What are you looking for?

by Jeffery Overstreet I’m four years old and staring at a screen. A bizarre figure flails about on a stage, hands and feet jerked by strings. That long nose seems strangely familiar. It’s Pinocchio, but not the Pinocchio I know from my Little Golden Book paraphrase of the Disney movie; this is some kind of public-television dance production. This memory is a fragment, as fleeting as a three-second GIF. And nothing more than that sticks with me. Several Pinocchio narratives exist, and I don’t recall which this production presented. Was Geppetto violent or peaceful? Was the wooden boy a terror or just a gullible idiot? Did the Blue Fairy set him free? Did Jiminy, Pinocchio’s talking conscience, sing about wishing on a star? I don’t recall. All I remember is the anxiety. The tightness in my chest. How my fingers twisted and tugged at orange strands of shag carpet—it was the early 1970s, after all. Something in me was desperate to see this frantic puppet freed from his strings. * * * Screens were the first windows through which I witnessed a world beyond the safe, familiar sphere of home, family, and church. I watched Sesame Street , Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood , morning game shows, Saturday cartoons, and not much else. So why does this Pinocchio moment stay with me like a surreal dream? This peculiar anxiety—I felt it again a few years later when I discovered a dragonfly struggling in a spider-web; I spent an hour picking at the web with a needle, trying to release her. This was not empathy : an imaginative engagement with unfamiliar suffering. This was sympathy : I knew, somehow, what the puppet and the dragonfly were feeling. I could relate. I could not yet discern, at that age, the particularity of my childhood. My home was full of love, my parents generously encouraged my imaginative growth. But we lived within overlapping spheres of evangelical fundamentalism: church, school, and extended family. Obedience and discipline were priorities everywhere. (Paddles for spanking students hung on the wall like swords behind the Christian school principal’s desk.) I learned to fear failure within this system, and to fear even further the world outside my “traditional Christian community.” And yet, in this memory as blurry as a Polaroid a half-century old, I already have a sense that I am living a life on strings: tethered, directed, bound. The figure in that flickering black-and-white screen is me wrestling with an intuitive sense that I am not sure how to be free, not sure how to become fully human. * * * Fast forward. I’m bombarded by ads for not one but two new Pinocchio adaptations: a Disney “live-action” remake from director Robert Zemeckis (with Tom Hanks as Geppetto), which is earning dismal reviews; and a darker, stranger (and probably far better) version from Guillermo Del Toro (with Ewan McGregor as Jiminy the narrator). Every time I see the puppet’s funny name fill the screen in stylized letters, I feel a pulse of anxiety. Intrigued by my visceral response to the story’s resurgence, I sat down last week and pressed “play” on Disney’s 1940 classic. And as I watched, I was surprised and enchanted: I realized that I had never seen the movie all the way through before. The figure in that flickering black-and-white screen is me wrestling with an intuitive sense that I am not sure how to be free, not sure how to become fully human. Jeffrey Overstreet I’ve known the basics since childhood. Let’s review: In short, the angelic Blue Fairy grants the wish of a kind-hearted woodworker and turns his smiling marionette into a string-free wooden boy. But what will it take to finish the job—to make Pinocchio fully human ? He’ll have to pass some ethical tests with a convenient cricket acting as his conscience. And, of course, he starts failing tests right away: He lies, which makes his nose grow. What surprises me most is how quickly the story moves on from the nose incident. Lying isn’t Pinocchio’s biggest problem. Disney storytellers seem more interested in dramatizing the daunting challenges for which the little blockhead is unprepared. As soon as he obediently marches off to his first day of school (education represents what good boys prioritize here), Pinocchio is set upon by con men: a fox nicknamed Foulfellow (nicknamed “Honest John”) and a dopey cat named Gideon. These partners in crime dupe him into joining the circus of a showman, Stromboli, who promotes Pinocchio to the delight of audiences. He’s an overnight sensation! But backstage, the truth is quickly revealed: Pinocchio has been sold into slavery. He’s locked in a cage and abused. The lesson is clear: To abandon school for fame and fortune is to bargain with the devil. If you disobey your father and follow ambition and vanity, you’re bound by subtler and more destructive strings. Pinocchio gets a second chance, but goes wrong again, falling for more false promises. This time, peer pressure plunges him into the reckless revelries of Pleasure Island, where cigar-smoking and billiards represent heavy depravity. Before long, Pinocchio has been sold to a labor camp for trafficked children, where foolishness transforms them into literal jackasses. They’re left braying for mercy. A second lesson: If, in your freedom, you prioritize pleasure and popularity, you may find yourself strung up by your own heart’s own worst impulses. It can be jarring to track this narrative’s dark turns. Disney is famous for sanitizing fairy tales, but this remains frightening stuff. Still, the source material is far more troubling: Carlo Collodi’s original novel casts Pinocchio as a living terror from the moment he opens his eyes. And Geppetto is no saint either: He assaults another character twice in the opening chapters, and we learn he has a reputation for abusing children. A little research reveals that Pinocchio, in Collodi’s first draft, dies as a consequence of his misdeeds, hung from a tree by his enemies. Obedience driven by fear and rebellion driven by disrespect—either action keeps us bound to cruel puppeteers. Jeffrey Overstreet But there is so much more to Disney’s version of the story than episodic moralism. From its opening anthem “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the song by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington that became the Disney studio’s signature anthem, the movie celebrates enchantment. It’s preoccupied with the idea that there is some higher power out there eager to bless dreams with “the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.” And it insists that our capacity to receive that blessing has something to do with the “still, small voice” of conscience that wants to keep us on “the narrow path.” Pinocchio is set “free” at the beginning of the film; he’s granted a mind, a heart, and agency. But he will learn right away that freedom isn’t enough. Independence can be every bit as dangerous as it is rewarding. As Nelson Mandela wrote in Long Walk to Freedom , “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” The path to being fully human requires the cultivation of conscience. Obedience driven by fear and rebellion driven by disrespect—either action keeps us bound to cruel puppeteers. And there are other kinds of strings as well. Pinocchio’s journey to wisdom culminates when his struggle in captivity enables him to feel sympathy for Geppetto, who has been imprisoned in the belly of a whale. There, we find that freedom can also lead to isolation. This puppeteer himself is now bound, controlled by strings of despair. * * * It’s unsettling how relevant this movie seems today. Yes, those lessons about lying are heavy-handed. But we apparently still need them. There’s something timely about watching two smooth-talking opportunists prey upon Pinocchio’s ignorance and try to steer him away from school. We are surrounded by increasingly outspoken enemies of education and intellectual discipline. And it makes sense to prevent rigorous teaching among the populace if your success depends on exploiting and controlling them. I had to laugh when I realized that Pinocchio becomes dizzy and disoriented under the influence of… what? Could we call it Honest John’s “fox news”? But these “teachable moments” are not what make the movie so memorably meaningful to me. = The more that artists inspire our own speculation, and the more they draw us into the creative process, the more we will feel invested in what’s happening. Jeffrey Overstreet What excites me most about Disney’s glorious rendition is how the animators, discovering just how much freedom they have to experiment with innovative tools, refrain from reveling in lurid violence, preferring curiosity and play. When Pinocchio dives in search of Geppetto, the filmmakers slow down, take time, and explore. They invite us to enter into childlike play, which leads to unexpected and (this is important) unnecessary discoveries. We might even call this sequence gratuitous : Pinocchio’s encounters on the ocean floor aren’t essential to the plot. They’re a grab-bag of the animators’ favorite inventions. And they make Pinocchio’s world more convincing. That’s because our own world is not overly concerned with the plot. Our world is full of playfulness, full of extravagance, full of incidental delights. Roger Ebert wrote about another strategy that demonstrates the animators’ virtuosity when he deemed Pinocchio one of The Great Movies : In Fantasia and especially Pinocchio, Disney broke out of the frame, for example in the exciting sequence where Pinocchio and his father are expelled by the whale’s sneeze, then drawn back again, then expelled again. There is the palpable sense of Monstro the Whale, offscreen to the right. Consider the implications of this. Pinocchio asks us, the audience, to keep on animating beyond the borders. The movie’s seven directors anticipate that our imaginations will collaborate with theirs. This strikes me as an act of artistic humility, and more—generosity. They are inviting us to find more in Pinocchio’s world than they have created. The more that artists inspire our own speculation, and the more they draw us into the creative process, the more we will feel invested in what’s happening. The experience becomes more communal. And that can only strengthen how capable we are of believing that what’s happening in the movie is relevant to us. Since my first encounters with this desperate marionette, Pinocchio and his world have been teaching me about art-making, truth-telling, and the promise and perils of freedom. They reinforce a deep Gospel: Our Maker seeks not to bind us, but to free us—not only from strings but for our help in setting others free. Jeffrey Overstreet is a writer of fiction, memoir, reviews, and arts journalism — and a teacher of creative writing, film studies, and cultural engagement for people of faith. Visit LookingCloser.org for more information.

by Kevan Chandler We Carry Kevan started in 2016 as an experiment in travel and friendship. Some guys and I wanted to go to Europe, and everywhere we planned to visit wasn’t going to be wheelchair accessible. This would normally be a problem because I am in a wheelchair, but we decided to not let that stop us. Leaving my chair behind, they carried me in a special backpack for three weeks as we danced through the streets of Paris, hopped fences in the English countryside, and hiked an island 7 miles off the coast of Ireland.  Since then, we have spent the past six years as a nonprofit answering the two biggest questions we got from families who watched the adventure unfold: Where did you get this backpack? And where did you get these friends? The first question was easy. So far, we have distributed 800 backpacks to families in 35 countries, and that number keeps growing every day.  But people long for deeper connections, too—friendships that will say, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” So we build relationships with families who get backpacks, and we share our stories around the world to inspire others to be these kinds of friends. And most recently, we started a new video series called Who Are We, in which I interview the “We” of We Carry Kevan. I figured, who better to ask about friendship than my friends?  I had the honor of going for a walk with Jonathan Rogers and Doug McKelvey, as we discussed art and friendship and how the two practices cultivate one another. Check it out (and see if you spy Pete in the background, too), and many other interviews about different aspects and keys to deeper friendship.  Here is Part 1: And here is Part 2: Kevan Chandler is a writer, speaker, adventurer, urban-spelunker, world-traveler, and founder of We Carry Kevan, an organization that aims to redefine conventional ideas of accessibility.

by Dawn Morrow On most weekend afternoons the year I turned seven, you could find me in my room pacing the purple shag rug while a library record spun on my old turntable. That summer, the last track on the b-side of a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was on heavy rotation. It’s the first time I remember hearing the story of Pandora’s Box, and I was enthralled. Over and over again I listened while curious Pandora opened the box and bad things escaped. Hunger, madness, despair, violence, greed—shadowy bat-like creatures, spiraling out of the box and surrounding poor Pandora before they flew away. The image haunted my dreams for years. But Pandora closed the box just before everything could escape, trapping the one remaining thing inside. Pandora’s Box was my introduction to the concept of hope, and I was hooked. At seven, I didn’t know many of the monsters that flew out of Pandora’s box yet, but I knew long silences over dinner when my father chose a can of Budweiser rather than the water or tea my mother offered. I knew a growing tension marked by closed-door “discussions” in the kitchen. I knew it was just my mom and me most nights in our little NJ rancher. And still, it came as a surprise when my dad tucked his long, lean body next to mine where I sat, reading, in his favorite chair—the one he fell asleep in most nights, dog in his lap, T.V. on, empty beer cans on the end table. He said all the right things: he loved me, it wasn’t my fault, they just couldn’t be married anymore. Fear, shame, anxiety, abandonment. The shadows lengthened. “Hope is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson, and that’s how I pictured it: a tiny fluttering bird, trapped, delicate, and weak. I had no idea how such a fragile thing could do any kind of battle with darkness, but I desperately wanted it to. I had no idea how such a fragile thing could do any kind of battle with darkness, but I desperately wanted it to. Dawn Elizabeth Morrow “The doctor found something; it’s not good.” It was the Monday just after Thanksgiving during my first year of business school and my mom, still groggy from sedation, was calling with the results of her colonoscopy. By the end of the week, we had a diagnosis: stage four colon cancer, already metastasized to her liver and lungs. It would eventually kill her. Sickness, death, loneliness, despair. Four years later, in early December, I sat on a daybed while she slept in her recliner nearby. White lights from the Christmas tree we’d decorated together lit the room. Day by day, her body was trudging in time with death’s slow march. She slept more and more, her fingers and toes grew cold, her breath hitched. On the morning after the death rattle started, I woke up early and recited the creed I’d known since childhood: I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit…the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. For twenty-five mornings, as my mother died in the next room, I had returned to the most basic hope of the gospel. It was the thread holding my days together. In those early mornings, I found the hope I practiced was fundamentally different from the frail little bird I pictured as a seven-year-old. This hope was strength. This hope was endurance. This hope actively clung to the fringe of faith on the threshold of tragedy. Hope, by its very nature, thrives in the liminal places of life—between the promise and the coming true. It’s the hush before the curtain rises, the space between lightning and thunder, the Sabbath between death and life. It’s the quiet spaces in prayer when we wonder if we’re talking to ourselves. Hope is not fragile. It exists to wrestle with our doubts. Sometimes it’s tattered, with a bloody nose and a black eye, but it always stands back up. Hope is a practice, a repetition, a habit. Years later I watched, weeping as Notre Dame burned. I’d stood under the rose window the summer before and listened to the bells ring. As the Cathedral’s spire fell, people gathered on the banks of the Seine and they sang: Ave Maria, pray for us. It was the habit of hope, cultivated from liturgy to liturgy, and in their hour of grief, they returned to it. Practice hope and may you return to it again and again. Notre Dame in Flames One April the gargoyles awakened, carved chimera breathing fire, alive for the first time in nine hundred years. They rose, wings outstretched, on plumes of smoke high over the city. For miles around people stopped, craning their necks to see fingers of fire wrap around the cathedral’s spire, and topple it like a child’s block tower Thousands of miles away, I watch, transfixed by flame-tails trailing across darkening sky, the sunset overshadowed by the orange-red glow of the church as it burned. Not long ago I stood under the rose window, spellbound, bell-song resonating deep in my chest, calling the faithful to prayer. In Paris, the people press in, held back by police lines and firemen. They watch the glow ebb and flow, as if it breathed, and they sing, as desperate as Orpheus to bring her back: Ave Maria, Pray for us. They raise the song like a knight’s sword at the dragon’s throat. Dawn Morrow writes poems for people who think they don't like poetry. Although she holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University, an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill, and a BS in Engineering from the University of Iowa, she’s a Jersey Girl at heart. Her poetry has appeared in the Molehill, vol. 5, published by Rabbit Room Press and SLAB Literary Magazine.

