What are you looking for?

My daughter is having a hard morning. It began with the moderate joy of feeding her new betta fish, “Rainbow,” all by herself. Rainbow is beautiful, but not as much fun to watch as Goldi, Goldy, or Silver – Livi’s first three goldfish. Goldi came from Wal-Mart, and never even made it out of the plastic bag. We rescued Goldy from Petsmart, and she was a joyful, bubbly goldfish until she wasn’t, and we brought her back to Petsmart for a more alive version. Enter the goldfish named Silver. Silver did great, until my son’s goldfish “Rocket” tasted her pretty little fan tail and developed a cannibalistic tendency that led to her ultimate demise. So, this morning, I should have expected a troubled mind from my grieving first-born. She fed Rainbow, and then started whining about her morning list. “I don’t want to do my stuff!” Whining gave way to stomping, then crying, and this is a job for SuperDaddy. I go in, I invite her onto my lap, I direct my nappy sock and garbage breath away from the tormented child, asking probing and thoughtful questions, affirming her and listening more than talking. While massaging her little hands, I talk to her about prayer, and she spits exasperation with not seeing God and not hearing him. I agree that it is hard to understand, and ask her to trust me for the time being, that God hears her and loves her. Things seem to be going well, until it is time to leave my lap and get back to the stuff she was avoiding. Teeth, hair, shoes, etc… Crying resumes. I escort her to the bathroom and close her inside, and crying turns to wailing and hyperventilating. This is a hard business. Time for Mom. Mom says,”Livi, we’re leaving in 10 minutes.” And though the wailing increases, the stuff is now getting done. I’ve been played like a cheap harmonica. Miraculously soon, my daughter meets me in my office and is dressed and ready for her piano lesson (the last of the stuff). I suggest an easy song. She wants to play the hardest one (a song called “Donkey”). We finish up with a melody game and a kiss on the head, she pulls on her backpack and slips out the door with my wife. “Bye Daddy! I love you!” Whew.

Boy, that title sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Like the title to a P.D. James murder mystery or something. It’s easy to imagine that title being about Satan, or about Terrorism, or about Greed, or any number of shadowy, forked-tongue devils that creep in the corners of our lives. Today, I had an encounter with a Restless Evil, and it happened right here in Nashville. On Music Row, no less. Was it a record label executive, you ask? (That was a cheap shot.) Nope. Was it Lust? Was I tempted by the siren call of one of the many strip clubs and adult bookstores that litter the downtown area? Not today. Here’s what happened: I had a radio interview. It was for a show called “The Word in Worship” or something like that. I’m not familiar with it, but it seems like a quality show. The interviewer asked some really good questions, and they seem to know what they’re doing. I have a confession to make. Every time I do a radio or television interview I’m scared stiff. If the folks at home could look into the landscape of my brain in the minutes before an interview starts they’d see an epic battle being waged–one part of me is boastful about the fact that anyone cares what I think, the other ashamed of myself for presuming to answer questions as if I know what I’m talking about; meanwhile another part of my psyche is cowering beneath the table sucking his thumb for fear of being found out for the charlatan that he is, that I must be. I start to organize the opinions I’ve bandied in the car with the Captains Courageous, choosing some for potential answer-fodder and discarding others. Sometimes I remember to pray, and when I do it’s the sanest part of me asking God to shut up the parts that are displeasing to him; sometimes I pray, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Sometimes I mean it. When the pendulum swings from my arrogance to my shame I then start to belittle myself and curse the way that God made me–why can’t I be well-spoken and smart as a fox? Why can’t I call to mind quotes from books I’ve read, or wow the audience with a too-perfect analogy? Why oh why am I me? If I were walking down some cobbled street and saw myself I’d be tempted to spit. Just who do I think I am? I have no business answering any question about anything, let alone questions about God and worship on a syndicated radio show. I have nothing to offer. God couldn’t possibly speak through a fool like me. The pendulum swings again and I’m congratulating myself for this or that accomplishment as if I had anything to do with it. Like I said, a battle rages. All that in the time it takes to shake the interviewer’s hand and introduce myself. He told me that we’d be talking about the current worship movement and at first I got excited. This is something I have Opinions about. Then I remembered Jason Gray’s post about Sara Groves’s new album, and I wanted to quote the verse from Isaiah that he referenced. I reasoned that if I fumbled too much with figuring out what I wanted to say I could always resort to reading some Scripture. This would be a fine example of the cart being placed firmly before the horse. But I couldn’t find the verse Jason referred to, and his cell phone was off. I was on my own. So the guy asked me a lot of questions. I gave him a lot of answers. I’m certain that about half of what I told him was off-the-cuff, ad libbed, specious and lame. I opined about the state of Worship Music. I stated that it’s a fad, and that I’ll be glad when it runs its course so that people will remember that it’s okay to listen to a song that’s just a song again. But then I realized that that’s a cocky declaration at best. Just because I don’t like a lot of what we call Worship Music doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable, doesn’t meant that throngs of people aren’t blessed by it. So I backpedaled, trying to lessen the blow I had laid on my own jaw. What was that Bible verse again? Oh, that’s right, I don’t know it. I had my shot at answering a question about the Christian music biz, and once again, I blew it. I could’ve answered graciously, with humor, without guile, could’ve said something instructive or wise, but I couldn’t manage it. I told him something that was so meaningless that right now I have no recollection of what I said. When I tried to dig myself out of the first answer, I hemmed and hawed and said basically–nothing. The interview ended about five minutes before I realized that the Restless Evil had gotten the better of me again. James 3 says, “The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” I know, I know. I’m being too hard on myself. The interview will be spliced and diced and made into something they can hopefully use, and when it’s all said and done it may be that the opinions I shoveled out weren’t so far off the mark. But I know I was walking a tightrope. It is a precarious business peddling words, and the more you sell them the greater your chance of exposing yourself as a con-artist. As soon as the elevator doors closed and I descended to the parking garage, my spirit descended into a cloud of repentance. If I didn’t have a good answer, I should have said so. If my words came from a place of arrogance, I should have never said them. Lord, let me be the kind of man who is brave enough to be silent when he ought. When you don’t know what you’re talking about, to speak out can be the easiest thing of all; it is shutting up that takes work. AP

W. H. Auden wrote in his introduction to the 1954 reprint of Lilith, “George MacDonald is pre-eminently a mythopoeic writer…In his power…to project his inner life into images, beings, landscapes which are valid for all, he is one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century.” I’ve decided that my two favorite George MacDonald books, Lilith and Phantastes, are a safe and stimulating way for Christians to experience a godly version of a hallucinogenic drug trip. Lilith is a tribute to the power of truth encased in story. It’s the tale of Mr. Vane, a man at first unaware he has no real sense of identity. Awakened to his true condition by the question, “Who are you?” Mr. Vane contemplates, “I could give him no notion of who I was. Indeed, who was I? It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I understood I did not know myself.” The questioner tells him, “No one can say he is himself, until first he knows that he is, and then what himself is.” Another great bit of identity truth happens when Mr. Vane says, “Tell me how to recognize the nearest way home.” “I cannot,” answered the raven. “You and I use the same words with different meanings. We are often unable to tell people what they need to know, because they want to know something else, and would therefore only misunderstand what we said.” The truth of identity in Christ is unintelligible to those who have not yet finished with world-identity. They still think the solution is to be found outside, in the world, in doings, in performance-based acceptance, and no amount of words will convince them otherwise. The only solution is found in the eventual, inevitable disillusionment with world-identity. The raven continues: “Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at home, has to go home. You thought you were at home where I found you: if that had been your home, you could not have left it. Nobody can leave home. And nobody ever was or ever will be at home without having gone there.” “Enigma treading on enigma!” I exclaimed. “I did not come here to be asked riddles.” “No, but you came, and found the riddles waiting for you! Indeed, you are yourself the only riddle. What you call riddles are truths, and seem riddles because you are not true.” “Worse and worse!” I cried. “And you must answer the riddles!” he continued. “They will go on asking themselves until you understand yourself. The universe is a riddle trying to get out, and you are holding your door hard against it.” I recognized this riddle of identity as the same I’d been asking my whole life. Truth is paradoxical and seems riddle until we are living in it. We live by dying. We are exalted when we are humbled. We find true strength by coming to a deep, settled awareness of our total weakness and inability to “be like Christ.” Each of us is on a journey to find our true Home – not the home of “pie-in-the-sky”, but of meaning, purpose, security, worth, identity down here on planet Earth. We look in the most ridiculous places until we come home inside ourselves and find that our true home is inner, where Christ lives in our hearts by faith, the fountain of everything that we are looking for. When we finally come to our inner home, we know we can never truly leave it. Mr. Vane then sets out on a journey to discover who he is, a gradual revelatory process that comes through various circumstances and his own inner and outer responses to them. By these he learns his weaknesses, and in his weakness he finds true strength – the strength to lay his life down for others, not in self-effort and presumption but in true love. Beyond Vane and his journey of identity, MacDonald’s Lilith, like his other great fantasy Phantastes, opens a window into the ultimate purpose and nature of evil. I first read Lilith a decade ago after I’d gone through several years of a deep and dark night of the soul, and through the dark night had learned a great deal about who I am in Christ. Through the Word, Mr. Vane, and personal experience I learned that the Devil most often speaks to us in first person, seeking a foothold in us in order to use us for his purposes. Casting great light on this dark truth, Lilith‘s character Odu says, “‘He was a shadow; he had no thick to him…He came down the hill, very black…He was nothing but blackness…He came on as if he would walk over us. But before he reached us, he began to spread and spread, and grew bigger and bigger, till at last he was so big that he went out of our sight, and we saw him no more, and then he was upon us!’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘He was all black through between us, and we could not see one another, and then he was inside us.’ ‘How did you know he was inside you?’ ‘He did me quite different. I felt like bad. I was not Odu any more – not the Odu I knew. I wanted to tear Sozo to pieces – not really, but like!’ He turned and hugged Sozo. ‘It wasn’t me, Sozo,’ he sobbed. “Really, deep down, it was Odu, loving you always! And Odu came up, and knocked Naughty away. I grew sick, and thought I must kill myself to get out of the black. Then came a horrible laugh that had heard my think, and it set the air trembling about me. And then I suppose I ran away, but I did not know I had run away until I found myself running, fast as I could…I would have stopped but never thought of it…Then I knew that I had run away from a shadow that wanted to be me and wasn’t, and that I was the Odu that loved Sozo. It was the shadow that got into me, and hated him from inside me; it was not my own self me!'” “…a shadow that wanted to me and wasn’t, and that I was the Odu that loved Sozo.” Odu recognizes his real identity as love for others, and sees the Shadow truly as not-me. The identity of the Shadow, the spirit of Ephesians 2:2, is that of me-for-me, as opposed to God’s Spirit of me-for-others. Our primary battle is not to fight our self, but to fight the lies of the Devil that gain him a foothold in our thought life; that fighting is simply to stand in what God says about us. Beloved. Accepted. One spirit with the Lord. Light in the Lord. Overcomer. Indwelt by Love Himself. “It was the shadow that got into me, and hated him from inside me; it was not my own self me!” As the apostle Paul put the same thought in Romans 7, “Therefore, when I sin, it is no longer I that sins, but sin which dwelleth in me.” In such times, the arrows of the Shadow have gotten past our shield of faith and hit a spot we’ve left unprotected by the armor of Christ. The Shadow’s lies have struck home, and we’ve swallowed them, and soon we act out of the lies to live in Romans 7 temporarily until we wake up again, like Odu, to our true nature in Christ. I’ve never found a book more illuminating, imaginative, uncanny, or thought-provoking than Lilith. Deep, deep writing worth real digging.

