What are you looking for?

Our backyard is surrounded by blessed groves. There’s a black maple directly behind the house, standing virtually alone in the path of the west wind. A couple of teenaged walnut trees toss their tennis ball fruits to the ground with slack-armed irregularity. At the south end, near “The Swamp,” green ash and cottonwoods spear the airspace, vying for sunlight. Storm-beaten in my neighbor’s yard, venerable poplars and oaks rain down the leathery opacity of their leaf litter. I collect all of it, every scrap of autumn-shed habiliment from these disrobing hardwoods. Wielding a backpack leaf-blower—and imagining I’m a ghostbuster—I work the leaves into the garden patch, putting the November soil to bed under thick coverlets. Lie down. Draw breath. Shabath from your labors. In Wendell Berry’s exemplary poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” he mentions “the two inches of humus / that will build under the trees / every thousand years.” It’s a fitting set of lines for a poet and philosopher who’s part soil scientist, but two inches every millennium? That’s about as much yield as my first savings account. With the leaves and some attendant compost, I try to amend this accumulation, to give manna to the dearth-wrack of our urban tillage. Ever since I first started growing things, I’ve been haunted not only by the Cherokee system of companion planting, but also by the Torah passages on letting the ground rest. Dirt, like all temporal things, is not inexhaustible. We all need this. I need it. I need a break, a practicum of stillness—but it isn’t often what I want. Whatever else the garden teaches me, it teaches me the humility of my limitations. Adam Whipple I recently read some author’s lament that writer’s block was his default station in life. I figured I had a good idea what he meant. Labor doesn’t get accomplished by waiting for the right feeling. If I need to be in a certain mental place to work, I have to wrench myself into that place by some force of will. Creativity, as Paul Collins writes, is “a pumping of thoracic bellows”— breathing, making the effort. The false ideology that inspiration sometimes sells us is that we must wait until we can spit out something that’s perfect from the very beginning. It’s a lie. Sure, once in a while I guess good art shoots like rainbow-spume from some nostril or other. People do occasionally write songs in flashes of brilliance, but mostly, it’s straight-up work. Waiting on inspiration is a losing game, time being what’s lost. In songwriting, you have to make do with bits of choruses or the recycled stubs of orphaned codas. The muse who will not sew a coat of these patchwork fragments will die of the cold. I believe that working can produce results, that creativity is more blue collar than high school me ever knew or wanted to think. If you want to make art, you often fire a parting shot at the muse and crack on without her. Still, on the other side of work, it has to be said that fallow time—that listless period of uncertain backbuilding—seems to be just as necessary as labor. It is one of the truths of post-Fall entropy that not many springs in life are ever-flowing. I’ve always wanted a potager. In Scotland, the word is kailyaird—that is, the “kale yard”—the wild-haired kitchen garden meant to flaunt its seasonal flora on the supper table year-round. I want summers with tomatoes like ribald ornaments, bumbershoot leaves of crookneck squash, and curlicues of purple kale. I want to follow it with okra, its siren blossoms debauching the flights of mud daubers and bees. I want autumn and winter squashes, cabbages and greens and endless tendrils of bean plants. I want parsnips curing their sugars with the first frost. I’m not sure how practical it all is, either in gardening or in the humanities. A friend once told me, in so many words, that those who fail to go out and live life will never have anything to write about. If I spend every waking moment scribbling in a notebook, for example, I’ll soon run out of valuable material to fill the page. Everything needs its Sabbath, perhaps. My wife and I used to sing this Nichole Nordeman song called “Every Season:” Everything in time and under heaven Finally falls asleep Ugh. I hate sleep. Needing it, even—I shudder—delighting in it, seems nearly indecent to me. Even if I’m tired during the day, I reflexively apologize to my wife for taking a nap. She doesn’t require this of me, you understand; I’m just that self-absorbed with my own imagined productivity. Never mind that Jesus slept. I’m almost certain that Jonathan Edwards didn’t. In fifty-four years of earthly pilgrimage, I think Edwards only amassed eighty-six minutes of actual REM. I foolishly love that idea, the thought of piddling away into the night, creating new things while mere mortals sleep, being caught up in the sheer forward motion of whatever fresh challenge is currently holding my attention. Even lying in bed, I tend to strain my mind for some delightful juxtaposition of words, hoping to extract a last ounce of viability from whatever waking moments are left. There it is: the irritant mote of one of my many hypocrisies. I’m actually happy to preach Sabbath to others, yet hubristic enough to imagine I’m a superman. I love characters who don’t need sleep—or who seem to make do instead with coffee or nicotine or meditation. I enjoy the Lord of the Rings palantír scene in which Gandalf sleeps with both eyes open. The elves walk under the stars and sing all night. Data, from Star Trek, does whatever Data does at three in the morning. Even characters who simply awaken to some inner summons and wander about in the middle of the night are envious to me. There are people in this world who wake up and suffer insomnia. In my idiocy and self-absorption, I’m jealous. Of course, I’ve literally slept through earthquakes before—in the plural. I haven’t even begun to push my soil to the point of a kailyaird. For now, it needs rehabilitation—a good rhythm of Sabbath, honest labor, and caregiving. Perhaps one day, I will join the talented Scots and the French and work the dance of horticulture all twelve or thirteen moons of the year. I’m certain there’s a good deal of give and take to it. As for myself and for the work of creating, a break here or there will do. Even at the beginning of all Creation, there was a day of rest. Whatever else the garden teaches me, it teaches me the humility of my limitations. Now, if you’ll pardon me, it’s a bit late.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Christine Flanagan, English professor at the University of the Sciences in Pennsylvania and editor of The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon. In this episode, Jonathan and Christine talk about the fascinatingly elusive influence of Caroline Gordon on Flannery O’Connor, the mystifying invisibility of some writers in our collective historical record, and the indispensability of thoughtful, engaged critique from a trusted mentor. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 32 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

