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“You must remember, garden catalogues are as big liars as house agents.” —Rumer Godden, China Court My love affair with gardening was tumultuous from day one, fraught with all the heights and depths of a grande amour. Mainly self-taught, my earliest attempts were characterized by rapturous perusals of garden catalogues, advertising such wonders as heat-tolerant lilacs and humidity-resistant tea roses. As a teenager, I pored over Jackson & Perkins, Park Seed, and White Flower Farm with the avidity other girls my age brought to YM and Seventeen. The pictures and descriptions made my heart pound, and much of my hard-earned babysitting money went to seed packets, bulbs, and bareroot crowns. I remember the agony of trying to decide between bleeding heart and lily of the valley, and the exquisite promise of the gardenia-like “Rose of May” daffodil. If it was old-fashioned, sweetly scented, and so much as mentioned in an L.M. Montgomery novel, I wanted to grow it. I sketched out a plan for a patch of uncultivated earth on the south side of a massive magnolia tree in my parents’ front yard, drawing and re-drawing the placement of my anticipated darlings. Some nights I was so excited about my garden I literally could not sleep. In all my zeal it never occurred to me that silly things like hardiness zones and growing requirements really mattered all that much. Those were for other peoples’ gardens, not mine—my garden would be loved into existence, regional limitations be hanged! Sadly, as may be imagined, a lot of that money would have been better spent as straight fodder for the compost bin (which I’d likewise saved up to buy). For the fact is, no matter how much I wished it otherwise—wished it to the point of believing—English primroses just don’t like Georgia’s sudden and generally brief springs, and sweet peas absolutely will not grow here unless you plant them in October, period. And nothing—nothing I was interested in growing, at least—was going to flourish in packed red clay. The weeds, on the other hand, seemed to get along just fine. By mid-June, what was left of my garden was completely drowned in chickweed and Johnsongrass. If my garden knows the curse of the Fall, by way of thorns and herbivorous larvae and fusarium wilt, then surely, surely it knows a Reclamation is burgeoning—is, indeed, already underway. Lanier Ivester Amazingly, I was undaunted by this early heartbreak. Quite the contrary, in fact. Which goes to show that even disasters have their metaphorically compostable value. The money I spent that first year made me all the more selective the next—and it also made me take another look at those dratted hardiness zones. I invited a dear friend of my mother’s, who happened to be an accomplished gardener, to advise me on soil amendments and plant recommendations, taking every drop of advice most soberly to heart. I mixed topsoil, mushroom compost, and sand to help drain that red clay, and I bought plants from a local nursery—special plants, like “Strawberry” foxgloves and veronica and blue salvia, which also happen to thrive in our area. My friend gave me a slip of a “Fairy” rose from her own garden to get things started, and it was the anchor of my planting design. When I married and moved to an old farmhouse several years later, that rose came with me, to anchor a new perennial garden at my new home. ~ The years since have seen considerable extremes of triumph and tragedy in my garden career. My husband built me the kitchen plot of my dreams soon after we were married, and I will never forget how the outer beds were ringed that second year with the salmon-colored bells of foxgloves I had grown from seed, nursing them through a full three seasons in the basement and on the patio before they were ready for the garden. I had all-but named them, they were so dear to me. Then, of course, there was the summer I had surgery and let the chives go to seed—over ten years ago, and I am still cursing that bit of oversight as I wrench volunteer chive plants out of the stacked-rock beds. But, oh, those stacked-rock beds! And that picket fence curtained with morning glories! Over time, we added a birdbath in the center and a colony of Italian honeybees in one of the herb beds, and, after a brief interlude of pine bark mulch, I laid out the paths in pea gravel. I confess, for all our ups and downs, we’ve had an understanding, my garden and me. And there have been times—amid the spring planting, for instance, or on a June morning when the beds around me fairly jubilate with squash and tomatoes and summer flowers—when I have felt the love flowing out of my hands and into the soil. I’ve always thought it loves me, too—in spite of my many mistakes and failures—in the way that our Creator meant for His creation to live in mutual respect and benevolence. And if my garden knows the curse of the Fall, by way of thorns and herbivorous larvae and fusarium wilt, then surely, surely it knows a Reclamation is burgeoning—is, indeed, already underway. I sometimes suspect it knows it better than I do. ~ Life has seen some significant challenges in recent years, and, by default, my beloved kitchen garden got demoted to low-priority status. The picket gate started to sag; the stacked rock beds caved in places. The honeybees quitted their pretty little English hive for more advantageous lodgings—a hollow tree, no doubt, or an unoccupied porch column. My neighbor saw them swarm and thought, most reasonably, “Hm. There go Lanier’s bees.” I could hardly blame them. But their going fell on my heart like a dirge, or the last light out in a deserted house. Plantings were out of the question. The weed situation, on the other hand, became a running joke between my teenaged farm assistant and me: at least once or twice a summer I’d hire him to help me bring order out of chaos, and together we’d whack and haul for hours at a time. “You know,” I told him on the hottest day of July, leaning on a fence post and drawing a grimy hand against my forehead, “I’m thinking about putting in a swimming pool. Right. Here.” ~ Two years ago, I looked out my kitchen window one January morning and was obliged to admit that my little garden was a nearly irreparable ruin. Dry weeds rose against a dour sky, rattling their seed pods menacingly in each gust of wind. (No wonder the French call them mauvaises herbes—“wicked plants”!) The center beds looked more like graves of dead lavender and rosemary, and the once-neat paths were obliterated under two winters’ worth of leaves and out-of-control clematis vines. After a long stretch of sorrow and bereavement in my life, the effort of reclamation seemed greater than all the years of cultivating put together. Maybe I’ll be a gardener in my 60s, I thought rather dismally, turning from the window with a sigh. The trouble with gardening, however, is that once you’re in love—and I mean really in love—it’s for keeps. No amount of discouragement or unpropitious circumstance is going to uproot that mysterious tangle of delight and desire from your heart. Like all the great loves in history, love of gardening persists, often in the face of impossible odds. At unlooked-for times, and in unlooked-for ways, the passion ignites, and you remember what you knew as a girl: even if the end result doesn’t live up to the promise—even if the promise is unattainable this side of heaven—the desire itself is sweet enough to make up for it. What’s more, the thing the promise points to is real, and your effort to incarnate it in an orderly vegetable patch or a flowerbed of flaming color is to claim a bit of Eden on a weed-choked, hard-crusted old earth still dreaming of a beautiful past and a redeemed future. You rejoice to find that neither drought, nor busyness, nor squash vine borers have power to snuff out that original spark, and that a seed catalogue, or a fleck of green on an otherwise dead-looking hydrangea cutting can still summon a quick rush of tears. Of all things. That very January I found my passion for gardening kindled once more amid the pages of Christie Purifoy’s quietly radiant book Roots and Sky. Christie’s journey to make a home out of an old house, and her efforts to embody truth with tangible beauty, were so close to my own heart and story it was like having an extended talk with a kindred spirit. I read more than half of it out-loud to Philip, and I’ve lost count how many friends have whipped out their iPhones and bought it on the spot at my enthusiastic recommendation. I loved—savored—every word. Midway through, however, I closed the covers and placed it on the bedside table with a sigh of resignation. “What is it?” Philip wanted to know. “I’m cleaning out my potting shed tomorrow,” I said. “Christie’s started talking about Brandywine tomatoes, and I just can’t bear it.” The truth is, Christie’s gentle and joyous reflections on gardening, from seed catalogue to wealth of summer harvest, felt so familiar as to be painful. It was years since I’d had my own little army of green under a lamp in the basement; years since I’d tasted an heirloom tomato I’d grown from seed. Years since I’d had enough produce to share with friends, and still enough to put up in the freezer. I knew I couldn’t continue reading her book until I had responded to the very personal and particular unction I had found in its pages. Accordingly, I fell on the little above-ground basement beneath our sunroom which has served as my potting shed since I moved here, sweeping, tossing, unearthing, and rearranging. I sterilized flats and trays, dropped seeds into ranks, wrote labels for herbs and flowers. And tomatoes, of course. Next to the name “Brandywine” I drew a little heart. Always my favorite, it meant even more to me now. The memory of it, the promise of it, had tumbled me headlong back into gardening. Multiple times a day I ventured down to the basement to talk to my seedlings, check water levels, re-route tendrils of moonvine. It was the re-beginnings of my garden, the promise of both nourishment and beauty, framed in a west-facing window. There was so much work ahead to prepare the beds and reclaim my kitchen plot from ruin. But as dear old L.M. Montgomery said, “It is always safe to dream of spring. For it is sure to come; and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter.” You can read more of Lanier’s writing on The Rabbit Room here.