A terror-inducing darling of a storm blew through Nashville last night. As I sat in what I like to call my “outdoor living room” (carport-turned-porch) with my November issue of Gourmet and as a calm instrumental played, I commenced to enjoy one of the last warm evenings of the season. The rainfall soon began with a gentle patter on the dead leaves that covered the ground. Just a lovely addition to my soundtrack, I thought. Then the rain decided to come in sideways. This annoyed me greatly and I resolutely hunched my shoulders against it. You will not force me inside, I muttered under my breath in the face of the horizontal shower. The pesky little drops persisted, became much larger than little, and within moments my magazine and I were drenched. I ran for the back door, which I could barely pull closed for the gale-force wind. I felt a good deal like Dorothy when she struggled to pull the storm door shut in those dark beginning frames of The Wizard of Oz. All of this to say, along with the rain came some dreadful cold. The dreadful kind is my favorite. It must be the staunch, stubborn Swedish blood that runs in my veins. I dressed accordingly as I got ready for my jog this evening and pulled my green woolen hat as far down over my ears as possible. The jog itself is of almost no consequence but the return home in the dark, starry night — quite strange and wonderful. There’s a song called “Dirty Knife” from Neko Case’s newest record, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It played on my iPod as I struggled to put one foot in front of the other, breathed the sharp, cold air deep into my chest and rounded the corner of Wyoming Avenue. This song has a macabre tone, haunting chords, and tells a story that one might not instantly understand and, furthermore, might not want to. (Turns out it’s based on a story she heard from her grandmother as a girl about some of their ancestors who went insane, but it sounds oh-so-much more marvelously murderous than that.) I came to the intersection at 44th and passed the place where the neighborhood Cat Lady lives. In the warm summer months, when one passes this house, one can smell…cats. Lots of cats. Tonight there were three huddled on the hood of the packed-with-trash pick-up that sits in the drive, four in shadow underneath it, and one beside the mailbox, trying desperately to derive some heat from the wooden post. Poor delusional cat. The very moment I passed the house (and the excessive number of felines), the following lyric floated through my earbuds: Cascading letters pool on the stairs / The grass is high, the cats are wild / You can’t even touch the tip of their tails / And the blood runs crazy with giant strides. Not even a block further in the dim street, closer to 43rd, there was a white shape in the middle of the road, lit from above with an eerie orange glow coming from the only functioning street lamp. As I came closer I noticed it was a creamy white dog (which looked a terrible lot like a wolf), lying low but eyeing me carefully. I was only slightly spooked, until the moment I came up on him and heard the following lyric: He sang nursery rhymes to paralyze the wolves that eddy out the corner of his eyes / But they squared him frozen where he stood in the glow of the furniture piled high for firewood / And the blood runs crazy with giant strides. Does this happen to anyone else? Is anyone else served these little slices of happenstance? And are they really just happenstance? My thinking is that it’s one more area in our earthly existence where God can sneak in some magic. To me, it’s another sign, a more innovative one, that He concerns Himself with things that may seem trivial, unimportant or unholy to his children. Tonight in the dark street as I stood and watched that white animal (from a distance) I knew that Someone was paying attention and smiling knowingly. I did a double-take and exclaimed in my heart, “Did you see/hear that??” Of course He did. He created that thirty-second episode just for me. He is with us, in everything. Everything. In a world so bedraggled with general unrest, does He really care about providing us with these small trinkets of enchantment? I say, as my breath forms a white vapor in the cold, Oh yes. He does. Here are the lyrics in their entirety, but please promise me that you’ll head to iTunes and search for a snippet of the audio. Her voice is such an important part of the story. So suddenly the madness came With its whiskered, wolven, ether pangs He locked the door And shut the blinds He laid down on the floor and he slept like iron While the dirty knife worked deep Into his spine The blood runs crazy The blood runs crazy Cascading letters pool on the stairs The grass is high, the cats are wild You can’t even touch the tip of their tails And the blood runs crazy with giant strides He sang nursery rhymes to paralyze The wolves that eddy out the corner of his eyes But they squared him frozen where he stood In the glow of the furniture piled high for firewood And the blood runs crazy with giant strides And the woodsman failed to breech those fangs in time So they dragged him through the underbrush Wearing three winter coats and a dirty knife (Ukranian) Krichit shaleno, strekoche zubami (He shouts very loudly, grinding his teeth)

Sources estimate that World War II veterans are dying at the rate of about 1,000 per day. Valiant attempts have been made to capture something of that war and the people who fought it, and it seems that the good attempts- the really good ones- involve Stephen Ambrose one way or another. My grandfather, George F. Aspinwall, or Pop Pop, was a glider pilot in WWII. To have heard him describe it, for most guys the choice to fly gliders was as simple as the pay raise that came with it. But they had all heard that the life expectancy of a glider pilot in combat was 17 seconds (as compared to the 19 minutes fighter pilots were given or the luxurious 1 hour and 46 minutes the bombers had.) The gliders of WWII were a fascinating idea- designed to silently fly into tight places delivering men, guns and even jeeps. But they were also sitting ducks, constructed mainly of canvas and pipe or wood. They were built to be “one mission crafts” and Pop Pop said every landing was essentially a crash landing. My grandfather participated in Operation Market Garden, an allied mission to secure a series of bridges in German occupied Holland. It was one of the few missions the allies undertook that failed. Before he died, I asked him to tell me about his experiences, which he did. I was 30, and it was the first time I had even thought to ask about it. And the reason I wanted to know now was because I had read and then watched the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers” by Stephen E. Ambrose. What strikes me about the men who fought in that war is that they themselves were reticent to be known as heroes, yet considered the men they served alongside to be just that. And they remember well what they experienced there. To hear Pop Pop talk about anti-aircraft fire coming up through the canvas between his legs as he flew over enemy lines was like hearing him talk about something that happened only last week. Which brings me back to Stephen Ambrose. Band of Brothers has little, if anything, to do with gliders. But it is the story of men from the same generation fighting in the same war. It is the epic account of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army- a company that took 150% casualties during their tenure in the European theater. Ambrose leads us through their beginnings in basic training (July 1942), through D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, all the way to the taking of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in May of 1945. What Ambrose give us with his accounting of World War II is a gift–a very thoughtful and irreplaceable one. What he gives is oral tradition, the stories and descriptions of that war in the words of those who died in it or lived through it. He generously saturates his writing with the actual words of the people he’s interviewed or the letters he’s examined or the journals he’s pored over–from both sides of the trenches. It seems men of that generation didn’t like to talk about themselves as much as my generation does. So if I wanted to know Pop Pop’s stories, I’d have to ask. Ambrose lit a fire under me to do just that, and just in time. I feel indebted to him for this precious gift of knowing some of Pop Pop’s stories. And I wanted to know Pop Pop’s stories because Ambrose had already told me so many others in Band of Brothers. That’s what his World War II books do. In them, Ambrose gathers and arranges the words of a generation that is passing away quickly so that he might tell their story and in so doing help teach us a bit of our own. (The HBO mini-series by the same name is excellent as well. You can also pick up other Ambrose World War II titles like The Wild Blue, D-Day, Pegasus Bridge and Citizen Soldiers.)

