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As our team loads up the van, puts together folders, and welcomes speakers and participants from far and wide for this weekend's Hutchmoot conference, we want to recognize the people who make it happen. And no, I’m not just talking about the people who plan the details and programming, but the people who make the event (and everything else around here) exist through their support, the Rabbit Room members. Thank you! For those of you who are not yet members but are interested in joining, read on. We have something for you. When you sign up for membership today through Monday, October 9th: Your initial donation is doubled for a potential $10k matched You’ll receive a handmade, leather Rabbit Room bookmark from our friends at Growley Leather along with our 2023 New Member Mug. (Reminder- you’ll also have access to our Housemoot Digital conference at no extra cost) You may be thinking, “Wait a tic... is this just for people attending Hutchmoot or Housemoot?” Set thy hearts at rest, friends. The answer is no. Everyone who signs up during this time window can make the extra impact and receive a bookmark. If you’re ready to take the step and partner with us, you can join the membership here. Expect your new member package in the next few weeks! If you’d like to learn more about the exciting new opportunities in Membership that go beyond supporting Rabbit Room programs (like access to Housemoot, lectures, and Member course opportunities), you can click here. We’re grateful for those who want to partner with us in this mission and support all Rabbit Room programs through membership. Thanks for being here and taking part in the work!

Editor’s Note: Undone is acclaimed author Philip Yancey’s latest book, published by Rabbit Room Press. In it, he renders 17th-century poet John Donne’s meditations on illness and suffering into modern English and adds his own commentary, informed by his experience with a debilitating diagnosis. Read Philip Yancey’s preface to Undone, explaining his heart behind the book. I was born at the height of an epidemic. In 1949, just over 42,000 Americans contracted the disease polio, most of them under the age of five. Less than 10 percent of the afflicted died, but a large number experienced paralysis. Children with crutches, leg braces, and deformed limbs were a commonplace sight, spreading fear among parents and children alike. My father, though an adult, somehow became infected. He spent several months in an iron lung, completely paralyzed, and then died at age 23. My first book explored the question Where Is God When It Hurts?, a question that had hung over my brother and me like the shadow of a missing father. In the years since, my writing has often circled around the issues raised by pain and suffering. Then came 2020, when a global health crisis put everyone on the planet at risk. Within weeks, a tiny virus overwhelmed hospitals, disrupted economies, and upended everyday social interactions. For a time, everything came undone. We had no instruction manual on how to respond to a pandemic—or did we? Historians soon dug up lessons from prior outbreaks of diseases such as polio, smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague, and Spanish influenza. At various times, these scourges spread terror and brought normal life to a halt. Each pandemic reduced humans to frail, bewildered creatures facing questions that seemed to have no satisfying answers. Where could I find a guide who had survived such an ordeal, and who offered wisdom for the ages? I found the answer in a journal predating COVID-19 by four centuries. John Donne wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in 1623, during a bubonic plague epidemic in his city of London. Here, at last, was a master tutor, a trustworthy companion in crisis. Thrilled at the discovery, I sequestered myself in a mountain retreat and began a project that would occupy me for several months. My goal: to make more accessible for 21st-century readers the timeless insights from one of our greatest writers. The understanding and treatment of disease has changed dramatically since Donne’s time, and yet I know of no better account of someone confronting God during a health crisis. Ironically, just as this book was being edited, my doctor confirmed a most unwelcome diagnosis: ‘Philip, you have Parkinson’s Disease,” she said. Suddenly I knew exactly how Donne felt when he wrote the first words of his book: “Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! This minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.” Unlike Donne’s feverish battle with immediate symptoms, I face the challenge of adapting to a chronic, degenerative disease. Yet I am finding that his journal of suffering points the way toward a hard-won faith. John Donne composed twenty-three meditations charting the stages of his illness. They include some of the most famous passages in English literature: “No man is an island . . . never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . .” To Donne’s meditations, I have added seven entries that explain some of the author’s background. Donne wrote as a form of contemplation, and his reflections should be read that way. I recommend reading one entry per day over a thirty-day period, slowly and meditatively. I was brutally selective as I edited Devotions, slashing anything that required explanations: archaic science or Greek mythology, or even obscure Bible passages. retained only parts that seem to have an immediate relevance, not only to the COVID-19 crisis, but to any crisis that stirs up existential questions. And, wincing at my own effrontery, I sought to tame his complicated writing style into something that modern readers can more readily absorb. I sought to extract from Donne’s literary masterpiece universal truths on how to live and how to die. —Philip Yancey, 2023