One of the difficulties I have with the Scriptures is my inability to see where the jokes are hidden. Jokes are cultural, and I’m neither Jewish nor several thousand years old, so even if the context is explained to me, I’m still sort of in the dark. After all, nothing makes a good joke die of ennui like having some fusty-lipped academic tell you why you ought to chuckle. Outside of jokes, though, I’ve often laughed out of sheer gladness. When an evening sky shimmers with afterglow, and the final tatters of an outbound weather system blaze blood-red in the setting sun’s last rays, a joyous chuckle is an appropriate response. It seems to me that the overflow of joy is crucial to our very lives. Imagine the drear of a Creation without it. Everybody has mental markers for when the world will end. Secularists tempted toward Hollywood’s mythology prefer a good nuclear winter, a plague, or a giant rock from space. Church folk often spin elaborate eschatologies out of political turmoil or, in less admirable cases, Dan Brown novels. For myself, I wonder what’s going to happen when there is no more laughter. In a line from a rather well-known Wendell Berry poem, amid a mounting crescendo of homespun iconoclasms, the Kentucky sage throws down a gauntlet: “Laugh,” he commands. “Laughter is immeasurable.” Yes. With all my fear-addled heart, yes. I think what Berry is talking about here is real joy, unmarred by irony. It is a mirth that stares Death in the eye and grins, knowing that, after Death has had his day, his day will be done. We see a glimmer of this holy elation in children. My five-year-old is good at it. The other day, I was going through some pictures and found one of her sitting at the table over play-dough, sporting what we might call her “crazy Woody Harrelson” face. She looks capable of any stripe of mischief. It’s hard not to giggle over the photo. I feel I have the comic’s addiction to laughter anyway. Even when reprimanding my kids, I often shoot for the most idiosyncratic phrasing. “If you touch your sister again, I’m taping both your hands to a passing donkey.” As you might imagine, this does not always make for effective discipline. “If you get out of bed, I’m glueing you to the refrigerator.” I can hear the tired steam-release of my wife’s exasperation, but sometimes I can’t help it. It’s too fun to be utterly silly. My favorite dad-comedic-ninja move is the stock-still face with shifty Gene Wilder eyes. The kids know it means tickles are coming, and they flee the premises with piggy-squeals of delight. All this might be too easy, though. Children’s laughter is wonderful, but perhaps we enjoy it because it seems guileless. Children have not, as Wendell Berry says in his poem, “considered all the facts.” Looking for joy on the other end of life, though, one person comes to mind: Mr. Brunson. He’s the owner of a Knoxville office park where a ballet studio sits. My wife and kids dance there. The end of every school semester provides me with an opportunity to witness more than fifty children, mostly little girls, do artistic, sometimes acrobatic things that I could never do. The iconography of their work always surprises me. I’m used to sounds and colors rendering beauty unto the world, but this troupe of amateurs and semi-professionals puts the bodily workmanship of the Creator on direct exhibit. It always feels unexpected. In a Daliesque splay of ulnae and tibiae, the girls venture toward the limits of the human frame, lending credence to its masterful Designer. Most unexpected, though, is Mr. Brunson himself. He’s an aging man, probably in his late sixties. Growing deltas of crows’ feet spread from the corners of his eyes. In conversation, his mouth curls like an elf shoe, trying and failing to hold in a subtle merriment. Unlike the young ladies doing barre exercises on his property, he boasts no Gumby-like flexibility. His body is closer to the Babe Ruth model. While he doesn’t yet seem to have trouble getting around, it won’t be long until entropy takes its toll. Every year, though, he takes to the stage in a top hat or shirt sleeves. Under the gaze of a full house of parents, community members, and lithe-limbed novices, he dances. It’s a light affair, all told. This past rendition played out to Sammy Davis’s classic version of “Mr. Bojangles,” drawing subtle toe-point circles that hearkened back to Fred Astaire. The old man tipped his hat, slapped his knee, and gently shook an open-fingered hand in the air, coupling the theatrical bits with easy turns and whimsical kick-the-can steps. It's the one joke that's on all of us—that the whole world is backwards and that even though everything looks like death, life waits inside and will explode at its appointed time. Adam Whipple Out of necessity, he’s more a grandiose stage presence than an acrobat. His smiling mien falls upon the audience at the measured pace of a sunset. The temptation, for all of us watching, is perhaps to find it cute that he’s even on stage. At a dance performance, we want the spectacle of a grand jeté or some up-and-coming girl doing endless fouettés. Mr. Brunson, of course, gives us nothing like this. For the passing viewer—or perhaps, the passive viewer—it’s too easy to be glad of an old man dancing in a show featuring mostly athletic youth. We are in danger of seeing mere irony. Upon the exercise of one’s attention, however—or one’s imagination—what Mr. Brunson offers the audience is nothing so superficial. It is no greeting-card painting or pasteboard ontology. It is joy. The line between irony and joy is a teleological one. That is, it’s a question of goals. If you imagine the universe ending in a supermassive black hole—followed by another eventual big bang, in which noble apes and other summations of carbon once again wait for Godot—your laughter and your smile will tend toward darkness. Like the Cheshire cat, the substance of things will gradually fade from view, leaving only an ever-more-alarming rictus grin. You will eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you will die. If, on the other hand, you see the machinations of a cosmic battle—in which unrepentant evil will be judged by the Lord of Hosts, whose robe is dipped in blood, whose name is written on his thigh, and whose tongue is a double-edged sword—just maybe, if you laugh at all, it will the the laugh of one who knows the endgame. While I enjoy seeing my children dance, and I love the artistry and pageantry of the production pieces, a grown man dancing in my culture is a treasure not to be missed. The fact that this man couldn’t do an arabesque to save his life makes it that much more worthwhile. He’s onstage grinning because, if you can dance, there is much reason to dance. I don’t see him as cute. Like a supernova, his small, genuine efforts constitute a moment so bright I have to look away at times. It’s so wonderful, it’s almost embarrassing. In these cases, irony is a defense, something to keep me from feeling too deeply. If I have eyes to receive the gift Mr. Brunson is giving, though, I can see the grand joke. It’s the one joke that’s on all of us—that the whole world is backwards and that even though everything looks like death, life waits inside and will explode at its appointed time. The corn of wheat will fall into the earth and die, and from the ground of its demise, there will spring forth much fruit. The setting sun will blaze, the old man will shuffle a little jig, and by the grace of God, you will laugh. You can find more of Adam Whipple’s work at the arts journal, Foundling House.

We are pleased to share with you, courtesy of our contributors, the Rabbit Room’s very own metaphorical mixtape of love songs—forty-eight of them, in fact! So it’s probably more like an epic series of mixtapes, because there’s just that much love in our hearts. Let the warm fuzzies commence. Click here to listen to our Valentine’s Day playlist on Spotify. Since there are so many songs on this playlist, we can’t include what each person said about their song of choice. But seeing as that’s half the fun, we’ve included here a smattering of stories and explanations. “Hallelujah I Love Her So” by Ray Charles We love our Genius here in Georgia, and this has got to be one of his best songs. There’s a fantastic pianist at the Jekyll Island Club who always plays—and sings—this classic for us, complete with knocking on the piano at the appropriate moment. Lots of happy memories. —Lanier Ivester “If We Were Vampires” by Jason Isbell Because love is a long haul, but it’s not infinitely long: “Maybe time running out is a gift / I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift.” —Jonathan Rogers “The Book of Love,” covered by Peter Gabriel, originally by Magnetic Fields Every line is so direct and unabashed. “The book of love is long and boring…but you can read me anything.” —Chris Slaten “Somebody” by Depeche Mode A song of longing for a true love-as-friendship relationship. That goes along with a moment of awkward self-awareness that there’s something a little too precious about such sentiment, even when it’s deeply felt. —Thomas McKenzie “Hotel Fire” by HEM This song has a wideness to its lyrics that allows for a fair amount of approachability, but as I approach it, it rings of the wildness of love. The lyrics speak of love as a thing that does what it will, that is willing to obliterate the walls of a comfort zone, and that, in the end, still has the gumption to demand devotion. I hear this, and I think of Rich Mullins saying, “God is a wild man.” —Adam Whipple “Choosing Teams” by David Mead This is one of my all-time favorite David Mead songs and that is saying something. I am a huge fan of his writing and could have chosen a number of songs including “Little Boats” and “Sleeping in Saturday.” I love the way he expresses the isolation of being a school-aged child and never feeling chosen, then contrasts it with finally knowing what he wants and feeling safe and wanted with his love. —Jill Phillips “Take It With Me” by Tom Waits, sung by Jubilant Skyes The last verse, where the camera pulls in, is the most beautiful image in any song I’ve ever heard. —Andrew Osenga A beautiful cover of a wonderful Tom Waits song. Sykes lingers over and meditates on every word like a man who’s coming to his last earthly moments with his beloved. The spare arrangement is perfect. —David Mitchel “Born” by Over the Rhine Because nobody sings the ache like them. This album (and especially this song) got me through one of the roughest patches of my life. —Jennifer Trafton “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty Because it always makes me laugh. Also because it takes some of the idealism out of marriage. —Rebecca Reynolds “All I Ask Of You” from Phantom of the Opera I think one of the most romantic notions of all time is summed up in the line: “everywhere you go, let me go too.” —Hetty White “I Know Different” by Neil Finn This song could only come out of a long-term, beautiful relationship. But really, I should just paste the lyrics to the last part of the song: One day, when it’s over All the borders will be open In your honor, for your virtue I never, meant to hurt you I surrender, to the future But I won’t be, taken prisoner And I’ll stay with you, if you’ll let me And the whole world, can forget me I know that, we came closer To believing, that we’re through I know different —Andy Gullahorn Click here to listen to our Valentine’s Day playlist on Spotify. What about you? What are some of your favorite love songs? Please share in the comments section!

This Saturday the 16th at 6:00 pm, Friends of L’Abri Nashville will hold a dinner in Cane Ridge, Tennessee, followed by a lecture by Mary McCampbell on the desire to worship in modern and postmodern fiction. Click through for more information about Mary and this event. In his oft-quoted graduation address, “This is Water,” David Foster Wallace argues that “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Following on from Wallace’s crucial comments, Mary McCampbell will look at the ways in which the fiction of a group of modern and postmodern authors explores a desire to worship an often unnamed, supposedly unknown, sacred source of joy and life. Even though the authors and their fictional characters are writing within and for a supposedly post-God cultural space, they are, as Paul Maltby claims, “haunted by the idea of the salvational moment,” the moment when an unnamed longing becomes a present joy through the act of worship. Mary McCampbell serves as Associate Professor of Humanities at Lee University. Her doctoral work at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne focused on the relationship between postmodern fiction, late capitalist culture, and the religious impulse. She writes regularly on faith and the arts in general audience publications such as Image Journal, Christ and Pop Culture, The Curator, and Christianity Today. Mary was the Summer 2014 Writer in Residence at the English Branch of L’Abri Fellowship and a Spring 2018 Scholar-in-Residence at Regent College in Vancouver. Mary has a forthcoming book entitled Postmodern Prophetic: the Religious Impulse in Contemporary Fiction.

