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by the Rabbit Room This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Elizabeth Harwell, author of The Good Shepherd’s Pasture and The Good King’s Feast . The Good King’s Feast: An Invitation to the Lord’s Supper is a picture book that helps children understand Communion. In this episode, Elizabeth and Jonathan Rogers discuss writing for children and what it means to invite them into a story that they are already a part of. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 45 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Email in! Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by the Rabbit Room Back by popular demand, it’s the  Rabbit Room Christmas Gift Exchange ! But wait, what is it? It’s a “Secret Santa” program. Everyone who wants to participate signs up, then we pull names out of the virtual hat, and everyone gives a gift (or gifts) to the person whose name they receive. You can remain anonymous if you wish, or you’re welcome to be as open as you like. How much should I spend on a gift? We’ve set a suggested gift value of $30. We’d love it if you bought your gifts in the Rabbit Room Store (this is a great time to share your Rabbit Room wishlist—click here and log in ), but you don’t have to, and we encourage folks to give creative gifts, something handmade maybe, something you made maybe. Be creative! But please ensure that the gift you give is something you’d value at about $30. You’re welcome to lavish your recipient with more if you like. (And please feel free to disregard the wishlist and shopping options built into Elfster—see below.) Where do I sign up? This link (also at the bottom of this post )  will take you to the Elfster website where you can sign up for the exchange. The site is a little clunky (and we hate the ads) but the exchange has gotten so big in the last couple of years that we need to use a system like this to administrate it effectively. What if I don’t get a gift? We urge everyone to be sure they mail or deliver their gifts well in advance of Christmas Day so that no one feels left out. However, should your Santa drop the ball, please let us know on or after January 1st. We’ll do our best to remind them and resolve the situation, and if necessary, we’ll make sure that person cannot participate again next year. Can I be a backup Santa? Yes! You can! If you’d like to make yourself available in the event that someone doesn’t receive a gift, please let us know via email at team@rabbitroom.com . We hope you won’t be needed, but we’d love to have your help if the situation arises (put “Backup Santa” in the subject line of your email). When will I find out who I’m giving a gift to? Sign-up starts right now.  The sign-up  deadline is Monday, November 22nd , and names will be drawn on Tuesday, November 23rd.  NO LATE ENTRIES will be permitted . If you miss the sign-up window, you’ll need to wait until next year—this isn’t because we’re mean, it’s because it’s a closed system that cannot be amended once names are drawn. Everyone who enters will receive an email with their target’s name and address on Wednesday, November 24th, and you’ll need to mail your gifts by Friday, December 10th. I have questions not covered by this blog post. Who do I ask? Email your questions to team@rabbitroom.com and we’ll do our best to answer! And please use the comments section to introduce yourself. You might also want to let folks know what your interests are and what books and music you like in order to give your Santa some hints to work with. Click here to join. P. S. There’s also an online gift exchange for our friends who live in Europe, organized by the wonderful Michael Tinker!  Click here to join the Europe gift exchange , and if you have any questions, reach out to Michael at  michael.j.tinker@gmail.com .

by the Rabbit Room [ Editor’s Note: We asked the Rabbit Room Members to send in featured highlights about themselves and what membership means to them, and we liked this one by Rachel Speer Donahue so much that we wanted to share it with you here on the blog.] Lately I’ve been introducing my teen son to the delights and peculiarities of Dr. Who, so when the call went out for testimonials of what Rabbit Room membership means to us, the first words that sprang to mind were, “It’s bigger on the inside.” However, I had to quickly abandon that train of thought. It’s not at all an accurate representation of the Rabbit Room community. But then I had to ask myself— why? The answer lies in a concept that Mick and I encountered in cross-cultural training years ago—the idea of bounded sets vs. centered sets.* A bounded set is a group that is defined by common traits. Things (or people) that share those common traits are inside the circle, while things (or people) that do not share those traits are outside the circle. The group is defined by the boundary of the circle. A centered set, however, is a group that is centered on a common focal point, and the group is defined by movement toward that center from a variety of other position points on the map. To say “it’s bigger on the inside” would imply that there is both an inside and an outside and that there is some boundary that can be crossed to go from being an “outsider” to an “insider.” It’s bounded-set thinking. But the Rabbit Room community doesn’t function that way. The Rabbit Room is a centered set, and the focus is namely this: “The Rabbit Room cultivates and curates stories, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world.” Membership is not stepping over a boundary from “outside” to “inside”—membership is, rather, a linking of arms and falling in step with people who are moving the same direction. Rachel Donahue Because the center of the Rabbit Room is Jesus, creativity, and community, there is no inside or outside to membership. There are simply people who have been here a while, people who have been here even longer, and lonely travelers who have just stumbled upon a jovial caravan that’s headed their direction. Membership is not stepping over a boundary from “outside” to “inside”—membership is, rather, a linking of arms and falling in step with people who are moving the same direction. If you’re new to the Rabbit Room, just hang around a while. Listen, read, and get a taste of the goodness that is to be found here. The words and music and art and community will shape you in wonderful ways. But don’t think for a second that being new excuses you from getting involved. Be ready for someone to hand you a broom—or a ladle—or a pen—because the work that’s going on here is yours, too. If you’re going our way, link arms and fall in step with us. Someone just might break out into song. *For more information about bounded sets vs. centered sets, particularly with regard to the Church, read part 1 and part 2 of this article. You can learn more or sign up to become a member at RabbitRoom.com/member .

For the first time, the Rabbit Room has created a Christmas package, a perfect gift for friends who are unfamiliar or less familiar with the Rabbit Room! Every package includes an assortment of items—books, recipes, art, an ornament, tea, and much more—carefully curated around the themes of Advent and Christmas. In this gift package, you’ll find: Letters From the Mountain by Ben Palpant Henry and the Chalk Dragon by Jennifer Trafton 2-bag package of Rabbit Room tea (Courtesy of British Bee Tea Company) 5X7 Print of “A Liturgy for the Christmas Season” Rabbit Room Ornament Postcards featuring art by John Hendrix, Kyra Hinton, and Jamin Still “Rachel’s Weird Butters” recipe cards Rabbit Room bookmarks Rabbit Room stickers Information about the Rabbit Room Christmas Gift Packages are available for a limited time only (while supplies last) and will begin shipping November 29th. Click here to view them on the Rabbit Room Store.

[Editor’s note: In addition to being Head of Operations at the Rabbit Room, Chris Thiessen is an eloquent and insightful music critic. On his bi-weekly newsletter, Quarter Notes, he recently completed the epic feat of ranking every single Taylor Swift song. Amazed by his fearlessness, we share here his words about Swift’s songwriting, the way that music marks our lives, and St. Augustine’s “hermeneutic of love.” Enjoy, and find the complete list at Quarter Notes.] No artist has so soundtracked my journey from adolescence to early adulthood like Taylor Swift. I wouldn’t go so far as to consider her my favorite musical artist (I’m certainly not a raving Swiftie). Honestly, I don’t even believe in “favorite artists” as a concept. There have been many—Switchfoot, Kendrick Lamar, Brandi Carlile, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds—who have profoundly informed my life thus far. But Taylor’s music just keeps marking my life—like the bold, vertical ticks of a timeline—dividing eras, helping make sense of the world in unsuspecting ways, and offering a marvelous time of it. As I ponder why Swift’s music has resonated within me so, all the critiques of her career come to mind. Surely there are more adventurous musicians, more substantive lyricists, less flashy entertainers. Indeed, Swift has adhered to formulas, simple arrangements, and well-worn ideas throughout her career. But despite any truth in these critiques, I can’t shake her music off. And it’s occurred to me that the reason why is this: the most important ingredient to Swift’s career—the glue that binds her trajectory from country small-town pop to synthy big-city pop to indie-inspired folklore—is love. Yes, love. Yes, it’s cheesy. Get over it. Let me talk about love (and a little theology) before getting to the ranking (which is really why you’re here, right?). Swift has explored every corner of what it means to be human and to embrace, desire, and even despise love. Chris Thiessen An idea that has stuck with me over the last year is something my friend Dr. Steve Guthrie encourages: living out of a hermeneutic of love in our lives. In other words, love should be the lens through which we are meant to see the world. It’s an idea that brings to mind St. Augustine as he talks about interpreting the Scriptures in his work On Christian Doctrine: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” Love—in interpreting the Bible, music, or the everyday experiences of our lives—might just be all we need, as the Beatles suggest. Perhaps it’s the whole point. “I wanna be defined by the things that I love. Not the things I hate. Not the things that I’m afraid of,” Swift tells us at the end of “Daylight,” the closing song on her album Lover. Years earlier, on 1989 bonus track “You Are In Love,” she paints a scene of someone finding love for the first time: “And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars / And why I’ve spent my whole life tryin’ to put it into words.” Here, Swift pulls back the curtain and reveals the modus operandi of her entire career: putting words to a world where love is the purpose. Across her 15 year career, Swift has explored every corner of what it means to be human and to embrace, desire, and even despise love. In her early albums, she writes at length about fairytale love, the stuff of daydreams and Disney films. But Swift never blindly embraces the fantasy world. For every “Love Story” with its tragedy-turned-happy-ending, there’s a heartbreak where it’s too late for her Hollywood prince on his white horse to come around. In Swiftian folklore, there are sure to be enchanted evenings, but there are also slammin’ screen doors, pictures to burn, and teardrops on guitars. This broken world never promises a happy ever after, and Swift leans into the pain of that reality often. She understands that grief is necessarily linked to love. It’s love that informs the deep mourning for a lost child on “Ronan,” or the desperate hope of “Soon You’ll Get Better.” It’s love too that fuels Swift’s anthemic (though sometimes heavy-handed or misguided) resistance to social pressures and inequalities on “You Need To Calm Down” or “Shake It Off.” And it’s love that, ultimately, causes sparks to fly and light up the darkest night. When it seems the pain will last forevermore, it’s love that comes “alive, back from the dead.” As I think of how Taylor Swift’s career has soundtracked my journey, I’m thankful for the way she mines the depths of love imperfectly. She “gets it wrong” perhaps just as much as she “gets it right.” But who of us could say any differently? Love is messy. I know all too well that I get it wrong on a daily basis. I too have lots of regrets, but at least I’m trying. At least there is something to reach for, to hold on to when the sun goes down. Because no matter how many times I get it wrong, I know that love will get the final word. So to celebrate the release of Red (Taylor’s Version), I’m taking a look back at Taylor’s 179 songs to date* and ranking them as best as I can. What I love about lists like this is that everyone’s lists look so different. Much of that is linked not just with our ideas of what “good” or “bad” music is, but what this music has meant to our own experiences of life, love, and grief. Everyone’s journey is different. And so my list here is humbly submitted. Don’t at me if your favorite song is 104th on my list. Or do…I like to fight about stupid things. Alright, without further ado…are you ready for it? *Further ado: though some lists like Rolling Stone’s include them, I did not rank cover songs. Also, this list will be updated with the new Red (Taylor’s Version) songs soon, and I’ll write blurbs for every song on this list! Click here to view Chris’s full ranking of every Taylor Swift song and here to listen to the list on Spotify.

[Editor’s note: In celebration of the print release of Pete Peterson’s “The Oracle of Philadelphia,” we share with you a piece from Pete originally published on the Rabbit Room blog in 2014 which narrates the frustration and reward of the writing process. Enjoy!] Yesterday, I saw someone on Facebook mention that they’d sent the final draft of their manuscript off to the publisher after having rewritten and revised it so much that they had come to hate it and could stand to look at it no longer. I know that feeling. When I sit down to write, one of two things happens. The first possibility is that I have a great idea, know exactly what I want to write and how I want to write it, and I bang it out in a whirl of clacking laptop keys. When I’m finished I triumphantly hammer down the save button and go away feeling satisfied with myself. The second possibility is that I sit and stare at the screen for a while, eventually writing an awful sentence, then deleting it, then writing another but maybe deleting only half of it because the first part wasn’t quite as bad as the last, then staring at and loathing even that until I delete and rewrite it twelve more times. This continues for an hour or two until I’ve got a few hundred words cobbled together that I can no longer stand to look at. I close the laptop and walk away feeling a little sick and a lot like a complete hack. To be fair, there’s a third possibility—a hybrid of the other two. I’ll have a great idea, and I’ll know exactly what I want to do with it, but when I sit down to write, nothing comes together. The interesting thing, though, is what happens the next day. When I come back to pick up where I left off, I read over the last thing I wrote and, in general, I find that whatever was written in the first case is usually a royal mess that’s nowhere near as clever or as interesting as I thought it was while I was writing it. On the other hand, the writing done in the second case is usually pretty good—which seems completely backwards. Right? In my experience, the writing I do under what I’d call “inspiration” is usually far inferior to the writing I do when I have to rely on little more than hard work. When the words are coming easy, they tend to end up sloppy. When I have to squeeze every word out amid weeping and gnashing of teeth, relying on a developed set of skills rather than on the sugary high of inspiration, the work tends to be lean and focused—in other words, it tends to be pretty good. That’s a hard truth for me, but I’m learning to rest on it. Illustration by Stephen Hesselman I wrote a short story last month called “The Oracle of Philadelphia,” and it’s a good example. I started out with two ideas that I really liked—a fun twist on the historical Oracle of Delphi, and the idea of two men adrift on a melting ice floe. I had no clear idea of what either of those things had to do with the other, but it felt right. I started off strong and banged out several scenes of Thurston and Obadiah adrift on the ice, but then I hit wall. Inspiration ran out and, like my characters, I was stranded on a melting life raft with nowhere to go. I had nothing left to lean on but discipline. I had committed myself to finishing the story, and I had my wife to be accountable to, if no one else. So I kept going back to those scenes, adding a sentence here, deleting one there, scrapping this, adding that, and slowly, painfully, a functional story began to emerge.* When I finished, I told Jennifer, “Well, I got to the end. But I hate it.” The story was awful. I was sure of it. But though I hated it, I felt like the core of the story hung together, if only just, and so I started rewriting and revising, taking the thing I had come to loathe and breaking it down a sentence at a time, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Though I’d fallen completely out of love with the story, I was committed to reworking it to the point that I could publish it without being embarrassed by it. I kept at it mechanically until, in the end, I was sick of it and could stand to look at it no more. So I gave it to trusted friends to help me see where my blind spots were. More revisions followed until, again, I had to abandon it. It was as good as I could make it—even if I felt it wasn’t good enough. But a few days later, a fresh read of the story changed my mind. I found that now, after all, I loved the story again. Why? Because I had put work into it, work enough that my puppy love for the story had faded until I could see it objectively and scour away its imperfections (though I’m sure it has plenty more that could stand a good scrubbing). That first swell of love we have for a potential work isn’t inspiration, it’s infatuation. And just like in human relationships, once the infatuation fades, the real work of love begins. Pete Peterson I think if anyone is serious about writing (or art in general) it’s important to get beyond what we usually like to call “inspiration.” In fact, that’s the wrong word. That first swell of love we have for a potential work isn’t inspiration, it’s infatuation. And just like in human relationships, once the infatuation fades, the real work of love begins. And it’s in the context of that real work—that work in which you may seem at times to fall out of love with the object of your labor—it’s in that work that real inspiration takes place. It’s in that work that the Holy Spirit often does work of his own. And it’s out of that hard labor that a work of art is finally hewn. So if you’ve created something and labored over it until you can no longer stand to look at it, keep the faith, your work is not in vain. “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” —Thomas Edison “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” —attributed to a number of people who apparently abandoned the original quote “I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” —dubiously attributed to William Faulkner *For the record, not a single jot of those original scenes remains in the final story. Click here to view “The Oracle of Philadelphia” in the Rabbit Room Store.

