What are you looking for?

Last year in Nashville I bought some pumpkin and caramel scented candles. For the next few weeks our home was filled with a smell that, in my mind, will forever be associated with Hutchmoot. While I burned my candles mercilessly, my daughter saved a small one and kept it in her room. A few weeks ago she burned it for a couple of hours, blew it out and then accidentally knocked it over, leaving a pool of thick amber wax to spread across her desk. As the oils seeped into the tiny cracks in the wood the fragrance filled the entire room, pouring out into the corridor and down the staircase. For days, every time I walked past her room, regardless of my mood, my task or the time of day, the waves of caramel pumpkin swirl involuntarily drew my thoughts to Hutchmoot. There is a link between memory and smell that is impossible to override. The faintest perfume of a certain flower can transport you instantly back to your childhood. The sharp, sterile blend of disinfectant and warm air drags you against your will to a hospital room you would rather forget, awakening pangs of anxiety or sadness you have tried so hard to bury. Even in the hardest hearts and the darkest moments the right scent is powerful enough to awaken longing. Heidi Johnston Some days there is nothing more comforting than opening my parents’ front door and finding myself cocooned in the smell that is particular to their house. Maybe it’s the blend of washing detergent, my Dad’s aftershave, the constant baking and the subtle lingering presence of furniture polish. Whatever it is, it smells like home. This deep, involuntary link between smell and memory is something we cannot switch off. Over-riding choice, it bypasses our stubborn, cynical defences and compels us to remember. I wonder if this is why God’s design for worship in the Old Testament was always such a sensory experience? Nauseating, metallic blood pooled around the altar. Acrid smoke rose from the sacrifices. Thick, heady incense burned continually in the tabernacle. Each of these strong, distinct smells created associations in the mind of the Israelites, blending to form an inescapable call to worship. Whether they liked it or not. In the Gospels we read about another time when worship and fragrance went hand in hand. Just a few days before his crucifixion, moved by overwhelming gratitude and love, Mary broke a priceless jar of perfume and poured it over Jesus. John 12 v 3 tells us that the smell of the perfume was so strong that it “filled the house.” There is great debate about this incident, if in fact it was just one incident, but one thing is clear: as Jesus left the house the perfume went with him. Once the concentrated oil soaked into skin and hair and cloth the smell would have lasted for days. I don’t know whether Jesus would have changed or washed His clothes in the short period between this intimate anointing and the time of his arrest and crucifixion. Either way, I don’t think it’s a wild overstatement to suggest that the smell of the oil continued to cling to him as he entered Jerusalem on the donkey. Like kings before him, his triumphal entry was perfumed by the smell of spikenard, immediately conjuring up pictures of kingship and majesty in the minds of onlookers, creating a sensory echo of their shouted proclamation, “Hail Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Perhaps even in the garden, mingled with the olives and the warm night air, the scent of the oil was present. As the soldiers moved in to take hold of Jesus, did the familiar smell cause their minds to wander for just a moment to something greater than their own short-lived authority? Is it possible that even as they stripped and beat him, his torn and bleeding flesh still carried the faintest scent of royalty? Even in the hardest hearts and the darkest moments the right scent is powerful enough to awaken longing. I have been wondering lately whether there is a way to harness this deeply instinctive connection. A way to tie our inner selves to memories of God’s word, to his faithfulness and to worship, in a way that is gentle yet intentional. I’m not sure how it would look practically but I can’t help wondering what would happen if our times of intimacy with God, whether alone, as families or even in our churches were in some way linked to fragrances that, in darker times, would draw us back to the memory of intimacy with God. Would stubborn children, drifting far from the things they learned at home, deaf to the pleas of heartbroken parents, find themselves broken by a familiar smell and the wave of longing that came in its wake? Would we, in our days of self-satisfied arrogance, be reminded of the God who once filled our hearts to overflowing? Maybe I could choose to have the same flowers regularly in the place I tend to go to meet with God? Could it mean choosing to burn a particular scent of candle in the background at times when your family sit around God’s word together, so that the chosen fragrance becomes a marker farther down the road? Some of you may already have your own well-established rhythms in this area. I know that in some traditions fragrance and scent play a larger part than they do in my own and I’d love to know how that works. Does it impact you? Is it something you are consciously aware of? Are there particular fragrances that stir up memories for you? Has a certain fragrance ever triggered a memory that has stirred you to worship? I’m captivated by the possibility of setting in place these invisible markers for my future self. Of reaching forward to gently touch my children’s hearts with a familiar hope. I don’t know if these links between scent and memory can be intentionally formed but if God has planted this deeply rooted connection within us then perhaps it’s worth considering?

Many thanks to those who are taking the time to read and discuss Slow Church with us. Who could have guessed that the timing of our study together would have been so, well, timely. I’m grateful to be a part of this community which takes serious the business of caring well for our fiercely beautiful, but badly broken, world. In an effort to promote the art of slow reading, we’re going to pause for another week before starting to discuss Section 3: Economy. In the interim, make time to listen to Pastor Dave Huber as he addresses the events of the past few weeks and our mandate to become agents of justice. His words bring to life many of the ideas found throughout Slow Church. In particular, Pastor Huber’s discussion of justice, mercy, and gratitude paint a vivid picture of what it means to “love thy neighbor.” And our neighbors are in deep need of being loved. “Our communities can only flourish in as much as their weakest members flourish.  And so whatever resources or power we have at our disposal, we must give them away to our neighbors in need, because we owe it to them as beings made in God’s image.” –Dave Huber As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts in response. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up here: Slow Church Reading Group Introduction Slow Church Reading Group Week 1: Ethics Slow Church Reading Group Week 1.5 Slow Church Reading Group Week 2 Whether you’re reading along or not, feel free to step in and visit the conversation happening in the Rabbit Room forum.

Edit: Thanks for coming folks. It was a great evening and a fascinating conversation. Join us at the Art House tonight at 7:00pm where we’ll host C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison (coauthors of Slow Church) and discuss Chris’s new book, Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish. We look forward to sharing an evening of conversation with both of them. Whether you’ve read these books or are merely interested in the topics, this will be a great evening of discussion and fellowship. Art House is located at 7544 Old Harding Pike, Nashville 37221.

About a year ago Eric Peters and I began chronicling our twelve-day tour of England, a flurry of concerts that were booked in part so Pappy and I could pillage England’s many second-hand bookstores. It was a wonderful trip. Eric and I are both lovers of old books, and the two of us are all too familiar with the tension of dragging family or fellow musicians into bookstores so we can sniff around like hounds for random and rare editions, while they go from politely patient to pouting to grumbling about how long we’re taking. But with Eric and me there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation if we saw a used bookstore on the GPS, even if it was thirty minutes out of our way. Early on in the trip, though, I began to do a bit of grumbling myself—not because Eric took too long, but because Eric’s talent for finding the good stuff far exceeds my own. Usually I’m in a bookstore alone, knowing I’m probably the only guy in there for a month who’s looked for Buechner or Chesterton or MacDonald. But now I experienced a new and sinful urgency to beat Pappy to the punch. Now, instead of a leisurely browse it was like a bookish version of Cannonball Run. I felt a most unpleasant anxiety as we both shouldered our way into a store, pretending not to hurry as we hurried. He would disappear into the maze of shelves and I had to choose which section to attack first: fiction, or literature (sometimes they’re different), or poetry, or theology, or children’s books? I’d skim whatever section he wasn’t in, usually with a sickening feeling that the reason I wasn’t finding any good books was because he had already passed that way, razing the harvest like a plague of locusts. And it so often turned out to be true. I’d meet up with him at the cash register with a book or two, and he’d be checking out with a stack of first editions that made me burn with envy. Hopefully you can tell that I’m mostly joking. Mostly. Early on, when we were in Hay-on-Wye, a famous book town on the border of England and Wales, Eric scored a first edition of C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, one of the books I was specifically looking for. We were both in the same store. I looked for it and didn’t find it. Minutes later he walked right in, pulled it off the shelf, and bought it for a couple of bucks. I can’t explain how he does it. There’s a reason he’s called the Book Mole. Well, after a lot of wonderful concerts and visits to castles and dinners with friends and pubs and Oxonian landmarks, we found ourselves at last at the end of our trip. Tom and Rachel Hart, a delightful couple (he’s English and she’s Scottish), hosted us in their home and arranged a couple of concerts. If the Rabbit Room ever makes it into the U.K., it will likely be thanks to Tom and Rachel’s enthusiasm for what we do here. They’re big Eric Peters and Randall Goodgame fans, not to mention a host of other Rabbit Room friends. (In fact, Tom has arranged not one but two Goodgame tours in England!) We got to the church in London for soundcheck. Tom was setting up the sound system when I noticed a couple of tables piled with books in the back of the room. “Is it okay if I look through these books?” I asked Tom quietly, stealing glances over my shoulder to be sure Eric was distracted. He said it was fine. The church was cleaning out its library, and the books were all Sunday School curriculum and old hymnals from the 1970s. Once my guitar was checked I looked around to make sure Eric was otherwise occupied and practically tiptoed over to the books, thinking I might discover something rare or interesting. But I was disappointed.  I looked under several piles with mounting disappointment, and finally gave up. This next part is totally true. After soundcheck Eric walked over to the table and I called out knowingly from the stage, “Don’t bother. I already looked through those. It’s just a bunch of old lame stuff.” As I turned my attention back to tuning my guitar Eric said, “Did you see this?” I looked up and he was holding A FIRST EDITION OF THE GREAT DIVORCE. My jaw dropped. I had been looking for that book, that edition of that book for literally years, and until he had bought one in Hay-on-Wye the previous week I had never laid eyes on one. Now he had found a second one—and this one was free. I truly couldn’t believe it. Eric is a talented man, who has written some of the most beautiful songs I know, but in that moment I was torn between a feeling of astonishment at his ability to book-sniff and an urge to tackle him and wrench the book from his hands. The good news is, Eric is a more gracious soul than I, and he gladly gave it to me with a chuckle. One of the pleasures of book collecting is not just the story between the covers but the story that surrounds the discovery of the book itself, and I’ll treasure this one as long as I live as a reminder of a once-in-a-lifetime trip to sing the Gospel in England with my friend—and to watch a master book hunter at work. One last pleasant memory: we finished that show and enjoyed a late night talk with the Harts afterward. The next day was our last show in London, in Harrow at Mike Hutton’s church. We needed to leave for the airport at dark thirty that night, so Eric and I holed up in Mike’s guest room till the wee hours and tried to figure out how to get all the books home. The Man Who Was Thursday, Black Beauty, Perelandra, At the Back of the North Wind, The Book of the Dun Cow, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Watership Down—book after book after book, piles of words and stories and deep truths, all ready to fly back with us and find their new homes on well-dusted bookshelves. Eric’s suitcase was full to bursting and mine was about to pop, so in the end we each had to carry an armful of books in paper bags through the long corridors of Heathrow airport. I’m not sure what the airport security thought of us, but if they had tried to confiscate a certain copy of The Great Divorce, I would probably be writing this from a holding cell in Scotland Yard.