Here comes Act II of The Orchardist’s People, People. The official release date is August 4th, but you can pre-order today and get an immediate download of the track “Quiet, Now.” People, People: Act II is the second installment of a three-part album about the classic human story of looking for shortcuts through life in the naive hope of avoiding the pain of transformation. Like any fairy tale or classic adventure story, the road between start and finish is fraught with pitfalls, unpleasant surprises, monsters to be faced, and unexpected moments of healing. With these songs, The Orchardist laments and celebrates the truth that we can only receive the fullness of life by holding onto every part of it, bitter and rich and everything in between. Click here to pre-order.

Melanie Penn hopes you trust her when she tells the story of her latest album. Specifically, she’s hoping not to come across as too “mystical” or “freaky,” but the reality is Immanuel, Penn’s first Christmas album, was birthed in a supernatural way. Instead of spending last Christmas with her family like normal, she spent the holidays in seclusion in her New York apartment, crafting songs as they unexpectedly came to her, first-person narratives from characters in the Christmas story. One by one, she obeyed the creative impulses until the scope of the project came into view. Immanuel is the beautiful result. Melanie recently sat down with us to detail the album’s origins and to share how friend and producer Ben Shive talked her into following through on the scariest part of it all. RR: Immanuel is an interesting spin on a Christmas album in that it tells the story from various first-person perspectives. Where did the idea originate? Melanie: 2016 was a really tough year for me. I headed into the month of December wondering how I could put the year to bed in the right way. I’m a believer in ending things well and starting things well. Those two ideas are related inasmuch as you can’t have one without the other, so as I rolled into the end of 2016, I wondered how I could end the year well and start off into the next one. It’s hard to explain this, but I really felt the Lord was calling me to hunker down in New York to be alone, to be by myself. I had this odd sense that God wanted to give me something at the end of this hard year. And again, it all sounds very mystical, right? It’s just an impression that I had. So I didn’t go home for the holidays. I usually spend Christmas in Virginia with my mom and dad, but instead I spent it in New York really alone. I randomly one day wrote a song from the perspective of one of the wise men in the Christmas story. The song was about following a star. The obvious narrative was that it was about one of the wise men, but the other part of it was about trusting that you’re on the right road. You’re not sure where the journey is going to culminate, but there’s something guiding you and you trust you’re heading in the right direction. I wrote that song and it intrigued me that I’d done that. Then a couple weeks later, I had a Christmas show in New York. It’s an annual tradition and a lot of people come and I sang the song as one of a collection. It’s usually only covers, but people came up saying they loved the song. So that intrigued me, too. Then a couple days later, still in this month of December when I was secluded in New York, I wrote a song from the perspective of one of the angels in the angel chorus. Again I have no explanation for any of this. I don’t know why I started writing these songs. Then I started reading Isaiah and the prophecies of Jesus being born and I wrote the song for Isaiah. They came out easily in a way but there was also a lot of labor. I was immersed in these melodies and the lyrics of this very ancient story became everyday. I wanted to narrate them in a modern, everyday, simple way. After the third song, I thought, “Okay, now I’m in this thing.” [Laughs] I continued to write the songs and once I got to the song about the shepherd, which came at the end in January, I realized I was into something that was engaging me totally. I thought it was weird. I wondered, “Why am I writing all of these Christmas songs?” I sent all of my voice memos to Ben Shive who’s a longtime collaborator of mine. We were talking about doing a different project, but I wanted to let him know what I was working on, and he said, “When are you coming to Nashville to make this Christmas album?” So the songs started coming to me as a gift, but there was no grand vision to make an album. My life didn’t get consumed by it until weeks into writing the songs. I didn’t expect it, but I think it turned out so well. For me the process has been so wonderful and special. I’ve