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by Chris Thiessen I have quite a few friends who are more passionate and well-versed in the expansive, daunting world of board games than I. These are the people that have every expansion pack, every collector’s item, etc. (Some of you may be reading this right now). I am not one of those people. I grew up with chess, Monopoly, and Yahtzee, not knowing anything of the world beyond Parker Bros. Then, in college, I was introduced to Settlers of Catan. Now, many of you just rolled your eyes for one of two reasons: either because you think Catan is a confusing game played by nerds (if you’re reading this series, this probably isn’t you), or because it’s so played-out that it makes you want to vomit just hearing its name. However, for the curious person like me, Settlers of Catan serves as a perfect gateway into something much larger—a world I would never have known existed without playing it first. What I’m trying to say is that Radiohead, like board games, is a whole universe unto itself, and their 1995 album The Bends is their Settlers of Catan. Music, after all, is not just personal expression, but an act of widespread community with massive historical precedent. Chris Thiessen I was in college when I first tried listening to Radiohead in earnest. I put on their 2000 album Kid A and tried desperately to decipher why Pitchfork and many others called it the greatest album of the 2000s, but I was entirely lost. I felt like “I don’t belong here,” to quote their early hit “Creep.” Kid A is dense and not remotely “catchy” in the conventional sense. And without being around for its initial cultural moment in 2000, I felt like I didn’t have a way in. “Radiohead must just be over-rated, snobby music,” I then concluded. I was wrong. But being a kid raised on ‘80s hooks and Van Halen guitar solos, I had no categories for the abstract electronic rock I was hearing. Dismayed, I shelved Radiohead for a few years before again attempting to brave the minds of Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien, Philip Selway, and the Brothers Greenwood. The next time I listened to Radiohead, I began with The Bends . From the very first, Greenwood’s rippling and roaring guitar and Yorke’s cool/uncool vocals grabbed me by the shoulders in a way Kid A simply couldn’t have years before. THIS was accessible to me—a brand of rock and roll not too far removed from the Britpop and alt-rock stylings rising from the hardly-flickering embers of grunge. Accessibility in music, and certainly on The Bends , is a virtue. Accessibility recognizes that before you can pull listeners into your intimate, unique world, you must woo them there with musical conventions the audience is familiar with. Music, after all, is not just personal expression, but an act of widespread community with massive historical precedent. Thus The Bends is filled with musical pieces we’re familiar with—the soaring riffs of “The Bends” and the jangly fade-in of “Black Star,” the emotional, acoustic balladry of “Fake Plastic Trees” and the simplicity of the plea “Don’t leave me high / Don’t leave me dry.” In all these moments, you can hear Radiohead’s influences from alternative pioneers like R.E.M. and Sonic Youth to traditional British rock acts like Queen and David Bowie. While “sounding like your influences” is often used derogatorily, synthesizing your influences into something brilliant and new as Radiohead does here is a glorious feat. It allows your audience to hold onto something familiar while disrupting convention ever so tactfully. Take for example the ballad “Fake Plastic Trees” which has the sweetness of a pop radio ballad, yet critiques the disposability and lack of authenticity inherent in such radio ballads and consumer culture at large. Lesser bands use accessibility as a crutch, always playing to the lowest common denominator as they fill arenas with nothing more than emotional appeals and homogeneity. Radiohead’s strong access points, however, pull you further into their uniqueness. We hear this on “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was,” where Yorke expresses his existential exhaustion and resultant emotional fragility, singing, “Limb by limb and tooth by tooth / It’s tearing up inside of me / Every day, every hour / I wish that I was bulletproof.” These themes of unbearable worldly pressure inform Radiohead’s music throughout their career, especially on subsequent albums OK Computer and Kid A which explore the isolation and paranoia of the digital age in more profound musical terms. I couldn’t understand those categories when I first attempted to listen to Radiohead. But this is the power of accessibility, especially as it relates to The Bends . Whereas Radiohead’s later albums are decidedly more life-altering, The Bends offers us a compass and map complete with a little legend in the corner helping us to make sense of the thick electronic forests and abstract thinking that inform Radiohead’s best work. I don’t advise parachuting straight into that forest without directions like I did with Kid A . I’d start with the instruction manual, and then feel free to explore the deepest corners of one of the greatest musical worlds built in the last 50 years. Click here to listen to The Bends on Spotify , and here to listen on Apple Music. This post originally appeared on Chris Thiessen’s weekly newsletter, Quarter Notes. Click here to learn more and subscribe.

by the Rabbit Room Whether you’ve already bought your ticket and want to see all you have to look forward to, or you’re on the fence and want to know more before you commit, here is how we’ll be spending our weekend on October 9th-11th. While this schedule will give you an overview of primary events, it represents only a fraction of the content available to guests. There is a lot more to explore than what is listed here, such as an entire program of events for kids in the Playroom (with concerts, story times, and more), sessions and discussions and more in the Art Studio , mysterious goings-on in The Forest , the first ever (and possibly the last ever) Hutchmoot: Homebound Challenge , and an array of artists who will be stopping by to play a few songs in the Backyard . Trust us when we tell you there’s a reason you’ll need two weeks to take it all in. This is only the tip of the iceberg. * All times are CST, but nearly all content will be archived so you can access it on your own time, should you choose. *Schedule subject to change *Full session descriptions will be posted in the coming weeks Friday, October 9th NOTE: Sessions/events will be archived and viewable until October 23, 2020. 11:00 a.m. Welcome to Hutchmoot: Homebound! 12:00 p.m. Sessions “The Sacred and the Profane: Caravaggio and the Paradox of Corruption and Grace” (Russ Ramsey) “From Text to Image: A How-to Conversation” (David & Phaedra Taylor) “The Pivot: Hutchmoot Edition” (Andrew Osenga & Santosh John) “Redemptive Imagination in the Garden” (Julie Witmer) 2:00 p.m. Sessions “Awaking Wonder” (Sally Clarkson) “Why We Need Fiction for Moral Formation” (Russell Moore) “Ain’t Gonna Lay My Religion Down” (Buddy Greene & Odessa Settles) “Visual Arts and Faith 101” (Rabbit Room Artists) ** 4:00 p.m. The Gullahorn Happy Hour (Andy Gullahorn & Jill Phillips) 7:00 p.m. Music and Poetry (Sara Groves, Propaganda, Joshua Luke Smith, and John Mark McMillan) Saturday, October 10th 10:00 a.m. Sessions “Neil Gaiman Goes to Narnia” (Russell Moore) “The Old House & the New Creation” (Andrew Peterson & Lanier Ivester) “Recovery, Escape, & Consolation: The Gifts of Fantasy” (Jonathan Rogers & Helena Sorensen) 1:00 p.m. Sessions “A Theology of the Blues & Belonging” (Ruth Naomi Floyd) “Starseek to Swordplay” (S. D. Smith, Kevan Chandler, & Connie Chandler) “Stealing Past the Watchful Dragons” (Heidi Johnston, Andrew Roycroft, & Ross Wilson) “Pass the Piece–Collaboration and Creativity” (Rabbit Room Artists) 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. In the Neighborhood 7:00 p.m. Special Guest Speaker: Steve Taylor 8:00 p.m. Music: Andrew Peterson Sunday, October 11th 10:15 a.m. Hymn Sing with Jess Ray & Taylor Leonhardt (Mission House) 11:00 a.m. The Rabbit Room Presents: TBD 12:00 p.m. Closing and Farewell

by the Rabbit Room Wherein Chris Yokel reads his poems “This Haunting” and “Another World,” Jennifer Trafton reads her piece This Is For All the Lonely Writers , we receive a brief serenade from Ron Block, and Drew Miller shares the second Word of Befuddlement: toom. In its nearly three years on the Rabbit Room blog, This Is For All the Lonely Writers by Jennifer Trafton has been posted, re-posted, loved, and loved again. If webpages could be dog-eared and scrawled upon, this post would stand out for all its markings. It’s somehow both vulnerable and universal—about the necessity of loneliness and where the deepest voice of the artist comes from. Whether you’re lonely or not, whether you write or don’t—this one’s for you. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com . The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The second Word of Befuddlement, shared in today’s episode, is the noun “toom.” You can send in your very own definition of “toom” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E2: This Is For All the Lonely Writers.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “All Through the Night,” “A Light So Fair,” “Bear My Harp Hither,” and “Hope Sings” by Ron Block

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast  is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Nashville singer/songwriter Ross King . In this episode, Jonathan and Ross talk about the instructive power of rejection, the complexities of writing for a living in today’s world, and advice for dealing with artistic competitiveness. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 36 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.