by Andrew Peterson As many of you know, the original Rabbit Room was in the back of a pub called The Eagle and Child, which was right across the street from another Inklings haunt called The Lamb and Flag. From what I read, Lewis and Tolkien changed pubs because they were annoyed that the Eagle and Child had introduced a dartboard. I happen to agree that a good pub’s goodness is due to its hospitality to good conversation. Loud music and television screens and party games have no place in the pubs of my dreams. So the Lamb and Flag, which as I said is right across the street from the Eagle and Child, was a gathering place for four hundred years. That’s a long time for an institution to last, and we got to enjoy its timelessness a few years back. One of my favorite memories from Hutchmoot in Oxford in 2019 was of Pete and Jennifer, me and Jamie, Phillip and Lanier Ivester, and a few others gathering in the Lamb and Flag’s snug to read our poems aloud in honor of the Inklings. Another was on the last night of the conference. We finished up at about 9 p.m. The Lamb and Flag closed at 11. We all began to furiously clean up the church, running trash bags to the dumpsters, cleaning dishes, vacuuming the floors, setting up the church for Sunday services the next morning. As soon as we got the place put back together we hurried through the streets of North Oxford to the Lamb and Flag, got there a few minutes before last call, and were able to raise a pint of English ale in a toast to Christ our King, to the many people who made Hutchmoot happen, and of course to the Inklings who had in some measure inspired the whole affair a half a century before. For whatever reason, Chris Thiessen’s delightful laugh in the alley outside the pub is the thing that stands out in my mind. It’s a good memory. But then, 2020 happened. A lot of people who care about the Inklings were saddened to hear that both the Lamb and the Eagle had shut their doors during the pandemic. Both pubs were rumored to have been closed permanently, and the Eagle and Child was supposedly going to be gutted to make room for a hotel. I couldn’t believe that these places which were so important to so many were going to be lost, just like that. I visited Oxford in 2021 and peeked through the windows of both empty, cobwebby pubs, muttering under my breath about the travesty of it all and wishing I was a millionaire so I could rescue them from certain destruction. We were in Oxford again this summer, and the pubs were still closed. I looked in the alley behind them in case they were tossing out the old benches and tables, because if they were I was absolutely going to find a way to steal one and ship it home. That these places would be forever lost, turned into a hotel lobby or a convenience store, felt so terribly sad. If a dartboard was enough to drive the Inklings out of one pub back in the day, imagine the sputtering indignance that the ghosts of the Lewis brothers, Tolkien, Williams, and the rest would have felt as their favorite haunts were pillaged and turned into soulless commercial ventures. I sputtered with them. It’s sad when something you love fades away. It’s sad when something like the Eagle and Child, a place that felt like it would last forever, is up and gone overnight. The death of a historic pub can represent the death of a million beautiful things in our broken world. That sadness is real, and appropriate, because what we experience in those precious places is a little glimpse of the Kingdom—and then things change and you realize it wasn’t permanent at all. It was only ever a glimpse. By definition, a glimpse is fleeting. But that one rustle in the bushes, the catch in the throat, the sweet memory of laughter on a warm night with your friends—it’s enough to tell you that the Kingdom is real and on the move, and the sad truth is that when the flash of light is gone the dark can feel even darker. That’s why it’s so important to keep our eyes peeled for the white stag, the cup of cool water, the miracle of an onion as you peel it, the Psalm that rises out of scripture like a candle to bless you in the cave. We need those things, and yet those things are just signposts to the giver of all good things. They’re like streams in the woods. We need the water. It keeps us alive. But it’s also a mere stream running downhill to a river, and even the river is a mere river coursing to the open arms of the unfathomable sea. The stream is good, but it’s not the ocean. The pub is good, but it’s not our home. Our hearts are restless till they rest in God, and we are yet pilgrims to the mansion of his heart. Our hearts are restless till they rest in God, and we are yet pilgrims to the mansion of his heart. Andrew Peterson I say all that to say this: it’s an error to confuse the stream for the ocean, or a wayside inn for home. I have missed Hutchmoot these last few years. I’ve missed the great joy of this yearly feast. If you’ve been here before I imagine you’ve missed it too. It’s such a concentration of good and beautiful things: conversation, food, books, music, laughter, stories—all emanating from the Great Story and the Great Storyteller himself. Of course, we celebrate that. We would be fools not to. But Hutchmoot is also just as imperfect as the people running it. We’re all doing our best to make the Rabbit Room amazing, but it’s going to disappoint you. I’m going to disappoint you. We’re trying, in our broken way, to make room for a fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom. And when we all come together, each with his or her gifts, each of us as eager to forgive as to be forgiven, each of us pointing the way home, then each of us can become for another that fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom. The last few years have shaken us all. It’s disorienting when things that seem unshakeable are shaken. The Rabbit Room is most definitely shakable. What the Rabbit Room is pointing to is not. Think of the thousands in Florida who lost their homes last week. It’s literally devastating. But when that devastation happens we’re reminded of what is steadfast and truly unshakeable—as Rich Mullins sang, “everything that could be shaken was shaken, and all that remains is all I ever really had.” And what remains? The purposes of God. The reality of his Kingdom and its steady, unstoppable advance. The indwelling presence of his Holy Spirit in his people, and the presence of his people all around us, stepping into the rubble to rebuild and remake, practicing resurrection till we die into the perfection of our resurrection through his. I learned last week that a hurricane is considered to have made landfall only when the eye of the storm arrives on the shores—not when all those tendrils of the storm spin out across land for days. The bands of the storm of the kingdom of God are here, but the thing hasn’t made landfall until that peaceful eye is overhead. All creation groans with eager expectation for it. So we hammer signposts into the ground of this old world, pointing to the good storm that’s coming, and coming, and coming, and which will one day be here in its fullness. Sometimes, a community of people comes together to recover what was lost. And that is always cause for celebration. And here we are. This morning, my dear British friend Mark Meynell texted me a link to an article. The headline was this: “The Fellowship of the Lamb: How We’re Saving Tolkien’s Pub.” The author of the article was part of a community who banded together to resurrect the Lamb and Flag. He wrote, “As Tolkienologists will know, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings , The Fellowship of the Ring , opens with Bilbo Baggins’s 111th birthday – or his eleventy-first birthday, as Bilbo put it. The new Inklings – locals, Oxford graduates and undergraduates – each paid a minimum of £1,000 for a renewable 15-year lease on the pub. I paid the minimum. Many paid much more – including one anonymous Inkling who paid for extra building work with a generous donation.” “In 1911, a young man named Tolkien arrived at Exeter College, Oxford, to read classics. A couple of years later, he changed courses to read English language and literature, which turned out to be quite significant. We reopen our pub at 6 p.m. on Thursday 6 October 2022, which is possibly, or exactly, 111 years to the day that J.R.R. Tolkien arrived in Oxford.’ So I’m happy to report that while we were setting up this afternoon, the Lamb and Flag reopened, and the familiar sounds of clinking glasses, laughter, fellowship, and celebration filled that place once again. Hopefully, there were no dartboards. That means that literally right now in Oxford, while the proprietor is mopping up and shutting the place down for the night, we’re reopening this thing called Hutchmoot, flinging open the doors for the first time in years. Look around you. Look into someone’s eyes. Catch a fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom of God, because in the words of the late Frederick Buechner, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would barely fill a cup.” Resurrection happens. Welcome, friends, to Hutchmoot. May it be a glimpse of the Kingdom. #Hutchmoot #semifeature Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter and author. Andrew has released more than ten records over the past twenty years, earning him a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, released in collectible hardcover editions through Random House in 2020, and his creative memoir, Adorning the Dark, released in 2019 through B&H Publishing.

by Matt Conner It’s always a joy to highlight the meaningful work of friends, and we’re excited to support a new one-day event happening soon in Raleigh, North Carolina called The Guild Conference . The Guild Conference is coming up on Saturday, November 5, and it is a creative arts conference and concert designed to care holistically for the craft and character of artists (and those who enjoy the arts). How do you not love that mission? We asked partner Cary Brege to tell us more. “This conference was an initiative started by artists who recognized the need to challenge, support and hold accountable creatives whose lives and artistry have been redeemed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’re creating an experience that encourages intentional rest, resetting, and reflection in the presence of God in light of our call as creative people.” Featured artists and speakers include many of our own favorites including Jess Ray, Sharlene Provilus, Joy Ike, Taylor Leonhardt, Andy Squyers, William “Duce” Branch, Derrick Holloway, and Mission House. You can learn more about the conference at their official site , and they’ve even given Rabbit Room readers a promo code for a discount on tickets: RABBIT. Matt Conner is a former pastor and church planter turned writer and editor. He’s the founder of Analogue Media and lives in Indianapolis.

by Sarah Bramblett To my sisters and me, my dad is the main character. He is presence and purpose, laughter and adventure, wisdom and authenticity. He’s also a protagonist in his job, marriage, and role in the church. By day, he’s Dr. Mark Geil: Associate Dean of Research and Operations and Professor of Exercise Science at Kennesaw State University. He does research on children with movement disorders, so to an under-represented community, he’s a background hero studying unnoticed aspects of movement that translate into better prosthetic limbs and overall understanding. Beyond his day job, he’s dabbled in several fascinating hobbies. His most notable hobby, that of being an extra or stand-in in the movie industry, is a unique culmination of both his career and his many other hobbies. He has “medical experience,” so he’s played a doctor on TV shows. He enjoys writing and photography, so for a brief second in the latest season of Stranger Things , you can see a close-up of my dad’s face taking pictures. All those years of archery at church kids camp somehow enabled him to be an occasional stand-in for Hawkeye (really, it’s probably more of a sizing match-up than a hobby alignment, but hey). Usually, his amazing stories collected from hours on movie sets yield a micro-second glimpse of him on the big screen. We watch movies with hands on the pause button. He’ll point himself out as the fifth guy on the second-to-last row of the UN in Avengers . Extras are labeled “background.” The audience is not supposed to notice the characters who contribute presence, normalcy, and purpose to the shot. But there’s beauty in hearing stories from the background. Sarah: You’ve probably been in about 40 shows and productions at this point? What’s one of your favorite experiences as an extra or stand-in? Mark : I’m a huge fan of comics and the Marvel universe, so it’s no surprise that my favorite moment is related to the MCU. But it might be unusual that it’s one that never made the screen. I was booked as a photo double for Jeremy Renner on the Hawkeye series. That’s someone who takes the place of the actor if he’s not available or barely in the frame. Two days before the shoot, I got a fairly frantic call from the casting agent. “Costumes really wants to see you for a fitting. They’re kinda freaking out. Is there any possible way you could get to the studio?” Naturally, I worked it into my schedule. I showed up at the studio, found my way to the right stage, and met with Renner’s personal wardrobe person. She led me into a room, wheeled in a rack, and said, “You’re the photo double, right?” I nodded and introduced myself, and she said, “Yeah, just to be safe, we really need you to try on everything.” I looked at the rack, and there were the comics come to life. Over the next half hour, I was fitted into Clint Barton’s regular clothes and his fancy clothes and was given random advice like, “Jeremy always tucks in his laces.” Ultimately, it was time to don the real live Hawkeye super-suit. The suit itself was remarkably engineered in about five layers, and it took a very specific process for them to put it on me, with instructions like, “Okay, now I need you to curve your back about twenty degrees and put your hands together over your head with your fingers pointed.” I loved every second of it. I finally stood there wearing full superhero regalia, and even though I had no mirror and couldn’t take any pictures, my childhood dreams were literally coming true. Sarah: I love your lifelong love for these movies and the process. Often, the motley crew that makes up the background is full of aspiring actors, people with no connection or love of movies just looking for a temp job, and a whole host of other characters. Why do you enjoy this hobby? What’s “in it” for you? Mark : You’re exactly right. I almost pity the folks who don’t realize how this works and are desperate for their “big break.” They have this hope that a director will spot just how well they walk across a street 50 feet behind the action and sign them on for their next film, but that just never happens. I enjoy this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m fascinated by the process and the machinations of making movies. Second, well, I occasionally get to try on super suits and such. Sarah: Speaking of the machinations of movies, what’s been your favorite “final product” or movie/show that you’ve worked on that turned out even better and more delightful than you thought it would as you witnessed its production? Mark: I played a doctor in a Reese Witherspoon film called The Good Lie , about the journey of refugees orphaned in a Sudanese civil war. I have some quasi-clinical training, and I’ve been in ORs observing surgeries, so I get to play docs from time to time. The set was a makeshift field hospital in Sudan. I was a little disappointed when the director shuffled me off to the back of the set and asked me to just count some items (which turned out to be packets of denture cleaner, oddly enough). So, I counted my packets, over and over, while the other background got to pretend to treat patients. But in between takes, I got to hang out with a wonderful group of kids and parents from a local Sudanese community, and the film turned out to be quite powerful. And even though I was in the back, I got to see myself quite a bit in the finished product. The attention to detail and the care taken in the craftsmanship are inspiring, and I enjoy the end products so much more having watched the process. Mark Geil Sarah: Often, the places that you film are common areas—parks and parking garages we frequent, or even campuses where you worked that morph into settings like Sudan or New York City. It could be that seeing the set and peeking behind the scenes disenchants the movie experience, but it seems to do the opposite for you. How does knowing how it’s all made increase your wonder and appreciation for the final product? Mark : I wouldn’t appreciate a Bob Ross landscape painting nearly as much if I hadn’t watched him create it. I get the same appreciation on a movie set. A single soundstage might have carpenters crafting a gravity-defying edifice out of 2x4s, hair and makeup departments making realistic looks from decades hence, and set decorators completing the finest detail on a set. I stood in a long line with hundreds of extras for one of the Hunger Games movies to get my hands and fingernails covered in artificial dirt, fully aware that none of the distant cameras would see my fingernails. I’ve watched the crew replace tiny pebbles on the ground of an alien planet, then blow them away in each take, and then put them back all over again. I marveled at Eddie’s trailer in Stranger Things, with so many ‘80s knick-knacks that never made the show. The attention to detail and the care taken in the craftsmanship are inspiring, and I enjoy the end products so much more having watched the process. Sarah: Being a stand-in has seemed to be even more gratifying for you than being an extra, but in those final films, you’re definitely not getting a screenshot of your face in the background. You’re never in the movie when you’re a stand-in, so why do you think you enjoy the work of standing-in for someone else? Mark : It’s so much fun! The stand-in watches the actor rehearse the scene, then steps in and repeats the blocking so the director, lighting gaffers, and camera operators can get everything just right before the actor returns for the actual take. So, you get a much closer view of moviemaking than you ever do as background. The most surreal moment I’ve ever experienced in this hobby was standing in for Renner on Avengers: Endgame in the Vormir scene. Part of the scene is an emotional dialogue between Hawkeye and Black Widow. It’s a really tight shot, so it took ages to set it up. I was standing in the middle of this massive, fantastic alien planetscape, almost nose-to-nose with Scarlett Johansson’s stand-in, while the crew struggled to get a camera angle just right. At one point, there was a long pause, and one of the Russo brothers shouted from across the stage, “Mark! How tall are you?” Even as I shouted my height, I marveled that, just for a moment, a bit of data as mundane as my height played some small role in the making of the biggest movie in history. Sarah: Has your Hollywood experience transformed, in any measure, the way you view your day-to-day roles? How does working in the background impact the roles you’re the main character in? Mark: Well, for starters, I have to talk myself out of abandoning my day job because I keep getting such fascinating offers. (Just kidding. Sort of.) Just today, I had to turn down opportunities to double for an actor in a car chase fleeing the bad guys, to be “hypnotized” in a celebrity prank, and to do a scene that would have had me chew a special pill to make me foam at the mouth. And last month, I had to turn down a chance to be, of all things, a Were-Butt! I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a Were-Butt? But then I come back to reality and I’m so grateful that I get to manage all of these disparate interests. I’m thankful for a gratifying “day job” and the chance to make an impact with it. And I recognize that it allows me the opportunity to pursue other interests, like movies, photography, and writing, without facing the pressure of relying on them to support my family. That also means that I can’t devote the time and energy it would take to get really good at any of them, but I’m content with that. An added benefit is that I’m totally okay with being in the background. I don’t try to squeeze my way toward a camera (like many extras do), and I’m fine if I don’t appear at all. I know this is a tremendous luxury, and I don’t take it lightly. So I always ultimately prioritize my “main character” roles—husband, father, professor, volunteer—knowing I can’t have the side gigs without the main gig. *** The process of creation often includes mundane editing, lonely pondering, late-night anxiety, and thousands of details that go unnoticed. But without the extras, the stand-ins, the lighting crews, and the fingernail dirt dusters, the movies we love wouldn’t draw us in. As I go about my own creation hobbies, both the little ones like occasionally writing or the main gigs like raising my daughter, I think about how wonderfully my dad embraces his movie hobby. Viewing the roles and responsibilities regulated to the background as tremendous luxuries enhances my appreciation for the greater story being told. Sarah Bramblett has a PhD in English Rhetoric and Composition and resides in Kennesaw, Georgia with her husband Lane and daughter Shiloh (a "joy tornado"). Sarah was an intern for the Rabbit Room while in undergrad and still believes in the life-giving power of Story; she loves passing on that power to college students who don’t think they can write.

