there’s a particular idea from an early chapter that’s stuck with me: “These days I am impatient with poetry that is not steeped in, marred and transfigured by, the world. By that I don’t necessarily mean poetry that has some obvious social concern or is meticulous with its descriptions, but a poetry in which you can feel that the imagination of the poet has been both charged and chastened by a full encounter with the world and other lives.” Here, he recounts his days as a young, ambitious student and writer, “so consumed with poetry that I would damn near forget the world.” And isn’t this the temptation of almost every art and vocation? There’s this romantic notion of escaping into a cabin to write a novel, or working long late hours to achieve success, or isolating yourself from community to focus on a relationship, a family, or even God Himself. They seem like noble aspirations, the picture of hard work and dedication. Meanwhile, the world turns on, with or without our participation and wonder. “One must have devotion to be an artist. . . But still, just as in religious contexts, there is a kind of devotion that is, at its heart, escape.” In the face of illness and death, Wiman calls himself out for the wasted years of constant moving and disconnection for the sake of his art. This challenges me, as a writer, a wife, a friend, a daughter, and a member of Christ’s body. Sometimes when the world as it is doesn’t line up with the world as it should be, it’s tempting to escape into a spiritual or artistic inner life, often with noble intentions of bringing back some beauty or truth. But if we are really participants in the new creation, called to live and work and play in community and have a hand in the healing of the world, then that involves participation, presence, and attention. Our lives and art become marred and transfigured by the world. And what a glorious sight it is. I’m still reading, so these are thoughts in progress. For a deeper look at this book, I highly recommend reading Kathleen Norris’s review for The New York Times. [My Bright Abyss is available in the Rabbit Room store.]

Back in March I traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for an arts festival. As I prepared my pieces for display, I tried to figure out how I could inject a little more story into my paintings. And so I decided to write a few lines that I would print on the back of the 2.5″x4.5″ title/price tags. These would be story seeds, words to stir the imagination, a few lines to trigger the mind of the viewer. Well, they ended up inspiring me as well. These lines, written in haste, almost as an afterthought, have helped me (once again) to see that writing is not a massive and unmanageable undertaking. And so I’m writing. I’m taking a couple weeks off painting (so my Instagram feed is going to be quiet for a time) and I’m going to get a story or two out that I can turn into a picture book. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite story seeds and the images they accompany. Stella Frees the Stars “I hope I’m not too late,” Stella whispered. “How long will it take to find your places again?” After a moment she added, “We need you, you know. Father can’t find his way home without you.” Fox Girl She liked the hat because it looked good with her coat. And it was warm. And it helped her see in the dark and hear the whispers of the animals in the forest. Ellen and the Owl “I think you will find,” said the owl, “that we have gone farther than you could possibly imagine.” “I doubt it,” said Ellen. “I have a very active imagination.” “Tell me,” said the owl, “do you recognize these stars?”

Our favorite Oxford student (since some dude named Jack Lewis) was recently interviewed about “living a storyformed life.” I thought it’d be swell to share that here. Sarah talks about The Rabbit Room, her new book Caught Up in a Story, her website Storyformed, and about life as an adventure story. The podcast is called The Read-Aloud Revival and it’s wonderful. The host, Sarah Mackenzie is a real ally for storytellers and has been a vocal advocate for The Green Ember, my own novel. I love what Sarah M. is doing and it was wonderful to listen to her interview Sarah C., another brilliant friend who has so much wisdom to share with us. Click here for the link, and consider subscribing to the podcast.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Living_Story.mp3

In retrospect, Home was an obvious result. In the few years following Love & War & The Sea In Between, Josh Garrels found an ever-increasing, well, everything. From the number of tour dates to the sizes of venues to the numbers in attendance, the Portland artist’s popularity grew in scope equal to the epic album he’d released. His songs were heard in Starbucks and on American Idol, featured in Billboard and NPR, and over 200,000 people grabbed ahold of Love & War. For an artist as thoughtful as Garrels, it took considerable time to flesh out these new songs — or even to find the personal space needed to create again. In the midst of tour dates and a special DVD project with Mason Jar Music (The Sea In Between), Garrels slowly began chipping away at them — songs that would eventually embody the name of the album they’re on: Home. They serve as a response to the grand scope of his last release. They’re intimate. They’re warm and vulnerable. They’re also some of his best. SSv: At what point did you know these songs were going to be about this feeling and theme of Home? Josh: To be honest, I never really know what I’m working with, or toward, until I’m quite a ways into the creative process. On the front end I’ll have vague impressions, very few words, and upwards of 30 to 40 audio sketches. My first big edit is to cut this number of potential songs in half, and then begin further development of the remaining 15 to 20 songs by writing lyrics and adding some sonic layers. It’s not until maybe halfway into the album-making process that I realize which ideas, sounds, and themes I’m gravitating to in particular. Once the personality, or theme, of the work has been recognized, the task then is to create focus and harmony between the songs, which often means cutting a few more songs. In the case of Home, I was left with 11 songs that I felt could work together to create a cohesive album. Read the rest of the interview at Stereo Subversion. #JoshGarrels

DAY FIVE (PART TWO) HAY-ON-WYE 02/23/15 Andrew wants to “throttle” me because I manage to outscoop him on a book he has been hunting for years. He and at least one other person on earth claim I have a knack for finding previously overlooked books on the very same shelves they themselves browsed not fifteen minutes earlier. Andrew says it’s annoying, I say it’s a gift. To the thoroughly meticulous victor belong the spoils. We reconvene at the B&B later in the afternoon where, after successfully squeezing an extra 20 minutes out of Hay’s regular business hours by playing ignorant tourist, we lay out our respective hauls: sacks-full of wonderful-smelling, early 20th-century books. An old book is my version of comfort food. While showing off, and comparing (yes, and sniffing) our book acquisitions in a sort of awkward chest-thumping bibliophile display of bravado, I notice a shadow pass over my friend’s Swedish face as I reveal the coup de grace: a dust-jacketed 1945 first UK printing of C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Having not known Andrew has been on a years-long search for a copy in this state, he most certainly lets me know. I feel bad. But not too bad. I don’t know if it would be melodramatic to claim that there could be but few rooms on earth at that very moment in which could be found such a collection of first printings of titles by G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Rosemary Sutcliff, Noel Streatfeild, George Macdonald, Elizabeth Goudge, Edith Nesbit, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Charles Williams, Anna Sewell, and Marchette Chute, to name a few. We are breathing rarified air. We are also hungry. An obsessively compulsive book hunter (The Book Mole is a side biz of mine), I willfully skipped lunch because eating food would have been time wasted. Instead, in hindsight, I found those precious minutes much better spent hunched over, nearly to the floor of Boz’s Books, where I found an elusive 1st printing of Maisie Ward’s 1940 biography of G. K. Chesterton. Our hunger at last too much to bear, Andrew and I carefully put our books away, reluctantly leaving them alone in the room, and we walk the block or two to an Indian restaurant where we dine on tikka masala, garlic naan, and beverages. Returning to the B&B, we once again scrutinize the book bounty. I keep a close eye on The Great Divorce. The next day, we are scheduled to play a show in Birmingham, but according to our itinerary, AP and I have enough time in the morning to get in a few more hours in Hay before we must depart this wonderful town. Yes, I say, to more books. [Day One] [Day Two] [Day Three] [Day Four] [Day Five: Part One]

After reading the manuscript for Dr. Critchlore’s School for Minions, the cover was the first piece of art I was asked to take on—and this was my very first book cover. So I quickly went to work designing a title/logo and a theme for the cover involving a stone arch and several character cameos on the bottom corners. I then came up with three different center-image options and presented them to the team at Abrams. The first was what I referred to as “Brace Yourselves.” It was slightly ambiguous, with two of the story’s main characters, Runt and Pismo, leading an army of hapless zombie minions in what appears to be a stand off with an unforeseen foe. This was not a scene from the story, but was intended to give a sense of urgency and unseen danger. My cameos for the bottom corners turned out to be Dr. Critchlore himself and his secretary, Miss Merrybench. The second option was taken directly from a scene involving a mysterious figure in peril, with our main character, Runt, coming to the rescue on the back of a dragon. The third, which I referred to as the “Hero Pose,” depicted three of the main characters, Syke the tree nymph, Runt the werewolf, and Pismo the new kid in school, each in a heroic stance atop a mountain of ogres and giants with the school castle in the background. Again, not a scene in the story, but giving a sense of small kids conquering large obstacles. By this stage, I had also learned that my depictions of Critchlore and Merrybench were not in line with the vision of the author, so I redesigned them to fit the new direction I had been given. Merrybench was now younger and more athletic, with Critchlore beginning to mirror a young ’30s Vincent Price and those great, creepy Willem Defoe Prada suit ads from a few years ago (google it). Abrams had their Spring ’15 book launch meeting and presented my three options. They unanimously chose the “Hero Pose.” I really liked the dangerous rescue shot with the dragon but knew that the Hero Pose had a great “series lead-in” feel. It gave an overarching mood to the first book without leaving potential readers in the dark about what was going in the story. The final cover was painted traditionally in an unscientific mix of Golden Fluid Acrylics and Holbein Acryla-guache. I tend to use either interchangeably whenever, and wherever, depending on desired fluidity or opacity. I painted each component of the cover on two-ply smooth bristol board. The center image was painted first at around 11 x 17. The stone arch was painted on a separate sheet, about the same size. Both character cameos were painted on separate sheets, as was the hand painted title/logo. My dad spent almost 40 years as a hand, gold leaf letterer on fire trucks, so I was proud to be able to hand letter the title in his honor. I scanned in and trimmed out each component in Photoshop and composed the layers together. Here is the final I submitted as an uncompressed Photoshop file. Later, I painted up a couple of imps that could be dropped onto the back cover. My AD and designer at Abrams did the rest of the magic, as well as having the final cover printed onto metallic paper, which looks amazing! It’s been quite a thrill walking into the various Barnes & Noble stores around my city and finding my art on the shelf.