by Bethany J. Melton Samwise had climbed too many stairs with Shagrat drooling on his heels. He’d blasted through Cirith Ungol’s gates with Galadriel’s light. He’d searched every black corner for Frodo, and now, his master was a tower trapdoor out of reach. So Sam sang nursery rhymes into Mordor. He murmured old childish tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo’s rhymes that came to mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. Darkness had dogged the hobbits since they’d entered Mordor, but this was a blackness deeper than anything Sam had known—like the waters of the coldest, farthest sea swallowing him. And here at “journey’s end” in “darkness buried deep,” Sam did something braver than anything. He sang of home. The gardener had killed orcs and maimed a spider, but this was a deadly blow to Mordor. Sam attacked the blackness by remembering the light. Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope… I remember your name in the night, O LORD, and keep your law. —Ps. 119:49, 55 Sam couldn’t put a finger on why he did it. He was “moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell” to sing. Tolkien had a friend who’d felt that way. Sam attacked the blackness by remembering the light. Bethany J. Melton C. S. “Jack” Lewis first felt shivers of “what thought in his heart he could not tell” as a boy in Belfast—an inconsolable ache for something he couldn’t explain. Twigs and flowers arranged to make a biscuit-tin garden worked the magic on him. He called it sehnsucht . The German language seizes what English can’t, just as a song seized what Sam’s sword couldn’t—longing, desire, joy, hope. Home. And wasn’t it always Sam who put the thought of Bag End back in Frodo’s heart? “Where there’s life there’s hope,” he told his master on Mordor’s road. Lewis grew to describe his feeling as “Northerness,” a bit like Shasta the slave, who longed to go North all his life even though he’d never heard of Narnia. He couldn’t help but ache for it. Shasta’s longing exploded into adventure. Sam’s blossomed into song. The unexplainable sehnsucht makes us do things we can’t always explain. I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me! My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. —Ps. 119:19-20 His voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could possibly mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord. The tune was simple, the voice thin, but Mordor’s blackest night couldn’t douse the song. In western lands beneath the Sun the flowers may rise in Spring, the trees may bud, the waters run, the merry finches sing. Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night and swaying beeches bear the Elven-stars as jewels white amid their branching hair. Though here at journey’s end I lie in darkness buried deep, beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep, above all shadows rides the Sun and Stars for ever dwell: I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell. Sam the hobbit, the Gaffer’s son, the gardener, wrote a poem and sang it into Sauron’s lair and let the truth of Home blast fiercer than Elven starlight. He stopped being a hero and remembered he was a hobbit. He wasn’t an Elven-lord with a bow or sword, but a Shireling with dirty feet and an ache to see his country one last time. Sam proves that the fiercest weapon against Mordor is hobbit-like hope— childlike faith—in a far, green country. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life… When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O LORD. —Ps. 119:50, 52 In all Tolkien’s tales, the image that put tears on my face was the very last. Frodo’s Western passage left me restless on the shore with Sam, but then the gardener returned to the Shire, walked up the Hill, and “there was… fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.” I journaled: Sam and I are still on the shore, but not without glimpses of light—slits in the shadows through which that swift sunrise glistens. We aren’t Home, but we’re on the doorstep, and the light from within warms us. Jack put better words to my longing: At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but we cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. We can slash at the shadows with our sword, yes. But Sting isn’t our sharpest weapon. What deals death to Mordor is the song in our souls that the King will return. And in the meantime—on the doorstep—we sing that light into Mordor. Your statues have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. —Ps. 119:54 This post originally appeared at the Story Warren. Click here to read more of Bethany’s writing at her website.

by Mark Meynell Those ancient Greeks didn’t mince their words. If you weren’t Greek, you were lumped together, not with the lumpenproletariat as Marx & Engels had it, but with the rest of the world, the vast hordes of the ignorant and uncivilised unwashed. They had a single, lump-all word for the lot of them: hoi barbaroi (βάρβαροι). Its etymological roots are assumed to derive from the apparent gibberish uttered by ‘Johnny Foreigner’ (as a previous generation of Brits might have put it). “ Bar-bar-bar-bar ”—it’s all a bunch of codswallop. No wonder they’re all barbarians when they talk like that . It’s not just foreigners who talk funny Yet from the moment we set about learning another language, the morning fog is slowly burned off by the emerging rays of sunlight. The world begins to look different, ever so slightly. Why? Because I am now entering an alternative … I wanted to say, ‘world’ but that’s not quite right. It’s the same world. But I now have an alternative medium for trying to talk about it. That way, I have a vague hope of you seeing what I’m seeing. Of course, every language has its quirks and enigmas. As a young boy it amused me to no end to learn that the literal translation for the French word for nightclub is ‘box of night’ ( une boîte de nuit )—the aesthetics of some establishments make that seem a far more appropriate term. Then if you find yourself desperately needing to borrow a stapler from an Afrikaans speaker in South Africa, you may well find yourself requesting a ‘paper vampire’ ( papier vampier )—makes perfect sense when you think about it. Then in Myanmar, if you get married, the usual Burmese word is also used for getting locked up in prison (အိမ်ထောင်ခြင်း if you must know—nope; I can’t read it either). To which my only response is, ‘no comment.’ Lest we English-speakers feel superior, as if ours was the most obvious and straightforward language for any human being to gravitate towards, get out the humble pie. Any heart (or primary) language will scarcely provoke even a raised eyebrow, despite objective weirdness or even absurdity of some of its idioms. We happily talk about the ‘foreseeable future’ despite the fact that the future is never foreseeable. What have cake slices got to do with finding a task easy to accomplish? Why on earth would your grandmother want to suck eggs? Although to be fair, I do get why offering her lessons would be quite insulting. Then who knows what’s really going on when we encounter some skullduggery? A great deal of nonsense about language’s power to shape thought gets spread around, as if something is unimaginable or impossible to experience when your vernacular lacks a word for it. For even if specific vocabulary is lacking, there’s nothing to stop us from settling on a work-around. We do it all the time. And it’s one reason we have poets: they take the words we do have to articulate the things for which we don’t have words. It’s also one reason why I love the concept behind Randall Munroe’s Thing Explainer . The book’s vocabulary is deliberately limited to the 1000 most common words in English, which is then used to explain all kinds of complexities: from the human torso ( bags of stuff inside you ) to oil rigs ( hole-making city boats ), via the Saturn V rocket ( US Space Team’s Up Goer Five ) and—my favourite—the Large Hadron Collider ( Big tiny thing hitter ). I was thinking about this earlier this week because, as my family will tell you, my taste buds seem fairly undiscerning. It suits me, because it means I find most food delicious. But the others are all conscious of minute distinctions of taste and texture. Then it occurred to me: we talk about blindness and deafness, and perhaps insensibility (when losing the sense of physical touch). But what about when we lose the sense of taste? That’s become rather more relevant recently, what with Covid-19 and all that. Medics call it hypogeusia but that’s unlikely to arouse much sympathy down the pub. Nor will substituting it with ‘I’m tasteless’ help much. But every now and then, you come across a language which really does boggle the mind. Which brings me naturally onto the Australian Aboriginal language of Guugu Yimithirr . It all depends on where you’re standing… doesn’t it? This language is unlikely to be a study option at even the most exclusive educational establishments since it’s only spoken by a thousand people, centred on the small coastal town of Hopevale, in the northern tip of Queensland. Their claim to fame was initially derived from lending one of Australia’s most important words to the world’s languages, although the joke is that when the English Captain Cook first heard it, the word just meant, ‘I don’t know.’ As Guy Deutscher notes in his truly remarkable book, Through The Language Glass , that’s sadly an urban legend; despite subsequent western explorers never encountering the word (thus assuming that Cook and his crew were mistaken), the Guugu Yimithirr do use it. The word is of course kangaroo . Its rarity was simply the result of the language’s rarity. But that is the least of the wonders of this people. To grasp what is so remarkable about them, we need first to consider some essential linguistics. Think about how you describe the location of an object. It’s an everyday occurrence. There are essentially two options: you describe its location in relation to yourself or in relation to some external, more objective criterion. This is the difference between egocentric and geographic locators. (Note: the former has no moral connotations but merely describes a fact, taking ego in its original Greek sense of “I” .) This then affects how we describe the world around us, which ultimately can only be done from an egocentric perspective. The Bible is no different from any other pre-scientific text, with the classic example being the notion that the sun rises and falls each day. That, of course, is merely an articulation of how the phenomenon appears to us on earth; it is a far cry from the astronomical reality. That is not a problem, as long as we understand what is going on here. Human language has always depended on egocentric locators and descriptors. Or so it was thought! Cue: the Guugu Yimithirr ! For it transpires that their language contains no egocentric locators at all . Instead, they use geographic locators for everything . Instead of saying, ‘Ginger is in front of the tree,’ they will say ‘Ginger is a little to the tree’s north.’ When Fred asks for directions at a complex junction, an instruction to turn left will not translate; he needs you to say, ‘take the south-eastern exit.’ In fact, it is so fundamental to the language that you can’t tell Mary to turn forward in a book; instead, you need to say ‘go further east in the book,’ assuming she is facing north. But only when speaking Guugu Yimithirr. They all speak English and so use egocentric locators all the time. It is not that they do fail to understand the concepts. Rather, in their heart language, they don’t need them. Why? Because they are so wired for their relationship to the compass that even when in an unfamiliar place, they still instinctively know the cardinal directions. They don’t calculate from the sun, or some other means. They just know it. Even if in a windowless room. Even in describing places visited long before or recalling dreams. Just as someone with perfect pitch just knows if a guitar has not been tuned to the standard of A=440Hz. So if you don’t share this perfect geographical sense, then you are going to need a compass when you start learning the language! Try a walk in another’s shoes for a change… Now, as Deutscher is careful to point out, the conclusions we can draw about the relationship between our language and our thoughts are fewer than we might assume. It is tempting to assume causes for effects or correlations. As I said, the citizens of Hopevale are perfectly capable of understanding and using egocentric locators in English even when they lack equivalents for ‘behind,’ ’in front,’ ‘above’ of their own. The point here is simple. This is an extreme example of the way language has an effect on our perceptions, so that a fluent Guugu Yimithirr speaker needs constant awareness of coordinates. Most of us only resort to them when required; although my hunch is they are more ingrained in Americans than Brits because of urban grid systems. (Older towns over here still largely follow their mediaeval street plans, so exclusive reliance on geographic locators will get you lost!) In short, a foreign language often pushes us to bear things in mind that we rarely consider. It is not just that we are listening to voices outside our echo chambers; we’re experiencing a completely different shape of chamber! The Christian believer needs to grow an innate sensitivity to coordinates derived not from the compass, but from the one who made the east and west. Mark Meynell One of the most fascinating films of recent years, to me at last, was Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016). Having worked in a small East African seminary for four years, the sense of dislocation from being unable to map a foreign culture was all too familiar, albeit with far less earth-shaking consequences! As it happens, the protagonist, linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams)—a nod to the great impresario of eighteenth century British science who accompanied Captain Cook in those ground-breaking explorations of the south seas, Sir Joseph Banks perhaps?—trots out the kangaroo urban legend to make a point about misinterpreting foreign cultures. Without plot-spoiling, the drama’s primary tensions are derived from fundamentally different (human vs alien) languages and the difficulties of translation that ensue (for example, a failure to grasp that one word can mean both a weapon and a tool). Once Banks starts to learn the alien lingo of weird, floaty smoke rings, however, her mind is blown. She begins to see the world, and indeed the whole of time and space, in a revelatory new light. It is life-changing. While we would all love such new perspectives on the world, I am not advocating that we must all now learn Guugu Yimithirr or floaty smoke rings. After all, language-learning is enough to bring many of us out in hives, even though a lucky few seem to be able to get fluent after only ten minutes immersion. We don’t need to when we have the arts before us. Every art form is a language of its own, each with its language families, subdivided into distinct languages, dialects and variants. Take these crude breakdowns as a start: If you have spent your entire life listening to only one form of music, then you may well end up with encyclopaedic knowledge but will find other forms strange and even cacophonous. Such specialism is by no means a bad thing. As long as you never forget that there are other artistic fish in the sea. So, that is why it is healthy to play the field a bit; hold onto your passions but occasionally dip your toe into the grammar and idioms of new musical waters. One of my favourite things on YouTube at the moment is TwinsthenewTrend . It’s very simple: two brothers sit in a room at home and film themselves listening to a song from an unfamiliar genre or artist for the first time. Fans write in with suggestions, ranging from Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ to Pavarotti singing Puccini’s Nessun dorma . The standout is their reaction to Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight.’ It’s sublime! No wonder it’s already had over 7 million hits! The same goes for writing, of course, or the visual arts, or movies with subtitles, or even textile installations. One of my favourite movies is an almost absurdly slow Turkish film, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia , directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan in 2011. It would never have occurred to me to watch it until a Turkish friend mentioned it and I noticed that it was screened on BBC 2 one night. It is dark, laconic, beautifully filmed and occasionally hilarious. That does not mean you will stick with everything you hear. I can appreciate the artistry of ‘Mongolian throat singing’, but I’m a long way off from adding it to my latest chill-out playlist. In fact, let’s face it, unless a true fan guides me through it, I’m unlikely to give it a further thought. But that’s what we so often need, isn’t it? An enthusiast to get us started. It doesn’t matter much what you explore, just as long as you do. An antidote to a fragmenting world There is method to all this, however. Much as I do like staring into space or going down Wikipedia-rabbit-trails for the sake of it, I actually think this enterprise is vital. We are all horribly aware of the ways in which western countries are fragmenting, often in extreme violence, but invariably with mutual suspicion. As a result, we may even regard the art forms of those on the ‘wrong side’ of our own boundaries as symptomatic or even inciting of such violence. Take the typical response from many white people to rap or grime, for example. But by entering into the thought worlds and ‘imaginaries’ of a different bunch of people, we just might begin to understand where they are coming from. And we will perhaps realise why dominant patterns or clichés (about which we never give a second thought) pall or even offend: like the movies depicting All-American heroes reliably defusing global threats, or Christ figures modelled on the extreme sentimentalism of Warner Sallman’s Aryan Jesus, or the easy resolutions of predictable chordal progressions. Then, we might just begin to see that the world does not revolve around our own, egocentric perspective on reality, and that there really is something more reliable by which to understand both our own lives and the lives of others (who are not so different after all). For the Christian believer needs to grow an innate sensitivity to coordinates derived not from the compass, but from the one who made the east and west, and was able to deal with our failings by separating us from them further than the east is from the west.