In the 1960s, Robert Coles was the child psychologist who treated Ruby Bridges, six years old, black, integrating a white elementary school in New Orleans. He would hate my use of the word treated. Rather, he listened to Ruby’s story as he counseled her through the massive life disruption and trauma that was integration during the Civil Rights movement. Later, he would write a book about what he learned from these brave children, and he would win a Pulitzer for it. In another book, The Call of Stories, Coles wonders: What if we don’t jump to conclusions trying to fix others? What if, instead, we “listen carefully, record faithfully, understand as fully as possible”? Coles also talks about the novels that formed his childhood—not only the ones he read, but also the books his parents read aloud in the evenings. What a boring thing to do! When the young Coles pressed his father about why he and his mother read together and discussed Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky, his father explained that these stories held reservoirs of wisdom. “Your mother and I feel rescued by these books.” In 2017, I attended the first meeting of a multi-ethnic group that meets in my city. The facilitator asked, “What is something you appreciate about your culture?” That’s often a difficult question for white Americans to answer. We have trouble pinning down just what our culture is without throwing it in relief against other cultures, other ethnicities. After long thought, I decided, Books. The wealth of Western philosophy and storytelling that has come down through the literature of my European ancestors and American contemporaries. But something rubbed uncomfortably when I said so in the meeting. A grain of sand in the oyster shell. Here is what you really look like, the best books show, like a mirror, like a blow to the skull. Like rescue. Rebecca D. Martin When I was in college twenty years ago, majoring in English Education, American Literature was not my jam. But it was required, so I struck out and enrolled in Contemporary American Lit, and to my horror, found myself reading Richard Wright’s Native Son. I read the initial chapters and then put the book down, and I could not, I could not make myself read the rest of that disturbing, galling story. Prejudice, terror, accidental murder, dismemberment. Who wanted to saturate their imagination with these things? What good could come of reading this? I withdrew from the class and retreated into a more comfortable mental space. I enrolled in an American Naturalism and Realism course, in which the stories, though dark-edged if I had known how to listen, were less challenging to my daily narrative. Black poet Amiri Baraka tells the story from another perspective. His grandmother would return home from dressing white women’s hair in the 1940s and bring her grandson white literature for him to read, including Dickens. He tried those books, but the pictures they painted didn’t reflect the life he lived. Instead, he says, “I knew the stories of the Black South,” the stories of African American writers, like Richard Wright. Baraka was stunned by Richard Wright when he first read him, and in fact worried for the author’s safety; surely someone was out to kill Wright for the kind of racial things he had put in print in mid-century America. Poet Wanda Coleman says, “At home, I lived in a Black world and no matter what [books by white writers] I read, it did not reflect my life.” She discovered Richard Wright’s 1930s and 40s fiction belatedly. Literature written by black men was taboo in her school until the late 1950s. Imagine! “Contraband,” she says; you’d get suspended for bringing it on campus. When she started reading what she calls Black literature—W. E. B. DuBois, Ann Petry—she found rescue. “There was the entrance to my world as I was struggling to survive in it.” The grain of sand in my oyster shell shows itself: a lack of recognition that there is just as rich a culture of literature and thought cherished by other ethnicities than mine, by people of color. More than cherished—held onto as a lifeline. And my own imagination and conscience are, in fact, in dangerous waters without it. I can picture the withdrawal slip I filled out for that American Lit class back in college. Reason for Withdrawal Request: “I prefer to focus on a different type of literature.” Never mind the famous, controversial words Franz Kafka once said in a letter to a friend: Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? . . . What we need are books that hit us like . . . suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. Do I wish to alter what I said the other day in the racial unity meeting? Like Baraka, like Coleman, I was an avid reader as a child. I was formed by fiction, by the practice of listening and learning, of putting myself into the stories of others. But whose stories? At worst, petty escapism (though often with a troubling strain of racism that my eyes weren’t open to). But at best, Dostoevsky and Austen, the Brontes, Marilynne Robinson. Dickens’s Little Dorrit, which is about how being imprisoned can become a lifelong internal identity, and A Christmas Carol, which is a story not about Christmas, but about social justice. It makes sense that white books did nothing for Baraka, but Dickens’s British culture was my inroad, driving his stories into my soul. Here is another reality, these good books say, when I listen. They show forth the oppressed, the poor, the forgotten, the economically-draining, the socially threatening, the wounded, the imprisoned, the worn down. Here is what you really look like, the best books show, like a mirror, like a blow to the skull. Like rescue. Their words have been picks, pounding these forty-some-odd years, though the cracks in my privileged consciousness have taken a painfully long time to appear. What will drive the pick straight through and crack my world wide open? Another black poet, Toi Derricotte, asks, “How can we wake / From a dream / We are born into”? If Baraka and Coleman’s experiences told them nothing of the white world’s stories, how can I hope to understand theirs? Baraka challenges: Afro-American literature . . . is one of the most influential and important in the world. Particularly given the contest of its creation, in the cauldron of racism, racial violence, and dismissal. It reveals American lives, culture and history in a depth that nothing else is able to do. Kafka uses that word, suicide, and I don’t think he uses it lightly when he says books should hit us this way. When we are touched by the terrible instance of someone taking his or her own life, we are gutted. We sorrow and grieve. We wonder what could have been done differently. We resolve to pay better attention. We  are changed. . . or at least we should be. Jesus speaks of a different kind of death, a good one. “Whoever loves his life loses it,” he says. And, “Go! Sell all that you have.” And again, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” What life? What wealth? The grain of sand rubs me again, and I see it for what it is. Self, I say, You wealthy white woman, give away the riches that are your white privilege. Lay your own story down. Yes. I can choose to set aside my own narrative, and let others sound forth their stories, even if they leave me shaken. Because if I ignore the real narrative of this country, if I stop being formed and informed by the lives of others, what is left? And how can I wake from the dream—or is it nightmare?—I’ve inherited, a citizen of this beautiful, broken, blended nation, if I won’t listen to stories that bite and sting? Click here to read more of Rebecca’s writing at her blog.