Since my book Reading For the Common Good (RFTCG) came out last month, I’ve had numerous people ask me about the connections between it and my previous book Slow Church (coauthored with John Pattison). I could write ad nauseam about the connections of the two books, and I would recommend reading the books in order; RFTCG will make a lot more sense if you have read Slow Church. For now though, a few thoughts on how Slow Church can be helpful – and maybe even transformative – for our personal reading habits. One of the biggest themes of RFTCG is reading in community with others, and while there are times when it is beneficial for churches, families, or neighbors to literally read together through a book, I still believe that most of our reading will be done on our own. The challenge then is finding ways to weave together the things I am reading with those that others in my church are reading, bringing our personal readings into conversation with one another and with the daily realities of our shared life. Slow Church is fundamentally about cultivating a conversational life together where the things we are reading can be an asset to the whole community. Here are three thoughts on the ways in which Slow Church should matter to our reading habits. These thoughts parallel the three major parts of the Slow Church book: Ethics, Ecology and Economy. Read GOOD Books / Writing. Ethics, as we discuss it in Slow Church, is largely about learning to prefer quality over quantity. There are an absurd number of new books that are published in any given month, and the vast majority of them are mediocre at best, and sometimes downright atrocious. Life’s too short to read bad books! Be willing to try new books and unfamiliar authors, but if you don’t find them compelling, there’s nothing wrong with abandoning them. Read book reviews (and not just customer reviews on Amazon / Goodreads), talk with friends whose tastes/opinions you trust, and find good books that align with your interests (more on this momentarily) and savor them. Life’s too short to read bad books! Be willing to try new books and unfamiliar authors, but if you don’t find them compelling, there’s nothing wrong with abandoning them. Christopher Smith Find Ways to Connect Your Reading to the Daily Realities of Your Life. Central to the concept of ecology, as we talk about it in Slow Church, is the deep inter-connectedness of God’s creation. We should not pretend that we are completely autonomous individuals doing our own thing, but rather should seek to be attentive to the ways in which we are connected to other people and to the whole of creation. Read local history, or if history isn’t your cup of tea, then read fiction that is set in your place or poems written about it. Are your children getting ready to start school? Read about the local options that are available and the educational models on which each option is based. Read the local newspaper. What activities are you involved in as part of your church? Read about ways that these ministries could be done better and more compassionately. Try to understand the ways in which your work fits with the mission of God in the world (Yes, of course, reading can help with that!). Wherever you live or whatever you do, be engaged in life, and the implications that your life has on other people, in your place and beyond. (Mostly) Read Things That You are Passionate About – Although there is something to be said for reading things that challenge and stretch us and draw us closer to our neighbors (see #2 above), God has uniquely created each one of us to contribute to the economy and the well-being of the communities to which we belong. The richest resource in the economy of our churches and neighborhoods is the people that God has gathered there, and the skills, talents and passions that each of us has. Discerning and maturing in a vocation, and understanding how that vocation fits with those of others in our local church is vital to our shared life and flourishing. Our communities are much better off when we read things that we each are passionate about, and seek to discuss these readings and to connect them with our shared life and daily activities, than if we develop habits of half-heartedly reading things that are of little interest to us. I am confident that cultivating habits of reading along these three lines, and at the same time being keenly attentive to the people (and all creation) that surround us, will radically transform our lives – slowing us down and bringing us the joy of living in the way that we have been created as humans. God has designed us with a passion to know, and to know in a way that draws us closer to God, humanity, and creation. Reading in the ways I have described here points us in this direction.

On Monday (July 11) we’ll be starting another round of Writing with Flannery O’Connor—my six-week online course. We’ll dig into O’Connor’s essays in which she talks about writing, and we’ll also look closely at her fiction to understand how it does its work and how we as writers might put some of her principles into effect. This introductory lecture should give you an idea of what to expect: To register, click here.

“Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set.” Proverbs 22:28 Èdouard Manet’s Chez Tortoni is a small 10 x 13 inch canvas of a man in a top hat and black coat sitting at a table in the Cafe Tortoni de Paris. The man, pen in hand, is drawing or writing. A half finished glass of beer sits on his table. Chez Tortoni was painted sometime between 1878 and 1880. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers entered Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and subdued the two night watchmen on duty. The thieves bound the guards, covered their eyes and mouths with tape, and chained them to pipes on opposite ends of the basement. After this, they spent the next eighty-one minutes selecting and loading thirteen irreplaceable pieces of art into a vehicle waiting outside. (I wrote a longer essay on this heist here.) The thieves left Manet’s empty frame sitting propped up in a chair in the security supervisor’s office. The painting itself, along with the rest of the art stolen that night, has not been seen since. Russ Ramsey The stolen works included Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert (one of only 35 confirmed Vermeers in existence), a Flinck landscape, a three thousand year old Chinese vase from the Shang Dynasty, five Degas, three Rembrandts (one, a postage stamp sized self-portrait etching; one, his formal Lady and Gentleman in Black; and last, one of the Museum’s most prominently displayed works, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee), and Èdouard Manet’s Chez Tortoni. The thieves drove off quietly past the homes and businesses of Fenway, never to be heard from again. Together, the thirteen stolen pieces of art amounted to the largest property theft in America’s history with an estimated value of more than 500 million dollars. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened its doors to the public in January of 1903. Ms. Gardner built her museum because she wanted to bring something into this world that would not perish. She poured herself into the project. She was not content to simply meet with her builders and pay her contractors. She designed every aspect of the museum herself. Her architect, William Sears, joked that on this particular job he was little more than a carpenter and mechanical engineer carrying out the true architect’s vision. At the time of her death in 1924, Isabella had accumulated more than 2,500 tapestries, manuscripts, rare books, sculptures, pieces of furniture, and masterworks from Titian, Vermeer, Flinck, Michelangelo, Raphael, Whistler, Degas, Manet, Sargent, Botticelli, and the Dutch master himself, Rembrandt. She had given them a home. More than that, she had given them places of honor to be savored by the “rapt glad faces of those who love art.”[1] Eighty one minutes. The sensors on the security door revealed that the thieves had to make two trips. They had plenty of time to handle the art with care, but it seems they chose not to. One Rembrandt was left behind, lying on the floor, bent and scuffed. The frame for Vermeer’s The Concert had been knocked out and lay discarded in the hall. As for Chez Tortoni, in what could only be seen as an act of mockery, the thieves left Manet’s empty frame sitting propped up in a chair in the security supervisor’s office. The painting itself, along with the rest of the art stolen that night, has not been seen since. People who knew Isabella’s vision for the museum were deeply offended by the theft— not because of how much the stolen art was worth, but because what the thieves did was rude. They moved the ancient landmark Isabella had set, and in doing so dishonored her desire to give her community and all who came to visit something lasting and beautiful. Manet’s man in black in Chez Tortoni looks directly at the viewer. Did the thieves who lifted him off the wall make eye contact with this artifact they cared so little about? Did they feel any shame? Have they ever been startled awake from a nightmare in which Manet’s man in black is staring back at them? And in the dream, is his glass of beer now empty? About the Art: Édouard Manet, Chez Tortoni, ca. 1879-1880, oil on canvas, 26 cm × 34 cm (10 in × 13 in). Stolen. Whereabouts unknown. [1] From John Updike’s poem, Stolen. 2000.

A few weeks ago, @Pete posted the following in the Rabbit Room discussion forum: “… When I look at the news (or Facebook) these days, I’m appalled at society’s increasing inability to disagree without falling into insult or anger or hate (or out of sound logic). Why is the art of understanding another’s point of view so thoroughly eroded? Why does it seem like compromise a bad word? As a society, is there even a pathway back to a place of gracious and thoughtful discourse? Or is the monster out of control until it’s run its course?” His questions, particularly in an election year, are significant. There are no easy answers. However, we can begin the work of reconciliation and productive dialogue by engaging our imaginations. How could we interact differently with those who have different viewpoints? How might we respond to tragedy or brokenness in ways other than placing blame or taking the opportunity to justify our own beliefs?  Perhaps learning to lament is a helpful first step. “To lament is to come alongside those who grieve, to sit with them (literally and figuratively) in the silence and to recognize there that in God’s interconnected creation, their pain is our pain. We might, in the silence, consider how it is that we share in the same pain. To lament is not to offer words of comfort; it is not to try to fix the problem or to prevent it from ever happening again. Diving headlong into a debate about gun control, for instance, after a tragic shooting such as the ones in Aurora, Colorado, or Newton, Connecticut, is not lament. Lament is the time for the hard work of searching our own souls, looking for the sorts of rebellion and violence that if untended could burst into violence toward others. (p.115)” I’ve been sitting with this quote for weeks. Our reading of Slow Church seems particularly timely. Whether you’re reading along with us or not, consider the following quotes, then choose a question or two to answer and share with the group. Since some of our group is just getting started and others may be reading ahead, we’ve numbered the questions (starting with chapter 1). It would be helpful if you’d number your responses accordingly. Our hope is that anyone can step in and participate and easily navigate the conversation as it unfolds. Feel free to answer either here in the comments, or over at the discussion forum. Slow Church Week 2 – Second Course: Ecology “Reconciliation is our capacity to talk and work and play with ‘the other’ toward the common good.” (p.111) 7. Given the current political landscape, how could you apply (practically – not theoretically) that principle in your life? “Lament is the time for the hard work of searching our own souls, looking for the sorts of rebellion and violence that if untended could burst into violence toward others.” (p.115) 8.  When facing tragedy or injustice, what are some of your “go-to” responses rather than to lament? What would it look like for you to lament rather than default to (fill in the blank)? “Redistribution teaches us to grow deeper in the reconciling economy of God in which God provides abundantly for us in order that we might share abundantly with others.” (p.143) 9. How has God provided abundantly for you? (Think not only of material provision, but also of talents, relationships, etc.) How might you share in that abundance with others? “Sabbath, then, becomes for us the day in which we pause our striving and start abiding.” (p. 147) 10. Describe a time when you experienced a deep Sabbath rest. What were the circumstances? 11. What stands in the way of your experiencing Sabbath rest on a routine basis? What’s one practical step you can take to help remove that obstacle? If you’re just joining us, you can catch up here: Slow Church Reading Group Introduction Slow Church Reading Group Week 1: Ethics Slow Church Reading Group Week 1.5