DAY FIVE HAY-ON-WYE 23/02/2015 “I just don’t get this thing you have for old books,” said lots of people, always. It’s okay. Of all my strange affections, this is possibly the one about which I feel the least embarrassment. I’ve always been bashful about my tendency to read books with dragons, or my weird fascination with honeybees, or basically everything in thrift stores, but I am and will remain an unapologetic bibliophile. But I get it. I get why you think I’m crazy. How in the world, you ask, will I have time to read all those books, and why in the world would I let them take over my house–especially when you can store all that information on a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad? What could possibly be enjoyable about rummaging around in a dusty bookshop for hours? — Old books smell good. Don’t believe me? According to a study by lead scientist Matija Strlicat at the Smithsonian, the chemical breakdown of old paper and binding creates “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, [and] this unmistakable smell is as much a part of the book as its contents. One of my favorite things Pappy did when I showed him my finds was to open the book and thrust his nose into it, inhale deeply, and then sigh—as if this were as important a test of the book’s value as the publication date. — A room full of books hearkens me back to my childhood—to vast public libraries, to my dad’s office at the church, and to the shelves of books at my house. A shelf of books is a shelf of possible worlds, possible adventures, possible discoveries, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I get the same feeling in an old library as I did when I was a kid in the family station wagon driving through the gates to Disney World. This sensation is heightened when I peruse the spines of books I have read and loved. — Posterity. Because books will never be out of date—trust me on this; I enjoy my Nook and see the value in the eBook thing, but in 100 years actual books will be more valuable, not less—whenever I buy an old, beautiful copy of a book I love, I think of my future grandchildren and their children. They won’t have ever met me, but looking through these old fairy tales and books about Jesus and mystery and adventure will tell them something about what I believed to be important—or at least what geeked me out. Pappy and I visited the Bodleian Library in Oxford and beheld shelves of 500-year-old books. They weren’t in a glass case. They were readable copies. No, the actual hold-it-in-your-hand, thrust-in-your-nose-and-inhale book isn’t going anywhere, my electronics loving friend. — Preservation. There are a limited number of first editions of The Great Divorce left in the world, and that number is actually getting smaller. In a book about Hay-on-Wye called Sixpence House (Paul Collins, 2003) he tells about the piles and piles of books that get shipped to this book town and never get sold, so sometimes they throw them outside where they’re eventually burned. BURNED. I shudder to think of the treasures that were inadvertently tossed out. But we can still buy new editions of The Great Divorce, you say. True. But they don’t smell good. Neither does the actual artifact represent sixty years of travel from owner to owner. Neither do you get the mild thrill of knowing that when C. S. Lewis opened his parcel from the publisher and first saw his new book in its completed form, this is what he held in his hands. Not only that, I like to wonder who was this person who happened to buy, during its first week of sale, what would become a classic in fifty years? — Old books are beautiful. Not all old books, but many, especially in the Victorian era. My early editions of George MacDonald books are works of art, which doubles the pleasure when the story inside is beautiful, too. It’s like a literary Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. — This is a bit more mercenary, but it’s also a financial thing. While it’s thrilling to find a rare book at a rare book shop, it’s far more thrilling to find a rare book at Goodwill. And it happens. My favorite bookshops are the rambly ones, the ones with piles of books on the floor, with the books ever-so-slightly out of order, because you stand a better chance of happening upon something awesome for mere pennies. It’s the booksellers who know their business that tend to be overpricing killjoys. If I can pay four bucks for an old Annie Dillard book that I already own, I can sell it later for twice or thrice as much, or give it as a gift (don’t old books make the best gifts?) that’s worth far more than a $20 gift card to Starbucks. Perhaps my most valuable discovery was in one of those rambly old bookstores in Texas. It was an early edition (not a first) of J. M. Barrie’s biography of his mother. I’m not a huge Barrie fan (I’ve never read Peter Pan, but I did love Finding Neverland), but the spine was attractive so I pulled it out and thumbed through it. I was surprised to discover that it was autographed by Barrie himself. This little book in Texas had been held by the man who thought up Peter Pan a hundred years ago. It cost me $6. When I got home I looked it up and found similar signed copies for sale for $800. Now, if only I could happen upon a cheap first edition of The Great Divorce (which I’ve never laid eyes on), then I’d be happy. Right? So it was with giddy anticipation that Pappy and I drove the two hours through hedgerows and little villages to the border of Wales and England, where the town of Hay (and its 25 or so used bookshops) rests on the River Wye, beckoning to book lovers all over the world. It was also the first time in our trip that I wanted to throttle dear Pappy. (To be continued…) This is a shot of Hay-on-Wye, from Hay Castle. Yes, those are books under the awning, and yes, you can see three of the fabled bookshops along the street in this one picture. The place is wonderful. [Day One] [Day Two] [Day Three] [Day Four]

Several weeks ago, I heard the news that Sir Terry Pratchett, British fantasy author extraordinaire, had finally succumbed to the terrible disease of Alzheimer’s. At the time I happened to be in the middle of reading one of his Discworld novels, Unseen Academicals. The sad news led me to recall my first encounter with his stories, and the impact they’ve had on my life. I first came across Pratchett’s fiction while I was in grad school doing research on my master’s thesis. I was studying postmodern fairytales, particularly those of A. S. Byatt, and while doing so I read an essay in which she discussed his novel Witches Abroad, which cleverly turns the fairy tale structure on its head. So in the name of “research” I got my hands on a copy and dove in. From this encounter I realized a few things. First, Terry Pratchett is the most hilarious author that I’ve ever had the privilege of reading, and I’d argue probably one of the funniest writers ever. The man’s wit knew no bounds, and he was liberal with it. I’d often find myself chuckling over small asides like this one from Guards! Guards!: “The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Brother Diddykins was preparing to give him the kiss of life. The mere thought was enough to jerk anyone from the borders of consciousness.” I also realized that behind Pratchett’s wit was a fierce intelligence, talented at skewering our cultural foibles and making us laugh at ourselves while doing it. Consider this passage from Jingo, where two watchmen from the city of Ank-Morpork, Sergeant Colon and Colonel Nobbs, discuss the Klatchians, a race from another part of Discworld: “I heard where they’ve got a load of odd gods,” said Nobby. “Yeah, and mad priests,” said Colon. “Foaming at the mouth, half of ’em. Believe all kinds of loony things.” They watched the painter in silence for a moment. Colon was dreading the question that came. “So, how exactly are they different from ours, then?” said Nobby. “I mean, some of our priests are—” “I hope you ain’t being unpatriotic,” said Colon severely. “No of course not. I was just asking. I can see where they’d be a lot worse than ours, being foreign and everything.” “And of course, they’re all mad for fighting,” said Colon. “Vicious buggers with all those curvy swords of theirs.” “You mean, like…they viciously attack you while cowardly running away after tasting cold steel?” said Nobby, who had a treacherously good memory for detail. “You can’t trust ’em, like I said. And they burp hugely after meals.” “Well…so do you, sarge.” “Yes, but I don’t pretend it’s polite, Nobby.” “Well, it’s certainly a good job there’s you around to explain things, sarge,” said Nobby. “It’s amazing the stuff you know.” “I surprise myself, sometimes,” said Colon, modestly. You can imagine then that I was surprised to read in an essay by Neil Gaiman that the source of Pratchett’s wit and humor was, of all things, rage. In a piece for The Guardian, Gaiman recalls an incident that occurred during the book tour for Good Omens, he and Pratchett’s co-authored fictional take on the Apocalypse. The authors had to get to a radio station for an interview, and Pratchett suggested they walk. Many wrong turns later, they arrived 45 minutes late to a very unhappy radio team, and endured a short, awkward 15 minute interview. In the cab on the way back, Gaiman could tell that Pratchett was very angry, and gently suggested that at that point it was water under the bridge. According to his recollection, “Terry looked at me. He said: ‘Do not underestimate this anger. This anger was the engine that powered Good Omens.’” At first this concept left me puzzled, but Gaiman explains, “…that anger, it seems to me, is about Terry’s underlying sense of what is fair and what is not. It is that sense of fairness that underlies Terry’s work and his writing…” Put in this light, it makes sense. Much of the time, Pratchett’s humor is pointed at skewering hypocrisy and stupidity, and demonstrating the cleverness of unlikely and marginalized characters. Gaiman also makes another observation about this sense of rage that is interesting: “[Terry] will rage, as he leaves, against so many things: stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and shortsightedness, not just the dying of the light. And, hand in hand with the anger, like an angel and a demon walking into the sunset, there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity. Or to put it another way, anger is the engine that drives him, but it is the greatness of spirit that deploys that anger on the side of the angels, or better yet for all of us…” Reading this made me realize that another crucial aspect of Terry Pratchett’s writing that I’ve always appreciated is that basic sense of humanity. It is what grounds his work. Let’s face it, any particularly intelligent and witty writer can tend to become a bit of a self-righteous ass, sitting in superiority over the rest of mankind. But in Pratchett’s stories there are always those “serious” moments that can unexpectedly and surprisingly touch you as much as the cleverness humors you. As A. S. Byatt says in her forward to his short fiction collection A Blink of the Screen, “[Pratchett] gets more and more attached to his characters, who become more and more complicated—consider the way in which Captain Vimes grows from being a drunk in charge of a dysfunctional Night Watch to a commander who can arrest two armies for a breach of peace. He finds it hard to go on disliking characters.” Now that Terry has gone from us, I’m somewhat comforted by the fact that I still have many Discworld books to read and enjoy, but I’ll miss the potential stories and characters that will never see the light of day. Ultimately, I’m grateful for Terry Pratchett, the not-so-jolly elf who was immensely clever, sometimes scathing, but overall a lover of us humans beings in all our bumbling and silly messiness.