While shopping for something else entirely, I discovered a pair of white K-Swiss sneakers with red stripes for only $27.00 at a local department store. When I arrived home, I proudly laced them up, sauntered up to my teenage daughter, and thrust my foot into her line of sight. “Check out my new kicks!” I said. She shrugged indifferently and without looking up, said, “That’s sweet, dad. They’re cute.” My consternation was genuine. “Cute? That’s it? These are totally sick!” “First of all, nobody says ‘sick’ anymore dad. That’s so 2016.” Her casual insult demanded a serious rejoinder: “Fine. Then they’re gnarly,” I said. “And K-Swiss is like, I don’t know, the Fred Meyer’s of shoe brands,” she said. “Nobody gets excited about them.” “I’ll have you know these are iconic,” I said. “Once upon a time—never mind how long ago—they were the symbol of wealth, style, and sophistication, having a certain je ne sais. . .” She wasn’t listening and I was suddenly sliding down the rabbit hole of memory, standing in the corner of the cafeteria with other prepubescent males like myself while the paragon of privilege, Randy, sat at a table with his covey of pretty girls. That practiced indifference. That five o’clock shadow. Those K-Swiss shoes… My daughter shook her head pitiably. “You don’t get it,” I said to her. “These shoes are totally rad.” That’s the best explanation of their je ne sais quoi that I could muster. Finding them, well, unexplainable, I staggered beneath the sudden realization that fashion had moved along without me. That I was time’s discarded debris washed ashore while the tides of change rolled inevitably along. When did that happen? I contemplated the wisdom of returning my unremarkable shoes to reclaim my precious twenty-seven bucks (plus tax) but my memory kept careening back to that cafeteria where Randy slouched in his glory like an Olympian god while the rest of us mere mortals mangled our bologna sandwiches and reluctantly waited for English class. There I stood, flat-footed in the kitchen, standing in the awful realization that what I thought was an autonomous decision made free of any influence was just another attempt at being like somebody; in this case, like Randy. I kept the shoes. My ego demanded it and, despite my daughter’s withering remarks, I still thought they were cool. I drove past my old middle school on Wednesday. It was deemed uninhabitable a decade ago. The edifice crumbles year by year and I am surprised to find my memories crumbling with it. The faces of my friends are fading, but the things I liked back then—scratch ’n sniff stickers, Atari, Star Wars, Superman, Dire Straits—still follow me around to this day. The people I hung around with thought they were cool so, inevitably, I found them cool too. My best friend’s dad—a manly man if ever I met one—loved what he called “real music” which meant Dire Straits. And then there was our local high school’s wrestling matches. We were perennial champs, so when the high school gym went dark, the electronic crescendo of “Money For Nothing” rose into the darkness. We stood to our feet as the drum rhythm ratcheted up and when Mark Knopfler’s solo guitar busted loose, the wrestling team streamed into the spotlight while blood rushed to my head. If that weren’t enough, my bus driver would play Starship’s “We Built This City” and Dire Strait’s “Money For Nothing” every day on the way to school. Why do I like Dire Straits? Because the people I loved liked Dire Straits. And, yes, I loved my bus driver. He made me feel like I was actually fun to drive to school, like life was good when I was around—like I was cool. I wasn’t—certainly not as cool as my bus driver—but I wanted to be. And when I decided to “be like Mike,” I did so with the rest of the world. Michael Jordan dazzled us. We all fell under his trance, but it wasn’t until a catchy advertisement put the words in our mouths that we realized, “Hey, we do want to be like Mike.” What was once just an embryonic notion was now a fully formed mental picture. I’m not saying that our generation didn’t actually want to be like Michael Jordan. We did. But what came first? Our longing? Or the song? “Sometimes I dream That he is me You’ve got to see that’s how I dream to be I dream I move, I dream I groove Like Mike If I could be like Mike.” It wasn’t just the basketball skills; Mike was an entire persona. It was the way he carried himself, the way he made everything look effortless, the way he stuck out his tongue while gliding through the air. That’s why we bought his jersey, his clothes, and (perhaps most importantly) his shoes. It had to be the shoes. Anything to be like Mike. That was the dream. I think that dream died for me in 9th grade when I served as the obligatory last man on the bench for our school’s c-squad. In my one opportunity to play in a real game, I had no idea which hoop we were shooting at. Who pays attention to these trivialities anyways when they’re at the end of the bench on a permanent basis? The other team had a full court press on. I made a move, grooved like Mike, broke my defender’s ankles, caught the ball behind the three point line, let it fly. Fade away. Three pointer. Swish…in the wrong hoop. I watched the scoreboard add three points to the wrong ledger. Dream gone. Poof! A virus is contagious, yes, but beauty and creativity and hope are contagious too. And you should perform contact tracing with this good infection just like you should with COVID-19. Ben Palpant These days, I’m forty-five years old and earth-bound. I get nervous if I don’t have the terra firma solidly underfoot. Sure, deep down I still wish I could dunk, but I’ve become a pencil-pushing poet instead. How did that happen? Well, I began to be inspired by other people. And this would be a little embarrassing to my high school self, but I wanted to be like those people whose souls I had encountered in books. Gasp! I wanted to be like those writers who had helped craft my soul, who had enriched my existence. Thinkers like Thomas Howard, artists like Makoto Fujimura, singers like Michael Card, storytellers like John Steinbeck and Pearl S. Buck, poets like Anne Porter and Li-Young Lee and Mary Oliver and Billy Collins. I wanted to be a wordsmith, a craftsman, an artisan like them. I wanted to nourish souls like them and cultivate culture like them even with so much incendiary polarization around me. These were the people I found cool. I wanted to move like them, groove like them. By God, I wanted to see like them. Still do, actually, but they’ve become more than mentors to me after all these years—they’ve become something like peers. I feel a certain level of arrogance just writing that word, but I’ve been learning from them, imitating them, cultivating culture like them long enough to feel a kinship. In my own way, I’m continuing their work, shouldering the same yoke. Let’s trace how I got here. How did I discover these cultural influencers, learn to love them, practice imitating them, and finally end up feeling a communal kinship with them? I got here by way of the good infection. A virus is contagious, yes, and we’ve had more than enough talk about that bad contagion these days. But beauty and creativity and hope are contagious too. And you should perform contact tracing with this good infection just like you should with COVID-19. I came to admire Thomas Howard and Mako Fujimura because my friend Charlie Dowers introduced them to me. I cherish Michael Card as a modern psalmist because the girl I fell in love with in high school and ultimately married listened almost exclusively to his music. I love Anne Porter because my friend Andrew Peterson said, “Read this! Isn’t this just how it is?” I love Mary Oliver because my nineteen year old daughter said, “Dad, I found a poet who makes me want to write poetry!” Sure enough. And I love Steinbeck because my father used to crank through his medical school work so that he could slip away on Sundays to read him. So it goes. The folks I love have introduced me to the folks they love. That’s one of the multiplying powers of community. My loves are proof that community is the fertile soil of our heart’s desires. We end up liking what our friends like. That’s why the righteous choose their friends wisely (Proverbs 12:26). They know that if you walk with the wise, you’ll become wise (Proverbs 13:20), but if you frolic with fools, you’ll become one (I Corinthians 15:33). We need good community so that we can get infected by the best things. What began so many years ago with a friend’s recounting his visit to Mako’s gallery in New York City culminated in a recent visit to Gonzaga University’s Jundt Art Museum—just a few miles from my home—where Makoto Fujimura’s work was on display. Fujimura combines traditional Japanese techniques and materials—pulverized minerals and pigments—to create multi-layered (often over a hundred layers) non-representational paintings that invite us into a somatic engagement. Mako has said that if you want to understand his work, you must sit in front of one painting for at least ten minutes. So I did. I sat in front of his “Silence – Mysterion.” It’s a 33 foot monumental work of art. “Mysterion” is the Greek word Paul uses in Ephesians 6:9 to describe the “mystery of the Gospel.” As David Brooks put it in his New York Times article, after ten minutes “What had seemed like a plain blue field now looked like a galaxy of color.” He was right. At the moment of revelation, I teared up. “Silence – Mysterion” by Makoto Fujimura I owe Mako a debt of gratitude for that moment, but I also owe my friend Charlie a debt of gratitude for nudging me toward Mako’s art and Mako’s thoughts on creativity and culture. I’ve been introduced to Fujimura by way of the good infection, but I’ve come to admire him on his own merits. He is a counter-cultural craftsman whose slow-brewed creative efforts have made an indelible mark on the way I see just about everything. Would I have appreciated Fujimura’s work if a friend hadn’t introduced me to it? Maybe. Would I have discovered Mako on my own? Maybe. But the friendship certainly encouraged that exposure and accelerated my admiration. Despite my rather staunch (and ignorant) loyalty to representational art, I gave Fujimura’s non-representational art a chance because my friend loved it. That’s how community works and, dare I say, that’s what community is for. A community collectively guards certain ideals and steers each other toward those ideals. The members of a community inform and form each other’s desires, correct and calibrate each other, validate and vindicate each other’s work. They remind each other, “This here is what we’re about, not that over there. Let’s keep going further up and further in!” Churches, schools, and families all function this way and they do so intentionally or accidentally. For good or for ill. That’s why the selection of our chosen communities is so important. That’s why the Rabbit Room is so important. Awhile back, I sent a manuscript to Andrew Peterson on a whim because I respected his poetic craftsmanship and I resonated with his outlook on faith and the arts. At the time, I didn’t know about his connection to the Rabbit Room or Rabbit Room Press or Hutchmoot. Truth-be-told, I’m not sure that I had even heard of these before (Embarrassing, I know. Yes, I was living under a rock). He graciously gave me feedback in classic Andrew fashion and then he said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a whole community of like-minded people you might enjoy.” Sure enough, I do. So this is a love letter to the Rabbit Room and to all those communities where the love of God and love for the arts converge. Where God’s Word nourishes creativity. Where craftsmanship, artisanship, and slow-brewed art meet a love for people and the world in which God placed us. Here’s to Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Here’s to a shared vision of the transformative nature of relationship and art. Here’s to planting trees where polemics and cultural warfare have left only ash. Here’s to things that endure, to timeless work that transcends mere fashion. I’m still wearing those K-Swiss shoes, by the way. I wore them to a coffee shop a few months ago. The twenty-something barista stopped in her tracks. She looked down at them, looked up at me, and said, “Dude, you’re totally rocking the retro. I need a pair of those!” I said, “Sorry, limited edition. The department store had only two pair.” She said, “Well, they’re totally bodacious.” And they are. But these days, I’d trade bodacious for beauty in a heartbeat. Sorry Randy, you can keep your practiced indifference and your fashionable apparel. And that goes for you, too, Mike. I’ve found something better. I’ve found other people to be like. Featured image: “Silence – Mysterion” by Makoto Fujimura

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with bestselling author, pastor, and podcast host Daniel Darling. In this episode, Jonathan and Daniel talk about the complex mystery of motivations that goes into online interaction, the double-edged sword of content curation, and how to communicate well in an age that prioritizes communicating quickly above all else. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 33 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

There’s an ancient story handed down to us in the Old Testament book of Numbers in which a group of people find themselves walking in circles. Their fear of change, their avoidance of Resistance, kept them from entering a portal to something—or somewhere—better. Sound familiar? For acclaimed poet Li-Young Lee, the Resistance represents that door, which when framed this way, emboldens us to face it. It’s just one healthy example of the ways in which Lee views the Resistance at work all around us—calling us to silence, calling us to notice, calling us to portals for growth and revelation. As the author of five poetry books, including The Undressing (2018), Lee has labored against the Resistance to earn prestigious honors such as the American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Award, and Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Our conversation with Lee opened our eyes to new layers of Resistance—a fearful proposition—even as we were also reminded of the maturation possible when it is faced. Click here to listen to this newest episode of The Resistance. And here to learn more about The Resistance Podcast.