Sara Groves irritates me just a little bit. With each album she makes, she moves from strength to strength and is always raising the bar with the quality, depth, and lyrical ambition of her work. And as a fellow artist, that’s just a little irritating since it means the rest of us are going to have to work harder if we hope to keep up. Sara’s husband Troy gave me a copy of “Tell Me What You Know” back in August, and I’ve been living with it since then, awaiting with great anticipation for the rest of the world to be able to hear it. And now that it releases this week, I thought I’d say a few words about it. Sara’s best songs have a real way of getting beneath my skin and messing with my junk. She’s always trying to talk about the real stuff of life, love, faith, and even doubt, and always in a way that nobody else has before. (I’ve been blessed to write with her before, and am always challenged by how hard she works to be both very accessible to her audience but without falling back on language and imagery that we’ve all heard before.) When she told me she was working on a record that would center on themes of social justice, I was both excited and worried. The words “social justice” have almost reached cliché status, especially now with celebrities like Paris Hilton involving themselves in social causes in hopes of re-inventing themselves. And here lies one of the challenges that the social justice movement faces – people who want to help the needy because of how good it makes them feel about themselves. (honestly, I really don’t care all that much as long as the needy are truly being helped) But Sara sings of a different kind of service to the poor, the kind that casts us (the benefactor) less as heroes who save the day and more like determined soldiers who march on in the face of a battle that we may not win and where there is little promise of glory, a battle that she calls the Long Defeat. Sara names the challenge, but she also names the deep joy that comes from knowing you are spending your life and heart on something that truly brings God pleasure. It’s SO hard to write songs about serving the poor and changing the world that don’t degrade into either preachiness or Michael Jackson singing “I’m looking at the man in the mirror…” Now, don’t get me wrong, I like MJ as much as the next person (pre-scary MJ days), but I’ve been there and done that (and besides, I liked “We Are The World” better). So how would Sara frame this story? Of course I shouldn’t have worried. The girl who brought us “we’re taking our church to the moon” would surely offer us a fresh and compelling vision of Social Justice. Check out the lyric of hope in a song Inspired by the story of a girl Sara met who had been abducted and forced to work in a Brothel in Thailand. in the girl there’s a room in the room there’s a table on the table there’s a candle and it won’t burn out in the woman there’s a song in the song there is hope in the hope revolution in the boy there’s a voice in the voice there’s a calling in the call there’s a promise and it won’t quiet down in the man there’s vision in the vision is a road it’s the road to his freedom… oh, tell me what you know about God and the world and the human soul how so much can go wrong and still there are songs… Another song, “When The Saints”, moves me to tears every time I hear it. The song “Abstraction” is an ambitious reiteration of a line from a Mark Helprin book that wonders how we can know the meaning of one life. I remember listening to this song and thinking Sara is maybe the closest to the depth and poetic versatility of Suzanne Vega that Christian music is likely to have. But my personal favorite is the song “The Long Defeat” that offers a perspective that we don’t often hear in the American church on why we spend ourselves on behalf of the victimized and marginalized. It’s a quiet call to a war of attrition with no guarantee of a win. I have joined the long defeat that falling set in motion and all my strength and energy are raindrops in the ocean so conditioned for the win to share in victor’s stories but in the place of ambition’s din i have heard of other glories and i pray for an idea and a way i cannot see it’s too heavy to carry and impossible to leave i can’t just fight when i think i’ll win that’s the end of all belief and nothing has provoked it more than a possible defeat… I’m weary of our church culture’s love affair with worship music.There are of course wonderful artists making meaningful songs of worship, but much of the rest of it seems so disposable and consumer oriented.This record calls me to what I believe is a more significant worship, the kind that truly brings God pleasure. The kind of worship that ministers to him. When I was in Africa working with AIDS orphans last year, I was startlingly aware that when I would make them laugh, that it was Christ who was laughing; that when I would bring them comfort, it was Christ who was comforted; the one who tells us that he hides among the least of these is well served when we serve the poor – in whatever kind of poverty we find them. This is what Sara’s record reminds me of and inspires me to.

I am outside on my front porch. The yellowed leaves are methodically falling from the black walnut in the yard, my breath is chalky visible in the recent cold snap, and lately I have been exploring the unpleasant nuances of the dark night of a soul – my own, to be exact. It is a strange passion we live out on this over-glorified orb of rock hurtling through space at some rate that I’m sure would astound me were I to know what it was. It is an odd series of days, I am realizing, when you question your own faith more than you question your own doubt. And, indeed, it is these nagging questions which have prompted me to share my thoughts on Andrew Peterson’s 2003 album, Love and Thunder. So, why did Eric title this post, “Andrew Peterson: Love and Thunder”, when all he’s done so far is talk about himself? Because I want you to know, dear reader, why I like this album so much: I am richer for having been physically present when some of these songs were born “from the void of the wire and the wood”. I am humbled – sometimes a good thing, eh? – by the sheer grace and honesty of his words. I resonate with the album’s starkness and revel in its hope. I remember Andrew playing “Family Man” for us, his band, in a Wichita hotel room. I remember hearing “Silence of God” for the first time during a soundcheck. Andrew might remember things otherwise, but I have vividly fond memories from the tour all of which aided me in thinking and seeing better. L&T is an album that is delicate in its haunting, beautiful in its sorrow, rich in questions, fertile in its proclamation of faith and doubt, and painstakingly glorious in its production. It is an album of songs that, no doubt, came from a dark night of Andrew’s own soul. And that, I suppose, is why I am drawn to write about it now. Misery enjoys company. No man or woman escapes this hurtling orb without suffering at the gates of pain, whether it is intense or minute, emotional or physical, faced head-on or avoided altogether. It is the condition of things as they are, but not as they one day shall be. I am grateful for the wisdom and insight of Andrew Peterson, as a friend, a songwriter and as a person who has possibly passed through the depths of earth (or hell) and returned a scarred, bruised and battered man, but all the more holy in his humanity. *Of course, this very splendid album is available for purchase here in the Rabbit Room.*

The other day I was on Andrew Osenga’s blog, where the topic lately has been “Top Five” lists. Several years ago, I made a top five “Christian Albums of all Time” list. (For more on what an “album” is, go here.) My list has been revised over the years some, but not much. And it has always retained Rich Mullins’s Liturgy, Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band and Phil Keaggy’s Beyond Nature. Both albums hold their immovable place on my list for the same reason—from the first track to the last, they are perfect. If I were speaking in hyperbole here, I would tell you. I am not. They are perfect. This opinion, I recognize, requires a defense. For Beyond Nature, here goes. Since this is an acoustic, instrumental record, some words on Phil as a guitarist are in order. If you’re familiar at all with Phil Keaggy, I don’t really need to mention that he’s a great guitar player. What does bear mentioning here, however, is that the acoustic guitar tells the truth about the one playing it. You cannot hide your imprecision or bad timing or flubbed notes. The acoustic guitar plays you as much as you play it. So to hear Phil alone with his acoustic is something rare. And I mean that. If you are someone who enjoys being around to witness history unfolding before your eyes, do whatever you can to be in the same room with Phil Keaggy and his acoustic guitar, because his talent comes by maybe once a century…maybe. Beyond Nature is Keaggy’s musical tribute to C.S. Lewis (which is why I thought it would find a friendly home here in Rabbit Room). The songs musically tramp you through Lewis’s Oxford England. You can almost feel the autumn wind on your face and smell the musty old earth beneath the fallen leaves as you walk through the dales. Every note is played with a deliberate, knowing sense of what each song needs. It is a very mature work, and rounding out the soundscape with his guitar is a collection of strings, woodwinds and, when called for, even some triumphant brass. Stuart Duncan’s fiddle on “County Down” is especially brilliant. I imagine this album is the kind of recording musicians rarely achieve more than once a career because it has an intangible quality that seems almost impossible to manufacture at will: seamless continuity from beginning to end. This seamlessness seems to “happen to” some records, but usually even the artist is surprised when it does. Well, it happened to Beyond Nature. And for this reason, it remains inspired and untouchable on my top five. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the other fine works Keaggy has produced. Its just that for me, this record holds together in a way that doesn’t come along very often. I have never bothered to remember the names of the individual tracks which make up “Beyond Nature” because the thing holds together so well as a complete work that I’ve never really favored one track over another. This record feels more like a symphony than a collection of songs. Beyond Nature washes over you. It is the sound of a virtuoso playing his best work, and keeping it up for a full 60 minutes. And sadly, it is running out of print in a hurry. But I believe you can still get a hold of it at philkeaggy.com. Thanks, Phil. It’s perfect.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.” –Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I just deleted four or five paragraphs of my own ruminations on this quote. After writing them, I went back and read the quote again, realizing that I’m ruining the beauty – like a curator overexplaining a painting, draining it of any personal meaning. So I hate to even try to expound on the beauty of this quote and will just let it stand on its own beautiful merit.