Or is it the horror of mental illness? Sometimes, something as simple as your morning cup of coffee can evoke a sensation of horror—given the right mental state. I don’t hear much in the way of a conversation about mental illness, particularly in Christian circles. After all, if we supposedly have the Holy Ghost living inside of us, somewhere, working something “good” in and through us, then I can understand why, for some, there doesn’t seem to be much room for mention of anything as dark as mental illness. But I’m particularly interested in a conversation about those of us who are what I will call The Functionally or Marginally Un-Well. You know who I’m talking about. Perhaps you or someone you know fits this description. You (or they) are, or may be, a believer, a professing Christian. They manage to hold down a job, go to the store, talk on the phone, mingle with friends, go to movies, produce creative work, etc. They manage to keep up an appearance of mental stability, of wellness. I’m only able to write about this because I’m confessing here. I’m one of those “Functionally Un-Well” people. I manage to keep up appearances, on good days at least. I’ve never been institutionalized. I am a Christian, whatever that means—I hold to the creeds, eat and drink Christ’s body and blood, and cry out to God in my utter helplessness. I’m a confirmed Anglican, although I’ve never felt so adrift, so un-confirmed if you will, as I do now. Point is, I don’t hear a lot of conversation in the church about those of us who walk about as functionally-unwell. That could also just be me. If I’m confessing to my own unwellness, I am more than likely looking at any given picture through a distorted lens, and hearing things through a distorted filter. But I’m not aware of a larger conversation about this, among believers. Why would I even want a conversation? Because these illnesses spread into every crevice of one’s life—including one’s spiritual walk, one’s occupation/vocation, one’s ability to earn a living and even to thrive as a human being in the world at all. I’ve cancelled shows as a singer/songwriter in my deep anxiety and fear. I’ve lost well-paying job contracts and turned away potential illustration and design clients. I’ve ruined relationships. I’ve stared over into the abyss of divorce several times in my 12 years of marriage. How does one crawl out of one’s own head? There are your blatantly serious mental illnesses, and those come in all shapes sizes and degrees. These being the textbook disorders that make great movies. I’m not so much talking about those—the kinds that ultimately land well-meaning people in hospitals. I’m talking here about the illnesses of depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsivity and paranoia—to name a few. I suppose any one of those modes of being really has a quiet, subversive part to play in the later development of those more overt disorders that writers and movie makers latch onto. For now, for this article, I’m really thinking about the quiet, day-in day-out weight of something like a deep, unrelenting depression. Something suffocating and inescapable like oppressive anxiety. Those are the bedfellows capable of taking one’s morning coffee ritual and turning it into a journey across gnarled fingers, crushing depths, need for oxygen, layer upon layer of mangled scales and sharp protrusions of thought/anti-thought. Isolation. Oblivion. Where lifting a pencil to touch the fibers of a sketchpad feels like an overwhelming journey, an immensity of hard-fought effort. I suppose it’s a redemptive thing that in me, an illustrator, this journey casts me back into the wilderness of the sketchbook time and time again. The Spirit drives me there. Or whatever. But with that comes this breed of functional dis-functionality that the course of my life has been marked by—and I’m not sure where to take that. What does one do when neither extreme—neither prayer nor medication—seems to bring any lasting relief?

DAY FOUR OXFORD 22/02/2015 Our London hosts, Tom and Rachael, generously send us on our way to Oxford with bellies full from a(nother) hearty English breakfast. The Brits are either unafraid of consuming sausage, and lots of it, or they are just showing off. The reasons for me to like these folks continues to mount. Though blander than I am accustomed, I find that English food is nowhere near as poor as some Americans report. This fallacy is likely a myth first concocted and perpetuated by a Cajun cayenne-junkie. I’m starting to get the hang of ordering my coffee properly: “Americano white, please. Cheers.” In my fumbling attempts to quietly assimilate and count out correct change, at no point do I get the sense I am putting any employee out in my struggle to articulate my food, drink, or book order. The English further cement in my mind their reserved, level-headed, and patient nature. I suppose a thousand-year-old culture has a way of tempering the soul. A word on the English coin system: though pockets-full could readily drag a man’s beltless pants down to his ankles, the English pound is an absolute delight, what with its significant weight in the palm of the hand, the carved Latin phrasing on its scored sides, the Queen’s profile (God save her), and gold color. The £1 coin is a thing of substance; it says “I matter.” At no point on this tour do Andrew and I have a drive longer than three hours, but the peculiar English (or European?) employ of roundabouts makes for seemingly longer periods in the car. It puzzles me that the Brits have not yet given these circular marvels a proper nickname as they have with their “Tube,” or “Chunnel”; I hereby propose “Roundie.” Over the course of our ten days here, our longest roundie-free, uninterrupted stretch of motorway driving is a scant 27 miles. Every other stretch of road, even in remote townships, involves hurtling through roundabouts spaced every foot or so, give or take. That’s to say nothing of the incredibly confusing signage thereof. I’m glad Andrew is not only doing all the driving, but has been here before to make sense of the road signage that is no less alien to me than an assortment of crop circle patterns. To further confuse the average hyper-ventilating Yankee driving in this country, each roundabout is utterly unique, and at no point does any sign resemble another. It all looks like cuneiform. The Brits did, after all, crack the code of the Zimmerman Telegram (thus dragging the United States into WWI), so I have to trust them, though I don’t always understand. England, on this day, lives up to its reputation of cold, wind, and rain. We meet the host and promoter of our two Oxford shows, Micah Coston—an American Oxford man donning scarf and umbrella—near the spot where Thomas Cranmer and pals were burned at the stake as heretics in 1556. The history lover in me shows outward solemnity as Micah tour-guides us, but inside I am giddy, not at the thought of that horrible event, but at the existence and passing of real time, of standing in the presence of the past. That one of the world’s significant moments occurred on this exact plot of earth some 500 years earlier—the very spot where I now stand in my new, not-at-all-broken-in sneakers, waterproof coat, hot coffee in hand, with friends—is hard to fathom. Time moves on, it always moves on, is never static, and we live our lives, making decisions with no real concept of the repercussions half a millennium from now. I find this to be a remarkable truth. But it is cold and miserable outside, and I—remember, Andrew was the first to dub me “Pappy”—am more than willing to escape the elements. Walking on, cowering beneath the rain along Broad Street, we enter Blackwell’s, a multi-level bookstore where I finally—miracle of miracles, I made it four days without a single book purchase!—buy my first book, Taste and Technique in Book Collecting (John Carter, 1948). This is the first of what will, in the end, be an unholy amount of books I will acquire in England. I did, after all, tell the customs agent I was here as a book buyer. Our show that night is at Illyria Pottery, a fully-functioning artisan pottery shop owned and operated by husband-wife duo Micah and Katie Coston. We arrive and help clear the open showroom floor of every table, display, and handmade piece. I brag to Katie that I own “#4” of the original small batch of mugs she made for the Rabbit Room, circa 2009. Before the show, the Costons take us around the corner to a pub called The Rickety Press for dinner. Agreeing to get an early start the following morning, AP and I barely sleep, knowing that a Welsh book town, Hay-on-Wye, is our destination for Day Five. I am a 42-year-old man, and I have butterflies in my widdew tummy. [Day One] [Day Two] [Day Three]