Several years ago I played a gig with the great Phil Keaggy, and he told me he had just read a book about the Inklings in which I was mentioned. Of course, I would like to say my first impulse was to disbelieve it, but my real first impulse was to buy the book and read it cover to cover. Well, it turns out there was nary a word about me in the book. Either Phil thought I was someone much cooler (which is probably what happened) or I misunderstood him altogether and he actually said something like, “I just read a book about the Inklings and you might like it.” This is what is known as a “delusion of grandeur.” So it is with some embarrassment that I admit that my first introduction to Diana Pavlac Glyer was due to my own sinful desire to be the kind of person mentioned in Smart People Books. If you want to write good books, good songs, good poems, you need some talent, yes. But you also need good friends. You need fellowship. You need community. Andrew Peterson The redeeming part of this little anecdote is that I actually loved the book, and at least some of the Rabbit Room’s existence owes itself to Glyer’s writing. The book was called The Company They Keep, and was a thoroughly researched and very well-written study of the Inklings’ influence on one another. Having read quite a few books by and about C. S. and Warren Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, Dyson, Barfield, and the rest of that crew, I was familiar with what seemed to me a strange claim made again and again that the Inklings didn’t really influence one another much. So much has been made of the Inklings that some of its members have downplayed the meetings and pointed out more dissonance than resonance. It’s easy for Americans like me, who are almost maddeningly intrigued by the romance of that famous fellowship, to idealize the Inklings—to imagine that the meetings were all chummy chortles and pipe smoke, pints of beer and chin-stroking, heady conversation and magical recitals of what are now classic works of literature. The Inklings were human, after all, and they lived in the same tired old world that we occupy, bearing the same weaknesses and wounds in varying degrees. The meetings were probably more sporadic and less inspired than we like to think. The story is a good one: Christians getting together in the name of friendship and good books. It piques an almost mythic longing in many of us. Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall in one of those rooms? For that matter, who wouldn’t want to be a member of that inner ring? Glyer’s thesis, contrary to some academic works that claim too much has been made of the Inklings’ influence on each other, is that the very nature of friendship, of nearness, of interaction, guarantees influence on their work. Like it or not, the famously grumpy and immovable Tolkien simply had to have been affected by his relationship with Lewis, and his work must have been affected, too. It was Glyer’s book where I first grasped the idea that The Lord of the Rings probably wouldn’t exist if not for C. S. Lewis. Yes, it was Tolkien’s God-given genius that wrote the masterpiece, but it was C. S. Lewis’s encouragement that nudged Tolkien along and convinced him that the public would care to read it. Friendship matters. Encouragement, resonance, accountability, and criticism were crucial ingredients that went into the feast of Middle-Earth. One of the central tenets of the Rabbit Room is that art nourishes community, and community nourishes art. And to me the profound thing about that idea is that the friendships—the heart-shaping relationships, the Christ-centered community—will outlast the works themselves. Glyer’s book makes a strong case for the influence of the Inklings on one another, imperfect though it was. If you want to write good books, good songs, good poems, you need some talent, yes. You also need to work hard, practice a lot, cultivate self-discipline, and study the greats. But you also need good friends. You need fellowship. You need community. That’s what we’ve been saying around these parts for years, partly because Phil Keaggy mistook me for someone else and I stumbled into the wealth of widsom in The Company They Keep. Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings, which is a wonderful distillation of The Company They Keep. She digs deeper into those same themes and offers fascinating insight into what makes a creative community tick. And that’s why I’m pleased to announce that Diana Glyer is our Hutchmoot 2016 keynote speaker. One of the biggest questions we wrestle with year after year is, “How do we foster this kind of community when we get back home?” I have a feeling Diana’s going to get us a lot closer to answering that question. In the meantime, be sure and head to the Rabbit Room Store and pick up a copy of Bandersnatch, and prepare to be inspired.

The hamlet stood on a gentle rise in the flat, wheat-growing north-east corner of Oxfordshire. We will call it Lark Rise because of the great number of skylarks which made the surrounding fields their springboard and nested on the bare earth between the rows of green corn… Thus opens Flora Thompson’s gentle masterpiece of rural life in an England that was just beginning to feel the benefits–and the drawbacks–of the Industrial Revolution. By turns witty and elegiac, this combined collection of three original works (Lark Rise, Over to Candleford and Candleford Green) is a haunting and detailed chronicle of a world that is no more; a world that existed for centuries and which ended abruptly with one generation. Don’t despise the old because it’s old, or overvalue the new because it’s novel. Don’t sacrifice the verities simply because they are invisible. Lanier Ivester With an eye as keen as only love could make it, Flora Thompson, by way of her thinly-veiled little fictional counterpart, Laura Timmins, paints a picture of the life she knew among the fields and hedgerows, in her father’s garden and at her mother’s humble but well-stocked table (“there was never enough of anything except food”), in the shades of her beloved woods and in the comparatively elegant streets of the neighboring village of Candleford. Through Laura’s eyes we see the men savoring their meager half-pints at ‘The Wagon and Horses’ after a grueling day in the fields and watch the women over their well-deserved teas at one house or another: These tea-drinkings were never premeditated. One neighbor would drop in, then another, and another would be beckoned to from the doorway or fetched in to settle some disputed point. Then someone would say, “How about a cup o’ tay?” and they would all run home to fetch a spoonful, with a few leaves over to help make up the spoonful for the pot. With a sensitivity that is never mere sentiment, Flora Thompson gives us an honest assessment of the life of the poor: the tiny cottages too small for the ever-growing families that occupied them; the privations resultant of “enclosure” acts which kept them in a station of life we would deem below poverty level, the ceaseless occupation of mothers endeavoring to cover the bodies if not the feet of their children as they went out to school or to work in the “larger world.” But there is a beauty, even in the harshness of reality, and an original truth undergirding the simple rustic lives she portrays. Perhaps water must needs be drawn from a common well on the outskirts of the hamlet (and in times of drought they “just had to get their water where and how they could”), perhaps milk was a rare luxury and “for boots, clothes, illness, holidays, amusements, and household renewals there was no provision whatever.” But in spite of such struggles for existence–or, perhaps, because of them–that existence was in many ways an enviable thing to those of us jaded and dazed by the overwhelming complexities of the current age. I’d never so much as dare to suggest that their lives were easier than ours, in the purely practical sense of the word; in almost every way they were harder, grittier, leaner. But there was an abundance in all the rustic rituals and dearly-earned pleasures, a fundamental simplicity that, quite frankly, made my heart ache to read of. Flora Thompson writes with such an honest beauty that the images of Harvest Home suppers and May Day customs long-since abandoned seem to voice their own appeal for the traditions of the past and lure our hearts to any and all of the various roots from which we have sprung. From her descriptions (and oftentimes adorable commentary!) she affords her readers a privileged view of life as it really was, and that in staggering detail. And all without the slightest shade of condescension or petty moralizing that would ruin the confiding tone and reduce its timeless truths to mere curiosities of a vanished era. As it is, Lark Rise to Candleford is a gift and a gem, and a kind pluck at the sleeve to the modern reader tempted to exchange community for all the things purchased with its price on the world’s market. Though she never says it outright, it seems to breathe in every well-crafted line: Don’t despise the old because it’s old, or overvalue the new because it’s novel. Don’t sacrifice the verities simply because they are invisible. Don’t forget where you’ve come from. But, in spite of their poverty and the worry and anxiety attending it, they were not unhappy, and, though poor, there was nothing sordid about their lives. “The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat,” they used to say, and they were getting very near the bone from which their country ancestors had fed. Their children and children’s children would have to depend wholly upon whatever was carved for them from the communal joint, and for their pleasure upon the mass enjoyments of a new era. But for that generation there was still a small picking left to supplement the weekly wage. They had their home-cured bacon, their “bit o’ leazings,” their small wheat or barley patch on the allotment; their knowledge of herbs for their homely simples, and the wild fruits and berries of the countryside for jam, jellies, and wine, and round about them as part of their lives were the last relics of country customs and the last echoes of country songs, ballads, and game rhymes. This last picking, though meagre, was sweet. Please give yourself the pleasure of this beautiful trilogy. It’s a treasure that would not have come into existence but for a remarkably observant little girl and the remarkably insightful woman that she became.

I saw Lester Flatt, of Flatt & Scruggs/Foggy Mountain Breakdown/Beverly Hillbillies fame, in 1976 when I was 12 years old, on television in southern California. The banjo in his band thrilled me, and Dad bought me a banjo when I was 13. I didn’t come out of my room until I was 21. When I picked up that Harmony banjo for the first time, when I attempted to play it and failed, I could have said, “I can’t do this.” My Dad could have said, “Don’t bother, kid. You don’t have any musical talent.” They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. C. S. Lewis The truth is I was already a musician; my “work” was to go on believing it and doing it. Throughout my life I’ve had plenty of doubts, fears, temptations, and sins, the kind that come from flesh, world, and devil. As a human being, I am expertly acquainted with all three. But follow my reasoning here. Everyone in the world operates by faith. It’s the means by which we do anything. I step out my door to greet the open sky, trusting a meteorite won’t hit me; I drive to the airport, “knowing” I won’t break down or get in an accident; I get in a seat-filled flying metal tube with 200 people and thousands of pounds of luggage (this thing goes up to 40,000 feet, racing at 600mph) and I trust it won’t break into pieces. Reason says, “The odds are against the meteorite, the accident, the crash.” So we bet on the odds, trusting we’ll be safe. Reason brings us to the outskirts of certainty and then we hop over the rest. Faith. When someone lacks this ordinary faith, we call it a disorder. We name it. Agoraphobia. Claustrophobia. Acrophobia. Banjophobia (a few of my relatives had this). One of my favorite dialogues in George MacDonald’s Lilith is this one, between Mr. Vane and Mr. Raven. Mr. Vane begins: “You have been making a fool of me!” I said, turning from him. “Excuse me: no one can do that but yourself!” “And I decline to do it.” “You mistake.” “How?” “In declining to acknowledge yourself one already. You make yourself such by refusing what is true, and for that you will sorely punish yourself.” “How, again?” “By believing what is not true.” C. S. Lewis in The Last Battle echoes. The dwarfs are sitting inside the stable door, with sun, trees, grass—all of new Narnia around them. But they refuse to believe it. To their minds they are inside a stable, and nothing can divest them of their false perceptions. “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs. We won’t be taken in.” “You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. But come, children. I have other work to do.” If I had believed I’m just not a banjo player 30 years ago I have no idea where my life would be right now. My circumstances, no doubt, would be vastly different. The Apostle Peter writes: “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” When I look at that it, and compare it to my life, it doesn’t seem real. Shouldn’t that read, “…His divine power will give to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” By his divine power God has already given me everything I need for life and godliness? Through the promises I am a partaker of the divine nature? I don’t feel that way. There are many times I’ve read the Bible and passed over these ideas or rationalized them because they didn’t fit my concept of reality, my theological upbringing and presuppositions. Again and again I’ve found that growth comes by coming up against truth that rattles my theological, rational, and emotional cages, not by having a smooth Bible-reading experience. Jesus rattled the prison bars of many of his disciples by saying, “He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him.” “Many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” His description of actual reality went against their long-held beliefs, their experiences, and they chose their perceptions over the living Word. I have been given, past tense, everything I need, in Christ, for my life—the ability to take care of my family, to be a good friend, to love enemies, to sing and make music. I’ve been given everything I need, by divine mandate, for godliness. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It may sound far-fetched to some ears. But the idea that I could learn to play bluegrass music in southern California, so far from the birthplace of the bluegrass sound, and make a living at it—well, that was not only far-fetched, but ludicrous. There I was at 13, 14, 15, 16 and beyond. Here I sit 38 years later. The belief “I am a banjo player” was foundational to the doing of it. Truth in the inward parts leads to truth in the fingers. Few or none keep that truth in the inward parts perfectly, continually. But we all have to do it, and persevere, or we become spiritual neurotics. We shrink back. The belief “I have every last cotton-pickin’ thing I need for both life, and godliness, in Christ” is foundational to growth in all areas. I imagine someone who lived completely according to God’s reality would experience growth as when Aslan called Narnia into being, and everything began sprouting out of the soil. It would look like the early Church—an explosion of Life. Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.  Love.  Think.  Speak.  Be walking trees.  Be talking beasts.  Be divine waters. If Narnia itself were sentient, and given a will, it could have resisted. It could have said, Oh, not me. I’m just a bunch of dirt and darkness. I’m worthless. He must be saying that to someone else. “…the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations but now has been revealed to His saints…the glory of this mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Don’t bother, kid. You don’t have any spiritual talent. It couldn’t mean you. Believing what is not true makes a fool of us. It robs us of living from what we’ve been given.