[Editor’s note: Last week, the Rabbit Room staff happened upon this excellent interview with one of our favorite people, George MacDonald scholar Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson. It originally appeared on Radix Magazine, which you should definitely peruse if you haven’t already. Read to the end of the interview to find a link to some more of Kirstin’s writing, as well. You’ll be glad you did.] Radix Magazine: Having read some of your work and listened to your lectures, one of the things I really appreciate is that while you are a scholarly expert on George MacDonald, you also take a great deal of joy from it too. I think, with your enthusiasm, you have drawn a lot more people into the MacDonald and Victorian and even Inkling world. I also love the fact that you live on a farm! And I hear you even [currently] have a donkey, along with other farm animals. I would dare say that this makes you even more authentically “MacDonaldian.” Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson: Well, thank you! You know, one of the first things that attracted me to MacDonald as a person was that he was a farm kid just like me. A farm kid who loved stories, people, place, and connecting people and stories and places. And I love his desire to live holistically, weaving all his world together, introducing different parts to each other. MacDonald didn’t just know the people in his vocation, or those with whom he attended church, etc; he actively sought to know those he was placed amongst—his physical community, of all stripes and sizes. He was very given to hospitality—creating spaces in which people could talk as human beings, could get beyond talking about only politics or theology. That inspires me as something to strive for; when I achieve it, I am enriched. Radix: Oh, that talk of hospitality is so, so meaningful. KJJ: It really is, isn’t it? And it’s important to note that indwelling this type of hospitality was central to a number of people in MacDonald’s wider circle: mentors like A. J. Scott, F. D. Maurice, and Thomas Erskine. Their hospitable practice, of which MacDonald was an active part, left deep impressions on luminaries such as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, who appreciated how it fostered convivial conversation and the further development of ideas. As an aside, A. J. Scott, MacDonald’s primary mentor, helped develop what we now know as the discipline of English literature, along with another mentor of his, F. D. Maurice. Kind of a big deal, right? They believed that true literary criticism should be the attempt to hear rightly, to hear accurately, to engage hospitably. Most current practice has lost that mooring. And we’ve forgotten the history, that the English literature department was created for, essentially, theological reasons. These men drew MacDonald into this outworking of their Trinitarian theology, one that demanded that we are relationally oriented—that faith and love are embodied in relationship and that “faith-full criticism” is indeed hospitable. And so this very much shapes MacDonald’s writing as well. Radix: What a tremendously powerful thought. Thank you. I think that the word hospitality is—gloriously—increasing in popularity. So when did you start reading MacDonald? KJJ: I was five or six. I actually remember listening to my pastor read Isaiah 6 around that time, and thinking, that’s from The Princess and Curdie! Eventually I realized, it was the reverse. My first memories of being read to were from Narnia, and soon I was reading both that and MacDonald on my own. As a teen, I read MacDonald’s longer novels. Years later, after a summer class on John Bunyan at Regent College with Maxine Hancock, I rediscovered MacDonald. As I read, I began to realize Bunyan’s influence on him, but I was simultaneously stunned by how much MacDonald had, in turn, influenced Narnia. I was also reminded of how beautifully MacDonald interweaves imagination with faith, and saw how that had shaped my own faith and personal growth. But I also began to see the depths to which MacDonald was interacting and engaging with western literature, and it was challenging me spiritually and intellectually in ways I’d not experienced before—in the “storied” and intertextual aspects of Christianity and its rich literary tradition. MacDonald made English literature exciting in a new way for me. And consequently, Scripture too. Radix: Was there anything that you noticed about how MacDonald dealt with the feminine? Maybe not at age six, but later? KJJ: Yeah. I’ll give you a story for background first. When I was taking a course with Loren Wilkinson at Regent College—one of my favorites, called “The Christian Imagination”—it struck me that every single artist and author we discussed in class had, as adults, difficulty investing healthily in family life. That bothered me. So I asked if anyone could think of exceptions. But the class was awkwardly silent. When Loren and I bumped into each other the next day, I mentioned that MacDonald’s kids called him the most holy person they knew. Loren named a couple examples he’d thought of since. But the troubling awareness remained that we knew of too few Christian icons that could sincerely claim great family relationships. MacDonald’s situation—even if still imperfect, for he was human—compelled me to look more closely into his life. (Eugene Peterson was my thesis advisor, and whilst working with him on the educational nature of Story, I developed some of the ideas that I would later build upon when writing my doctorate on MacDonald.) But back to the family thing. MacDonald could have spent a lot more of his time writing and editing his work, but instead he put that time into family and friends and community—including collaborating with his wife and kids in teaching and ministry—as well as playing together. And yet, nonetheless, his work is still changing lives today. And I think some of the wisdom that occurs, that comes through in his writing, is there because of this choice to put more time into relationship than vocational success. I believe this type of relational prioritizing informed his engagement with, and ability to learn from, women. MacDonald spent time with some particularly strong women throughout his life. His wife, Louisa Powell, was one of six girls in an artistic and philanthropic family, and letters show how much he enjoyed visiting the whole lively household. He then had five girls of his own (and six boys). His birth mother had studied multiple languages in school, and came from a literature-oriented family. And after she died, his stepmother was similarly educated. Then MacDonald had his Federal Calvinist grandmother that we all hear about—especially the part about her burning the fiddle. Though that was not George’s fiddle, but his grandfather’s. Biographers and others have confused MacDonald’s life story with aspects of the novel, Robert Falconer, which, like many of his novels, borrows upon family stories in its shaping.[i] MacDonald’s mentor, A. J. Scott—who modeled a strong partnership with his wife Ann—taught at the first higher education college for women in the UK! MacDonald himself later taught there: Bedford College, London. F. D. Maurice, another friend, had already founded the first institute at which girls could gain academic qualifications in Britain, an Anglican college called Queen’s. They were all involved in fighting for tertiary, or post-secondary, education for women. Even before Bedford, MacDonald taught classes independently to women in both literature and science. He was also a friend of numerous suffragettes, such as Elizabeth Jesser Reid, Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Emilia Russell Gurney, and Georgina Cowper-Temple. He was spiritual confidant to some of them, and supportive of them all. And then, if we think about how women are portrayed in his fiction, we can see that women are shown to repeatedly rescue men. Men are taught by women, challenged by women, and also challenged to think about women in different ways. For MacDonald, women are not just prizes in a chivalric story, but are mentors, teachers, and fellow travelers in the journey—finding their own way philosophically and theologically, being their own persons. I want to read a quote from his novel The Seaboard Parish. Remember, this was written in 1862: And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day—the rights of women—that what women demand it is not for men to withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they have a right to—a far wider and more valuable education than they have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate.[ii] —George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish Radix: Oh, wow. And in 1862. KJJ: Isn’t that crazy? His novels are full of this. For MacDonald, story is a medium for change; the gospel itself is the story of Christ. Story is relationship. Story allows this amazing thing to happen: we get to know someone and see them change, and then we can change too. MacDonald very much wants to do this with his novels. That’s why he addresses issues like the rights of women, and the place of women, and the importance of female education. Moreover, women in his novels are frequently better in some areas of education than their male counterparts—especially mathematics. Radix: [Laughter] He was quite ahead of his time, then! KJJ: So much, yes, he was. He uses story to speak to a variety of contemporary issues: of social housing and animal rights; of interracial marriage (then illegal in the U.S.); of land ownership, eugenics, vivisection, and ecological wrongs; physical and emotional abuse; to the shameful way culture treated persons pregnant out of wedlock; to how those with neurological and physiological differences were treated and (de)valued. He even speaks to depression and suicide. And he addresses these within the framework of his stories. Radix: That statement you made just a minute ago is so powerful: “MacDonald sees story as a medium for change.” So good. It also bugs me that more people aren’t aware that MacDonald was ahead of his time in so many areas. We should know! KJJ: It sheds light. And I also think, again, that part of the reason that MacDonald was able to be so in touch with the social justice issues of his day is because he and Scott and the others he was close with didn’t put up walls between themselves and the communities in which they lived; they engaged very intentionally with people who had different theological perspectives—or none. This goes back to hospitality. They intentionally sought relationship with those around them even, perhaps especially, if they didn’t agree with them. And because of that they were so much more aware of the issues of the day; of how and where people were hurting and of the earth groaning. They knew how to speak into those issues because they didn’t restrict the communities in which they dwelt. Radix: I am thinking about your statement of “no walls on their relationships,” which of course is a matter of hospitality and imagination. This goes into the next question. In one of your recent papers, you mentioned the connection between a healthy imagination and a healthy theology. Can you touch on the link between imagination and the feminine for MacDonald? KJJ: Well, it’s important to remember that MacDonald didn’t have high walls that kept other perspectives out. He was widely read: from Church history, to the Church Mothers and Fathers, all the way through to Chaucer, Dante, Spencer, and Shakespeare. This means that his imagination was constantly being pushed in different ways. He was also deeply interested in Scripture, and the Greek, Hebrew, and even the Latin it was later written in. Because of this, he was aware that the Greek and Hebrew words for spirit are feminine. Every time you read about the Spirit of God, it’s feminine. Let alone that male and female are both created “in God’s image.” So you can’t avoid this aspect of femininity in God, along with the masculine. And then there are all his strong fictional female characters, such as the wise woman from The Wise Woman, or The Lost Princess; Great-great-grandmother from the Princess and Curdie series; Grandmother in The Golden Key or North Wind from Back of the North Wind. Now, how MacDonald was dealing with the feminine in the divine isn’t glib. He is not simplistic. So, I think that while these female characters have aspects of the divine, they aren’t meant to represent the fullness of God. Take Great-great-grandmother: she says herself that she is only 2,000 years old. Because we know that MacDonald is very intentional, Great-great-grandmother cannot, therefore, be a feminine version of God. Similarly, in The Golden Key and North Wind: these women themselves say that they have limited knowledge. I want to throw my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism. George MacDonald I think MacDonald creates these characters as ambassadors of the divine, or maybe reflected aspects of the divine, rather than as God. Others may differ, but I think that maybe Great-great-grandmother is, in a sense, “a Wise Imagination,” which MacDonald calls “the presence of the spirit of God.” Maybe the Wise Woman in The Lost Princess is an exploration of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs. MacDonald scholar Kerry Dearborn helped me see how the green-haired Grandmother in The Golden Key evokes Mother Nature. I think this kind of thinking makes more sense and is more richly nuanced than merely saying, “she is a female representation of God.” MacDonald doesn’t think God can be cataloged. God is too big for that. At the same time, he encourages us to delve deeper into the various aspects of God’s nature. And, always, drives us back to explorations of that in Scripture. Radix: Oh, I love that idea of these characters being hints; that they hint at aspects of God. KJJ: One of MacDonald’s goals was to increase—to cause an explosion of possibilities—of our understanding of God. He wants us to explore the various attributes of God, both masculine and feminine. Giving us a different perspective of the feminine does not mean he is negating the masculine, but that he wants to redress the balance. MacDonald was very keen on redeeming the fatherhood aspect of God, from a culturally prevalent perspective of cruel judge to that of loving father. We can see a lot of that in his stories. But McDonald is also not saying God is only this masculine father. Yes, God is a loving father as opposed to an abusive or hurtful or damaged father, but God also transcends gender. Radix: I wonder what you think he would tell us, especially now, if he were here. KJJ: Well, I’m reminded of MacDonald’s compilation, England’s Antiphon (1868), an anthology of devotional poetry. In it he pulls together a variety of writers from different theological perspectives. Such ecumenical intentionality was not common practice in that social climate. Here is what he says about why he does it: “I want to throw my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism.” Radix: Oh, wow. KJJ: In fact, MacDonald’s son, Ronald, wrote something that I wish could be at the beginning of everything that is written about George MacDonald: Bred in a land of religious division, his [my father’s] whole fight was against schism … He made no war upon the Church as he knew it—whether Independent, Presbyterian, or Anglican. His war was upon the faithlessness of the officially faithful, and, incidentally, only upon one or two Calvinistic and Augustinian dogmas exaggerated out of all proportion to their service.[iii] —Ronald MacDonald Now, I believe this is especially important. So, if George MacDonald were here with us today? I think he would stand against the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism. Radix: Powerfully said. In a similar vein, if he were here, what do you think MacDonald might disagree with what is said of him? KJJ: There are three areas. And I should say that more recent scholarship is helping to shift some of these older perspectives. The first one is that people have this entrenched idea that McDonald was an impoverished pastor who wrote novels only because he needed to feed his family. Emphatically not true. The real story is that MacDonald was a minister in a Congregational church for twenty-some months in his twenties, but that he taught English literature for over forty years. Now it is true that he did preach in churches throughout his entire life, sometimes every Sunday. A church in New York offered him a ridiculous salary to become their minister.[iv] But he always refused payment for preaching. However, his vocation and occupation was teaching literature. In addition to teaching in educational institutions, he was a paid lecturer. That was how he earned money for his family. He lectured all over the place: England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Canada, the USA. These lectures were on English literature and Dante. In his writing, too—even his fiction—he was constantly teaching literature. Illustration of George MacDonald by Frederick Waddy (1848-1901) Now, part of why I think knowing this is important—really important—is this: if we think of MacDonald as “only” a pastor who wrote literature on the side, we are doing a great disservice to the profession of literature. MacDonald was a steward of Story. He was calling us into “storyness.” We are devaluing the teaching of literature and the value of story when we get this part of MacDonald’s life wrong. His ministry—his holy calling—was teaching through story, pulling people back to an imaginative engagement with the world, with each other, with their communities, and, thus, with God. Radix: Oh, that is so good. That he was a steward of Story, and that he was calling us into storyness. KJJ: The second error goes something like this: MacDonald was a genius who sprang out of a vacuum. Now this is tied up with a related misconception, that he grew up in a repressive Calvinist household. Because, just think about it: “repressive Calvinist” automatically implies no art, no literature, and no acknowledgment of imagination. Right? But this does a great disservice to MacDonald’s family and community. The fact is that he grew up in a family environment that was highly literate and that greatly valued both education and imagination. In his family you have Shakespeare scholars, Gaelic scholars, women and men who were readers, poets, artists, and fairy-tale collectors. MacDonald grew up reading Coleridge and Milton while lying on the back of his horse. It was also a family highly invested in the social and spiritual health of the community. His paternal grandmother—with whom he did not live—may have embodied many of the particular Calvinistic expressions that his writings later challenged and even railed against, but letters with his father show how very different was his own childhood household; one that invited and prepared the type of exploration and discussion upon which MacDonald later built. To say that he sprang from a vacuum is misleading. The third error is that his realistic novels are unreadable in the “original.” Now, I greatly appreciate Dan Hamilton, a friend of mine, Michael Phillips, and Elizabeth Yates for making MacDonald’s Scottish novels more accessible to American audiences. And it’s true that his Doric dialect in those can be a challenge—though many find that if you read it out loud it is easier to understand. However, David Jack and Jess Lederman have recently granted readership a huge boon in their ongoing publication of the twelve Scottish novels in parallel text, so not a word of the original is lost yet an English option is right there alongside.[v] MacDonald’s other novels are in normal English. Radix: I know that over the years you have been involved in numerous projects. What are you particularly excited about now? KJJ: Certainly. Perhaps the most exciting project is a graphic novel of MacDonald’s The Golden Key, being produced by The Rabbit Room Press. I was a little hesitant at first, but when I saw what the artist Stephen Hesselman had done, I was hooked. Not discounting the truly beautiful illustrated version by Ruth Sanderson, I think this—in its particular format—may be the most important publication of The Golden Key since it was first published. Also, in general, for people who are interested in MacDonald and the Inklings, The Rabbit Room is just a great website to go explore. I have also been invited by Jess Lederman to contribute to his new editions of Lilith and Phantastes, and have a MacDonald-focused chapter in James Houston’s book on child theology. I am very happy to be involved with the C. S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits Society from Romania. They do important work with Lewis and the Inklings, but also “kindreds” such as MacDonald, Chesterton, L’Engle. Speakers include George MacDonald Society president Malcolm Guite, Trevor Hart, Philip Ryken, and Brenton Dickieson.[vi] Also, because 2024 is the 200th anniversary of MacDonald’s birth, The George MacDonald Society is preparing celebrations.[vii] A recent discussion on MacDonald and the Poetry of Science with eminent physicist Tom McLeish and science historian Franziska Kohlt is available on the Society’s site, and upcoming events include an online Christmas gathering and a day-long conference on teaching MacDonald. Radix: Sounds like you have lots of fun and meaningful things on your plate. Do you have any last thoughts for us? KJJ: Yes. And it goes back to Sabbath-breaking through Schism. For many people coming out of brokenness and wounding by church and family experiences, MacDonald is a healing tonic. But it’s important to know that MacDonald doesn’t want us to be anti-church, nor, especially, antagonistic towards those who understand God, faith, and church differently from ourselves: he would want us to have and practice grace. In the novel with the fiddle-burning, he actually chastises the character who takes “a mental position of enmity” towards the austere grandmother, for not perceiving the good also present in that woman. Yes, name—with particularity, not with unhelpful generalizations of “isms”—that which you see as damaging, but also laud that which is good. Fight rather than feed schism. Be actively involved in helping to build hospitable community. Community flourishing with transformative love: that’s what he’d want for us. Click here to read this interview on Radix Magazine. And click here to explore Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson’s writings on the Rabbit Room blog. [i] The fiddle-burning incident in the MacDonald family actually occurred when MacDonald’s father was a teen or young adult: according to an uncle, the boys in the family had found and begun to play with their deceased father’s instrument, and fearful that such music would lead her sons astray, their mother burned it. [ii] George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1868), 91-92. [iii] Ronald MacDonald, From A Northern Window: A Personal Reminiscence of George MacDonald by His Son (Guelph: Sunrise Books, 1989), 53-54. [iv] MacDonald became an Anglican in the 1860’s. [v] http://www.worksofmacdonald.com/products/robert-falconer[vi]http://simpozioncslewis.blogspot.com/ [vii] http://gms.george-macdonald.com/george-macdonald-biographical-introduction/