“My Father’s House” is the ninth track on Springsteen’s classic lo-fi album Nebraska, and the last song he wrote for the album. In his autobiography Born To Run, Bruce has this to say about the creation of the album: Nebraska began as an unknown meditation on my childhood and its mysteries. I had no conscious political agenda or social theme. I was after a feeling, a tone that felt like the world I’d known and still carried inside me. The remnants of that world were still only ten minutes and ten miles from where I was living. The ghosts of Nebraska were drawn from my many sojourns into the small-town streets I’d grown up on. My family, [Bob] Dylan, Woody [Guthrie], Hank [Williams], the American gothic short stories of Flannery O’Connor, the noir novels of James M. Cain, the quiet violence of the films of Terrence Malick, and the decayed fable of director Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter all guided my imagination. I am a fan of Springsteen’s classic hits: “Born To Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Hungry Heart,” etc. But Nebraska has always haunted me in a way other Springsteen albums do not, and of all the songs on Nebraska, “My Father’s House” has always haunted me the most. And, having growing up in Christianity, you can understand why it would—it’s a prodigal son story. But it’s not the prodigal son story, because this song does not have a redemptive ending. The last verse of the song says: My father’s house shines hard and bright It stands like a beacon calling me in the night Calling and calling so cold and alone Shining ‘cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned I think the reason the song has no happy ending is that it reflects the real relationship of Bruce and his father at the time, a man who struggled with undiagnosed mental illness and alcoholism. Bruce writes about his early relationship with his dad: I was not my father’s favorite citizen. As a boy I figured it was just the way men were, distant, uncommunicative, busy within the currents of the grown-up world. As a child you don’t question your parents’ choices. You accept them. They are justified by the godlike status of parenthood. If you aren’t spoken to, you’re not worth the time. If you’re not greeted with love and affection, you haven’t earned it. If you’re ignored, you don’t exist. Control over your own behavior is the only card you have to play in the hope of modifying theirs. Maybe you have to be tougher, stronger, more athletic, smarter, in some way better…who knows? One evening, my father was giving me a few boxing lessons in the living room. I was flattered, excited by his attention and eager to learn. Things were going well. And then he threw a few open-palmed punches to my face that landed just a little too hard. It stung; I wasn’t hurt, but a line had been crossed. I knew something was being communicated. We had slipped into the dark nether land beyond father and son. I sensed what was being said: I was an intruder, a stranger, a competitor in our home and a fearful disappointment. My heart broke and I crumpled. He walked away in disgust… Unfortunately, my dad’s desire to engage with me almost always came after the nightly religious ritual of the ‘sacred six-pack.’ One beer after another in the pitch dark of our kitchen. It was always then that he wanted to see me and it was always the same. A few moments of feigned parental concern for my well-being followed by the real deal: the hostility and raw anger toward his son, the only other man in the house. It was a shame. He loved me but he couldn’t stand me. He felt we competed for my mother’s affections. We did. He also saw in me too much of his real self. My pop was built like a bull, always in work clothes; he was strong and physically formidable. Toward the end of his life, he fought back from death many times. Inside, however, beyond his rage, he harbored a gentleness, timidity, shyness, and a dreamy insecurity. These were the things I wore on the outside and the reflection of these qualities in his boy repelled him. It made him angry. It was “soft.” And he hated “soft.” Of course, he’d been brought up “soft.” A mama’s boy, just like me. When Bruce was about seventeen, his father decided to pack it up and start again, so his father, his mom, and his younger sister Pam moved to California. Bruce decided to stay in New Jersey, so he was left to fend for himself. After that he didn’t really see his father much except for occasional trips to California. Bruce would later express some of his rage and sorrow over this relationship in his searing song from Darkness on the Edge of Town, “Adam Raised a Cain.” He has said that songs like this are the way he talked to his father at the time, because they didn’t talk much. Perhaps the most resonant lyrics of the song are: We were prisoners of love, a love in chains He was standin’ in the door, I was standin’ in the rain With the same hot blood burning in our veins Adam raised a Cain Darkness on the Edge of Town came out in 1978, followed by The River in 1980, then Nebraska in 1982. By that point Bruce seems to have grown more reflective about his relationship with his father and the silence between them, so he penned the poignant and haunting “My Father’s House.” In a performance of the song posted on YouTube, he tells this story before playing the song: I had this habit for a long time: I used to get in my car and I would drive back through my old neighborhood, a little town I grew up in. I would always drive past the little houses I used to live in. I got so I would do it really regularly, for years. And I eventually got to wondering, What the hell am I doing? So I went to see a psychiatrist—this is true!—I sat down and I said, “You know, doc, for years I’ve been getting in my car, and I drive back to my town and I pass my houses late at night—do you know what I’m doing?” And he said, “I want you to tell me what you think you’re doing.” So I go, “That’s what I’m paying you for.” So he says, “Well, something bad happened. You’re going back, thinking that you can make it right again. Something went wrong and you keep going back to see if you can fix it and somehow make it right.” And I sat there and I said, “That is what I’m doing.” And he said, “Well, you can’t.” The thing Bruce couldn’t fix was the darkness of his childhood; the fatherly silence, the sudden rage, the alienation. We hear this irresolution in the ending of “My Father’s House,” where the the dark highway full of unatoned sins lies between the son and his father. Bruce writes in Born To Run: “’My Father’s House’ is probably the best song I’ve written about my dad, but its conclusion wasn’t going to be enough for me.” Thankfully for him, it wasn’t the end of the story. Bruce tells a story about how, right before he became a father for the first time, his dad drove five hundred miles to his house in L.A. just to “say hi.” Bruce writes: I invited him in, and at eleven o’clock in a small sun-drenched dining area, we sat at the table nursing beers. My father, in his normal state, had little talent for small talk, so I did the best I could. Suddenly, he said, “Bruce, you’ve been very good to us.” I acknowledged that I had. Pause. His eyes drifted out over the Los Angeles haze. He continued, “…And I wasn’t very good to you.” A small silence caught us. “You did the best you could,” I said. That was it. It was all I needed, all that was necessary. I was blessed on that day and given something by my father I thought I’d never live to see…a brief recognition of the truth. It was why he’d come five hundred miles that morning. He’d come to tell me, on the eve of my fatherhood, that he loved me, and to warn me to be careful, to do better, to not make the same painful mistakes he’d made. I try to honor it. Bruce goes on later in the book to talk about how, in the last ten years of his life, his father was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was able to get some help. In those ten years they were able to reconnect and repair some of the damage that had been done. “My Father’s House” starts with a dream: Last night I dreamed that I was a child Out where the pines grow wild and tall I was trying to make it home through the forest Before the darkness falls After his father died, Bruce describes having a dream. He says: I’m onstage in full flight, the night is burning, and my dad, long dead, sits quietly in an aisle seat in the audience. Then…I’m kneeling next to him in the aisle, and for a moment, we both watch the man on fire onstage. I touch his forearm, and say to my dad, who for so many years sat paralyzed by depression, “Look, Dad, look…that guy onstage…that’s you…that’s how I see you.” This essay is adapted from a session at Hutchmoot 2018.

Let the Local Shows commence! A new season begins on Tuesday the 19th with Andrew Peterson, Cindy Morgan, Ron Block, and Jeff Taylor. Starting on the 19th, Local Shows will be convening every other Tuesday at The Well Coffeehouse on Granny White Pike. Click here to purchase tickets. We are also very pleased to share that the live stream is back up and running for this new season. So if you are unable to attend, but would still like to tune in, you can do so by visiting our Facebook page on Tuesday evening at 7:30 CST. We’ll see you there!

I used to be a shepherd, keeping natural-colored sheep for their fleeces. Most sheep grow white or off-white wool, but ours, bred from the occasional black sheep any commercial shepherd would reject, grew amazing-colored wool: ebony, silvers, grizzled grays, and countless shades of chocolate. Fiber artists used these rare colors to create beauty without dyes. Some of my sheep grew shiny, strong fiber that was perfect for tapestry work or socks with durable heels while others produced wool soft enough for camisoles and baby gowns. Each sheep on our farm had the genetic potential to grow good wool, but not all of them did. It wasn’t because they were lazy—sheep don’t work. They’re relationship creatures. Sheep live with someone who takes care of them. People and sheep benefit each other; we need the warmth and nutrition they provide and they need the provision and protection we offer. Whether they know it or not (usually not), sheep need to be kept. Cared for. My sheep met certain aspects of their care with enthusiasm. They loved the extra grain they got before breeding season and lambing but, left to themselves, they crowded the feeders, knocking the small and weak aside. If I didn’t take care to make sure each one got enough and not more, some sheep would be fat and others hungry and stressed. Most of my flock liked the taste of their mineral supplements, but others—not so much. Those who refused the minerals ate the red paint off the barn instead. It did them no good. Some of my flock preferred to go their own way. I kept them safe with fences, guard animals, a security camera, and most importantly, my presence. As a result, the sheep could rest and fully chew their food. If they didn’t feel safe enough to lie down, they wouldn’t ruminate, and they lost vital nutrition. The ewes that trusted us rested easy. Others were timid or afraid. Startling at nothing, they depended on themselves and their ability to flee. They spent countless calories running away from imagined threats instead of investing them in growth and strong wool. The quality of a flock's wool depends on whose they are. It's the shepherd's care that determines the value of the fleece. Suzanne Tietjen Lambing season left me as sleep-deprived as a new mom. Our family took turns answering the alarm clock every two hours when the ewes were heavy with lambs. We put in closed circuit TV to cut down on the number of cold, dark slogs through the snow to the barn, but we still had to wake up and watch for a half hour when the alarm jangled us awake. The girls rarely wanted my help when they had lambing problems. They’d fight me. Sheep are strong. And willful. The best of them accepted my attentions and forgot their discomfort when they greeted their healthy lambs. My sheep couldn’t know I was keeping them healthy, so they resisted taking medicine. They hated worming solution and fought vaccinations. If they disliked their healthcare regimen, they really hated the coats they had to wear to protect their wool from dirt, vegetation, and sunburn. Our dark sheep were actually cooler in white coats than if they were coatless, but they didn’t understand that either. We fought a constant low-intensity battle over keeping those coats on. What we had was a failure to communicate. My care must have seemed like a mysterious hardship to them—“What does it take to satisfy this shepherd?” No matter—I needed them to let me do what was best. I wanted their cooperation, or at the very least, their acquiescence. True, some of my sheep recognized me as a resource, running to me for a treat. A few of them enjoyed my company and sought it out when I sat down in the pasture. But the sheep in general? They wanted their own way. And, yes, there was a day of reckoning. Shearing day—our harvest. While the shearer eased his back between sheep, I bear-hugged each still-warm fleece over to the skirting table and threw it open like a rug. I skirted the fleece, tearing off the dirty edges, then pulled a lock of wool thick as a matchstick out of the fleece. I gave the lock a twist, held it to my ear and pulled on the ends, hoping I wouldn’t hear the hiss of fibers breaking—the sure sign of a tender fleece. Tender wool isn’t worth a spinner’s effort; a whole year’s growth wasted, good for nothing more than garden mulch. If the lock of wool didn’t break everywhere along its length, I’d inspect it against the light and snap it to detect any other break in the wool. A fever or a predator scare could ruin the fleece by causing a weak spot at the same point in every strand of wool. Because blood shunts away from the follicles during extreme stress, every fiber is deprived simultaneously of oxygen and nutrition, leaving a fragile “tear-here” line throughout the entire fleece. Broken fleeces are either a total loss or problematic, depending on the break’s location. At best, they’re a salvage attempt. Sometimes, the color was flawed by mineral deficiency or sun-bleaching. When a sheep won a battle in the coat war, stickers and vegetation got in the wool. A spinner had to really love that fleece to invest the amount of time and effort hand-picking out the junk. The fault in the fleece often lies with the sheep, but the quality of a flock’s wool depends on whose they are. It’s the shepherd’s care that determines the value of the fleece. I, their shepherd, couldn’t grow wool myself, but I harvested good wool because I loved the sheep and took care of them. I watched over them, discerned their needs, and provided for them. Their part—their gift—was to abide. To stay close, follow me, and let me take care of them. Jesus named himself Shepherd, One who knows and loves us. Not our stuff or accomplishments. It’s us—each one of us—he loves. He’s our Shepherd, even if we don’t want to think we need one. He wants, more than we’ll ever know, for us to keep company with him. To abide. When we do, it’ll be evident. An outgrowth of his life in us.