by the Rabbit Room Chris Thiessen (Keeper of the Books, Rabbit Room Store Expert, and Encyclopedic Source of all Musical Knowledge) has compiled a reading list and a streaming playlist that together represent the speakers, subjects, and artists involved in Hutchmoot: Homebound. They are vast. We’ve also got some fun goodies to share from Growley Leather, so be sure to scroll to the bottom. This reading list is a great way to dive into the goodness that awaits you and familiarize yourself with voices such as Mark Meynell, Heidi Johnston, Malcolm Guite, Helena Sorensen, and Jonathan Rogers. Chris threw a few Inkling classics in there, too (Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien, etc). Click here to view the Homebound Reading Collection in the Rabbit Room Store. Likewise, this streaming playlist will give you a sampling of songs by Sara Groves, John Mark McMillan, Propaganda, Joshua Luke Smith, Taylor Leonhardt, and Jess Ray—plus it’s curated with great care around the theme of “Homebound.” Thanks, Chris! Click here to view the full Homebound playlist on Spotify. And click here to view the full Homebound playlist on Apple Music. One of our long-time Hutchmoot partners is Growley Leather. They make some amazing bags, journals, hats, guitar straps, and more. Better yet, they’ve got lots of Rabbit Room-themed items, complete with the Rabbit logo. Click here to check out their store and see if there’s something for you. Click here to register for Hutchmoot: Homebound.

by the Rabbit Room Wherein Adam Whipple reads his poems “The Knowing is in Silence” and “Swimming at Meads,” Helena Sorensen reads her piece Feelings Like Water , and Drew Miller shares the third Word of Befuddlement: obloot. Feelings Like Water first appeared on the Rabbit Room blog in November of 2018, offering the densely-packed metaphor of snow to name some of the most vulnerable and intimate motions of the soul—from birth to childhood to adolescence to adulthood. In less than one thousand words, Helena manages to illustrate the many deaths and rebirths that define a human life. Words of Befuddlement Words of Befuddlement is a special Molehill Podcast segment inspired by games like Dictionary and Balderdash. In fact, it’s no different, except that the word in question doesn’t exist anywhere other than in the notorious mind of Pete Peterson (so don’t go looking for it in a dictionary). Each week, Drew Miller (host of The Molehill Podcast) will share a new Word of Befuddlement and ask you to send in your very own definition to drew@rabbitroom.com . The following week, he will read some of the definitions he received and reveal the “correct” definition as determined by Pete. The third Word of Befuddlement, shared in today’s episode, is the noun “obloot.” You can send in your very own definition of “obloot” to Drew, and he might just read it on next week’s show. And who knows? You may even guess correctly. Click here to listen to “S1 E3: Feelings Like Water.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Artwork by the inimitable Stephen Crotts Words of Befuddlement graphic by Mindy Cook Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “Kindred Spirits” by Analog Heart “In the Shattering of Things” by Hammock

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast  is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Dr. Irwyn Ince, pastor and author of The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best . In this episode, Jonathan and Irwyn talk about beauty’s refusal to be possessed, the aesthetic impact of pursuing racial justice, and the joy to be found in responding to God’s calling—even and especially when that call entails “divine dissatisfaction.” Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 37 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.

by Matt Conner The experience doesn’t matter. The expertise isn’t real. For singer-songwriter Mindy Smith , the writing process is as mystical as ever, an elusive exercise that remains unpredictable despite her 15 year-plus run as a performing artist. Acclaimed albums. TV appearances. Endless tour dates. Film placements. Hit singles. None of it changes a thing. For these reasons, the creative pursuit remains as vulnerable as ever, an imposing form of the Resistance at work in her world. But as Mindy explains in this episode of the podcast, the work requires thick skin. Criticism is inevitable, and the artist must let it roll time and again. Fortitude and fragility are strange bedfellows, but Mindy says both are essential to her craft as a songwriter. It’s a mix to which we can all relate as we seek to do the work before us. To chase the dream, to bring about the imagined, to pin down the evasive—we must enter the fragility of the unknown and walk it out with an unfounded confidence. Click here to listen to this newest episode of The Resistance. And here to learn more about The Resistance Podcast. Matt Conner is a former pastor and church planter turned writer and editor. He’s the founder of Analogue Media and lives in Indianapolis.