In this short series of posts, I am hoping to encourage the reading of poetry for all it’s worth—to foster confidence in those who love to read poems, but perhaps feel a little intimidated by tackling the work of some modern poets. My case study is Seamus Heaney, the most significant poet to emerge from Ireland since W. B. Yeats. Seamus Heaney’s work spanned some crucial moments in Irish and world history, migrating from the rural simplicity of his boyhood farm to the dazzle of modern cities, documenting the personal and domestic, as well as the conflicts which sundered his society and the communities of the world. Some basic tools for approaching his work were provided in the introduction to this series, providing a ‘way in’ to his poetic output. In this post I will isolate one his earliest poems, ‘Digging’, and will seek to model how it can be understood and enjoyed by those who are new to his work. To access a copy of the poem (including a wonderful audio recording of Seamus Heaney’s reading of it) please click here. Of spades and fountain pens ‘Digging’ is the first poem from Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist. Many of his poems have gathered proverbial momentum, but this piece is often viewed as his poetic signature, capturing many of his long term preoccupations about his place in the world. Two images are crucial to understand what he is considering in the poem, providing a kind of punchline for its descriptive section. On the one hand, there is the spade, wielded with skill by his father and grandfather, and on the other there is the pen. These two work instruments will form a kind of tension throughout the whole piece, providing points of comparison and departure, and allowing Seamus Heaney to meditate on where he fits with regard to his heritage. Ironically, for a writer, the spade receives the majority of attention in the poem—with the weight of imagery leaning on its handle. At this point we can remember the vital importance of emphasising the ‘ordinary’ in Heaney’s work. The spade was an everyday tool in any rural community in Ireland during the poet’s childhood and adolescence, an image of work and connection with the land. In Ireland spades provided points of comparison and definition, often being employed verbally to make a point: to ‘call a spade a spade’ is to speak honestly, to ‘have a face like a Lurgan spade’ is to have a grumpy or doleful expression. The spade is, then, a common implement relied upon for turning the earth and providing produce. Heaney’s family history with this tool is enriched and prominent, drawing from him some beautiful descriptions of digging on his family farm. The poet is not concerned to make the spade into a flat metaphor, but invests it with texture and detail. Awakened by its ‘clean rasping sound’, he is transported ‘twenty years away’ to when his father was in his prime, working at the ‘potato drills’. As readers we should be in no rush to get to the ‘meaning’ of the poem at this stage. Savouring the way in which the poet meditates on this everyday occurrence from his childhood is deeply enriching. The details are beautiful; potatoes emerge from the earth with ‘cool hardness’; the mechanics of working the earth are regimented and rhythmical, embodying great technical skill—’the coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered firmly’. Such assumed deftness brings the reader to the first vital point of tension in the poem: By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. —Seamus Heaney, ‘Digging’ Heaney’s language here is conversational and deeply vernacular, the ‘By God’ serving as a common way to intensify what follows, but it also bears some latent anxiety. There is a heritage in his family of being skilful in using a spade, a long line of men whose labours are renowned and respected, a work ethic and manual skill which serve as a kind of currency in the community. His grandfather’s reputation on the peat bogs was unparalleled, the ‘turf’ cutting being a major part of the mid-Ulster landscape in which Seamus Heaney’s family lived. His own place in that lineage seems somewhat up for grabs. As with many of Heaney’s poems about his father and grandfather, he finds himself as a moderate outsider to the action, fulfilling a role which is auxiliary. This is reflected in another poem from Death of a Naturalist in which he states that ‘I was a nuisance, tripping, falling/Yapping always.’ Even here his carrying of the milk is graphically precarious, the bottle ‘corked sloppily with paper’, his grandfather’s focus being on the job at hand rather than the grandson who brought him a drink. The connection with the land is profound, ‘going down and down/For the good turf. Digging’. All of these memories are tainted by a sense of dislocation. The memory of tilled soil, with its ‘squelch and slap/Of soggy peat’ is rooted in the poet’s mind, part of the fabric and landscape of who he is, and who his family was. With pathos he laments, ‘But I’ve no spade to follow men like them’. Ultimately, although his imagined world is enriched, Heaney has no purchase on this ground, no right or privilege among these strong and revered workers. This is not merely an image of modernisation, but a reluctant repudiation of the agriculture which has bound the poet’s family to the land for years. Knowing that Heaney was the first of his family to attend university brings his meaning here into sharp relief. 'Digging' makes a one time apologia for what the artist does, then leaves him or her to get on with the important business of plunging into the earth to draw good things for those who depend upon them. Andrew Roycroft This anxiety finds its resolution in the second main image of the poem—the pen. This is the object that heads and closes the entire piece, a plain rhyme scheme emphasising the fit and feeling of being able to write. Just as the spade had been ‘levered firmly’ by his father, for Heaney the pen ‘rests’ in his hand, ‘snug as a gun’. Here the man and the medium are as much in harmony as a farmer with a spade, and there is an aptitude and rectitude in Heaney holding his writing instrument in this way. Temperamentally and functionally the pen is his chosen tool, and the poem’s final line delivers this with incredible candour and power: ‘Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it’. Where his farming forbears worked the earth with skill and vigour he will now use the pen to penetrate beyond the soil from which he has come, and will embody the same prowess his father and grandfather enjoyed, with a simple shift in instrument and emphasis. Heaney is both in discord and accord with his background, gently leaving the physical world of farm and labour, but carrying into the intellectual world the graft and grit that made tilling possible. It is an extraordinarily powerful image, and an important window into the poet and the poem. An artist with a place in the world In the previous post in this series, I emphasised that grasping the immediate physical world Heaney presents is the best way to reach the ‘universals’ that inform his work. ‘Digging’ exemplifies this powerfully. While ostensibly about his specific background, his anxieties, and their resolution, Heaney lays bare some soil which is part of almost every creative person’s struggle—knowing one’s place in the world. There are some who enjoy (or endure) being part of a creative heritage, where the language of art is well understood. Perhaps more commonly, those who follow the compulsion to create do so at an angle from the background which formed them. An artist might emerge from a working class background in which visual art is not valued or noticed. A poet might find it easier to read her poems to the public than to her parents, sensing an unspoken resistance, or a deeply internalised anxiety about how what they are doing can integrate with where they have come from. Heaney’s poem does not merely resolve that anxiety, but grants a dignity to creative work which places it in the arena of provision, labour, and tillage. ‘Digging’ is a manifesto for the whole body of work which the poet would later bring into the world, a rationale for how such work ‘fits’ within who he is, and where he has come from. Seen in this light, ‘Digging’ becomes ours as well. Particularly in the evangelical world, creative activity is often misunderstood, hideously commercialised, and commodified into having to ‘function’ according to the parameters of ‘ministry’ or ‘evangelism’. The Christian artist (whatever their medium) often feels like an outsider, and can easily carry deep misgivings and anxiety about where they fit on the ‘family farm’ of church and mission. Seamus Heaney’s digging pen liberates us to see our work as valid, vital, and a dignified part of human endeavour. ‘Digging’ makes a one time apologia for what the artist does, then leaves him or her to get on with the important business of plunging into the earth to draw good things for those who depend upon them. As we will see in the next post, Heaney does not share the theological or spiritual underpinnings of a ‘Christian artist’, but it takes very little thought to connect what he shares in this poem with our dignity as God’s image bearers, and the mandate to till the earth, given at creation. Those who engage in any kind of creative work (although rejecting the commercial overtones of an ‘industry’) can thus readily see that industriousness, dedication, the honing of skill, and an intimacy with the materials of the world is an endeavour well worth pursuing—as important as breaking sweat while digging crops. In the next post we will examine Seamus Heaney’s handling of the spiritual world, thinking through how a Christian reader can be challenged by his position, but also enriched in their faith. Click here to read Part 1 of this series.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with children’s author Carolyn Leiloglou. Carolyn Leiloglou’s picture book Library’s Most Wanted was a 2021 WILLA Award Finalist. She was also a 2018 finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize. Her poems and stories have appeared in children’s magazines around the world, including Highlights, Ladybug, Cricket, and Clubhouse Jr. In this episode, Carolyn and Jonathan discuss rule-following, characters who take themselves too seriously, and other things. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 47 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine Woodhull at sarahkatherine@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Rabbit Room! To celebrate, we’re re-sharing a wonderful and applicable session from this year’s Hutchmoot: Homebound called “The Indispensable Feast,” co-led by Lanier Ivester and Steve Guthrie. We’ve also made a few fitting liturgies available for free download on the Every Moment Holy website. The Hutchmoot Podcast features some of our favorite sessions recorded at our annual conference which celebrates art, music, story, and faith in all their many intersections. Today, it is our pleasure to share a session led by Lanier Ivester and Steve Guthrie called “The Indispensable Feast” from 2021’s Hutchmoot: Homebound, in both video and audio form. Feasting is one of the foundations of human culture, both sociologically and theologically. Steve and Lanier lay groundwork both for understanding why we feast as well as providing practical advice for the occasion. Click here to listen to this episode of The Hutchmoot Podcast. Liturgies for Thanksgiving: Free Downloads Whether you find yourself surrounded by loved ones, all by yourself, or somewhere in between, we hope you are able to find peace and hope this Thanksgiving. We’ve made several liturgies from Every Moment Holy available for free PDF download on the Every Moment Holy website to assist you in prayer. Click the title of the liturgy you’d like to download below, or visit EveryMomentHoly.com/liturgies to view all available liturgy downloads. A Liturgy for the Preparation of a Meal A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends A Liturgy Before a Meal Eaten Alone A Liturgy for Leaving on Holiday Liturgies for Thanksgiving: Every Moment Holy App These liturgies are also accessible via the iOS app, which is especially useful if you plan to use them in group settings. And coming up on Cyber Monday (the 29th), all liturgy bundles—including the entirety of Volumes I and II of Every Moment Holy—will be available for download at half price. We encourage you to take advantage of this on Monday if you’re interested in adding to your on-the-go liturgy collection. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine Woodhull at sarahkatherine@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

For 2021’s Advent season, we’ll be sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. We’re beginning today with Thomas McKenzie’s introduction to his Advent devotional, The Harpooner; Every Moment Holy’s “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season,” read by Kristyn Getty; and an ink painting by Kyra Hinton called “Remedy,” accompanied by a few words from Kyra about the piece, how it was made, and what it means to her. Enjoy. Kristyn Getty Reads “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season” from Doug McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy Download a PDF of “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season” at EveryMomentHoly.com. “Remedy” by Kyra Hinton “This piece is a ‘double exposure’ where various layers of my ink paintings shine through each other to create something new. ‘Remedy’ captures the feeling of a rising sun through morning’s misty blanket, of a sunlit wisp lilting up from a warm mug, of the slightest turning heart in anticipation of a hope to come. Maybe not clear, but clearing. Maybe not yet, but soon. Maybe not here, but coming.” —Kyra Hinton Visit Kyra Hinton’s website. Introduction to The Harpooner by Thomas McKenzie In his recent memoir, Eugene Peterson compares the life of a pastor to the role of a harpooner on a nineteenth-century whaling ship. A harpooner was the member of the crew whose task was to throw his harpoon at the whale when the ship was close enough. While the rest of the crew struggled against the wind and waves, the harpooner waited, conserving his strength for the perfect moment. Eugene Peterson says it this way: In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there is a turbulent scene in which a whaleboat scuds across a frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle taut, all attention and energy concentrated on the task. The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined; chaotic sea and demonic sea monster versus the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab. In this boat, however, there is one man who does nothing. He doesn’t hold an oar; he doesn’t perspire; he doesn’t shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And this this sentence:”To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world Musgraves start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.” … History is a novel of spiritual conflict. The church is a whaleboat. In such a world, noise is inevitable, and immense energy is expended. But if there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment and become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin… Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into a fray we know has immortal consequence. And it always seems more dramatic to take on the outrage of a Captain Ahab, obsessed with a vision of vengeance and retaliation, brooding over the ancient injury done by the Enemy. There is, though, other important work to do. Someone must throw the dart. Some must be harpooners. —Eugene Peterson, The Pastor, pages 281-282 I have on small disagreement with Eugene Peterson. While he sees this as a way of describing the life of a pastor, I see it as a metaphor for the best kind of Christian life. Life is not about doing great things for God. Most of life is simply about being present, waiting upon the Lord, and responding when we're called. Thomas McKenzie We are called to live a life of waiting. Of course, there will be moments of strife, and we should be ready for them. But we must resist the voices that say we must be always fighting, always struggling. These voices tempt us to use all our strength in some righteous cause, throwing ourselves against the merciless storm of evil in the world. They lead us to believe that we will conquer our enemies, but the truth is that we will only destroy ourselves. Instead, we must learn the truth that God is the mighty warrior, he is the Victorious One. He is strong enough to conquer the darkness, I am not. Life is not about doing great things for God. Most of life is simply about being present, waiting upon the Lord, and responding when we’re called. This is what it means to be a harpooner. Jesus was once asked, “What must we do to do the works God requires? (John 6:28, NIV).” That is the question that most religious people ask. We want to know what we’re supposed to do in order to please God, we want to be acceptable to him. Many of us want a definite list of moral principles that we must obey. Others want to know exactly what doctrines they need to believe. Still others want to be sent into battle against the world and the devil. We want to “take a hill for Jesus,” as I once heard an excited pastor declare. But the Lord has something different in mind. “Jesus answered them, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent’ (John 6:29, NIV).” The work of God is to trust Jesus. Doing good deeds, believing the right things, and struggling against the temptations of this world are all important. But the one thing God is most interested in is that we simply rest in the love of his Son. Resting is not laziness. We aren’t called to lie stagnant, like a couch potato vegging out in front of daytime T.V. Quite the opposite. We’re called to rest like a harpooner, strong and prepared to act. Jesus put it this way in Mark’s Gospel: Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!” —Mark 13:33-37 (NIV) Waiting on the Lord, being on guard until the time to act—this is the theme of Advent. But what does that look like? How do you “watch” in the real world? The purpose of this devotional guide is to help train your soul, to aid the Spirit’s work of forming you into a harpooner. View Thomas McKenzie’s Advent devotional The Harpooner in the Rabbit Room Store.