Yesterday I watched Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella. After the movie began, I sat in the dark theater measuring my expectations, waiting for the old, familiar fairytale to be deconstructed. I’ve seen enough modern adaptations of classic stories to worry about a director pulling the rug out from under me. Just a few minutes into a plot, there’s often a cynical jolt, and my innocence becomes the butt of someone else’s joke. Out of nowhere comes the sarcasm, the crude humor, or the cheap political slam, and I feel my face flush with shame that I had once again hoped that a world—even an imaginary one—could be honest and beautiful. Indeed, the first few scenes of Cinderella are idyllic. The film opens to a lovely meadow adorned with flowers and a blue sky full of puffy clouds. Ella’s family members are tender with one another. Their home looks like it was built from a vintage storybook drawing, so unabashedly sweet that I heard little girls and their mothers coo with delight as we walked through the rooms. In fact, it was all so perfect that I couldn’t relax. I felt like the high school geek about to walk in on a locker room prank, so I steeled myself, preparing for that awful moment when the director would lift his leg and mark an old fairy tale as his newest territory. I was ready for the worst, but the worst never happened. Cinderella was told purely,  without excuse, without abuse, and without sarcastic distortions. Every plot addition that I noticed emerged from the core themes of the earliest versions of this tale. In a few places, I felt undertones of King Lear and the Russian folktale “Finist the Bright Falcon,” but whether these connections were intentional or not, Branagh’s final product gelled with the same narrative spirit that has made this folktale beloved in many countries for centuries. The unflinching purity of this film is so rare that it made me uncomfortable at first, and then it made me ache, because I’m so starved for sincerity.  I’ll admit that when the pumpkin turned into a carriage, I got a big knot in my throat, for pure wonder was being held out to me in two hands. A magical story was being told humbly, and I was being trusted to receive it with humility as well. For years I have been afraid that we were becoming a post-fairy tale culture, and as a humanities teacher, I can see some philosophical/sociological reasons for that. I’m not as well-versed in this realm as many of you, but I’m going to offer two examples that I have been considering below, and maybe those of you with more training can contradict or complete my gaps in the comments. (Or, if you want to avoid the nerd talk, skip the next seven paragraphs altogether.) In the late 1700s and early 1800s, there was an important German philosopher named Georg Hegel. He made a number of contributions to the world of philosophy, but one of the simplest was a method of truth finding called the “dialectic.” Hegel’s dialectic (which I believe he actually attributed to Kant) begins by submitting an idea called a thesis. After the thesis is established, an antithesis (a counterargument) is provided, and then both of these viewpoints are morphed into a conclusion called a synthesis. The idea of using some sort of argumentative dialectic to find truth didn’t begin with Hegel or Kant; it goes back to the Socratic dialogues. However, some of Hegel’s thoughts and methods ended up being quite influential upon our present world. Maurice Merleau-Ponty suggested “All the great philosophical ideas of the past century—the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and psychoanalysis—had their beginnings in Hegel.” One example of this influence is found in Karl Marx, who attempted to apply Hegel’s dialectic to social change. His first activist group, The Young Hegelians, adopted “Criticism!” as their battle cry, for they believed reform would result from the critique of power. Of course, there was quite a bit in Marx’s time that needed critique; however, can’t you also feel the deep unrest in such a methodology? Can’t you feel how it is driven by mistrust of every established good? And elements of that same fidgety spirit still run through our culture today, though our battle cry tends to be, “We doubt it! Whatever it is, we doubt it!” I’m a child of this age, a cynic by nature, and I believe there are benefits as well as drawbacks to a mindset of criticism. What is inevitable for the cynic, however, is that trust will eventually begin to feel naive. Switching to the realms of linguistics and literature, we can find a similar tendency in Derrida and other post-structuralists. Post-structuralism suggests that “there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and that structures must become unstable or decentered” (Owl Purdue). In other words, let’s dig down into the skeletal forms that hold our society together and rattle their bones. Particularly, let’s do this whenever power is involved. It is an assumption of post-structuralism that hegemonies are actively working to maintain control, so we must find out where strength is rooted in a culture and uncover how authority is being maintained. What does this mean on a practical level? It means that all grand narratives are immediately suspect. It means that the fundamental promises of science (innovation will save us), of theology (God will save us), of history (mankind is growing), of traditional literature (the canon exists and its stories are good), of every realm are deconstructed. The old templates are torn to shreds. Nothing is dependable, including language itself. Post-structuralists were not the first to notice that there are spaces between words and their intended meanings. There’s no way around the fact that language is metaphorical. However, what they did with the gap is unique, for “post-structuralists assert that if we cannot trust language systems to convey truth, the very bases of truth are unreliable and the universe—or at least the universe we have constructed—becomes unraveled or de-centered” (Owl Purdue). In other words, they took a single defined gap and used that to blow up trust in everything. You can see shadows of post-structuralist thinking in a movie like Shrek, a deconstructed fairy tale. That plot is built around the humor of defying narrative norms. The princess is a tough guy half-ogre. The ogre is an insecure romantic. There is bathroom humor, and short guy humor, and phallic humor, and the protagonist’s best friend is an ass. (Haw, haw, haw. An ass. See what they did there? An ass. Haw, haw, haw.) Sure, Shrek is funny in some ways—but it’s funny like passing gas in church. When you hear it, you laugh first, and then you are sad you laughed, because crude humor feels like despair after it settles. And it’s not just Shrek, there is so much in our culture that reduces humanity to its lowest animal state. I wasn’t around to verify whether humans evolved from apes, but I have seen evidence that we are becoming beasts. We are crass. We treat one another as if we were disposable. The present zeitgeist of defiance and deconstruction pushes us toward an uncivilized end instead of just acknowledging it. Last week a couple of high school students told me about a video game that kids are playing these days. I thought they were exaggerating, so I found clip of the game on YouTube, and I watched it myself. What I saw is terrible to explain. The gamer picked a virtual prostitute off the street, then he drove her to a parking garage where he used her sexually two different ways. The images and the dialogue were graphic. When the gamer let the girl out of his car, he walked around and shot her in the head.  After she fell, I could see up her skirt. She was naked, dead, bloody, and I wanted to vomit. My legs felt weak for several hours thinking about all the children who are exposed to this sort of role play. God, save us. Ever since I watched that clip, I’ve been thinking about different strategies creators are using to try and rescue us from our barbarism. Of course there are Christian people making overtly Christian movies. Yet not all creative strategies are so straightforward, and I think that’s fine. It’s even street smart. There are creators who operate like that ragged assortment of British fishermen recruited in WWII to collect wounded soldiers from foreign banks. These authors, filmmakers, songwriters are a motley crew, using an odd mix of grit and light in their attempts at redemption. For example, the movie (and books) The Series of Unfortunate Events seem to attempt a covert sort of rescue. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how the grim challenges of the plot are introduced by a saccharine Littlest Elf, who prances about with cutesy, overdone sweetness. When the elf’s fantastical world is exposed as a foil, there is something like disappointment and relief that rises in the viewer simultaneously. We want to cry out, “I knew it!  I knew the world couldn’t really be so cheery and simple.” Then the story moves on to tackle courage and love in desperate times, and for some reason, the painful struggles of the Baudelaire children feel more honest because that gay little elf was dismantled from the outset. So I sat in Cinderella, prepared for a similar sort of sinking. I was ready for it, but it never came. This time the strategy was different, an old school, unadulterated fairy tale. There were no challenges to the establishment. There was no attack on metanarrative. The mockery didn’t come. The cynicism didn’t come. The heroine was kind, tenacious, long suffering, honest, and beautiful. As tears swelled up in my eyes at the audacity of such a thing, I asked myself, “What is happening here; and why is this both so foreign and so familiar?” Cinderella’s tale of redemption is found in countries all over the world. She has different names, and the details change, but the same basic plot is there. Why is that? Why is humanity so driven to create, to tell, to retell this story? Maybe it’s because we are tired of sleeping in the cinders. Maybe it’s because we are all sore from evil stepsisters and from grieving the losses of old comforts. Maybe it’s because we haven’t been courageous or kind, and we wish that we would have been. As I watched Ella’s tenacity—without being offered even a drop of cynisism for protection—I grew penitent, because I recognized that I had given up on goodness too soon. As I watched her kindness toward the needy, I saw how I have been more focused on what I don’t have than on being generous with what I do. In her refusal to retaliate, I saw how I have accepted the currencies of pain and abuse, and how I’ve traded in them. In her strength, I saw how I’ve given the cynics my character and my hope. More importantly, I saw how I don’t want any of that any more, and the existence of my thirst indicates that there is also something in the universe to quench it. There is a brilliant scene at the end of the movie (spoiler, if you haven’t seen it) where Cinderella asks her evil stepmother why she is being so cruel. The stepmother replies that Ella’s beauty and kindness have made hatefulness more tempting instead of less. There is a sort of math to this. The corrupt heart cannot receive Ella’s goodness, because darkness hates light, and because somewhere along the way, every villain stops believing that happily ever after could apply to him. Losing that one hope changes everything. It means we look at our pitiful plate of leftover food scraps and refuse to kneel down and share with four hungry mice. It means we lose our bearings for bravery. It means the roots that once fed tenderness shrivel, and we sit drying up, weeping in our rags, not understanding that Jesus was speaking to our very own poverty when he said, “take courage; I have overcome the world.” A lovely woman from China sat next to me in the theater, and every once in a while, I would steal a glance at her shy grin. She looked seven years old sitting there, and I could tell that we were both recovering something powerful that we had held inside us when we were tiny. “You too?” I thought. “You and me both, and all of us. We had forgotten, hadn’t we?” Somewhere along the way, our worlds grew dim, we got discouraged, and we forgot how much the fairy tale meant. Finding it again is as audacious as holiness, and even though we are tired, we aren’t too ruined for it yet. Goodness. Kindness. Courage. Beauty. Hope. The early tales whisper a promise that a servant girl can stumble into an extravagant grace on the night of her deepest despair and become a great queen as a result. Therein is the gospel, isn’t it? Believe, weary one. Believe. Drink from the stream of faith so that you can walk today having courage and being kind. You who wake with labor’s ash on your face, with trouble’s sorrow in your heart, and with the hunger of loneliness in your belly, you can live from the good old vision again.”

Why do the arts matter? Why does beauty matter? I don’t believe I have ever heard a better explanation than the song “Why It Matters,” by Sara Groves. I can still remember Gina coming to me years ago while I typed away at my first novel, battling discouragement (as always), and saying, “This song is what you’re doing.” I hope so! Even if it’s just in a small way for a few people, I hope so. We love Sara Groves in our home and this is one of many reasons why. She (like Andrew Peterson) always seems to be singing about our life. Do you have that experience too? Thank you, Sara. Like a single cup of water, oh it matters. Lyrics below. Here’s the record, Add to the Beauty (and it’s all so wonderful). Why It Matters by Sara Groves 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 dissension Like small ramparts for the soul How it matters Like a single cup of water How it matters —– Are there other songs, or expressions of soul, that are like this for you?

Last April I ran the Music City Half-Marathon with my fifteen-year-old son. I ran most of it, anyway. Between Mile Marker 10 and Mile Marker 11 I decided I’d had as much fun as I could stand and sent my son on ahead while I walked a little, trotted a little, walked some more. I was walking, and not very briskly, near the foot of Capitol Hill when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “You can do this,” said a woman’s voice. “Don’t walk. Run.” I looked to see who my encourager was, but I didn’t recognize her as she passed. I could see that she was a few years older than I. My first thought was, “If this woman can keep running after eleven miles, I can too.” My second thought was, “I’ve got nothing to prove here. She can run if she wants, and good on her. I’m tired of running.” My third thought was, “Wait, is she wearing a beauty pageant sash?” A white satin sash ran across the woman’s torso from left shoulder to right hip. On it the name “Carolyn Corlew” was emblazoned in royal blue letters. I started running again, not because I had the Eye of the Tiger, or even because I was ashamed that I was being outrun by a woman who clearly had a decade or two on me. No, I ran because if I didn’t catch up with the woman with the sash, I would never know her story. “So,” I asked when I caught up with the woman, “is your name Carolyn Corlew?” “Yes it is!” she said. “I’m Senior Ms. America! Can you believe it?” She showed me the front of her sash, in case I couldn’t believe it. Sure enough. She was Senior Ms. America. “Are you the current Senior Ms. America,” I asked, “or a former Senior Ms. America?” I wanted to know: there could be dozens of former Senior Ms. Americas kicking around, after all, but only one current one. “Current!” she said. “I’m Senior Ms. America right now!” This was her eighth Country Music Half-Marathon, she told me. She was from Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where she worked for Charlie Daniels. She started singing background vocals for him in 1979. Let me put that in context: when Charlie Daniels recorded “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” she was there. That song was as important to eleven-year-old Jonathan Rogers as—I don’t know, as some Rich Mullins song was to some of the folks around here. I stood in mute astonishment. But only for a second, because Carolyn Corlew was still running, and I didn’t want her to get away from me. We came to a sharp switch-back. Everybody in front of us was cutting across the sidewalk, saving themselves a few steps. And who could blame them at Mile 12? “You’re cheating!” Carolyn shouted. “I never cheat.” “Me neither,” I said. That wasn’t, properly speaking, true, but Carolyn Corlew made me wish I was the kind of person who never cheated. I dutifully ran those extra ten steps with her. Pete Peterson says that running for fun is insane. Maybe so. Nevertheless, I must say it has done me quite a bit of good to do something hard for which I have no real talent and which I don’t exactly enjoy. It has been suggested that one of the most important things that separates us from the beasts is the fact that we humans can make ourselves do that which we don’t want to do. A monkey or a goat can’t bind his own will. As Chesterton said, “I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. ” Here in my forties I have gained wisdom from running that I never gained from books. To wit: I have learned never to ask, “Can I run 13.1 miles?” (the answer is probably no) but only to ask “Can I run to the next telephone pole” (the answer is probably yes). To apply this principle to my line of work, people don’t write books: they write sentences. Here’s another thing I have learned from running: there are a hundred reasons to quit, yet it is surprising what a small reason will keep you going. A small word of encouragement. Curiosity about a woman running in a beauty pageant sash. Long after I thought I was done, I ran two last miles rather than walking them, thanks to the current Senior Ms. America. We crossed the finish line together.