I began writing Collect Prayers the second week of March, around the time that the CDC recommended no gatherings of 50 people or more. At the time, I wrote them in response to specific requests, from both personal friends and strangers on social media asking for words that would help them to cope with their fears. I didn’t imagine I’d keep writing prayers, but new things kept happening that demanded new prayers: a prayer for grocers managing panic-buying shoppers, a prayer for medical professionals overwhelmed by the countless sick, a prayer for anxious children at bedtime. I wrote prayers for dashed plans, untimely deaths, single people, and wearied parents. I wrote a prayer for the beleaguered and the irritated and another for new mercies. I wrote a prayer for geographically separated worship, and, most needfully, I wrote a prayer against the pestilence that stalks in the dark and the plague that destroys at midday. I even wrote a prayer for a neighbor behaving like an idiot, because I figured we all had a neighbor who fit that description, wherever we may live or whatever our political persuasion. The following is a collection of prayers related to the start of school this fall. I tried to imagine the sorts of things that parents and children, along with teachers and school administrators, might be feeling in light of the unpredictable realities that face them in the weeks to come. My heart goes out to all of them, and while I can’t promise that these prayers will magically or immediately change their circumstances, my hope is that in praying them they will sense, in palpable and deeply personal ways, the care-filled love of their Good Shepherd who knows them by name. Practically speaking, these prayers could memorized, they could be printed out and posted in a place that they’ll be easily seen, or they could be reworked from the first person “I and me” to the second person “you and yours,” or even to the third person “he and she and they,” depending on who is praying it. The goal, in the end, isn’t a perfect mark for praying it every day. The goal is simply to keep praying as one can, when one can, trusting always that the Holy Spirit prays in and for us when we can no longer find the right words or even the will to pray. May God bless you as you entrust yourself and others to the Lord in prayer. A Prayer for Children Going to School Dear Jesus, you who promise to be with me always, I pray that you would be with me today as I go to school. Bless my going and my coming. Bless my learning and my playing. Please protect my heart from fear. Please keep me safe. Please give me good friends. Give me joy this day and thank you for loving me from head to toe. In your name. Amen. A Prayer for Children Schooling at Home Dear Jesus, you who promise to be with me always, I pray that you would be with me at home today as I do my school work. Please help me to do my best, help me not to feel alone, and help me to be patient with my family. Give me joy this day and thank you for loving me from head to toe. In your name. Amen. A Prayer for High School and College Students O Lord, you who promise to be with me always, be with me this day as I begin my schoolwork. Keep me in health, I pray, and keep me from harm. In all that I do and say, may I love you with all my heart, mind, soul and strength, and may I love my neighbor as myself, so that I might fulfill your purposes for me and your calling on my life as a student. In Christ’s name. Amen. A Prayer for Parents O Lord, you who promise to guide us through the wilderness and to protect us through the storm, we ask that you would make us wise where we cannot clearly see the way forward, make us brave where we feel afraid, make us strong in the face of our weakness, and make possible what to us seems impossible, so that we might joyfully entrust ourselves and our children into your tender care in these trying and troubling times. In Jesus’ name. Amen. A Prayer for Teachers O Lord, you who have called and equipped the teachers in our community, we pray for them today. Watch over them, provide for them, guide them, sustain them. May you be their sun and shield, so that they might do the work that you have entrusted to them and sense your care in these uncertain times. In Jesus’ name. Amen. A Prayer for School Administrators O God, you who have promised wisdom to all who would ask it, we pray today for school administrators, that you would grant them clarity of mind, unity of spirit, strength of will, a heart of wisdom and the gift of your truth-bearing Spirit, so that they might be enabled to make decisions that lead to the flourishing of their teachers, staff, and students and to the wellbeing of the whole community. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. For families who may want additional helps for prayer this fall, W. David O. Taylor and his wife Phaedra created a set of illustrated prayer cards that offer both adults and children an opportunity to pray in light of key themes in the Psalms—themes such as honesty and community, sadness and joy, justice and enemies, life and death, and so on. Find them here. This article originally appeared on the website of the Anglican Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Gina Dalfonzo, author of Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis and writer for Christianity Today, The Atlantic, First Things, and more. In this episode, Jonathan and Gina talk about the often overlooked friendship between Dorothy Sayers and C. S. Lewis, Sayers’ innovative depiction of Jesus in The Man Born to Be King, and her lifelong wrestling with Lewis on the issue of artistic conscience and calling. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 34 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

The experience of lockdown that gripped much of the world during the Covid–19 crisis was, for me, a strange period in creative terms. New ministry and family pressures brought on by the existence of the virus meant that much of the mental space I rely on for reading and reflection was gone. In the earliest days of isolating and “social distancing” I felt like I had undergone a power cut in terms of writing. Into this silence and darkness these three poems nudged at the door, and eventually came in and made themselves at home. They were those happiest of poetry writing experiences—pieces which felt pre-written in the heart before they entered my mind. Occasionally a poem surprises you as a poet, because it lays bare emotions and anxieties which you were only vaguely aware of before you met your own thoughts written down. To read them after they are written is like remembering and recounting a vivid dream. These are those kinds of pieces. Grace at all times is not something which we rule in or rule out of our way of seeing the world. Instead, it sweetly intrudes into the darkness, and makes a home in the middle of our making the best sense out of the world that we can. Andrew Roycroft “Selah” was written in mid-April, when the uncertainties of Covid–19 seemed to be most intense globally. The airspace over our home, normally punctuated by the lights of commercial aircraft, were now more deeply dark, with Venus taking full advantage of an empty stage to show its glory. Families were at home, away from the preoccupations of work, focused solely on avoiding the plague that seemed so near to our doors. I wrote this poem in order to make a sound in that hushed moment, and the term “Selah” seemed like a good fit. That mysterious term, which disturbs the flow of the Psalms by saying something silent, seemed so appropriate. The poem seems to insist on looking upwards, and I found that the abandonment of form (apart from meter) provided a way of reflecting the tension I felt between the “fixity” of God’s purpose and the seeming fluidity of circumstance. I also felt that “Selah” gave me room to rehabilitate April from the cruelty so often attributed to it, emphasising the life that follows the pains of the final month that feels a little like winter. The Covid–19 crisis sharpened the focus of those thoughts and feelings, and allowed me to run my eye heavenwards and hope-wards again. “Selah” Because the planes no longer fly, I dared tonight to trust the sky, the fixity of stars, the full moon uncrowned by icy light, the true North not now misread as flight, the evening’s settling upwards chill. I would impute good faith to this April, firmly believe in season’s sure ingress, that, in spite of our under-heaven distress, we are in a universe of laws. That— panoplied above all these furloughed cars, populous homes with children’s shadowed dreams— a hand which could constellate such fading lights would wait an age for their sweet demise to give us sight of unfaltering grace. He, from the circle of ravelling earth, soft whispers to our pains, ‘Not death, but birth’. “Distance” was written to reflect the difficulties presented by Covid–19 in terms of community and cohesion in grief. In my work as a pastor I was confronted with the reality of people who were suffering their final illnesses, but whose bedsides I was unable to visit. This was followed by funerals at which I had to remain distant from families engulfed in grief, and I so missed the efficacy of touch to compensate where words are wanting. I opted for the sonnet form, partly as a means of reflecting the constrictions brought on by the pandemic, and partly because of the sheer relief of writing a final couplet in which Jesus crosses the gap caused by the virus. My prayer with this poem is that it might touch something universal among those who have lost loved ones and friends at a time when the grace of gripping another’s hand, cradling a sorrowing friend’s head, and shouldering grief in touchable tangible ways, have been taken from us. “Distance” We will not embrace this day, but maintain our distance, a widening loss marked in time, but not in touch, each moved against the grain as though sorrow would remain in lines and not transgress, nor breach, nor blot, nor blur. These are times of feelings kempt and stayed, of charity retrained to speak that it is there, and reach no hand, but heavenwards to pray. This is charged space, that craves new collision, that would split each atom of exiled grief, bring disordered grace, insist on confusion of homes, and hearts, and limbs, and life. But now, with Mary, Martha, in vacant tears, we eye the gap, for Jesus drawing near. “Shells” was written as a reflection on the shoreside walks which we have been able to enjoy as a family in the later stages of Covid–19 lockdown—a luxury that vulnerable family health had prohibited for months. We live at the lip of the Irish Sea, and have a tradition of bringing home treasures from the beach each time we visit it. A large vase in our hallway has been gradually filling up over the years, and that image of shells rather than sand being emptied into the hourglass really caught my attention. There is something powerful and providential in the arrival of common place shells on the shore, and something vibrant about bringing their colour into our home as a measure of moments spent together. As a parent, time is visibly outgrowing me all of the time, the height and happy maturing of my daughters marks their progress into the world, and foreshadows my eventual regress out of it. That tidal nature of time, the treasuring of filled up hours with things of no monetary value, but of huge emotional value seemed a fitting way to reflect that. Again, the sonnet form raised its hand for this poem, and I was happy to let in, particularly as it afforded me the opportunity to issue an invitation to others to fill up the hours well. “Shells” The vase in the hall holds trophies from all our walks at shore. Shale, fragments of leaden skies, smooth-edged brick ends from Belfast walls, oil painting mussel, canvas of heaven; Dog whelks, tellins, ordinary, like days with the girls, gathered bounty in small hands. Time is a rising tide that we display, in glass, stacked ground in place of sinking sand; Old porcelain with washed out pattern face, a now long-past family’s Sunday best, no more adrift but in our home, the grace of waves turning up lives, from roiling rest. Come then, let’s brim the wide lips of this jar, store up the shells with which we fill these hours. When all three of these poems were delivered, revised, and refined into a more final shape, what surprised me was that “grace” had unconsciously been mentioned in each of them. This was not by my design, but that seemed so appropriate. Grace at all times is not something which we rule in or rule out of our way of seeing the world. Instead, it sweetly intrudes into the darkness, and makes a home in the middle of our making the best sense out of the world that we can. “A Grace Triptych” seemed like a good way to bind these seemingly disparate pieces together, a three-panelled perspective on God’s movement and mercy in the midst of tough times and public fear. Grace is the theme which binds every part of our creative work together, and at a time when public spirit and public health seemed to be mutually in decline, I was deeply grateful for the cohesive force of God’s faithful disposition towards me. My prayer is that the grace which insisted on a place in these poems, might do the same work in the hearts of those who read, whatever their uncertainty or turmoil.