by Rebecca Reynolds We filled our storage unit with hundreds of boxes during a family crisis. I couldn’t sort through it all at the time because too many objects triggered memories I didn’t have the capacity to process. Here was the stuffed animal of a grown child I’d give anything to go back and parent differently. The scent of a half-burned candle from our first home. A t-shirt I wore while making a mistake that led to years of pain. A church bulletin with naïve but simple, faith-filled notes I’d scribbled in the margin. An old Christmas card from a beloved friend who ended up not being a friend at all. There was a time when simply touching these items unleashed waves of fear, guilt, grief, and regret. Because I had young children during the crisis, I didn’t have time or space to tend to my own emotional wounds. So, I threw it all in storage, and I forced myself to look forward instead of back. I don’t enjoy thinking about all the money we lost renting that storage unit. I also hate remembering the long, slow ache of trying to ignore the existence of those boxes. For years, I felt a clench in my throat every time I thought about opening them. Sifting through all that stuff wouldn’t just throw me into the physical chaos of clutter, it would also involve dealing with relational and spiritual disillusionment, guilt, and shame. I wasn’t sure I had the fortitude to rip open a hundred and eighty Pandora’s boxes. Stories have a funny way of sticking to objects. The wind-up watch I had when I was six still ticks, and when I hear it, I can somehow see almost every object in my childhood bedroom. The biscuit cutter my grandmother used brings back the smell of fried sausage and potatoes. I can still feel the late summer breeze in backyard snapshots of people who have either died physically or who were swallowed alive by political agendas. I have stacks of old prayer journals—hundreds of pages full of sincere requests for God to save and heal people I love. If He is fulfilling those requests, He must be working on a timeline or in dimensions I could not have begun to imagine in my optimistic twenties, my head bent over those pages, appealing to my Father. Unpacking meant facing the intensity of those stories. It also risked realizing that I was losing many of them. When I was a child, the old folks would school me in the history of this ceramic soup pot or in that old war relic until it felt like I’d heard the same explanations a hundred times over. I didn’t understand the intensity in their voices—so determined for a past I had never seen to be preserved. Now, I’m the one entrusted, the steward of all those connections. If I donate an object, I forfeit its meaning in our family forever. I feel like the weak link—the one who was asked to pass the torch, but who ultimately quenched it instead. I guess that’s how it’s always been; what’s been lost between generations has always been greater than what’s been preserved. But how do we transfer family history with any sort of balance? How do we make those thousands and thousands of decisions? Unpacking a box isn’t always just unpacking a box. It can require emotional and spiritual vulnerability, reflection, and repentance. Both the emotions and the responsibilities of simplifying can feel crushing. Unpacking a box isn’t always just unpacking a box. It can require emotional and spiritual vulnerability, reflection, and repentance. Both the emotions and the responsibilities of simplifying can feel crushing. Rebecca Reynolds There’s also guilt. I don’t like being reminded that I was the sort of fool who bought too much stuff in the first place. I bought this unnecessary outfit at Goodwill in 1998. I splurged on name-brand peanut butter in 2003. These are micro-irresponsibilities, but certain financial teachings within evangelicalism led me to believe that any measure of waste distinguishes responsible and godly citizens from people who deserve the needs they are facing. There were so many truths I didn’t understand when I was taught to think like this. I didn’t understand large-scale societal or economic conditions that leave some with almost no margin, no matter how frugal they are, and give others all the room in the world to believe they’ve multiplied their savings through only the sweat of their brow. But even though my understanding has grown, I still feel a finger of shame pointing straight at me as I look at every extraneous possession. I bought things I didn’t always need. It’s hard to know how to process that failure. Then, there’s the lingering pain of wounds I was attempting to medicate through buying things. For example, I’ve always felt too tall, too big, too hideous. When I shopped, therefore, I wasn’t just buying clothes. I was looking for some sort of external magic that might deflect everything I hated about myself. Decades later, I realize those purchases didn’t take away this pain. My insecurity has outlasted everything I bought trying to kill it. So I open those boxes to find futility, shame, and reminders that such wounds don’t easily heal. It’s becoming clear why simplifying was difficult, right? Opening a simple cardboard box can entail: “I am not strong enough to revisit all that raw pain.” “People close to me betrayed me. I don’t want to remember this in detail.” “I would give anything to go back and change this year of my life. How could I have failed so deeply?” “I cannot understand why a God who loves me didn’t fulfill my most selfless and critical requests. He disappointed me so deeply, I’m not sure what to do with that pain.” “I am going to fail at stewarding the family stories. Then they will be lost forever.” “I was foolish, selfish, and wasteful in buying what had no value. Every struggle we face now is my fault, and here is the evidence.” In light of all that, no wonder I’ve been paralyzed. No wonder I decided to keep those boxes locked up for so long and to just keep going forward. And to avoid looking back. Several months ago, my parents decided to downsize, and they asked me to walk through their place and pick out any furniture that I wanted. Mom and Dad are organized and tidy people, but even in their meticulously clean house, I caught a glimpse of the colossal task it was going to be to let go of a lifetime of collected possessions. I don’t know why it had never struck me that every tiny bit we take in must also go out, used or unused, no matter if the object has proven worth the investment or declared a waste. How would they manage this? And how would I manage my own stuff in twenty years when I’m even more tired than I am now? My great Uncle Jessie Lee said, “If you own too many things, your things start to own you.” I felt that threat in high-def. I returned to our home with new eyes and asked my husband to crack open the time capsule. We committed to spending twenty minutes every weeknight sorting papers and photos, and several hours every weekend sorting larger objects. Setting an actual timer for the weeknight tasks is essential for me. Initially, I made the mistake of attempting this deeply emotional work five hours at a time, and that wasn’t good for me. A twenty-minute limit sets a boundary on what the past can do to my heart on any given day, and I need that limit. While searching and sifting, I opened many boxes feeling ashamed and broken, then quickly began to feel more validated than condemned. Re-reading helped me realize why I had been so shocked and so deeply hurt. It helped me realize why I’ve put distance in certain relationships. But other boxes corrected and humbled me. The number of personal letters from people who cared about me is breathtaking. I’m grieved to think of how many I never answered. And I’ve been astonished to find the complex, caring comments that teachers and professors wrote on my papers. I hadn’t remembered being loved on that scale during years when I felt so alone. I don’t have room here to share how all this purging and sorting has impacted what we bring into our home. Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll find time to write that side down as well. For now, though, I wanted to reach out to those of you who have a stack of long-packed boxes of your own. The fear of digging too deep in the Mines of Moria while going back to touch your own past is real. You’re not just lazy. This is complicated. I’m sorry it’s such scary work to do—and also such scary work to postpone. Now might not be the right time for you to tackle your boxes, but when that season does come, I hope your guilt is lightened a bit by knowing that you’re not the only one heading back into such a mess. Even though it’s painful at times, I am feeling lighter as loads leave our house. I’m slowly learning to give past iterations of myself more grace—I don’t know when I’ve ever engaged with the gospel so practically as I have while surveying my broken past. I’m gaining an understanding of my triggers and reactions. And while I’m still not sure why certain hard things happened, or why other good things have not happened yet—this is my life. I carry the impressions of it within me. I survived my past once, and now I’m learning what that survival meant. Twenty minutes at a time, I’m swimming in those waters. So far, I’m not drowning. So far, the progress feels good. Rebecca K. Reynolds is the editorial director of Oasis Family Media and Sky Turtle Press. She is the author of a text-faithful modern prose rendering of Edmund Spenser’s 1590’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene and of Courage, Dear Heart by Nav Press. Rebecca is a longtime member of the Rabbit Room, and she has spoken at Hutchmoot both in the US and the UK. She taught high school literature for seven years and has written lyrics for Ron Block of Alison Krauss, Union Station.

by Trailand Eltzroth “We’ve been invited to a house concert where Son of Laughter will be sharing. I’d really like to go,” my wife said. I didn’t need any convincing. “Awesome, which grandmother should I ask to babysit?” I replied. About a year ago Kathryn and I had dived into Chris Slaten’s (Son of Laughter) music. I have fond memories of listening to “The Meal We Could Not Make” on repeat during the holiday season of 2020. When I find an artist whose work I admire, generally a week or two of repeated listening follows.  The night of the house concert came around. As we drove down streets we didn’t know toward people we hadn’t met, I started to feel anxious. House concerts are unavoidably intimate. I couldn’t help but create scenarios in my mind about how interactions might take place. I can too easily assume what people are like before I’ve even met them. (If you’re like me, please stop reading this long enough to play Son of Laughter’s song “Flesh and Bone”.) My worries were quickly dispelled. We found the front door slightly ajar, closed just enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay but open enough to signify we were at the right place. We entered the house and added our shoes to the mounting evidence of the company we would be keeping. Removing our shoes is an intentional part of our own house rules, so as my sneakers slipped off, I immediately felt at home. In the kitchen we were greeted by our hosts & fellow music lovers, laden with paper-plated goodies and warm introductions. I learned more about our hosts, the Murphys. They lead worship at a local church and are welcoming people. One of our mutual friends—Matthew Clark—had told them that Chris would be passing through and was hoping to play a house concert. You might think that it requires special skills or possessions to open your home for a concert, but I assure you, it doesn’t. The Murphys, while notably full of generosity, aren’t “special” beyond responding to the call placed on their hearts to be hosts. After some small talk in the kitchen, we were shepherded into a living room filled with fold-out chairs and repositioned furniture. As Chris took the stage—or in this case a carpet—we met both Chris and Son of Laughter. I was struck by how a pseudonym or stage name could be enlisted by some to either hide behind or give an air of grandeur. This isn’t the case with Chris. Son of Laughter is not a mask to hide behind, rather it is a tool he uses to announce who he believes we were created to reflect. In this small setting, we had the benefit of receiving the thoughtfully crafted art of a down-to-earth man and fellow believer.  The beautiful intimacy of the experience continued after the concert, into the authentic connections that followed with the others in the room. Trailand Eltzroth As soon as Chris started playing, I was reminded of how wonderful a gift it is to see an artist present their own art in a live setting after being familiar with their recorded work. When you know the lyrics and melody of someone’s music, it’s a lovely feeling to share in the exchange together. As a performer myself, to experience this kind of engagement with your work is deeply satisfying and encouraging. For all in attendance, these moments were multiplied further by the intimate proximity of the living room setting. When we all joined in singing together, we were able to hear our individual and collective voices praising God.  The beautiful intimacy of the experience continued after the concert, into the authentic connections that followed with the others in the room. My wife and I were meeting everyone for the first time but quickly discovered a myriad of shared passions. We met a couple who sat in front of us that lived near a park Kathryn had recently discovered. While the ladies set a playdate for our kids, I met a local pastor who invited me to a songwriter’s dinner. I spoke with Chris about his music but also connected over our shared love of Chattanooga. Unprompted, he asked me about my own music and genuinely wanted to hear it, whipping out his phone to look up my music online and saving me from struggling to talk about my own art. I realized that once the music had stopped, we all resumed being guests in the Murphy’s home as we got to know one another. All of the interactions that night were funneled through the respect and security created by being in someone’s dwelling place and the communal enjoyment and inspiration of meaningful and purposeful art. I’ve felt it rare to find such discussions happening as naturally within a church building, and I wonder if that’s because I don’t put enough effort into remembering whose house I am in. “How amazing was that?” I asked my wife while we were sliding our shoes back on.  “I’m so glad we came,” Kathryn said while carefully closing the door behind us. “That was a beautiful night.” Driving home I recalled when I had first heard of Son of Laughter while reading Andrew Peterson’s book Adorning The Dark . This memory started a discussion of how the enjoyment of intentional art encourages the discovery of other art and artists. As we pulled into our driveway, we were still talking about the songs we had heard, the friends we had made, and the ways we could participate in supporting further impactful evenings of art and fellowship.