Into the Wild accents a tension between the value of relationships and freedom. There is little doubt on which side the main character in this movie comes down. Chris McCandless’s apparent creed is that freedom is most supremely manifest in nature. It’s not that he is necessarily opposed to relationships. In fact, he is a social young man with plenty of personal mangnetism. People are drawn to him like bees to honey and he seems to like them. Still, McCandless–played with skillful realism by Emile Hirsch–eagerly seeks fulfillment and joy in the great outdoors, even if it means divorcing himself from meaningful relationships. With focused intensity, McCandless pursues new experiences. He is intrigued by people–as long as they don’t become too familiar and as long as they don’t tie him down. McCandless has seen all he wants to see of the upper middle class lifestyle in which he was raised. He donates his law school nest egg to charity and leaves the values of his family behind, literally. Through the course of this movie, I wondered if he was motivated more by that which he left behind or that which he was seeking. In other words, was he running “from” or running “to”? It’s a difficult question, though he was no doubt a wise and thoughtful young man. On the other hand, how much wisdom should we expect to find in a twenty year-old brain? One of the first pillars of wisdom has something to do with humility; the more one knows, the more he realizes he doesn’t know. Something akin to that line of thinking would have led to different outcomes than that which McCandless ultimately found. After obtaining his undergraduate degree from Emory University, McCandless–who takes on the assumed name of Alexander Supertramp–heads west. Along the way, he encounters an interesting, eclectic range of characters including a grain dealer in South Dakota, (Vince Vaughn with his usual quirky character spin), a hippie couple in Arizona, and a wise old retired military man in California. He engages in these relationships just long enough to see the dawn of meaning and fulfillment. But as soon as something like love rears its head–with cool, dispassionate fury–Chris exits stage left. This movie is produced (in part), written, and superbly directed by Sean Penn. I can and do ignore movies by other Hollywood types who wear their political heart on their sleeve: Tim Robbins, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin, and Susan Sarandon come immediately to mind. But Sean Penn’s skills as an actor and director are too significant to ignore. While I largely disagree with Penn’s political platform, his latter-day work seems driven by truth and humanity more than an aggressive political agenda. In this film, I felt as if the story was being shared as it really happened, not as if it was being framed to promote some progressive political theme. Into the Wild is based upon a true story which has been adapted for the big screen. Jon Krakauer wrote this best seller which chronicles the young adulthood adventures of the late Christopher Johnson McCandless, who leaves life as he knows it to seek unlimited elbowroom in the wild wilderness of Alaska. And yes, I let a spoiler slip without warning. The thing is, that McCandless dies is a foregone conclusion for anyone that is even half-way engaged in domestic pop culture. And more to the point, the drama in this movie comes not from this young man’s death, but from the way in which he lived his life. Penn uses the editing style in which the near-ending is the first thing we see. Scenes are shuffled like a deck of cards which then circle back around to the beginning. But rather than confusion, this approach brings clarity. The mystery and suspense come not from the stark destination, but in the discovery and magic of the journey. Watching the film, I pondered the question, “Is this twenty year-old man a visionary, an idealistic poet with insight, courage, and intelligence, or a reckless vagabond, foolishly self-indulging his life away?” By the end of the movie, I realized that in my attempt to lasso tidy understanding from my theater seat, I was engaging in the very technique I shun in blockbuster filmmakers. Yes, the film characterizes McCandless as a bit arrogant and–at times–more than a little reckless. Still, it’s hard and maybe unfair to arbitrarily pigeonhole the man. He was a complex person. I appreciated the way in which Mr. Penn refrained from leading me around by a chain, jerking me here and there to force feed some overly simplistic thesis. It’s rare to discover a mainstream release that allows ambiguity and complexity to be what they are. Mr. Penn allowed the story to tell itself with little hint of directorial interference. Rabbit Room readers will appreciate the literate, poetic nature of this effort. The movie brims with quotes from the likes of Henry David Thoreau (“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”), Leo Tolstoy, and Jack London. My mind wandered a few times as I pondered the aphorisms from McCandless’s journal or dialogue. Passages of McCandless’s personal journal and clips of letters he sent to friends intermittently scroll across the screen. Beauty will also be found in the gorgeous cinematography which captured some of the most beautiful locations in the U.S., Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California, Denali National Park in Alaska, Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, and many more. McCandless and retired military man Ron Franz, played perceptively by Hal Holbrook, share a most compelling and moving relationship. Holbrook’s character wisely indulges Chris McCandless, intuitively realizing that McCandless has built sturdy walls of philosophy what are not likely to be scaled by just anybody. In fact, it’s McCandless that dispenses most of the advice in their dialogue. Like most wise men, Franz mostly listens. Nevertheless, the grizzled old man casually releases what turns out to be one of the most memorable lines in the movie: “When you forgive, you love … and when you love, God’s light shines on you.” Setting aside any dispute as to the explicit theological truth contained in these words, please remember them as you view the final scene of the movie. Like me, odds are that you will find it profoundly moving when you link the final scene to the casually delivered, but penetrating words of the old man. As an aside, the departure scene between Ron Franz and McCandless is one of the best of the entire movie. Failed relationships leave gaping wounds, some more, some less. Its more obvious victims bleed incessantly, are asleep in the back alley, waiting for delivery at the crack house, lounging at the open door mission, or staring blankly at the big screen down at O’Malley’s. Perhaps unintentionally, McCandless offers the closest thing to explaining his unique path when he says, “Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” Sometimes, the walking wounded bleed in public. For others, it’s a lonely and private experience. When I first learned of Jon Krakauer’s book and the basic story of Christopher McCandless, I thought he must be an idiot. And on some level, maybe he was. Despite his cock-sure, single-minded assurance, McCandless was ill-equipped to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. Simply put, he was unprepared. Many Alaskans familiar with his story have been even more critical. But similar to real life, labels and rash conclusions rarely provide real understanding. I haven’t read the entire book, but the movie does seem to be fair-minded, offering insight without explicit judgment; questions without concrete answers. That this excellent movie evokes a passionately divided response isn’t really surprising; that the passionate response comes from the same viewer is not only surprising, but it is also an indication that it is a serious, nuanced movie that is beholden to nothing but the cause of telling a good story. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Please note that our own Eric Peters wrote and recorded an impressive song about this event. It’s called “Bus 152” (not 142, like in the movie) and it’s one of the awesome tracks on Land of the Living. Miracle of Forgetting and Scarce, other Eric Peters projects, can be purchased in The Rabbit Room. Eric’s song was a natural fit for the soundtrack and may have been in the running, but despite a public relations push, was somehow not chosen.

Eleven-year old Reuben Land, a character in the 2001 book Peace Like a River, provides narration that is clear-eyed and insightful, yet retains the magic, wonder, and innocence of youth. I found it easy to entrust my imagination to the author’s clever method of telling the story through the sensibilities of a pre-teen boy. An author with lesser skill would have either made the boy too smart-alecky for his own good or impossibly cute. As it is written, the character is believable and real. The novel employs the wide open spaces of the Minnesota countryside and rugged terrain of the North Dakota Badlands as a backdrop for its colorful tapestry. Set in the early 1960s, author Leif Enger uses diverse elements including Old Testament and Old West allusions and literary/historical references—often accented by miracles—to tell a tale which highlights eternal truth. As with many stories that contain elements of fantasy, it’s easy to find unmitigated joy in the unexpected mining of tiny truth nuggets hidden in the rubble of the narrative. When I happen upon a vivid and compelling truth—whether or not actually intended by the author—like the power of an atom bomb which belies its size, it detonates waves of pleasure which resonate like massive ripples in a small mountain stream. You will discover many such moments in Peace Like a River. Without succumbing to cartoonish hyperbole or explicit moralizing, Enger uses compelling characters and masterful prose to craft a story which is both familiar and mysterious. Like a well worn path, I found values that were inspirational, comfortable, and warm as my favorite pair of gloves. And yet, despite moments of recognition, I was also intrigued and jarred by so many strange twists and turns. Like a fountain drink of living water, this story refreshed and fulfilled a deep hole, but left me craving more. Of this great novel, it’s equally true to say that I’ve seen it before and I’ve never seen it before. Peace Like a River is a novel which contains deep sadness, pain, and lost innocence. Despite that, I found it dripping with loyalty, peace, faith, joy, and extraordinary love. As the novel ebbs and flows—I was vividly reminded once again that good is better than evil, the truth is better than a lie, and that life is better than death.

Here’s a quick look at the string session. The song they’re working on here is “Hosanna”, and I have to say that I believe that Ben Shive has outdone himself. You should’ve heard these string players going on about how great the arrangements were, all the more amazed because Ben isn’t a string player. Hope you like it. AP —————- Listening to: Randy Travis – Labor of Love via FoxyTunes

A name is more than a convenient handle; it’s an identity. My family names, the lineage of my father and mother, contain both good and evil – remnants of the Fall. For most of my life I’ve identified with those names, and have felt the push and pull of the good and evil of my forebears. In this struggle of life, our name determines and dictates much of our experience. I have relatives who struggle with various forms of addiction and the revolving door of prison; their circumstances are the natural outcome of the identities they are believing in and relying on. But for Christ, we would be doomed to more or less struggle in our various earthly names forever. In Jesus Christ a way has opened for humans to receive a new name; we have been offered a place – and a name – in the Royal Family. Ephesians 3 says that the whole family in heaven and earth is named by the name of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our new lineage, our pedigree, our genealogy. We have been put in Christ, have died to the old name and the old false identities built on our human ancestors and our mothers and fathers, and now, even now, we are named with this new name, the name of this Father of the Lord. The old names, the names of our earthly lineage, no longer apply. What names are in our lineage? Alcoholic. Loser. Adulterer. Murderer. Abuser. Blasphemer. Suicide. Worrier. Rich Man. Poor Man. Good Man. Bad Man. We can check all these off the list, and in fact throw the list in the trash, because we have a new name: Christ-Man. Christ-Woman. Indwelt son and daughter of God. One Spirit with the Lord. King. Priest. Holy. Beloved. Overcomer. The name Block, with all its attendant history, lineage, pedigree, no longer applies for me. Don’t get me wrong; I love my Dad, my Mom, brothers, sisters. But something fundamental has happened to me in Christ. That old name has been cut off, circumcised in him; the old-man Adamic lineage, with its attendant tag “Sinner,” was cut off. Circumcision is a symbolic act that foreshadowed the future, the Redeemer cutting away from God’s people their old-man identity. Colossians 3 says we “have put off the old man with his deeds,” and “have put on the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 2 says, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ” Romans 6:4 says we are “buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Baptism is the New Testament equivalent of circumcision, a cutting off of the old life and entering into the new. Let’s get a little graphic here to see what God is getting at. When a person in the Old Testament was circumcised, what did he do with his cut-off foreskin? Did he carry it around in a baggie as a treasured memento of the old life, or keep it in a jar on his shelf? Did the thing try to sew itself back on later? None of the above; it was thrown out on the dunghill. Why? It was dunghill trash because it was dead and no longer part of him. It was nothing but a dead, rotting piece of flesh, no longer part of his identity, in fact no longer related to him in any way. The rite of circumcision meant a complete break with the old life and a wholehearted entrance into the new. Now, if we are circumcised in Christ with the circumcision made without hands, buried with him through baptism into death, what has been cut off? The old identity. The old name. The old lineage, with every bad and good name in the book that was part of our earthly family line, Adam’s race, infected with “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in (get that, in) the children of disobedience.” (disobedience in the Greek is apeithia, literally “the unconvinced”). That false indwelling lord is now cut off in Christ. That old union with him is the very essence of the old man. It is circumcised, cut away from us, and thrown on the dunghill. Good riddance. I’ve heard people say “Well, the old man comes down off the Cross sometimes.” “We’ve got to crucify the old man.” But get this: He’s dead, and we are cut off from all that, here, now, forever. He can’t come down from the Cross, because his life is over. That’s what circumcision in Christ is. The devil schemes constantly to deceive us out of living from our new name and rightful lineage. He works tirelessly to prevent God’s people from accessing our limitless riches in Christ; George MacDonald wrote in Phantastes, “‘Shadow of me…which art not me, but which representest thyself to me as me; here I may find a shadow of light which will devour thee, the shadow of darkness!'” That’s Satan’s game; to masquerade and parade his lying thoughts as our own, getting us to live from that old, dead, cut-off, old man foreskin which doesn’t even exist anymore except as rot in a pile of dung. The old man, that false union of Ephesians 2:2, died with Christ; if Christ died, the old man died. Back when we were the old man, we were put in Christ on the Cross. He “became sin for us” not only by taking the penalty due our sins, but by taking into himself all those thousands and millions of old man identities throughout history. This wasn’t just “paying our sin debt.” In his love he had to separate us from that old name, that old identity of “vessel of wrath, child of the devil, prince-of-the-power-of-the-air-indwelt humanity.” And so we as the old man were put into him; that false union of Ephesians 2:2 that we all had entered into the center of Jesus Christ. It literally burst that pure, beautiful heart to have such muck and filth put inside him after an entire lifetime and a pre-existent eternity as a unity with the pure, beautiful Father. His love-act killed him; when the centurion went back to the Cross, he found Jesus hanging there dead, way ahead of the normal crucifixion death-schedule. When Jesus Christ died, the old “I” in Adam which had been placed in him died. The old man identity of a believer is as dead as a road-kill; we’ve got to fully get that before we can move on and be who we really are. The Mack truck of Justice and Mercy ran the old man clean over. That’s why we’re to put off the deeds of the old man – not because he’s alive and we’re to fight him, but because he’s dead and he is no longer “I”. “When I sin it is no longer I that sins, but sin which dwelleth in me,” says Paul in Romans 7. This is how Paul can say, “For you were once darkness; now you are light in the Lord. Live, then, as children of light.” You were darkness. Old man. Sinner. Enemy of God. Child of the devil. Now you are light in the Lord. New man. Righteous. Friend of God. Child of God. And Paul says, in effect, “Now be that. Live in it. Manifest your real identity.” That’s also his argument in 1Cor 6 and many other places: “Don’t you know your body is the temple of the Lord? He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Are you going to take your body and join it with a prostitute? Flee fornication.” The Pauline pattern is always identity, then behavior, because reliance upon our real identity, trusting in Christ himself at the root of our being, produces the righteous life that God desires. “You were once darkness (old man identity); now you are light in the Lord (new man identity). Live, then, as children of light (be who you really are).” Read Paul’s letters and you’ll see that he rarely talks about behavior before extensive reiteration of our new identity. He does this especially in Ephesians and Colossians; if you read them with this in mind you’ll see the distinction: Eph 1-3: Identity – Eph 4-6: Behavior. Col 1-2: Identity – Col 3-4 Behavior. We have a new name, the name of our indwelling God. A totally new identity and lineage, with absolute power to overcome all the unbelief the devil has built up in our psyches, all the ruts of false self-coping mechanisms built in a lifetime of human interaction. And now, the only thing left for us is to be transformed in our actions on a daily basis. How? It all happens by renewing our minds to the real truth, in a Christ-directed life which uses the devil as resistance training. We’ve got to internally recognize and rely upon the eternal truth of our circumcision, the cutting-off of the old man which Jesus did once for all time. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Period. And now the prince of the power of the air is no longer part of our identity; he is merely part of our training; his opposition makes our faith-choice possible. What’s in a name? Well, in the new name, our true name, power. Completeness. Holiness. Life-change. Purpose. Meaning. Everything we’ve been looking for. In the old name? Sin. The hamster wheel of self-effort: try-sin-repent-try-sin-repent, ad nauseum (believe me, it’ll go on forever until we jump off in faith). Striving, lacking, incompleteness, unholiness. Frustration. “I keep doing what I don’t want to do! I’m not doing the good things I want to do!” Life under the Law and so under the Curse. That’s what Paul describes in Romans 7. But we’re not meant to stay in Romans 7; we’re meant to move on and live in 8 and even 9, where we willingly give our lives – and if it were possible even our salvation – for others. As believers, we choose daily. The Christian life is not a pie-in-the-sky concept; it is a here-and-now commitment to taking God at his written Word, and through faith watching the Living Word flow through us in our experience. It’s our choice: Am I defined by my heavenly Father? Or does my earthly Adam-lineage determine my identity? Our actions will flow spontaneously as a result of the inner choice.