A new episode of The Membership podcast is now available. In this episode, Jason Hardy and John Pattison interview Charlie Peacock, the 4x Grammy Award-winning, multi-format jazz and pop recording artist, composer, and record producer. The goal of The Membership is to curate great conversations that contribute to the health of the land and the health of our communities. Throughout this new podcast, hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem discuss Berry’s life and writings. They will also interview other folks—farmers and makers, writers and artists, and community practitioners of all kinds—who are responding to Wendell Berry’s writings in their own places. You can listen to the new episode here. And you can learn more about The Membership at its official website here. Click here for more information about The Rabbit Room Podcast Network and to check out other great podcasts.

For years now, people have been asking us to take Hutchmoot on the road. That’s a complicated request, but this year we’ve come up with a way to do just that…well, sort of. We’re teaming up with the Great Homeschool Conventions and the Wilberforce Weekend to provide eight—count ’em: EIGHT—Rabbit Room on the Road events this year. And don’t worry, there’s no need to be a homeschooler or even have any interest in homeschooling—you can still come and enjoy the Rabbit Room on the Road part of the program. We’ll be visiting folks from California to New York, and below you’ll see what we’ve got in store. The great thing about most of these events is that you can purchase access for your entire family for a very low price. When you register for the Great Homeschool Convention, you’ll have access to the entire program listed below as well as the rest of the convention content if you’re interested. This is a GREAT chance to get a taste of Hutchmoot content for a fraction of the price (less than $70 for an entire family!). Note: The Washington DC event is part of the Wilberforce Weekend and NOT a Great Homeschool Convention. See below for details. So come out and join us. We’d love to see you at the sessions. Stop by the Rabbit Room booth afterward to say hello. Below, you’ll find the program and the dates for each convention. To register, visit the Great Homeschool Convention site here. To register for the Wilberforce Weekend event in Washington DC, click here. Rabbit Room on the Road at the Great Homeschool Convention includes: Andrew Peterson live in concert Slugs & Bugs live in concert Community, Calling, & the Mystery of Making – Andrew Peterson and Jonathan Rogers discuss the nature of creative work—its challenges, its joys, its importance in the Kingdom of God—and the ways in which we enrich one another’s lives when we participate in creative work together. The Work of the People: Redemptive Rhythms in Our Shared Lives – Pete Peterson and Doug McKelvey examine the ways in which we strengthen families and build relationships, friendships, and community through the liturgical rhythms of our lives. Finding Your Voice: Overcoming Barriers to Creativity – Jennifer Trafton and Helena Sorensen examine the forces that restrict creativity in our lives and explore ways in which we can break down those barriers and find room to let our imaginations thrive. In Search of a Truer Story: Nurturing A Redeemed Imagination (Andrew Peterson, Douglas McKelvey, Helena Sorensen, A. S. Peterson, Jennifer Trafton, Jonathan Rogers) – What’s the point of a good story? Why do we need them? What do they have to teach us? This panel of Rabbit Room writers and musicians invites you into a discussion about the importance of Story to our imaginations, our lives, and our faith. Where and When? Ft. Worth, TX – March 7-9 Greenville, SC – March 21-23 St. Louis, MO – March 28-30 Cincinnati, OH – April 25-27Ontario, CA – June 13-15 Rochester, NY – August 1-3 Jacksonville, FL – August 8-10 To register, visit the Great Homeschool Convention site here. Rabbit Room on the Road at the Wilberforce Weekend includes: Jonathan Rogers – Speaking on the subject of why stories are a powerful force in the Church and in the world. Doug McKelvey & Andrew Peterson – Speaking on the subject of how our imagination shapes our capacity for hope. Panel Discussion with Jonathan Rogers, Andrew Peterson, Doug McKelvey – A moderated discussion about how art nourishes community and community nourishes art. Songs with Andrew Peterson Where and When? Washington, DC – May 16 (Pre-conference only) Click here to register for the Wilberforce Weekend Pre-conference (Rabbit Room on the Road).

Doug McKelvey was recently interviewed by Convivium Magazine about the process of writing Every Moment Holy—a wonderful conversation we’re excited to share with you here. Convivium: Every Moment Holy, published in 2017, is a “book of liturgies for the everyday.” When did you first begin to write liturgies for the ordinary, maybe even mundane, bits of life? Douglas McKelvey: I was working on a young adult sci-fi novel and had hit a point in the process where I was struggling to get in the right place and be productive. I needed a prayer to focus and remind me of who I was in relation to my Creator, the gifts I was stewarding, and the people I was seeking to serve by what I was creating. So, I wrote a liturgy for fiction writers. At that time, I was preparing for a session on storytelling and story creation together with Andrew Peterson and Heidi Johnston, a wonderful author and Bible teacher from Northern Ireland, and I sent Andrew that liturgy for fiction writers. His immediate response was, “This is great, but I wish I also had a liturgy for beekeeping, and a liturgy for …” The light came on, and I realized, “There’s a whole book idea here that could potentially serve the body of Christ.” In many ways, it became a community supported effort to bring the book into print. I consciously drew from the early Celtic Christians who had created prayers for everything. They had a prayer for milking the cow, even for covering over the ashes of the hearth fire at night. They had this awareness of moving through their days with God being present. There’s something beautiful about how they were so intentional about cultivating this every moment sort of awareness of God’s presence with them, and his involvement in their life, even in the mundane tasks. With this project we weren’t setting out to create something new. We were looking back at something that had been beautiful and significant to the church at multiple points in our shared history, and sought to reintroduce people today to those beautiful and helpful prayers. Click here to read the full interview at Convivium Magazine.

It is a real thrill to announce that Steve Turner will deliver the keynote address for the first ever Hutchmoot UK in July 2019. Steve has a wealth of experience to share and the chance pick his brain over a few summer days in Oxford is incentive enough to come along for the fun. But who is Steve Turner? John & Yoko. Eric. Ray. Bruce. T-Bone. Bono. Judy. Jarvis. Beck. Jay. The list goes on. Steve has interviewed and profiled them all. He’s written acclaimed biographies of Marvin Gaye, Van Morrison, Johnny Cash, Jack Kerouac, Cliff Richard, and even the eight musicians that went down playing with the Titanic. He co-wrote the official book accompanying U2’s Rattle and Hum. But he’s been prolific on The Beatles, most recently with his excellent Beatles ‘66 about the watershed year in the band’s development. He would hate to be reminded of this, but Steve Turner has been writing intelligently about music for over five decades. But this wasn’t how I first encountered his writing. That came about through his poetry, which a number of us were really into while at university in the early 90s. His verse was punchy and provocative, with a witty immediacy that evokes the Liverpool poets like Roger McGough or Brian Patten. Perhaps that’s not so surprising, as these guys were at the heart of the scene that gave birth to The Beatles in the first place. But none of that would have grabbed me at the time. Bună casă de pariuri, cele mai bune pariuri sportive pin up ставки. It was the fact that Steve’s poems were provocatively theological. I could wax lyrical, but for now, I recommend hunting these down: Creed Lord, Lord If Jesus Was Born Today Tonight We Will Fake Love Extensions Dial-A-Poem Is Temporarily Out Of Order Old Soldier (Joseph Martin, 1883-1978) In the Interests of National Security And I’ve not even mentioned his books of poetry for children! Bono was absolutely right when he wrote that “his verse is sharp and in focus; as vital as newspaper print and just as difficult to get off your hands.” But there is a greater reason why many Christians involved in the arts feel so indebted to Steve. Many—too many—have been part of church environments that ignore or even actively despise the arts. And Steve’s book Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts was a godsend for thousands when it came out nearly twenty years ago. I devoured it and have returned to it many times since. In many ways, Steve does in print what Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri fellowships have been doing for many of us for decades: namely helping us to grow in discipleship integrity with the God-given gifts and passions we each have. It was from L’Abri, and then Steve, that I first learned to reject the unhelpful distinctions between high and low art, focusing instead on trying to distinguish between good and bad art (regardless of its medium or form). He put this into practice in his follow-up Popcultured: Thinking Christianly About Style, Media and Entertainment. I had no idea before moving back to England to start working for a central London church that it would in fact be the same fellowship that Steve and his wife belonged to. It meant, however, that we were able to chat from time to time about all this stuff and he was a great encouragement. But quite apart from encouraging Rabbit Room readers to get into his writing (if you haven’t already), it will be great for all of us at Hutchmoot UK in Oxford this summer to have the chance to hang out with him.

Last fall, Jared Malament began the ingenious practice of compiling Spotify playlists after each Local Show, making the featured songs publicly available for all to listen. With his help, we are continuing this tradition for the spring season of the Local Show, accompanied by Jared’s description of the evening and what made it memorable. “The Local Show kicked off this year with old favorites like Cindy Morgan, Ron Block, Jeff Taylor, and the proprietor himself, Andrew Peterson. However, the surprise highlight of the evening was Jeff Taylor’s guest, Dennis Parker, who’s recently played with Ricky Skaggs. If you closed your eyes during Parker’s cover of “Frozen Man” by James Taylor (no relation to Jeff) you might just have thought you were listening to the man himself. The rest of the night was filled with songs and stories of parenting and Alzheimer’s, of air conditioning units and Kentucky weddings. It was a delightful start to a new season of shows.” —Jared Malament Click here to listen to the playlist from our first Local Show of the season on Spotify.