[Editor’s note: On March 26-29 Laity Lodge welcomed us back to the Texas Hill Country for the 2nd annual Rabbit Room Retreat. The weekend was an enormous delight and today’s guest writer, Randi Sanders, recounts the experience.] “Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves) Our company of four – whom I shall refer to as Merry, Pippin, Bilbo and Frodo – consisted of two musicians, an aspiring writer, and an all-encompassing creative. For months we collaborated in anticipation of a retreat at Laity Lodge that, we hoped, would prove to be a unique and inspiring adventure. Having been at least ten years or more since I last attended a “retreat,” when Frodo mentioned this opportunity I agreed to go in blind enthusiasm. Graciously, all of our spouses indulged our whims – and off we went. The journey started with a trunk full of luggage, guitars, and journals. Our cup holders were filled with caffeine and our hearts were full of joyful expectancy. Upon naively choosing the “scenic route,” we set out on a six hour drive down to what I would soon believe to be the most beautiful place in my entire home state. We made a few pit stops along the way, including an encounter with a kindly state trooper, the indulgence of a giant chicken-fried steak and equally giant chocolate meringue pie, and a plethora of bathroom breaks. Frodo, our elected chauffeur, suffers from two ailments: a right foot made of lead and a sugar intolerance, both of which caused many laughs. Once we got out into the rolling green landscape of the Hill Country, where cell phone service is spotty at best, we were forced to rely on our rusty directional instincts. We drove down a winding dirt road, through a river, and as good adventurers eventually do, we discovered our oasis, a hidden gem of rustic luxury. Soon we would learn the truth of what J.R.R. Tolkien noted in his book The Hobbit when he said, “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” The Lodestar House was reserved for our small group’s private use, a secluded structure at the top of the hill with ample bedrooms and a perfectly situated patio. When we first pulled up, I knew it the was an indicator of what the next few days had in store. After a little exploring, we made our way a quarter of a mile down to the main camp for dinner, which marked the official beginning of the weekend. The retreat was hosted by The Rabbit Room, but beyond the names of the speakers and musicians, none of our company was entirely sure what to expect. I confess that I hoped to meet an eclectic assortment of people, partake in many delicious meals, absorb a wealth of information, and be inspired. All of my hopes were exceeded. Our first evening’s lecture opened with Dr. Ralph Wood, the Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University, who is an author and a leading expert on the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Flannery O’Connor. Dr. Wood led captivating discussions on both Tolkien and O’Connor, including at one point an informative piece on peacocks (which Merry and Frodo found extremely enlightening). One evening I had the privilege of sitting beside Dr. Wood at dinner. I was privileged to pick his brain on the Inkling’s debatable use of allegory and inquire about the hobbit to which he most related. Dr. Wood and his wife were a true delight, making for marvelous dinner partners. In my humble opinion, singer-songwriter and author Andrew Peterson proved as fascinating and down-to-earth as I had imagined he would be. His talent stirred my heart. On the last day of our retreat, he was free long enough for me to ask a few questions I had regarding his books, The Wingfeather Saga. Peterson kindly indulged my curiosity about his characters and the surprising finale, as well as imparted various tips about writing that I will forever treasure. Also worth noting is the kindness and musical talent of his wife and three children, who participated in the weekend’s events and added a special facet to the experience. Even more than before, I am convinced that nature is an unfailing muse. I could spend all day describing the enchanting Frio River with an abundance of adjectives, but suffice it to say I had no idea that Texas was capable of producing such clear emerald water. Each morning it held me in a trance as I stood on the deck, mesmerized by the sunrise reflecting off the surface. There were also unforgettable moments spent scaling walls of the Threshold, swimming in the frigid river, and climbing trees on mid-afternoon walks. Beyond that, hiking with Merry and Pippin proved to be a jolly event, filled with big belly laughs and exhausted lungs. For someone who prizes sleep as highly as I do, I found little to no time for it. I was too eager to wake up before dawn and watch the sun illuminate the sky while enjoying a hot cup of coffee on the patio. But I was equally zealous to stay awake past midnight in the company of my friends who blessed me with the sound of their voices and guitars while I sat with my pen jotting away in an overflow of imagination. The moments felt so precious and sacred that I didn’t want to miss even one. A unique activity at the retreat, led by a local artist, was to write on two wooden blocks. On the one, we were to write a single word that describes what hinders our creativity, and on the other block we were to write a word we wish to be removed from the lexicon. Then he constructed a tower (a “Tower of Babble,” he coined it) out of everyone’s blocks. The last evening, after an intimate concert hosted by Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips, we went outside where we found our Tower of Babble sitting on a spinning pottery wheel. And then the incredible happened – we lit it on fire. Watching our antagonists burn in a vortex of fire was a surprisingly liberating experience. Afterwards I was able to snag the attention of A. S. “Pete” Peterson, and share with him my love for his character, Fin, in his books The Fiddler’s Gun and The Fiddler’s Green. He, too, graciously entertained all of my questions about his unexpected ending. He shared with me the remarkable conception of his books and ultimately encouraged me to “just write.” Peterson assured me that merely finishing a first draft is worth celebrating (and that they all kind of suck – but that’s normal – and they get better in the second and third refinements). He also urged me to embrace the reality that as my characters develop and take unexpected turns, my plot will too. Storytelling, I am learning, is an unpredictable experience that varies with each author’s journey. I was also delighted to make the acquaintance of Jonathan Rogers, author of The Wilderking Trilogy. After just recently finishing the trilogy, I found myself curious about the inspiration of the feechiefolk, a tribe of semi-civilized swamp people who fight too much, cry too easily, and laugh at jokes they’ve heard a hundred times. In an entertaining tale I shall not soon forget, Rogers shared with me the exciting source of these feechiefolk. My time at Laity Lodge was spent either in quiet solitude, allowing my thoughts to entirely engulf me, or within a milieu of interesting and insightful people. I had little to no concept of time; my days were dictated by the ringing of a bell which indicated meal time. Being Bilbo has its certain food-focused advantages – I am pleased to announce my success at eating about six times a day. There was no cell phone service. No television. No one locked their doors and we left our car keys in the floorboards. So what I took home . . . First, the understanding that all artists take their art very personally. It is nerve-racking to share that piece of yourself with others, especially for the first time. Vulnerability is scary. And although we ultimately create for the enrichment of others, we hope that others find our creation as precious as we do. Embracing the identity that Tolkien calls us to as “sub-creators” can be an overwhelming ambition. The doctrine of sub-creation was especially significant to Tolkien, both as a Christian and as a fantasy writer, because he viewed sub-creation as a form of worship, a way for creatures to express the divine image in them by becoming creators. In addition to the challenge of aspiring to be a sub-creator, I learned that I can, and must, rely on my own Inklings for support. My own circle of creative friends provides me with a safe place to share my craziest ideas and the comforting knowledge that they’re just as crazy as I am. Frodo, Merry, and Pippin have become a small circle of brothers and sisters with whom I can be honest and vulnerable. As unlikely a group of friends as the Oxford Inklings were, our band of Southern Inklings are, I imagine, equally diverse. I shall never forget the many micro moments that created a macro memory in my heart and mind. The experiences we shared at our Texas oasis will forever be memories that ignite laughter, imagination, and dreams.

I find that some writings come together relatively quickly. Others I tinker with off and on for years before I’m satisfied. And still others languish in a state of stunted realization perpetually, perhaps never to be completed. I find this equally true of stories, songs, poems, and essays. I have fragments of up to 40,000 words languishing (or percolating) on the backburners of these hard drives. Some are perhaps only the initial workings out of an idea that eventually finds incarnation in some other form or piece. But others seem to be their own thing, such that either I will one day bend them to conclusion, or they will simply sink into the peat bog of the half-finished and the forgotten and the might-have-been. In celebration of the not-fully-realized, I offer the following found poem. This is one I created some time back, probably ten years ago, limiting my source material to a single page from a history textbook. I never had the settled sense that the poem was complete though, so I never did anything with it. In looking back at it now, I concur with my initial instinct. This poem still needs one or two additional closing lines; some sort of clincher that ties it all up or brings the reader to a new place. Even so, I like what it is and where it’s going. I no longer have any notion of what I did with the original textbook. If I stumble across it in my basement someday, I’ll try to land the ending. In the lingering meantime, I offer it as a snapshot of a found poem in progress. [For a brief explanation of “found poetry” please see the earlier Rabbit Room post The City Our Eyes Cannot See.] “Hurting“ A found poem created from the source text: America: Changing Times Since 1865 pg. 663, Charles Dollar, editor They were hurting. Long after the war ended, they were hurting. After months of bitter debate, the conviction was growing that they were hurting. As years went by, panic turned in to a severe depression. They tried to get and retain power, but without much success. They tried to work harder and longer, but the crunch made little difference to anyone. They tried to hoard a solution to their ills (This action failed to end the depression). The liquor question played upon these and other weaknesses. The result was a disaster: They were hurting. The most enduring problem was the question at the root of iron and steel: Those who suffered had little impact; Those who suffered often made little difference to anyone. Those who suffered simply did not have enough “utmost importance.”

I’ve been lately enjoying George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie. Many of the ideas in those books echo the thoughts in one of MacDonald’s other fantasy books, Phantastes. MacDonald’s characters are often on a journey of some sort which prompts all sorts of surprises and discoveries. There is nearly always some sort of tension between faith and unbelief, virtue and temptation, courage and fear, and MacDonald never fails to give me deep, life-changing prompts for my own journey. I’ll highlight just a few of these to keep this post from being a novel of its own. The first example is that of unbelief, that progressive losing of the childlike mindset that sees wonder and potential and possibility all around. Curdie is a miner boy whose stealthy spying on the goblins in The Princess and the Goblin uncovers a plot to kidnap the princess. But in the beginning of the sequel, The Princess and Curdie, he is losing his grip on true reality: “….as Curdie grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind— with the usual consequence, that he was getting rather stupid— one of the chief signs of which was that he believed less and less in things he had never seen. At the same time I do not think he was ever so stupid as to imagine that this was a sign of superior faculty and strength of mind. Still, he was becoming more and more a miner, and less and less a man of the upper world where the wind blew. On his way to and from the mine he took less and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths and dragonflies, the flowers and the brooks and the clouds. He was gradually changing into a commonplace man. There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in, so afraid of it that he takes himself in altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a thing with him is to have it between his teeth.” In Phantastes, MacDonald’s chief character, Anodos, opens a closet he was told not to open, and his shadow-self finds him. This shadow changes the way Anodos sees people and things – it comes between his vision and his relationships and causes problems. As he goes on, he says of his shadow-self: “But the most dreadful thing of all was, that I now began to feel something like satisfaction in the presence of my shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, ‘In a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me things in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.’” Anodos begins to embrace the lack of wonder as right, as normal, as true; Chesterton said, “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” In the end Anodos and Curdie, both lacking wonder, make selfish choices that harm others. The harm they do causes them to see more truly, and they repent. George MacDonald always brings moral and spiritual issues to the heart and not simply to the head. Courage is shown to be kingly and beautiful. Fear is contrasted with servility and ugliness. Unbelief creates delusion and destroys beauty, and the childlikeness of faith shines out true reality and beauty. Reading MacDonald causes an inner reaction of desire – the desire to be courageous oneself, or childlike, to avoid the ugliness and imitate the beauty. Truth in the head alone often creates only arrogance and self-satisfaction, because we can think we’ve owned a thing when we’ve only grasped it with our intellect. But MacDonald always brings it home to my heart, to my will, and stirs me in the depths. This bit from The Princess and the Goblin shows how fear can drive the very thing we fear to come to pass: “Not daring to look behind her, she rushed straight out of the gate and up the mountain. It was foolish indeed—thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of.” Curdie, by contrast, is not afraid of the goblins. Instead, he makes up mocking songs to sing to them: “We’re the merry miner-boys, Make the goblins hold their noise.” The goblins can’t stand hearing someone sing boldly, confidently, not giving in to fear. Jesus had to say to the disciples many times, “Do not be afraid,” and “Be of good courage.” King David said, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee.” Fear locks us in a prison of our own perceptions, a cell of our own making. We create and live in a false reality, sometimes for decades, until our perceptions of reality are altered or even shattered.