Her head slouched to one side on the pillow, and her breath rattled through a slackened jaw. As I watched from the doorway, my hands plunged into the pockets of my white coat to hide their worrying, I wondered how many great-grandbabies she’d spoiled, how many Italian treats she sneaked into their sticky hands between stirs of marinara bubbling on her stove. I wondered about the people she’d loved and lost, the memories she cherished. And my stomach twisted as her daughter, whom the coronavirus had stranded hundreds of miles away, whispered goodbye over Zoom. This wasn’t how the story was supposed to end. Grief abounds in the ICU, but those of us who work in its corridors still glimpse snippets of grace. When families realize that recovery lurks on a faraway continent, they paper a loved one’s room with photographs and drawings, and comments scrawled in black marker on poster board to say what a patient cannot: her favorite activities are golf and watching I Love Lucy reruns. He served in Korea, and his favorite color is green, like the Kentucky fields in the shadow of the Appalachians through which he ran as a boy. Each scribbling declares to those who enter that the person fighting for life in that room is more than a diagnosis, and more than a name. He or she has a story to tell, a story that matters, rich with color and joy, messiness and hilarity. As I stood in the doorway, the N95-mask clenching my face, my critical care fellow leaning over with her cell phone so our patient’s daughter could see her mother’s greasy hair and glazed eyes, the story felt backward. Life had pummeled this poor woman for nine decades, until her body finally heaved and gave way. She’d survived wars and the Great Depression, untold grief and heartbreak. Death was supposed to claim her quietly, padding in with the footfalls of a cat, while those she’d nurtured encircled her and sang hymns. Photographs should have surrounded her. Her marinara recipe, its secret ingredient known only to her daughter, should have perfumed her final moments with the scent of home. The ending, the finale to the real Story, is clear as daylight. And therein, we have hope. Katie Butler Instead, she gasped in a mechanized bed, with no picture, card, or crucifix to hint at her past. No one lingered at the bedside to remind her, through tears, of the thousands of moments, many awkward, some glittering, that knitted together into the weave of her life. The only link to her story came in a tinny whisper across a touch screen. Even when she breathed her last, pandemic restrictions against funerals would mute her story, silencing voices that would have otherwise reminisced about her laughter, her fiery temper, and that time a Johnny Carson joke made her throw a spoon at the wall. This pandemic, it seems, has wrenched us from our own stories. When we most need reminders of who we are—beloved, won through suffering, made new in Christ—the reel grinds to a halt, and the audience dwindles away. After that shift in the ICU, I crumbled into bed, and knew to my bones that we are all broken. I prayed, and dozed in and out of a restless sleep, clinging all the while to my patient’s image on that bed. In a primitive corner of my mind, I feared that forgetting would erase her story entirely. At mid-day, I shrugged off the cat who lay unconscious at the small of my back, and proceeded with homeschooling as usual. I made peanut butter and jelly for the kids. I continued our reading of Tolkien’s Return of the King as they munched. The longer we read, the longer the pauses unspooled between their bites of gummy sandwich. Would Frodo make it to Mount Doom? they wondered, leaning forward over their plates. Would Minas Tirith withstand the siege? Would Aragon finally claim his throne? Deep down, drawing from the well of all that’s true and lovely, they discerned the ending, although we’d never dived into the trilogy before this year. They knew good would overcome. The ring would burn up. The King would return. They knew this, because they knew that all good, true stories echo that one, greatest Story of all: the King come to earth, the evil undone, the world made new. They knew in their hearts that the best stories are “the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues.” A few hours later I returned to the hospital, and entered an ICU filled to the brim with people on ventilators, people clinging to life within bare-walled rooms, people who struggled for survival without the comforting handhold of a spouse. I didn’t know the stories behind each hiss and sigh of the ventilator. No glimmers from their lives papered the rooms. With the coronavirus tightening its stranglehold on my patients, I couldn’t know the moments that infused their lives with meaning. And yet, the One who gave them life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:25) knew their stories. He knew these dear image bearers in my care (Gen. 1:26), from their first influx of air in the delivery room to their last breath drawn in a hospital bed (Ps. 139:13-16, Isa. 49:1). And the ending of his Story is perfect. It will never diverge or disappoint. It flows like a cool cup of living water, ushering us to eternal life. The King, the One who bore our burdens (Isa. 53:4), will return. The cursed ring will burn up. The middle of this coronavirus narrative is bloated and murky. But the ending, the finale to the real Story, is clear as daylight. And therein, we have hope.