After thirteen Dove Awards and two GRAMMY nominations, Cindy Morgan’s latest batch of albums have been made as an independent artist outside the spotlight of the CCM industry—they’re likely the most artistically rich work of her career. Audiences for the 2015 Behold The Lamb of God tour will remember Cindy for her soaring voice and Americana sensibilities. On March 8th 2019, Cindy will be releasing a new EP called Autumn & Eve, which she says is “about a merging of Old Testament struggles and modern heartache.” From today until March 7th, you can pre-order a signed physical copy of Autumn & Eve and receive three exclusive bonus tracks. She has invited Rabbit Room readers to be the first to hear her new song, “West of Nod.” Scroll down to read the lyrics and story behind the song. Lyrics: We use to dance under the stars Bask in the warmth of his love But our skin got cold and dancing got old We needed more to dream of Over your shoulder I saw something there So hard to resist so we both thought we’d dare Remember when we had it good Walking where the angels trod Now all we talk about’s moving on East of Eden and west of Nod Lovely and red swirled in my head You said that you’d taste it too Why did we stay Why not walk away Nobody likes to be used How I remember, wish I could forget With toil and with tears We live with regret I want to track All my steps back They say it won’t work anyway The boys fight fight I’m tired at night So much regret For just one bite “There is no greater feeling of loss than recognizing the value of something you’ve been given—just after losing it. Many people lament the loss of a loved one they were never able to express their true feelings towards. Adam and Eve had it perfect, but perfect wasn’t enough. And so they were turned out of the garden to wander, east of Eden and west of Nod.” —Cindy Morgan Click here to pre-order Autumn & Eve at Cindy’s online store.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is perhaps my favorite book, or at least in my top ten. I rarely re-read books, but this one is an annual read for me, and only recently did I think to explore why I have loved and continue to love this story so much. Over the years since I discovered it, I’ve grown to love the characters, the settings, the language, and the respectful grace Grahame imbues into his story. But the thing that brings me back time and again to this book is not just the characters but the longings they experience—longings that resonate within me more profoundly on each read. The twin longings for adventure and for home draw me in and create the central joys and tensions of the book, but a third longing soon takes their place. Mole is our entry-point, from the very moment he departs his home at the summons of the upper world. Through his eyes we encounter not just the wild excitement of new environs, but the great gift of camaraderie to be had with those who are rooted in the land—the poetic Water Rat, the curmudgeonly Badger, and yes, even the flagrantly conceited Toad—and ultimately the power of home and adventure upon embodied creatures. In “Dolce Domum,” Mole is completely mastered by the smell of his old home, a longing so potent in supposed opposition to his friendship with Rat that Mole breaks down and weeps. He has “lost what he could hardly be said to have found.” Here the grace of Rat is revealed—that he would affirm Mole’s home in such a way that Mole himself is brought to realization and acceptance of the grace of going home. They tidy, they feast, they welcome others in, and then they rest. In the end, it is not the quality of the place that makes it meaningful, but the familiarity of it. [Mole] saw clearly how plain and simple—how narrow, even—it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. Rat, however, is assailed by an opposing longing. From the start, Rat is the sensible (if sentimental) one. He is Mole’s fast friend and guide. It is the tactful Rat who introduces Mole to the river, to Toad and Badger, to the basic layout of all that he needs to know and understand of this new world—up to a certain point. When Mole asks about the Wide World, Rat immediately shuts it down. “That’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please.” But then, in “Wayfarers All,” Rat is seized by a nearly impenetrable desire to migrate out into the Wider World. The migratory tendencies of little creatures are not denigrated here, but there is a sense in which it would be against all natural reason for Rat specifically to answer that call, regardless of its peculiar persuasion and beauty. Here Mole extends grace to Rat, speaking of the beauty and delights of home, and leaves Rat, pen in hand, to turn his poetry to the hearth instead of the pathway. These twin longings are for all of us. The longing to go, the longing to stay—they war within us as only they can, within those who live in the tension between pilgrimage and home. We are set in a place designed to be our home, but marred by our willfulness. And we are journeying ever nearer to the distant shores of Heaven itself—that which our home, this earth, could have been. In equal measure, we see the attractions of home and adventure in Badger and Toad. Mole’s first encounter with the Wild Wood emphasizes its fearsome nature, but even here, there is shelter to be had: Badger’s simple, rustic home. It is a haven for all those lost in the snow, a den very similar to its owner in its rough-about-the-edges practicality. Badger is philosophical about the origins of his home. “People come—they stay for a while, they flourish, they build—and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.” Badger is a practical creature, and his home is exactly what and where it should be. The allure of it comes not from its trimmings or tidiness, but from its enduring nature. A true home is loyal. It is a place we can come back to and know it will be the same. These twin longings are for all of us. The longing to go, the longing to stay—they war within us as only they can, within those who live in the tension between pilgrimage and home. Chris Wheeler For his part, Toad is the antithesis of enduring. Each new obsession of his involves motion, from taking his home on the road in a canary-colored cart to his disastrous motor vehicle escapades. We are carried along with him (like his long-suffering friends) on adventure after adventure, willing to put up with him because he makes life so darn interesting. When in the depths of despair, however, it is the smell of home that lifts him from his stupor and breathes new life into a singular purpose: to return to Toad Hall. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one’s ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. Say what you will about Toad (and there is plenty to be said), but his motivations begin and end with longing—the longing for adventure and the longing to return home after said adventures. Upon his sodden return to find Toad Hall invaded by ruffians, it is not solely Toad that takes it back but his company of loyal friends, all of whom are utterly convinced of the necessity of reclaiming their home. Each character may reveal new aspects of these twin longings, but it is in the central chapter, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” that we discover a third longing, one which generates and eclipses the others. The call of this third longing can be found throughout the book, a through-line from the very first chapter: “With his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.” In “The Piper,” we discover the source of this whisper. Rat and Mole are out searching for a lost otter cub when the call comes to them. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity. “It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worthwhile but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it forever…” Grahame unfolds for us here a sense of Someone beyond these animals who not only sustains and protects them, but creates unimaginable beauty to draw them to himself. This Someone’s parting gift to them is the grace of forgetfulness—that rather than remember the fullest longing they have yet received and pine away for heavenly reality, the fullness of it would pass from their minds and linger only in whispers in the reeds. We too, encounter this longing. We who are in great need of a Savior have a Savior who comes to us and reveals himself, and grants that we would ever be longing for full communion with him, and ever experiencing it only in part. We long to journey to him, and we long to rest in him, our final home, because in him is perfection. Only in him are we truly satisfied. For now, we only have glimpses that create in us a thirst for more. So we sense him in the company of saints, in the Word that nourishes us, in fresh and recurring displays of his creative glory, in our own creative passions, along the path and beside the hearth. We are Mole and Rat and Badger and Toad—forever sniffing out the source of longing, often errant in our passion or conceit, fiercely protective of those places which carry the burden of that longing. We are always drawn to him. We are always seeking him. And in this longing we find hope to face our days. This is the gift of story, and the gift of The Wind in the Willows—to stir up that longing within us and to let it slip away again, leaving us breathless on the edge of wild adventure, sending us home into our familiar places, full of faith that someday, someday soon, he will return again and longing will be overshadowed by reality.

As part of Lent, my congregation always studies a particular topic that touches on Lenten themes, such as suffering, spiritual disciplines, and repentance. And as the pastor, I can present to the parish whatever I think is best, so if I’m smart, I’ll teach on something I already know a lot about—less preparation makes life easier. But last year, I did something stupid: I told everyone I would teach on the Desert Fathers. As it turns out, I didn’t know as much about the Desert Fathers as I thought. You may not be familiar with them, either; most Christians aren’t. A thousand years ago they were the rock stars of the Church, but unfortunately, they’ve largely disappeared from our thoughts today. The Desert Fathers lived in the 2nd—4th centuries A.D. They first dwelt in the deserts of Egypt, but later they could be found in modern-day Israel, Jordan, and Syria. Essentially, they were men and women who wanted to know God more fully, and they were willing to do anything for that to happen. So they left everything behind and moved, alone or in small groups, into the desert. In preparation to teach, I read many stories of their lives and adventures. Some narratives were truly inspiring, others totally bizarre, and still others were both. Besides these stories, they also left us a great deposit of wisdom teachings found in the form of short sayings or anecdotes called “words.” Reading these stories and words, I was amazed by the Fathers’ simplicity, insight, and passion. I found them to be far more helpful to my Christian walk than 95% of the stuff I typically read for my job. I ended up getting a great deal out of these teachings and immediately wanted to find a way to share some of this with others. I considered a number of projects, but ended up writing a Lenten devotional guide based on forty-seven of the Fathers’ words. Each day of Lent includes a word, then my reflection on that word. I think the book is quite simple, though spiritually challenging. Lent is best kept with some kind of devotional guide. It certainly doesn’t need to be the one I wrote. I’m quite sure there are many better books. But I do suggest that everyone uses something. Otherwise, Lent kind of boils down to not eating chocolate, plus whatever happens at your church. And, if your church doesn’t practice Lent, then all you’re left with is chocolate cravings until Easter. Who wants that? Seriously, Lent is awesome. It’s a wonderful way to make space for the Holy Spirit’s work in your life. Especially if Lent is new to you, get yourself a guide. Prayerfully commit to a spiritual practice and do your part to follow through. Will Lent get you more points with God? No. Do you need to practice Lent to pay for your sins? Not at all; that’s what the Cross is for. Lent is a gift from the Church to you. I encourage you to make use of it. Lent begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 5th. It ends early in the morning, just as the sun is coming up, on Easter Sunday, April 21st. Click here to check out Thomas’s new book on Amazon.

Two new episodes of The Membership podcast are now available. In these episodes, our hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem discuss Wendell Berry’s 1968 poetry collection, Findings, as well as his short story, “Pray Without Ceasing.” The goal of The Membership is to curate great conversations that contribute to the health of the land and the health of our communities. Throughout this new podcast, hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem plan to discuss Berry’s life and writings. They will also interview other folks—farmers and makers, writers and artists, and community practitioners of all kinds—who are responding to Wendell Berry’s writings in their own places. Check out the new episodes here. And you can learn more about The Membership at its official website here. Click here for more information about The Rabbit Room Podcast Network and to check out other great podcasts.