For this year’s Giving Tuesday, we’re celebrating the amazing people that make up our Rabbit Room membership. In this post, you’ll learn the stories of a few of those members—Jud Neer, Joe Thomas, Kori Morgan, Rachel Donahue, Melanie Waldman, and several more. Plus, if you’re interested in joining the membership and would like to make as big an impact as possible, we have a special opportunity for you today only. Read on to learn more. Special Giving Tuesday Opportunity Thanks to a generous donor, when you sign up to become a Rabbit Room member today, your entire first year of membership donations will be doubled in advance. That means that your initial monthly $25 donation will have a $325 impact, or a $600 impact for a yearly donation. This will be for up to 132 new members, for a total potential of $40k matched! If you’d like to learn more about what membership means to the Rabbit Room, you can read about it here. If you’d like to join us in stewarding this work and community, on a day when your gift will have a huge impact, sign up to become a member today at RabbitRoom.com/member. We’re beyond grateful for these people who resonate with the Rabbit Room’s mission and have taken up the walk with us. Thank you for being with us in membership! Video: Meet our Members Kori “I’m Kori Frazier Morgan and I first learned about the Rabbit Room from being a part of The Habit with Jonathan Rogers. During his classes throughout 2020, I saw firsthand the fellowship and encouragement that mark Rabbit Room members. After having an amazing experience at Hutchmoot, I quickly decided to join. I think membership is about learning how our art intersects with our faith and understanding that relationship better. Everyone seeks not only the good of each other’s creativity, but the good of them as people. Because I found the Rabbit Room during the pandemic, this community has been instrumental in helping me see what it means to be a writer at this unusual point in time Also, my favorite author is Flannery O’Connor. The photo above was taken last summer, when I had the chance to visit her home in Milledgeville, Georgia, and of course, meet the peacocks.” Joe “Hi! I am Joe and I am originally from India and now reside in the beautiful city of Allen, TX. As someone from a country with such limited Christian resources, I truly enjoy this immersive experience that the Rabbit Room has created through art, books, music, concerts, Hutchmoot, and so on that is grounded in Christian perspective. I am still trying to find my own art, but I really wish there was a Rabbit Room-like community in every country on earth so Godly men and women could nurture their arts and crafts and grow in maturity for Christ’s calling in our earthly journey.” Melanie “I’ve heard Pete and Andrew repeatedly mention the idea that beauty ‘pushes back the darkness.’ I didn’t really understand it at first, and I even fought with myself about it because I thought there were so many other ways I could serve or give. But I think I am finally getting it. As believers, we can and should bring light to the far reaches of the world—and as artists, we are called to push back the darkness through our art.” Hannah “Hi! I am Hannah, and I am a part of the Rabbit Room Membership. I am a born-and-raised Georgian living about an hour south of Atlanta. A proud nerd, I spent the early part of the pandemic learning to do cool tricks with my lightsaber. This picture of me, wild with joy at meeting BB8, encapsulates my nerdiness perfectly. I was introduced to the Rabbit Room by a friend during one of the most difficult seasons of my life. She played Andrew Peterson’s ‘The Rain Keeps Falling,’ and I knew I had to learn more. The Rabbit Room’s books, music, podcasts, blogs, and Hutchmoot session recordings saw me through that difficult season of my life. I became a Rabbit Room Member because I wanted to give back to the community whose content had done so much for me. The Rabbit Room community is a haven for so many people, and being a member means that I get to be a part of the welcome that was offered to me so many years ago.” Rachel “Lately I’ve been introducing my teen son to the delights and peculiarities of Dr. Who, so when the call went out for testimonials of what Rabbit Room membership means to us, the first words that sprang to mind were, ‘It’s bigger on the inside.’ However, I had to quickly abandon that train of thought. It’s not at all an accurate representation of the Rabbit Room community. But then I had to ask myself—why? The answer lies in a concept that Mick and I encountered in cross-cultural training years ago—the idea of bounded sets vs. centered sets. A bounded set is a group that is defined by common traits. Things (or people) that share those common traits are inside the circle, while things (or people) that do not share those traits are outside the circle. The group is defined by the boundary of the circle. A centered set, however, is a group that is centered on a common focal point, and the group is defined by movement toward that center from a variety of other position points on the map. To say ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ would imply that there is both an inside and an outside and that there is some boundary that can be crossed to go from being an ‘outsider’ to an ‘insider.’ It’s bounded-set thinking. But the Rabbit Room community doesn’t function that way. The Rabbit Room is a centered set, and the focus is namely this: ‘The Rabbit Room cultivates and curates stories, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world.’ Because the center of the Rabbit Room is Jesus, creativity, and community, there is no inside or outside to membership. There are simply people who have been here a while, people who have been here even longer, and lonely travelers who have just stumbled upon a jovial caravan that’s headed their direction. Membership is not stepping over a boundary from ‘outside’ to ‘inside’—membership is, rather, a linking of arms and falling in step with people who are moving the same direction. If you’re new to the Rabbit Room, just hang around a while. Listen, read, and get a taste of the goodness that is to be found here. The words and music and art and community will shape you in wonderful ways. But don’t think for a second that being new excuses you from getting involved. Be ready for someone to hand you a broom—or a ladle—or a pen—because the work that’s going on here is yours, too. If you’re going our way, link arms and fall in step with us. Someone just might break out into song.” Sign up to become a member today at RabbitRoom.com/member, and your $25 donation will have a $325 impact!

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Jill Phillips, singer-songwriter and star of the Gullahorn Happy Hour along with her husband, Andy Gullahorn. Jill is also a Marriage and Family Therapist. Jill will soon be releasing a new album called Deeper Into Love, a collection of songs that take a journey through grief, healing, and redemption. In this episode, Jill and Jonathan talk about the gap between the truth and how it feels, integration and disintegration, and going boldly into the house of grief. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 48 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine, at sarahkatherine@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

The season of Christmas is, for so many of us, a crazy-busy, head-spinning, noise-making, exhausting affair. We’re supposed to feel peace on earth but our days and nights are anything but peaceful. Every heart is expected “to prepare Him room” but, like the Bethlehem Inn of Luke 2:7, there’s no room in our hearts for Jesus to make a leisurely visit, crowded as they are with worries over things that we can rarely control. We sing about silent nights, but we find ourselves tumbling from one commitment to another and our head space is anything but the language of the beloved carol, “Silent Night,” where all said to be “calm.” We confess belief in angels and virgin births and strange magi from the east, but our sermons invariably find ways to domesticate the fantastical aspects of the nativity stories and to rob us of an encounter with the truly terrifying nature of the Incarnation. We tell the children in our communities that baby Jesus “no crying he makes,” but these same children face anxieties that they struggle to articulate and fear to make public. We’re told to “repeat the sounding joy” three times, but what we really feel is deeply frustrated by all sorts of strained family dynamics that never seem to improve. And we extol the simplicity of the manger but find ourselves drowning in a torrent of messages that tell us to do more and to be more, because our happiness presumably lies in the exact opposite of what Mary and Joseph possessed at the hour of Christ’s birth. So what do we do? One thing we can do is resist the story that the “market” keeps telling us and instead read, as if for the first time, the story that Matthew and Luke tell—discovering in this re-reading something far more life-giving than we ever imagined possible. This is something that I have written about before, in The Washington Post and in Christianity Today. And it’s something that Phaedra and I have tried to wrestle with in our own family practices and in this new set of illustrated prayer cards that we’ve created, “The Light Has Come.” Our hope, it should be said, is not simply to offer practical help to celebrate the so-called reason for the season. Our hope, more critically, is to help re-imagine the season of Advent, wherein our own experiences of painful longing are not inimical to true happiness, nor a sign that we have failed in some way and are thereby being punished by God, but are rather central to God’s work of making us more like Jesus. Our hope is to help re-imagine the season of Advent, wherein our own experiences of painful longing are not inimical to true happiness, nor a sign that we have failed in some way and are thereby being punished by God, but are rather central to God's work of making us more like Jesus. W. David O. Taylor Our hope is to help re-feel our way through the often-dissonant practices of Christmas in our country, which invariably lead to a confusion of feelings about what we ought to be doing with ourselves in light of the burden of demands that we both place upon ourselves and that are placed upon us by others, “to do Christmas right.” Our hope is to help re-sense the Feast of the Epiphany as our own story too—as the story of God becoming manifest within the often-oppressive mundane circumstances of our lives, within our own challenging contexts of Christian mission, and within our own stories of displacement. Our desire, in short, is to make this tripartite season feel more truly meaningful through the media of word and image. For it is not just words in our heads that shape our sense of the good life, it is images as well—often very broken ones, too. What Stanley Hauerwas once wrote of the gospel, we believe applies also to the good work of art: “That God is lord of history means we must be able joyfully to imagine that things need not and will not go on just as they are but as God will have them.” “Fantastical” by Phaedra Taylor For us, with this collection of illustrated prayers, it means seeing with Spirit-baptized imaginations the true nature of faith and hope, joy and peace, shepherds and angels, but also our own experiences of feasting and sorrow, fear and doubt, along with the political implications of Mary’s Magnificat and the public ramifications for Christian faith in the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt. What does it mean to possess a distinctly “Christian mind” (to borrow the language of the Anglican literary critic Harry Blamires) about Christmas? How do we make space for both praise and lament on New Year’s Eve? How might the gospel teach us to begin a new thing well? How might the saints of old, who lived in such strange and distant times, help us to live well in our contemporary society? These are the kinds of questions that fired our own imaginations as we set about to make images and to write prayers that might help us to embody the gospel in our own times and places. Our hope, in the end, is that this set of prayer cards might invite people to stop, to look, and to listen to the nativity narratives in order to discover afresh a story that heals this very broken and beloved world of ours as well as to experience anew the good story of Christ’s coming in this often-harried season of the year. View “The Light Has Come” in the Rabbit Room Store.

What can our corner of the created world reveal about our creaturely and creative selves and our Designer? What can trees teach us about theology? We invite you to join us on Friday, December 10th for The Trinity Forum’s Online Conversation with Andrew Peterson on what it looks like to encounter God through the glory of creation and how deeper attentiveness to the beauty around us can awaken us to wisdom and wonder. In his lyrical and insightful new book, The God of the Garden, Andrew Peterson reflects on the formational significance of place and symbolism of nature in the spiritual life. He notes: Trees need to be still in order to grow. We need to be still in order to see that God’s work in us and around us is often slow and quiet, patient and steady. It was in this stillness that I sat in the Chapter House, watching through its windows as creation cycled through its changes, to delve into the soil of the past, to brain into the air of the present, and to strain toward the skies of the coming kingdom. —Andrew Peterson, The God of the Garden Those who register for this Online Conversation will be invited to participate in post-event discussion groups to continue the conversation! The discussion groups will be moderated by Trinity Forum representatives and aim to allow participants to more deeply engage with the ideas in the Online Conversation with other viewers. Once registered, look in your confirmation email for the link to sign-up for a discussion group. We trust this will provide a safe space for you to connect with other thoughtful folks who want to continue the conversation! Click here to register for this Online Conversation, and click here to register for the post-event discussion.

For 2021’s Advent season, we’re sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. Today’s collection includes a performance of “Hold Still” by Taylor Leonhardt; an Advent reflection by Jen Rose Yokel called “Far As the Curse is Found,” originally published to the blog in 2018; and a painting by Tim Joyner inspired by John 12:24 and Hosea 2:15 called “A Door of Hope.” Enjoy. “Far As the Curse is Found” by Jen Rose Yokel When I was a child, it was so much easier to answer if a grown-up asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” I’m old enough to remember when there was no event like getting the Sears Wish Book in the mail and spending hours poring through the pages, my sister and I circling our desires in the thin, glossy pages, staged photo shoots of broadly smiling children and the coveted toys of the moment. Growing up complicates things. If you believe the ad industry, a grown-up Christmas list is more likely to show off diamond rings, the latest smartphone, a Lexus with a giant red bow. But what if the things we want are mostly signposts aimed at our desires? Do we want the ring, or the rock-solid assurance that someone loves us? Do we want the phone, or something to signal how productive, competent, and needed we are? Do we want the car, or the status symbol, the independence to go anywhere? Do we want the things, or do we want to fill up some lack, to find something wrong in our lives and make it right? It feels a little cliche to say that the things we want most can’t be wrapped up and left under the tree, and yet the older I get, the more true it feels. Imagine me, asking you, “Seriously…what do you want for Christmas?” For a loved one with depression to feel joy again? For the cancer diagnosis to be reversed? A guarantee that you’ll make the rent this month, or scrape together enough money and time off to go home, or just to look at the news one day without feeling hopeless, to end one old year with the satisfaction that it was, indeed, for the whole world, a good year? No more let sins and sorrows grow Nor thorns infest the ground Take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter's bitter sting to spring's gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing. Jen Rose Yokel Here we are, in the thick of Advent. We’ll spend the next three weeks gathering our hope, lighting a new candle each Sunday, singing in the face of the longest nights of the year. We celebrate this season of remembering every year, because even though the Christ child came—yes, he came, in a fragile body like ours to show us what God is like, and that is no small miracle—even for all the things Jesus has made right, we are still well aware that we’re living in the wait. Every year, I find myself resonating more and more with the sometimes forgotten third verse of “Joy to the World.” I suppose thoughts of sorrow, thorns, and curses don’t exactly drum up holiday cheer, but something in me resonates when I hear those words. They capture the soul of Advent, the waiting, the intense anticipation for reversal. They hint at a story too good to be true. Jesus has come to make many things right. I believe he did. I believe he still is and that we’re invited to be part of it. But in another Advent season, the wait can be so hard sometimes. He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found Far as the curse is found. Maybe farther. Hope, renewal, joy, flooding across the nearly-dead earth to drown the weeds. Sometimes, I can almost feel it. The first great curse is that we toil, surviving by sweat and tears and waging battle against thorns and drought and disease. Of course the beauty is there, but our joys and sustenance are tempered by futility, the sense that we can never do enough, or be enough, or win. But take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter’s bitter sting to spring’s gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing. Joy to the weary, broken, beautiful world. “Hold Still” by Taylor Leonhardt You’re on the move again Saying you’re through again Don’t know what to do again You’re on your own Walking the streets tonight Under a neon light Just want some peace and quiet I know Hold still, don’t run You’ll never find the love you want If you take off when it gets real You wanna be held; you gotta hold still You’ve heard it all before The tired metaphors Don’t move you anymore You’re out of tears If you get cold enough Maybe come close enough To let somebody love you Maybe me Everybody has to land sometime You’re born to fly, I know I’ve been watching from the ground Sending smoke signals In case you need a little sign it’s safe To come down No shame in coming back From all that greener grass Turns out you never lacked a thing Click here to listen to this song on Spotify and here to listen on Apple Music. And click here to listen to an interview with Taylor Leonhardt and producer Lucas Morton about this song on The Second Muse. “A Door of Hope” by Tim Joyner 6’ x 3’ Foraged pigment and brass leaf on maple-mounted washi “This painting was created as an iteration of a progressive altarpiece designed for Trinity Church in Bolton, MA. Based on John 12:24 (“unless a grain of wheat is planted in the ground and dies, it remains a solitary seed. But when it is planted, it produces in death a great harvest”), the altarpiece examined different aspects of the paradoxical nature of the Gospel through the framework of the Church year. Advent is the season of two-edged hope, when we experience both the excitement of anticipation and the pang of longing. For those of us not raised in a liturgical tradition, the pairing of this season of hope with practices centered around fasting and repentance can feel uncomfortable at times. This paradox is, of course, intentional and representative of the deep truths of the Gospel. In remembering our spiritual darkness, we are made all the more aware of our need of Christ’s Light. We see Jesus’s counter-cultural, counter-intuitive truth asserting itself again: life comes only through death. The title for the Advent iteration of the piece is taken from Hosea 2:15, wherein God promises to Israel through the prophet that he will “make the Valley of Trouble a Door of Hope.” This prophecy refers directly to Joshua 7. At the gates of the Promised Land, after the defeat of Jericho, the Israelites are commanded to not take any plunder. Because of one man’s disobedience of this command, God’s blessing leaves the nation and they are defeated in their very next battle. There, in the Valley of Achor (trouble), in the place of defeat, this sin and disobedience is rooted out and God’s favor returns to the Israelites. Joshua renews the Covenant and a door into the Promised Land is opened. Jesus himself, of course, is the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy. In John 10 he says “I am the Door. If anyone enters by me he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” In this declaration, Christ identifies himself with Hosea’s door—the door through which we can enter the promised land of salvation. But more broadly, we see here the fundamental transformation of the Valley of Trouble into the Door of Hope. All the way back in Genesis, when Adam and Eve first ate the fruit at the urging of the Serpent, God pronounces their doom. To Eve he tells of pain in childbirth and restlessness unfulfilled. To Adam he tells of endless toil and a cursed earth, bearing thorns instead of fruit. The path of the story of mankind swiftly descends into the Valley of Trouble and seems to stay within in its dark walls far longer we’d like. But in Christ we see the Curse taken up and transmuted into Hope. It was through the painful, bloody process of childbirth that the hope of all mankind was delivered to this world. And eventually this child would be buried into the barren earth, only to produce in death a great harvest. The curse itself becomes the cure, and we see the Valley of Trouble transformed at last into the Door of Hope.” —Tim Joyner

[Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, Lancia E. Smith at The Cultivating Project shared an in-depth interview with author Ben Palpant about his new book, Letters from the Mountain. We enjoyed it so much that we’re sharing it in its entirety here, with Cultivating’s permission. We hope that Lancia & Ben’s conversation inspires you in your own creative work, and if you find yourself wanting to hear more from Ben, you can find Letters from the Mountain in the Rabbit Room Store.] Ben Palpant is the author of a beautiful new book written for writers and for all those who labour to create art. While written to his own daughter, Letters from the Mountain could just as easily have been written to any one of us. The language throughout this book is kindhearted and careful, but it is also brave. It openly names the dangers and challenges we face as we labour to be faithful in our calling. Ben’s previous works bear this same signature of finely crafted words that inspire, reveal, encourage, and commune. Letters from the Mountain will be referred to countless times by those looking for guidance and a kindly light cast on the sometimes dark and hard paths we follow. This interview gives you a glimpse of the man behind the book. We are honoured to share it with you. Happy reading and many blessings to you! Lancia E. Smith: Ben, over the past few years you’ve written several volumes of work in the genres of poetry and memoir, including one that I have particularly loved—A Small Cup of Light. You also authored and created a writer’s journal (in two versions) that can be used alongside your newest release, Letters from the Mountain, a memoir of writing craft and the pursuit of living well. Was there a genesis incident that sparked the idea for Letters, or did it begin to emerge more as ideas persistently bubbling up? Ben Palpant: Everything else I’ve written has had a genesis moment, some idea that knocked on my heart louder than the rest. This one was unique in that I didn’t write it originally as a book, but as letters to my daughter. It was just a matter of practicality, really. She went off to college and we still had stuff to talk about. She’d email me her questions about creativity and faith or she’d call me on the phone and off I’d go with a long-winded response. After quite a while, I started wondering if these exchanges would be helpful to my former students or others who wrestle with the same questions I do, so I started compiling them into topics more formally. To be honest, this book started out as an uncompiled collection of random thoughts in the style of Pascal’s Pensées. Since I’m not nearly as profound as Pascal, it was just a frustrating experience for early manuscript readers. Good editors set me straight. Thinking back on this, I can say that this book is actually the continuation of a life-long conversation that started when my daughter was tiny. As I recount in the book, I caught her scrawling on a shiny blue rental car when she was three years old. When I snatched her up and gave her a fatherly exhortation, she was genuinely surprised. Her beautiful big eyes brimmed with tears and she said, “But Daddy, I was just painting a pretty picture.” I knew then and there that she was going to need some help channeling her creativity. It was certainly one of those moments (and I had many of them) when I realized that telling her to stop wasn’t a satisfactory answer to creativity’s impulse—an impulse God gave to her. What’s more, she’s always been very observant, and she’s always asked questions of me that required some thought. Since I was growing into the writer’s life right in front of her, she watched me and asked me questions. And now, twenty plus years later, those conversations have been published so she can access them anytime and, Lord willing, give them to her kids someday when I’m not around to talk about these things in person. That’s the hope anyway. LES: Letters from the Mountain is an especially beautiful edition with lovely paper, cover design (with French flaps) a delightful design layout, and fabulous font use. It is so compelling aesthetically that it makes this paperback edition more desirable than many hardcopy books ever are. As I understand it, you designed the book as well as wrote it. You also designed both versions of your journals for writers and the book Honey from the Lion’s Mouth. It is not common practice for an author to design their books as well as write them. Would you tell us about designing your books and what has drawn you to that? How does that activity influence the way you see the final product of your writing work? BP: Rabbit Room Press has always impressed me by their intentional pursuit of beauty, from content to design, so I was honored when they asked me to design the inside and outside of the book. What a rare opportunity for an author. I think many authors care about what their book looks like and feels like (as they should), but not many get to do anything about it. I started studying font design and cover design many years ago in an effort to learn how to maximize a book’s impact for a reader. It’s amazing how the little, overlooked decisions (like the amount of page margin or space between letters) change the way a reader enters the reading experience. Why did I start studying design? Probably because I wanted to submerge myself into the holistic writing life, not just put words on a page. For me, the process of writing looks like this: I start with an idea. Then I put words on a page, one at a time, to try and recreate that idea as faithfully and vividly as I can in another person’s mind. After I’ve got a good idea what the book is going to sound like and feel like to a reader, I start thinking about the cover. When I’m stalled in my writing or frustrated or tired, I start working on the cover design. It’s a refreshing break from thinking in terms of words all of the time. I probably churned through fifty different cover ideas during the process of writing this book. None of them made the final cut, but the process helped me get a sense for what I wanted to say in the book and how I wanted to say it. When it comes to my creative process, content feeds design and design feeds content creation. I can tell you that getting involved with the design of the book has given me an even greater love for the final product. Every author feels a kind of parental joy and excitement and nervousness when their book gets released into the world, but I think those feelings are augmented by my involvement in every aspect of the book, not just the content. LES: How did you become acquainted with the Rabbit Room Press and what led to choosing them to publish this new work? BP: The road to Rabbit Room Press was circuitous. I’m not sure I trust my memory at this point, but I didn’t actually send my manuscript to them directly. I sent it to a fellow writer for feedback. That author had connections to Rabbit Room Press and suggested it might be a good fit. I didn’t know much about them at the time. All I had heard about (and valued from a distance) was the Rabbit Room community and Hutchmoot (their annual conference). So that author passed it along personally to them and that’s how it started. Once they’d read the manuscript, they reached out to me. Rabbit Room doesn’t publish many books in a year and that’s one of many reasons I like them. They’re not interested in cranking out books, but instead really care about the author/publisher relationship and they want to stay invested in the authors they publish. That requires a depth of trust on their part that I really admire. It also means there needs to be a fair amount of ideological and personal alignment and, in the long run, a kind of friendship that goes beyond the printed page. I like everything about that, and I consider myself lucky to have partnered with them in making something that we hope will be a treasured gift. LES: You have invested much of your life writing with the concern to teach, not preach. Why does it matter to you to teach people to write well? BP: I have taught for over twenty years. The longer I’ve taught, the more I feel like I have to learn. One of the lessons that I learned early in my career by watching great teachers is that they don’t talk at us, they talk to us. Poor teachers have something to say, great teachers have something to give. They may give it in various ways with various degrees of intensity and vigor, but in the end, the spirit behind the teaching is always a matter of gift. I’ve tried to imitate them in my teaching and in my writing. This book is more didactic than anything else I’ve written (outside of Honey From the Lion’s Mouth), but I tried to utilize everything I’ve done before (memoir, poetry) to make it feel more conversational than a typical teaching book. It also helped that I was talking to my daughter. I suppose there have been many times that I’ve talked at her, but I’ve found it hard to talk at people with whom you have a relationship. Most people talk at each other because there’s no shared relationship. They may feel like they have a certain amount of authority, but that’s not enough to compel someone to listen. People are compelled by relationship and relationship can be developed by the way we speak to one another. This might be a digression, but it seems worth mentioning. One of the hopes I have for this book is that it would help writers jettison a platform-building mentality in favor of a gift mentality. It’s not about what you can get from your audience or from a publisher, but what you can give. That heart change will affect not only what you say, but how you say it. The tone of your writing will change because you’re not trying to shoulder your way into the public discourse. You’ll stop trying to talk over everyone else and start writing/speaking/creating differently. It’s no less authoritative. In fact, it’s a kind of strength that’s secured by something deeper than public recognition or praise. It’s the kind of authority I imagine Christ had when he walked the earth. Matthew 7:29 says, “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” I’m sure there’s much to unpack in that verse, but I think one of the differences between Christ and the scribes is that he spoke to people and they spoke at people. The difference is palpable, and the effects are lasting. But I still haven’t truly answered your question. Why does it matter to me to teach people to write well? I suppose it’s because once a teacher, always a teacher. But it’s also because my daughter needed these intimate conversations to help her along the way. Maybe others do too. We’re all somewhere on the mountain. I have more experience than some who are following me and I have much less than others. I see this book as a way to create cairns, little stacks of rocks that serve as markers to point travelers in the right direction. Everything I put in these letters was gleaned by following others who are further up the mountain than I am. Nothing in this book is original to me. LES: One of the deep refrains in Letters from the Mountain is the essential call to not simply write well but to live well. How does writing well feed a life well-lived? How does a well-lived life inform and feed writing well? Are there measures we can use to assess what makes for a well-lived life? BP: Just this evening, during dinner, my daughter and I were talking about this very topic. We shape words, but forget that the words shape us in the process. There’s a circular nourishment that happens in a writer’s life. The manor in which one lives daily life dictates the kind of words—even the tone and trajectory of those words—that one writes on the page. At the same time, the way a person writes and the content of those words shapes the way he thinks and feels. Jesus said that what comes out of us is simply the heart’s overflow (Mt. 12:34). That goes for writers and artists in particular. How we view life, how we wake up and engage life, and how we respond to daily frustrations or obstacles dictates the kind of art we produce. Likewise, what an artist creates will shape his outlook on life. There’s a clear correspondence. Sin, for example, doesn’t just impact us spiritually or relationally, it also impacts our creativity. The health of one’s body and one’s friendships and one’s marriage all have their impact on creativity. Or that relational collapse leads to poor creativity. Rather, that you should expect a correspondence between your life and your creativity. If you want to create lasting and generative work, you should try to live accordingly. LES: This statement in your chapter titled “The Writing Life” captures something essential to the call of what we do in Cultivating and The Cultivating Project. “Christians waste a lot of energy trying to impact culture rather than investing in people who create culture. Such labor requires that generative writers be patient in their perspective, intentional in their work, and charged with a transcendent vision.” There is a counter-intuitive work asked for in investing in individuals rather than trying to impact an entire culture. It is costly work to labour deeply over a few people rather than superficially over many. How do you, Ben, anchor yourself to do this costly work of investing in a few when the world at large so persistently says success is measured by numbers and head count rather than marks of transformation? BP: Okay, I’m no Latin scholar so don’t take my word for it, but I believe that the Latin word cultūra ( from which we get the word, culture), comes from cultus, which, according to the inter web, is the perfect passive participle of colō (“I till, cultivate”). That’s just a sesquipedalian (I just discovered this word and loved it so much that I had to drop it into this interview. Isn’t it gnarly?) way of saying that I think the garden is a helpful metaphor by which to live when it comes to culture care. Good gardeners tend to the ground right in front of them, and they beautify it by their patient labor. So when it comes to cultural cultivation, I till the metaphorical ground in front of me. Or at least I try. That mentality keeps me from thinking about the entire garden called the world and it prevents me from thinking that gardening is about my publicity. My job isn’t to parade myself or my work, it’s to cultivate the world (especially the people) around me in hopes that God would use me to beautify whatever and whomever I impact. That seems to me to be an ambitious enough project without complicating it with a drive for success or fame. LES: In your writing career, you pay concerted attention to the issues of remembering and how we frame the narratives of our pasts. This is reflected not only in A Small Cup of Light, but in Honey from the Lion’s Mouth, and your volumes of poetry. One of the remarks that lingers with me in Andrew Peterson’s new book, The God of the Garden, was made by his counselor who said, “I’ve never met anyone who could correctly interpret their own childhood.” Why is accurate remembering so significant to you and why do you share that publicly? BP: I think there’s a difference between remembering our past and interpreting it. Throughout scripture God calls his people to remember. The act of remembering is a matter of faith. When Moses was preparing the people to live in the promised land, he often used the phrase, “Do not forget.” In Deuteronomy 4:9, he says, “be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Someone once told me that best practices for faithful living require driving forward while watching the rearview mirror. God’s faithfulness in the past enables us to trust him for the unknowns ahead of us. His reliability is reinforced when we remember and there’s no other way, certainly no short cut, to building faith. One of the hopes I have for this book is that it would help writers jettison a platform-building mentality in favor of a gift mentality. It’s not about what you can get from your audience or from a publisher, but what you can give. That heart change will affect not only what you say, but how you say it. The tone of your writing will change because you’re not trying to shoulder your way into the public discourse. Ben Palpant And for clarity’s sake, let me just say that God calls us to remember the hardships and not just the miracle moments in life. I wrote A Small Cup of Light largely for myself, to help me remember the story of my health collapse and the lessons I learned along the way. As the years progressed, those things were fading from my heart. Those were some of the most difficult times of my life, a kind of crucible that I don’t want to relive, but that I should still remember. At the most basic level, the old maxim is true: those who forget history are bound to repeat it. That being said, I’m well aware that memory is a complex issue. Andrew Peterson’s book is a wonderful example of how to remember well; meaning, how to remember the past without thinking that your perspective is infallible. If your readers haven’t read The God of the Garden, I highly recommend it. Somehow, God knows how to redeem our fallible memories and our broken pasts in a way that is beautiful. Maybe not yet, but certainly someday. In the meantime, we try to remember the past as faithfully and as accurately as possible without revising it, twisting it, abolishing it, or ignoring it. Memory always has a filter. We see through that filter and we should take care that the filter is clear. The only trustworthy filter is God’s word. Faithful and accurate remembering, then, depends upon seeing the way God sees. I think that’s one reason why God gave us the Bible—so we could learn to see. The interpretation of what we’ve seen will be skewed in proportion to our distance from God and our ignorance of his word. And we won’t see the whole picture until the other side. Indeed, we see through a smudged window right now, but someday, we will see clearly. “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I’m no scholar and I don’t pretend to have this whole memory thing figured out, but that’s my stab at it so far. All I know is that God tells me to remember and to tell the stories of his faithfulness. That’s why we have a Joshua Basket in the middle of our table. When the Israelites crossed the Jordan river, God told the priests to gather 12 big rocks from the river and build an altar so that when their children saw the stack of rocks and asked, “Dad, what are these rocks for?” they could tell their kids the story of what God had done. Our Joshua Basket has some, not all, of the key events in our life. Each rock has a date and a short description. The birth of a child. The death of a loved one. The accidents and the miracles. These rocks helps us commemorate the sad and the joyous markers in our story. Notice that I didn’t call them “bad” and “good.” That’s an interpretation only God can assign, I think. Some events that I would have called bad have been important moments in what turned out to be really good. Interpreting what God was actually doing in and through the event is difficult to do accurately. But we can certainly remember what we saw and try to see with biblical eyes, not simply our own. LES: Ben, you hold something unusual in common with two of my favorite writers, S. D. Smith, and Malcolm Guite. You each had childhoods spent in Africa. S. D. Smith spent formative years in South Africa as a boy, and Malcolm Guite was born in Nigeria and lived there till he was 10. How did your years in Kenya shape the way you see the world and does that inform the way you write now? BP: Wow, that’s a question much too big to tackle adequately in a few short paragraphs. I’m sure they would agree with me that those formative years are so deeply important that it’s difficult to explain. I tend to get tongue-tied when someone says, “So you grew up in Africa, what was that like?” Your question is better than that, but I still feel tongue-tied. The three of us are what sociologists call Third Culture Kids. We tend to make ourselves at home rather quickly wherever we are, but we never feel settled inside unless our circumstances rhyme in some way with our childhood. I didn’t have any idea at the time that wandering clay footpaths through quiet countryside would shape me in significant ways. At the time, I just thought I was living a boring life in a forgotten part of the world. It wasn’t very romantic. Nevertheless, I think my childhood shaped me in three distinct ways: it wired me to live at a certain speed, to see people a certain way, and to value certain things more than others. Here’s the short explanation to each of those. Speed of life: My childhood was a slow experience. There wasn’t much rush because there wasn’t much to do and there wasn’t anywhere to go that you couldn’t reach on your own two feet. We had our fun, don’t get me wrong, and we ran as much or more as any kid does these days. But we weren’t driving at 60mph from one one event to another, shoving food down as fuel before rushing off to another activity. Cooking our meals took time. We had no microwave. We had a little Ford Escort, so our transportation was limited. We lived on a shared generator, so late night activities were also limited. Those shaped me. I think they have shaped the rhythms and the depth of my writing. Now don’t get me wrong. I like my microwave and my Toyota Highlander and my electricity. I’m writing this right now on a computer that’s a technological miracle I would never have dreamed of back when I was a kid and I’m not that old, no matter what my kids say. I’m also writing this late at night beneath a lamp that can run until dawn if I so wish. But I don’t wish. I’ll go to bed shortly. Nevertheless, these things have a shaping affect on my children that they do not understand because it’s “normal” to them. People: The small community in which I grew up valued people, especially (so it seemed to me at the time) the elderly. One of the biggest culture shocks for me upon returning to the United States was the way we treat old people, even parents. But people in general mattered very much. Front doors were always open so that anyone could enter at any time and one never knows when one will entertain an angel (Hebrews 13:2). They gave themselves a fighting chance to entertain at least one angel in life by entertaining whoever passed through. Around my neck of the woods, we tend to only entertain ourselves. Is that too strong? Probably. At any rate, having people over is a rare occasion (and I’m as guilty as anyone). So the way we speak to or at each other is formed largely by our social media and not formed by intimate conversation over food. I think that difference has impacted the tone of my writing. Valuing certain things: An affluent culture like ours will inevitably invariably overvalue certain things that are cheap and undervalue other things that are priceless. It will also increase our appetites. No longer is a Tonka truck satisfactory on a kid’s birthday. Now, the floodgates of the local toy emporium must be opened wide for a child’s appetite to be assuaged. I have found that my appetite has grown to excess just as my children’s have. Still, there’s a part of me that values simplicity and quiet and stillness (nourished in me by my childhood in Africa) and those probably make their way into my writing in ways that are hard to identify. LES: In the way that you live, teach, and write, you model something essential to living a whole life and writing with significance—the importance of the company we keep. How do you personally cultivate the relationships that nourish your life and give it meaning? Do you ever need to discern where to draw lines in relationships that are not life-giving? BP: I’d like to deflect this question—a really difficult and profound one like these others you have given—with some cupcake questions that I’ve been waiting for without any sign of reprieve. Questions like these: BP: What’s your favorite color? Blue, thanks for asking. I know, not very original. BP: Do you believe in vegetables? No. BP: What’s your favorite hobby? Fly-fishing. I can’t wait to fly-fish in eternity. I’ll be able to actually catch something. BP: How many dogs do you have? 2 Okay, I think I can get back to your deep questions now. I’ve given about half of my life to a small classical Christian school and nearly twenty years to one small church which has allowed me the rare opportunity of planting deep relational roots. I made the decision many years ago to try and stay put for as long as I can for the sake of myself and my family. I’ve experienced my fair share of relational hardships (whether the cause or not), but the process of sinning against each other and deliberately pursuing repentance and forgiveness is the glue of healthy life in community. That’s certainly true of marriage, right? Even in these close communities, I gravitate toward some people more than others. I suppose that’s natural. But I try to cultivate relationships with people who make me better as a human being and most of the people around me do that. Regarding your last question about discerning where to draw lines in relationships, I always found it difficult to notice when some people impacted my life negatively. Other, more godly people had to come alongside and point it out to me. As I got older, I started to notice the traits that godly people held in common and then I tried to hang out with them so I didn’t get swept into the other relationships, even though they might be more attractive. What were some of those traits? They pray more than me. They love reading the Bible more than me. They’re more thankful than me. They serve without complaint, unlike me. They do their duty, unlike me. They’re also more generally down to earth than me. LES: On Jonathan Rogers’ podcast for The Habit you mention the desolation of longing that music can evoke in us. I have certainly experienced that with music, but also in passages of literature, in photography and films, and in the garden. It is an unexpected stirring of a memory of the Home for which I am made but am yet in exile from. I know many who have pursued that longing in destructive ways, but is there a faithful way for us to cultivate that “longing for the other side” and have it serve as a kind of compass pointing the way Home? Is there also a way to strike a counterbalance to that longing by being able to accept with contentment what is good right in our present midst? BP: It doesn’t take much for me to feel that way! The way the clouds hung low and rolled in over the hills today made me stop in my tracks. Lines of poetry. The unadulterated happiness and love in my kids greeting me. But yes, I feel torn by the longing and it usually keeps me from doing my duty. The answer to this question probably goes back to the previous answer I gave to your last question. Godly people help me lots. They have the same longings, but they keep working faithfully without complaint. Duty isn’t a four letter word to them. They are my counterbalance. I think it also helps to find activities that are fulfilling and help you feel like you did something beautiful, that something you’re doing became a kind of bridge between the now and the not yet. Writing does that for me. Gardening. Drawing or painting. Reading Steinbeck or Li-Young Lee or William Saroyan. But you still have to do the dishes. If you let transcendence have its sway, you’ll end up being unfaithful in what God has put right in front of you. That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad policy to get your work done so you have margin to enjoy the transcendent. LES: One of the most prevalent elements to your writing, and something evident on every page of Letters from the Mountain, is the presence of love. You use a voice that is personal, familiar, and feels as if you are leaning forward to get a little closer while you write. You demonstrate something that Jonathan Rogers talks about in his two part blog titled “Love Thy Reader.” Transformative writing is rooted in love. This same idea is the premise of the splendid book, Charitable Writing, by Richard Gibson and James Beitler III. When we write from the position of loving the reader, how we phrase things and how we organize them shifts. We are less concerned with being impressive than with our message serving our reader and being clear. But writing as a craft is done largely in solitude. When we are writing we are not generally in the company of others. How do you cultivate a practice of loving your reader when the work is done somewhat in a vacuum, and when you can’t see the faces of the people to whom you are writing? BP: Well, you’re very kind to say that. That tone is thanks, in part, to my editors who know what I desire and can help me achieve that tone. I love that picture of leaning forward to get a little closer while I write. That captures the honesty and intimacy and vulnerability that I’m trying to achieve in my writing. I’ve learned to do that over time by purposefully selecting two or three people for whom I’m writing the book. They don’t know it (except in this case, obviously), but having them right before me while I write a poem or a story helps me tailor my words for them. C.S. Lewis achieved a rare kind of simplicity and beauty and intimacy by writing for his nephews and nieces. Lewis Carol did the same. I think it’s a great practice and it keeps us from trying to reach a certain demographic. Writing for an age group has always been a trap for me. I start writing for the wrong reasons and then the quality of work falls off dramatically. Choose a couple of people. Write for them and you’ll find that your work is not only better, but it will minister to more hearts than just the two or three people to whom you wrote. LES: Letters from the Mountain reads like a long benediction for the writing life and the craft of living well. In fact, you close each chapter with a benediction. Why did you choose to close the chapters that way? Would you close us out here as fellow craftsmen and writers with a benediction for us as we go forward to tend to our living? BP: A benediction is simply a gifting of a blessing. I used to give a benediction to my daughter when I put her to bed. Sometimes I still do it when she’s home for a visit. It seemed fitting that I would continue that relational habit in my written letters to her and I can’t think of a better, richer, more helpful benediction than that same one for you all, my fellow craftsmen and writers. It comes from Numbers 6:24-26 and stands tall among the many benedictions throughout scripture. I’d like to break it up in a different way in hopes that it might impact us in a new and refreshing way. This is my gift to you: The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” This interview originally appeared on The Cultivating Project. Check out their website, if you haven’t already! Click here to view Letters from the Mountain by Ben Palpant in the Rabbit Room Store.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Daniel Grothe, pastor, rancher, and author of The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age. In this episode, Daniel and Jonathan discuss embracing obligation, the value of thinking small, and the possibility that God is a materialist. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 49 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine, at sarahkatherine@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Jonny Jimison is back with a special, River Fox-themed edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to pick up a copy of his latest, full-color graphic novel, The River Fox. And click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