by Ben Palpant I’ve always been a storyteller. My poor mother! I used to recount every life event in technicolor for her, even movies. She didn’t have to see the movies herself; her son had already reenacted them in their entirety. I think I told stories to know that I wasn’t alone. I wanted to see if the story made others feel the way that it made me feel. I wanted to see if it moved them and transformed them, too. Turns out, we’re all story-reading and storytelling creatures by design. That’s our factory setting. We have no other way of interpreting existence. No wonder the Bible is roughly 45% story, 30% poetry, and 25% discourse on the story and poetry. God knows how he wired us. Indeed, The Gospel itself is a story. Our word “Gospel” comes from the Old English word “God-spell.” Spell originally meant “story.” So they called a good story a “gód spell.” When the early Christian missionaries arrived in England, they called the Greek word evangelion the “gód spell” which later became the gospel, or the good story. You might even say The Gospel is the powerful enchantment. It is God’s enchantment of the world. God is weaving a spell, a story, of which Christians are a part. I learned this from Matthew Dickerson’s delightful book, From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy . You should read it, especially since he’s speaking at Hutchmoot: Homebound this year (hint, hint!). But here’s my point: God wired us for story. We reflect on our existence in narrative form. We tell stories while living a story within the larger story God is telling. The Gospel is the meta-narrative that makes sense of all our individual stories. It began at creation and continues even now while we’re together. Tonight, when you lose your temper with your spouse, the Gospel story includes that moment. Tomorrow, when you wake up worrying about your job or your friend or what you’ll serve for dinner, the Gospel story includes that moment. A 2014 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Your Brain Loves Storytelling,” describes how brain chemistry responds to stories like it responds to laughter or chocolate. Stories trigger the release of oxytocin, dopamine, cortisol, and endorphins that predispose us for open receptivity. That’s one reason why stories are such a powerful means of persuasion. They can move us emotionally, transform us spiritually, and propel us to action in ways that simple truth claims fail to do. According to Michael Ward, that’s why C. S. Lewis stopped debating. It was a tactical move. Lewis came to realize the power of story to shape us and change us. He recognized that no amount of debates or propositions could surpass story’s ability to engage people at a heart level. Take, for example, this statement from Psalm 14: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” We can understand that claim with our mind, but we come to know this truth through our “chests” (a term C. S. Lewis used to describe the affections) when we read of Elijah’s epic showdown with Jezebel’s prophets on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18) or David’s showdown with Goliath (I Samuel 17) or Christ’s parable in Matthew 21. Those are powerful, narrative expressions of the truth that God is on his throne and he does as he pleases (Psalm 115:3) regardless of what fools may say. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe unpacks this truth claim so vividly that children grown to adulthood still remember how much they longed for Aslan to return so that Lucy would be proven correct and so the witch’s curse might get unwound. Looking intellectually at the statement, “The fool says, ‘There is no God,'” is like looking at truth through a simple piece of glass. You can see it clearly enough, but when we look at the truth through a story, we see it through a prism that refracts the truth into something more colorful and more meaningful. Without stories, the truth tends to remain in the brain without truly affecting us. Stories help truth travel those essential eighteen inches from our head to our heart where real change begins. Maybe that’s one reason why Jesus is a storyteller. Maybe that’s why he continues the prophetic work of storytelling as a way of unveiling the kingdom of God for people wrapped around the axle of political partisanship and social upheaval. Jesus knows that the heart is the core engine of our being and that stories are the way to move them emotionally, transform them spiritually, and propel them into kingdom work. Stories help truth travel those essential eighteen inches from our head to our heart where real change begins. Ben Palpant Stories have a remarkable ability to powerfully and permanently speak into our lives. In some respects, God uses stories to move mountains. If ever there was a mountain, it was king David. The anointed one. The slayer of lions. The boy hero. The warrior poet. He became so popular and so strong that he could look out over his kingdom, see a beautiful woman, and say, “I’ll take that one.” What’s going to move a mountain like David? Does Nathan come in swinging the law like a world renowned debater? No. David already knows God’s law. He even delights in God’s law. Ignorance of God’s law wasn’t the problem. Clearly, intellectual assent to God’s law wasn’t the issue, either. David’s desires were the problem. In this particular case, God’s law had not made the necessary journey from his head to his heart. Only a story could sneak between David’s natural defenses and reach his heart. Did you know that the amygdala is triggered whenever something we really care about is attacked? It is the self-protection mechanism, triggering emotion and adrenaline. If a person’s identity is threatened, the brain goes into self-protection mode. Have you noticed this happen in your own life? Someone comes to you with a political agenda you don’t like, you feel your heartbeat increase, your words don’t come out right, you start getting frustrated. This happens in marriage, too. All your spouse is doing is pointing out one little flaw in your character, but you blow it out of proportion! Nathan took the amygdala out of play when he said, “Once upon a time…” He got David to lean in. When he had David’s whole mind, heart, and body involved in the story, he brought down the hammer, saying, “You are the man!” If you want to cultivate people, to make them actually change, imitate Nathan. Stop sermonizing. Preaching and sermonizing, by the way, are not the same thing. Sermonizing is sparring. Sermonizing is what we do on Facebook: always qualified by, “I don’t usually do this, but…” Preaching, however, is teaching. Preaching is shepherding. Good preaching reminds us of the story, unpacks the story, expounds on the story, and applies the story so that we are profoundly changed. And what kind of change we get will depend very much on the kind of stories we tell—and whether our stories are stirring proof texts that God does, indeed, exist.

by Jonathan Rogers The first TED talk I remember ever watching was “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” by Elizabeth Gilbert, in 2009. If you aren’t among the 19 million people (literally) who have watched this talk, or if you just want to relive the magic, here’s the link . There’s a lot of good stuff in that talk, but the thing that has most stuck with me these eleven years is Gilbert’s account of the way the word “genius” has changed through the centuries. The ancients believed that “creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.” The Romans called this attendant spirit a “genius”: They believed that a genius was a sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artist’s studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work. —Elizabeth Gilbert So, for the Romans, “genius” was something that existed outside the artist. But around the Renaissance or soon thereafter, people started to think of creativity as something that comes from the individual instead of something that comes to the individual. “And from that time in history,” says Elizabeth Gilbert, “you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius instead of having a genius.” The idea of having a genius, being attended by a genius, protects the artist from many of the neuroses and unhealthy habits of mind that beset artists: If your work was brilliant, you couldn’t take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed—not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame. —Elizabeth Gilbert You are not your gift. Jonathan Rogers I don’t know whether Elizabeth Gilbert actually believes in attendant spirits. It’s not always easy to discern when she’s speaking literally and when she’s speaking figuratively. But I can tell you that the best stuff I’ve ever written has always felt like it was coming from some place that wasn’t between my ears. And the idea that creativity originates in the individual human brain—that strikes me as at least as superstitious and woo-woo as the idea that creativity originates outside the individual human brain. Creativity is a mystery; you are not your gift. Or, as Elizabeth Gilbert puts it, Allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is the vessel, the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun. It just completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. —Elizabeth Gilbert It’s not your job to be a genius. It’s your job to sit down and do the work. There are mysteries at play in all creative endeavors. Those mysteries are beyond your grasp. That’s all the more reason for you to double down on what is within your grasp—staying in the chair, putting words on the page, resisting the urge to check social media or (as the case may be) to fold another load of laundry. Tend to your business. Hopefully your genius will show up. This piece was originally shared in Jonathan’s weekly Habit Newsletter. If you’d like your own inbox to be graced with such insight—and with staggering frequency, at that—you can sign up for it by clicking here. Jonathan Rogers is the author of The Terrible Speed of Mercy, one of the finest biographies of Flannery O’Connor we've ever read. His other books include the Wilderking Trilogy–The Bark of the Bog Owl, The Secret of the Swamp King, and The Way of the Wilderking–as well as The World According to Narnia and a biography of Saint Patrick. He has spent most of his adult life in Nashville, Tennessee, where he and his wife Lou Alice are raising a houseful of robustious children.

by Matt Conner We’re not sure how Alisa Xayalith or Thom Powers crafted something so meaningfully synthetic, but their new album, Recover , is a heartening, even healing listen. Together, the duo known as The Naked & Famous has played to vast crowds on six continents over the last decade, since the release of 2010’s Passive Me, Aggressive You . However, over the last few years, the native New Zealanders called their craft into question. It wasn’t just a musical break. Instead, each of them endured a difficult personal season marked by loss, depression, confusion and, for Thom, a near-death experience. On the other side, Alisa and Thom found the creative spark to return with lessons learned. You can hear the results in the title track of their new album, Recover : I can’t replace the loss of the mother I can’t erase the loss of my father I can’t replace the loss with another But I can regain myself and recover —”Recover,” The Naked & Famous For those of you facing the same—a halt in creative momentum, a hopeless season of despair—you should know that something substantive is taking shape even as you cannot see it. This episode features an honest conversation about how meaningful art can somehow emerge in the face of so much resistance. Click here to listen to this newest episode of The Resistance. And here to learn more about The Resistance Podcast. Matt Conner is a former pastor and church planter turned writer and editor. He’s the founder of Analogue Media and lives in Indianapolis.