When I was a kid, practically every story that danced across the screen hinged on a character who was running down a dream. A big dream. I just ate that stuff up, because I was completely certain that dreams had to be these colossal, magnificent feats worthy of being chased down, maybe even worth dying for. And planted deep in my young heart, I was already tending one of my own. Not counting a brief third grade fascination with becoming an auto mechanic, all I ever wanted to do “when I grow up” was to write songs and sing them for people, preferably for many people from a very large stage. But I was a derelict dreamer at best, highly undisciplined when it came to lame things like taking lessons and practicing and mapping out exactly how to accomplish such a pie-in-the-sky goal. I guess it just made more teenage sense to kick back with my Metal Edge magazine and wait for Mr. Big to show up in his limo with my six-album deal. The movies made it sound so doable. But years later, the mirror found me fixed on the back side of thirty with three small children, a husband in the ministry, and a pile of songs (in my head) that had never come to be. The pace and space of life had quietly put my dream to bed, and I could hear it snoring all the way down the hall. Plus, my newly redeemed imagination was desperately longing to create something true and life-giving, but most everything I had known of faith-fueled music sounded a lot like my mom’s LPs of the Statler Brothers. Hard pass. Sleep on, sweet dream o’ mine. Then the day after my thirty-second birthday, a very insistent friend dragged me to a concert headlined by Third Day and David Crowder in Tyler, Texas. It was a small, dilapidated venue where a ceiling tile fell on the drummer’s head during the last song. I mean really—he came out for the encore wearing a bicycle helmet just in case. Gritty, sort of. I was interested. The opening act was a band called Hyper Static Union. And, wow. HSU’s front man shredded lead like a beast, all the while belting out stratospheric melodies. I was dumbfounded at what I was hearing because this guy was seriously rocking, all while singing about Jesus. I had no idea that was even a thing one could do. Clearly, I had not done my research. So, bias dispelled. And like an alarm clock slicing through the silence, I was in. Not sure exactly how, but I wanted in. I returned home that night chewing on a sweet suspicion that it might be time for the old childhood dream to wake up and play out. I stared sternly at my husband in the dingy yellow glow of the kitchen countertop light and declared, “We are going to make an album!” And, bless him, he did what that sweet man always does when my manic side comes home with a ludicrous idea. He just smiled and asked, “What do you need me to do?” Now, a seriously rusty mom of three in her thirties has pretty much zero ranking on the new artist marketability scale. I knew that. And with our thread-bare shoestring budget and the little whipper-snappers nipping at my heels all day long, the idea of some full studio production and international world tour was probably (definitely) not on the table. No delusions of grandeur allowed. But what kept spinning in my head after that show was this: Something had awakened. And I could either continue to do nothing with that passion and let sleeping dreams lie, or I could do whatever little something I could do. Hey, even the “one-talent servant” was expected to somehow invest what the Master had invested in him. A dream's slumber is needed at times, that it may sabbath, or that it may give birth to different dreams. Jennifer Hildebrand So that very week, in true rock star fashion, while the children screamed destruction throughout our little house, we untangled crusty cables, restrung dusty guitars, unearthed our 8-track digital recorder that had been gifted to us by my still hopeful in-laws several years prior, and we got down to business. I wrote fresh songs, resurrected and tweaked old songs, and studied up with whatever free online recording tutorials I could find. I also continued to rock babies, read Little Golden Books, cook meals and wipe noses, but then I’d sneak off to our fancy “studio” in our not-even-the-slightest-bit-soundproofed garage every time someone took a fifteen minute nap. We were all the band we had. We played and sang everything on the record and got really cozy with our cheap, elderly drum machine. I decided that, sure, I could play a little lead guitar (I could not). We mixed like mad men, in real time with sliders and knobs and actual human fingers over and over and over again until it was somewhere in the vicinity of listenable. It was a crazy few months, and the fury of it all fed my soul like manna. It was a sweet time of growth and naïve discoveries. The dream had slept in a little later than I’d wanted and was sporting a good deal more bedhead than expected, but she was finally up and at ‘em. Was the album awesome? Meh. It was okay. Was the production off-the-charts spectacular? Well, of course not. But it did happen, by golly. God roused a little dream, humbled it, made it less sparkly but more real, and did it all right in the middle of the day-to-day chaos of life. The couple dozen people who heard the album seemed to like it and resonate with the songs, and they let us know that it was worth the effort. They heard God’s goodness somewhere in that messy, simple recording. In the end, it felt like we had built a wonky, hodgepodge cathedral from the ground up with bare hands, and all we could do then was pray for God’s praises to inhabit the humble, unsteady structure. Please be pleased, Lord. Since then, we’ve undertaken that same adventure two other times. Each time, a few more people were kind enough to lend a hand. Each time, I felt exhausted, exhilarated, completely ill-equipped for the task, and yet those same words kept pushing: I can either do nothing at all, or (wake up, little dream!) I can do the little something I can do. Maybe it’s just one talent, but it’s got to be all in, baby. That’s every believer’s call to answer. A simple song, a courageous painting, an earnest poem, a cup of water in Jesus’ name. Our Lord himself praised one woman’s quiet, costly offering saying, “She has done what she could.” (Mark 14:8) And it was to be remembered. Situated firmly in my forties now, I have no idea if I’ll ever get to feel that kind of awakening again. Sometimes chapters close nicely and don’t need to be revisited, and the older I get, the more comfortable I am with that reality. A dream’s slumber is needed at times, that it may sabbath, or that it may give birth to different dreams. It’s a beautiful cycle. Because with each bleary-eyed dream yawning into life, every effort exerted to find beauty in the broken, every attempt to overcome pride and ego and let the Light be all that’s left to shine, we get wrapped again in the reminder that our God is still in the business of bringing new things into being. In his mercy, may he call them good.

Shortly after having completed his newest record Gather, at a time when his creative energy was depleted, Christopher Williams was asked by his friend Jaco Hamman to make another album to accompany his latest book. Jaco’s book, The Millennial Narrative, enters into a conversation about the distinct experience of the millennial generation by way of the commonly overlooked book of Joel—he wanted a corporate worship album to bring it to life. Christopher needed help, so he turned to his friends and fellow songwriters to construct a musical journey through the book of Joel. The result is a deeply collaborative record called We Will Remember that gives song to grief with the collective voice of community. Read on to listen to a few songs and learn more about Joel, what the locusts can mean for us today, and the healing power of singing together. Christopher: Starting where the book of Joel starts…oh man. Drew: It’s just devastation, right? Christopher: Oh yeah. I think it’s verse three when the locusts hit. And you’re like, “All right, here we go.” Drew: You were saying you met with Osenga earlier today—he’s really made those locusts his own with his “Year of the Locust” song. Christopher: Jaco, the author of the book that instigated my record, makes very clear that he wants people to know all the different kinds of locusts and use the word purposefully. And there were a few spots throughout the record where I removed that word, just because it was too much. But I think the word “locust” still shows up five times. I mean the whole book of Joel is about that, so you have to talk about it. But how do you talk about it in a corporate worship setting without it sounding abrasive and strange? Drew: It’s not really what we suffer these days. Christopher: Not literal locusts, at least. I think that’s why this book is so universally accessible, though. The locusts. Drew: Yeah, just tell me about Joel. I want to read it now. Christopher: It’ll take ten minutes to read. Drew: And remind me your relationship to Jaco? Christopher: He and I have done some conferences together. He’s a very loyal guy, and he told me, “As long as I’m doing this specific conference, you’ll be doing music.” And I said, “Yes, I will.” So we’ve spent lots of time together. He has taught the book of Joel all over the world to different generations, and he’s convinced that it’s the one book anyone could jump into, regardless of where they are in knowing God or not knowing God—especially for millennials. Drew: Wow! So what does he say about that? Christopher: Well, we all experience loss. Especially in our culture right now. And the millennial generation knows loss more intimately than any other generation—in the sense of growing up in the shadow of 9/11, school shootings, the financial meltdown—this generation knows that something isn’t working. Jaco’s argument is that the millennial generation is doing quite a lot in terms of social justice and is incredibly good at gathering. He lists all these organizations coming up around the country, begun by millennials, that are meeting the need that churches used to meet for previous generations. So he would say that as a church, we need to adjust the way we do things to come alongside millennials instead of expecting them to step into existing systems. Does that make sense? Drew: That makes lots of sense. And I appreciate it. Christopher: One example Jaco mentions is a thing called Supper Club: dinners in people’s homes, but for people who are mourning or grieving a loss. It started in one small community, but is now popping up in cities all over the place. So he and I have known each other through these conferences and he lives in Nashville. We’ve both done a lot of work with Young Life. He brought up this topic with me because he has always wanted to write this book, and he’s a huge lover of all kinds of music. His collection is vast! He’s passionate, wise, and unique. Because of his love for music, he wanted to have a collection of songs that could accompany his book. So the lyrics are taken largely out of the book of Joel as well as Jaco’s book, which is called The Millennial Narrative: Sharing the Good Life with the Next Generation. Drew: So how did you experience what Joel has to offer as you read it for the purpose of absorbing and singing it? Christopher: I’ve never spent the amount of time as I did for Joel in one body of scripture. Months and months and months. Which was epic. And really, at the beginning, I didn’t get it. I couldn’t see the depth. But Jaco sent me his book as he was writing it, and through his eyes and teaching, Joel came alive for me. Having experienced loss in my life—losing my dad, especially—it made it come alive in a different way. And there was a beauty to the Gather record before that, because one of the main themes of the book of Joel is to gather as a community—so I felt like I had already written these songs in some way. I went into the writing process pretty dry, which was where I needed to be. That’s the whole point of the book of Joel: I’ve got nothing. And the deadline was really fast, too. So I wrote the first few songs, and then there was a dry period in the summer, and then I had two and a half months to write eight songs. Totally stressful. Drew: I think my heart rate just went up sympathetically, imagining that. Christopher: Yeah! But the beauty of the journey for me was inviting other people in. Drew: There were a few songs where I noticed it would start with just you, then one or two other voices would come in, then by the end it was this chorus of people. Even though what is being sung is sad, you’re all singing it together and it conveys this encouraging sense of solidarity around loss. Christopher: That was the hope. The book of Joel calls us to mourn and grieve together: call the elders, call the children, come together and grieve. It was important for me to invite my community into the process of both writing and singing. The dryness of it, too—this came closely enough after Gather that the writing well was dry, and the only way I could make this record happen would be if some folks came alongside me. That’s a beautiful picture of the gospel, and a great way for me to practice surrender. And the process for it was amazing. Most of the folks had never read Jaco’s book, and maybe they had read Joel, but I went into each writing session with the Joel passage and a few pages of notes I took on each chapter of Jaco’s book. We would just sit down with that and throw out ideas. And I already had an outline of the order for the album, which I had never done before. So it was less about each song individually and more about crafting a cohesive story that matched both the book of Joel and Jaco’s book. And we truly wrote one at a time, from start to finish. So I would make decisions song-by-song based on their order in a way that I hadn’t before. One of those decisions was simply to let the album start very quiet and sad, then slowly lift into a greater sense of energy and life. Drew: Well I noticed that! And by the time I got to “The River”—man, what a beautiful song. It felt like the apex of jamming, just as a group of people who love each other. Christopher: One of the calls of Jaco’s book is for the church not to get distracted trying to create “new” things for millennials to step into, but to join in what’s already happening and what God is already doing. Modern churches always feel like they need to do something new and hip and reinvent the wheel—no! See where the Lord is working. Step into it. So the idea for “The River”—I wrote that mostly on a drive from Idaho to Portland and back in twenty-four hours. I was driving along the eastern Oregon desert. No one would think of Oregon as dry desert, but when you come along the Columbia River Gorge, it’s desert that all of a sudden turns green. Drew: That’s an epic journey. Christopher: There’s so much river imagery in scripture. Especially in the book of Joel, it begins with desolation and ends with mountains flowing with new wine. Very Revelation-esque. Drew: So good. All those images are timeless. Christopher: It’s super fun to sing live, too. And that was another great criteria for this project: Jaco wanted these songs to feel very congregational in nature, which is not something that I usually do. There’s a south African phrase, ubuntu, which means “I am because you are.” I think that phrase really sums up that congregational spirit. Drew: I love how succinct that is. Christopher: Jaco’s South African—he and his wife taught me that phrase. As soon as I heard it, I knew I wanted to write a song around that phrase for congregations to be able to sing. And that specific song, “Because You Are,” is very repetitive, it’s almost hypnotic to hear a whole group of people singing together. It never really resolves, either, so it’s fun to sing over and over. I got to lead that song for about a thousand folks at Young Life recently and it just knocked me over to hear that many people singing something like that. There’s something so powerful about singing God’s words together, and creating new music with those words. There’s so much more power to it. I’ve done it in little chunks, but I’ve never done a whole album’s worth. I want to sit down with Sandra sometime and talk about it. Drew: The thousand-year old songs. I also felt like the record has such a purposefully-chosen sonic palette that was very fitting. The sparseness—especially toward the beginning—the space and silences were so well-chosen. I’ve never read Joel purposefully, but I could hear what it was about. I could feel the exile and desolation, the devastation and bareness moving back toward fullness. I could sense what Jaco was saying: the songs felt very inviting, but inviting out of a space of loss as something we all know. I got swept in pretty easily for that reason. Christopher: The first song we wrote was “Cry Out To You,” and I loved the way it made me feel, but I quickly realized that the album needed another song to come before that one. You can’t start with “Cry Out To You”—you need a sort of call to worship to get everyone on the same page first. And then I looked in Joel and realized he had already done just that! And I had skipped over it. So the first song became “Hear This,” taken straight from the first words of Joel. It essentially says, “Have any of you experienced loss? If so, tell your children, and let your children tell their children,” and so on. Drew: That is so important. When you mention Jaco talking about how important the narrative of loss is—if there’s anything we are in need of right now, I think it’s preserving the stories of loss and grief that we’ve attempted to push past and shove aside. Our instinct is to keep going, but we need to remember and exercise that storytelling. Christopher: Loss is so important to talk and sing about, and especially in our Christian culture right now, we have such a severe lack of songs that speak into this in an inviting sort of way. One of my favorite lines from the album is from that first song: “Receive what sorrow gives.” Drew: For me, entering into this record happened through that entry point. I mean, that’s a rhetorical question: have you experienced loss? Of course you have! Christopher: There’s a beauty in that—when we can recognize and step into it, we are bound together. Jaco says, “It’s not if the locusts come, but when.” If they haven’t come already, they’ll come. Even in the last seventy-two hours of my life, there’s been a memorial service, I’ve been notified of two unexpected deaths, and a heart attack within my circle of friends. It brings an awareness to me that I want to share these songs out of the sheer need to bring comfort. That’s all. Drew: I’m struck by the language in the very beginning of Joel, the way he speaks of the locusts. He introduces them wave by wave, and says what the first wave doesn’t eat, the second one will, and what the second one doesn’t eat, the third one will, and so on. So there’s this understanding that there’s a relentlessness to the forces of devastation and death, and if you feel like you’ve been spared, you’re wrong. You won’t ultimately be spared from that. I imagine the proper response is, whatever you do, do together. Mourn together, sing together. That’s something I feel the need to learn—where’s the guidance for it? How do we sustain this loss together? Who will show us? Is that something corporate worship can help with, at least to some degree? Christopher: Yes. It’s all about coming together, gathering. And I didn’t want the book of Joel to just be for church—I want it to be for any kind of setting. Any situation in which you’re present with people. Drew: I love that you cowrote so many of these songs with people, too. Through and through, every part of this album came out of gathering with others. I could feel that that’s where it came from. Christopher: That felt necessary. I had absolutely nothing in terms of writing or ideas. Which is maybe where we’re supposed to begin most of the time. Drew: I love this thought that you can engage in this corporate practice of people being present together, singing, and it doesn’t have to be church. When we did Hymnmoot last winter—that was an Advent hymn event. It was so enriching. I just thought, “Why don’t we do this all the time??” I want it to become more of a rhythm. I was trying to think of how to ask you what your hope is for these songs, but I feel like you’ve already given me your answer: “Just sing these together.” Bring these songs to one another. Christopher: Before we went into the studio, since most of these songs didn’t really have any legs yet, we hosted about twenty folks at our house: I took all the lyrics from this record and wrote them on big pieces of sticky paper, put them all on the wall and sat everyone in a semi-circle facing those notes. We played and sang the whole record together, interspersed with readings from the book of Joel and Jaco’s book. Drew: And that’s where the songs got their legs, right? Christopher: Yeah! Little short ones. It was a good start. My hope is to do more of that. It felt almost like Behold the Lamb of God: really intentional, from start to finish, here’s the journey. Drew: That’s such a great way to develop a record. If you’re wanting the songs to serve a community, begin with a trusted group of people. Sing, talk, and see what surfaces. Christopher: Yeah, and after we did that, we had a conversation about it and the biggest impression everyone had was that of having gone on a journey. And I thought, “Perfect. That was the goal. My job is done.” It’s like liturgy. You enter in one place, you go on a journey, and you’re sent out with a new perspective on the Lord and where we’re going from here. Drew: I’d love for more records to be made that way. Click here to view We Will Remember at the Rabbit Room Store.