had so much joy doing this and I hope that people get that out of it. I really want there to be a pure tenderness and joy in the album because that’s how I felt while making it. RR: You said these songs presented themselves to you in a way. How different is that from the normal process of songwriting? Melanie: I still consider myself a nascent songwriter, so I’m in no way an expert. I would say that the difference in these songs is that typically I’ve taken an experience I’ve had or something I think and I try to distill it into a song. Whether that’s trying to find a theme that exists in the world already and trying to write my own or having an experience and then trying to articulate it in a universal way, it’s all come down to me and things I’m going through. But these are all about other people. I’m trying to get into who they were and what they might have gone through. These songs are very biographical, which is totally different for me. I have to believe the saints are in heaven. I believe they are eternal souls. I have to believe on some level that they’re watching over us. I would ask them from time to time, “What would you want me to say? I’d love to know your story.” That can be freakish to talk about channeling Mary and Joseph. No! I just mean that I have to believe on some level that we all exist together as the eternal church and I did inquire of them what they felt and what they might have thought. I just wanted to be true to who they were. So that was very different. RR: You started with the wise men, Isaiah, the angel, etc. Is there a moment when it becomes more intentional, where you have seven songs and you need ten, so you pick a new perspective on purpose? Melanie: It became fun because honestly there are so many people you could write about. There’s Simeon and Anna and all these other characters. Most of the characters gravitationally pulled me, so I knew there were songs there. I knew I wanted to write a song for the innkeeper and the star of Bethlehem. Those were organic and had gravity that I couldn’t explain. I just knew it had to be done. I was going to leave Mary out of it totally because I was terrified to step into her story, so I thought I would leave her out. Ben was like, “That’s super cute if you think you’re going to write a Christmas album and that you won’t write one for Mary.” After our first week of pre-production, he sent me back to New York and said, “Why don’t you go write a song for Mary?” That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to pick a week in May, I think, and a friend lent me a house in the Hudson Valley. I went there specifically to write a song for Mary. Even when I wrote it at that point, we recorded it and then in August I rewrote the chorus. It just wasn’t good enough and I knew it wasn’t. I wanted it to be worthy of her story and worthy of who she was and I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I now have peace about it enough to let it go. RR: Was there ever consideration that you would leave it out since you said you weren’t quite sure about it even after you first recorded it? Or were you 100 percent committed to finding a way to make it work? Melanie: 100 percent committed. It was never a question. I knew that Ben was right. I knew she had to be included, but I just wanted a way out of it. Once I faced the truth of that, I knew I couldn’t complete the album without her. RR: That’s powerful what you just said, because you just admitted you had this single thing you wanted to avoid and yet it took community to push you to do the thing that you ultimately wound up so committed to. Melanie: I love how you put that about community and it speaks to the creative relationship I have with Ben. It feels very meant to be. He speaks a lot of truth to me and I think I speak a lot of truth to him. When I think of what I’d want artistic collaboration to look like, it definitely looks like our working relationship. RR: I love that the perspectives aren’t just those immediate figures we find in any nativity scene but you include Isaiah and this Old Testament lead-in. Was that purposeful to give it that breadth of scope? Melanie: I don’t know if it was intentional. Isaiah’s song is long at six minutes, which to me is a little risky. But in a way, it felt like the thesis statement, not only for the album but the story itself. It’s also so relevant for today. Today more than ever, we need to hear there is a ruler coming who is going to reign in peace and speak peace. Isaiah’s words about Christ’s coming just felt so in the moment we are in and then also foretelling what actually happened. It felt like the natural launching point. Preview the songs here. The album will be available tomorrow!

Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1 will be available on March 30th, but you don’t have to wait that long to get a taste of the new music. Resurrection Letters: Prologue is now available in the Rabbit Room Store. What’s a prologue? Here’s how Andrew describes it: [With Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1], it felt odd writing about Christ’s victory over death without spending at least some time on his death itself. That led to the idea of Resurrection Letters: Prologue, which is—let’s face it—a prequel to the prequel. (I can already hear the jokes about me waiting another ten years to release a prequel to the prequel to the prequel, called Resurrection Letters: Title Page and Contents.) In the spirit of Lent, the season of fasting that precedes Easter, we put together Prologue, a collection of five songs that take us from the last words of Jesus on the cross to his interment in the tomb. And then comes the long wait for spring. This is our hope, and I’m still surprised by it. The stories are true. Click here to download Resurrection Letters: Prologue.

“You are the cause. I am the effect. The rest is destiny.” Today in 1797, Mary Shelley was born, and 21 years later the first edition of Frankenstein was published. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the novel. It’s become one of our most enduring stories, and this year A. S. “Pete” Peterson went to work with Studio Tenn to develop a fresh new adaptation for the stage. The show opens tomorrow and will run for two weekends. The story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature is much more than a mere monster tale. It’s a story rich with theological, sociological, and psychological layers exploring not only what it means to be human, but what it means to be shaped by the power of love—or hatred. What obligation has a creator to his creation? Where does human kindness come from? Is true justice possible? These questions and many more are deftly investigated in Peterson’s probing interpretation of Shelley’s classic work. The show is a classic example of Studio Tenn’s sumptuous production aesthetic and is not to be missed. Receive 20% off tickets by using the discount code: RABBITROOM. Purchase tickets to A. S. Peterson’s Frankenstein by clicking here. And if you can’t make it to Nashville for the show, the play script is now available in both hardcover and paperback from the Rabbit Room Store. Click here to order.

These days, worship music is an entire sub-industry in the realm of art. There are conversations over the nature and performance of said music, and about as many worship traditions as there are denominations. Having been a worship leader on and off for most of my adult years, I know this world fairly well. But I can’t say I’d ever heard much time spent discussing the connection between our worship and our everyday work. Sure, there’s a strong Protestant tradition for the sacredness of ordinary work, but not many songs about, at least that I’m aware of. So I was pleasantly surprised to recently hear about a project called Work Songs, produced by the sacred arts collective The Porter’s Gate. Work Songs involves some Rabbit Room favorites such as Josh Garrels and Audrey Assad, as well as artists like Latifa Alattas (Page CXVI), David Gungor (The Brilliance), and Joy Ike, among others. Here’s a short video clip about the project: Works Songs is available through most digital music outlets.

Jess Ray’s music defied the conventions of debut releases. She seemed, with 2015’s Sentimental Creatures, to have leapt right into her stride. Now, this year’s Parallels + Meridians jumps equally as far ahead of its excellent predecessors. The pop hooks, even when they come softly delivered, as in “Humble Heart,” are anthemic in scope. This is the kind of music that you could imagine holding a stadium’s worth of listeners to rapt attention. Yet in further contravention of most stadium-rock radio offerings and pop music in general, the lyrics are full of delightful specificities and the bravery of truth. As with her earlier hit “Headed for the Hills,” Ray leans hard into a sound built on the road. The aural landscape is wide open, full of miles and deep-breathing expanses. There’s also a rock solid groove that pervades much of the record. Opening with a one-two punch of “O Great Light” and “When I’m With You,” you are immediately transported into joy and mystery. My wife is a dancer, and so are my daughters. I instead claim the dance handicap of growing up Southern Baptist. I’ll bob along enough to embarrass myself now and again, but it takes a lot to make me do this in public. Yet, you can put on a Jess Ray record and that’s enough to get me moving around the house, hoping the neighbors don’t look in through the windows only to wonder if I have a complex. The beat leans back into a history populated by Des’ree and Lauryn Hill, but it’s definitively Jess Ray. The lyrics are full of delightful specificities and the bravery of truth. Adam Whipple Lyrically, Ray continues to favor bare-knuckled expressions of humanity. Yet while her phrasing is comfortably raw, it comes across with the finesse of maturity. “Funny how I could just turn and run from this,” she says in “You and I.” “Maybe I am too afraid; maybe I don’t want to change.” On “No Man,” she opens the track with “Your daddy didn’t love you like you wanted him to,” a call-out of the broken world that burns more with each repetition. Guest vocalist Ellie Holcomb follows it up with a second verse: “Your husband didn’t love you like you wanted him to.” The ache is palpable. Yet the album is also rife with hope. Ray even braves the revelation of what sounds like a church youth group experience (though it could be any number of similar events): Years ago, down in Orlando, I heard an old man speak. I was not prepared for what he shared, Sitting in the bleacher seat. — “Did Not Our Hearts Burn” Having grown up with the kind of gatherings portrayed here, I am possessed of an ingrained cynicism regarding them. There is the danger, even in such a personal story, of the episode seeming trite at large. Yet in “Did Not Our Hearts Burn,” I find an approachability that encourages me to accept the Spirit’s mysterious work in such instances. There’s even a winking sense of final victory: The harder the wind will blow The deeper roots will go, And the devil is gonna hang, Oh, the devil is gonna hang, The devil is gonna hang From his own gallows. — “Gallows” The comeuppance represented here is reminiscent of the same humor that led medieval Christians to dress Satan up in red pajamas and give him a pitchfork. This, even while Ray evokes a great relief that the last enemies will, in the end, be defeated. I suppose that’s a great word to describe Parallels + Meridians altogether: relief. It’s everywhere. Relief twirls down from Ray’s voice like autumn leaves. Catharsis pools in the arrangements like water in cupped hands. If you feel the great rumblings of the earth, the nerve-pinched vibrations of the world spinning toward hell, here is a weaving of songs that offers to hold you in an embrace and remind you of the brooding wings of the Holy Spirit. You can learn more about Jess Ray’s new record at her website.