MUSWELL HILL, LONDON. We drove east from central London (sometimes keeping to the appropriate side of the road) to a place called Dagenham. I overheard someone explain the pronunciation: “It’s DAG-en-HAM, yes, but to sound local you just mash it all together so it sounds like ‘Dagnum.'” We stayed with the Harts, a family we met on the Petersons’ European adventure almost two years ago. In July of 2013 they picked up Jamie and the kids and me from Heathrow and drove us to their home in Dagenham, charming us with their accents the whole way. Tom grew up on a farm in England and Rachel is from the highlands of Scotland, and now they live in the manse of a little church in a little neighborhood called Osborne Square. In a delightful case of Englishness, their proper address has no house number—it’s just “The Manse, Osborne Square.” Tom, whom I don’t think I’ve ever seen without a smile on his face, cracked up me and my boys right away when he asked, “So what’s the deal with July 4th, anyway? What are you guys celebrating?” I love that I had to explain Independence Day to the first Brit I met. Evidently, it’s a bit of history they’ve chosen to ignore, for understandable reasons. Jamie and I got there the week Tom and Rach and their daughter Jodie left for—get this—Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They were going to Iowa to visit—get this—my dear friend Jody, also known as the Queen of Iowa. Tom and Rach had heard my song and, moved by Jody’s story, named their daughter after her. They were flying to Iowa to introduce their daughter to her namesake. Clearly, I felt a connection with this young family, and I couldn’t wait to introduce Eric to them. As it turns out, they already knew Eric pretty well, or, as well as you can know someone when you’re a raging fan of their music. When my family and I stayed there last time, Rach couldn’t say enough about the tremendous blessing Eric’s music had been to her. We were exhausted from the trip, but not too exhausted to enjoy Tom’s homemade shepherd’s pie and some homemade scones for dessert. The next morning they served us a full English breakfast, which consisted of sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, tomatoes, and beans. I’ve heard people complain about the food in England, but in my book a prevalence of fish and chips, Indian and Thai food, meat pies, and hearty breakfasts, is cause for celebration. The only thing I can think to complain about is how much weight I gained in nine short days. The next morning (day three), taking Tom and Rach’s advice, we drove south from Dagenham to Kent, which was Eric’s first taste of the English countryside. If you’ve been to London but have never gotten out of the city, it’s fair to say you haven’t really seen England. London is a magnificent city, but as soon as you leave the metropolis and exit the motorway (not to be confused with the “interstate”), the roads narrow and you find yourself gasping at old stone walls, English churches with weathered tombstones tilting out of the grass, cottages at odd angles to the road, and alluring public footpaths beckoning to the Took in all of us. We were aiming for Chartwell, the home of Winston Churchill, but got distracted along the way by an antique store and a castle. The entrance fee for Hever Castle proved too steep, so instead we walked across the street to a pub called Shepherd Neame, which boasted a picture of Henry VIII on the shingle. Of all the pubs I’ve visited, this one was perhaps the most authentically pubbish. The ceiling was low. Real candles sputtered on iron candlesticks on every table. The food was delicious—I had cod and chips, Eric had prawns (he is a native Louisianan, after all). I asked the server how old the building was, and he said, “It’s been around since the 1400’s. They say Henry VIII used it as a hunting lodge. Can I get you some ketchup?” Truly, there’s nothing like having lunch in a building that predates Columbus. Shepherd Neame Pub, where Henry VIII lodged and Pappy and I lunched. After a quick walk around Churchill’s gardens at Chartwell, we drove back to London for the show at St. James’s in Muswell Hill. The crowd was small (though very kind), but the church—a building that was bombed during WWII—was grand. My favorite thing about the night was watching the audience’s reaction to Eric’s music. I saw tears gleaming in their eyes, and their applause was long and disproportionately loud. Pappy and I outside of the church in Muswell Hill. Yes, I thought, these were Eric’s people. His humble demeanor turned the boisterous American stereotype on its head, and they loved it. After the concert the pastor walked us across the street for a pint at the local pub, where we talked about gun control and Ferguson and the Monarchy and Jesus and ministry. Every time I play in what some call “post-Christian” Europe I’m reminded how far I am from the Bible Belt. I’m reminded too of how strong and true the Gospel really is, and how alive the church will always be. The Kingdom is big and beautiful, folks. Cheerio.

[Thanks to Lanier Ivester for introducing us to this gem. Happy Easter, folks. He is risen.] Desdichado —This is the heir; come let us kill him. —Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved? Christ walks the world again, His lute upon His back, His red robe rent to tatters, His riches gone to rack, The wind that wakes the morning blows His hair about His face, His hands and feet are ragged with the ragged briar’s embrace, For the hunt is up behind Him and His sword is at His side,… Christ the bonny outlaw walks the whole world wide, Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me, Lie among the bracken and break the barley bread? We will see new suns arise in golden, far-off skies, For the Son of God and Woman hath not where to lay His head.” Christ walks the world again, a prince of fairy-tale, He roams, a rascal fiddler, over mountain and down dale, Cast forth to seek His fortune in a bitter world and grim, For the stepsons of His Father’s house would steal His bride from Him; They have weirded Him to wander till He bring within His hands The water of eternal youth from black-enchanted lands, Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me, Or sleep on silken cushions in the bower of wicked men? For if we walk together through the wet and windy weather, When I ride back home triumphant, you will ride beside Me then.” Christ walks the world again, new-bound on high emprise, With music in His golden mouth and laughter in His eyes; The primrose springs before Him as He treads the dusty way, His singer’s crown of thorns has burst in blossom like the may, He heedeth not the morrow and He never looks behind, Singing: “Glory to the open skies and peace to all mankind.” Singing: “Lady, lady, will you come away with Me? Was never man lived longer for the hoarding of his breath; Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain . . . If we perish in the seeking . . . why, how small a thing is death!” —Dorothy Sayers

The newest issue of The Molehill contains a couple of truly unique pieces of history. The first is an original, previously-unpublished essay by the great G. K. Chesterton, and you’ll have to pick up a copy of the book to read that one. But the other is this bit of literary treasure discovered by Jonathan Rogers while doing research via microfilm in the Vanderbilt library. It’s a hand-written poem he found in the margin of a sixteenth-century manuscript by a Sir Richard Roland, Second Earl of Astley. Apparently it has never been published (at least not until we published it in The Molehill Vol. 3), so this is a poem that few living eyes but yours, dear reader, have ever seen. “Never, Sweeting, Could I Play Thee False” Never, sweeting, could I play thee false, E’en until the day we both should die— Verily, till we go to our vaults. Ever was there lover true as I? Rocks may split, the mountains all remove, Gone away the rivers, all run dry. Only I will love still, still unmoved. Never was there lover true as I. Never, sweeting, could I make thee weep. Away, away with each old love thou ruest. Give me thy heart, and my heart thou canst keep. I of every lover am the truest. Verses sometimes lie; I never do. Eye me, and the soul of truth thou viewest. Yew bow never shot a shaft so true. Of every lover, dear, I am the truest. Until the end I plight my troth, forsooth. Upon my hoary age, upon thy youth… Prithee, hast thou ever known such truth? —Sir Richard Roland (1587)

In this passion week, I’m happy to share with the Rabbit Room community an essay I wrote fifteen years ago for the liner notes of what turned out to be one of the most laboriously-titled CD’s ever: “Music From and Inspired by Jesus, the Epic Mini-Series” While the TV mini-series starring Jeremy Sisto did manage to portray a warm, even playful, side of the Messiah, it also had some glaring theological flaws. Enough so that after viewing an advance copy, I didn’t know if I wanted to accept the writing gig. I even went to my pastor to talk through the implications of affixing my name to a project that presented a distorted view of the nature of the Son of Man. Ultimately though, I decided that someone, somewhere, was going to write something about Jesus that was going to be included in the CD packaging. And whatever was written was going to be read by thousands of people (this was back in the days when everyone still purchased CDs, mind you), many of whom wouldn’t have any accurate idea of who Jesus was. At that point I came to see the writing of the essay as an opportunity to introduce people to the Jesus I believed the gospel writers truly testified to. So I said yes to the gig. Over the years since, I’ve been pleased to see the essay pop up in various places on the internet, taking on a modest life of its own. I wish it well. I hope it runs a course that lasts far longer than I do. Having not looked at it in who knows how long, I re-read it now with some surprise, because there are insights reflected in it that I could swear I only just started to see in the last few months, even in the last few weeks. Revelations I’ve just uncovered that strangely, I had also apparently just uncovered fifteen years ago. But then, maybe that’s the nature of the Christ. In some ways we never get past square one with him. Even as our experience of him and our love for him grows over time, we still find ourselves confounded by him over and over again at the same points we did when we first dared believe that his words might be true. So in the midst of this week of deep lament and celebration, of death and life, of crucifixion and resurrection, I offer the following meditation for your consideration. —Douglas “What do we do with this Jesus?” That was the question on everyone’s mind at the swing-point of history 2000 years ago. The Jews, the Romans, Herod, Pilate, the High Priests, even Jesus’ own disciples — they all found themselves wrestling with the same perplexing question: “What do we do with this man?” For some reason he didn’t seem to fit very conveniently into anyone’s agenda — personal, national, religious, or otherwise. The Jews wanted a warrior king to drive the occupying Roman army out of the promised land. The Roman’s wanted to maintain and expand their empire over the known world. Everyone else just wanted what people everywhere have always wanted: pleasure and prosperity and to be left alone. Jesus came along and upset all of that. He refused power. He didn’t seek fame. He treated the pleasures of this life as inconsequential. He humbled himself as a servant and his selflessness alone became a walking indictment of all human agendas — base and noble alike. It’s no wonder he made people nervous. He was like a splinter in the soul. Even those who despised him couldn’t ignore him. They buzzed around him constantly, angry and perplexed. In their defense, his presence must have been a bit overwhelming. The story of his life on earth is more than we seem eager to contend with today, but people then had no choice but to physically rub shoulders with him. They walked the same dusty roads and breathed the same air. There wasn’t any getting away from it. He kept popping up at odd moments, infuriating people with his compassion, perplexing them with his gentle wisdom, and frightening them with his unbearable love. And then there was the whole business about claiming to be the Son of God. Truth is, Jesus was an absolute scandal. He taught that the least were the greatest, the rejected were the blessed, the wise were the foolish, the weak were the strong, and the secure were the lost. He taught that people should selflessly love, not just their friends and families — which would have been difficult enough — but strangers and enemies as well. He called on those possessed by their possessions to leave their wealth behind to follow him into a life of uncertain suffering for the one promised consolation of his love. His words grew so appalling one afternoon that many of his followers gave it up for good and returned home, muttering that his teaching was too hard. They had had enough. Those who stayed were apparently in too deep already. Most scandalous of all was the way Jesus publicly and persistently rejected the proud, self-righteous religious leaders of the day and instead drew prostitutes, half-breeds, political revolutionaries, smelly fisherman, and turncoat tax-collectors into his circle of friends — all of whom soon and somehow found themselves, by his very acceptance, transformed from what they had always thought they were into a new existence as children of God. It’s one of the eternal ironies surrounding Jesus that those who allowed the exposure of their own weakness, shame, and guilt were the very ones who were afterward able to drink with joy from the fountains of eternal forgiveness and love, while those who fought desperately to prop up their own crumbling facades of self-righteousness were in the end reduced to a ridiculous position, raging blindly against love and their own liberation. Jesus was always hard to take that way — an insult, even — because beneath it all, it seemed that everyone needed him whether they wanted to or not, prostitutes and Pharisees alike. And that really was the crux of the problem. His very nature exposed the heart and forced the hand of everyone around him so that in the end, after the haze and baggage burned away, it was all laid out pretty simply. You were left with only two possible ways of answering the question “What do we do with this Jesus?” You could either follow him or you could crucify him. 2000 years of science, progress, and religion don’t seem to have changed things for us all that much. The human heart is still the human heart. Nuclear power, psychotherapy, and satellite television notwithstanding, most of us still find ourselves — in our more honest moments — faced with the same troubling question and the same simple options that perplexed Christ’s contemporaries . . . “What do we do with this Jesus?” It’s something to think about anyway. . .