by Livi Goodgame We love getting the chance to share meaningful music here at the Rabbit Room. It is an honor to be able to showcase different artists in the community who are not only great singer-songwriters but also great friends. The Local Show is a live, in-the-round concert held at North Wind Manor—also streaming on Facebook and YouTube ! While this month’s show is sold out, join us on Tuesday, November 1st at 7:30 PM (CT) on our live streams to share in this inspired night of songs and stories. We’re proud to present this next Local Show’s line-up of artists: Andrew Osenga, Leslie Jordan, John Lucas, and Zach Bolen. Check out more about each performer below. Andrew Osenga A long-time Nashville musician, Andrew Osenga’s strong vocals and smooth guitar riffs accompany his authentic lyrics and storytelling. His music ranges from soft acoustic melodies with atmospheric harmonies to head-bangin’ ballads with electric guitar solos. He has toured with Steven Curtis Chapman, Andrew Peterson, and Jars of Clay. Bonus: if you were at Hutchmoot, you got a preview of some new music on the way. Leslie Jordan After working as a worship leader for a decade, Leslie Jordan released her first EP this year, titled All That I Need to Know . Her experience leading worship carries itself into her songs. With calming vocals and accompaniment, she seeks to nourish others with music that points to Christ. John Lucas John Lucas is a singer-songwriter from North Carolina. His style ranges from bare-bones acoustic to cinematic melodies, with lyrics honest yet gentle. He has had his work licensed for TV shows, corporate ads, small businesses, and wedding films. Zach Bolen Zach Bolen is a singer-songwriter with an alternative rock style. He is the lead singer for the band Citizens , some of whose songs have become incorporated at church gatherings in recent years. He recorded his first solo album, 1001 , in 2016. Livi Goodgame is a native Nashvillian, a fiddle player, and an aspiring poet who teaches line dancing on the side. She is currently studying English and French at MTSU.

by C. Christopher Smith Poetry helps us see things in a new light. Whether the subject of a poem is a thing, an experience, an emotion, or something else, the care with which the poet chooses her words helps us to see that subject in a completely different way. Poetry cannot be read fast; a poem challenges us to sit with its words, to pay attention, to contemplate what the poet has offered us in these words carefully woven together. Of course, none of these tasks come easily in our technological world, where speed and efficiency reign supreme. Several years ago, I started challenging myself to find poems that resonate with a particular passage of Scripture. Approaching scripture in this way illuminated the text by opening up a whole new conversation that included not only myself, scripture, and the interpretations of that particular passage that I had accumulated over the years, but also the voice of the poet channeled through the words of that particular poem. Scripture is not a static text. While it is of utmost importance to those of us who follow in the way of Jesus, the work of reading and understanding scripture is not just a matter of learning what it meant for those faithful ones who have gone before us. The text of scripture and the interpretations we have received are very important, but God also desires to speak to us, through the Spirit, in the present moment. The work of understanding scripture, in its most robust sense, is that of holding together the word of God that we have received in scripture as we have been taught to understand it, with the word of God that is spoken to us in the present, inviting us to live faithfully within all the particular facets of our present situation (our time, our place, and the manifold dynamics that give shape to our lives). “What does a new word [from the Spirit] look like?” asks theologian Willie Jennings. “We will know it by its fruit. That which builds life together, life abundant, and deepening life in God is truly a new word from God. That which speaks the community of Christ and echoes a desire for shared life, shared hope, and redemption from death and all its agents is always a new word from God.” ( Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible , 2017, p. 120) Almost three years ago, I started selecting a classic (i.e., public domain) poem and a contemporary poem to accompany each weekly scripture reading in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), which many larger denominations use in their worship and preaching. When I began this Lectionary Poetry project (published weekly on The Englewood Review of Books website – a sample of a week’s poems can be found here ), I thought that the selected poems would be helpful for preachers working from the lectionary, and maybe a few worship leaders who wanted to incorporate poetry into services on occasion. The work of understanding scripture, in its most robust sense, is that of holding together the word of God that we have received in scripture as we have been taught to understand it, with the word of God that is spoken to us in the present... C. Christopher Smith The RCL follows a three-year cycle (Years A, B, and C, and then circles back to the texts of Year A in the fourth year), and as I am near completion of the cycle, I’ve found that it’s not just preachers and worship leaders who appreciate the poetry selections. Laypeople in churches that use the RCL appreciate having the poems to help them process the scriptural passages that they hear in their worship services. I’ve also added poetry selections that accompany the readings for the Narrative Lectionary, which is fairly popular among churches that don’t use the RCL. Others, both clergy and laity, in churches that don’t use the RCL or the Narrative Lectionary, often appreciate the connection of poetry with scripture passages, even if the timing doesn’t coincide with their church’s worship. Curating these Lectionary Poems each week has become a sort of Sabbath practice for me, a perfect excuse to spend a couple of hours reading poetry. Without this project, I most likely wouldn’t ever find this much time to sit and enjoy poems. Generally, I do this reading and selection on Sunday afternoons or evenings. I try to select poems from a diverse array of poets—women and men; of various eras, ethnicities, and nationalities; Christian writers, poets of other faiths, and of no faith at all—and I’ve tried not to repeat any poem in the three-year cycle. I try to stay away from poems that merely re-narrate or illustrate the scriptural text. Rather, I often find a key word or phrase that stands out in biblical text and seek out poems that explore this word or phrase. Certain poets recur frequently in the three-year cycle of Lectionary Poetry: Malcolm Guite, Nikki Grimes, and Madeleine L’Engle, because each poet has written prolifically in reflection on biblical texts; Emily Dickinson, because she has simply written such a vast body of poetry; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Black female poet of the nineteenth century, whose work I stumbled upon as a result of this project, and who, although she didn’t publish vast numbers of poems, wrote frequently on biblical themes that are strikingly relevant today. I also tried to include a substantial number of poems from some of my favorite poets, including Thomas Merton, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Ross Gay, Lucille Clifton, Denise Levertov, Tania Runyan, and George MacDonald. I’m currently in the process of going back through the cycle of Lectionary Poetry and preparing it to be published as a book—or at least an e-book, in the short term. (Poetry is subject to stricter copyright rules than prose, which makes the publication process full of logistical and legal challenges). Some poems have inadvertently been repeated over the course of the cycle, so I’m fixing those by finding alternates so that no poem will be used twice. The e-book edition will not include the full text of contemporary poems that are under copyright (unless I have permission to use the full text) but rather will link to sites that have legitimately published the poem online with permission. That parameter requires confirming that all contemporary poems have legitimately been published online. Another part of the editing process is surveying the diversity of the poets included in this collection, both diversity across the poems for a given week, and diversity across the three-year cycle as a whole. One perk of the e-book edition is that it will have a scriptural index that will allow readers to find poems connected with a particular biblical passage. This index will hopefully make the e-book a more helpful resource for those who aren’t familiar with the RCL, and for those who are preaching in churches that don’t use the RCL. A few books exist that connect modern poems with passages of scripture (e.g., David Curzon’s excellent 1994 book, Modern Poems on the Bible ), but I’m not aware of any that cover as broad a swath of scripture as the Lectionary Poetry Project does. You can get the Lectionary Poems in your inbox every week, by signing up for The Englewood Review’s free weekly e-newsletter (and a get free ebook in the process!) Or, watch for the Lectionary Project ebook for Year A, which will be available in November. C. Christopher Smith is founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books , and the author of several books including Slow Church (co-authored with John Pattison) and How the Body of Christ Talks . He also is on the leadership team for Cultivating Communities , a project which helps local churches deepen relationships within their congregation and with their neighbors.

by Dave Trout A friend once told me, “I hate tribute albums,” and honestly, I get why people feel this way. Yet something compelled the creative team of Old Bear Records, UTR Media, and Andrew Greer to press on for nearly three years of work to release Bellsburg… The Songs of Rich Mullins . This 18-track album is on the one hand a tribute album, in many ways it’s something all its own. Producer Chris Hoisington was inspired by Rich’s last recording a week before he died—what is now known as The Jesus Record Demos . He wanted to know what would happen if we recorded Rich’s songs in a sparse, raw way—even putting analogue tape into the mix—instead of the full production you get on most tribute albums. What if, he asked, instead of going into a Nashville studio, we recorded these songs in Rich’s old house in Bellsburg, Tennessee? The dream came true. And nearly every artist we asked to participate in the recording said “yes”, from Rich’s friends and tour mates (e.g. Amy Grant, Mitch McVicker, Ashley Cleveland, Carolyn Arends, etc), to Rich’s family members (e.g. brother David Mullins, nephew Jonathan Mullins), to the next generation of artists influenced deeply by Rich’s life and music (e.g. Andrew Peterson, Jason Gray, Sara Groves, etc). The essence of the album is community. You hear some banter before and after some of the songs, there with intentionality. You can tell that these were not songs recorded in isolation, but the tone and beauty of the album feels like a tapestry woven together. Some of my favorite moments are actually found in the imperfections. It’s the opposite of a studio masterpiece; it feels more like you’re hanging on the front porch with dear friends enjoying songs the speak into our hearts. Rich frequently told people that he was convinced that his songs would have a short life-cycle, that no one would care about his music in 10 or 15 years. Now, here we are, 25 years after his death, and it seems like some of his songs are just beginning to connect with us in new and fresh ways. With the help of presenting these songs in a more timeless folk/Americana styling, it’s a joy to see his songs carry forward and maybe even resonate in new ways we could have never imagined. Bellsburg (The Songs of Rich Mullins) is available on all platforms on November 4. Dave Trout is the founder of UTR Media, a non-profit building community around well-crafted, faith-inspired music. His wife, kids, and puppy live in Murfreesboro, TN.