If you know anything at all about Sarah Clarkson, you know this: she loves books. And today she uses her lifetime of reading to bless us all with her newest book: Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treaures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life. Book Girl is now available in the Rabbit Room Store, and look for more to come from Sarah in the coming days.

Drew Miller’s new project, set to release October 4th, is now available exclusively in the Rabbit Room Store for the next week. And it includes an unreleased bonus track, supplemental videos about the project, and beautiful liner notes in PDF form. Click here to view the Desolation EP in the Rabbit Room Store. And here to visit Drew’s website.

Click through to see what Marco himself has to say about The Dragon Lord Saga: Martin & Marco. Click here to pre-order The Dragon Lord Saga: Martin & Marco in the Rabbit Room Store.

Today is a good day, because it’s the day that Spirit by Jeremy Casella is finally and officially out in the world. Celebrate with us and give this album a listen! Spirit is a gorgeous record, marked by gentle wisdom and heartfelt honesty. We’ve been keeping up with Jeremy on the record-making process since the beginning—check out an interview from during his Kickstarter campaign here and read our review of his record here. You can purchase Spirit now in the Rabbit Room Store. And be sure to check out Jeremy’s website, as well. Happy listening!

My latest project is, content-wise, somewhat of a departure for me. Or maybe it’s not, depending on how you view my songwriting over the years? Earth Has No Sorrow is a hymns project. Some friends and patrons of mine invited me to record “Come Thou Fount” for an episode of their Chicago-based podcast, The Bridge, some time ago. It was definitely outside my comfort zone, but I enjoyed it and was encouraged to assemble a few more hymns and try to release them. I only sporadically attended church growing up, so my familiarity with hymnody is embarrassingly shallow (at least, for someone who makes their living on the ragged-edge fringes of the Christian music industry), but as an artist and songwriter naturally drawn to honest, rich, genuine lyrics, it is not terribly difficult to see just how extraordinary and profound are so many of these songs. Like psalms, hymns speak for and to us. They have a way of reaching into us, especially when our own energy, heart, mind, or words are sapped or empty. Their gift to us is to remind and to advocate. Though this collection of songs is not my typical offering, I do hope they’ll reveal some iota of me, and in the process be something peaceful and pleasant, a balm in this wonky world. At the time of writing, Eric’s Kickstarter has just four days remaining. He has met his goal, but more funding will make the project even better. Click here to become a backer for Earth Has No Sorrow.

Tomorrow is release day for Russ Ramsey’s new book, Struck. Look for the Rabbit Room review to come, and in the meantime, watch the book trailer (by Samantha Fisher and Stephen Gage).

The Door on Half-Bald Hill takes place in an ancient Irish culture marked by its oral and aural storytelling tradition—which makes it a fantastic audiobook.⁣ And today, you are now able to listen to this story through the voices of its three narrators: Perth, Idris, and Saoirse, played by voice actors from England and Ireland.⁣ Here’s a five-minute sample of the book taken from Chapter 3: Click here to download the book on Audible.

The beloved tale of Henry and the Chalk Dragon by Jennifer Trafton is now available as an audiobook, skillfully read by Rebecca Reynolds. And you can listen to a ten-minute sample of it right here, exclusively on the Rabbit Room. Click here to view the Henry and the Chalk Dragon audiobook on Audible.

The Rabbit Room team has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and today we’re delighted to announce that this strange little organism of ours has sprouted a new limb in the form of Andy Patton, our newly minted Director of Operations. Andy comes to us as a transplant from Greatham, England, where he and his family worked at L’Abri for several years (he was previously transplated to England from Missouri so, sadly, you won’t detect an accent or an unnatural affinity for marmite—okay, that last part isn’t sad). He’s a writer and game designer and an inquisitive, playful, kind, and soft-spoken leader. We are thrilled with his addition to our team and we look forward to the direction and organization that he aims to bring to the Rabbit Room in the years to come. Welcome, Andy. We’re glad you’re here.