by Mark Meynell It’s the stuff of little girls’ (and not a few little boys’, no doubt) dreams: a vast portrait-lined hall, say, glittering in a forest of sparkling chandeliers, filled with serried ranks of men in white tie and tails, radiant women in sumptuous gowns, and the sounds of an orchestra on fire. But this is no fairy tale. Welcome to the grandest balls of nineteenth century Vienna. Welcome to that epitome of Viennese style: the Waltz. Music and movement have always been inextricably linked. With rhythms that correspond to, and profoundly influence, something as basic as our heartbeats, music has always had an uncanny ability to get people off their backsides! One of the fundamental refinements of this has been the lilt of music in 3/4 time. UM-cha-cha, UM-cha-cha, UM-cha-cha . There, you see! Your toes are already tapping. Now, you might think that the waltz is confined to a bygone world, but it’s alive and kicking in surprising places. Take Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” or Jimi Hendrix’s “Manic Depression”! Just as great, but less well concealed, is Leonard Cohen’s “Thanks for the Dance.” Still, there are surprises in store within its original setting, because each one of these examples somehow articulates an emotional mood entirely different from the others. It seems the waltz is as good a vehicle for expressing the breadth of human experiences as any other (a bit like its namesake, Christoph, for that matter). Tales from the Vienna Wood (Op. 325, IJS 149) Johann Strauss Jr (1825-1899, Austrian) Vienna Philharmonic, Robert Stolz (cond.) Just as it would be wrong to start anywhere other than Vienna, so we must open with Johann Strauss Jr, son of Johann Strauss. The father was good, but the son was a genius. He was the waltz king. You probably know the Blue Danube (a total misnomer by the way, if you’ve ever visited Vienna) from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , so it would be a waste to include it here. Instead, we’ll lightly traipse through the city’s surrounding forest. Here is joy, excitement and joie-de-vivre all at once. It’s sure to put a spring in your step (much needed in these strange days). Take your partners, please… Entr’acte and Waltz with Chorus from Eugene Onegin (Op. 24: Act II, Sc 1) Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893, Russian) Neil Shicoff (‘Lenski’, tenor) , Dmitri Hvorostovsky (‘Onegin’, bass) , St. Petersburg Chamber Choir, Orchestre De Paris, Semyon Bychkov (cond.) Instead of sweeping the room up, we now encounter a waltz vicariously on stage. But in Tchaikovsky’s operatic adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel, this dance is a crucial plot element. We are in that archetypal romantic drama: you know, two eligible bachelors, two gorgeous but different sisters, etc. You can guess the rest. Almost. A moral of the story is, be careful who you dance with… But this opening to Act 2 barely hints of the drama to come. Instead, its melody is just wonderful and exuberant. You’ll be humming it for days. (By the way, the protagonist’s surname is pronounced, Oh-NYAY-gin with a hard ‘g’; most definitely not a drinks order in a pub). Waltz in F major Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, Russian) Lera Auerbach (piano) Since we’re in Russia, it would be a shame to miss this little gem. Who knew that one of the greatest novelists in history had a nice little sideline in waltzes? I, for one, had no idea. This is just a delight. Here is whimsy and wistfulness, with perhaps a touch of melancholy, but it is all so deft and light. At only a minute and a half, it is like a miniature crystal ornament on the mantelpiece: easily overlooked but pregnant with personal meaning for those who love it. Slavonic Dance No. 10 ‘Allegretto grazioso’ (in E Minor, Op. 72, No. 2) Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904, Czech) Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek   (cond.) Tolstoy’s melancholy has now become full-blown in Dvorak’s treatment. The 3/4 tempo is restrained and full of pathos, with memories of youthful joys perhaps now lost. Those joys suddenly have full voice about halfway through, perhaps as we are transported but to the glory days. Yet the heartbreak is just too strong to resist for long. We’re back in the sweeping strings of the first melody and the tears perhaps start to well up. Waltz No. 6 in D-Flat, Op. 64 No. 1 “The Minute” Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849, Polish) Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) And now for something completely different. Not a scintilla of nostalgia here; this is a distillation of keyboard fireworks exclusively bottled for the drawing room salon. Ashkenazy is one of my favourite musicians and he makes it all so effortless here (which was undoubtedly Chopin’s intention). ‘Minute’ Waltz was not Chopin’s title—he originally called it the ‘Puppy Waltz’, believe it or not?!—so nobody seriously tries to play it in under 60 seconds since that would guarantee an unpleasant mess on the floor. More commonly, it takes up to around two minutes. But it is a piece of pianistic showmanship. Listeners of the long-running BBC Radio 4 panel show Just A Minute will recognise it for sure. La Valse/The Waltz (1919/20) Maurice Ravel (1875-1937, French) Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (cond.) So, as we conclude, what finer encapsulation of European civilisation can you get than the waltz in all its glamour and romance? But notice the date of composition. We’re only a year or so after the end of the Frist World War, an event so catastrophic and destructive that ‘European civilisation’ had become a contradiction in terms. Ravel himself had been an ambulance driver during the conflict (like a number of other artistic people including Ralph Vaughan Williams, e. e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Jerome K. Jerome, Gertrude Stein, and Jean Cocteau). But he commandeers this throwback to the nonchalance of an aristocratic age and subverts it cha by cha . The UM-cha-cha is relentless but the mood and tone become increasingly deranged, even though it keeps being jerkily interrupted. This is no romantic flight of fancy. Ravel has transformed the waltz into a tragic emblem of cultural disintegration. Ravel originally conceived of it as a ballet, but it is more normally performed as a concert piece (perhaps because it is only around thirteen minutes). It begins rather murkily, as if a ball is taking place in a room or house next door. But we are never able to ignore it, since it whirls and cascades, drawing more and more people into its almost demonic rhythm. (Listening, I am always reminded of that Mark Gertler painting from this era referenced in my engagement with the film 1917 ). La Valse ’s final minute or so is manic and destructive. The trenches have killed off that old glamourous world once and for all. Still, some listeners disagree; they would see this as the ultimate waltz, almost an apotheosis of the form, with all the wild, bacchanalian fervour that an all-or-nothing dance demands. Either way, once Ravel had done with it, the waltz could never be the same again. P.S. Before anyone gets wrong ideas, I want to state categorically that I am in no sense a dancer. Two left feet and all that. Past experience has clearly taught that the consequence usually features red faces and broken bones. But I appreciate great art when I see it. Just don’t ask me to take a partner onto the dance floor (into the ring?). It’s just not worth it.

by Adam Whipple The country of radio theater has long been depopulated, but still its fields are fertile as ever they were. There, the imagination grows high, strengthened by roots which must dig deep to find purchase. Artists and craftspeople have long known: a good way to enrich one’s work is by limiting materials. Take away a color or two from your palette. Use only hand tools on your woodwork. Cook your meat plain, with heat, smoke, and nothing else. In radio theater, we forego our eyes; therefore our minds rocket into the realms of possibility. So goes A. S. Peterson’s Frankenstein . Produced by Oasis Audio and Rabbit Room Press, Peterson’s stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel is now available in audiobook form . Released just in time for Halloween, it’s fitting for any season of the year. With the sound effects, the music, and the heart-turning work of original cast members Jared Reinfeldt, Euriamis Losada, and Morgan Davis, it serves as a fresh spin on the classic monster story. Mary Shelley’s novel is a curious narrative to adapt. While it has a long history of adaptation—the first play premiered in 1823—the original material, published in 1818, is highly literary for today’s audiences. Furthermore, it’s told by multiple narrators in retrospect, or through the proxy of personal letters. Shelley rather mutes the action in favor of an emotional inner narrative. Peterson manages to balance both styles, the original and his own fresh take, and keep listeners on the edge of their seats. He couches the story within a well-spun courtroom drama on the north-bound ship, keeping the first-person narratives as bookends and markers and delving seamlessly into the adventure we would expect from a tale of travel, deep ethics, and supernatural science. Inevitably, retellings of Shelley’s tale tend toward such creative liberties. Peterson’s play in particular leans heavily into the metaphysical and Biblical themes that Shelley only brought out to a point. Personally, Mary Shelley was demonstrably irreligious, though she both maintained an obvious sense of moral injustice about some issues and, exacerbating her unflattering image, suffered the postmortem indignity of historians making much ado of the more lurid details of her life. Her storytelling borrows generously from Enlightenment philosophy, even at times seeming to hold any Biblical source material at arm’s length. Peterson’s exploration of the text focuses in on the narrative of God and Adam as the pattern of Frankenstein and his creature. Don’t try and listen to this while you’re washing dishes or folding laundry. You’ll stop your work, I promise you. This rendition is worth every minute of a quiet evening, seated with a cup of tea, eyes closed in rapt attention. The performance is completely immersive, brilliantly edited to be set against the creaking of a ship, the singing of birds, and the sounds of various chambers. Listening in stereo is helpful as well, as the tracking and mix-work is such that one can hear the characters speaking from different places in and out of rooms. As with all good stories, this one walks easily upon ground where sermons may falter, leaning into the imagination to ease open our painted-shut windows onto a true country. Adam Whipple Jared Reinfeldt as Victor is wonderful at maintaining a sense of emotional continuity amid differing timelines, incrementally working the good doctor to a fever pitch of professional, then fearful, obsession. Euriamis Losada proves himself an able character actor and a powerful explorer of the human psyche as the creature. The role is so obviously outsized, often in danger of being made cartoonish, but Losada brings gravitas and humanity. Where Shelley’s written creature requires a few imaginative gymnastics to believe its motivations, Losada’s portrayal, bolstered by Peterson’s text, is all too believable, his character’s sins all too ubiquitous. Peterson roots the character in the moral fabric that Shelley seemed at times to eschew. Particularly plaintive is the journey of Morgan Davis’s Elizabeth. Her grace both with Victor and with his creature is the keystone of Peterson’s invention and adaptation. She alone looks the creature full in the face and grants him humanity. This might be the best fruition of the feminism inherent in Shelley’s writing. If her novel fought for the rights of women simply by dint of its author’s gender, Peterson’s treatment fights for women’s humanity by having a woman as its most ardent champion of the Image of God in mankind. Elizabeth recognizes the creature as a person , the Adam so reluctantly alluded to in the original book. Additional moments that give life to the story are the family scenes and the foreshadowing dialogue of the shipmates. The world feels so real, having just enough detail to leave the listener wanting more. The whole performance clocks in at just over two hours, but its scenes are divided helpfully into tracks. As with all good stories, this one—Shelley’s, Peterson’s—walks easily upon ground where sermons may falter, leaning into the imagination to ease open our painted-shut windows onto a true country. To see this as a spectacle on the stage is magnificent, but now, to see it in our minds at any time, is a gift. Click here to view the Audiobook CD in the Rabbit Room Store. And click here to view the audiobook on Audible.