At the end of Jonathan Roger’s podcast, The Habit, he always asks his guests, “What writers make you want to write?” I love listening to people’s answers—to find out who has encouraged them or given them a vision for writing. I always smile when people say either C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien… because, me, too! The question could also be asked as “What artists make you want to create art?” or “What singers make you want to sing your own songs?” I believe that at the root of these queries is the question, “Who moves you to find more in yourself to be creative, using your own gifts and voice and vision for others? Who helps you live out being made in the image of a creative God?” And perhaps even deeper, “Who do you encourage to help live out their creativity in the image of God?” My husband Ned and I have talked often about this idea, many times leading us to discuss who encourages us to live creative, generative lives in our community. The Merriam-Webster definition of generative is having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, or reproducing. What a utilitarian definition of such a poetic idea! Painter Makoto Fujimura puts it a bit differently when he writes, “When we are generative, we draw on creativity to bring into being something fresh and life-giving.” For Ned and me, the idea of being generative solidified in our minds when we were with Fujimura at The Philadelphia Museum of Art looking at the show Cezanne and Beyond, a major Paul Cézanne exhibit. Mako has a wealth of understanding about the language of art, and he helps others see contemporary artwork more clearly. He mentioned that Cézanne was a “generative” artist. And as we continued to walk around the museum, we talked about Cézanne as someone who opened up beauty to us, inspiring us to create or appreciate the world. In contrast, Pablo Picasso (although brilliant) tends to shut the door to almost any conversation. Mako explained that Picasso takes a visual idea to its utter end while Cézanne would give you ideas and suggestions of paths you could follow after he was gone. Since that conversation I have kept my eyes open for writers and art-makers that free my heart and mind to keep creating and to find more of myself in the creative process, in hopes of encouraging others. For example, writers like Madeline L’Engle, Luci Shaw, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Seamus Heaney offer something to me that keep me paying attention to the world and my reactions to it. In his essay “On Becoming Generative: An Introduction to Culture Care” Mako posits that being generative includes genesis moments, generosity, and generational thinking. Genesis moments are an artist’s own moments of beginning, through inspiration, work, and even failure. An artist’s genesis moments can then offer genesis moments to others, sparking a movement in creativity they had not experienced. Generosity comes from an open heart and open hands to others. It’s offering something out of an overflow; it is not holding back out of fear or scarcity. And generational thinking is about dialoguing with past artists to create something with which future generations can dialogue and from which they can create. Mako writes: Generative thinking is fueled by generosity because it so often must work against a mindset that has survival and utility in the foreground. In a culture like that, generosity has an unexpectedness that can set the context for the renewal of our hearts. An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction—because it is a gift. —Makoto Fujimura I have seen this idea worked out in the Rabbit Room community. Andrew Peterson wrote, “One of the central tenets of the Rabbit Room is that art nourishes community, and community nourishes art. If you want to write good books, good songs, good poems, you need some talent, yes. You also need to work hard, practice a lot, cultivate self-discipline, and study the greats. But you also need good friends. You need fellowship. You need community.” There are myriad of examples of how generative the Rabbit Room’s vision has been and how it has influenced many, many people. Genesis moments have happened in community and collaboration through activities like Pass the Piece and also through mentor relationships. Artist Stephen Crotts shares about his experience with this: “Through the Rabbit Room, I’ve had the opportunity to form relationships with artists I admire. They have become mentors to me, but have also allowed me to encourage them in their vocations. Now, I even get to exchange critiques with some of my heroes.” Relationships like this have become seeds for more creative genesis moments. Rabbit Room folks have been generous in their sharing of words, music, and art making. Eddy Efaw bears witness to how this abundance of ideas has been generative for him: “For me, the deep impact of the Rabbit Room began with the first Hutchmoot I attended in 2011 when I was introduced to the idea of thinking about my artistic life and my spiritual life as being integrated and not compartmentalized. This seed has steadily grown over the years, and now my art would feel extremely empty to me if it wasn’t informed by kingdom thinking in some way.” Our hope is that this conference will plant seeds of generativity in the imaginations of those who attend. Leslie Bustard Within this group there is much love for writers from the past—George McDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien—as well as contemporary writers, musicians, and art makers. The fruit of this love has helped root the Rabbit Room community in the present, with eyes towards the hope of future flourishing for others. Singer and songwriter Hope Kemp explains it well, “These [writers] are the stalwarts they are, not just because of their writing, but because of their thinking. Their writing flows out of their ideas—and though we love the stories, it is their imagination that inspires and ignites our own. There is no other way to be creative for future generations than to do the good work of holding up the treasures made in former times.” The work of the Rabbit Room is overflowing, and the people involved have been living examples to me of what Mako has said: “We can be comfortable, even confident, in affirming a cultural contribution as generative if, over time, it recognizes, produces, or catalyzes more beauty, goodness, and flourishing.” Like many writers, musicians, and poets in the Rabbit Room, the Inklings—that group of writers connected to Lewis and Tolkien who met to share and discuss each other’s works—have been an inspiration for Ned and me in generativity. From naming our homeschool St. Clive’s Academy, Ned’s graphic design business World’s End Images, and a backyard play tower Minas Gûl, to artwork and storytelling rooted in the tradition of Lewis and Tolkien, our little home in the world (“BookEnd”) is warmed by the reflected light of the Inklings. Several years ago, after having read Diana Glyer’s Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings and having enjoyed my first Hutchmoot conference in Nashville, I started imagining what a Square Halo Books conference modeled after the spirit of Hutchmoot might look like, focusing on the creativity, collaboration, and community of the Inklings. The vision of Square Halo Books, for almost twenty-five years, has been to publish “extraordinary books for ordinary saints,” and to give writers who may not have the prerequisite platforms a place to offer their words and work. We have sought to be generative in how we care for this company, for those who write for us, and for those who read our books. Hosting a conference is a natural outworking of what we deeply care about. On February 11th and 12th, 2022, Square Halo Books is hosting our third conference in Lancaster, PA. It is called The Inklings: Creativity, Collaboration, and Community. We are offering thoughtful talks about the writers and ideas of the Inklings, as well as offering activities that will involve our attendees in creativity and collaboration in community. One Ring to Rule Them by Hannah C. Weston— beautiful artwork for the Arts Invitational, held in the Square Halo Gallery, as part of the Inklings Conference. You are invited to add your creativity to this event, too. Our main speaker is Donald T. Williams, Square Halo author of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis. Other speakers include authors Douglas McKelvey, Andrew Peterson, Christie Purifoy, Shawn Smucker, poet Christine Perrin, and illustrator John Hendrix. Friday night attendees will enjoy a talk with Matthew Dickerson, a pub night with locally-made beverages and snacks, and book release party for a new Square Halo book Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children (curated and edited by Théa Rosenburg, Carey Bustard, and me). Saturday will be full with good talks and breakout sessions, as well as a staged reading of Leaf by Niggle by two local actors, a pop-up printing workshop with Ned, a gallery full of artwork inspired by the Inklings, and tea with readings from the Inklings. And of course there has to be food—breakfast and lunch will be offered, as well as coffee and snacks. The final goodness crowning this event will be a concert given by Andrew Peterson in the Great Hall. Our own work of putting this event together has included collaboration with other local organizations, such as The Trust Performing Arts Center, Square Halo Gallery, The Row House, Reverie Actors Company, St. Boniface Craft Beer, Hammond Pretzels, and Wanderlust Coffee. Jack and Tollers by Stephen Crotts—deep conversation, drinks, and books. Come join us as we follow in the good footsteps of Lewis and Tolkien. The generative work of the Rabbit Room has been the impetus of relationships that span across the country, and some Hutchmoot friends will be helping us with this event—which makes putting this together a greater joy. Also, the Rabbit Room, as well as the Trinity Forum, The Cultivating Project, Black Barn Collective, Anselm Society and Classical Academic Press are our sponsors. It’s good to work with kindred spirits. Our hope is that this conference will plant seeds of generativity in the imaginations of those who attend; that this weekend together will be a time to encounter generosity of spirit, experience genesis moments, and enjoy the fruit of generational thinking. And, having feasted on this richness, we hope to see people take all of these ideas and experiences back across the country to the people God has given them and in the places he has planted them. When you register, you can choose which Square Halo Book you would like to receive in your welcome bag—either C. S. Lewis and the Arts or J. R. R. Tolkien and the Arts. Consider joining us this February 11th and 12th, 2022 in Lancaster, PA for The Inklings: Creativity, Collaboration, and Community conference. Click here to register for the conference. Click here to learn more about Square Halo Books and here to find Square Halo Books on Facebook. Click here to learn more about the Inkling Arts Invitational. Learn more about the sponsors for this conference at the links below: The Cultivating Project The Black Barn Collective The Trinity Forum The Anselm Society Classical Academic Press