There was a stretch of time — a very long stretch — that gave all of us every reason to abandon television. Every hour of programming, whether sitcom or drama, seemed to pander to the lowest common denominator. Devoid of meaning, it made sense to encourage kids (and adults) to turn off the television to find something meaningful to do. But at last, that season is behind us. Now the opposite is true: there’s not enough time in the day to get through the staggering amount of recommendations on network television, cable, Netflix, Amazon or even web-based series. We’re in a golden age of television, one in which characters are fleshed out, plotlines are complicated, and more is demanded of the viewer than ever before. We polled some of our RR contributors to get their recommendations, even as we realize that a dozen more could be discussed and highlighted. Add your own in the comments. We want to hear what you’re watching. Doctor Who I’ve been a sci-fi and fantasy fan from an early age, and loving Doctor Who is a logical outcome. The Doctor, as scriptwriter Stephen Moffat has said, “. . . is an angel trying to be a man.” Doctor Who is a Time Lord, a time-traveling human-like alien with the ability to regenerate at death. Long ago he stole a Tardis (a time machine disguised as a British police box) and now uses it for the good of others, continually getting himself into situations requiring hard ethical decisions. The Doctor loves people, and saves them even at the expense of having to regenerate and use up another of his own lives. One of the best things about the Doctor, the thing in him to which viewers relate, is his intense loneliness; it is just there, unsaid but seen. His relationships, usually a female companion traveling with him for one or two seasons, give him respite. Some of the most moving episodes happen as his companion is torn from him by circumstance. This recurring theme of the series is as important as the actual story lines. I started with Season Two with the David Tennant Doctor on the advice of Rebecca Reynolds, and it was sound advice. The first season feels like they were still trying to get their feet—worth watching later if one becomes a fan. [Ron Block] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNPhX565xnM] Homeland Let me get this out of the way before a close friend points this out: I’ve had a crush on Claire Danes since the dawn of time. Trust me when I say, however, that I would be addicted to Homeland sans crush. Ask Arthur Alligood who told me he watched every season in a matter of days after I told him it was the best thing around. Homeland is a Showtime series focused largely on Carrie Mathison (Danes), a CIA officer with a history of mental illness. Early seasons feature an ongoing plotline involving the rescue of an American prisoner of war who Mathison believes has been turned by al-Qaeda. Future seasons stand on their own. Homeland’s ability to give perspective and voice to unAmerican characters is almost as impressive as the way it handles issues of mental illness. Yet as strong as these elements are, Homeland was created to be a suspenseful drama about the perilous times in which we live. Given the smart set of actors involved (Danes has won several Emmys here), it succeeds in every respect. [Matt Conner] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18ZHrU3XYQ] Agents of Shield As an extension of my sci-fi fondness, I love watching superhero movies with my teens. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an extension of the Marvel comics and movies—Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Captain America, and The Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) is the secret government entity behind the Avengers. The show is concerned with a particular team of agents headed by Phil Coulson, an agent seen in the various Marvel movies. These agents don’t have superpowers, but they are heroes in doing good in the world, fighting against evil using more “common” means — martial arts, hacker knowledge, guns, technology, and—most of all—brains. Like the Doctor, these folks fight for the good of all, often at their own expense. And again, like the Doctor Who series, the relationships are often the centerpiece of the drama. The themes of love, kindness, goodness, loyalty, deception, and betrayal run throughout. [Ron Block] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3T-evQZiQo] Breaking Bad I know, I know—it’s over. But that show raised the bar, elevating mere TV to the level of literature. When I finished the last episode, I felt like I’d just put down a great, great book about morality and greed and the consequences of the way we treat the people around us. It’s like someone put Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky into a sandwich with some chipotle sauce and bacon. I loved eating that sandwich. [Pete Peterson] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMEq1mGpP5A] Person of Interest Not only does it have some great actors in Michael Emerson, Jim Caviezel (probably a career saving role), and Amy Acker, but it’s spent four seasons delving into the moral complexities of government spying, counter terrorism, and the ethical challenges of increasingly powerful artificial intelligence. Plus, it does this Whedon-esque thing of taking a bunch of brilliant-but-damaged people and putting them together as a team in order to achieve something greater. [Chris Yokel] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xAK3ueOJxE] Sherlock I am not a big TV watcher. It’s not a snobby thing . . . it’s more like an adding-shows-to-my-Netflix-queue-and-never-getting-around-to-them thing. (My biggest accomplishment was finishing Firefly a year or so ago, if that tells you anything.) So for all I know Sherlock is old news, but I watched all three seasons in the span of a few weeks, and it’s pretty much my new favorite thing. It’s a remarkable show. For one thing, it updates—but respects—the source material. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are legendary, but in this 21st century update, they feel like they could belong in our world of tech crimes, terrorism, and media-powered celebrity culture. On a technical level, the series is beautifully crafted and makes excellent use of visual storytelling, creatively showing the inner workings of Sherlock’s mind as the episodes go on. But most compelling, I’d say, is how the heart of the show is less about solving mysteries and more about the redeeming relationship between two flawed heroes. In the first episode, Watson walks with a literal and figurative limp, and Sherlock, for all his genius, lives in isolation. By the last, their friendship has made them—and is continuing to make them—better men. I’m hooked—and waiting a whole year for new episodes like the rest of the world. [Jen Rose Yokel] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRyG8QYV45M] Master Chef Jr. I know, I know. It’s not a TV show in the “great characters and plot” sense of the word, but I love it anyway. Little chefs, ages 8-13, plating dishes that, when I was their age, I wouldn’t have ever dreamed existed. The creativity runs high, and the über-dramatic antics of the show’s adult counterpart (the regular Master Chef) are almost non-existent. Sure, things happen in the kitchen—the occasional cut finger, or the miniature nervous breakdown—but in place of the conniving commentary of the adult competitors, the kids on Master Chef Jr. are prone to a kind of compassion that’s often missing in similar shows. Someone gets sent home and the rest of them gather around him or her and offer hugs and encouragement. Another kid forgets a key ingredient, and someone else has extra and decides to share. As a full-time MFA student and English teacher, I am up to my ears in character and plot. This show gives my brain a break while giving me a glimpse of some intense creativity at work. So, instead of following intricate plot lines, I can watch immense young minds at work—bringing to my older mind the same desire that comes to me when I listen to good music or read a good story: I want to grow younger. I want to see supposed obstacles as opportunities to make something really beautiful. [Barbara Lane] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aBYsdFF-iw] The Walking Dead This started out as a guilty pleasure. I gave it a shot mainly because it was produced by Frank Darabont and I like most of his stuff (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist), and just let me say from the outset that this isn’t for everyone. It’s over-the-top gruesome sometimes, and it’s got some downright awful dialogue at others. In fact my assessment of the show fluctuates wildly from episode to episode and season to season. But what keeps me coming back is the idea that yes, it’s a monster movie, but the zombies aren’t the monsters—the humans are. The show is at its best when it’s pitting its characters against each other in complex and interesting ways—all amid an apocalypse of undead, of course. Whether it’s watching Shane and Rick tick like time-bombs or itching to see why the Governor is just as bad as you suspect he is, I love it. And I also love the ways in which it explores the societal ramifications of something as ludicrous as a world fallen to a zombie horde. Watching how the world’s social constructs evolve and devolve is fascinating. Also, it’s a modern-day western.[Pete Peterson] [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OZ0mu8Ey6A] Black Mirror Take this recommendation with the strongest possible warning. The content of this BBC speculative-fiction series is mature—and I don’t necessarily mean “mature” in the lots-of-explicit sex sense (though that certainly figures in at times). Do NOT let your kids watch this one. That said, the show is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of television as literature. The aptly-named show is basically a set of unconnected short stories, each of which takes a cold, hard look at the crumbling morality of our culture. If Flannery O’Conner and Phillip K. Dick had lived to write for television, the result might have been something like this. Each episode is disturbing, but in the best ways (for me, at least). The stories leave me thinking for days and weeks afterward and force me to look at the world in new and ever more complex ways. That’s the job art is in the world to do, and Black Mirror excels at it. It’s especially interesting to watch the show carry on such a vital conversation about morality in the context of a post-Christian world that’s struggling to figure out which way is up in a sea of moral subjectivism. The BBC (Broadchurch, Happy Valley, The Bletchley Circle, Foyle’s War, Death Comes to Pemberly, The Office, etc.) What is it about British television. It’s so darned good! I read something a while back (I can’t recall where) making the point that in Britain, the BBC has the mission of creating excellent works of literature that enrich the British culture—the result being that they strive for excellence and depth in writing, storytelling, and filmmaking. So in Britain the TV culture is one of striving to create the next well-done thing. Contrast that with America where the primary thing networks seem to care about is money (I’m making generalizations, I know). In our country we strive for whatever nets the most viewers, and as a result we lean on the titillation of violence and sex to draw in the highest profit. That doesn’t exactly make me proud to be an American. And another thing: look at the actors on the BBC. They seem to be cast based on their ability in the craft and their suitability to the role. Now look at an American show. Why do they all look like models instead of real people? Seems to me some folks are getting roles based on criteria other than ability and suitability. It’s a sad commentary on value judgments of our culture. All that said, I know there’s some excellent stuff on American television (hence a lot of the shows on this list), and I applaud it, but the BBC elevates the whole craft. For that, I’m thankful. I love every one of the shows listed up there in the header of this entry, and any new show with the BBC stamp on it instantly merits a closer look in my house.[Pete Peterson]