by Jen Rose Yokel We like to say around here that “community nourishes art,” and there is no joy like watching a piece of art grow from the seeds of friendship into a finished work. We’re excited to let you know our friend and contributor Janna Barber is about to release her debut memoir Hidden in Shadow . I met Janna at Hutchmoot 2011, and over the years have found in her a kindred writer spirit, someone who desires to grow in her craft and offer hope through her words. It’s been an honor to support her through the process of writing, revision, and preparing for release day. We had a conversation about the eight-year making of Hidden in Shadow , the challenges of vulnerable storytelling, and her hope for the readers who experience her story. Congratulations on your new book! I know this has been a long time coming, and I’m so excited for people to finally read it! How long have you been working on it? I’ve been dreaming of writing my own memoir ever since I first read Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, way back in 2002. I wanted to share a collection of powerful stories like Anne’s, only from the perspective of someone who grew up in a Christian home in the South. But it took several years of blogging and becoming a member of the Rabbit Room community to gather up the courage to start writing that book. It was after the second Hutchmoot that I finally got serious about it, and I finished the first draft in April of 2019. That’s almost eight years if you do the math, but I can assure you that I spent a lot more time not writing during those years than writing. I quit many times, for long periods of time, and I struggled to believe that my words were worth sharing with the world. But eventually I cobbled enough stories together that a theme emerged, and once I recognized that theme, I was able to get behind it enough to finish the work. How would you describe your book? And what do you want readers to know going in? Hidden in Shadow is a memoir, not a how-to kind of book. It’s a collection of stories from my life that demonstrate the value of expressing doubt and sorrow in an honest way. I don’t believe there’s a formula for how to deal with grief, so I tried to steer clear of providing easy take-aways for my readers. Instead, I chose to examine my memories with an eye focused on redemption, but hopefully not in a way that feels forced or fake. I’d like for people to be able to see themselves in my experiences, to feel a little less alone, and a lot more seen and understood. The subtitle is Tales of Grief, Lamentation, and Faith — certainly not light subjects, but so important. Can you talk about why you chose to focus on grief in this book? For much of my life I felt forbidden to grieve, but I don’t think I thought grief was bad. I simply never saw anyone engage in it, so I didn’t realize it was a thing I could do, let alone need. I just knew that I was scared to cry in front of others, and felt that outwardly expressing any emotions besides thankfulness, praise, or repentance would be some sort of betrayal of my faith. Even though I experienced a lot of anger and sadness during that time, I felt ashamed of those emotions, and tried to hide them from everyone. But the result of that hiding was severe depression and a complete lack of joy and hope. Depression led me to therapy, which was the first place I experienced permission to grieve. I later began writing as a way to give myself more permission to grieve. What surprised me was that both of those processes led me toward hope, and eventually joy. Once I began to see that vital connection, I knew I had to share it with others, regardless of how heavy it might seem to some. You share a lot of vulnerable stories in this book. How did it feel to put them in writing, knowing others would read them? It was pretty scary at first, and I still worry about what others might think of me from time to time. But I know that the stories that have made a lasting impact on my heart contain that same vulnerability. And when I think about the fact that others might find healing through my stories, it makes the fear less threatening. What do you hope for people to experience when they read Hidden in Shadow ? I hope people will begin to see vulnerability as a strength, and not a weakness. I also hope my readers will find permission to feel all their feelings, without any shame, and that might, in turn, build their faith in a God who accepts and loves them just as they are—no matter what they’re feeling or expressing. Earlier this year, you also put out a book of poetry! I’d love to hear how those writing experiences compared for you. I know for me, as a writer, telling the truth in a poem can feel very different from telling it in an essay or memoir type of piece. Curious how that is for you. I think poetry is more mysterious than straight forward essays, so there’s a lot more room to say things that mean something different to you than they do to your reader. In that way it feels less vulnerable to me. However, I don’t think I’m as good of a poet as I am an essay writer, so I’m a bit more proud of my memoir than I am my poetry book. Then again, there’s nothing quite so powerful as hitting on the exact right metaphor and finding a form and sound that expresses it well, too. When that happens you might find yourself crying without knowing why. Poetry is special like that, and I hope I’ll always be able to write it. Okay, maybe this is too soon and the worst question to ask a writer, but… what are you working on now? (Or is there something you’d like to try in the future?) I would love to try a novel at some point, but I need a lot more practice with plotting and the ability to hone in on appropriate details. A couple of weeks ago I had an idea for a new work of nonfiction, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I didn’t think that would happen until next year, if ever, so I was pleasantly surprised. I look forward to writing in a more focused and regular way than I did with this book, so hopefully I’ll finish the next one in less than eight years! Hidden in Shadow releases from Thistle Bound Press December 4th and is now available for preorder at the Rabbit Room Store . Jen Rose Yokel is a poet, freelance writer, and spiritual director. Her words have appeared at She Reads Truth, CCM Magazine, and other publications, and she released her first poetry collection Ruins & Kingdoms in 2015. Originally from Central Florida, she now makes her home in Fall River, Massachusetts with her husband Chris, where you can find her enjoying used bookstores and good coffee.

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast  is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Crystal Downing, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College and author of Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy Sayers . Jonathan Rogers and Crystal Downing discuss the danger of Christian celebrity, the strategy of shock in Dorothy Sayers’ work, and the subversion at the very heart of the Christian faith. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 46 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.

by Jonny Jimison Jonny Jimison is back with artistic insight and empathy in this 27th edition of Rabbit Trails. Click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

by Chris Thiessen I see the world of art as one expansive tapestry. No particular work exists in a vacuum; its fabric overlaps its artistic neighbors. Dyes blend. Threads interweave. Over time, a gorgeous picture is revealed made of myriad strands that—while precious in their individual ways—are elevated by their intricate connections to and contrasts with each other. Thus, I love digging into my favorite musicians’ influences, competitors, and companions. Because if you listen closely enough, you’ll hear each one expressed in their music. Take the Beatles for example (because I always use the Beatles). You can hear the “Woo!” of Little Richard on their song “ Oh! Darling ,” or their Beach Boys nod on “ Back in the USSR ,” or their attempt to one-up the reckless loudness of The Who on “ Helter Skelter .” Each song is wonderful without knowing how it connects to the larger tapestry of art, but picking up on these little Easter eggs of influence just fills me with such delight. The influence of art on new art becomes even more interesting when different media and styles cross-pollinate. A painting may inspire a poem that gives voice to the emotions it conjures, or a film may bring to life the words of an author, either through adaptation or abstract inspiration. Of course, this sort of cross-pollination can be done poorly. The filmmaker could just copy onto the screen what is written on the page. The poet could create a word picture of the painting without any expression of why she believes the painting to be worthy of her time. These expressions don’t add anything to the tapestry of art but a shiny new coat of fabric paint to cover the original. Sometimes, however, an artist is able to adorn a thread from the tapestry—extending it, changing it, and giving both the new artwork and its inspiration elevated importance. This concept is at work in the wonderful ballad “ Runaway ” by singer-songwriter Jess Ray, which takes the children’s story Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown—a story about a bunny who wants to leave his mother who promises faithfully to run after him no matter how far he runs—and recontextualizes it by connecting this show of relentless love to the love of God who promises to pursue every lost child. Each time I read Brown’s story or hear Ray’s song, I’m reminded of the other. Each is enriched by the other, and I, the listener/reader, feel doubly nourished by their connection. To further express this idea, we’ve asked a handful of friends to share some of their favorite songs inspired by literature. Some are humorous (Leonard Nimoy’s “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”, Tom Lehrer’s “Oedipus Rex”); some are hope-filled (Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips’ “I Will Find A Way”); some are a gut punch (J. Cole’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”). But with every song, the tapestry is expanded, adorned, and made truer. Listen at the links below, and keep reading for a full list of songs and their novels, stories, and poems that inspired them. Click here to listen on Apple Music. And click here to listen on Spotify. Biblical Literature “Two Doves” – Dirty Projectors ( Song of Solomon ) “Wisdom” – Jill Phillips ( The Book of Proverbs ) “Song of Songs” – Pierce Pettis ( Song of Solomon ) “Samson” – Regina Spektor ( The Book of Judges ) “The Transfiguration” – Sufjan Stevens ( The Gospel of Matthew ) The Greeks “Ulysses” – Josh Garrels ( The Odyssey – Homer) “Wait For Me” – Anaïs Mitchell (The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) “It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)” – Arcade Fire (The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) “Daedalus” – Thrice (The myth of Daedalus) “Oedipus Rex” – Tom Lehrer ( Oedipus Rex – Sophocles) Shakespeare “Romeo and Juliet” – Dire Straits ( Romeo and Juliet ) “Ophelia” – Natalie Merchant ( Hamlet ) “Sigh No More” – Mumford and Sons ( Much Ado About Nothing ) “Sound + Fury” – Ella Mine ( Macbeth ) The Poets “Weight of Living, Pt. I” – Bastille (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge) “The Road Not Taken” – Bruce Hornsby & the Range (“The Road Not Taken” – Robert Frost) “Afternoons and Coffeespoons” – Crash Test Dummies (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – T.S. Eliot)|“A Boy Named Sue” – Johnny Cash (“A Boy Named Sue” – Shel Silverstein) “Adventures of Isabel” – Natalie Merchant (“Adventures of Isabel” – Ogden Nash) “Richard Cory” – Simon & Garfunkel (“Richard Cory” – Edwin Arlington Robinson) “The Stolen Child” – The Waterboys (“The Stolen Child” – W.B. Yeats) “Death, Be Not Proud” – Audrey Assad (“Death, Be Not Proud” – John Donne) “Another New World” – Josh Ritter (“Annabelle Lee” – Edgar Allan Poe) “Xanadu” – Rush (“Kubla Khan” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Classics “To The End” – My Chemical Romance (“A Rose For Emily” – William Faulkner) “A Rose For Emily” – The Zombies (“A Rose For Emily” – William Faulkner) “Don Quixote” – Gordon Lightfoot ( Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes) “Wuthering Heights” – Kate Bush ( Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë) “Valjean” – Penny and Sparrow ( Les Miserables – Victor Hugo) “The Ballad of Jody Baxter” – Andrew Peterson ( The Yearling – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings) Steinbeck “The Ghost of Tom Joad” – Bruce Springsteen ( The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck) “Timshel” – Mumford and Sons ( East of Eden – John Steinbeck) “The Pearl” – Fleming and John ( The Pearl – John Steineck) “Sweet Thursday” – Matt Costa ( Sweet Thursday – John Steinbeck) The Inklings “In the House of Tom Bombadil” – Nickel Creek ( The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien) “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” – Leonard Nimoy ( The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien) “Riddles in the Dark” – Chris Thile ( The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien) “Ramble On” – Led Zeppelin ( Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien) “Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue, Pt. 2” – Jason Gray ( The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien) “Dear Wormwood” – The Oh Hellos ( The Screwtape Letters – C.S. Lewis) “The High Countries” – Sandra McCracken ( The Great Divorce – C.S. Lewis) “The Lament of Eustace Scrubb” – The Oh Hellos ( The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S. Lewis) “Out of the Silent Planet” – King’s X ( Out of the Silent Planet – C.S. Lewis) Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Oddities “Desert Rose” – Sting ( Dune – Frank Herbert) “Empress” – The Arcadian Wild (“Harrison Bergeron” – Kurt Vonnegut) “Tomorrow Never Knows” – The Beatles ( The Psychedelic Experience – Timothy Leary) “Moon Over Bourbon Street” – Sting ( Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice) “Soma” – The Strokes ( Brave New World – Aldous Huxley) “2+2=5” – Radiohead ( 1984 – George Orwell) “Home” – Breaking Benjamin ( The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum) Contemporary Literature “For Whom the Bell Tolls” – Metallica ( For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway) “For Whom the Bell Tolls” – J. Cole ( For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway) “Thieves in the Night” – Black Star ( The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison) “Atticus” – Noisettes ( To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee) “Kumalo” – Matthew Clark ( Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton) “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” – Sufjan Stevens (“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” – Flannery O’Connor) “The Life You Chose” – Jason Isbell ( The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath) “Song For Myla Goldberg” – The Decemberists ( Bee Season – Myla Goldberg) “Rain King” – Counting Crows ( Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow) “Shadows and Tall Trees” – U2 ( Lord of the Flies – William Golding) “The God of Loss” – Darlingside ( The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy) “Take Me Down” – Son of Laughter ( The Crucible – Arthur Miller) “I Will Find A Way” – Andy Gullahorn & Jill Phillips ( Ragman And Other Cries Of Faith – Walt Wangerin) “Caught It From the Rye” – Tre Burt ( The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger) Non-Fiction Literature “Maya” – Rapsody ( I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou) “Julie” – Rhiannon Giddens ( The Slaves’ War – Andrew Ward) “Wear Your Wedding Dress” – Ben Shive ( The Mystery of Marriage – Mike Mason) “O Theo” – Matthew Perryman Jones ( Dear Theo – Vincent Van Gogh) “Skin” – Vigilantes of Love ( Dear Theo – Vincent Van Gogh) “Bus 152” – Eric Peters ( Into the Wild – Jon Krakauer) Children’s Literature “Runaway” – Jess Ray ( Runaway Bunny – Margaret Wise Brown) “Everywhere I Go” – Becca Jordan ( Wherever You Are: My Love Will Find You – Nancy Tillman) “The House At Pooh Corner” – Kenny Loggins ( The House At Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne) “Run Down” – Eric Peters ( Watership Down – Richard Adams) “Secret Garden” – Bruce Springsteen ( The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett) Thank you to all who contributed to this playlist: Janna Barber, John Barber, Jeremy Casella, Shigé Clark, Matt Conner, Steve Guthrie, Ella Horn, Jonny Jimison, J Lind, Thomas McKenzie, Mark Meynell, David Mitchel, Andrew Peterson, Pete Peterson, Russ Ramsey, Chris Slaten, Helena Sorensen, Chris Thiessen, Leslie Thompson, Janie Townsend, Jennifer Trafton, Chris Wheeler, Hetty White, Adam Whipple, Chris Yokel Click here to listen on Apple Music. And click here to listen on Spotify.