I had a high school art teacher who wanted her students to do more than develop artistic skills. She wanted us to love the art that was already in the world. She continually put great art in front of our young eyes, and insisted that we not move on from it too quickly. This may be one of the greatest lessons anyone has ever tried to teach me—stop and look before you move on. Imagine. One of the paintings she introduced us to was Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) was a prominent American Realism painter from New York. His paintings are subtle, sparse canvases with still, simple scenes in subdued color pallets. Something about Nighthawks struck me, but I could never say exactly what. I have since discovered that this is a common experience people have when they look at Hopper’s work. His style conveys a lonely, mysterious emptiness. The people in his paintings (if there are any at all) are often either alone or doing solitary things in the company of others. So what makes Hopper’s work so engaging to so many? Isn’t this one of the ways art does its work? It captures moments that draw us into deeper tales and truths. Russ Ramsey One Hopper scholar, Mark Strand, said, “It is my contention that Hopper’s paintings transcend the appearance of actuality and locate the viewer in a virtual space where the influence and availability of feeling is predominate.”[1] I think Strand is touching on what makes Hopper’s work so compelling—his canvases create a sense that the viewer stands in the scene itself. When I look at Hopper’s work, I feel like I have been to the places he has painted. How does he do this? How does he give the viewer the sense that we are in the scene—that we have been there before? I contend this is more a trick of the mind than the brush. Hopper’s scenes are moments that are in the process of passing away. We try to construct the narrative for the moment at hand, and wonder what will follow. We do more than look at his canvases. We imagine them. Hopper’s paintings, though usually very still, present a world in motion. Strand said Hopper’s images “recognize the importance for him of roads and tracks, of passageways and temporary stopping places, or to put it generally, of travel. They recognize that the invitation to construct a narrative for each painting is also part of the experience of looking at Hopper. And this, inasmuch as it demands an involvement in particular paintings, indicates a resistance to having the viewer move on. These two imperatives—the one that urges us to continue and the other that compels us to stay—create the tension that is constant in Hopper’s work.”[2] We stop and look. We imagine. We stand in the tension of wanting to stay but needing to move on. Isn’t this one of the ways art does its work? It captures moments that draw us into deeper tales and truths. In Nighthawks, we approach the diner in Greenwich Village. The restaurant is a container of light. It is late, maybe past midnight. The streets are empty. We see the man and woman at the counter. She is disengaged, perhaps lost in thought, or maybe in a fight with the man[3] who is talking to the soda jerk. We don’t know what to make of the shadowy figure whose back is to us. Hopper wanted that man’s presence to raise the possibility of danger in the night.[4] Does the sight of him slow our step as we approach this temporary stopping place? Do we read this scene as sinister? As lonely? As innocent? In this world, all are possible. We wonder. We imagine. Nighthawks, and the rest of Hopper’s work, invites us to wonder about the scene. What is happening? This scene at the late-night diner arouses familiar feelings to which we can relate—the sudden tinge of fear after happening upon danger, the hollowed-out feeling of fatigue from staying up too late, exhilaration at the possibility of a new romance, or the emptiness of a love that is falling apart. Throughout his life, Hopper struggled with depression which manifested itself in an inability to produce. This creative languishing is a common experience for artists. Hopper said, “It is hard for me to decide what I want to paint. I go for months without finding it sometimes. It comes slowly.”[5] His friend Walter Tittle described seeing Hopper “suffering from long periods of unconquerable inertia, sitting for days at a time behind his easel in helpless unhappiness, unable to raise a hand to break the spell.”[6] Perhaps this was Hopper’s brilliance— his struggle to come up with ideas. Perhaps he was vexed by an artistic determination to try to capture a world that was passing away, which led him to capture ordinary, rather unmemorable moments of life unfolding. Perhaps the reason his work moves so many is because it is in these sorts of moments that we spend most of our days. After all, as Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”[7] About the Art: Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, Oil on canvas, 84.1 cm × 152.4 cm (33 1⁄8 in × 60 in), Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. [1] Mark Strand, Hopper, Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ, 1994, p. xiv. (Emphasis, mine.) [2] Mark Strand, Hopper, Ecco Press, Hopewell, NJ, 1994, p. 3. [3] The painting got it’s name from Hopper’s wife, Jo, who likened the man with the blue-banded hat’s nose to a beak. [4] Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography. New York: Rizzoli, 2007, p. 350. [5] Levin, Gail, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995, p. 88 [6] Wagstaff, Sheena Ed., Edward Hopper, Tate Publishing, London, 2004, p. 53 [7] Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

As we contemplate Slow Church, it seems appropriate that the natives are crying for slower reading. Over the past week, we’ve enjoyed rich conversation in the discussion forum, and folks have been generous with sharing their observations and personal stories. Many are just getting started with the book and, rather than rushing through to adhere to the schedule, we’ve decided to extend discussion of First Course: Ethics for another week. That’s good news for those of you who want to dig deeper into the first several chapters and good news for those of you who haven’t started reading (or ordered the book yet) but want to join us. If you want to catch up on the conversation, you can do that here. Make sure to click “subscribe” at the top right corner of the screen so you can receive updates as others comment. Here are a few more quotes/questions to add to the first three: “Slow Church happens when people live, work, worship, go to school, eat, grow, learn, heal and play in proximity to each other, often outside of the sanctuary.” (p.44) 4) Do you agree? If so, what obstacles stand in the way of your developing such a community? How could you overcome (or mitigate) one of those obstacles? “Place, like all things in life, is a good gift from God. Our calling is to come to know our places in ways that reveal God’s gifts to us and that evoke in us deep gratitude and rejoicing.” (p.70) 5) What are some practical ideas that could help you “get to know your place”? Are you willing to try one of them and report back to the group? “How do we grow deeper into our calling as the patient people of God when our surroundings reinforce our inner restlessness?” (p. 80) 6) How would you want your life to look differently as you grow to be more patient? If you’re just joining us, you can catch up here: Slow Church Reading Group Introduction Slow Church Reading Group Week 1: Ethics

At 7:00pm on Tuesday, July 12th, join us at the Art House in Nashville where we’ll host C. Christopher Smith (coauthor of Slow Church) and discuss his new book, Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish. Many of you are already reading Slow Church as part of our Rabbit Room reading group, and this is a great opportunity to come out and discuss that book with its authors. Chris will also be joined by coauthor, John Pattison. We look forward to sharing an intimate evening of conversation with both of them. purchase a copy of the new book as admission. Books are available in the Rabbit Room Store and will be available at the event itself. Seating is limited. Please RSVP to info@rabbitroom.com if you plan to attend and we’ll save you a spot. Snacks and drinks will be provided. Whether you’ve read these books or are merely interested in the topics, this promises to be a great evening of discussion and fellowship. We look forward to seeing you there.

Uncertainty. Shame. Identity. Jason Gray hasn’t shied away from exploring these themes in his music before, but in the song “Where We Go From Here” there’s a particularly tender image that’s hard to shake: God, bending down to his broken beloved, saying “lift your head, I’ll dry your tears / and then I’ll show you where we go from here.” There, at the bottom of the hardest times, is the expectation that something good must come next. That’s our hope. And it’s the kind of hope that runs freely through every song on Where the Light Gets In. I’ve been a fan of Jason’s music for a long time now, so I suppose that makes me a little biased whenever I write about a new record. For one thing, I’ve seen how he loves his audiences, taking time to listen to fans after a show, no matter how long the day has been. That generosity spills over into compassionate, wise songs that speak the language of pop music, and knowing the care he takes in crafting even his most radio-friendly albums makes me want to keep listening. Sure, Where the Light Gets In is a fun record, but it takes time revealing its true depth, proving once again that catchy songs and lyrical substance don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Ultimately, these songs are a testament to the holy mystery of healing. Jen Rose Yokel This is unashamedly the most pop forward and straight up joyful record in Jason’s career yet, and for good reason. His last record Love Will Have the Final Word was born in the midst of deep pain, and the result was a collection of psalm-like honesty and hope. If that was the cries from the darkness, then Where the Light Gets In is the first light of morning, the first evidence that maybe, finally, every sad thing will come untrue after all. “Learning,” the opening track, kicks off a celebration, all catchy chorus and textured beats. Don’t feel awkward having this on your summer dance party playlist though. Though it sports an undeniable groove and recalls the many empowerment anthems that dominate the music of summer, “Learning” is a celebration of failure: “If I fall, I win / Every time I get up again / I know that I can’t lose if I keep learning.” And so it goes… “Sparrows,” built in spacious, layered sounds, is a fresh rendering of Jesus’ caution against worrying, a reminder that we are worth more than many sparrows. “I Will Rise Again,” one of my personal favorites, continues the theme as it builds to a rousing declaration of getting back up against the odds. There are the ballads too — gentle, thoughtful, and somewhat melancholy moments to honor the pain that comes before the joy. “Death Without a Funeral” is a poetic highlight, co-written with and produced to spare acoustic perfection by Andy Gullahorn. The next time someone wonders where the honest Christian songs are, you can send them this one. Though specifically reflecting on the death of a marriage, this lament for the silent griefs we all experience is written in a way that’s personal and universal, loving and brave. The title track “The Wound Is Where the Light Gets In” could be the record’s true gem. Musically gentle and lyrically powerful, its refrain is the heartbeat not just of this record, but of Jason’s entire career. It’s an anthem for wounded healers, to borrow a phrase from Henri Nouwen. And it’s an image repeated over and over on this record, this state of being broken down, cracked open, maybe even beyond repair, yet still surviving. Ultimately, these songs are a testament to the holy mystery of healing, continuing the arc started years ago in Jason’s records. Listen to them all and you hear the stories of losers finding identity in Christ, unmasking shame, and learning to grieve and move forward with joy. This album highlights the work of nine different producers, something uncommon in Nashville records, yet technically necessary to finishing the job. Somehow though, I’d like to think it’s a perfect picture of community meeting in time of need to create something beautiful. Whether it’s Colby Wedgeworth’s slick pop grooves or Andy Gullahorn’s understated yet gorgeous acoustic guitar melody, the pieces manage to fit, and the record is better for it. If you’re looking for honesty, hope, or even just something fun and optimistic, Where the Light Gets In is well worth spending time with in the long summer days ahead. [Where the Light Gets In is available here]