by Jason Gray Note: You can read the first part of Frederick Buechner, God’s Handkerchief by Jason Gray here . Read on for the second part, “The View from Buechner’s Window”. In his book Wishful Thinkin g (1973), Frederick Buechner said of the Bible, “If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond. Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a holy bore and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.” I suppose you could make a similar case for any great writer, Buechner included: the flyspecks and dust of it are the words on the page, the style of writing, and the articulated ideas themselves—the graffiti scrawled across pages for others to find afterward that, in essence, says, “Kilroy was here.” On one level, Buechner’s writing was merely the articulation of the world as he saw it, written in the good faith that “the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” (Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey , 1982) But on another level, his writing was so much more than the words on the page, beautiful as they were. For me, Frederick Buechner didn’t write books as much as he crafted windows—portals through which the deep mystery of God could call out to the deep mystery of myself. More than the words he wrote about what he saw, the enduring gift of Buechner’s writing is that he fostered in me a way of seeing. There is so much beauty I wouldn’t recognize if he hadn’t given me a way to see it: a world of the holy hidden in the profane, the sacred in the shabby, all of it drenched in grace and a joy that against all odds will swallow tragedy in the end. I believe God didn’t want me to miss these things, so he sent Frederick Buechner into my life to give me eyes to see them. There’s no way I could write a post to do this phenomenon justice, so once again I’ve accepted that anything I write will be both too much and not enough, and I’ve limited myself to just three of the many wonders I’ve seen through Buechner’s window. 1. Doubt as a sacred mechanism for finding truth. I never got the sense when I read Buechner that he was anxious for me to believe anything. More often than not it felt like he simply offered personal observations for the reader to do with as they pleased. One of the features I love most about his writing is the way he’d make a skeptic’s argument better than they might’ve made it themselves, which, of course, made his faith that much more compelling. Consider the way he acknowledges the implausibility of the virgin birth, validating the doubter by meeting them in their skepticism (which is a form of incarnation—breaking into someone’s reality to meet them where they’re at) before suggesting that the immaculate conception is not as preposterous as you might think if considered a certain way: “ The earliest of the four gospels makes no reference to the virgin birth, and neither does Paul, who wrote earlier still. On later evidence, however, many Christians have made it an article of faith that it was the Holy Spirit rather than Joseph who got Mary pregnant. If you believe God was somehow in Christ, it shouldn’t make much difference to you how he got there. If you don’t believe, it should make less difference still. In either case, life is complicated enough without confusing theology and gynecology. “ In one sense anyway, the doctrine of the virgin birth is demonstrably true. Whereas the villains of history can always be seen as the products of heredity and environment, the saints always seem to arrive under their own steam. Evil evolves. Holiness happens.” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) In full view of academic questions surrounding the virgin birth as a tenet, Buechner puts forth the phenomenon of saintliness as a kind of recurring virgin birth wherever it happens, creating space to consider it at least as a principle. And just like that, he honors skepticism while simultaneously chipping away at it, disarming argumentativeness by finding a slim patch of common ground. Another example of his sympathy with/honoring of the skeptic is found in his novel, The Return Of Ansel Gibbs, where doubt is offered up as a necessary part of spiritual authenticity: Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and. . . great laughter. (Frederick Buechner, The Return Of Ansel Gibbs , 1958) And here, his most direct affirmation of doubt: Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) In his book The Alphabet Of Grace (1970,) Buechner wrote, “If there’s no room for doubt, there’s no room for me.” Maybe this is why his writing always set a large table with room for everyone, no matter where you found yourself along the spectrum of faith, as though he really believed that, “Whether you call on him or don’t call on him, God will be present with you.” (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then , 1983) 2. The holy work of paying attention We might be tempted to imagine that the holy things of the world are strictly associated with religion and only come to us via the proper religious channels, presided over by experts in piety. But through Buechner’s eyes, I learned that, while that may be occasionally true (and when it is, it’s more likely in spite of all the religious fuss than because of it), holiness has a mischievous quality to it, showing up in the places I’d least expect. It can also be terribly shy—furtively hiding when I try to look directly at it, best spotted out of the corner of my eye. “ Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God’s holiness is God’s Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God’s mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize. “ One holy place I know is a workshop attached to a barn. There is a wood-burning stove in it made out of an oil drum. There is a workbench, dark and dented, with shallow, crammed drawers behind one of which a cat lives. There is a girlie calendar on the wall, plus various lengths of chain and rope, shovels and rakes of different sizes and shapes, some worn-out jackets and caps on pegs, an electric clock that doesn’t keep time. On the workbench are two small plug-in radios, both of which have serious things wrong with them. There are several metal boxes full of wrenches and a bench saw. There are a couple of chairs with rungs missing. There is an old yellow bulldozer with its tracks caked with mud parked against one wall. The place smells mainly of engine oil and smoke – both wood smoke and pipe smoke. The windows are small, and even on bright days what light there is comes through mainly in window-sized patches on the floor. “ I have no idea why this place is holy, but you can tell it is the moment you set foot in it if you have an eye for that kind of thing. For reasons known only to God, it is one of the places God uses for sending God’s love to the world through .” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) Notice the demureness of glory in this scene from his novel, The Final Beast , when the protagonist prays: “Please,” he whispered. Still flat on his back, he stretched out his fists as far as they would reach—”Please . . .” then opened them, palms up, and held them there as he watched for something, for the air to cleave, fold back like a tent flap, to let a splendor through… “ Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood. That was all—a tick-tock rattle of branches… but praise him, he thought. Praise him. Maybe all his journeying, he thought, had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, to see nothing cross the threshold but to see the threshold, to hear the dry clack-clack of the world’s tongue at the approach perhaps of splendor.” (Frederick Buechner, The Final Beast 1965) Maybe the most poignant instances of the sacred in the mundane show up in his reflection about a day in the life of Jesus: “ …When he saw a big crowd approaching, he figured he didn’t have enough steam left to do much for them that day, so he went and climbed into a boat for a few hours’ peace, only to find that the disciples were hot on his heels and wanted to go along too. So he took them. Then he lay down in the stern of the boat with a pillow under his head, Mark says (4:34), and went to sleep. “ Matthew leaves out the details about the stern and the pillow presumably because he thought they weren’t important, which of course they’re not, and yet the account would be greatly impoverished without them. There’s so little about Jesus in the Gospels you can actually see . “ He didn’t doze off in the bow where the spray would get him and the whitecaps slapped harder. He climbed back into the stern instead. There was a pillow under his head. Maybe somebody put it there for him. Maybe they didn’t think to put it there till after he’d gone to sleep, and then somebody lifted his head a little off the hard deck and slipped it under. “ He must have gone out like a light because Mark says the storm didn’t wake him, not even when the waves got so high they started washing in over the sides. They let him sleep on until finally they were so scared they couldn’t stand it any longer and woke him up. They addressed him respectfully enough as Teacher, but what they said was reproachful, petulant almost. “Don’t you see that we’re all drowning ?” (Mark 4:38)… “ The Roman officer, the sick old lady, the overenthusiastic scribe, the terrified disciples, the lunatic — something of who he was and what he was like and what it was like to be with him filters through each meeting as it comes along, but for some reason it’s the moment in the boat that says most. The way he lay down, bone tired, and fell asleep with the sound of the lapping waves in his ears. The way, when they woke him, he opened his eyes to the howling storm and to all the other howling things that he must have known were in the cards for him and that his nap had been a few moments of vacation from. The helplessness of the disciples and the way he spoke to them. The things he said to the wind and to the sea. “ Lamb of God, Rose of Sharon, Prince of Peace — none of the things people have found to call him has ever managed to say it quite right. You can see why when he told people to follow him, they often did, even if they backed out later when they started to catch on to what lay ahead. If you’re religiously inclined, you can see why they went even so far as to call him Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, the Son of God, and call him these things still, some of them. And even if you’re not religiously inclined, you can see why it is you might give your immortal soul, if you thought you had one to give, to have been the one to raise that head a little from the hard deck and slip a pillow under it.” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) I’ve read that passage maybe a hundred times, and I still feel the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes at the thought of Jesus resting his head on that pillow—such a commonplace thing that I might’ve missed if Buechner hadn’t shown me the resplendent glory of it. Perhaps it’s this most beloved of Buechner’s quotes that best sums up this hunt for the holy in the mundane: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then , 1983) 3. The broken places of our humanity are where the light shines through Buechner’s best characters—whether from his novels, theological works, or memoirs—possess a brokenness that allows a light to shine through them, giving us hope that if God works through characters such as these, maybe he can do the same through the likes of me. I think this is true of Buechner himself, most of all, that broken and holy character who is spilled out on every page of his books. Who would’ve guessed it? It turns out the human condition is the precondition necessary for the divine to break in. Buechner might’ve said it best through Saint Brendan: “ Pushing down hard with his fists on the table-top he heaved himself up to where he was standing. For the first time we saw he wanted one leg. It was gone from the knee joint down. He was hopping sideways to reach for his stick in the corner when he lost his balance. He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn’t leapt forward and caught him. “I’m as crippled as the dark world,” Gildas said.“If it comes to that, which one of us isn’t, my dear?” Brendan said. Gildas with but one leg. Brendan sure he’d misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was cripples all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees. “To lend each other a hand when we’re falling,” Brendan said. “Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.” Amen. #semifeature Jason Gray is a recording artist with Centricity Records. His latest single, out now, is "When I Say Yes".

by John Cal Editor’s Note: This year’s return to an in-person Hutchmoot gathering also allowed our favorite chef/writer John Cal to bless us with his thoughtful essays before each evening meal. What follows is his Thursday night pre-meal address from Hutchmoot ’22. Self: Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. (Spoken) When you read you begin with . . Response: A-B-C Self: When you sing you begin with do-re-mi. Response: Do-re-mi Self: The first three notes just happen to be do-re-mi. Response: Do-re-mi Self: Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti…. Do, a dear, a female dear Re, a drop of golden sun Mi, a name I call myself Fa, a long long way to run So, a needle pulling thread La, a note to follow so Ti, a drink with jam and bread And that will bring us back to do, oh, oh, oh Everyone: Do, a dear, a female dear Re, a drop of golden sun Mi, a name I call myself Fa, a long long way to run So, a needle pulling thread La, a note to follow so Ti, a drink with jam and bread And that will bring us back to do, oh, oh, oh, do We were friends. We were supposed to be friends, but the world around us changed. The rules were different. Our surroundings had shifted. It all happened as if overnight while none of us were paying attention. We no longer knew how to relate to each other, and it was all tempered by how very hungry we all were, wandering the city streets in Austria. During my senior year in college, my dear friend Marsha Steiner got engaged to Tomaś Bartulec, a kind Czech man she met while working abroad in Prague. After two years of courting and many flights back and forth between The Czech Republic and Lincoln, Nebraska, he proposed, and together they planned a Christmas wedding in the small town of Trinec, just south of the Polish border. Six of us, of her college friends, got the money together for plane fares to Europe. We borrowed backpacks. We told our families that in lieu of Christmas, we’d be half a world away at the wedding, supporting our friend Marsha, of course. It would be worth the great sacrifice, and a week-long jaunt through Central Europe afterward didn’t hurt. But it’s hard being in a new world. Exciting, exhilarating, yes. The challenge and adventure can be thrilling, yes, but also hard. The six of us had always been friends under the construct of college—dorm rooms, cafeteria halls, admin buildings, computer labs—but who were we without the comfort of familiar surroundings? Jeremy wanted to see cathedrals. Gina wanted to buy shoes. Sissel and Tim had been to Europe before and wanted to meander through nostalgia. Unlike the rest of us, Leslie managed to be a good time wherever she went, and I, like I always want, as I’ve always wanted, longed for a quiet corner to sit, sip something delicious, and watch the world around me. With all that we disagreed on, one of the more difficult things to navigate was that three of us were vegetarians and three of us were not. Perhaps it is different now in 2022, but nearly two decades ago in Central Europe, vegetarian restaurants weren’t easy to come by, and so we ended up eating a lot of pasta. It was the easiest way that we all could share meals together, and we were all getting sick of it. We were beginning to fracture down the middle. It’s been a long three years since we’ve all been together, and the world feels—the world is —different. In this new world, I’ve found myself contemplating the beginning, my first Hutchmoot, over a decade ago now. My friend Ashley had attended before, and when she invited me along and I agreed to go, I asked, as any good Enneagram 6 does, “Is there anything I should think about to prepare?” “People will assume that you believe all the same things they do,” she said. The last three years have been such a palpable reminder of how not true that assumption is. And maybe for some of you, these last few years feel like new territory, but I’ve been brown my whole life. Some of you are women or Asian or differently abled. Even in these crowded halls, even among friends, there are lots of ways someone can feel alone—like a scared nun turned governess for a grieving captain and his seven children. Just three Hutchmoots ago, I was having a conversation with a man, a theology student I’d put in his late 20s, who had just become an Anglican and was in the process of studying to become a priest. “Anglicanism has so much truth,” he said. “I wanted to be aligned with a church that has roots in ancient tradition. ” “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve mostly attended evangelical churches, but I just started to go to a liturgical church and have really loved the rhythm of it.” “Sure,” he replied, “but not all liturgical churches are created equal. Anglicanism is not like Catholicism or Episcopalianism which have both gotten so much wrong about God.” At the time I was living in Portland, Oregon, and attending services at an Episcopalian Cathedral. So how do we do this? Because I still believe it’s worth doing, this being in a room together, after everything that has happened—not just in the past three years, but with all of the stories that each of us carries—when so many of us feel so raw, with everything we’ve experienced, with everything we know…with protests and shootings, with masks and vaccines, with embryos and babies, and banned books, with what each of us may feel about the police, or the president, or whether or not Black Lives Matter. Let us make Christianity a place where we recognize the Divinity in one another, that breath, that life, that spark that was first shared with us in Eden. John Cal When I was a kid growing up in Hawaii, I had a Youth Pastor that would often tell us the story of how the word ‘aloha’ came to be. “Before the ancient Hawaiians became a polytheistic society,” she said “they believed in one god, who they called Alo, and ‘Ha’ is the Hawaiian word for breath. So when we say aloha to one another, we are sharing the breath of God.” Similarly, Moses’s recording of the creation story found in the second chapter of Genesis talks about the shared breath of our God: “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground.” Sometimes it’s hard to remember that He made us and He called us good. “He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.” This acknowledging of breath happens in so many greetings, so many beginnings when people come together around the world—like the nomadic Bedouins, who greet each other by rubbing noses, or the Maori of Aotearoa who rest their foreheads against each other before sharing a sacred breath. In Greenland, it’s called kunik when you sniff someone you love and then press your nose on their skin to breathe on them, and in Tuvalu, you press your cheeks together and inhale. I even hear hints of this sacred exchange in the meaning of the Sanskrit greeting namaste: that which is divine in me bows to that which is divine in you. It was raining in Austria, that day when our differences came to a head. By that time, many of us weren’t talking much to one another. In the days before Yelp or smartphones or even coffee shops with Wifi, the best we could do was wander the streets looking for something besides pasta to eat. We walked south away from the Danube past restaurant after restaurant that just wouldn’t do. First through Stephansplatz, down Kärntner Straße. We turned east at the opera house. Then a few blocks down, the place on the corner had a big fish on its sign, and all at once and almost instinctively, like when Peter and Andrew were first called by Jesus, we turned inside. I don’t know how we came to a consensus that the place on the corner was acceptable. We didn’t even look at the menu before we went in, but I do know that being out of the rain helped. I honestly can’t remember what anyone else ordered, but I do remember what my supper tasted like. I was so overwhelmed and afraid to try something new. For a moment, I think I may have even believed that it would have just been simpler to have pasta again, a meal that on face value we all believed in enough, but that didn’t really leave anyone satisfied. The waiter helped me order when he saw me panicking with so many choices in front of me. “What does it taste like?” I asked. “Creamy and sharp and a little sweet,” he said. “You might like it.” Isn’t faith the worst? Taking a step into the unknown, believing the assurance that it’s going to be okay, but living in the reality that it might not be. I took a chance on the unknown, the Thom Kha, a Thai soup made with chicken and coconut milk and galangal root; and like so many bowls of soup before—my grandmother’s chicken and rice, my father’s favorite Portuguese bean, bowls of corn chowder shared with friends—it warmed me from the inside. As we sat around the table, as the six of us in our differences shared an intimate space, as we supped and breathed together in this new world, it all became just a little easier. We didn’t have to agree on everything to be friends. We didn’t even have to agree on much. I just had to remember that the person sitting across the table from me was made from the same stuff I was: dust and breath. I get that the room is still heavy with all the things that may divide us, and whether we should or should not talk about race or sex or politics, or even begin to tackle the really polarizing issues like whether or not Princess Leia is a legitimate Disney Princess. I get how hard it is. I get what we are facing tonight as we sit across from each other, as we share in our supper, as we sit across the table not from ideas or beliefs but from real living people. And I am not naïve to believe that a bowl of soup can fix any of that, but I do believe it can help us get to the next step. The ancient Hawaiians understood, as did Moses, and the Bedouins, and the Inuit, and the Maori that the same Divine breath that is in me is also in you. Maybe one day I’ll understand too. Maybe one day, I’ll be counted as a person who shares the breath of God. So after all this time, let us come together. Let us join with the Divine in the ongoing creation of the world. Let us make Christianity a place where we recognize the Divinity in one another, that breath, that life, that spark that was first shared with us in Eden. And if for a moment you forget, when it all becomes just a little too hard, first, take a breath, then remember what you’ve been given from the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start.