This week, we’re sending membership gifts out to our new members. I used to be the one to pack those, and took a particular delight and care in it. I got to envision the joy on each face as they unpacked their mug, read their letter, and pondered the mystery of their member card. More than that, though, I reveled in knowing that each parcel going out represented someone who loved the Rabbit Room the way I love it. The world is full of folks who seem happy to be passive consumers, but I’ve never been one of those. When I love something, I have to dig my hands into it. I don’t just want to see the lake, I want in that water. If you don’t want someone singing harmony to your car jams, you best tell me ahead of time. The mountains are gorgeous, and I’m thrilled to gape over them, but at some point I’ve got to find a trail. Let me knead the dough, climb the tree, pull the weeds. Put me in the game, coach. I’ve never been content to stand by and watch. It doesn’t matter how clumsily I may start out, I want to be involved. That’s who our members are—the people who dig in. They encountered this crazy, wonderful experiment called the Rabbit Room and weren’t content to love it from afar. I’m not surprised to find kindred spirits here—this community is full of creators who feel pulled toward engagement and cultivation. When we kicked off the membership prototype in 2013, we couldn’t have imagined the community that the Rabbit Room would grow into today. We just wanted to create a space for people to get involved. There are folks who’ve been with us since the start, back when membership was just a shaky scaffolding. Since then, we’ve worked to build it into something more sturdy. Along with gifts and surprises, we’ve begun meaningful dialogues with our members about ongoing and upcoming Rabbit Room projects, events, and activities—and we’re working on ways to keep improving as we incorporate our members even more. At the end of 2022, we hope to be able to tell you that the Rabbit Room is 100% operationally sustainable through our membership, and that every dollar given beyond that goes toward new works, programs, and ways to bless artists and the community. Shigé Clark This membership has grown into a foundation of kindred friends who’ve made it possible for the Rabbit Room to keep running and bless others in times of trouble—and these last years of being able to turn and support artists and ministers during an economic crisis has inspired us toward a new dream for the membership. Our dream is for the Rabbit Room to be 100% operationally sustainable through membership alone. That means that we as members would cover all of the Rabbit Room’s operational needs, so that every donation beyond that will go directly toward programs, products, and services. We’ll provide the solid foundation, so that everything else goes toward building the house, where people will find refuge and inspiration for years to come. So we’re making it our goal to find 700 new members in the next year—folks who resonate with the Rabbit Room’s mission, believe in the work God is doing here for the life of the world, and want to dig in with us. At the end of 2022, we hope to be able to tell you that the Rabbit Room is 100% operationally sustainable through our membership, and that every dollar given beyond that goes toward new works, programs, and ways to bless artists and the community. This quarter, we hope to find 200 more people who want to be involved—and we’re looking forward to finding more ways to make membership fun and inclusive along the way! We hope you’ll join us. If you’ve been teetering on the edge of whether or not you should be part of the membership, this is your chance to jump in. If you haven’t heard of the membership yet, come learn about it here. And if you’re already part of the membership with us, thank you for being part of this good work that has been such a blessing, to me and to so many. We’ll be rolling out updates this quarter and next year, and we can’t wait to show you all that we have planned. I hope you’ll be a part of it. Let’s dig in. Click here to become a Rabbit Room member.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Alan Noble, Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture, and author of You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World. Tim Keller has said “Alan is, I hope, the beginning of a new generation of scholar-writers who can bring the insights of [more esoteric thinkers and philosophers] down to earth and apply them in the most practical, compelling, and helpful form.” Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 40 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 Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@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.