For 2021’s Advent season, we’re sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. This week’s Advent collection includes a poem & short essay by Malcolm Guite called “O Sapientia” from his Advent book Waiting on the Word; an ink painting by Kyra Hinton called “Resonance”; and a nativity song from the perspective of Joseph called “Son of David” by Graham Jones, taken from his new Advent album Good News, Great Joy. “O Sapientia” by Malcolm Guite O Sapientia O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence. “O Sapientia” by Malcolm Guite I cannot think unless I have been thought, Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken. I cannot teach except as I am taught, Or break the bread except as I am broken. O Mind behind the mind through which I seek, O Light within the light by which I see, O Word beneath the words with which I speak, O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me, O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me, O Memory of time, reminding me, My Ground of Being, always grounding me, My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me, Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring, Come to me now, disguised as everything. This is the first sonnet in a sequence of seven I have written in response to the seven Advent prayers known as the ‘O Antiphons.’ In its first centuries the Church developed a custom of praying seven great prayers, calling afresh on Christ to come, addressing him by the mysterious titles found in the Old Testament, particularly in Isaiah: ‘O Wisdom!’ ‘O Root!’ ‘O Key!’ ‘O Light!’ ‘O Emmanuel!’ These prayers were said ‘antiphonally,’ as the name suggests, either side of the Magnificat at Vespers from 17 to 23 December (although in some places they begin a day earlier, on 16 December). Each antiphon begins with the invocation ‘O’ and then calls on Christ, although never by name. The mysterious titles and emblems given him from the pages of the Old Testament touch on our deepest needs and intuitions; then each antiphon prays the great Advent verb, Veni, ‘Come!’ The whole purpose of Advent is to be for a moment fully and consciously Before Christ. In that place of darkness and waiting, we look for his coming and do not presume too much that we already know or have it. Malcolm Guite There is, I think, both wisdom and humility in this strange abstention from the name of Christ in a Christian prayer. Of course, these prayers were composed AD, perhaps around the seventh century, but in another sense, Advent itself is always BC! The whole purpose of Advent is to be for a moment fully and consciously Before Christ. In that place of darkness and waiting, we look for his coming and do not presume too much that we already know or have it. Whoever compiled these prayers was able, imaginatively, to write ‘BC,’ perhaps saying to themselves: ‘If I hadn’t heard of Christ, and didn’t know the name of Jesus, I would still long for a saviour. I would still need someone to come. Who would I need? I would need a gift of Wisdom, I would need a Light, a King, a Root, a Key, a Flame.’ And poring over the pages of the Old Testament, they would find all these things promised in the coming of Christ. By calling on Christ using each of these seven several gifts and prophecies we learn afresh the meaning of a perhaps too familiar name. It might be a good Advent exercise, and paradoxically an aid to sharing the faith, if for a season we didn’t rush in our conversation to refer to the known name, the predigested knowledge, the formulae of our faith, but waited alongside our non-Christian neighbours, who are, of course, living ‘BC.’ We should perhaps count ourselves among the people who walk in darkness but look for a marvellous light. In making these seven sonnets in response to the antiphons, I have tried to do that, looking at both my own deepest needs and our common needs, to inhabit some of the darkness that waits for a light. The first antiphon is ‘O Sapientia,’ ‘O Wisdom.’ It draws on two passages from the Apocrypha praising wisdom. And it is clear from these passages that the wisdom described in this antiphon is not the private capacity of an individually wise person or the accumulated prudence of a human ‘wisdom tradition;’ it is a primal, almost pre-existent, quality of order and beauty out of which all things spring. Though they speak of wisdom in the feminine, a divine being delighting before God and with him ordering the cosmos, it is clear that for the writer of this antiphon, Sapientia is part of what John means by the Logos, ‘the Word [who] was with God’ (John 1:1), the coming Christ. In Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 (AV), we read: ‘Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things.’ And then in Ecclesiasticus, the beautiful extended passage: Wisdom shall praise herself, and shall glory in the midst of her people. In the congregation of the most High shall she open her mouth, and triumph before his power. I came out of the mouth of the most High, and covered the earth as a cloud. I dwelt in high places, and my throne is in a cloudy pillar. I alone compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep. In the waves of the sea and in all the earth, and in every people and nation, I got a possession. With all these I sought rest: and in whose inheritance shall I abide? So the Creator of all things gave me a commandment, and he that made me caused my tabernacle to rest, and said, Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thine inheritance in Israel. He created me from the beginning before the world, and I shall never fail. —Ecclesiasticus 24:1-9, AV It is this Wisdom we address, and for whose advent we pray when we look for the coming of Christ. Wisdom is both hidden and gloriously apparent. Malcolm Guite In my sonnet I wanted to convey this sense of the underlying and underpinning order of things, the ‘Mind behind the mind through which I seek … Light within the light by which I see.’ Writing the poem led me in the end to a strange paradox. The psalmist is taunted by the question, ‘Where is now your God?’ And it’s a question that some more militant ‘scientific’ atheists of our own day still use to taunt Christians. And in one sense we cannot directly point to God because Sapientia, this underlying coherence and beauty, is not to be found anywhere as an item in the cosmos; it is not a single being, but the ground of being itself—not a single beauty but the source of all beauty. And yet, for the very same reason, there is a real sense in which we can point to everything, ‘from one end to the other’ of the cosmos, and say, ‘There, can’t you see?’ For wisdom is both hidden and gloriously apparent. Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring, Come to me now, disguised as everything. Click here to view Waiting on the Word in the Rabbit Room Store. “Resonance” by Kyra Hinton “This piece is another ‘double exposure’ where layers of my ink paintings mix with each other to create something new. ‘Resonance’ captures the feeling of the warm light from an open door cast across a stone street, of campfire sparks rising to mingle with cold stars, of solo wafting notes finding consonance with unfamiliar melodies. Longing meets connection. Just a bit further up. Just a little further in.” —Kyra Hinton Click here to visit Kyra’s website. “Son of David” by Graham Jones O God, what do I do with this horrible news? What do I do with a girl who is due To give birth months before we are to wed? Why me? For so long I waited for someone who is right Who tries to live blameless in your sight But now it seems that hopeful dream has died Still I don’t want to bring her further shame I need to end this and send her away But I don’t know if it’s the right thing Is everything that’s happening really happening for a reason? Where are you in this brokenness? Will you help this son of David? This son of David “Joseph, son of David, Do not fear to wed young Mary For that which is conceived in her Is from the Holy Spirit” O what a mystery you have revealed Apparent failure turned to God’s own will The ancient prophets’ words are now fulfilled For everything that’s happening is happening for a reason “Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear Emmanuel” For everything that’s happening is happening for a reason You’re working in our brokenness to send your promised Savior The Son of David, Son of David Click here to listen to Good News, Great Joy on Spotify and here to listen on Apple Music. Click here to visit Graham Jones’s website, here to follow him on Facebook, and here to follow him on Instagram.