The new marketing tagline at Chick-fil-A read, “Lines are so last year.” It promoted Chick-fil-A One, which allows chicken-eaters to earn loyalty points to acquire free poultry. Also, in-app purchases allow customers to pay for their spicy fowl meat before entering the restaurant, meaning they can skip the lines and go right to the pickup counter. Faster fast food. No hassle. Well, I am beginning to wonder if our present-day obsession with making experiences easier and tasks more convenient is turning us less human. David Michael Bruno So, I have been giving some thought to inconvenience. All sorts of experiences have me thinking about this, but especially lines. Here’s what I want to know: does standing in line at Chick-fil-A actually do something good for my soul? Look, even Disneyland’s Fastpass doesn’t eliminate the lines. What it does is allow Fastpass holders to skip the long line before entering a shorter long line. But think about what’s actually going on for a minute. I get a Fastpass. Welling up with smug pride, I briskly walk past the losers in the long line and take my rightful place among the privileged in the shorter long line. Get rid of the lines altogether and you’ve eliminated anthropology. Oddly, some humans seem to think that’s already happened. Silly Neo, embodiment is so last year. So what does this have to do with inconvenience? Well, I am beginning to wonder if our present-day obsession with making experiences easier and tasks more convenient is turning us less human. I’m mashing up Sherry Turkle, Nicholas Carr, Wendell Berry and Norman Wirzba in order to make a case for a minor theology of inconvenience, which also could be termed a minor theology of figuring out how to get through the long line of living like a human being. I want to write one of those cool Alan Jacobs thought experiments right now. But Facebook Messenger keeps distracting me and I cannot concentrate. So I’m leaving it here for now. Epilogue Today was National Donut Day. First, what quantum computer algorithm is ever going to think up something as awesome as National Donut Day? Two, I took advantage of National Donut Day by foraging four quarters from my car and going to VG. The place has really good donuts. There always is a long line at VG. Out-the-door long. It is a right of passage to get to the counter and buy a warm maple bar that melts like hot lembas on the tongue. Today, an old woman asked if I would hold her place in line while she went and sat down because she wasn’t well enough to stand for long. (She was healthy enough to eat a raised cinnamon swirl, apparently.) And behind me in line was a mom with her three-year-old daughter. The little girl was almost as excited about the length of the line as she was anticipating the donut. I repeat, eliminate the lines and you’ve eliminated anthropology.

Sometimes the Christmas story almost sounds like the start of a joke, “A pregnant Jewish virgin and her husband knock on the door of an inn.” It seems crazy. That’s because it is. It’s a crazy story. So when New York City playwright, Chris Cragin Day and I decided to try re-telling this age-old story, we wanted a medium equally crazy, a medium where, say, people burst into song during heightened emotions. Yep. A musical. It’s called The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby, and we’ve launched a Kickstarter to help fund not one but two productions of it–one in NYC, one in Knoxville, TN. In Nasvhille, in 2014, Chris (my co-writer from my first musical, Son of a Gun) stayed with our family while she and I knocked out our first draft of the story of Jesus’s mother and stepfather in only nine days. The songs and scenes just kept coming, twelve hours a day. It was a rare burst of creative energy born of a shared passion for this story and this way of telling it. Germany has lots of trees, but Israel has lots of rocks. Israeli builders were stonemasons. So, I guess someone needs to order the “My boss is a Jewish stonemason” bumper stickers. Don Chaffer That October, we had a reading of the show in Knoxville, where a friend reported her mother’s assesment to us afterward, “I loved Son of a Gun, but when I first heard Don & Chris were doing a Mary & Joseph musical, I thought, ‘Oh Gawd,’” and the pitch of her voice dropped, as she dragged out the word “Gawd,” in a way that says spare me. “But when I saw it, I was in, couldn’t wait to see what happened next. They pulled it off!” A director friend said something similar, “When I read the script, I had to remind myself who I was reading about. It all felt so new and different.” Okay, I know. I’m bragging, but I’m also trying to combat a disease. This story suffers from widespread AIAMS (Away In A Manger Syndrome). The original story has been so domesticated, so smoothed over and commercialized for so long now that the reality of it is almost on life support. But we still think there’s a story worth telling in there. For example, did you know that Joseph wasn’t a carpenter? Nope, he was a stonemason. Apparently, Martin Luther is to blame for that. In the original Greek, Joseph is a “builder” and since German builders are carpenters, Luther called him a carpenter. However, Germany has lots of trees, but Israel has lots of rocks. Israeli builders were stonemasons. So, I guess someone needs to order the “My boss is a Jewish stonemason” bumper stickers. Secondly, consider Joseph hearing the news. He’s engaged to Mary, whom he presumes is a virgin, but she turns up pregnant, and tells him the baby is God’s. Whew. That’s tough. Not only does he fear that the woman he loves is unfaithful, she may also be crazy. Still Joseph plans to end the engagement, and arrange for Mary’s exile, a mercy compared to death by stoning, which was called for in the extreme religious laws of the day. So, what changes his mind? A dream. In a dream, an angel confirms Mary’s crazy story. It’s one little dream between Mary and a potential death sentence. Then there’s Herod, the psychopath ruler Rome installed over Israel, who was so paranoid about retaining his power that once, when he heard a rumoured assassination plot, he rounded up hundreds of Jerusalem’s rabbis and told his men that if someone succeeds in assassinating him, kill all the rabbis. One way or another, he told them, “I will have all of Israel mourn my death.” So, obviously the show is a comedy. Seriously. Someone spilled the beans about Mary’s pregnancy to Joseph, right? Enter Benjamin, fictional cousin and fellow stonemason who lets the news slip on the job site in the song “Eggplant Casserole.” There’s Naphtali, the Shepherd, who arrives early, while Mary’s still in labor, and tries to calm Joseph’s nerves with his “Birthing Checklist for Sheep and/or Fathers” an effort plagued by the shepherd’s questionable ability to distinguish between sheep and humans. And of course, at the heart of it is a pair of common, sleep-deprived young parents, trying to figure out how to care for a very special baby boy. A lot of people who write musicals never get to see a production, so Chris and I feel very forunate that The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby, already has two productions planned for later this year: one at the Fringe Festival in NYC this August, and one at River & Rail Theatre in Knoxville, TN this winter. However, producing theater is both difficult and expensive. Most theaters, including Firebone Theatre, who will produce at the FringeNYC, and River & Rail, who will produce in Knoxville, are non-profit, and rely on benefactors to make their shows happen. That’s why we mounted a kickstarter to help them. All we need is for people like you to join in. [Editor’s note: the Kickstarter campaign is also going to produce a new Waterdeep album (not to mention t-shirts and other cool stuff). Check out the campaign page here for all the details.]

They called him an illustrator. Not an artist. Norman Rockwell was a visual bard, an historian, and an observer. And he was prolific, producing more than 4,000 original works of art over the course of his life. Much of his work was dismissed by art critics, who considered his paintings to be too idyllic and sentimental to be considered great art.[1] If you look at many of his Saturday Evening Post covers, it isn’t hard to understand why the critics felt this way about his work. Many of his figures bordered on being caricatures: the lanky football player with his protruding adam’s apple, the redhead with the impossible freckles, the middle-aged man with the cigar nub sticking out of his mouth, the old woman and young boy saying grace over their meal. We’ve all been where she is, trying to look through the mirror to what might become of us. We’ve all felt stuck between two eras. We’ve all wondered how we can get from here to there. Russ Ramsey His style was disarming. He set viewers at ease. He connected with people. His “illustrations” seemed to speak in a common tongue. As he grew older, he began to take on more serious subject matter, like racism, basic human freedoms, leaving home, and going to war. These paintings did not stand alone as his only substantive work, however. They shed light on the depth of his other works which had been so casually dismissed. Rockwell’s entire body of work comes together to give us something rich, beautiful, and honest. He didn’t just honor the great World War II generation in America; he preserved their era in stills. His work is like a time capsule holding the cares, fears, humor, ways, and quirks of the generation we are right now in the process of losing. And when we look at that generation in his “illustrations,” we find we are not that different. Take, for example, Rockwell’s Girl at Mirror, which appeared on the cover of the March 6, 1954 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. This was the 281st of what would wind up being 322 total Saturday Evening Post covers he would paint over the span of 47 years. Think about that for a minute. Anymore, the exception is the person who does anything for 47 years. Nothing in Girl at Mirror is where it permanently belongs— the mirror leaning against the chair, the stool the girl has scooted into the middle of the room, the hand held mirror, brush, and make-up on the floor, the doll cast aside. Even the girl herself is not yet fully dressed, wearing only a slip. The actress Jane Russell looks up at the girl from the magazine page. The movie star is offered as a sort of “finished product” to the girl who is very much a work in progress. (Interestingly, Rockwell later regretted including Jane Russell in this painting, saying, “I should not have added the photograph of the movie star. The little girl is not wondering if she looks like the star but is just trying to estimate her own charms.”[2]) Each of these little composition decisions that Rockwell made to dress the scene come together to tell us that this girl is someplace between being a child and a woman, and she knows it. When we look at this painting, we wonder what she is thinking about. Will she put on her play clothes or try on one of her older sister’s dresses? Will she lace up her scuffed saddle shoes or take her first awkward walk across a room in heels? Does the woman from whom she borrowed the brush and make-up know she took them? Is she hiding? How private is this moment supposed to be? We wonder about these things, but we also know this girl. We’ve all been where she is, trying to look through the mirror to what might become of us. We’ve all felt stuck between two eras. We’ve all wondered how we can get from here to there. We know what it is like to sit in that posture, all gathered in on ourselves. Her eyes seem to plead with the girl in the mirror for some sort of answer, or at least help in figuring out what questions she should be asking. We’re all “trying to estimate our own charms.” And just like that, Norman Rockwell leads us into a private room filled with weighty questions about who we are and who we were meant to be, and he leaves us there alone to pine. This is not the work of a mere illustrator. Those who dismissed Norman Rockwell “just an illustrator” took his paintings to say, Here is the world. Isn’t it a quaint and funny place? But when I look at Girl at Mirror, I see the brilliance of an artist whose work echoes what Frederick Buechner said: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”[3] About the Art: Norman Rockwell, Girl at Mirror, 1954, oil on canvas, 31.5 x 29.5 inches, The Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge MA. [1] Windolf, Jim (February 2008). “Keys to the Kingdom”. Vanity fair. Retrieved April 28, 2012. [2] Saturday Evening Post, Beyond the Canvas / Rockwell’s Favorite Model, Part III [3] Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith.