“He’s so…asymmetrical.” This was how a friend of mine once described his introduction to Lyle Lovett. My first introduction to Lyle was through the tabloids wondering how he managed to marry Julia Roberts. Then one day rummaging through the old Davis Kidd Bookstore in Green Hills, Tennessee, I found The Road to Ensenada in one of the listening stations. So I listened. I had no idea, honestly, what to expect. Half a song in, I grabbed a copy and bought it, thinking I was getting my hands on something witty. And I was, but as I listened, and then got more of his work, I realized not only that he was witty, he was also brooding, and whimsical, and serious…and very strange to look at. And the quality of his work is top shelf. I’ve described him as being to country music what Sting is to pop music–in there when he wants to be, but obviously capable of way more depth and substance than what you typically find on the radio. It hard to review just one Lyle Lovett record because they all seem to have a personality of their own, and Lyle achieves something very difficult–he can own whatever he records, whether he wrote it or not. One minute he’s folk, another straight up country. Then he’s gospel, then big band. Then American classic, then Latin. But he owns it all in such a convincing way that you never feel like he’s losing himself in this variety. It’s like some combination of all these IS his style. Asymmetrical. So since I want to limit this to just one disc, I’m going with the one that introduced me to Lyle, and served as, I think, the best preparation for whatever else you get your hands on by him. Oh, and one more thing. Lyle put a hidden track on this disc before hidden tracks were cool. And its not a throwaway song either. Free stuff!

I was further bombarded with “hello Miss Coates!”-es from all sides as I made the trek to my subterranean art cavern, and then again as I carried my cowboy mug to the teachers’ lounge. Even the middle-schoolers muttered some “HeyMissCoates”-es from beneath their shrouds of long hair that are forever hiding their bleary eyes. (Why does it feel as though pigs are flying somewhere when an adolescent boy speaks kindly to me?) As I swirled cream into my coffee, it occurred to me how these mutual recognitions and little greetings-in-passing had made my day’s beginning so very much more bearable, and that they were little gifts from God. “I like you hair, Miss Coates. It’s really pretty,” he said with a sheepish grin over my shoulder as I finished my sweet potato at the lunch table. “Your earrings are so sparkly!” he offered with an equally sparkly smile as he entered the classroom. As we settled into learning mode, I explained and demonstrated how thorough coloring would make the robot’s feet look sooo much more lively, I heard, “I just love you, Miss Coates,” and he patted my [lower] back sympathetically in a manner similar to that of a concerned aunt. His classmates erupted into laughter and those rollercoaster-y “oooooohhhh”s that I dislike so intensely. His face flushed berry red and his head lowered a bit. As soon as the taunting died down I said, “Cooper, I just love you, too.” “But you’re too old for him!” they cried, and we all laughed. I took a break from coloring my robot and launched into a mini-sermon on how important it is for us to love each other well, and that it’s one of the big reasons we were even put on this earth. These unsuspecting third graders’ faces were displaying blank stares for the most part, but I could recognize the light of understanding in a precious few pairs of wide eyes. Van Gogh strung the words together in the loveliest way: “I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” A friend of mine has posed this question to me a few times: “What do you want your legacy to be?” After thinking about it for a couple of years, my answer has formed into this: I want to be remembered for loving people well through offerings of my creative gifts. They are what God gave to me and I offer them, in turn, so gladly. I hope that when I am remembered, it is for the meals I make, the flowers I arrange, the home atmospheres I create, the music I share, the letters I write, and the art I offer. (And maybe for my curly hair…and my staggering sense of humor…then there’s my obvious knack for comedic timing….oh, and my spelling ability….ummmm, that’s it for now.) There are so many intricate, winding pathways that lead to loving artfully, and we all go about the business of love from different angles — we show it (and receive it) in various ways, but the emotion ultimately makes its way to the heart of the recipient, despite our bumbling and tripping ways. We hold its beautiful, quiet, but overwhelming power so timidly in our hands and extend it to one another. This is where the art happens. Being an artist of any kind requires equally heavy doses of vulnerability and bravery, as does this hugely complex and deep matter of love. The creative process is much like a relationship in that it is a journey, most times a long, laborious one. The idea or dream of something new grows and develops, then slowly turns into reality as we come to know and understand our subject matter, or our friend or lover. How good of our God to give us unending supplies and time enough, in both the worlds of art and love, to explore the possibilities.

I just finished a book that upon closing it, I felt like it finished me in a sense. A quiet meditative book that reached down and stirred the deep waters in me. It’s Marilynne Robinson’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner Gilead, given to me by my friend Andrew Peterson. I was first of all amazed that a woman could author a book with such a convincing male voice! There’s never a moment that John Ames voice rings untrue. It’s also remarkable Marilynne Robinson captured the subtlest nuances of the father/son story. Furthermore, I’m not sure what her spirituality is, but she wrote convincingly of a very authentic and deeply rooted faith. I’m hard pressed to think of a more profoundly Christian book than Gilead, but in ways least expected. Mark Twain talks of a “religious man in the worst sense of the word”, and I would call this a religious book in the best sense of the word. I knew I wanted to write about this book here in the rabbit room, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of what to write and I was afraid I’d fail the book. It’s difficult to pull little quotes from it that are brilliant, because any brilliant quote would end up being three pages long. Entire passages are stunningly beautiful, but all in a quiet and unassuming way. It took me a long time to read the book because I had to savor every page – there was no filler. It’s one of the books that I feel changed me in the reading of it, or at the very least made me more present to my own life. That’s probably the best that I could say about it. Andrew and I were talking about the book a few weeks ago after I had finished it, and I talked about one of my favorite scenes where John Ames has a dream that his grandfather “stalked out of the trees in that furious way he had, scooped his hat full of water, and threw it, so a sheet of water came sailing toward us, billowing in the air like a veil, and fell down over us. Then he put his hat back on his head and stalked off into the trees again and left us standing there in that glistening river, amazed at ourselves and shining like the apostles. I mention this because it seems to me transformations just that abrupt do occur in this life, and they occur unsought and unawaited, and they beggar your hopes and your deserving….” That’s the way I feel this book came to me, like an unexpected, unsought, transformational gift.