by Russ Ramsey Allow me to introduce you to this special Limited Rabbit Room Edition of Rembrandt is in the Wind . I dedicated this book to my art teachers from middle school and high school because they played a formative role in developing my love for art. The Rabbit Room played a similar role in my desire to write.  Back in 2007, I received an email from Andrew Peterson asking if I would like to be part of an online community he was hoping to build—a place, he said, “where you’ll find writings and reviews by artists and appreciators of art, conversations about creation, storytelling, songwriting, and the long journey of becoming who we’re meant to be.” The idea was that we would focus on the kind of art, books, music, film, and ideas we’d recommend to a friend over lunch—just the good stuff. I believe my first articles were about the TV series Band of Brothers and Phil Keaggy’s instrumental masterpiece Beyond Nature . (Good grief, I just went back and reread those two essays from 15 years ago. You can see hints of the newness of the Rabbit Room in those posts, and I can see a young writer trying some things out—some of which I’ve developed over the years and kept, others of which I have moved on from. Such is the way of the writer. You can also find an old relic of a video featuring Stuart Duncan and the Captains Courageous from the recording sessions for Resurrection Letters II —circa 2007—if you follow a link in one of the essays. You’re gonna want to watch that video.) Writing for The Rabbit Room was my first experience with crafting pieces that were intended to be read by a largely anonymous audience. One byproduct of being part of this gathering of writers was that we had the opportunity to help each other develop. We shared early drafts, experimented with style, and received honest feedback. The Rabbit Room is where I first learned about my voice as a writer. Who was I? What did I have to say? How would I go about saying it? This community is where I worked through all of that and so much more early on as I developed in this craft I love so much. Because of this history, I cannot begin to tell you how much it pleases me that Zondervan wanted to do a limited edition of one of my books with The Rabbit Room. How is the Limited Rabbit Room Edition different from the original Zondervan Reflective edition? It is full color throughout with a larger trim size and a lovely blue bookmark ribbon. Also, the team at Zondervan took the time to completely redo the page layout so that they could place all the images I included in line with the text where they are mentioned—no flipping back and forth to the full-color insert in the middle. Finally, it truly is a limited edition. They didn’t print many, and when they’re gone, there will be no second run. So it is with no small amount of gratitude to Andrew and the entire Rabbit Room community that we, together with the fine team at Zondervan Reflective, offer this beautiful limited edition of a book I know I would not have written had it not been for this community. I hope you enjoy it. Click here to order the new limited full-color hardcover edition of Rembrandt Is In The Wind from the Rabbit Room store. Russ Ramsey is the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church Cool Springs in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and four children. He grew up in the fields of Indiana and studied at Taylor University and Covenant Theological Seminary (MDiv, ThM). Russ is the author of the Retelling the Story Series (IVP, 2018) and Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death (IVP, 2017).

by David Mitchel “ . . . together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings II. 8.) Of the things most books have in common, I delight especially in dedications. Whether formal, obligatory, funny, or profound, they can reveal much of an author’s temper and, specifically, the spirit in which a book was composed. Wendell Berry’s dedication to his latest collection of Port William stories, How it Went , is as fine an example of this as I have seen. “This book is for Den—who defined my task: ‘How to remember, and why.’” All Berry’s books—essays, poetry, Port William stories—are rich in memory, and the hows and whys of remembering; How it Went particularly so. Told from the point of view of an elderly Andy Catlett, one of the Port William membership’s most articulate storytellers, the book distills the refined and telescopic qualities of well-preserved memories like few others. Like a bottle of wine, a memory will not lie about the land and weather that produced it, but the memory aged fifty years will not be as it was on first impression. It will either gain richness with faithful and judicious storage, or be ruined if abused or neglected. David Mitchel A common modern error about memories is that they exist in two kinds: correct or errant (with the second kind comprising the mistaken and the deliberately tampered with). A human’s mind’s eye, however, is a more sensitive instrument than a camera or microphone. And a memory faithfully preserved may yet change over time, as it nestles into new contexts and resonates with other memories. Like a bottle of wine, a memory will not lie about the land and weather that produced it, but the memory aged fifty years will not be as it was on first impression. It will either gain richness with faithful and judicious storage, or be ruined if abused or neglected. Catlett’s mind proves to be—in How it Went as elsewhere—a cellar full of faithfully stored memories, conveying precisely the conditions in which they were born and adding complex resonances gained through decades of reflection. The fidelity of Catlett’s memories, and the preservation of his memories in writing, is also underscored by their telescopic quality. He can remember how he remembered events as a boy or as a younger man, when the memory was fresh from the vineyard, and reflect on that memory itself through how he remembers as an older man. If you’ve not read any other Berry, or any of the other Port William books, you may be tempted to conclude from what I’ve written thus far that How it Went is so many layers of navel-gazing. Not so; narrator Andy Catlett is a faithful witness of a treasured place and beloved persons. Like all faithful witnesses, he is aware of and accounts for himself, but that is not his object. His object is to convey the essence of the lands and persons he loves. And that brings us to the why of his remembering. Port William, its membership, and the nearby countryside and farms are beautiful and fragile. In them, we see the fragility of beautiful things, and the beauty of fragile things, especially when those things are under threat from the acids of modernity and postmodernity. Keeping the memory of them alive is their only protection, their only hope of forming sound human affections and commitments: Now, in his latter years, Andy knows that [Alvin Coulter’s farm] could not have lasted as he saw it for very long. And by this he understands how fragile it was, how temporary and passing, in the rush of the terrible century in which he and it had so briefly and so lastingly met. For he has never forgotten it. He could not have forgotten it. That day . . . he stood without moving, . . . looking with all his might at the beautifully kept small place that was surely one of the first landmarks or measures of his conscious allegiance, that would never again be far from his thoughts, that no doubt had influenced every right decision he had ever made. (Berry, 28-29.) It is here that the quality of the memory becomes crucial. When a time, a place, and a community have a fragile beauty that makes them dear, it becomes easy to idealize them, then defend them with reactionary anger. Hannah Coulter once had an eschatological vision of a “new Port William coming down from heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband” (Berry, Hannah Coulter, 43.), but the characteristic memory of the Port William membership does not ascribe to Port William an Edenic age stolen by invaders. The fragility of Port William’s beauty under the sun, “in the rush of the terrible century,” colors its memories with sadness. Those in the Port William membership, no less than the Lady Galadriel of Lothlorien, are well aware that they are fighting a long defeat. But in How it Went , that sadness mingles with generous measures of humor and hope, producing an atmosphere not unlike what Alexander Schmemann called “bright sadness.” It is an atmosphere that, if we could once get our heads into it, would never again be far from our thoughts. #WendellBerry David Mitchel is a small-town lawyer who has represented clients in a broad spectrum of causes, ranging from foster care to business transactions to property disputes to the defense of criminal charges to federal habeas corpus and Civil Rights actions. His passion for literature and story, which he caught first from Tolkien, informs all of this work—which requires patient, careful adjudication of competing stories and creativity to help clients and courts write the rest of the story justly and wisely. David was born and raised near Baltimore, Maryland, went to law school at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and now lives in central Virginia with his wife Libby and their two young daughters.

by Leslie E. Thompson Having grown up in a non-liturgical tradition, Advent as a practice is new for me. Though my mama handcrafted beautiful felt nativity-scene Advent calendars for us, we couldn’t control ourselves and always thought the calendar worked best with all the pieces at once. Rearranged. Over and over. She didn’t seem to mind. Then there was the annual Advent candle my grandmother would gift each year–a tradition that sounds warm and delightful but always ended up being a waxy reminder of forgetfulness when we’d have to burn through four days at once. Of course, there was the weekly candle lighting at church–featuring a family carrying a single flame, carefully yet briskly walking down the aisle toward the candles at the altar before the fire went out. Even though I’d been surrounded by Advent, the reality of it as a framework for understanding Christmas didn’t sink in until I was an adult. I’ve grown to appreciate it, especially the practice of assigning themes to each of the weeks; It provides space for processing the complexities of the season. The timeframe from Thanksgiving to the New Year is one of immense joy and celebration, but it brings memories of loved ones lost, reminders of dreams deferred, and longings for things to be made right. It was this dichotomy of celebration and grief that we had in mind when developing the Every Moment Holy Advent journal. We wanted to offer a reminder that the same God who invites you into a celebration will also sit with you on the back porch while you grieve the loss of someone who used to sit in that now-empty chair. The same God who invites you to rejoice, also mourns the loss of your pregnancy. The same God who delights in laughter and jubilant chaos will sit with you in the still of night when social exhaustion overwhelms. God is not threatened by the dark. There is room for all of it during the Advent season, and what better proof than the Messiah himself arriving to live as we live, hurt as we hurt, cry as we cry, and laugh as we laugh? Perhaps this journal will help you embrace that truth as you enter into the coming weeks. The 4-week journal centers on four themes: Hope, Faith, Joy, and Peace. Each theme features a liturgy from the Every Moment Holy series and writing prompts that invite reflection and response. As a pairing to the journal, Doug McKelvey has crafted a Liturgy Writing Guide for the Advent season which can be used as a supplement to the journal or on its own. The journal begins with “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season”, and we offer it to you here as we welcome the holiday season: A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season LEADER:  As we prepare our house for the coming Christmas season, we would also prepare our hearts for the returning Christ. PEOPLE: You came once for your people, O Lord, and you will come for us again. Though there was no room at the inn to receive you upon your first arrival,  We would prepare you room here in our hearts and here in our home, Lord Christ. As we decorate and celebrate, we do so to mark the memory of your redemptive movement into our broken world, O God. Our glittering ornaments and Christmas trees, Our festive carols, our sumptuous feasts— By these small tokens we affirm that something amazing has happened in time and space— that God, on a particular night, in a particular place, so many years ago, was born to us, an infant King, our Prince of Peace. Our wreaths and ribbons and colored lights, our giving of gifts, our parties with friends— these have never been ends in themselves.  They are but small ways in which we repeat that sounding joy first proclaimed by angels in the skies near Bethlehem. In view of such great tidings of love announced to us, and to all people, how can we not be moved to praise and celebration in this Christmas season?  As we decorate our tree, and as we feast and laugh and sing together,a we are rehearsing our coming joy! We are making ready to receive the one who has already, with open arms, received us! We would prepare you room here in our hearts and here in our home, Lord Christ. Now we celebrate your first coming, Immanuel, even as we long for your return. O Prince of Peace, our elder brother, return soon. We miss you so! Amen. Find the Every Moment Holy Advent Journal and liturgy writing guide at everymomentholy.com/advent .

by Carly Marlys I was at a friend’s house a couple of months ago, and we were sitting around a dinner table talking together when I started to feel sick. I’m allergic to most things, so for a while, I thought the problem was just too much dust or cat hair, but then I started to sweat and my brain clouded over. I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t hear what the others were saying. My stomach swelled and then my liver and kidneys overloaded; it was all I could do not to double over in pain. I knew what was happening. It had happened many times before. I made my best excuses and got out of the house as fast as I could. Then I just sat in my car, swallowed a handful of pills, and cried. I knew I couldn’t go back to that house, at least not for a long, long time.  I have mold poisoning, which means that I was exposed to mold in houses and apartments over and over until my natural defenses wore away. Black mold toxins entered my bloodstream and settled in my cells. They wormed into my muscles, clogged up my brain, and collected behind my eyes. I’m not sure when it all started, but I do know that there are so many toxins in my body that I can’t be exposed to anymore without my organs and my brain sounding the alarm bells. If there is any type of mold in someone’s house, my body will scream at me until I’m out in the open air again, and I will feel the effects for days or weeks afterward. Over the last five months, I’ve been barred from concerts, game nights, seminars, movie nights, hangouts, and dinners. I’ve taken hundreds of pills and gone to a handful of doctors and tried everything I could think of. I’ve sat in my room, trying to get rest, as my body fights battles and loses them and fights battles and wins them and then fights and loses again. Someday it will get better, but the timeline is uncertain. I hate it. It was hard when it started, the first time my stomach swelled and my head pounded and my body cooked up a fever that never seemed to end. Months later, it’s still just as hard as it was when this whole journey began, except now I’m even more tired. But contrary to how it may seem, this post is not just a lament. It is also a letter of gratitude. About two months ago, my health got significantly worse. It came out of nowhere. I had been doing my best to stay on my feet, to not ask for help, to not need anybody. I was still working full-time and tearing up in bathrooms and behind closed doors where no one could see me. And then, my ability to pretend to be okay ran out. One Sunday morning, I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t take care of myself. It wasn’t safe for me to drive. I sent a voice message to a group of my friends. I didn’t even know what to ask for. I just said I needed help; within hours, they arrived in force. They made me hot tea, cooked me dinner, watched movies with me on the couch, and held me when I started to cry. They were kind and understanding and I had no choice but to lean on them. They got me through that week and I went back to work. I was feverish and fragile but I was making it, until a few nights later when I went to watch a friend play piano. The moment I walked into the building, I could tell that I wasn’t supposed to be there. The air was thick and close. The walls were tattered and tired and oozing mold. I tried to stand near a window, stay away from the walls and the air conditioning units, anything to allow me to stay there. Instead, within 20 minutes, I could feel my organs betraying me and I had to leave. That little bit of mold was the last straw. I called my parents the next day. I was too sick to live on my own. I bought a plane ticket, packed a bag, and then sat on the floor of my bathroom and cried. I went to tell my friends and cried some more. I told them I was angry, that I was tired of this thing running my life. I told them I had stopped praying because asking God to fix it just made me angry. Every time I asked for healing, he told me no. They prayed with me and held me, and when I went home they sent me letters and called me to make sure I was okay. When I returned to Nashville, they were here to welcome me back. My friends and my family gave me hope. I’ve lost hope again since then. I lose hope about once a week now, and every time when I run out of energy and I can’t face it by myself, my family and friends are there. Although there are rooms I can’t walk into and times I am frustrated and exhausted, they have loved me, and it has helped me hold together. More than that, it has made me realize that while I am not yet healed from mold poisoning, I may be healing from the need to do everything on my own. If I were perfectly well and capable, if I could cook for myself, if I could keep my heart calm and hope for healing in a vacuum, maybe I wouldn’t recognize my need for community. But I’ve found healing through the presence and prayers of those around me. Because I was struggling, I was forced to reach for help, and when I did, some hands reached back.  I’m not grateful for all of it. Maybe someday I will be, but right now, I can’t see the ending. There isn’t an easy path forward, at least one I can see, and that’s okay. I’m telling a hard and beautiful story, one in which I’m still in the middle. I’m not going to say that I am grateful for the pain and the exhaustion. Nor am I going to say how I’ve learned how to need people and recognize my limits and that I’m glad that this physical evidence of darkness found its way into my body. If I’m honest, I am still angry. I’m angry at the time I’ve lost and have yet to lose. Yet at the same time, I have never felt more loved in my life. Evil is not meant to be fought alone. Darkness cannot be pushed back with a fragile pair of hands. I thought I was strong enough to keep trudging along on my own, but I’m not and that is a blessed realization. If I had never run out of my own prayers, I would’ve never asked others to pray for me. If I had never run out of energy and willpower, I would’ve never asked others to walk beside me. I have been told all my life that I am not meant to walk through life on my own strength. I have been told to lean on God and others, yet I have always smiled and nodded and tried to forge on alone. That is until I couldn’t, until I was forced to recognize my limits and forced to let those who love me fill in the gaps. And in between the tears and the pills and the wondering, I am thankful.