Welcome to Rabbit Room Book Group. We’re so very glad that you’re here. Before we get started, some housekeeping: For the next three Tuesdays we’ll post a few initial questions from the week’s reading. Please be generous with your comments. We all have something to offer, and your willingness to share may give someone else the courage/inspiration to step into the conversation. Additional questions may be posted in the Rabbit Room forum. If you’re not sure how to register in the forum and receive notifications and updates, you can find some guidance here. If you haven’t read the Slow Church yet, don’t let that prevent you from joining the conversation. The quotes we’ve chosen to share are valuable on their own merit. Consider them fodder for personal reflection. Incorporate the ideas and questions into your daily routine of quiet time, journaling, or conversation over coffee with friends. Then buy the book and dig deeper. Our hope is that this reading group is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue to be continued and lived out in your local community. Now that we’ve taken care of the details, let’s get started. Slow Church Week 1 – First Course: Ethics Given the last few weeks’ headlines, I can think of no better place to start than this: “…The most important factor we should consider in making the choices that give shape to our lives is not ‘Will it cause pain and suffering?’ but rather ‘Will it move us in the direction of the common good?’” (p.90) Question 1: Why is the question relevant? How have you seen the desire to avoid pain and suffering trump the desire make choices on behalf of the common good? In your community? In your own life? Give a practical example. “Slow Church takes the long view, examining all action and reaction by the messianic light of the last day. Paradoxically, taking the long view allows us to be truly attentive to the details of the here and now. It all matters.” (p.24) Question 2: How does “taking the long view” impact how we live today? Give a (non-church-related) example from your own life. “We learn patience by immersion, journeying faithfully alongside those who are suffering.” (p. 87) Question 3: When have you witnessed patience and community borne out of journeying alongside one (or many) during their suffering? *Note of interest (at least to me). As I was reading the story of the fire across from the church on Christmas Eve, I realized the church referenced was the church in which I grew up. I was in college at the time, but the incident has indeed marked the community twenty-five years later. Click here to visit the forum discussion.

“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens,” wrote Chesterton, contrasting that poetical sanity with the craziness of the logician “who seeks to get the heavens into his head.” The poet gets a good view; the logician gets a splitting headache. I do not know whether Alexander Schmemann was a poet. He got his head into the heavens, though – going not over but through the things of Earth, particularly those earthy signs of heavenly life we call sacraments. In For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, Fr. Schmemann serves a feast for the imagination, conveying to his readers the quality of heavenly life as seen and lived through the liturgy and sacraments. In the process he demolishes (almost incidentally) the sacred/secular divide. In Schmemann’s world every day, every hour, and every scrap of bread are deep magic, to which every man’s proper response is Eucharist, thanksgiving. There is power in art and beauty, power to transform our dour, function-obsessed world. David Mitchel The expansive, panoramic quality of For the Life of the World makes reading the book delightful, but reviewing it more than a little daunting. A reviewer’s usual job is to make sense of and explain a book — to get its content in his head the way a logician seeks to get the heavens into his head, and summarize and explain it. But one cannot approach For the Life of the World that way any more than one can approach, say, the Gospel according to St. John that way. As Mr. Bingley (correctly) reminded his sister Caroline, a ball needs dancing, not analysis. But to say “just read the book and enjoy” isn’t a review. It may be a recommendation, but it isn’t a review. So perhaps the best way to get at For the Life of the World’s essence is to start with two virtues that Rabbit Room readers generally would find interesting and applicable. First, the book sets forth how the liturgy and sacraments reveal and impart to the Church the bountiful and inherent goodness of creation – a goodness fragile and fleeting, but now made new by Christ. Second, the book shows the refreshingly childlike and “useless” nature of beauty. Fr. Schmemann begins For the Life of the World with the quote from the materialist philosopher Feuerbach, “man is what he eats.” Schmemann not only concedes but embraces the point, for long before Feuerbach the same definition of man was given by the Bible. In the biblical story of creation man is presented, first of all as a hungry being, and the whole world as his food . . . : “Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed . . . and every tree . . . .” As Schmemann summarizes how we stood at creation, we were, first, homo adorans, priests “receiving the world from God and offering it to God.” The world was “created as the ‘matter,’ the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.” And while we have failed at our vocation, nevertheless we “still understand all this instinctively if not rationally.” Neither the Fall – not coincidentally, an act of eating – nor the “centuries of secularism” that followed could shake this eucharistic quality out of eating or “transform eating into something strictly utilitarian.” A meal is still a rite – the last “natural sacrament” of family and friendship, of life that is more than “eating” and “drinking.” Through the Eucharist the act of eating ceases to be opaque and once again appears as it really is: clear, and “shot through with the presence of God.” And this happens through the Eucharist because that sacrament was instituted by Christ, who in taking his Father’s gift to man — the whole world — and bringing it before heaven, did what Adam did not. To the naked eye bread may appear opaque, and wine thick and dark, but Jesus saw them as he saw the whole world: shot through with the light of his Father. When Jesus gave thanks for the bread and wine, for his Father’s presence in them, he drew us to his own Table, into his Thanksgiving, his Eucharist. They again became ours as well. But it isn’t only the earth and its fruits that are restored to us by sacrament and liturgy. The restoration also includes the elusive reality of time. Time may be measured in weeks, years, and days, but it isn’t redeemed simply by measures. That, too, requires Christ’s work: Did Christ . . . rise from the dead on the first day of the week, did He send His Spirit on the day of Pentecost, did He . . . enter time only that we may “symbolize” it in fine celebrations which, although connected with the days and the hours, have no power to give time a real meaning, to transform and redeem it? Schmemann’s questions are of course rhetorical. Christ did not rise from the dead to give us a liturgical calendar or set hours of prayer. He died to redeem time, and all measures of time. The week is transformed by Christ’s beatification of the eighth day: the day on which he defeated all the sin and death of the seven days preceding, and redeemed all the goodness of the seven days preceding by rising from the dead, and inaugurated a new first day of the Kingdom. The Lord’s Day is thus an end and a beginning of the week. The year is likewise transformed by Easter, the Feast of Feasts which completes time past and begins the age to come. But perhaps the most radical transformation of time as most of us perceive it (certainly as I always had perceived it) is in the restoration of the day: Contrary to our secular experience of time, the liturgical day begins with Vespers, i.e., in the evening. This is, of course, the reminiscence of the biblical “and the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gn. 1:5). Yet it is more than a reminiscence. For it is, indeed, the end of each “unit” of time that reveals its pattern and meaning, that gives to time its reality . . . But the vesperal service does not begin as a religious “epilogue” of the day, as a prayer added to all its other experience. It begins at the beginning, and this means in the “rediscovery,” in adoration and thanksgiving, of the world as God’s creation. The Church takes us, as it were, to that first evening on which man, called by God to life, opened his eyes and saw what God in His love was giving to him, saw all the beauty, all the glory of the temple in which he was standing, and rendered thanks to God. And in this thanksgiving he became himself. Schmemann proceeds from food and time to consider the restoration of men and women in Baptism, Chrismation/Confirmation and Penance, and of vocations in Matrimony and Holy Orders. But I have written enough about how For the Life of the World sets forth how, through sacrament and liturgy, we are initiated into and participate in Christ’s restoration of all things. And so now I turn to the other great virtue that runs through Schmemann’s book: it constantly nudges us out of our idolatry of usefulness by pressing upon us the life of beauty, useful or not. I have never read Marva Dawn’s book on worship A Royal Waste of Time — but I love the title, and it could quite easily be applied to everything Schmemann says about worship in For the Life of the World. To the charge that the beauty of the Eucharistic liturgy is “unnecessary,” Schmemann pleads guilty. But like Reepicheep on the Dawn Treader admitting that some adventures have no “use,” there is not a whiff of actual guilt in Schmemann’s confession of the “uselessness” of beauty: Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear — fear of corruption, deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. But “he that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 Jn. 4:18). As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. That last sentence could be a Rabbit Room mission statement. There is power in art and beauty, power to transform our dour, function-obsessed world. The affectionate and childlike representations of the Kingdom of God in art and beauty simply convey the quality of life in the Kingdom, its economy of grace, in a way definitions cannot. And so Schmemann’s exhortations to prize love, to receive joy, to make and behold beauty no matter how “useless” it seems, run through the book like a golden thread, a brilliant light that, like the Incarnate Word Himself, confronts all those “helpful” things that serve only to reconcile us to — rather than defeat — death.

Over the past few years, I’ve attempted to create space in my life for solitude and reflection by going for walks, often in one of the many nature preserves that surround the area I live in. But what I’ve noticed, especially in the busiest seasons, is that these times set aside for margin can easily become just another thing to check off on my to-do list. Or my body might be walking a forest path, but my mind is far away, still wrapped up in the daily problems of work and life. Think of how true this is for many of us. Yoga class becomes another thing to get to. Running becomes that accomplishment we need to fulfill in order to compete in that half-marathon. Reading that book you’ve always wanted to becomes a nagging guilty thought in the back of your mind. The very things that are meant to take us out of our daily routine can become utilitarian in and of themselves. Sometimes it’s necessary to take a purposeless ramble. To not have a plan. To open ourselves up to where whim might lead us. To be open to the world. I did this just recently. My wife was out of town visiting family, and one Sunday I got up and randomly decided that I should go to Boston for the afternoon after church. I didn’t have any particular reason for going to Boston, nothing I had to accomplish up there. I simply had the time and it was a beautiful spring day and I wanted to experience what the city had to offer. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. J.R.R. Tolkien As if the universe was conspiring against me, right away there was pushback. I found out that the train I wanted to take was an hour later than I thought. This led to a strange bout of ambivalence—should I just call it and head back home to my normal routine? Or should I just go for it? With about fifteen minutes to go, I decided to go for it and jogged into the station. Misreading the fare schedule, I paid about twice as much as I expected for a round trip, which threatened to put a damper on my newly psyched up enthusiasm for this adventure. As the train started to make its way north, I wondered whether this spontaneous adventure was going to be worth it. After all, I’d been to Boston plenty of times. Turns out, I could not have picked a more perfect day. As I stepped out of South Station into the streets, the air was pleasant and warm, one of the first truly nice days to emerge this spring. As I threaded my way through the financial district up to the Boston Common and Public Gardens, I saw that many Bostonians and visitors like myself were also out to enjoy the sunshine. The trees were in peak bloom, casting sprays of white and pink over the walkways like natural cathedrals in the heart of the city. People lay on blankets soaking up the sun, or sitting on the banks of the Public Garden pond, watching the ducks and new ducklings paddling about. Making my way down Newbury Street, it felt like the city had finally cast off winter and thrown itself open to the spring. Shops and restaurants spilled out onto the sidewalks with wares and smells and conversation. I stopped at Georgetown Cupcake for a small treat, an apple cinnamon cupcake with cream cheese frosting that melted in my mouth. I wandered through the neighborhoods and out to the Esplanade along the Charles River. The sailboats dotted the water, skimming back and forth across the sun sparkled blue surface. I sat there on a bench, letting the sun warm me as I read a little from the book I’d brought along. Taking these sights in, it felt like my winter-weary eyes were being renewed, taking in the freshness and color of spring. That afternoon filled me up with something I needed, something that could only be found in a rambling, random adventure. I could not have planned such an afternoon. Later, as I was sitting on the train headed home, I posted this tweet: “How much would you pay for a shot of wonder in the arm? Today it cost me $21. Worth every penny.” This would not have been possible if I hadn’t listened to the call of the ramble. To paraphrase a certain adventurous hobbit, sometimes you need to step out onto the road, not knowing where you’ll be swept off to.