Next to my name on the front page of the Rabbit Room it claims that I’m a boatwright. That’s a bit of a stretch in my mind; building boats is something I’ve done little enough of and something I do only as a small part of my larger job as an Arts and Crafts Instructor for teenagers. But it’s something I love, and something I really believe has worth beyond its obvious end product. I’ve completed two cedar canoes in the last two years and as my bio points out, I’m in the process of building a small sailboat. Each time I’ve delivered one of these boats out of my shop and loosed it into the world people congratulate me and tell me I’ve crafted a true work of art. That accusation, that a boat is a work of art, is one I struggle with. Part of my definition of art is that it has to convey meaning, however tenuously, and I don’t know how people can see meaning in my boats. But I have come to the conclusion that they are works of art after all, even if I don’t consider them ‘art’ when approached objectively. How’s that? Well, the best way I can answer that is to tell you how a boat is made. I begin with a form. A simple skeletal shape, upturned on a bench, and looking like a canoe to no one but me. Each piece of this temporary structure is painstakingly positioned, aligned left and right, up and down, plumb, fair, and true. If the underlying shape is not true, the final vessel will reflect those flaws. Then I go to the lumberyard. They hate me there. I pick through all their cedar boards, inspecting each one for knots, grain orientation, and color and set a precious perfect few aside. I buy the few I find and ask when the next shipment might be in so that I can inconvenience them once again. Back in the shop, I take these few chosen boards and break them down, cutting them into thin, brittle strips and then running each strip through a router jig to get them ready for their purpose. During this cutting and shaping, many break and find their way into the scrap pile, those that complete the process are sorted by color and laid aside to await their purpose. When enough strips are cut, they are one at a time bent to the form and glued together. Slowly, over a matter of days and weeks, the shape of a canoe begins to materialize from so many disparate parts. When the hull is complete, each piece has been planed, cut, and fitted by hand to serve the exact purpose for which it was designed. No strip is interchangeable with another, they are each unique and each supported by the one above and below it, each a small part of a greater form. Then with the entire form visible, it is easy to think the work nearly done. This is a deception. The hull is roughly shaped and must be faired. Every errant corner and imperfection must be planed and sanded away. There is no shortcut. This is when you come to know the thing you are building. You close your eyes and work by the feel of it beneath your hands. You run your fingers around its curves and flanks and cut away everything that doesn’t belong. You lay your cheek against it and smell her cedar perfume as you follow her sweeping lines from bow to stern. It is a singular and exalting experience to fair the hull of a wooden canoe. With the hull at last faired and perfected you sheath her in fiberglass to give strength. When you think the work is nearly done, you remove the hull from the form and she stands on her own, maintaining the shape you gave her, but you find that while she’s fair on the outside, she’s rough and empty on the interior. So you start again, feeling, cutting, sanding, making her fine and once again when you’ve done all you can do, you sheath her in glass to give strength. Then she’s solid, she’s seaworthy, she’ll float. But she’s not finished. She needs gunwales and decks, seats, and a thwart to keep her sound, steady, and comfortable. So your work goes on and little by little you watch her become what you saw in your mind so long ago when others looked at the form you made and scratched their heads. And in the end, your hands have bled for her, the sweat of your brow has dropped onto her and become part of her, you’ve held her and caressed her and been silent together a long time, and at last she’s beautiful. Time to give her away. You deliver her to strangers that haven’t known her, and they call it ‘Art’. But they don’t know what she means. I know. The boys that helped me build her know. She’s an art of work. The art is the blood and sweat. The silence. The ache in the bones, and finally the knowing that whomever she carries, she will bear them safe across dark waters.

I haven’t figured out a way to link my other blog (andrew-peterson.blogspot.com) to this one, so I’ll just include the video here. To read more about good ol’ Stuart Duncan, read here.

Most of us began by desire; at some point we desired a guitar or banjo, or wanted to write stories or essays or songs, or we longed to paint. My son loves to draw; his desire is a full-blown passion. I don’t have to tell him to draw – the desire is his compulsion. His early desire is a good indicator of a gift in that area. And as creative artists on this site, our various desires and careers show our God-created gifts. A gift from God. Desire. Faith. These fueled me from my early teens until the age of 30. I had a gift. I loved doing the thing. And I believed I could continue in doing it for the rest of my life. But unbelieving adults in my family implanted doubts, sowed tares among the wheat. “How will you ever own a home, or raise a family? You need something to fall back on!” Their motive was love, but fueled by fear of failure. My reply back then was Matthew 6. I can trust God to take care of my needs; all I need to do is seek him first, and all these (food, shelter, clothing, etc) shall be given – handed – to me. Though they hammered on that, I never questioned it. But in the heart of me there was doubt about my ability – especially my voice. And so perfectionism was born in me. The gift was there; desire was there. But faith in the gift became infected by doubt. At 27 I joined a high level band and have been in it for 16 years. At first it was a high. The validation. The thrill. But then the perfectionism kicked in. It’s not good enough. Do it again. Over and over. So I crashed; those undermining doubts dug a crater under my faith in the gift, and the whole thing collapsed. My self-worth, subconsciously connected to my ability as a musician rather than to Christ, crashed along with it all. In that crash I found Christ at the center of my being, and through the Word he began to reprogram my thinking about myself. I found that I am not my gift. I’m a reigning overcomer, because the Overcomer lives in me. The Father and Son have made their home in me by the Spirit. I’m one spirit with the Lord, an indivisible union that is eternal. And that’s the source of my worth. Christ living in me, through me – as if it were me living. That’s the real Me. To the extent that I trust him to do so, he lives through me, because righteousness is by grace through faith. I found all that in the mid-nineties. I found my total weakness, and through that I found true strength as I began to recognize Christ as the Root and Ground of my being. But the lack of faith in my gifting continued. I rested for years in my role in the band, and subconsciously stayed within that comfort zone, rarely venturing out into faith-territory. I didn’t want to meet any giants or fierce inhabitants, even though there was milk, honey, and wine to be had, because I had chosen to not have faith in the Giver of my gift, the Promiser of the promises. Recently God has begun to bring me back to faith in himself as the Giver of my gift. I’m realizing that he has put this musical gift in me for others; it’s not there for me to get self-worth from and turn into an idol. It’s there for others to experience the richness of a life indwelt by Christ. It’s there for a platform for me to speak Christ to others. It’s there to move and inspire and stir those who hear it into a deeper relationship with God, whether I’m playing gospel or secular music. I’ve learned that humility doesn’t mean to downgrade the gift and be perfectionistic. It means to accept our gift, trust in the Giver, and live from desire. That in itself will bring the gift to a greater and more perfect expression. So I’m getting back to the beginning. Life as a child. A gift. Desire to use it, loving the doing of it. And a faith that doesn’t shrink back in fear at digging deep, at being honest and transparent, at speaking the truth in love through songs. To have this kind of faith in the gift is to have faith in the Giver, to have purpose, meaning, passion, not rooted in the gift, but in the Giver who lives inside the gifted one…inside the artist. I played my first show last night. That sounds weird, because I’ve been playing in bands since I was 16 and am now 43. But this was the first show that I led. It was up in Kentucky, with three talented musicians, and we all sang songs and played instrumentals; I didn’t want it to be the Welcome-To-Me Show. We played a lot of bluegrass, and about half of the show was gospel songs that I’ve written. Near the end I realized how much I was enjoying it. I didn’t sing the best I’ve ever sung, or play the best I’ve ever played, but it wasn’t the worst, and there were some really good moments. There’s room for improvement, but that will come as I continually let go of all those false concepts that have shaped me into staying in my comfort zone in my regular gig as I learn to trust in the Giver rather than comparing my gift with the gifts of others. We can let the world define us. We can choose to compare ourselves to others and feel defeated or elated because we’re not-as-good-as or better-than. We can give up in defeat and become complacent, or resentful and bitter. We can strive to climb to the top of the heap and stand there like Hercules, flexing our greater-than-other-men muscles. But what I’ve found is best is to just trust the Giver of the gift, and live from desire. The Devil hates that. But that’s Christ expressing himself through our art. That is what it means to be an Christ-ian artist, whether we are writing songs about human disappointments, loves, hopes, experiences, or writing explicitly about Christ. God expressed himself through Jesus in Gethsemane and the Crucifixion as well as in the Resurrection and Ascension. Darkness, weakness, fear, and death. Power and new life, resurrection and a stepping up to our true destiny. It’s all part of our art, because true art springs from God’s mind and is pushed through into this temporary realm by his chosen agents – his Christ-indwelt people (I don’t want to get off on a sidetrack of how God expresses himself even through the art of those who hate him – but he does). C.S. Lewis said in The Great Divorce, “Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower – become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations.” “I don’t think I’m much troubled in that way,” said the Ghost stiffly. “That’s excellent,” said the Spirit. “Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain.” ”What fountain’s that?” “It is up there in the mountains,” said the Spirit. “Very cold and clear, between two green hills…When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.” I’m once again living by faith in my Father’s Idea of me as Musician; that’s an idea that I cast off long ago as “Not my true identity.” But it is a part of my real identity in Christ; not the Center, but part of the means of expression. Faith is not arrogance. Humility is not “I’m no good.” I’m to punch pride and false modesty in the face every time the devilishly-inspired thoughts come into my brain. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s the height of arrogance to refuse to trust the Giver of gifts, desire, and faith; it is the death of Christ-expression to downgrade our gifts and our humanity. And humility is the simple recognition that it all comes from the Father. Gift + Desire + Faith = Art. That’s what I watch my son doing; he knows his gifting, lives from desire, trusts me, and so trusts himself. In the creative act, that’s what it means to become a child.