[Editor’s note: As avid readers of Ollister Pembrick’s writing (commendable!), we at the Rabbit Room are proud to present this letter from Barnabas Quiggle regarding the discovery of a cronker. It was brought to our attention by a student named Annie Butler, a skilled writer in her own right, as part of Andrew Peterson’s Creaturepedia writing contest. In fact, we are pleased to report that, with this letter, Annie won the 3rd to 5th grade section of this writing contest! Well done, Annie. And to our readers: enjoy, and may you remain safe from all nibbles.] Dear Ollister Bahbert Pembrick, I hope you remember me, Barnabas Quiggle, from when you were in Skree. I helped you document several species of dangerous animals (which contributed to the loss of several of your toes, some of my hair, and my left earlobe) that lived in mostly dangerous environments. I was a ranger then and knew how to handle those things. But even though I have aged and am now retired, I noticed you left one animal out of your Creaturpedia: a cronker. I came across one yesterday, and I will describe it to you to see if you will be tempted to return and properly document it. My two granddaughters, serious Kalia and small Lililah, came to visit several days ago. Lililah stated that I looked like the sky missed me, and Kalia said, like a stern and unsmiling nurse, that a walk would do me good. I realized I hadn’t been outside in days, so, after breakfast the next day, I announced I was going for a stroll in the woods. The walk was making me feel so good that I kept venturing further into the forest, thinking I could simply turn around and go backward. Squeezing through a large clump of bushes and trees, I was having such a good time that I nearly fell off a ledge before it was too late. I windmilled my arms and fell backwards, and laid there for a while, groaning. Eventually, I crawled to the edge to find a way down. Unfortunately, it was a sheer drop of twenty feet. And I had just been having so much fun! Suddenly, the trees rustled in the wind and shifted, shining light on a patch of brown-rusty-red fur that I realized sleekly ran down the length of a large, weasel-like body—it was a cronker! There was no mistaking its crocodile-shaped head and rounded, leathery tail! Most people thought cronkers didn’t exist! I only knew it wasn’t an apparition because my late Aunt Nanny told me about it when I was younger. Cronkers usually sleep at noon to avoid the heat (if they were awake in the shade, they would probably feel guilty for not doing anything), so the cronker in the shadow of the ledge was asleep. Illustration: “Spike-Eared Vargax” by Aedan Peterson Did I say shadow? Only then did I realize the sun was more to the west. The shock of finding the cronker was wearing off, and I eyed the retractable claws and mouthful of teeth it revealed when snoring. I began to tremble and sweat, because how could I leave this rare animal that could turn me into turkey dinner leftovers in three seconds? I decided to run back to town and get professionals to catch it, but the cronker woke, stretched, and locked its maliciously adorable black eyes onto mine. I wanted to run but was frozen and knew I couldn’t fight. The cronker looked at me, most likely wondering whether to eat or befriend me (or both) as was its nature. It was a tense moment that felt like hours, but I guess I was unfit for consumption or friendship. The cronker stood and began trotting away, and I suddenly felt like I just couldn’t not go after that creature. My friends at the tavern would call me a coward if I told them the story, so I recklessly stumbled down the hill on the side of the ledge and hobbled after the creature. My misadventures of the day are too long to relate fully, but I mostly learned these things by following the creature: It had a litter of five pups, was carnivorous (I don’t even want to retell that part), can climb trees due to its claws, can play dead, lives in a town of burrows (I don’t want to tell how I figured that out either) that are in and under all manners of things, communicates by yipping, and has a weakness for beetles, which it will crawl after in any given situation. These are only a few attributes of a cronker, and I hope you will come back to study it further (not because I’m too lazy to do so, of course). Unfortunately, no one has believed my tale so far except Lililah, and I thought I saw Kalia have a twinkle in her eye. I now write this letter and will probably send a more detailed one if you don’t arrive first, or after my friends at the tavern stop nagging after me about wanting to hear my story. I hope to see you soon. With kind regards, Barnabas Quiggle P.S. I congratulate you on your recent marriage to Miss Stupe. My best wishes to the both of you. [Editor’s note: This was the winning entry for the 3rd-5th grade section of the Creaturepedia writing contest. Congratulations, Annie Butler! The runner-up was Ben Hardy’s The Spiky Bimble. Well done, Ben! To view the names of all the winners of the writing contest, click here. Next week, we’ll treat you to the winner of the 6th-8th grade section: Calen Lotspeich’s Notes Regarding my Encounter with the Elusive Snorthog.] Pembrick’s Creaturepedia is now available in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

Friends, Hutchmoot: Homebound is right around the corner. This Friday, October 8th, we will celebrate art, music, story, and community together, in pockets of family and friends all over the world. Here in Nashville, the Rabbit Room staff is so excited to finally get to share the sessions, concerts, and fun extras that we’ve been filming for months. In fact, we would love to give you a taste before the conference even begins—so throughout this week, follow our social media (@therabbitroom) to catch snippets and snapshots of what will become fully available this Friday. Click here to register for Hutchmoot: Homebound 2021.

Jonny Jimison is back with the thirty-first edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. In this 100th conversation of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners. Click here to listen to the 101st episode of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Jonny Jimison is back with a special podcast-themed edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

Jonny Jimison is back with a special Christmas edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.