A few nights ago, during dinner, I DJed an impromptu YouTube playlist of ‘80s music. Why? Someone mentioned St. Elmo’s Fire (the weather phenomenon, not the classic Brat Pack film). That’s all it took. That was enough to get the sentimentality flowing. For the next hour, it was Patrick Swayze, Simple Minds, and, yes, John Parr (from the aforementioned St. Elmo’s Fire). My kids tolerated it. My wife Janna and I reveled in it. I don’t know that music is embedded in the teenage experience for all of us. I don’t know if we all had soundtracks for our formative years. I do know that I did. I can track my emotional journey album by album, artist by artist. And when I saw the trailer for the new film Sing Street, I felt it calling me, pulling at the breadth of that emotional memory. https://youtu.be/C_YqJ_aimkM Written and directed by John Carney (Once, Begin Again), Sing Street takes the heart of John Hughes, the bitter romance of Once, the musical high of The Commitments, and a fiery, determined optimism, and synthesizes all of them into something remarkable. It’s 1985 in Dublin. Duran Duran is burning up Top of the Pops. John Barber Fifteen-year-old Conor Lalor is a futurist. At least that’s what he tells people when they ask what kind of music he likes. All he really knows is that the present and the past don’t have anything for him. It’s 1985 in Dublin. Duran Duran is burning up Top of the Pops. Conor is in a new school, a buttoned-down parochial institution that chastises him for violating the strict “black shoes only” policy, while allowing all manner of bullying and cruelty. His parents are constantly at each other’s throats, and the sound of their arguing pushes through the walls of the Lalor house. Conor, his brother, and his sister do their best to drown it out with the records of Joe Jackson, The Cure, and Hall and Oates, and the music is a balm for them. Things change when Conor, at his lowest, meets the beautiful Raphina, who dates older boys and wants to be a model in England. She’s the archetypal “I’ll do anything to be near her, even just for a few minutes” girl. He responds the way any of us would: he asks her to star in a music video for his band. Unfortunately, Conor doesn’t have a band, and he doesn’t know how to play an instrument very well or how to write songs. But after he teams up with a few of the other marginalized students at his school, the rough and tumble rock band Sing Street starts to take shape. As the band writes songs, records them, and makes music videos together, a new community is born. As they work to figure out who they are, the begin to find themselves. I sat next to my 16-year-old son for Sing Street, and two things happened to me. First, I was instantly transported back to my teenage years — not too far removed, musically speaking, from Conor’s. His deliverance came from New Wave. Mine came from R.E.M. and then, a few years later, grunge. But the notes are all the same, aren’t they? I remembered every drop of angst, every spark of teenage love, every bit of longing. The second thing that happened to me was that I began to look at my son and wonder. “Is he seeing himself here? Are these ‘universal’ experiences true for him, too?” There came a commingling of lives. I was 16 again, and he was 16 now. Part of being a teenager is that you don’t tell your dad about things like this, so I was left to guess. The way that he gushed about the movie afterward leads me to believe that he saw himself on that screen. There’s a moment in the movie, about halfway through, when everything is right. Conor and Raphina are in a moment of idyllic beauty, and it seems like it should end right there. If the movie stopped at that point, we would have left happy. And while a lesser, more cynical movie would have thrown the real world at them and dashed their optimism, Sing Street chooses a different path. Yes, the real world intrudes. But instead of battering them (and us) with the bitterness of reality, the intrusion of the real world gives them the chance to see that the future is so much bigger than that one fleeting moment. Sing Street does have a point to make about the change that community brings when you’re floating in liminal space. Conor finds his people when he starts the band, and when his parents are falling apart, he and his siblings form a tribe of their own. It also has something to say about how art can affect political change. In the midst of a corrupt regime at the school, Sing Street fights back. But, at its heart, Sing Street is a movie about the innocence of teenage romance, and how relationships can drive you toward something wonderful or away from something terrible. The final scene of the film underscores just that – the optimism of a relationship that drives our heroes toward something new, toward the future. It’s unusual in our postmodern world to find a film that so proudly wears its optimism on its sleeve, but Sing Street does so unapologetically. Can you dig back in your mind, in your imagination, to how it felt when you were 16 and in love, to how you knew that if everything fell just so, to how all would be wonderful? You’d get the girl. You’d get to make out with the girl. The future wasn’t a plan; it was a promise. If you can find that feeling again, just for a moment, you’ll get a glimpse of what Sing Street does. If you can’t remember, go see Sing Street, because it’ll help you find that feeling again.

“At the crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.” — Iris Murdoch[1] Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 – 1564) said, “The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell to free the figures slumbering in the stone.” The figure Michelangelo saw in the marble block that would become David is confounding. The shepherd is at the same time vulnerable in his nakedness and imposing in his size, standing over thirteen feet tall. One hand grips a sling, ready for action; the other hand is relaxed, cradling a stone. The warrior is alert but calm, equipped but patient, daring but confident. He stands in a way that conveys motion, as though he has just shifted his weight or taken a step. The sling and stone signal to us that David is looking at Goliath, who is about to die. The shepherd’s hands, his torso, his battle-ready stare, his posture, and the overall composition of the sculpture seem to animate the block of marble. David is a living stone. We work with what we’re given, and we live in a world of limits. Russ Ramsey One of the things that makes this masterpiece so astonishing is that Michelangelo was not the first sculptor to take a hammer and chisel to this marble. Nor was he the second. In 1464, the city of Florence commissioned sculptor Agostino de Duccio to sculpt a statue of David to be part of a series of twelve Old Testament figures begun by Donatello in 1410. The city brought in a block of marble from the alps in northern Tuscany and Duccio began his work. But Duccio only got as far as roughing out the legs before his death in 1466. Ten years later, another sculptor named Antonio Rossellino was brought in to pick up where Duccio left off, but for reasons unknown, he was soon removed from the project, and the work-in-progress sat unfinished for the next 25 years. Then, in 1501, a twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo convinced the city officials that he should be hired to finish the sculpture Duccio started eleven years before Michelangelo was born. When Michelangelo began, he had to accommodate the work of two prior sculptors, whose creative choices would determine, at least to a degree, how David would have to stand, which would, as a matter of course, effect everything about the end result. How different would Michelangelo’s David have been if he began with a virgin stone? What artistic choices would he have made differently? Would that sculpture be as beloved as the one we’ve been given? We will never know, because that’s not what happened. Michelangelo was given a stone others had a hand in shaping. Is this not a metaphor for life? None of us build upon an untouched foundation. Many people and their many decisions— for better or worse— have played a role in determining where our feet are planted. And the chances good that we are each in the process of shaping some aspect of a foundation upon which someone else will one day come to take their stand. Lord, have mercy. We work with what we’re given, and we live in a world of limits. Michelangelo chipped away at the stone set before him. He had to accommodate the other sculptors. He had to accommodate the stone masons who hewed the marble from the Tuscan Alps. He also had to accommodate the written word. These limits played a role in the creative decisions Michelangelo would have to make in order to draw from that stone the shepherd he had read about and imagined. Some of those choices had already been made for him. Had they not been, we would not have Michelangelo’s David. About the Art: Michelangelo, David, 1501-04, Marble statue, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy. [1] Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, (Routledge, 1970). p. 37