Do you have any CD’s in your collection that will be forever associated with some event or season of life—like the soundtrack to your last high school summer or what you listened to over and over again on that one road trip to wherever it was? As a musician, Andrew Osenga is a unique voice in that he can deliver a folk-tune with all the earnestness of an old-school troubadour, and then turn the volume up to eleven with unadulterated, straight-ahead rock and roll. Not only is he capable at both. He’s good. For his musicianship alone, you can’t go wrong with any of his releases. And vocally he has a great gift of knowing where he is in a song a delivering his lines just right within their context. But Andy is also a courageous songwriter. He doesn’t spoon-feed us the context for his songs. You don’t always know if he’s being introspective, autobiographical or just spinning a good yarn. But you always have the sense he is up to something with each song. Photographs speaks in many voices. The mark of Osenga’s skill is how seamlessly he tells these tales without flinching, and without feeling the need to tell us how everything worked out okay in the end. His songs are slices of life, little snippets of unfolding stories, told with simplicity and great importance. Yet, before and after these photographs are much larger unfolding stories in the process of being told. “High School Band” is a great example of this. It’s the same weekend in September every year, and sitting in their lawn chairs on that hill, the people who have gathered to watch the Homecoming parade calibrate the passage of time and the plodding on of life. They are ordinary by appearance, but complex when the curtain gets pulled back a bit. Aren’t we all? No one has a simple story. Osenga has a way of saying things that causes me to check to make sure I heard him right. And some of these lines, when I realized I had heard them right, left me more moved than I expected to be, like when one of his characters describes growing up without a dad: “A boy without his father has mighty shoes to fill. He becomes a husband to his mother and a daddy to himself.” The theme that emerges throughout is this: We become who we are. Your life, my life… they are the perfect result of the lives we’ve lived up to this point. And our lives have become what they are at least in part due to the generations before us who either gave or withheld what we needed and either improved or ruined those things before handing them down. And we’re in the process of doing the same. When I hear the opening swell of the first track, my mind pulls out a photograph of me walking home in the winter. And I remember Osenga’s record, but I also remember how that was a season of growth and change in my life—how I was in the process of becoming who I am. And how I still am. And how its constant… “So take a photograph, cause this ain’t gonna last…”

Returning from a convention on the West coast, my Continental Airlines flight began to circle Denver. Upon landing, my business partner and I would switch planes for the lastleg of our trip home to Omaha. A regular flyer, my inerds still stirred a bit with each sway of the aircraft. Near blizzard conditions prevailed and the inexplicable holding pattern added a squirt of fuel to the fire of my concern. After the second or third trip around the mile-high city, the pilot made an announcement: “Due to backed up runway traffic at Stapleton Airport and inclement weather forcing runway closures, we will continue to circle the city until a runway can be cleared for landing.” After circling the city for what seemed like another dozen times, the speakers crackled with another static laced announcement from the pilot. Without emotion, he explained that our aircraft would be diverted to Colorado Springs, a short twenty minutes by air. Deteriorating winter weather in Denver meant the grip of the holding pattern became tighter, like a persistent, but slow moving vise. With nearly four hours of travel time already logged and a delay at hand, I noticed the rarely seen look of annoyance on my business partner’s face. Removing my glasses and rubbing my eyes, I couldn’t deny that I felt the same way. It had been a long week. I just wanted to view the snow from my own window, inside my own house, with my own family. After an eye-of-the-storm white-knuckle landing in Colorado Springs, we learned we would be required to sit on the tarmac until a decision was made on our final destination. As nervous passengers, we had many questions and no answers. I was happy to be safely on the ground, but still simmering in self-pity and mild anger when the familiar CBS jingle signaled the start of the five o’clock news, visible on a nearby T.V. monitor. As the flight attendants passed out complimentary drinks and snacks, Dan Rather opened the newscast with these words: “This just in, from Denver, Colorado–Continental Airlines DC-9, Flight 1713, has crashed on take-off in a snowstorm; 28 people are reported dead and 82 have been injured …” The half-joking demeanor of my fellow passengers–the byproduct of nerves and vodka–grew eerily quiet. The reason our flight maintained an extended “holding pattern” suddenly became crystal clear; literally too close for comfort. I was stunned. As the snow continued to pelt my small window, my attitude transitioned from arrogance and anger to graciousness and gratitude. I was concurrently sad for the passengers and their families who had lost their lives or sustained injuries and thankful and humbled that my partner and I were–for the moment–safe and on the ground. Many years have passed since that sad day in November of 1987. And guess what? I still face holding patterns. A traffic jam, a financial or personal dilemma, a career conundrum, or simply standing in line at the wrong supermarket check-out line–these things still present personal challenges. And though I’d like to say that I left my overgrown impatience and arrogance on that tarmac in Colorado Springs, I must reluctantly admit, I still carry them around in my pocket. How else to explain that they are so close at hand when I call them? Nevertheless, on my best days I have a vivid recollection of a Colorado winter’s day. I reflect on the lesson borrowed from Continental Airlines flight 1713. A holding pattern need not be a bad thing. It’s often necessary for safety and provides an opportunity to recharge, refuel, and rejuvenate. Not to mention, just when I have the belief that my life circumstance could not get any worse, I need not divert my view very far to find a neighbor in need of support–maybe suffering though pain that dwarfs my own. Oh … and this: Often, the reason for the holding pattern isn’t clear until I casually glance into the rear view mirror and see the flashing lights.

Today, in the middle of a conversation, I realized that the man I was speaking to was insane. This gentleman, whom I have known for quite some time, without warning began to tell me of his vast collection of the works of an obscure writer and insisted on detailing this writer’s entire career to me right down to how different manuscripts of various books differed from each other by even the slightest word. As if he were passing a scandalous stock tip he leaned in and whispered to me that he’d recently bought a rare edition worth over $100 for merely $90. He seemed somewhat crestfallen at my narrow-eyed, slow-nod, ‘alrighty-then’ reaction. This bizarre turn of the conversation into something I considered utterly snooze-worthy led me to the discovery of his insanity. Clearly a crazy man. So aren’t we all defined by our various insanities? Yes, of course we are. Here’s a short list of some of the many ways in which I am certifiably insane. 1. The aforementioned comic book disorder. Happily, I only have a couple hundred and therefore have not yet been relegated to the realm of the true nerd. Distressingly though, this number is growing at an alarming rate. 2. My Strawberry Nesquik (which I must have every morning) must be made only of the powdered mix, never the syrup, and must consist of three heaping teaspoons of mix in a large tumbler type cup. (The use of the word ‘heaping’ here carries the very scientific and culinary meaning of “really freakin’ huge”) 3. Butterflies may touch me. Grasshoppers may not. 4. I play this really geeky game with the kids at work called Heroclix. I can best describe it as chess with Superheroes. Sometimes I refer to my superheroic army as “all zee little pepples” and line them up so I can pretend like they are my henchmen. 5. Movies make me cry. I wish this only applied to movies like The Way We Were and Steel Magnolias but I’m afraid I cry a little for pure joy when Yoda pulls out his lightsaber and I cry a lot when Sam tells Frodo he’ll carry him. I’d talk about Pride and Prejudice but I’m afraid I’ll start crying right now. 6. Food on the plate is not allowed to touch other food except on rare occasions where it is unavoidable–like Thankgiving. Even then, the cranberry sauce must be kept a close watch upon. 7. I hate hot weather, love snow, and live in Florida. 8. I voted for Ross Perot. 9. I secretly love Meatloaf songs, and wish Andrew Peterson would write more in the style of Jim Steinman. 10. When I go out to eat Mexican, I spend the entire drive (35 minutes for me) agonizing over whether I should order cheese dip, guacamole dip, or possibly both. Lately, guacamole is winning the battle for my soul. So those are a few of mine (trust me there are more, so many more). What are yours?