We first shared this liturgy in March 2020, in the wake of a devastating tornado in Nashville. Nearly one year later, we shared it for our friends in Texas after their widespread blackout. And now, we share it for all who are reeling from their own devastation after this weekend’s tornadoes, especially in southern Kentucky. We’re saddened that this liturgy continues to prove so relevant, but once again, we hope and pray that it may lend words to a situation that defies description. Leader: O Christ in Whom Our Lives are Hidden, People: fix now our hope in that which alone might sustain it. O Christ in Whom Our Treasures are Secure, fix now our hope in you. In light of all that was so suddenly lost, O Lord, in light of all we had gathered but could not keep, comfort us. Our nerves are frayed, O God. Our sense of place and permanence is shaken, so be to us a foundation. We were shaped by this place, and by the living of our lives in it, by conversations and labors and studies, by meals prepared and shared, by love incarnated in a thousand small actions that became as permanent a part of this structure as any nail or wire or plank of wood. Our home was to us like a handprint of heaven. It was our haven, and now we are displaced, and faced with the task of great labors—not to move forward in this life, but merely to rebuild and restore what has been lost. Have mercy, Lord Christ. What we have lost here, are the artifacts of our journey in this world, the very things that reminded us of your grace expressed in love and friendship, and in shared experience. Let our rebuilding be a declaration that a day will come when all good things are permanent, when disaster and decay will have no place, when dwellings will stand forever, and when no more lives will be disrupted by death, tragedy, reversal, or loss. So by that eternal vision, shape our vision for what this temporary home might become in its repair, O Lord, that in that process of planning and rebuilding we might also streamline our lives for stewardship, for service, and for hospitality in the years ahead. But those are all tasks for tomorrow. We do not even know yet today the full measure of what we have lost. Today is for mourning. So let us grieve together as those who know the world is broken, but who yet hold hope of its restoration. A moment of silence is observed. Then any who wish to speak aloud their specific expressions of grief may do so. The leader then continues with these words read by all: Comfort us, O Lord, in the wake of what has overtaken us. Shield us, O Lord, from the hurts we cannot bear. Shelter us, O Lord, in the fortress of your love. Shepherd us, O Lord, as we wake each new morning, faced with the burdens of a hard pilgrimage we would not have chosen. But as this is now our path, let us walk it in faith, and let us walk it bravely, knowing that you go always before us. Amen. —from Every Moment Holy by Doug McKelvey Please join us in praying for all those in Kentucky who suffered loss of any kind. You can download a PDF of this liturgy here.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Shawn Smucker, who has published five novels in the last five years—most recently, The Weight of Memory. Shawn has also co-written some thirty books. He and his wife Maile Silva coach, teach, and encourage other writers in a creative community they call The Stories Between Us. They host a podcast of the same name. In this episode, Shawn and Jonathan discuss revision, point of view, and when it’s okay for writers to stop pushing and take a break. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 50 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine, at sarahkatherine@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Dear Dare I Asketh Thee, Doug? I have been way waaaay waaaaaaaaay into your column for more than a year now, poring over it for a strictly regimented 16 hours per day in order to puzzle out the clandestine clues and hidden codes you have so expertly embedded in your obscure phrasings. I regularly post such findings on a social media account that now has 17 million inexplicably credulous followers ready to act upon your veiled suggestions. I am writing today to ask for confirmation of—and further clarification regarding—some of my prevailing theories about your (now our) covert agendas. Reading between the lines, I have deduced that you have gained access to data that proves gravity is optional and on July 17 will demonstrate this by aggressively reversing all gravity worldwide, and thereby jettisoning forever from the earth all of the “untethered flotsam” who refuse to unbelieve in gravity, and who will therefore remain “unbuckled” on that great day of reckoning. Secondly, it is my understanding that you wish your followers to wear vole-trimmed, purple capes (representing something I’m not yet certain of, but that I nonetheless recognize as of utmost significance to our cause), and thirdly that you wish us to militantly push an agenda denouncing “Space Ice!” Finally, I am pleased to report that I have cleverly detected multiple words of exactly three syllables in your columns—words such as premium, government, and knee-shine (if you count the hyphen as a silent second syllable, which I’m pretty sure is what you wanted). I assume these 3-syllable words are intended to direct our attention to the number three, and thereby to the 1975 Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway movie “Three Days of the Condor,” which is in turn a subtle reference directing us to call into question all recent CIA activities and/or to maintain a vigilant suspicion of condors. Could you kindly confirm these theories (in further code, if necessary)? I would hate for our burgeoning conspiracy movement to go off the rails due to the admittedly slim possibility that we might have connected “a few of the wrong dots” as it were. Conspiratorially (but not the crazy kind!), —Desperately Decoding in Decatur _______________ Dear Decoderer, Why have we failed to toboggan? What shape skirts scare horses? Who controls two-digit trade protocols while the rest of us are sleeping? Why is the media strangely silent about sea urchins? What is the worth of a fife when all the bugles have been impounded? When did the muskrat enunciate? Was it always so lonely? What is the original name for space ice? What is the extra crispy name? How long before being five must one be four? Why must one be four? How in the world could you possibly believe that “one” must be “four”? Who is president of the oceans?1 Now please, please, please stop interrupting me, dear readers, that I might move on to my “stated purpose.” Namely, to complete this overly-protracted tale of the great Paul Harvey and of his ill-fated Abe Lincoln radio broadcast, and [SPOILER ALERT] his subsequent downfall as the nation’s most popular radio personality. Now for the love of small, Spanish goats2, let us please get on with Who Was This Paul Harvey & Why Should You Care About Part 3 of Who Was This Paul Harvey and Why Should You Care? Now, Dear Readers, where did we most recently leave off in our compelling narrative? Ah yes, right smack-dab in the middle of Paul Harvey’s ill-fated “The Rest of the Story” episode transcript. We were at the point (delivered in Harvey’s silky, saber-toothed3, midwestern croon) at which President Abraham Lincoln had, in a fit of protracted frustration and vexation, exercised the power of the “Executive Bellow,”4 to angrily and forcefully hail a moose-drawn cab. Eliminate All Space Ice!5 Now let us jump feet-first right back into the middle of the ORIGINAL Script for PAUL HARVEY’S September 27, 1977 “The Rest of the Story” RADIO BROADCAST Keep your knees well-polished, friends, just like the Harveys do, including the world-famous Harvey Quints, including Warvey the Elder! And now for the rest of the rest of the story… The rest of the story must be pieced together from the written records of two individuals: the cab driver Jed “Reeky” Pitt6, and a D.C. apothecary named Ebenezer “Untucked” Tuck.7 Lincoln, Pitt recounts, “brooded like a coiled reptile” in the bowels of the carriage, occasionally pounding a ham-sized fist into his palm with a threatening sluwumph! At first the nation’s chief executive barked no orders, so Reeky “shimmy-jacked a cordle of jerry-slack to the gabble-rashers,8” sending the hobbled moose along a meandering path, perhaps absentmindedly tracing through the city streets, in cursive, the name of some lost love 9. As they looped past the recently constructed Washington memorial, Lincoln is reported to have sneered and derisively muttered an ancient, incantational curse10. Fearing now for his life, Pitt turned the cab in the direction of the more populated areas of the capitol. Ebenezer Tuck, a rheumy, near-sighted apothecary headed home to his dank “reconstitution chamber” after brewing a potent filibuster potion for the Federalists, happened to see the carriage pass by. Immediately recognizing his President in stovepipe silhouette11, Tuck drew himself up and gave a smart salute. Lincoln responded by heaving his size twenty-nine battle boot12 at the startled Mr. Tuck, slicing him across the ear with the razor-sharp, spinning-tungsten heel. It was ever after a scar Ebenezer Tuck wore with pride and, albeit, some confusion.13 The moosiecab14 continued its route past D.C.’s once-famous Delbert Gilbert Still15 fountains and into the shanty towns around the seedy harbor, where the greasy air reeked of fish-oil smoke and cheap magic.16 There, Lincoln commanded the driver to stop, “jindle-pop down-wagon hoop abreavement,”17 and follow him into an alley, claiming that “executive orders must always be followed on penalty of death.” The frightened Mr. Pitt nervously obeyed, even while maintaining as much distance as he dared. Whether he would survive to see another dawn was far from certain. As they ambled down the alley, the gawky mister Lincoln undertook a series of “bizarre and spectral stretches,” as if he were “the ghost of an athletic competitor” warming up for some “forgotten sporting event designed especially for tall, gangly men at twilight.” “You,” the president said, abruptly turning and pressing a bony finger into the sternum of the hapless driver, “will be my second. You are to take my place as president if something goes wrong. And your valiant moose back there shall be my third.18 Now clasp my sacred beard in your red right hand and solemnly swear it shall be so!” “B-But I don’t know how to be president!” Pitt stuttered. “Oh yeah, like I really do either!” Lincoln replied sarcastically, shoving Pitt backwards, and turning on his heel.19 The commander-in-chief trotted down the alley singing an old West Point fighting song20, while Pitt scratched his head uncertainly21. It was then that Lincoln’s intentions became obvious. At the far end of the alley three wandering philosophers22 lay in crumpled heaps, sleeping off their latest “insights.”23  Lincoln approached and began kicking roughly at their boots to rouse them. “Mr. Davis,” he shouted. “Mr. Lee, and Mr. Booth! On your feet! Let’s settle this once and for all!” The driver observed in disbelief as the chief executive then heaved the disoriented men to their feet, stood them against the wall, and grappled them all at once in his long, wiry arms, ignoring their woeful cries and entreaties and also their poorly delivered incantations of warding, hastily composed from the writings of Rousseau and Aristotle. Lincoln’s relentless wrestling moves “did then flow like a ferrous, liquid lightning, furious and battering.” His pugilistic prowesses were as effortless, Pitt remembered, as those “of a great house cat,”24 and his aggression as fierce as that “of an enraged arena bull.”25 The three rattled philosophers may as well have been facing down a howling midnight train. “That’s for these United States!” Abe cried, slapping each fellow smartly upon the belly button, “And this one’s for me!” he all but roared, felling all three men with one Dormmitt’s Dread Crab Pincer™ wrestling move, his scissoring legs scattering them like a row of poorly-wrought bowling pins. The chief executive then danced around the alley a moment, waiting to see if any of the men would rise. None of them did.26 When Lincoln returned to the cab shortly thereafter, he was a calm, controlled man, no longer on the verge of an explosive hysteria. Both cab driver and moose27 were amazed at the change. “He was gentled, easygoing, pleasant,” Pitt told friends. “We made frivolous conversation all the way back to the White House as if nothing unusual had happened. When I scobby-whicked28 him at the door he slipped twenty dollars (Confederate money) in my hand and said ‘Be here next Friday night or you will regret it most forcefully I don’t know how I can make myself any clearer yes I am threatening you but perform these sacred duties and your reward shall be great I am your dread sovereign and I have spoken, mincing no words not even one.’”29 White House staff observed a stark and immediate change in the president’s demeanor. “Abe was suddenly staid, calm, resolute, like a glistened sheet of hardy dowdy girded by a brittle bottom of molasses plied most thicke,” official presidential descriptionist and White House food journalist Goodie Solyndra recorded in her daily presidential update. Gone were the angry outbursts, the fits of rage, the unwanted games of tussle-tag30. For the next three years without fail, every Friday [Down with Space Ice!!!] night Lincoln would fold his tall frame into Pitt’s imitation-mahogany31 moose-cab, and head off to frequent the back alleys of Washington, D.C., seeking out and defeating “in time-honored ceremony of grappling with little to no affection” the wandering philosophers of the city. Always to him they were “Mr. Davis, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Booth,” however, and occasionally “That Toad that Trapped Me In Marriage By Her Dark Magic.” And now you know The Rest of the Story.” END OF BROADCAST. PLEASE REMEMBER TO WIPE SPITTLE FLECKS FROM MIC AS COURTESY TO OTHER HOSTS WHO MIGHT HAVE TO USE IT AFTER YOU. AND PLEASE REMEMBER NOT TO READ ALOUD THESE PARTS IN ALL CAPS. THESE ARE JUST NOTES FOR YOU TO READ QUIETLY TO YOURSELF (WHEN THE GOAT IS NOT LOOKING). PAUL! YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN! YOU’RE READING THESE NOTES OUT LOUD ON THE AIR! STOP IT, MR. HARVEY! I MEAN IT! STOP IT NOW! THE GOAT IS PROBABLY LISTENING! STOP READING THIS ALOUD! SHEESH! EARTH TO HARVEY! HELLO-O??? COME IN HARVEY! _____________ So ended the infamous broadcast. The backlash was swift and rancorous. Listeners across America were incensed by the irreverent, unhinged portrayal of their second-most32 beloved president. “Even if it’s true, it’s still a lie!” unruly protesters shouted outside the studios of Harvey’s flagship station WKRP in Toledo33. They chanted furious slogans like “You can’t tell us things we don’t want to know!” “All Conspiracy Theories Must Be True, Otherwise How Could They Exist!” “Earth is No Place for Space Ice!” and “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Mister Harvey’s Got to Leave This Place Relatively Soon!” Within 24 hours the initially-geographically-focused protest had spread and devolved into wide-scale name-calling and furious “poppin’ & lockin’” dance-offs in the streets. Harvey’s sponsors began canceling en masse their blocks of ads34 scheduled for future “The Rest of the Story Broadcasts.” Sensing that the heart of the nation was like a rapidly-rising tide turning against him, Paul Harvey had to make some desperate counter-move, and fast, all the while never betraying the presence of the small, Spanish goat that had masterminded his vast media empire.35 Stunned by “the sudden loss of widespread affection for my merits both demonstrated and assumed,” Harvey tried to spin the situation as best he could, hoping to play up the educational value of the ill-fated broadcast. Rather than simply apologizing and enduring the traditional, humiliating penance of offering himself to be strapped “without raiment save a burlap onesie, and exposed to all weathers” for four consecutive weeks atop the dome of the Jefferson Memorial, Harvey instead panicked and ordered his staff to hastily design, assemble, and mail out “Harvey Happy-Time History Packets” to every elementary school in America. The packets included a recording of the Abe Lincoln broadcast (with the more incendiary statements either garbled or redacted), as well as a dozen other history-related “The Rest of the Story” broadcasts36. A hodge-podge assortment of hastily-printed classroom materials were included as well, with the intention that the mini-curriculum would be viewed as a great boon to public education, and would be utilized in history classes. The “Harvey Packets” also included one hundred wads of Bazooka Bubble Gum each. This was a move intended to re-endear Harvey to the schoolchildren and so to soften the now-loathed broadcast personality’s image in the minds of the younger generation. “My only hope of future idolization now lies with them,” Harvey told his staff, a lone tear reportedly streaming down his autumnal cheek. “Harvey’s Bungle,” as this desperate mail-out came to be known in radio circles, backfired when it was discovered that the gum wads were all pre-chewed—by Harvey himself!37 “But it’s still perfectly good gum!” Harvey protested, in the lone, ill-advised press conference he gave. “I never chew a stick of gum only once. It would be unpatriotic! We’ve got a war on, don’t we?38 Rationing is patriotic! Why, when I was the age of those kids, I had one piece of gum and that’s all I had. I chewed that piece of gum for eleven years. No, no, you’re all wrong. That gum I sent out to the kids was practically unchewed and let me tell ya, they should be happy to get it!” “Gumgate” marked the end of the beginning of the end for “America’s Wireless Sweetheart.” For the first time in more than five decades, Paul Harvey failed to make People Magazine’s list of “The 100 Most Popular Despite Not Also Being Really Buff & Dreamy Guys” list. The debacle of the “Harvey Packets” only served to further inflame sentiments against the public figure. His poll numbers absolutely tanked.39 Most of the packets were destroyed in public bonfires lit during city council meetings across the country.40 A lone copy of that original mail-out was preserved in the secure underground vaults of the Museum of Radio and Television in Washington, D.C., where once every five years, a random scholar is chosen by lottery and then, after great ceremony, allowed one hour’s access to the controversial documents.41 The scholar is afterwards publicly pilloried in atonement for what is now their knowing participation in the ongoing history of the scandal, and then they are afterwards “dealt with,”42 but not before being given the opportunity to recite hastily-memorized portions of the text (or portions of “the quotable goat’s quotable goat quotes™,” depending on which version of alternate reality you subscribe to). The crowd of spectators—forcibly assembled for the ceremony—whose unfortunate ears these words fall upon, are also summarily “dealt with” for their complicity-by-proximity43. Finally, or so the prophecy goes, Harvey himself, as the last undealt-with human on earth, will place himself voluntarily in the stocks and fling fruit at his own face till the old era is finally ended, and the mayoral hopefuls are at last proved right, and the sentient coffee sludge has learned to love, and the Mayors return to establish their village built of “a fine and glorious mud, in which king and commoner alike will frolic and enjoy abundance of sweet, clotted butter and sauces of vinegar and many pickled fishes perhaps not every day but no less than once per week.”44 And now you know a lot of things related to the story that you might not have known previously!™ Space Ice. Wrong for America! Wrong for Americans!™45 So that’s all I have to say about Paul Harvey. What, pray tell dear readers, will you want to talk about next? With feigned urgency, —Ask Doug! Click here to read Part 1 of “(Whatever You Do, Don’t) Ask Doug!” and here to read Part 2 of “(Whatever You Do, Don’t) Ask Doug!” #DKM #humor #PaulHarvey #RestoftheStory

“Are we really doing this?” my husband asks from the driver’s seat, damp and chilly. My resolve begins to waver, but the wail rising from the back of the van nips any change of plan in the bud. “I want to get a Christmas treeeee!!!” It may be raining out; it may be the Monday evening after Thanksgiving; the tree lots may be completely picked over. We are going to get a tree. We settle for Lowe’s, where a few of the trees—the old, the crooked, the growing brittle and dry and less sellable by the day, I suspect—are under an overhang, out of the drizzle, and won’t get the inside of our van or our house too wet. Why did I insist we do this right now? We could have waited till the next shipment of freshly-cut trees on Wednesday. We could have gone the following weekend. We could have shopped the tree lot at the local garden supply store. We could have spent an afternoon in the mountains at an actual Christmas tree farm. But tonight, the rainy Monday night after Thanksgiving, was the night. Advent had begun. Or was about to begin. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought the next morning, December first, was the day. Our church denomination celebrates Christmas, certainly, but we don’t tend to use church calendar words: “Advent,” “Lent,” “Epiphany.” I was once part of a wonderful church body that didn’t celebrate the Christian calendar holidays at all. Sermon texts on the book of Leviticus did not pause for the warmer fare of Christmas and Easter, because we remember every day of the week, every week of the year, that Christ has come. Year-round, God has done the miraculous, every day the debt has been paid, not just on one week, or in one season. There was something to that. There was some freedom, too, in escaping the emotional rigmarole of the music, the garlands, the tinsel and bows, and all the things that drive the Grinch so mad. But my world is different now, and my small children’s cries for festivity and decoration and my own need for light shed into darkness mean Christmas will come to our house. So we were going to get a tree. Right now, tonight. In three-and-a-half weeks, we would be headed north for the big family holiday, and I didn’t want to lose any time making this Advent season—making it what? What was it I intended these three weeks to be? I had been reading about Advent. In one place, I read that we decorate trees and hang lights because this is a season not just of light, a great and beautiful light, but of light in the dark. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That resonated. There is so much darkness. Dark, evil acts being done in other countries; driving people from their homes across dark, cold waters in thin, damp boats or deep into hills, in hiding. Dark, evil acts being done in our own country; in big, awful ways with guns; in small, selfish ways with fearful, mean thoughts and words; in cold, empty ways in our chilly, closed hearts, our absence of action and love toward our neighbor. There is so much hurt, out there and in here. And in this moment, at the beginning of the week after Thanksgiving, when the sky grows dim by five o’ clock, I wanted to push back at the night—or warm it up, at least, in this little space that I own, this home that I manage for our family, the four people out of all the world who live here with me. Advent is not only about what has happened; it is about what we still need to happen. Rebecca D. Martin With this intention, I have been making an Advent calendar, slowly stitching embroidery floss to felt. It will hang like a banner across our wall. We will see it when we walk in the door. It took me some time to decide what it would say. “Joy to the world?” “Glory to the newborn king?” “Jesus Christ is born today?” But no, Advent is not only about what has happened; it is about what we still need to happen. It is about waiting, about that quiet, anticipatory, mildly-uncomfortable moment before the song starts up, the lights come on, the guests arrive. Advent takes place in the dark. In the Advent season (my rendering of it, at least), we are remembering the long historical moment before the Prince of Peace got here. And we are remembering that we are still waiting for him to get here again. There may be eager expectation, but creation still groans. The dark remains very dark: the people walking and walking, without homes, without loved ones; the lives lost to strangers waving guns in what should be safe places; the stoniness in my own heart that declines to care about my neighbor, to love him. “Have mercy,” we cry. The wail rises from my daughter in the back seat of the car; the cries resound from as far off as a country hemmed in above the Arabian Sea, as a border crossing states and states away from me. “Come, Lord Jesus.” Quickly. Make this right. Ease up. Give us peace. I looked, and I found the right words for my calendar from deep in the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”: O Come, thou key of David, come, And open wide our heavenly home. Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. —”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” The Tuesday night after we got the dry tree at Lowe’s, the first night of Advent by my own estimation, if not according to official church calendars, I sat at my dining table in the bedtime quiet, cutting felt for this calendar I am making, the rhythm of measure-and-slice, measure-and-slice like a kind of Protestant rosary. Consider my blessings, calm my thoughts, peace, peace, peace of Christ to you. It was night, and the day had been long. The children were in bed, and my husband, walking by the table, asked, “Do you want to watch something?” I told him, “Yes, but in a minute,” because I was in a hurry. I wanted to finish cutting these squares so I could stitch them together tomorrow and get this good reminder hanging on our wall. I kept cutting, and he went upstairs, and then I heard Christmas music coming from the bedroom, and I knew he was watching Youtube videos, and I knew in that moment that he was happy, and he didn’t mind that I was still downstairs, and I pulled across another sheet of felt, red, soft felt, wool felt. And I looked up, and suddenly, I was happy. The brightly-decorated, thinly-branched tree and the felt and the quiet and the kitchen open to the living room in this warm, safe house, and the children asleep, and my husband relaxing, and I am sliding the rotary cutter down a thick strip of rich fabric, and there are toys strewn across the rug, and there is a wall in the dining area that needs to be patched and painted, and there are the grimy window shades the old owner left behind, and it may not be the heavenly home I am waiting for in the long term, but right now, it is just right, and so good that it feels unfair. There are people across dark seas on cold waters, endangering their lives in hopes of finding better ones, of finding some light instead of darkness, and this seems unfair, very unfair, what I have here. In this late moment, there is not much I can do but keep cutting and keep waiting and hoping, and I do that, and the words that will go on my calendar repeat themselves over and over in my mind: “Come, thou key of David, come.” And the prayer is for me, and for my family, and for the world. This piece originally appeared in Art House America in 2016.