by Caitlin Coats This Thanksgiving we are reminded that the past two years have robbed us of many feasts with friends. With so much lost, it reminds us anew of the importance of gathering together. Wherever you find yourself this year, we invite you to remember with us that “nothing good and true and right will be lost forever. All good things will be restored.” To that end, we offer you this liturgy from Every Moment Holy . A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends Leader: To gather joyfully is indeed a serious affair, for feasting and all enjoyments gratefully taken are, at their heart, acts of war. People: In celebrating this feast we declare that evil and death, suffering and loss, sorrow and tears, will not have the final word. But the joy of fellowship, and the welcome and comfort of friends new and old, and the celebration of these blessings of food and drink and conversation and laughter are the true evidences of things eternal, and are the first fruits of that great glad joy that is to come and that will be unending. So let our feast this day be joined to those sure victories secured by Christ. Let it be to us now a delight, and a glad foretaste of his eternal kingdom. Bless us, O Lord, in this feast. Bless us, O Lord, as we linger over our cups, And over tables laden with good things, as we relish the delights of varied texture and flavor, Of aromas and savory spices, Of dishes prepared as acts of love and blessing, Of sweet delights made sweeter by the communion of saints. May this shared meal, and our pleasure in it, bear witness against the artifice and deceptions of the prince of the darkness that would blind this world to hope. May it strike at the root of the lie that would drain life of meaning, and the world of joy, and suffering of redemption. May this our feast fall like a great hammer blow against that brittle night, Shattering the gloom, reawakening our hearts, stirring our imaginations, focusing our vision On the kingdom of heaven that is to come On the kingdom that is promised On the kingdom that is already, indeed, among us, For the resurrection of all good things has already joyfully begun. May this feast be an echo of that great supper of the Lamb, and a foreshadowing of the great celebration that awaits the children of God. Where two or more of us are gathered, O Lord, there you have promised to be And here we are And so, here are you. Take joy, O King, in this our feast. Take joy, O King! Leader: All will be well! Participants then take up the cry: All will be well! Nothing good and right and true will be lost forever. All good things will be restored. Feast and be reminded! Take joy, little flock. Take joy! Let battle be joined! Let battle be joined! Now you who are loved by the Father, prepare your hearts and give yourselves wholly to this celebration of joy, to the glad company of saints, to the comforting fellowship of the Spirit, and to the abiding presence of Christ who is seated among us both as our host and as our honored guest, and still yet as our conquering king. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, take seat, take feast, take delight!

by April Pickle I was no artist. Even when I was little, I didn’t paint pictures, I painted lines. I have laughed to cover my shame about it for most of my life. I was four years old when I stood at an easel and painted a page full of green in nursery school. I didn’t paint the sun or a tree or a rainbow. I painted green. Green lines. All green lines. Green line after green line until the page was full. Of course, I was thinking about art and artists in the days leading up to Hutchmoot. I was retelling my soul that it’s okay to go, even if I’m not an artist. And yes, I know that “Everybody’s a Creative” . But let’s face it: some folks, like Monet, paint The Poppy Field, Near Argenteuil, while others, like me, paint boring green lines. So back in October, when I was mulling over which childhood memory I could write about for Jonathan Rogers ’ Pre-Hutchmoot writing class, I couldn’t think of anything to write about, at first. But after typing “I can’t think of a memory to write about,” and staring for a while out the window at the hackberry trees, still green in October, I remembered again those green lines in nursery school. But this time, instead of making fun of myself for being embarrassingly uncreative, I let the memory sit down and talk to me. This time, I paid attention. This time, I listened. This time, I focused on that four-year-old girl, standing at the easel. I watched her, and she surprised me. She smiled as she painted. She wasn’t the least bit ashamed that she was painting green lines instead of an animal or a flower or a tree. She took joy in lifting and lowering, lifting and lowering a brush full of green. She was downright proud of those lines she was making. She loved her painting. I probed my memory for more explanation. I typed questions: Who was this four-year-old girl? Where did she come from? How did she end up at the nursery school in the first place? A year and a half before, her father (my father), had relocated our family from Texas to a little town in Tennessee called Dickson. This move was traumatic. It tore my older sister and me away from our grandparents—Mom and Pop, who, since our births, had cared for us while our parents were at work. Mom and Pop were farmers. My sister says that she rode on a tractor with Mom. She says I rode on a tractor with Pop. I don’t remember the tractors, but I’ve always been particularly fond of my Pop. I typed more questions. “What did the tractor look like? What about the land?” I pictured an old rusty tractor. I pictured a hard metal seat. I pictured little towheaded me, in front of my grandfather, underneath a big Texas sky. Then I remembered the peanuts. When I was little, my grandparents farmed peanuts. I remember the smell. I remember piles of peanuts stacked in burlap sacks on the back side of their house, in an area they called the breezeway. Surely, I would have ridden the tractor when Mom and Pop were harvesting peanuts. From that seat in front of Pop, I would have been looking out at a field full of peanut plants, growing in the sun. I stopped typing questions. I summoned Google, typed “peanuts growing in a field,” and clicked on the Images tab. My jaw dropped. My eyes teared up. The field was green. Green, green, green. Rows and rows of green. No wonder I painted green lines with such pride. I painted rows of green because I loved rows of green. I painted rows of green because I loved riding on the tractor with my grandfather. I had seen that field, not from a side road or from a television show, but from the middle of the Texas prairie, from the top of the tractor, next to my grandfather. I had been an eyewitness. How much I must have missed my grandfather. But with an easel in front of me and a paintbrush in my hand, I had found a way to feel closer to him. I had found a way to feel closer to the peanut farm. I had painted with creativity. I had painted with imagination. I had been an artist. I am not ashamed of that painting anymore. April Pickle lives in North Texas with five other human Pickles and two Pickle dogs.

by Elly Anderson Defining the Rabbit Room is not the shortest or simplest of endeavors. I’ve learned this over the past year and a half when catching up with loved ones and sharing about my life here in Nashville. Though I know many dread giving the “work update” to friends and family during the holiday season, it’s a delight for me. I start by telling them about the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, how writers like Tolkien and Lewis used to delight in creative collaboration and community in one of the rooms in the back called the Rabbit Room. I watch as the wheels start turning in their heads, laboring in part confusion but also intrigue. I then venture into a long-winded description of all the things we get to do here—Local Shows and podcasts, Fika and Hutchmoot, book releases, and theatrical premieres—and I watch as their facial expressions reflect pure joy. Something I love about the Rabbit Room is that it cannot be simply tied together with a red bow. There is no easy sentence that sums up all the goodness we get to be a part of or the feeling of seeing it take root in the world. It’s not just a place, a conference, a podcast hub, a bookstore, or a community. Instead, it’s many things wrapped in ribbons of red, blue, yellow, orange, turquoise, and perhaps periwinkle—things that are created and to celebrate the one true Creator himself. Whether you’ve been a long-time lover of the Rabbit Room or you’re reading the blog for the first time, I ask you to take a step in learning more about what it means to become a Rabbit Room member. Whether it’s a lecture night here at the Manor, a new press title, a blog post, a play like The Hiding Place , or staff support, membership deeply impacts our everyday needs as an organization and breathes life into our works and events. By making a recurring monthly donation of $25/month or more, you’re joining a community that speaks into the work of this place and nourishes Christ-centered communities for the life of the world. As a thank you, our Rabbit Room members receive various updates, opportunities, and gifts like the Hutchmoot Archives and the Member mug. If this speaks to you, I encourage you to join the team and partner in this mission with us. And if you’re already on board, we’re glad you’re here!

by Chris Slaten Providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us [Caesar] Augustus, whom she filled with virtue that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior, both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things […] The birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good tidings for the world that came by reason of him. [9 BC] The text above is from a stone inscription celebrating the birthday of Caesar Augustus, though the language is eerily familiar to modern churchgoers heading into the Christmas season. The good tidings of a savior, one who ends war and arranges all things, presents the gospel of an emperor who is no longer thought of in quite this light. So much of that has to do with the way each of these phrases is defined. How is this good news for countries of his conquest? For his political enemies? Caesar’s peace, Pax Romana, will come by sword. This is especially true of the name Augustus, which can be translated as something like “The Great One,” a name he took on as he rose to power which had far more inspirational appeal than his given name, Octavian, number eight. According to the verbs summarizing his life in Wikipedia , Augustus was, by most definitions, pretty great. After a reign of expanding, reforming, establishing, conquering, developing, restoring, and making it so that we say his name the eighth month of every year, he died at 75 of natural causes and was declared a Roman god. Boom. Well done. Cover art for “The Great One” by Josh Green. As part of the advertising of the time, his chosen name was ubiquitous on the sculptures, coins, and tablets of his domain with an intent to inspire and unite his people. It is in this context that Jesus holds up a coin that likely says something like “The Great One: Son of God” and says, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He doesn’t have to correct it, because his definition of those phrases is entirely different. He will redefine Messiah in a way that does not require an army to overthrow the government, and what it means to be truly great will be forever inverted. Several years ago Travis Hutchinson, the chaplain of the school where I teach, preached on that fascinating juxtaposition between the language that surrounded Augustus and Christ, and the song that I am sharing today was my way of working out those ideas in the weeks that followed. I’ve shared it at house shows and churches (and Hutchmoot!) for years with just my guitar, but I am especially excited today to share a fuller version of it. “The Great One” is out today on all music platforms. P.S. Special thanks to Andy Crouch for sharing the Priene Calendar Inscription with me over a Hutchmoot meal back in 2018. You can listen to Son of Laughter’s newest song, “The Great One,” below on YouTube. You can add it to your Christmas playlists here on Spotify or on Apple Music . The Great One He was just another number, Octavian, number eight, but the emperor inside him knew his name was not his fate. So he changed it to Augustus, The Great One, The Highest, so that Caesar, Son of God, would be the star that burned the brightest. He would be… The Great One! The Great One! His people would proclaim his name above all names: The Great One. He spoke chaos into order by edict and decree. He fortified new borders and preserved prosperity. Then he made of marble what had been made of clay, so his hand would span the centuries and even to today. All people who opposed him were crushed or put to flight, and the Peace of Rome filled every home by military might. He was… The Great One! The Great Ons! A man above all men with a kingdom without end. The Great One! The Great One! His people would proclaim his name above all names: The Great One. So when he counted up his people like money on the table two nobodies from nowhere looked for shelter in a stable, and the homeless hearts within them burned for a better day, while the brightest star was burning for their baby down in the hay. He would be… The Weak One. The Poor One. The Suffering One. The Scorned One. The Guilty One. The Foolish One. The Forsaken One. The Slain One. The Blameless One. The Faithful One. The Loved One. The True One. The Mighty One. The Merciful One. The Risen One. The New One. The Highest King who came to take upon our shame. A Man above all men with a Kingdom without end. His people would proclaim His Name above all names: The Great One! The Great One! The Great One! #semifeature Singer-songwriter Chris Slaten releases music under the name Son of Laughter. His most recent recording, No Story Is Over, was made possible by the generosity of listeners who hosted and attended his house and church shows across the country. He’s currently working on a musical about the life of Jacob, though he spends most of his time teaching high school literature in Chattanooga, TN, where he lives with his wife, Lyndsay, and their two delightful children.