by Chris Thiessen The perfect album lands between 42 and 47 minutes. It’s long enough to embrace an emotional arc and take the listener on a journey without overstaying its welcome or veering into self-indulgence. Every so often, however, an album earns a longer stay. Indeed, some of popular music’s greatest feats are far longer than 60 minutes. Kendrick Lamar’s  To Pimp A Butterfly runs 78 minutes; Pink Floyd’s  The Wall is slightly longer at 80 minutes; the Beatles’ boundless  White Album deserves every bit of its 93 minutes (though I used to believe it was half fluff). These three are exceptions to my rule, which holds up about 95% of the time. But it’s always a special treat when, about once a year, a long listen really pays off and enters my personal canon of great music. This week, the culprit was Smashing Pumpkins with their 121-minute magnum opus,  Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness . To be honest, I had avoided this listen for years partly because of the extended runtime and partly because a random stranger at McKay’s Used Books and CDs felt the need to advise college me, “That’s a really hard listen.” I don’t know why I remember that specific encounter or why the opinions of a man I’d never met dissuaded me from listening to a record. But here we are five-ish years later, and I’m going to give you some advice as well: it’s a really hard listen. However, I love challenges. And d̶e̶s̶p̶i̶t̶e̶ because of the album’s abrasive eclecticism, flirtations with nihilism, and explorations of existentialism, Mellon Collie will prove one of the most memorable listens from 1995. Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan once ambitiously claimed the record would be  The Wall  for Generation X, and he’s not wrong. Across the album’s 28 songs, Corgan and company explore societal isolation, loneliness, love, and its distortions as proficiently as Roger Waters had done 16 years prior. Add to this a Gen-X-specific penchant for angst, and you get a generation-defining piece of art to rival ‘90s essentials  Fight Club, Nine Inch Nails’  The Downward Spiral ,  and Nirvana’s  Nevermind . It’s a musical tapestry that toes the line between chaotic and precisely composed. Chris Thiessen At the root of Corgan’s angst is anxiety about self and thoughts of a homogenized society without personality. “I fear that I am ordinary just like everyone,” he begins on “ Muzzle .” This lack of self-understanding isolates Corgan even from himself, as he sings on “ Zero ,” “My reflection, dirty mirror / There’s no connection to myself.” These thoughts fuel Corgan’s nihilistic tendencies, as he laments on “ Jellybelly ,” “There’s nothing left to do / There’s nothing left to feel / Doesn’t matter what you want,” or concedes on hit single “ Bullet With Butterfly Wings ,” “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” Despite feelings of confinement and meaninglessness, Smashing Pumpkins rage anyway and find a way to break down the homogeneity and isolation through their eclectic approach to music. Mellon Collie is a melting pot of heavy metal riffage; prog-rock experimentalism; grungy attitude; sweet, pop-sensitive melody; and an expert’s attention to texture. It sounds like everything and nothing at once—from the muddy, industrial guitars on “ Tales of a Scorched Earth ” to the dreamy autoharp on “ Cupid de Locke ” to the triumphant orchestral arrangement of “ Tonight, Tonight .” It’s a musical tapestry that toes the line between chaotic and precisely composed. Through the music itself, the Smashing Pumpkins escape the rat’s cage and leave the door open for us as well. Surprisingly, Mellon Collie is also home to some of the sweetest love lullabies of the ‘90s, something you definitely don’t find with contemporaries Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana. Though the simply-titled “ Love ” may be one of the album’s few skippers, “ Galapogos ” is one of those sad love songs, in the tradition of the Beach Boys’ “ You Still Believe In Me ” before it and Radiohead’s “ True Love Waits ” after it, that doesn’t “deny the pain,” and yet shimmers with hope born from love. If I have one complaint, it’s that their greatest song, “Tonight, Tonight,” opens the record instead of closing it. In truth, it should be the album’s climax rather than an overture—a look back at the dark journey through infinite, unchanging sadness we’ve endured and a look forward with hope to “believe that life can change / that you’re not stuck in vain.” On the other hand, maybe that beautiful exhortation to believe needed to be said upfront. Maybe it’s the guiding truth that makes the 121 minutes of existential dread, angst, doubt, and emptiness endurable. Maybe we need to remember that the song’s promise—that things will be made right, that the impossible is possible—predates and postdates the pain. Maybe sadness isn’t infinite after all. Click here to listen to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on Spotify , and here to listen on Apple Music . This post originally appeared on Chris Thiessen’s weekly newsletter, Quarter Notes. Click here to learn more and subscribe.

by the Rabbit Room The Habit Podcast  is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Tsh Oxenreider, teacher, podcaster, literary tour guide, and author of Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent. Jonathan Rogers and Tsh Oxenreider discuss the challenging art of graceful endings, the perils of the internet’s promotion of absolute accessibility, and what sets the Advent season apart from merely a “happy clappy countdown to Christmas.” Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 47 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.

by Christina Blout This past year has given us all a hard shake, and the season of Advent has been a welcome relief. It seems we’re experiencing transformation personally, within our own homes, and collectively, as a nation. We’ve all been brought face to face with our own vulnerability, fears, limitations, and need for community. Just so, it was a privilege to capture this timely conversation with author and scholar W. David O. Taylor and singer-songwriter Jason Gray, as they met for the first time to explore the topics of honesty and community in their recent works. Together, David and Jason blaze a trail for us to find peace during this time of emotional and cultural turmoil. They are trusted guides as we navigate this season, showing us how it can ultimately lead us into deeper unity, trust, intimacy, and delight with our Lord, Jesus Christ. Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life is a book released this year by W. David O. Taylor. Within its pages, we find purpose in bringing our honest anger, sadness, joys, and fears before a loving Father. We discover a life-giving source of courage in the psalms, enabling us to walk through times of uncertainty with fearless, resilient, and transparent faith. Each chapter explores different attributes of the Psalms as they relate to our turbulent emotions. They leave us much to explore and ponder on our own or with small discussion groups. David leads us to see our relationship with God and each other in a refreshingly honest way. W. David O. Taylor is Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and Director of Brehm Texas, an initiative in worship, theology, and the arts. Order Disorder Reorder is an album released this year by Jason Gray. This thought-provoking and engaging collection of eighteen songs tells the story of transformation through the seasons of order, disorder, and reorder we experience in the ebb and flow of life. The trailhead finds us skipping along, when our lives are in order, and we’re eager to get started. Five songs later, we’re led into the honest realization of our own breaking point, when our lives suddenly spin out of control into a state of disorder. Finally, we emerge on the other side of chaos to a time of reorder, and a renewed sense of identity and purpose. We’re more aware of who God is and who we are in light of that. From the emotional transparency of these songs, we discover how to embrace seasons of difficulty with honesty, courage, and anticipation. Jason Gray is a Centricity Music artist, partners in ministry with Compassion International, and shares an encouraging message of hope with radio audiences, churches, and mission organizations.

by the Rabbit Room Merry Christmas from the Rabbit Room! Can you believe we’ve made it this far? This Christmas is a complicated one, of course. We certainly wish you joy and merriment, and yet there are countless good reasons why you may not feel altogether cheerful. So on this Christmas Day, we’d like to offer you a lesson and a carol, so to speak—meaning, a poem by Andrew Roycroft and a song by Jess Ray, each of which speak specifically to where we find ourselves this Christmas. First is “Bethlehem, Year Zero” by Andrew Roycroft. This video was shot by New Irish Arts on the shores of Strangford Lough. The text of the poem is provided below the video. This year none of the pieces are in place, no finishing touch, just the rush, headlong, to make the best of things— more make-do, than make-believe, a clambering to retrieve family under one roof, to pluck some safety from the dragon’s teeth, to make a place for joy again, long looked for after labour pains, the grace to hold our griefs in one hand, and with the other, just hold on. This year has no precedent, just more numbers from the government, just more bitterness of argument, sick hearts retching on hope deferred, reading tight between the lines for a Word that might flare across the firmament and speak deliverance. But this year, we have made the best of things, found shelter here against the odds, adapted what has come to hand, rested in the grander plan that underwrites this circumstance, sees grace instead of blinded chance, and lays in this manger ark the Best beside the worst, the Light amidst the dark, the King among the filth. And Mary cradles at her breast the head of one who from obscurity will carry heaven’s destiny through thorn to crown, dandles with her hand the heel that, promised from eternity, will crush King Death into the ground. This year, we have no normal, new or old, but a different day, a dawn, a moment long foretold, now here, this year. —”Bethlehem, Year Zero” by Andrew Roycroft Accompanying this lesson is a carol recently released by Jess Ray called “Gloria, Gloria” which holds the tension of this peculiar Christmas Day with beauty and generosity of spirit. And that’s all from the Rabbit Room this year. We’ll see you in 2021.