Editor’s note: If you missed the listening party for Eric Peter’s new record, here’s the song-by-song recap. “When The Lightning Strikes”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 I have, with very few exceptions, written my songs with guitar in hand. Going into pre-production with Gabe Scott (producer), this song had a typical swinging, up-tempo, pop feel. This song is a good example of why I could never trust myself to produce my own album. I am too much in my head, too rigid in my tunnel vision to be able to imagine one of my songs existing in any form or shape other than the way I first wrote it. However, I trusted Gabe. He wanted to slow the song way down, and he took the only instrument I know—guitar—out of my hands. On thoroughly unfamiliar musical terrain, it morphed into an almost entirely new melody from the one I’d originally written, with sparse programmed synth, and more or less built around a background of soaring vocal pads (textures, layers). Gabe, from day one, wanted me to try alternate approaches to FSotS. He challenged me to choose left turns, to deliberately not do what I’ve done on past records, in other words, to make myself musically, if not artistically, uncomfortable. This song was the introductory reconnaissance into what Gabe had in mind. I was not at all comfortable early on, but I was increasingly drawn to his less organic style of production. I found myself often bored with my old way of imagining songs. I realized early on that “Lightning” would be the opening track. It seemed to be a musical departure for me, enough so that I wanted it to set the overall tone for the rest of the record. I’m familiar with being torn between two worlds, two homes: this present one, and one devoid of chaos, not yet realized. I think this is what the song is about. And allow me to answer your question: yes, I did steal a car. I took a toy Matchbox Firebird from my neighbor without asking when we were playing in his room one day as kids. Later that night, I felt incredibly guilty, so the next day, instead of fessing up, I tossed the car over the fence into his yard. One count: petty larceny. One count: cowardice. “Farthest Shore”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 If my memory serves (it increasingly does not), I had a song start for this but nothing at all convincing. Early in pre-production, Gabe wanted to write together. One afternoon he took to the piano with a music/melody idea he had, and listening along I drew upon the early version of these lyrics from which he and I sketched out something altogether new—a song about change. Gabe made this a really beautiful piece. “Gravity (Vincent In Reverse)”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/3_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 One day my wife, Danielle, was cutting my hair (I’m too cheap to pay for a haircut), and as she was clipping around my ears I thought of Vincent van Gogh. All that blood, all the pain, the heartache, delirium, and disappointment. Seated on a stool, defenseless against the sharp scissor blades, I wondered how Vincent’s sad story might have been different were he loved unconditionally, had the litany of disappointments and his own rejected and awkward attempts at love found purchase. What if his sadness were reversed? I’m drawn to Vincent’s paintings—the thick swabs of impasto gold, the deep Cobalt blue, the ochres, the vivid and slightly off-kilter subject matter. There are aspects of his sad drama to which I can relate: the deep disappointment of the non-echo of one’s art and work in the world, to repeatedly feel the gravity of indifferent reaction, to realize the hysteria of wanting not only to be liked but to be accepted, to feel valued and valuable. In Irving Stone’s wondrous novel Lust For Life, the author describes the onset of Vincent’s mania, his succumbing to despair, and receding hope in such a beautiful, poignant way. In these brief scenes, the author gives us an image of the artist as if he were standing in a wheat field while a black cloud of feathers and chaos bursts forth, and Vincent shuddering and breathing crows in. It is as beautiful a depiction of depression as I have ever read. Gabe’s production treatment on this song is probably my favorite on the record. He and I are both suckers for a pop song, and this one makes me want to drive with the windows down. “Field Of Failure”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/4_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 I’ve heard it said that men open their door each day to a field of failure. Things break, nothing works—not our tools, not our hands, not the soil—even the work itself fails. On my own, I try to be enough: for the world, for my wife, for my kids, for my art, for my career, even, God forbid, for God himself. Striving to be enough, and believing I could be, I fail. But amid the ugly tumult of my own decisions, deep hurt, wounds, and a relentless enemy, I seek refuge in the shadow of God’s wings until the disaster has passed. And it is there—only there—where I am enough, because he makes me so. “Old Man Hiding”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/5_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 Staring at a black & white photograph I’d taken of a botanical garden gate, Adam and Eve walked into my mind. I considered them there, on the heels of their debacle and banishment, now on the outside of their Garden looking back in, barred from ever returning. I could feel their ache, their longing to return to the intimate fellowship they experienced with God on the inside. I thought of them, the gravity of their situation on their shoulders and hearts, standing there, hand-in-hand, trying to catch glimpses of their Lord, wondering where he was, what he was doing, whether he missed them at all. “Beautiful One (Nowhere)”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/6_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 My aunt was killed in a freak car accident in south Louisiana on November 29, 2011. I began writing this song that evening while trying to imagine the hollow, unimaginable sadness my uncle must have been experiencing at the sudden, tragic loss of his wife. A few months later I became acquainted with a father whose teenage son had died in his arms. In an interview the dad gave to bring awareness to prescription drug abuse, he recounted early days of playing hide and seek in their house with his young son, recalling how his boy would try to “sneak and surprise” him. Deeply grieving, the father would have done anything to get his child back, to breathe life into his loved one, to bring him back to the land of the living. “Nobody”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/7_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 I wrote this from the perspective of Judas Iscariot: the bad guy, the villain, the apostate, the traitor. Knowing there is far more to his story than we could ever possibly know, I imagined Judas dropping everything, and following a whole-hearted Messiah around the eastern Mediterranean seaboard. Judas surely harbored secret ambitions to achieve professional recognition and executive status in the coming, new administration. For three years, Judas followed Jesus, hearing him talk over and over again about a kingdom on earth. The idea of being exalted from a Nobody to a Somebody was alluring to Judas, so he waited, and he bided his time. But when it finally dawned on Judas that there would be no literal, physical Kingdom on earth during his lifetime, it must have wrecked his world—so much so that he wanted no further part in it. Unwilling to be a Nobody, Judas went and did what he did, betraying the very one who indeed transforms Nobodies into Somebodies. “Where I Lost My Way”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/8_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 Searching a photo I took of a pile of castoff bricks, I had an odd thought: what if a brick, long ago abandoned on a construction site and unneeded, standing helpless, was left to ponder its fate and lack of purpose in the world. If not to achieve fame by adorning the façade of a building, how, with hope and trust, and the release of control, might an overlooked brick find joy in a new purpose—a repurpose—on the ground, laid in symmetry alongside its brothers, guiding mortals along a path from Point A to Point B. As a person who is, admittedly, addicted to misery, it is a daily exercise for me to choose joy, to be grateful for not only my life, but for my small, if not insignificant, place in the world. “Rusted Things”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/9_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 In some ways this song summarizes the theme of the entire album: abandoned, forgotten objects with stories to tell. It takes two to tell a story. A listener is always required. In the same way histories were once passed down orally, we have secrets—doubts, fears, shame, desires, crushing memories, burdens—that, unless we share them and speak them, unless we drag them out into the light, we unwittingly carry them as anchors, as butcher voices that seek to eviscerate our hope, to convince us we are worthless, that our secrets, however shameful, are better kept in the dark. The great irony of vulnerability is that in admitting weakness we find unexpected strength. That’s how I imagined a rusted door I came across years ago. Wearing a worn-out crown, it awaits the day when we will all remove our crowns and lay them at the feet of a Savior who bore every burden, was rejected, experienced all of Hell and its isolation, and is the one who deserves them. “Worst Parts”https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/10_far-side-of-the-sea_clips.mp3 I suppose it breaks social decorum to compare marriage and parenthood to a wheelbarrow, but that’s the origin of this song. As most of the songs on the album are derived from photographs I’ve taken, the image of multiple wheelbarrows lined up, chained together, some leaning into the other, all soiled from use brought to mind the exhaustion and thanklessness of being a parent. I get that some folks take to parenthood gracefully, easing in as if wading into warm, placid, Caribbean waters. For me, fatherhood was like plunging into the shockingly cold North Sea, and then having some cold-blooded maniac explode underwater mines nearby as I tried to tread water. I was not a man who cutely adored, and adapted to, parenthood. From day one, I have had to fight against bitterness: at the feeling of being torn from my wife, at having to give away my life to a tiny, helpless, pooping, intrusive, and needy human being. If you’re a parent, you’re aware of this tearing, and aware of the submission to monotony, to repetition, to endless and thankless tasks. It’s humbling. I salute you if you do it with grace and dignity. Parenthood, like nothing else, brings out the saint and the monster in me. While looking at the photograph of wheelbarrows, exhausted and leaning into one another, I considered my relationship with my bride. There have been many nights where we have had little or nothing left to give either to our children or, sadly, to one another. We collapse into each other. And as far as I can tell, that’s the way it’s intended to be, this act of emptying ourselves over and over and over again.

This morning, a friend showed me some snapshots of her vacation in Italy. As I looked at image after image of extraordinary artistry on display in places both sacred and public, she remarked, “Nobody does stuff like that anymore. You have to wonder why.” I don’t have to wonder why. Those artists were paid, even commissioned, to bring beauty into those spaces. And their work could not be easily pirated and duplicated: The one-of-a-kindness of it was precious and preserved. Okay, sure — even in those days, artists were “bought” and exploited. The world has never been particularly kind to creatives. But the age of the Internet has brought us, in some ways, to a new low. Beauty is so available, so easily ripped off and copied, that the world has decided it’s a waste to support new artists with a living wage. Why pay musicians or painters for something new? Why not just grab something off the Internet that already exists, alter it, and use it for your own purposes? • This is on my mind because I am just learning that Peter Shaffer passed away at the age of 90. Shaffer was one of the lucky ones whose work was celebrated enough to give him a career as an artist. Those artists who refuse to play capitalism’s games usually end up having only as much time for their art as most people have for a “hobby” — they have to do other kinds of work if they want to survive. And the world is deprived of what God might have revealed through their work. Jeffrey Overstreet And yet, his play Amadeus, which became a film I celebrate in my book Through a Screen Darkly, is a truth-telling work about the exploitation of artistic genius. It’s a lament for how true vision can go unrecognized while the visionary lives, and an acknowledgment that great work is often discovered and appreciated only when the inconvenient artist is no longer with us (if that work is ever discovered at all). Amadeus reinforced for me what the Scriptures mean when they say that God shames the proud by raising up the humble. The Mozart of the movie is a foul-mouthed, bawdy, womanizing alcoholic. He’s everything the self-righteous establishment refuses to accept. But he’s gifted with vision that opens the heavens so that anyone — anyone — can hear echoes of the glory of God. That’s God’s way of saying that we can’t earn divine favor or win true vision like a prize. That’s God’s way of demonstrating unconditional love and grace, so that no one has any right to boast. In Amadeus, how does the self-righteous “expert” on composition respond to evidence of God’s “unfair” economy? Like the religious leaders scowling over the devotion inspired by Jesus and his apostles, he’s consumed by jealousy and bitterness. In the end, the real genius lies in ruins, while the mediocre and self-righteous Salieri snarls in resentment. It would be a complete tragedy, except that beauty goes on doing its work, calling us all to pay attention to the source. Amadeus remains one of the most influential works of art in my life. It taught me to appreciate wisdom and beauty wherever I find it. It affirmed my suspicions that God’s most glorious revelations will often come from the most unlikely people — people who whose voices would be silenced at Christian schools for their troublemaking, people who would be rejected from church congregations for how they smell or how they won’t “clean up.” And it reassured me that even if I pursue excellence in my art, I am not guaranteed appreciation, respect, or even a decent income. While historians will pick Amadeus apart, Shaffer’s fictional tribute to Mozart offers profound insight into how and why the world stifles creativity, exploits creative people, and celebrates mediocrity. Mozart’s imagination is disruptive — it tells us that we haven’t figured everything out. Mozart’s imagination threatens so-called experts — it reveals them to be as petty and as prideful as anyone. Mozart’s imagination shows us that beauty can be found everywhere, regardless of our hierarchies. And yet, alas, Mozart’s imagination sets self-interested human beings to work in figuring out how they benefit from someone else’s genius. Thus, Mozart’s imagination ends up forced into the service of crooked systems. Shaffer’s Mozart could amplify “the voice of God.” And so he was persecuted by the jealous, exploited by the powerful, and deprived of the support he needed. • Whether or not Shaffer’s Mozart is anything like the real Mozart, there’s no way to deny that the plight of this Mozart correlates to the plight of gifted musicians — gifted artists — today. I know so many people who invested heavily in artistic educations in order to refine and strengthen their art, and who now spend most of their hours doing something entirely different because even their best artistic efforts wouldn’t put food on their table or a roof over their heads. I think of Amadeus whenever I’m reminded that I can either apply myself to my art or earn a living wage. I think of Amadeus when I hear Christians condemning my favorite artists and entertainers for their moral failings. “What? You like that guy’s movies? You like that woman’s music? Do you know what kind of life he lives? Do you know what I read about her?” I think of Amadeus when I see commercial entertainers stealing great ideas from unappreciated masters (who never made a “hit”) and turning them into box-office success. And the exceptions? The artists who do find a way make a living off of their work? Don’t kid yourself — most of the art that plays on big screens is there because someone other than the artist is making most, if not all, of the money. The music that’s promoted and marketed? It may come from somebody whose work has earned them “success,” but it’s likely that they’re still owned by a company who receives most of the reward. Those artists who refuse to play capitalism’s games usually end up having only as much time for their art as most people have for a “hobby” — they have to do other kinds of work if they want to survive. And the world is deprived of what God might have revealed through their work. This is the devil’s world, for now. He’s doing all he can to keep good artists down, to stifle beauty, and to turn what glory is revealed into a “profitable” opportunity. But he doesn’t have to win every time. Who in your life today would give the world beauty and imagination if only they had more support? Who spends their days laboring on something other than their art in order to make ends meet? How many musicians, novelists, and painters might bless the world in life-giving ways if they were compensated for their work? Amadeus tells the far too familiar story of an artist who became a living sacrifice for the sake of revelation, and ended up exploited, suppressed, ruined, or all of the above. Watch it again, and see if he reminds you of anyone you might know who labors in the fever of a vision, and who goes overlooked, unappreciated, or exploited. Let this movie work on your heart. Think of the artists in your life, those who have given you glimpses of something beautiful and true, and give them a note of encouragement today. And consider donating to their futures, even if all you can spare is a little each month. Let’s see if we can turn loose a little beauty that doesn’t have strings, or parasites, attached. [This article originally appeared at LookingCloser.org. Used with permission.]