Last fall, Jared Malament began the ingenious practice of compiling Spotify playlists after each Local Show, making the featured songs publicly available for all to listen. With his help, we are continuing this tradition for the spring season of the Local Show, accompanied by Jared’s description of the evening and what made it memorable. Click through for our second playlist of the season. “Andrew Peterson began this week’s edition of the Local Show by reminding us that we were at the beginning of the Lenten season with a rendition of his ‘Remember and Proclaim.’ What followed was a wonderful night of songs from Andrew Osenga, Drew Miller (in his solo debut), Tim Timmons, and the husband-and-wife duo Wild Harbors. They also opened up their hearts to us and told of scary dreams and heavy sicknesses and the savior that helps us overcome them. In particular, I’d recommend listening to ‘Battle’ by Wild Harbors for anyone like me who might struggle with depression and anxiety. On the whole, this week’s show was a great way to spend a cold Nashville night.” —Jared Malament Click here to listen to the playlist from our second Local Show of the season on Spotify.

How many of you have specific events that are a yearly marker in the journey towards spring? I have several. My computer currently has a browser open counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the First Day of Spring. The start of Daylight Savings is marked on my calendar with a picture of the sun, flowers, and butterflies. But the earliest—and always completely unplanned—marker of spring’s coming is the First Annual Seed Sighting. Each year I’m usually wandering through a store, deep in thought, as I shop for some random item. There is usually some degree of winter slump to my shoulders and a frigid funk weaving its way through my mind. Then suddenly and without warning, I turn a corner and come face to face with seeds! I am a firm believer that on occasion, the heavens genuinely do open and angels sing as glistening shafts of light float down from above. The first annual seed sighting seems to be solid proof of this reality. What is it about a seed that brings such awe and wonder? For me, Hebrews 11:1 sums it up: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” How can a tiny seed represent so much? Some seeds are so small that it’s completely unimaginable that they could ever amount to anything. One example of this is the petunia seed. Every year as I scatter these tiny black dots, I’m perplexed at how something smaller than a fleck of pepper can turn into a plant. Not only will this little dot sprout and grow roots, but it will have a stem and leaves with veins, and produce beautiful flowers. I particularly love the Wave Petunia variety. Given the right environment, the plant will vine and spread out several feet in diameter and generate hundreds of blossoms during the growing season. Wave Petunia To examine at a more complex level the faith and hope that comes in a seed, consider this Wave Petunia variety that I love so dearly. For a Petunia to be considered a true Wave variety, it must come from patented Wave Petunia seeds. As a home grower, you can purchase these seeds at a premium price compared to regular petunia seeds or buy live plants that are certified as a Wave variety. I usually choose to buy a few live plants—this is mostly because I’m impatient and the plants will provide me with earlier blossoms while I’m waiting on last year’s seeds to mature enough to bloom. As a gardener, I can never escape how significantly gardening mimics life. It is a wonderful parallel that fills me with awe and reverence. Gina Sutphin Then every year in the fall, at the end of the growing season, I make the choice to let my purchased plants go to seed. The following year, the seeds that sprout from last year’s plants exhibit a new level of complexity. Now, a Wave Petunia is a genetically engineered plant, developed to give a specific result. It comes in many options: solid colors, star patterns, brilliant hues or pale palettes. (My personal favorite is the Plum Vein. Its petals are a lovely medium plum shade, but the center of the blossom and all of the veins are a deeper shade of purple.) However, when you make the choice to let hybrid vegetation go to seed, you will not get a plant that matches its parent. In this scenario, plants become more like people. The offspring do resemble their parents in certain ways, but are not identical copies. Seeds from the Plum Vein usually result in plants offering an assortment of blossoms in various shades of purples, neon fuchsia, and pale pinks. Although this particular option creates an unknown result, it still begins with the hope and belief that it would produce something beautiful, even though it’s impossible to know exactly what the outcome will be. As a gardener, I can never escape how significantly gardening mimics life. It is a wonderful parallel that fills me with awe and reverence. Every year, when this glorious first seed sighting happens, it truly feels as if the world stands still for just a moment. No matter what haze was filling my mind a moment earlier, it seems as if a fresh breeze of clarity begins to rattle the cobwebs loose. And as that happens, the truth begins to filter in again, the always reliable truth that no matter how cold and dark the winter feels, there is always hope. Spring will always come, the snow will always melt, and new beginnings will poke their tiny heads up through the mud no matter how deep it’s become. So for a moment each year I stand still, taking in the glory of this hope, this potential. Then, standing a little taller, with a bit of the icy burden melted away, I continue on my journey and make my way to the cash register. This marker of spring cannot be added to the calendar or anticipated with a countdown. Nonetheless, it always seems to find me at just the right time, exactly when it was needed, and without warning. Where there is a seed, there is potential. And where there is faith in that potential, there is hope.

“Writing poetry is too hard.” This is the offense I hear my high school students protest frequently. I get it, but I don’t think it’s entirely true. A year or so ago, Lyndsay and I took our kids for a walk to a nearby overlook we call Devotional Rock, a clearing that offers a front row seat to one corner of the Nantahala National Forest. When I threw out the idea that we should write a poem about our hike as a family, our kids—ages five and seven—jumped on it and immediately started throwing out lines like “When I look at the flowers and the bees it makes me happy” or “the trees sneeze drops of water.” Kids don’t care if something sounds poetic or if writing a poem might make them a “poet” with all the glory or pretension or lameness that might be associated with the title. They are free to take a shot at what they see with the best words they have. Occasionally I would tease out some lines when I noticed them stopping in amazement at some small phenomenon. How would you describe that? “The leaves are washing their hands.” “It’s a dragon.” “I always think those cocoons are little leaves.” We didn’t write any of the lines down during the hike, but instead let our memories be our first editors. When we got home I asked them to tell all the lines they remembered. We wrote them all out. Then I asked them to categorize the lines as I read them out loud. “Those are about flowers…that one is about butterflies.” Lyndsay and I each threw in a line, and then I stitched it together with their categories. They loved hearing all of our words put together in fresh, playful ways…just as any human does before all of our other social, egotistical, and educational messes get attached to the word “poetry.” While I clearly hope this exercise will in some small way prepare my children to deal with all of the complex baggage to come for poetry in high school, I am the one most in need of this training, the one quickest to forget just how easy playing with poetry can be. Plus, it’s fun. We’ve done this a few times since then. It works well in car rides home after other family adventures like playground dates, movies, or birthday parties. You should try it. Hiking to Devotional Rock By Sally Ann, Shepard, Chris and Lyndsay Slaten As we go on our walk I soon see Hundreds and hundreds Of wildflowers – firework weeds, ferns, and fairy wands. They sneeze drops of water For the handwashing of leaves And the swimming of ants. Butterflies and sweat bees gather nectar, While we steal blackberries. It all makes me happy And I look to the sky – The mountains and clouds Gather for a meeting Because they are friends. When the trees wave I always think of you. When I look at the split trees I think they’re interesting. When the mossy boulder peaks out from the trees it looks like a dragon. On the road back while we walk on sparkling trails of mica Like constellations scattered in dirt, We see an endangered caterpillar And rescue it to go make the kind of cocoon I always think are tiny leaves. What’s orange with black spots? A butterfly, of course! Do you think Devotional Rock is beautiful or ugly? Beautiful.