LONDON Friday 20/02/15 (Why break with British custom now?) During the 8-1/2 hour flight across the Atlantic, I watch two movies. One of them is a sci-fi action movie starring Tom Cruise, set in alien- and war-ravaged London. Later that night, unable to sleep because of jetlag, I watch yet another sci-fi film—this one set in an apocalyptic, dragon-scorched London. This is my first time visiting the United Kingdom, and I’m not sure what to expect when I land—either Tom Cruise or a fire-breathing lizard. I don’t know which would be worse. The plane touches down at Heathrow on Friday morning, 8:45am local time. The first thing I notice is a general, though pleasant and subtle, aroma in the air. Too discrete to be cologne, but certainly not Axe body spray, it’s something more tempered, more mature. I notice it everywhere we go: in the airport, in the restroom, on the shuttle ride, at the car rental site. No sign of dragons or scientologists. I approve. A while back I read a cautionary tale of a musician who was deported from the UK for visa-related hijinks. I’ve been dreading customs ever since. I’m the guy who gets nervous ordering a coffee at Starbucks. But here we are in the queue, and I’m trying my best not to sweat: Customs Agent: “Why are you here?” Me: “For pleasure.” Agent: “What do you do?” Me: “Um, I have a landscaping business in Nashville, and I buy and sell books.” Customs Agent: “Why are you here?” AP: “I am an author, and I teach creative writing.” Agent: “To what ages?” AP: “College students.” Neither of us is lying when we tell the agent our respective professions: landscaping, buying and selling books, teaching creative writing to college students, and authoring books. The agent approves. We are allowed to enter England. We collect our luggage and take the twenty-minute shuttle ride to the car rental site. Then we wait almost an hour to get the car as Andrew haggles with the agent over some questionable fees on the bill. The Proprietor saves us £200, which is good news indeed since our goal (besides books) is to break even on the trip. No small task in a familiar land, much less in an unfamiliar one. I have to repeatedly remind Andrew to get in the other lane as he blithely drives down beautiful hedged-in rural roads into oncoming traffic. Assuming polite British form as if I were born into it, I immediately apologize for being a backseat driver, whereupon AP assures me we will remain friends. It doesn’t take long for our default British accents to kick in, and much of what we say for the rest of the trip is uttered in slices of Cockney or Estuary, and cut with sharp doses of dry humor. We share a lot of laughs throughout the tour, and they are a balm to me. Not realizing that only damn-fool tourists drive through central London on a weekday, we hurtle past Parliament and Big Ben, cross and re-cross the River Thames, gawk at Buckingham Palace, and stare in wonder at some of the oldest buildings I have ever seen. After paying a mere £26 for parking near Trafalgar Square, we walk around trying our Yankee best to find a store that sells UK SIM cards for our phones. We luck upon a gigantic Apple store, and learn that they sell SIM cards at a reasonable rate. For the next hour, Andrew works with the confused, though helpful, employee (who happens to hate London) to get the new card to work on his phone. I don’t hang around for long, instead I follow the beckoning of used bookstores from nearby Charing Cross. I try to look European as I walk alone, making my way down the alley-like streets. Nothing is cheap here, and somehow, by a rare miracle of self-restraint, I leave behind a pristine, jacketed first printing of historian David A. Howarth’s 1986 autobiography, Pursued By A Bear. I’d never before seen or held the book in my hands, but at £35 it’s a price too steep for my wallet, especially this early in the trip. When I rejoin Andrew he reminds me that our odyssey has only just begun. I may find a copy for much less elsewhere – Hay-on-Wye, perhaps? Taken near Cecil Court—an alleyway of overpriced used books. It’s nearly four-o’clock. We decide it’s time to get on the road and drive the hour or so to our host home. The parking garage gate won’t lift or let us out, and none of the garage attendants are able to tell us why, even though we show our paid receipt. Several cars queue up behind us. It’s here, in my passenger seat, that I first notice the peculiar (and welcome) British trait of quiet patience and imperturbability. If this same garage scene took place in big city USA, horns would honk, drivers would complain, and gestures of the most unfriendly sort would let us know how terribly we had failed at life. But not the Brits, at least not these. They endure the moment of temporal inconvenience with – get this – silence. No horn honking, no shouts, no fingers, no rage. No dragons in sight. I decide right then and there I am among my people.

I am not the artist I think I am. Neither are you. Not completely anyway. All of us live with blind spots—realities in our lives and art and thinking we cannot see. We have them even in the endeavors we are most passionate about. Such is the nature of a blind spot—I can’t see it. There are so many bits of information, maturity, perspective, and wisdom I have yet to obtain. They simply aren’t yet mine. A friend asked me recently what I thought was my greatest weakness as a writer. As I thought about it, I discovered I did not know the true answer—a fact which itself may be the best answer I have to offer. My greatest weakness is that I am in many ways oblivious to my weakness. I don’t know what I don’t know, which means sometimes my writing is the work of a blind-folded man with vertigo stumbling around a china shop. I am relatively young in the craft of writing, but I love everything about it. I am wired for this work, and I intend to keep at it until my God takes the pen from my hand. I love the blank page. I love grimacing through the bad first draft. I love the tedious work of revision. I love realizing the paragraph I just spent a half hour on needs to be struck from the manuscript because it does not belong. I love sending my best first pass to an editor. I love that feeling of having accomplished something weighty. And I love it when the editor sends it back covered in red ink. I really do. I feel that the editor just made the work better. They saw what I could not see and spoke into it, and in doing so, made it stronger. Still, whenever someone edits our work, or brings constructive criticism of any kind to the labors we take on, we have a choice to make. Will we receive the criticism as a wound, or as a gift? That depends on whether or not we’re okay with having blind spots and limits. Learning to function within our limits brings us face to face with our pride. And anything that humbles the proud has inherent virtue. Love for the craft of writing is not my struggle. But when I go back and read things I wrote even a year ago, I see weaknesses in that writing I did not recognize at the time. What makes me think the same will not be true a year from now when I look back on these words I write today? This fact tells me two things about my writing: 1. I will always have blind spots. and 2. If I keep at it, I will get better. I can live with that, as if there’s a choice. (This article originally appeared at The Blazing Center.) ______________________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

Jill Phillips says her new album is filled with the stories of brokenness and redemption of family and friends around her. Those of you who are familiar with Jill’s music will know that her many albums are also filled with personal, vulnerable melodies penned from her own journey of faith. “Any Other Way”, our Song of the Week, comes from Jill’s album The Good Things (2008), speaks from a perspective of the trials shared with her husband, Andy Gullahorn. It’s the sort of substantive song we’ve come to expect from Jill. “Any Other Way” by Jill Phillips from the album The Good Things Do you remember that Monday when The world fell out beneath our feet Both surprised that we had been So close to losing everything Putting one foot in front of the other felt like such a long, hard step to take We thought about moving and starting again But it was something we could never outrun so we just stayed I wouldn’t have it any other way I wouldn’t have it any other way Gaining back the trust we lost Was harder than just losing it But if we wanted change at all The pain was a prerequisite So little by little, a piece at a time We were putting back together what was left of a broken life It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t easy But that kind of change isn’t one that happens overnight I wouldn’t have it any other way I wouldn’t have it any other way When we first met, love was a feeling But making it last, that’s a decision A good decision When we watch the kids run through the yard Sometimes I just can’t help but think That every bit of what it cost Was worth it for this family ‘cause I wouldn’t have it any other way I wouldn’t have it any other way I wouldn’t have it any other way

Back about 10 years ago, three things converged in my life that would prove momentous to my personal growth: I started getting serious about writing poetry, I was discovering the literary legacy of Lewis and Tolkien, and I was also beginning to uncover the riches of the church calender. As it happened, Easter was approaching, and I was eager to practice Lent. I had always been soberly and mysteriously drawn to Passion Week in all its agony, ecstasy, and wonder, and I wanted to honor the story in my own way. Having steeped myself in the ambitious poetry of T. S. Eliot and the epic recreations of Tolkien, I thought to rewrite the Passion as a heroic “lay,” in an exercise of personal devotion. So week by week, I poured over the Gospel accounts, and let my imagination cast the story in the mode of a bard. Sixteen poems later, I had completed the last part of what would eventually become The Lay of the Lord trilogy: Birth, Life, and Death & Triumph. I had attempted to present the spirit of “True Myth” which J. R. R. Tolkien talks about in “Fairy Stories,” without getting too archaic for modern sensibilities. Engaging in such a project enabled me to see the story of Jesus with fresh eyes, to recapture a sense of the drama and the characters involved: the impending doom of Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem, the intellectual parry and thrust of His sparrings with the Pharisees, the darkness of Gethsemane, the gloom of Golgotha. Doing so allowed me to slip past the watchful dragons of my own settled thoughts about these all too familiar tales. I would later go on to spend Advent writing the Birth section of the trilogy, and then a few years distilling Jesus’ ministry into Life. Since then, the books have gone out of print, but now I find myself again, during this Lenten season, revising my original work in preparation for a single volume Lay of the Lord. These seasons of the church year can easily become a tired rehash of the “old, old story” that we’ve heard a million times over. Or they can become times for us to press deeper into the tale, to stand in awe of the sweep of the divine drama, and to stand beside the rich human characters caught up in it. What are you doing this Lent to encounter the “True Myth”? The Lay of the Lord: Death & Triumph, is free on Noisetrade Books from now through Easter.