Wherein Rebecca Reynolds kicks off the show with her poem “Welcome,” Don Chaffer reads The Wilderness Journal, and Drew Miller shares the first ever Word of Befuddlement: pleethe. The Wilderness Journal is a deeply touching, deeply funny account of the Exodus written by a scripturally fictitious character named Eli Ben-Ami. The story goes that after the Exodus—which he affectionately refers to as “The Great Escape”—Eli decides to keep a journal logging the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness and into the Promised Land, peppered with details from his own personal life. Over the course of the story, you may find that Eli becomes more and more real to you. He’s kind of a jokester, also a softie, and his story isn’t that much different from any of ours. Enjoy. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com. The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The first ever Word of Befuddlement is the verb “pleethe.” You can send in your very own definition of “pleethe” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E1: Welcome to the Wilderness.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original music by Zach & Maggie

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Vesper Stamper, illustrator and author of A Cloud of Outrageous Blue. In this episode, Jonathan and Vesper talk about how illustration became for Vesper a doorway into storytelling, what her research into the Middle Ages for her new book has taught her about plagues, and synesthesia as the beginning of metaphor. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 35 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis puts a finger on one of the things I love so much about Tolkien, though Lewis is not specifically talking about his good friend Tolkien’s stories. In the chapter “On Realisms,” Lewis distinguishes between what he calls “realism of presentation” and “realism of content.” Realism of presentation refers to those little concrete details that give the world of a story the textures that make it feel like the world God made. Realism of presentation, writes Lewis, “is the art of bringing something close to us, making it palpable and vivid, by sharply observed or sharply imagined detail.” Lewis lists several examples of realism of presentation, but my two favorite are the dragon in Beowulf “sniffing along the stone” and the fairy bakers in a French fairy tale rubbing the paste off their fingers. Neither of those examples are remotely “realistic” in the usual sense. Neither fairy bakers nor dragons exist in the real world. And yet those great little details—the dragon sniffing like a dog and the fairy bakers rubbing their fingers the way regular bakers do—make those fantastical worlds feel palpable and vivid. “Realism of content,” on the other hand, simply refers to whether or not a story concerns itself with the kinds of things that actually happen in the “real” world where we live and move and have our being. Fantasy and science-fiction stories are low on the “realism of content” scale, whereas police procedurals, family dramas, and Flannery O’Connor stories are higher. But the two scales operate entirely independently of one another. Some “realistic” stories lack the realism of presentation that makes their supposedly real worlds feel vivid and palpable. The best fantasy and science-fiction stories rank very high on the “realism of presentation” scale. One might suggest, in fact, that good fantasy writers work harder to make their stories “feel” real because they can’t fall back on realism of content. I don't believe in hobbits or wizards or goblins or dragons (except, of course, for alligators). But I believe The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Jonathan Rogers And, of course, plenty of “realistic” stories are strong on realism of presentation, and plenty of fantasy and science-fiction stories are dreadfully lacking in the concrete details and gestures that make a fictional world feel real. As I said, the two kinds of realism operate independently, neither opposing one another nor depending on one another. Lewis makes the case that there is plenty of great literature that doesn’t strive for realism of presentation. I don’t disagree with his assessment, but most of us aren’t writing great literature, so I recommend that you DO strive for realism of presentation, whether your stories are high or low on the scale of realism of content. All this reminds me of a quote you may have seen before, from a writer with the mellifluous (if somewhat truncated) name John Rogers: There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged [by Ayn Rand]. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. —John Rogers (ahem—not Jonathan Rogers) Acolytes of Ayn Rand claim to be realists. But there is more than one kind of realism (and, now that I think about it, Ayn Rand’s stories don’t conform to any of them). I’ll give Lewis the last word on unrealistic realisms: “Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines.” Realism of content accounts for what I love so much about Tolkien’s stories. I don’t believe in hobbits or wizards or goblins or dragons (except, of course, for alligators). But I believe The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien convinces me that if there were a world with hobbits and goblins, that world would feel like this. This piece was originally shared in Jonathan’s weekly Habit Newsletter. If you’d like your own inbox to be graced with such insight—and with staggering frequency, at that—you can sign up for it by clicking here.

A man named Harlan Hubbard—a writer, a painter, a musician, a husband, and a lover of the good earth—once wrote: “It happened this morning that I left for wild, far off places.” Some 15 years ago, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was myself setting out for a wild and far off place when I first read Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow. The place came in the form of a fictional town called Port William, and the wild in a cast of beloved characters. But as I’d learn as I explored the breadth and depth of Berry’s writing, his towns and people, his sentences and poems, were not the destination itself—but instead the path, a path that would lead me not from the world but deeper into it. Berry’s love of Port William (and by extension, his love of his actual home in Port Royal, Kentucky) would teach me to love my own places and my own people in deeper, truer ways. It happens in life that we often find ourselves in need of a guide, of someone to show us the wild and far-off facts that often lie right in our own backyards or back-woods or creeks or brothers or sisters or wives or husbands. Wendell Berry, I suspect, is no different from you or I in that regard. And though many of those who guided him may be unknown to us, I think perhaps Harlan Hubbard was one of them. It happens in life that we often find ourselves in need of a guide, of someone to show us the wild and far-off facts that often lie right in our own backyards or back-woods or creeks or brothers or sisters or wives or husbands. Pete Peterson He was a man of the generation before Berry, as Berry is of the generation before mine. Harlan loved the earth and was spellkept by it all his life. The industrial noise of engines and the callous grind of commerce frustrated him. He dreamed of an escape from them, and so in time he married Anna and together they left for wild, far off places upon a shanty boat on the Ohio river. They would make it as far as New Orleans before returning to the Kentucky hills to settle in Payne Hollow, a little piece of earth along the river they loved. There they lived out the remainder of their lives. They had no running water, no electricity, no modern conveniences, but their lives were full of wonder and music. She played piano and cello, he the violin. And their songs filled the Kentucky woods for 30 years. He also was a serious writer and a talented painter, and the subject of both his words and his art was the earth about him, the river, and the preservation of its beauty. It’s impossible to know the story of Anna and Harlan without seeing them as literary and ideological ancestors of Wendell Berry, as if in them we better understand the soil out of which Port William and its characters have grown. In fact, the cover of every one of Wendell Berry’s novels is adorned with one of Harlan’s paintings, like a watermark suggesting some underlying ownership or heritage. To say that without Harlan and Anna Hubbard we might have no Wendell Berry is to state the case too strongly. But certainly, I think, their lives have given greater depth and direction to Berry and his work, for as T. S. Eliot said, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” And therefore to know Harlan and Anna Hubbard is to know Wendell Berry with more completeness than we have without them. Anna Hubbard died in 1986. Harlan followed her two years later in 1988. And in the wake of their lives and music and writing and painting and care for the goodness of the earth, it seems right that Wendell Berry would offer us his remembrance of them. That remembrance takes the form of a fifteen- minute, one-act play called Sonata at Payne Hollow. On October 11th, The Rabbit Room is proud to present a special staged reading of this unique piece of theater. Drawing talent from Nashville’s rich theater community, we aim to create, in the space of just a few short minutes on stage, something that captures the timelessness of Berry’s words and also of Harlan & Anna’s lives. During our online event, Hutchmoot: Homebound, join us down at the riverbank for Wendell Berry’s Sonata at Payne Hollow.

Wherein Malcolm Guite reads his “Quarantine Quatrains” poetry collection, Andrew Roycroft reads his “Grace Triptych,” and Drew Miller shares the fourth Word of Befuddlement: spoothe. Malcolm has spent his quarantine in Cambridge, England, while Andrew has been hunkering down in Millisle, Northern Ireland. Both Malcolm and Andrew reference the idea of “distance,” of a “gap” that has stranded us from one another—yet at the same time, what they are offering us is precisely their voices, their breath, and in a way, their presence. Malcolm Guite’s “Quarantine Quatrains” first appeared on the blog in June of this year, while Andrew Roycroft’s “Grace Triptych” was published on the blog less than a month ago. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com. The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The fourth Word of Befuddlement, shared in today’s episode, is the verb “spoothe.” You can send in your very own definition of “spoothe” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E4: Pandemic Poetry.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “O’er Furrow and Field” by Ron Block “Fresh Pair of Eyes” and “Colorbloods” by Brooke Waggoner “Overlook” by Roary “Observance” by Adam Bokesch

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Marilyn McEntyre, author of Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict. In this episode, Jonathan and Marilyn talk about the rich etymological depth of the word “conversation” and its connection to “dwelling with,” the lost art of visiting, the transactional nature of conversation in a capitalist world, poetry’s abiding danger to the status quo, and the recovery of metaphor. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 38 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