by Hannah Hubin What do we need from a New Year’s post? What do we say? That it’s been hard? You don’t need the Rabbit Room to tell you that. That surely this year will be better? Being a poet doesn’t make you a prophet. What else you got? Eight days after Christmas, what do we have? It’s not a trick question. We’ve got an eight-day-old Jewish baby who’s still fussy because he was circumcised this morning and even the Son of God didn’t think that routine fun. The Gregorian calendar jots this down as New Year’s Day, but the church calendar started its new year at Advent. Today is the Feast of the Holy Name. Eight days old, circumcise him, name him Yeshua. “Deliver.” And two millennia later, we are still only sounding out a mystery: we the weary, the thrust forward, the weeping, the singing, the saved, we the confused, the expectant of the great hell-wave of tragedy, the caught off-guard by the blue flower in the gravel. We live life, but we cannot define it. Someday I hope I might write words simple enough to describe it. Meanwhile and always we speak the holy name and talk of all that might be meant by that holy claim to save: Yeshua, Yeshua, Yeshua: Ours the land remade, the sky reframed, ours the inheritance, ours the stars and sand, the colors never seen and notes never heard except caught sometimes as an old echo in our minds between two waves of the sea, ours all the words we have not yet learned to speak; and so we speak the one word we have been given: Yeshua, Yeshua, Yeshua: Ours the year we’re beginning and the strange grace of today when, for one day out of the year, the entire western world and beyond agrees that something is being made new and celebrates that together. Yeshua. Ours the white stone and the coming feast of our own holy names. Yeshua. Men speak it as a promise, a lament, often as a blessing, often spat as a curse: Yeshua. And here at the beginning of 2021, it is all I can think to say: Yeshua. This is what we’ve got. And with each new year, we have never been so near to putting a face with the name: Yeshua. Click here to read more of Hannah ’s writing at her Instagram account.

by Adam Roycroft The term “cognitive dissonance” has become lamentably familiar in our culture. It describes a sense of conflict in our thinking, a feeling of being unable to line up what we see with what we believe; how we feel with how we know we should behave. Given the weight of world headlines and the proximity of the issues it describes, it is little wonder that this experience is so common. As Christians we are not immune from this. Sometimes our experience of the world, its sensations and vexations, seem to contradict what we know to be true, and seem to complicate what we have come to trust in. This is a horribly disorienting feeling to have. Of all of the biblical prophets, Habakkuk is perhaps the individual whom we could best describe as experiencing cognitive dissonance. His is a book on the brink, a book that is at breaking point, inhabiting the interface between thoroughgoing faith and outright fear. Habakkuk’s prophecy gives voice to the concerns and questions of thoughtful people within the nation who can see injustice, have cried to God for help, and are left confused at the outcome. In this post I want to reflect a little on Habakkuk’s experience, showing the emotional and lyrical range that Old Testament prophecy can achieve, and finding points of contact with our own experiences. Habakkuk can help us as we weigh the woes of our world against the character and conduct of God, providing a good starting place to find firmness where we might have begun to falter. Habakkuk’s work also provides inspiration for those whose calling is to create, showing how words which speak our deepest doubt can often engender the strongest faith. The poet, prophet, priest Habakkuk is the grey man of Old Testament prophecy. Apart from the tiniest glimpses provided by his writing, we know nothing about him at all. We don’t know anything about his family, his biography, or even his chronology. Crunching the numbers and assessing the state of the nation of Judah that he describes, lands him within the lifetime of Jeremiah, but that is about all that we can capture of him. What we do learn of him in his book, however, is highly revealing. Like a good jazz pianist, Habakkuk can employ dissonance creatively and beautifully, and gives us space to think tough thoughts. Andrew Roycroft Habakkuk was a creative man and, as often goes with that temperament, a deep thinker. He was not a prophet who could content himself with surface explanations, or who could discipline his mind not to probe into the “why” of God’s actions as well as the “what.” He had access to a word hoard which could depict the ferocity and sovereignty of God in frightening terms, and he had sufficient musical nous to translate these reflections into music. The whole third chapter of his book is a song which manages to combine cultural references, personal confession, and a sense of literary balance which is astonishing. The book of Habakkuk is what happens when the Spirit of God enables a creative thinker with the soul of a poet to take a clear eyed view of the chaos of the world. The outcome is not always comfortable, but it is compelling. As we might expect, Habakkuk writes from a distinctive angle. He dispenses with the usual formula of “God told me, now I’m telling you,” and instead writes a book which is akin to a spiritual journal. We are allowed to listen in on the prayer life of a poet-prophet, and to see the flex and fear which calling God out on his actions engenders, and the result is gut-wrenching and soul-inspiring by turns. Wicked and wickedest Habakkuk knows that his nation is in trouble, and he longs for God to intervene. The nub of the problem is justice and righteousness. The Law, designed to govern the hearts of those who would follow God, has become horribly inert, a monument to a past morality and nothing more (1:4). Cultural and judicial paralysis follow with the needs of the neediest neglected, while the appetites of the wealthiest are sated. The poor, the righteous, the godly, have neither recourse nor ally, and the trend of Judah seems to be inexorably downwards. Habakkuk can’t handle this, and so he offers his complaint to God, asking for an answer. The response he receives is not the one he had wished for. God’s answer to Habakkuk is total and terrifying. He is going to discipline Judah by sending the Babylonians. They are a fierce nation, who pay their bills in the blood of their enemies, who consume continents and cultures with voracity and viciousness. Their machinery of warfare is nightmarishly efficient, their cavalry combining the speed of leopards, the rapaciousness of wolves, and the acuity of eagles. They fish in the ocean of the world with hooks, netting nations, slaking their blood-thirst and exploiting the needy. Habakkuk is horrified. His solution for injustice was not more injustice, his antidote to arrogant leaders was not more despotic rulers. His revulsion, his confusion and discombobulation are palpable as he writes. Does God’s decree not contradict his character? How can this be justice? How can this be so? This is cognitive dissonance 101. What is refreshing for us is that Habakkuk records all of this. He doesn’t closet or privatise his fundamental struggle with the ways of God, and he doesn’t mute his voice as a poet in portraying it. As a prophet, Habakkuk excels at honesty, and as a poet he is a master at lament, liberating others within Judah to say the unsayable: namely that at a national and moral level, God doesn’t seem to be working righteousness, and his solution seems contradictory of his character. This gives us a space to breathe in the biblical account, especially if we have to handle an inner voice which insists on answers. Like a good jazz pianist, Habakkuk can employ dissonance creatively and beautifully, and gives us space to think tough thoughts. Given our national crises, given the ubiquity of injustice and inequity across our world, given the political sleight of hand which many spiritual leaders whom we have lionised in the past have pulled off, Habakkuk is a book which reestablishes our right to not remain silent when things aren’t just. Even though, even so The conclusion of Habakkuk’s prophecy greatly elevates his relevance to our own times. Having asked, and having been answered, he now composes a song for the choir to sing. It’s a song of the terrifying justice of God, the mountain-melting righteousness of his name, the tsunami sending shockwaves of his action in the world—a piece of such power that it leaves the prophet trembling in its wake. Then the conclusion sweetly dawns, and the goodness of God is planted in the bitter soil of present circumstances. Habakkuk has to handle the “even though”—even though the fig crop has failed, even though the olives are cast away, even though the cattle are destroyed, even though the symbols of national welfare will be trampled by the horror of warfare, even though. Habakkuk sings a barren harvest which dwarfs the dustbowl desolation of Steinbeck, he casts a cold eye on the hardship of our world which makes the modernist playwright or poet appear positively cheery, and he does so in the context of faith. “Even though this is where we are” is the motif of his poetry, a recurring refrain which grinds the reader’s nose further and further into the pain and penury of their times. Habakkuk is not, however, a Buddhist or a fatalist. There is an “even so” which matches the “even though,” a bedrock joy which journeys with him into a future which seems to belong to Babylon. This is the knowledge that God will strengthen him, and equip him to work through these tough times, and wait for the salvation which has been promised. Habakkuk uses Psalm 18 as a “found poem,” taking some spare parts from it to compose his own praise. God will give him the feet of a deer, so that he can scale the heights away from harm, God will not abandon him, God will uphold him, and in this there is joy. Strike up the band What is wonderful in all of this is that the choir would sing these sentiments. In the sunset years of Judah, when the the streets of Jerusalem were doomed to destruction, when injustice increased more and more, what sounds could be heard from the Temple choir? “Even though, even so.” Theirs was neither anthem nor dirge, but the deep certainty that suffering would come, but that God would be there. The joy that the string instruments would strum, that the raised voices would declare, would not be the easy joy of harvest, but soul-wrought joy from hardship. Habakkuk’s art would neither embellish difficulty nor abandon hope—he told things as they were, and as they would be. Complain creatively All of this can both help us and move us to action. Habakkuk enters into the pain of a questioning mind, a broken heart, and a creative soul, but he also gives us a pattern for our own output in a world devoid of justice and teetering on the edge of final unbelief. Habakkuk takes us to the edge of a world which could be without God, but manages to affirm sincere faith. On our part, this demands stories, songs, poems, and paintings which opt for no quick or easy answers, but that can articulate a faith strengthened in its weakness and watching its world through tears, yet with hope.