by Pete Peterson I’ve been watching The Wingfeather Saga come together since the beginning and I’m so glad that today the public finally gets to see what the animation team has been up to. Tonight, episode one will be available to everyone everywhere via the Angel Studios app. [ Apple Store | Android ] Fangs? Maggotloaf? Igibys? Dragons? Songs? Books? Crannies? It’s all here, and over the next few weeks we’re getting three episodes, followed by the final three episodes of season one this February. Andrew and the team have taken a long road to get here and they are joined by a crazy-talented cast and crew that make up a who’s-who list of movies and animation. After seeing what they’ve done with these first few episodes, those who have read the books will be chomping at the bit to see what the team can do once the series gets into the epic territory that comes later. Fork factory? Ice Prairies? Green Hollows? Throg? Anniera? Yes, please. If you enjoy the show and want to support it and help seasons 2-7 happen, use the app to pay it forward (just like many of you have done with The Chosen ) and check out the merch store at the link below. Merch is one of the biggest ways you can support the show in a long-term way and they’ve got some really cool stuff available . Huge congrats to Andrew and the team. This is an enormous accomplishment—and it’s just the beginning. #semifeature

by Pete Peterson Wayne Garvey is a retired Methodist pastor, a neighbor, and a dear friend who leads the Rabbit Room team in prayer each Monday morning. I’m not sure exactly when he started showing up, but over the last few years he’s become a fixture around North Wind Manor and things don’t seem complete without him anymore. We’ve even adopted him as the unofficial Rabbit Room chaplain and have dubbed him the “Grandrabbit.” Wayne is always a delight to have in the room, but I especially appreciate the care he takes in writing a unique prayer for us as we start each week. He’s a wonderful writer and his kindness, care, and love for all of us (and all of you) come through loud and clear in his words. So this year, we asked him to turn his talents to writing these five prayers for Rabbit Room readers around the world. The first is a prayer for those who are lonely during the holiday season. The second and third are for the wrapping and opening of gifts, with the latter meant to be read around the tree on Christmas morning. And the final two are for the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. We hope these prayers of Wayne’s lead you into and out of the Christmas season with hope and joy. Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you. A Prayer for One Sitting in Loneliness A Prayer for the Wrapping of Christmas Gifts A Prayer Before the Giving of Christmas Gifts A Prayer for the Ending of a Year A Prayer for the Beginning of a Year Pete Peterson is the author of the Revolutionary War adventure The Fiddler’s Gun and its sequel Fiddler’s Green. Among the many strange things he’s been in life are the following: U.S Marine air traffic controller, television editor, art teacher and boatwright at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch, and progenitor of the mysterious Budge-Nuzzard. He lives in Nashville with his wife, Jennifer, where he's the Executive Director of the Rabbit Room and Managing Editor of Rabbit Room Press.

by Joe Sutphin I’ve never considered intelligence to be the defining factor in the acts and processes of making art. I’ve never once thought to myself, “Human artists could finally be supplanted if there were just something else out there with enough intelligence.” Humans are intelligent, and there is a high level of intelligence required in order to process artistic concepts and overcome the various challenges presented by any artistic medium. But to me, art has always been an extension of the person making it—the result, in part, of their personality and individuality, their hopes, fears, love, brokenness, spiritual nature, sense of longing, joy, passions. Intelligence is certainly a key factor in being able to process these inner feelings and senses, and then employ them in the act of making art. But intelligence alone does not produce art. Art is built upon the whole of the human experience. If you aren’t aware, AI art has become a very complicated and contested topic within the visual arts community. Not too many months ago, Artificial Intelligence image generators became available to the public. These generators allow any user to type descriptors into them, describing any form of image they would like to see created. The generator, loaded full of countless images found throughout the internet, essentially follows the specifics of the text prompt and then contrives several variations of an image. As users start to learn the quirks and better descriptors, they can refine their prompt vocabulary to get even better results. Then by tactfully refining result options down, over and over, users can come to some very striking imagery. But the generator/software is not able to come up with images from a blank slate no matter how intelligent its artificial intelligence seems. The machine has no “life experience”. AI possesses no memories of a life lived. Instead, the entirety of mankind’s digital record of visual art is fed into the AI generator, which then fuels this new virtual technology, and all done without the consent of millions of human creators, deceased or living. And the person typing the prompts into these generators does not need to have any artistic ability whatsoever. The results are impressive. AI image generation is still growing and is the equivalent of a rampant, unruly toddler who is about to transition into a fully functioning facsimile of an adult. But when I look into its eyes, I find it has no soul. Yet if there’s no soul, why do I care so much? Why does this concern me? It’s concerning because the technology is actually producing very impressive results, and it’s only just now getting its legs under it. The results, in some cases, are so impressive that, when used effectively, it can pass as true artwork made by human hands. Untrained eyes will be convinced of what they see in many cases. And as technology advances, the lines between AI and true art will begin to visibly blur together until they are indistinguishable. We start to enter a world of art inundated with imagery, yet devoid of humanity. Are we entering an era where the artist is no longer a central component in the creation of new art? Joe Sutphin As AI generators were first heavily explored earlier this year, the imagery being generated and shared was oftentimes outlandish in nature. Some of the trends being explored leaned into an otherworldly vision of sci-fi and fantasy that felt garish and preposterous. Envision, if you can, an endless plethora of Baroque-informed, sprawling dreamscapes of lattice-weave mountains, seemingly composed of crystalized spider silk, jutting from a formless darkness and jarringly interrupted by ominous, vaguely familiar yet somehow ambiguous shapes and forms of cloaked figures, birthed out of the chiaroscuro of undefined fire and fog—all as if it were painted by some ghostly, spectral amalgam of Rembrandt, Casper David Friedrich, Christopher Nolan, and Alan Lee. But as the months have passed, the growing community of AI image generator users has continued to fine-tune the terminology being used, and the results are sometimes frighteningly deceptive. It’s imperceptible to the majority of the public at the moment, but AI imagery is already being dropped into articles, and used in visual development. Somewhere, someone is being paid some amount of money to input pertinent verbiage into an AI generator in order to quickly create attractive images to aid text or inspire creative development for larger projects. At some small rate, there are definitely freelance art jobs that are no longer available to artists at beginner and intermediate levels in publishing. I believe that will become a trend in periodical publishing, and in some publishing for print. In the film industry, set, environment, costume, and character designers will have new competition for freelance jobs now that comparable images can be generated in a fraction of the time, and not at the cost of a team of traditional artists. Given enough time, Google image searches for specific artists could easily become a swamp of visual misinformation, making it a daunting task to truly know which results are actually the work of the artist being searched for, or simply part of the myriad of mashed-up or emulated AI forgeries. Today, everyday people are regularly generating incredible images through AI generators such as Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney among the most popular. Anyone with access to the correct artistic terminology, descriptors, and metadata can type a sequence of these words into a text field, click a button, and the image generator begins cutting years off of your road to an original work of art. With enough experience and savvy, the right person entering those words can cut that artistic journey—not in half, but by generations. With no natural talent or practical artistic skill at all, one can prompt an AI generator to create unique combinations of artistic components that our eyes instantly recognize as fine art. As viewers, we’re taken aback by this image that feels so familiar and effective, and that person never had to learn or attempt anything other than to type in the correct words. However impressive AI art is to take part in and to look at, many who are working in visual arts are desperately speaking out against AI imagery generators that are beginning to threaten their livelihood and their artistic identity. I’ve personally come across artists who have discovered AI imagery that was made by pulling from their own portfolio of work, creating images that mimic that artist’s style, aesthetic, medium, and subject matter but with none of the personal sacrifice and hard work. All across social media, working artists are echoing a sentiment that AI generators are now stealing from entire generations of artistic individuals. For ages, artists have taken pains in solving complex artistic processes in order to express their unique inner artistic concepts. The first human who conceived of creating an image for the purpose of instruction, record-keeping, or enjoyment, had to contemplate how to utilize the tools and materials readily available to them. Each subsequent creator of artistic imagery then worked their powerful minds and hands to refine those raw materials into tools and processes. They then experimented with new materials in order to devise new tools and processes. This slow and meaningful game of artistic leapfrog has continued throughout mankind’s chain of artistic growth. Figuratively speaking, while one artist is bent over their work, pouring their blood, sweat, and tears onto the page, the next artist gleans insight while peering over their shoulder. That artist then leaps forward, making something new from a mixture of their own personal experience and creativity and the inspiration and information they drew from those who came before them. There have always been measurable leaps in visual art, but Immeasurable risks were taken, countless failures endured, and lessons learned and passed forward through instruction, admiration, and inspiration. A price was paid. Art was earned. The sacrifice of an artist standing over their work, exposing their inner selves, trading away days, months, and years of life in order to bring something new into the world and connect with another living being is a true factor in why art has always held a sacred place in society. Are we entering an era where the artist is no longer a central component in the creation of new art? Is art at large still enjoyable if it all was generated by artificial intelligence? Personally, as I look at new art, I inevitably ponder who must have made it and what they were reaching for. What is their story? The artists themselves matter to me. At times, I have scrolled through the Midjourney hashtag on Instagram scrolling through post after post of truly impressive AI baroque/chiaroscuro/sci-fi/high fantasy imagery. Now and then I’ll visit the account of the person who made a particular AI post and then scroll back through that user’s account. More than a few times, I’ve scrolled through months worth of AI images, posted at a seemingly frantic rate of inspiration. Post after post of various iterations on the same types of heavy fantasy-driven images, and then suddenly, as if the account had been hacked by another user altogether, I’ll hit an abrupt moment where they posted their last honest attempt at making traditional art. Oftentimes, it was a post showing a genuine effort to figure out some process in acrylic or watercolor, with plenty of apparent struggle but plenty of effort to try and figure their way through their limitations. Then they came across an AI generator like Midjourney, and like some dark magic, artistic imagery beyond what they could reach just yet became attainable in minutes. End of artistic process. End of their personal artistic growth, mid-journey . How horribly ironic. There’s something truly unholy about it all in my eyes. By “unholy” I don’t mean to imply demonic . If you take a moment to contemplate what makes art a sacred and holy thing, then consider AI prompt-generated imagery and its purpose and uses, it’s unnatural, unholy. Part of what makes making art holy is that it’s real work by real people, contemplating and solving and overcoming limitations to create an image that didn’t exist before, and now does because a portion of life was traded away in order to bring the art to life. But there is no true reward in art making without the risk of failure. Artists that endure failure learn from it in order to grow, and then they try again with new insight. Joe Sutphin My heart behind writing this is that readers will become aware of what is taking place, and continue to lift up, celebrate and draw attention to real art made by real humans. I’m passionate about this topic because making art is emotionally, mentally, and physically hard work. We call it artwork . We take time out of our lives to visit museums and gaze at works of art. We describe the painstaking details in works of art. That very word describes hard work: painstaking, taking pains. Art-making is a true struggle. It requires strenuous effort, demands we make sacrifices, and dares us to take risks in order to receive the rewards. But there is no true reward in art making without the risk of failure. Artists that endure failure learn from it in order to grow, and then they try again with new insight. Making artwork is working and striving to make something new and beautiful because it’s good. And it honors God when we work hard and become disciplined in a craft in order to make something good. My prayer is that humans will continue to desire to risk ruining their clothes with paint splatter, risk cutting their thumbs with a spoon gouge, risk spending too much money to find just the right quality of paper, risking the loss of sleep on a work night because they’re on the verge of an artistic breakthrough because it’s good. Because it’s a life lived well. Because the process contains and the product conveys the stories of the ones behind the work. Genesis 2:15 says that God put the man he made into the garden to “ work” and to keep it. I’ve learned that the Hebrew term used in that verse, avad , has multiple meanings and uses. It does mean to work and to labor , but it can also frequently mean to perform acts of worship. The very first directive God gave the man he created was to physically work in order to tend the earth. This act also honored God as an act of worship. Making art can certainly be an act of worship. One of the ways in which we humans can bring glory to our Creator is by using the gifts He gave us in order to create new things, to make something good to uplift and be enjoyed by others. God is honored by it. But If mankind can manage to completely remove the work from artwork, what is left? If our own hands no longer skillfully manipulate brushes loaded with paint, press and mold clay into thoughtful forms, or scratch a pen nib around the pages of a sketchbook, what was gained by the shortcut? If the process involved in the creation of artistic imagery no longer costs anything, wasn’t something still of value still traded away? If art will simply exist because we tell it to, in the end, who or what was worshiped? Who or what was honored?

by Jamin Still If someone were to ask me, “What is it you’re trying to do with your creative work?” I think I would say, “I want to give hope, but acknowledge hardship.” Growing up in the church, I hated the pat answers to life’s complicated questions. (Think, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “One day it’ll all make sense.”) These answers weren’t necessarily wrong, but they were often accompanied by a failure to acknowledge or engage real bewilderment or doubt being experienced in the present. Answers like these were meant to give hope, but at the same time they dismissed real pain. Or worse, these kinds of answers communicated that to acknowledge struggle somehow revealed that you were rejecting hope. If our hardship isn’t acknowledged, hope is a disconnected thing that means little to us. Jamin Still That never seemed right to me and I know now that it  wasn’t  right. Jesus offered hope, yes, but only after he waded into pain. If our hardship isn’t acknowledged, hope is a disconnected thing that means little to us. And so that’s what I try to do in my creative work: give hope, but also acknowledge hardship. In my narrative paintings I’ll often paint an individual (usually a child) going on a difficult quest, but carrying a lantern or going toward the light in the distance. These images are meant to meet the viewers where they are, to say to them, “Yes, this is hard, but it’s worth doing. It might be the hardest thing in the world, and it might not make sense, but there is something to walk toward.” Here’s a piece I’m working on now: Five children hunting a creature in the forest. It’s an adventure, yes, but there’s fear there, there’s doubt, there’s danger. The children, though, are together, and in the distance there is daylight. Hope and hardship are twined together. Two years ago I put out a collection of short stories . Those 12 stories feature characters who are dealing with some heavy things: grief, loneliness, self-doubt. While writing the stories I resisted the urge to fix those characters. I wanted to very much. One boy had lost his parents to a plague and I wanted to bring in someone to tell him, “Everything’s going to be all right.” But I couldn’t, because to do that would be dishonest, or at the very least, it wouldn’t acknowledge his pain. So I brought in a character who offered hope, but who also sat with him in his pain and said something to the effect of, “This is going to take a while. And even then it will never be the same.  You  will never be the same. But there is a way forward.” He offered hope, but didn’t dismiss the boy’s hardship. I’m wrapping up a novel this winter, a follow-up to that collection. Some of the characters are fleshed out more in this story. As the story has advanced, I’ve continued to wrestle with how to write honestly about the difficult experiences of my characters. It’s not easy, but I’d rather do it poorly than not at all. I think about the kids out there who are like I was, who cling to hope, but also want their struggles to be acknowledged for what they are: hard and sometimes impossible to understand. I write for them, hoping that they will feel seen and that in being seen, their hope will be that much richer. Stories have kindled Jamin Still ’s imagination since he was small. As a child he drew and painted and dreamed, and the power of those things in his life never diminished. He went on to study painting in college and now he paints and writes for a living. Jamin works and lives in a little stone house with his wife and three young children in Wichita, Kansas.