I’ve never been set up on a date, but I can imagine such an occasion creates quite a bit of pressure. After weeks of your friend telling you, “I think you two will really hit it off; I can’t believe you haven’t met already,” there’s a heightened sense of anxiety for things to go right. And if they don’t, it’s probably your fault. You don’t want to disappoint your matchmaker friend, so you reluctantly agree to meet. At this point, however, there’s no possible way expectations can be met, right? This is how I feel when someone tells me I’ve been missing out on one of their favorite musical artists. To that end, I’ve avoided Chicagoan alternative rock group Wilco almost entirely following multiple conversations that have gone, “WHAT?! You haven’t heard Wilco??” No, sir. And your enthusiasm has only further ensured I can’t possibly listen to Wilco and enjoy it to the extent you want me to. But nonetheless, the time finally came this week, and I went on a first date with Wilco. Considering all the buildup to this auspicious occasion, I thought it proper to set the mood. I opened the windows to the cool fall breeze, lit some candles, and poured the last of my Amador Double Barrel bourbon before allowing Wilco’s 1995 debut record A.M. to flood my ears. “WAIT,” I can hear Wilco fans objecting. “You’re supposed to listen to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Summerteeth first!” Yeah, yeah. I get it. But one, this is Quarter Notes and those records weren’t released 25 years ago, and two, I like to start at the beginning when possible. So I listened through Wilco’s debut, and to be sure, their faux-southern charm and tongue-in-cheek country leanings were engaging. A.M. is beautifully easy to listen to. However, three days later, I remember hardly anything about that album. Nothing grabbed me as something I must listen to. Nothing lived up to my friends’ certainty that we’re a perfect, compatible match. Nothing made me feel like going on a second date. Maybe this is because I really do need to listen to their supposed best work (the aforementioned Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth), and A.M. is truly a mediocre-to-good record. However, I was struck by a larger realization that I’ve been contemplating over the last few days. Expectations are everything when it comes to engaging with art. Enjoy the artist and their work for what it is, then do the critical work of evaluation and defining the relationship once you’ve given them a fair shot. Chris Thiessen Consider another musical “first date” I had recently. Despite releasing their first record over 30 years ago, I had never before listened to Ohio lo-fi, indie rock legends Guided By Voices. I had never specifically been told I should do so, besides various articles and things I had seen about them. So with no expectations attached, I grabbed a beer and played Rocket League while taking in their 1995 album Alien Lanes for the first time. I had an absolute blast. The unpolished budgetlessness of the record combined with excellent musical hooks made me feel like I was listening to scratch demos for the Beatles’ White Album. (That’s high praise; don’t let me oversell the record, ha!) So here’s my dilemma: I may truly enjoy Guided By Voices more than Wilco, at least on the first impression. However, my expectations for the two listening experiences were entirely different. My bar was set quite low for the former and impossibly high for the latter. I think in order to be a good listener and enthusiast of music, I need to carry an equal level of expectation to each artist and each work I engage with. This won’t always be possible, but the disparity of personal feelings and expectations we hold toward different artists and works of art must be recognized and addressed, like any bias in our lives. Love doesn’t often happen at first sight, neither will an artist often change your life with the first impression. These things are OK. It’s OK to lower your expectations when listening to a certain artist for the first time. Just grab a beer and enjoy listening. Enjoy the artist and their work for what it is, then do the critical work of evaluation and defining the relationship once you’ve given them a fair shot. It often takes living with an artist for some time for their music to reveal itself to you and truly feel like a part of your life. So temper those expectations. Don’t hope for every new listen to be The One that changes everything. As for Wilco, this is me apologizing for my unfairness with first impressions. Call me back. I’d like to go on that second date. Click here to listen to A.M. on Spotify, and here to listen on Apple Music. This post originally appeared on Chris Thiessen’s weekly newsletter, Quarter Notes. Click here to learn more and subscribe.

Many of you will remember Joshua Luke Smith from his participation in Hutchmoot 2019 and Hutchmoot UK. He’s a UK-based singer-songwriter and the founder of Orphan No More, a kindred organization that works to build community among artists in Bath, England. We’ve gotten to know him over the last few years and we want you to have that opportunity as well—and having seen what he’s got in store for everyone at Hutchmoot: Homebound, we have no doubt that he’s going to make a good impression.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Barnabas Piper, author of Hoping for Happiness: Turning Life’s Most Elusive Feeling into Lasting Reality. In this episode, Jonathan and Barnabas talk about the unrealistic expectations that artists can sometimes project onto their craft, how much easier it is to write while sad than while happy, and the distinction between hope and optimism. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 39 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Jonathan has a new online writing course that starts on October 13th called “Writing with Feechies,” in which he will walk through the writing process for his first book, The Bark of the Bog Owl. Click here to learn more and to register. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

First published in the Dublin Review in January 1945 and later in his collection Tree and Leaf (which also included the essay “On Fairy Stories”), Tolkien’s account of a curmudgeonly but kind-hearted painter and his unfinished masterpiece is a perfect companion to our own unique creative journeys. It’s also a perfect story for us to read together as we think more deeply about the role of creativity within our Christian communities. Hosted by Jennifer Trafton, the Rabbit Room Reading Group is providing a space for contemplation and conversation as we prepare our hearts and imaginations for Hutchmoot, culminating in Matthew Dickerson’s lecture and Zoom Q & A on Saturday the 10th. Join anytime—the materials and discussion forum are now available and will stay open indefinitely. Click here to join the Leaf by Niggle Reading Group! Want to attend Hutchmoot, while you’re at it? Click here to join. Oh, and as long as you’re here, we’ve got an extra surprise—in March 2021, a book of essays entitled J. R. R. Tolkien and the Arts: A Theology of Subcreation will release through our friends at Square Halo Press. This collection of essays will look into the life and writings of Tolkien to learn how to apply his ideas to the arts. Featuring Ned Bustard, Matthew Clark, Matthew Dickerson, Billie Jarvis Freeman, John Hendrix, Bryan Mead, Christine Perrin, Bethany Ross, Charlie Starr, Jennifer Trafton, Donald Williams, and a foreword by Devin Brown. Click here to pre-order J. R. R. Tolkien and the Arts: A Theology of Subcreation in the Rabbit Room Store. Below is an excerpt from Jennifer Trafton’s essay on “Leaf by Niggle:” Here is someone who understands me. I’m right in the muddled middle of the journey too. Jennifer Trafton The night before his short story “Leaf by Niggle” fell upon him in a flood of inspiration, Tolkien had reached a point in the writing of The Lord of the Rings that is painfully familiar to any writer of fiction: the muddled middle. Beginnings carry the thrill of invention and possibility; endings are exhausting yet triumphant; but in between, there is a long and often harrowing journey filled with imaginative dead ends, plot threads that meander, and characters who seem to have wills of their own—not to mention the ever-present demons of procrastination, self-doubt, and despair. What began as a simple sequel to The Hobbit had quickly burgeoned into something far greater, and the prospect of finishing this ever-growing behemoth of a story was beginning to seem so far off as to be impossible (in fact, it would take him 12 years). Tolkien was feeling inadequate, overwhelmed, fearful that it would never be finished and that all the years of effort would be wasted, and—regarding the specific fate of this little band of hobbits who had just stumbled into a mysterious stranger at the inn in Bree—completely stuck. From the perspective of a scholar or fan of Tolkien’s work, those little biographical details illuminate both the genesis and content of his story in fascinating ways. But for a fellow storyteller or any other kind of an artist, they can evoke another reaction: a sense of vindication, camaraderie, and profound encouragement. I understand how he felt. Or maybe more importantly: here is someone who understands me. I’m right in the muddled middle of the journey too. Which is why “Leaf by Niggle” is something of a miracle—and, above all, a gift to artists. As a writer of fiction, a visual artist, and a teacher/mentor of young writers and artists, I have collected a kind of “library of encouragement” over the years—works that inspire and challenge me as an artist, and which I circulate amongst others who are pursuing a creative calling. These include classics like Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water, and Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, as well as fiction that works in us at a more visceral, intuitive level—Chaim Potok’s novel My Name is Asher Lev, Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer-Prize winning musical Sunday in the Park with George, and the Danish movie Babette’s Feast. Right at the top of my list of recommendations to artists of any kind, and the one I talk the most about, is “Leaf by Niggle”—but rarely do I attempt any theological introduction before simply thrusting it into their hands to experience for themselves. Because as tempting as it is to leap immediately to Niggle’s themes and symbolism and to deduce from it something about Tolkien’s View of Creativity, it is, first and foremost, a story, not a thesis. And as the story of an artist’s journey, it functions beautifully as a companion on our own. Click here to join the Leaf by Niggle Reading Group. And click here to pre-order J. R. R. Tolkien and the Arts: A Theology of Subcreation in the Rabbit Room Store.