“Jesus thrown everything off balance.” So says Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit in her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” It’s as true as the globe tilts and spins on its axis. To understand why, you need to hear, really hear, the Christmas story. It’s an important story to tell. And it needs to be told well because it is at the same time simple and intricate, endearing and profound, joyful and sober. Behold The Lamb of God, by Andrew Peterson and his friends, is a Christmas record that tells the story well. You will not find renditions of Christmas classics here. What you’ll get instead is the telling of a story that takes an epic sweep across the whole of redemptive history. Reaching all the way back to Genesis, Behold the Lamb of God takes us through the unfolding of God’s plan to reconcile His people to Himself. The arch of the story is of a grand magnitude. But what makes this album so effective is that it also faithfully and elegantly captures snapshots of the events that transpired that night in Bethlehem. Christmas is a time for celebration. But it’s the kind of celebration that is part exultation, part gasp. We should be as blissfully drunk on the intoxicating good fortune that’s come our way as we should be speechless at the “grotesque” reality that the incarnation occurred so that the body of this tiny babe might be offered up for you and for me. Andrew contends this is as much an Easter meditation as it is a Christmas one—which makes it all that much more a truly excellent Christmas record. Some Highlights: Track 2, “Passover Us:” Only Andrew Peterson can deliver a line like “Denial ain’t just a river, you know,” without making us roll our eyes. That line comes in “Passover Us.” This song is a gasp—the people of God, enslaved to Pharaoh, praying as they apply the blood of the lamb to the doorposts of their homes, “Lord, let your judgment pass over us. Lord, let your love hover near. Don’t let your sweet mercy pass over us. Let this blood cover over us here.” Already Behold the Lamb is presenting Jesus as the “long awaited Messiah.” There’s an urgency to this song… a desperation that cries out for a more permanent and more perfect sacrifice. Track 3, “So Long, Moses,” is to me what “The Color Green “was on Rich Mullin’s Liturgy, Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band. That is about as high a compliment as I can offer— what I consider the best song on the best recording by a great artist. And I say that as a fan of Andrew’s entire catalog. I link these songs because until I heard “The Color Green” I regarded Rich as a great songwriter, but that song let us all know he was more than that. He could actually draw us deep into this world where “the streams are all swollen with winter, winter unfrozen and free to run away now…” I couldn’t listen passively to that song. I had to enter in and feel its weight. (I realize I may be making such a subjective reference here that only I can appreciate it. But if Ron Block is right, there are enough absolutes to the craft of songwriting that maybe Rich Mullins fans will know what I mean.) Anyway, “So Long, Moses” tells of the people of God eagerly waiting their King to come, imagining what He’ll be like. They were looking for a King like David, and David was such a hero in their minds that they figured they’d be able to tell the Messiah by the fact that he would be more “David” than David was. But when the Messiah comes, Isaiah says, “He will bear no beauty or glory. Rejected, despised, a man of such sorrows we’ll cover our eyes. He’ll take up our sickness and carry our tears. For His people He will be pierced. He’ll be crushed for our evils, our punishment feel. By His wounds we will be healed. From you, O Bethlehem, small among Judah, a ruler will come, ancient and strong.” I don’t know how Andrew came up with this song, but its bigger than him. That much I do know. Track 6, “Matthew’s Begats,” is an unbelievable achievement. It is Matthew’s Genealogy put to song. I once preached on this text, and rather than reading it, we played this song over the house system. I would not have done that if the song skipped generations or played around with the text too much. It doesn’t. And Ron Block’s banjo makes all the difference. You just have to hear it to appreciate it. And the genealogy is so important to the story, too. It reminds us that these events took place in real time and space. Track 8, “Labor of Love,” is a powerful portrait of Jesus’ birth; of Mary and Joseph on the cold, hard stone and straw. Jill Phillips takes us there so beautifully. Man, she’s got a gift. There I was driving down the highway minding my own business, and then this song came along and all the sudden I had tears to deal with. Thank you Jill. Track 11, “Behold the Lamb of God “ (and the reprise that ties in at the end) is worshipful, rich, and beautifully layered. As the song builds, it plays like a montage of everything that’s played before it, capturing in bits and pieces these images Andrew and friends have presented along the way. There are no throw away songs on this record. It holds together, faithful to its objective to tell the “True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ.” This disc is a great gift to give, and an excellent way to prepare yourself and your family for Christmas. May your celebration of Christmas be marked by your worship of Jesus. And if you could use assistance pursuing that end, this record is a very helpful guide. Here’s the track listing and the featured vocalists: 1. Gather ‘Round, Ye Children, Come (Andrew Peterson) 2. Passover Us (AP) 3. So Long, Moses (AP) 4. Deliver Us (Derek Webb) 5. O Come, O Come Emmanuel (Instrumental) 6. Matthew’s Begats (AP) 7. It Came to Pass (AP) 8. Labor of Love (Jill Phillips) 9. The Holly and the Ivy (Instrumental) 10. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks (AP) 11. Behold the Lamb of God (Composed by AP and Laura Story) 12. The Theme Of My Song/Reprise (Everyone) Andrew sells this disc individually and in bundles at a discount on his website. That’s my review of the album. What follows here is a meditation I’ve written on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. And in the interest of giving credit away, my inspiration to write it came from listening to Behold the Lamb of God many, many times. _____________________ Incarnation: Isaiah 53:1-6, 12 “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all… Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” God told Isaiah, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa 53:8) Higher? As the Heavens are higher than the earth? Oh, the paradox of salvation! What looks backward to us, He calls “higher.” God’s people look to the east, watching for their King to arrive in majesty. But God quietly sends his angel to a poor teenage girl in the out of the way town of Nazareth. God’s people expect His Messiah to be known by all upon His arrival, but God brings His arrival under cover of darkness into the shelter of a cave doubling, this night, as stable and maternity ward. God’s people anticipate strength, and are delivered a fragile baby. They seek inspiration they can follow, and are given one who would be countless times rejected. They long for their suffering and oppression to end with His coming. And yet He came to suffer, afflicted. They looked for impenetrable strength in His person, and yet He would bear the wounds of us all. To all this, God tells us His way is higher than ours. His plan is to ours what Heaven is to earth. We have our plans. God has His plan. His is higher. We did not know what we needed. When we thought we needed a figurehead, God gave us a sacrificial lamb. When we thought we needed inspiration, God gave us a man of sorrows. When we thought we needed strength to overcome persecution, God gave us One who would become subject to it, even unto death. Ah, but when we thought we were healthy, He took up our infirmities. When we thought we were righteous, our iniquity was laid upon Him. When we thought our own righteousness would save us, by His wounds we were healed. When we thought we were safely “in the fold,” never transgressing God, He was counted among the transgressors. He bore the sins of many. He makes intersession for the transgressors. His thoughts are not our thoughts. This is more than a comparison of intellect. His thoughts transcend time and space—and His eye pierces through all the veils, known and unknown, we throw up around our hearts. His ways are not our ways. This is more than a comparison of ethics. His righteousness is complete and unlimited—and His holiness shines through all the blindness, intentional and accidental, we fumble around in as we walk. His thoughts conceive what we need—this man of sorrows on whom our iniquity would be laid. His ways bring about what we need—a tender shoot with no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him. And yet by the score we are attracted, but by what? Our way is to be drawn to what is beautiful, majestic, strong. But we are none of these things until we are made these things. Our thought is to be saved through changing our minds. But “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him…” (1 Cor 2:9) What has God prepared? Who is this tender shoot from the stump of Jesse? And who are we that He should come?

Russ offered a great story about an art class experience. It reminded me of my own brief career as an art student. I was ten years old. And I had some talent, if you don’t mind my… saying so. If I’d had an Evie Coates to mold and direct my genius, who knows what I might have become? But my artistic growth was stunted by a conviction that Art Is Supposed to Be Serious Business. By the time I recovered, it was too late. B county Board of Education put on a summer enrichment program for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and I signed up for a painting class. (I signed up for Rocketry too, but that fact doesn’t figure into this story). It was the summer of 1980; the American hostages were still being held in Iran (surprisingly, that fact does figure into this story). The first day of our class, our teacher stalked in five or ten minutes late. She surveyed the bright and willing faces of her nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old students. She seemed unimpressed. The teacher wasn’t much taller than the eleven-year-olds in the class, but she was an imposing presence nevertheless. Her eyes somehow flickered back and forth between heavy-lidded indifference and an artistic wildness that I have since decided was mostly affectation. ut it made an impression on me at the time, I don’t mind telling you. “If you’re here because you want to paint pretty pictures for your mama…” she began, then she paused for effect. Her gaze fell on me; she could see on my face how much I loved my mama, and it disgusted her. “If all you want is to make pretty pictures for your mama, I’d suggest you leave this class right now and go get yourself a camera.” My mama, of course, was paying for my art lessons. She was expecting to get at least one pretty picture out of the deal, and who could blame her? There was an artist in town who made a good living painting pictures of derelict barns and outmoded farm equipment, all in neutral tones. He was one of my mother’s favorites, and I secretly planned to surprise her with a painting in his style. “Art isn’t just pretty pictures,” the teacher was continuing. “Real art says something. Real art makes a stand. Real art is political.” She had made her way to a large stretched canvas that faced against the wall, and even I, the naive ten-year-old, could see a Dramatic Flourish coming. When the teacher whipped the canvas around to face us, it electrified the room. It was a life-sized portrait of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Only when you looked at it closer (the teacher invited all of us to come up and get a closer look), you could see that the pupils of his eyes were actually the silhouettes of people running for terror, and his flowing gray beard was actually the smoke of a burning village at the bottom of the canvas. There were more people running in terror out of the village houses. They were naked, for some reason. Lurid flames licked in the background. It was a political painting, the teacher explained. It took a stand. I don’t know how many Khomeini supporters there were in Middle Georgia at the time, but I had to admit, this painting would definitely give them something to think about. It was strong meat. I gave up on my idea of painting a barn and a rusty harrow. That didn’t Say Anything. I soon realized, however, that I didn’t have Anything Much to Say–not at ten years old, anyway. I ended up painting a picture of a football player. He was the last person remaining on the field; even the stands were empty. In the top-right corner of the canvas, a blue balloon was floating away into the ether. The balloon was supposed to Symbolize Something, though I don’t think I knew what, even at the time. My teacher was not very impressed (see–she wasn’t entirely lacking in judgment). Mama wasn’t impressed either, though she was polite about it. Shortly thereafter I put away my paints and moved on to other interests.

It’s hard for me to get excited about the popular stuff. Then sometimes I read it (or watch it or listen to it) and I remember that just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s lame. That mindset is a remnant of my anti-establishment tendencies in high school. Football was popular, so I hated football. (Now I think it’s a great game, and though its significance was blown wildly out of proportion in my little town, now I find that slice of small town American culture fascinating.) All my friends loved country music, so I hated country music. (Now I live in Nashville, and Alison Krauss regularly makes me cry.) As an adult I was like that with Harry Potter for a while, and with Coldplay, and with the first couple of seasons of Lost. But sometimes something beautiful happens, and the Thing in question attracts the attention of the masses not because it’s sensual or fashionable but because it’s telling the Truth. It is wise without being highbrow, it is accessible without being patronizing and simpleminded. It gives its viewers/readers/listeners credit for being image-bearing souls with complex emotions, relationships, doubts. It acknowledges the suffering in the world and in our hearts–and the universal hope for a reprieve from it. This started out as a recommendation for the bestseller Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. Back to business. When we Petersons moved from suburbia to this place we call the Warren earlier this year, we traded a bigger house in the ‘burbs for a smaller house on a few acres of quiet land. We miss our old house now and then (especially Jamie, who had a big, open kitchen and now has a hallway with a stove and sink) but the trade was a good one. I’m not complaining, but it goes against American culture (and human nature, maybe) to downsize your house. Our kids are getting bigger by the minute and our house shrank by about 25%. One casualty of that downsizing was, sadly, my books. More than half of them are boxed up and in storage, and the shelves that once held stories and ideas and adventure now contain pots and pans and casserole dishes (I told you about the tiny kitchen. We have exactly four cabinet doors’ worth of kitchen storage–have I mentioned that my wife is amazing and (almost) never complains?). Where was I? Ah. Life of Pi. Having little selection, I finally, after hearing our own Eric Peters suggest the book, picked up this one. I went for the popular thing. I joined the millions who read it, and I’m glad I did. I’ve never read a story like it. With the millions of books written every year, somehow Yann Martel wrote something new. I was a little put off by the universalism of the main character, whose comments on God, Jesus, and Krishna are sometimes a little specious. But if you can move past that and into the wonder of the story itself, you’ll find a haunting, engrossing tale. I talked with Eric about the book yesterday, and both of us were moved and mystified by the ending. Here are a few lines from what the author claims are the core chapters of the book. …the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably. And: I can well imagine an atheist’s last words: “White, white! L-L-Love! My God!”–and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, “Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,” and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. My main contention with the book, now that I think about it, is that the author makes a strong, beautiful case for the value of faith over fact, as if the two don’t mingle and co-exist. The Christian story is profoundly moving whether it’s true or not. But if it didn’t really happen, it is ultimately a waste of our time. That the story of Jesus is as sweet and harrowing as a fairy tale adds weight to the fact that the story actually happened; that it actually happened adds weight to the beauty of the tale. The book claims that the story of Pi Patel will make you believe in God. I don’t know if that’s true or not (since of course I already believe in him). At the very least, it helped me to believe that there are good (sometimes even great) stories still to be told, and the best of them ask us to believe.