She opened up about her suffering and we drew our collective breath. A dozen voices hummed musically when she confessed that perhaps she had been blind. She had poured herself into an effort for years, only to miss problems that had scorched the ground she had cultivated. Handing it off to others in a turbulent ending to her season of investment, she now grieved what had been lost. Time. Opportunity. The struggle to bring forth good only to find herself in a desert partly of her own making. We inhaled her pain, we exhaled reassurance. The room rippled with the murmur of compassionate people at a party, scrambling to make amends. “Hardship makes us more sympathetic.” “None of us is perfect.” “God is definitely going to use this in your life.” At one point a friend re-summarized her experience and ended with, “But now you’re good.” In an instant, I heard all the crevices getting smoothed over, the fissures of suffering flattened in the reflexive urge to rectify another’s pain. I drove home and doubts rumbled. Certainly we pounced with good intent, but was this the best we could offer? Too bad about the past, but hey, at least now you know better? We squirm when our friend suggests that her own lack of perspective furthered her pain. We scurry to connect the dots, to offer a solution. Noah's wait was reshaping the continents. Candace Bright And while I drove, my own past flickered to life—images of a woman who used to wake at night to cry for hours. Who sat in the parking lot minute after minute because she lacked the emotional energy to leave the car. I had realized something about the world back then. Until then, I’d always thought that people who crawled into therapists’ offices, crushed and suicidal, were the worst ones off. Now I’d realized that they already had a string of successes to their day: they’d made it out of their beds, out of the house, out of the car. I sometimes think of reaching back to tell that former self, so oblivious to the forces afflicting her soul, what I know now. I long to send her to the right doctor, the right counselor, accelerate her recovery, make amends. But the past is inaccessible to me, every detail frozen in a timeline I cannot touch. What do we do with these scorched places? With the knowledge that our own blindness, our lack of awareness, kept us circling in the desert? And that’s when I start to think about Noah. In many ways, it’s a tale of secondhand catastrophe. Surrounded by wickedness, Noah’s life was unhinged by proxy. Building a massive boat on dry ground, filling an oversized coffin with a zoo—these eccentricities were inflicted on him not by his own sin but by the lives of others. And then, when those others drowned and creation itself unraveled, Noah was ushered into a season not of consummate deliverance, but of waiting—weeks turning into months aboard the ark. What did Noah do while his own desert stretched around him, liquid and deadly? Did he bob on the waves in trust or did he fester with uncertainty? What was the point of all this waiting? We aren’t sure what he could see from the ark but this much seems certain: there were changes going on in the geological realms below him, and to these Noah was blind. Did he wonder if there was something he was supposed to do to speed up this process? Our hindsight does not whitewash Noah’s experience, but it does reveal purposes that are staggering in their import. Tectonic things were happening under Noah’s feet, no knowledge required. No one said to Noah, years later at a cocktail party, “This experience has made you a much more interesting person.” And no one had to. Not only was a speck of humanity being saved from which would come all future generations, but the very ground upon which we walk was being reforged under those monotonous gray waves. Noah’s wait was reshaping the continents. Where do our platitudes fall short? We come at others—I come at myself—with answers focused on solutions when some of the greatest anchors are found in God’s character. What was God’s capstone on the months (years? century?) of traumatic upheaval in Noah’s life? A rainbow. A rainbow? But do not miss where the comfort of this sign is placed. God offers Noah no handy platitudes to neatly tie up every aspect of his suffering. He removes the threat of repeating disaster, establishes new order in the world, then ends with this: “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (Gen 9:16 ESV, emphasis mine). Noah is left with the marvel of a God who binds himself to see, remember, and sustain. It is his covenant nature that has the final word. Our ransom lies not in our ability to put tidy epithets on our suffering, but in the character of God himself; he makes the narrative read right. For Noah, for my friend, for me, there is a reality more radical and penetrating than any of us could imagine. Beyond the floodwaters is a God who is taking desolation and making something new. The scorched places will become watered gardens. The blind ones will finally see. And the desert will blossom like the rose. Candace Bright is a writer and essayist living in Indiana. She writes at www.candacebright.com. Artwork Credit: “Desert Wind” by Joshua Smith

Great news! Today is Release Day for husband and wife duo Wild Harbors. Their debut record Monument, produced by Andrew Osenga, is now available everywhere, including the Rabbit Room Store. Click through to stream a song from their record and purchase your copy. Monument is a lyrical, melody-driven album, full of momentum and dynamic highs and lows. It narrates the story of taking risks to pursue what matters to us—the story that began Chris and Jenna Badeker’s journey to becoming Wild Harbors. We at the Rabbit Room are fans of the deep cuts, so we’ve chosen to share the seventh track from Monument, a song entitled “Water.” It’s an anthemic slow-burn of a song, lending honest wisdom paired with reassurance: “You can hide, but suffering will find you just the same / If you try, you can learn a lot from your deepest pain before you send it on its way.” Click here to purchase Monument at the Rabbit Room Store. And here to visit Wild Harbors’ website.

The longing for community is a deep and personal one. Each of us comes to the subject bearing the burden of our own experiences and the weight of our own wounds. If there’s a way to encapsulate all that complexity with tact, grace, and truth, I’d love to find it, but for now, I’d simply like to have a conversation. So, let’s talk about “the Inner Ring.” There’s a scene in A. S. “Pete” Peterson’s play Frankenstein in which The Monster lives in the shadows outside a simple, country home. He hovers just beyond the ring of warmth and love that emanates from the family within, longing to join them. He laments the depth of his loneliness and yearns to belong. This was the point where the play had me hooked. Thankfully, I’ve never been run out of town by an angry mob (though there’s still time). I have, however, known the silent ache of isolation. Who among us doesn’t yearn for belonging? Who hasn’t at some point felt like an outsider, trapped in the cold while that warmth glows far off—or worse, perpetually just beyond our fingertips? Frankenstein reminded me that I’m not alone in longing for a sense of community and connection that I fear I may never find. In a lecture to the students of Kings College, C. S. Lewis refers to this desire as “the quest of the Inner Ring” and calls it “one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action.” I’m not surprised, then, to have found it in Frankenstein’s Monster, just as I’ve found it in myself, and I’m not surprised to find it circling through conversations around the Rabbit Room. It’s written in emails, spoken at shows, and pasted across social media. Sometimes it hides in statements like, “if only I lived closer to Nashville” or “I wish I could just be best friends with such-and-such an artist.” It can lurk in the laments of those leaving Hutchmoot or of those who couldn’t attend. I even hear it whispered in my own heart. There is a sense of some secret, special group of Rabbit Room insiders out there sitting by fires, strumming guitars, (perhaps even smoking pipes—the miscreants) and having deep, meaningful conversations—without us. And if only we were in just the right place or knew just the right people, we could also be part of it and at last be contented. This is the illusion of the Inner Ring. We believe there’s a sanctum from which we’re excluded, and in which we might find the connection and validation we crave. The problem is, it isn’t real. Like Tantalus beneath the fruit tree, the quest for the Inner Ring leaves us forever straining and never fulfilled. Lewis points out that, even in gaining the access we desire, we would find ourselves disappointed. Inside every perceived Inner Ring, we discover only the flawed, ordinary (and extraordinary) people who already surround us. We’re faced with our same, imperfect selves, called and validated by God. There’s power in recognizing an illusion for what it is. It leaves us open to discover something more real and lasting, and this is where the Rabbit Room wants to come in. How have you found success in intentionally nurturing community where you are? How can the Rabbit Room better provide opportunities and resources to build your communities? Shigé Clark The Rabbit Room’s mission is to foster Christ-centered community and spiritual formation through music, story, and art. If you’re anything like me, you may get so focused on the “music, story, and art” portion that the other half can fade to a buzz in the background, but the two sides are complementary. The practice of making and appreciating great art draws people into community, and within such a community, creativity thrives. The Rabbit Room is not here to exclude, but to unite: to help kingdom-minded people come together around the common goal of creation. We want to debunk the myth that there is some ethereal “Rabbit Room Community” out there that only a select few get to be a part of, or that the Rabbit Room can be found in, or constrained to, an online space. Rather, as the mission states, we want to foster Rabbit Room communities, wherever people love God, music, art, and story. Recently, it seems more conversations have cropped up that are geared toward intentional engagement in personal community. Groups are gathering to sing hymns, reaching out to find fellow Rabbits in their areas, getting together to study classic theologians, inviting others to join for a personal meet-up at a cafe. Mini-Moots abound! What a beautiful and encouraging trend to see. This, after all, is what the Rabbit Room is about. So, here’s where this becomes a conversation rather than a soliloquy. We want to hear from you. How have you found success in intentionally nurturing community where you are? How can the Rabbit Room better provide opportunities and resources to build your communities? I’ll leave you with a final thought from Lewis’s Inner Ring lecture (which you should absolutely check out, by the way—it’s a wondrous read): And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it. Inner Rings may be illusory, but community is real, and community can be difficult. Let’s figure out how we can work together to develop and support Rabbit Room communities wherever they appear and wherever they are needed. Artwork Credit: Sky Fire by Georgiana Romanovna

Two new episodes of The Membership podcast are now available. In these episodes, our hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem discuss Wendell Berry’s 1968 poetry collection, Openings. The goal of The Membership is to curate great conversations that contribute to the health of the land and the health of our communities. Throughout this new podcast, hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem discuss Berry’s life and writings. They also interview other folks—farmers and makers, writers and artists, and community practitioners of all kinds—who are responding to Wendell Berry’s writings in their own places. Check out the new episodes here. And you can learn more about The Membership at its official website here. Click here for more information about The Rabbit Room Podcast Network and to check out other great podcasts.