Carly Bannister is making her first-ever full length record, and best of all, she’s inviting her listeners to make it happen via Kickstarter. Let’s get this album fully funded! Bannister’s songwriting is at once witty, searching, and disarming—she conveys dense, complex emotions through fresh and singable melodies, resulting in songs both weighty and weightless. She’s made several appearances at Local Shows and, in the words of Kacey Musgraves, she never fails to leave us “smiling with tears in our eyes.” It’s not often that you can say this of a songwriter, but truly: you’ll laugh and you’ll cry. Here’s her profile on Spotify, where you can listen to a few of her songs:

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Russell Moore, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul. In this episode, Jonathan and Dr. Moore talk about the various ways that fear presents itself to the writer, the self-sabotage of chasing relevance, the temptation to write our own life stories, and the timeless danger of trying to be no more than who your audience wants you to be. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 40 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Jonathan has a new online writing course that starts on October 13th called “Writing with Feechies,” in which he will walk through the writing process for his first book, The Bark of the Bog Owl. Click here to learn more and to register. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Discernment takes practice. It’s a lifelong process of listening and looking, sensing and sitting, taking risks and taking breaths. And our ability to perceive, in healthy ways, when to move and when to stay is the difference between being overcoming or being overcome by the Resistance. Ever since her acclaimed debut, Heal for the Honey, released in 2008, Brooke Waggoner has been known for her substantive work. From her considerable work with Jack White to numerous TV/movie placements to playing ACL and Lollapalooza, Brooke has enough credits to move the meter, but it’s her imaginative, ambitious work that has moved listeners so deeply over the years. Yet despite the success and the acclaim for yet another album, Sweven (2016), Brooke decided she needed a break. The industry’s demands could wait. Family was taking shape. Home was calling. The creative plates stopped spinning—at least those we were used to seeing. This episode of the Resistance features an honest conversation with Brooke about the tension of when to stop and start, when to move forward and how to let go. There are no right answers, but there are meaningful questions asked. Click here to listen to this newest episode of The Resistance. And here to learn more about The Resistance Podcast.

Wherein Chris Slaten reads his poems “Conversation,” “The Right Time,” and “All Saints’ Day,” Russ Ramsey reads his piece “Beech Grove,” and Drew Miller shares the sixth Word of Befuddlement: grumpple. First published in Volume 2 of The Molehill, “Beech Grove” is a tale that proceeds at the pace of Port William, charting the parallel landscapes of a small Indiana town and of a young boy’s inner life. You’ll learn about Russ’s introduction to the feeling of guilt, his larger-than-life grandfather, and our simultaneous ability to be deeply known and deeply unknown by those closest to us. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com. The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The sixth Word of Befuddlement, shared in today’s episode, is the noun “grumpple.” You can send in your very own definition of “grumpple” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E6: Beech Grove.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “Under the Stars” by Analog Heart “Highlands” by Kyle McEvoy “Overlook (Ambient Mix)” by Roary “By the Grave” by Anton Belov “The Twilit Vale / The Quiet Longing” by Ron Block “Family” by Greg Thomas

Dear Mabel, You gave me a gift before I learned how to talk, much less how to write a proper thank-you. A $25 savings bond, invested at the time of my birth, to mature sometime in my early adulthood. It matured, and so have I, and now this 30 year-old has $150 to spend. You left no instructions about how to spend this money. Instead, you placed blind trust in an infant you barely knew, that some day she would use your investment well. But then again, I guess your trust wasn’t entirely blind. After all, you invested much more than $25 into that baby girl. You raised my grandmother, who nurtured my mother, who married my father. And by the time the seeds of your love reached me, it was lavish and extravagant. Your love compounded like interest. I bet you knew it would. But back to the matter at hand. How to spend it? You left no instructions, but did you have dreams? Did you want it to make me happy? Comfortable? Did you want me to use it for something responsible? Whimsical? Did you want me reinvest it for later? Did you want me to give it away? Or did you simply want to be a part of my adult life, a part of my own dreams, whatever they turned out to be? Is there anything so profound that could do all those things? Groceries. I think I’ll buy groceries. Lactase I think you’d love the man I married. Christian is kind and funny and gentle and good. Unfortunately, he’s also lactose intolerant, but don’t worry, there’s pills for that now. I know that your dairy farmer blood runs in my veins. Rest assured, we only eat cheddar if it’s sharp, and I promise we’ll never use margarine. Cucumbers I’ll get some from my farmers market on Saturday to make pickles. My mom found a letter addressed to my other great grandmother from my great great grandmother tucked into the pages of an old family Bible. The letter was in answer to the question, “how do I make pickles,” and the response was meandering and approximate with very little concrete instruction. I love it. She cooked like me. I don’t really like pickles, but I’m a sucker for nostalgia and kitchen improv. So, I need some cucumbers. Pecans Your daughter made pecan caramel Christmas candy to give away every year, and I picked up the tradition a couple years ago. Turns out your side of the family writes charmingly vague recipes, too. But I figured it out, and last year, I made a big batch. Christian and I rode around our new town giving candy out to strangers. It was well received and hopefully not as creepy as that just made it sound. We’ll do it again this year. I’ll make the candy in early December (close to your daughter’s birthday), but I’ll buy the pecans now and put them in the freezer. I’ll see if I can get them from The Peach Truck. Eggs It’s almost September 22nd. I’m not sure if you know this, but that’s Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’s birthday. My new coworkers definitely know that. I just started working for a place called the Rabbit Room. It’s lovely and good and very difficult to describe, but suffice it to say that I feel the need to bake something for them as an elevenses meal on September 22nd. If we wanted to, we could eat it next to a fireplace that used to belong to J. R. R. Tolkien. I’ll get the eggs from an orchard down the road. And while I’m there, I’ll probably spend a couple more dollars on a frozen cider slushie. Coffee and tea Your daughter was a coffee addict, and your granddaughter has a bit of a tea obsession. You may be pleased to know that I’m addicted to both. I’m low on coffee, so I’ll run by E&B roasters in town on the way to my mama’s porch this afternoon. We’ll have tea when I get there and solve the world’s problems. We might need two cups each. There are several world problems at the moment. My sister may swing by while I’m there. She lives right down the road. We’ll see my parents off before they head to Paris. Oh that reminds me, I need some Cheese My Mama and Daddy will have been married for 40 years on Sunday. They had considered running off to Europe to celebrate, but then the world shut down (temporarily, I think), so now they’re adorably going to picnic in Paris…TN. It’s a small town, but I still doubt their visit will make the paper like it did when my Daddy used to come visit you and hunt on your farm. I wonder if Oh My Chives has any of that good sheep’s milk cheese I could give them. I should check. ? That’s about all I can think of, and it’s already more than I need. But there’s still about $75 left. Over the time it’s taken the bond and me to mature to this point, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been extravagantly invested in, in every imaginable way. Because of your vision and generosity, I’ve enjoyed much more than you started with, and I’ve still got plenty to share. So that’s what I’ll do with the rest. I’ll invest in and nourish someone else who maybe doesn’t have the generations of support that I have. I love my life, and I’m glad you’re a part of it. Thanks for the gift. Your affectionate great-granddaughter, Rachel Y Matar [Editor’s note: You may have seen under Rachel’s entry for “Eggs” that she recently began working for the Rabbit Room. She’s been shipping store orders, and before that, she generously volunteered during the Mystery Moot Kit-packing process. If you received a Moot Kit for Hutchmoot: Homebound, there’s about a 96% chance that Rachel played an instrumental role in getting it to your doorstep. So, welcome to the Rabbit Room, Rachel. We’re already so grateful for the investment you’ve put in us.]