I recently came back from a conference featuring pastors/authors Rob Bell, Peter Rollins and Shane Hipps called Poets, Prophets and Preachers. It was an inspiring time and I left filled with more hope and promise for our local ministry – The Mercy House – and my own personal dreams than I have in a long time. And while I bask in the glow of a pastoral pep rally, this seems the opportune time to work through some thoughts. I It can be maddening. Painter friends of mine wonder why the canvases labored over remain unsold while older, much less technical works are the ones that sell. Musicians often speak in interviews of being surprised by the legs of a last-second addition to an album while the other “sure-fire” tracks never garner any radio spins. No matter the venue, sometimes our most valiant works go unnoticed or even refused while the half-hearted, there’s-no-way-this-will-work efforts receive all the praise. Thus, the artist, the preacher, the writer, the potter are all left in a precarious position. Of course, this is no excuse to rest on your laurels, but it also removes the longing to hold out expectations for something you cannot control. As Rob spoke, I wrote a note that I’m not sure how much was a quote and how much was my own mind working around what was being mentioned. But in that moment, I simply jotted down “…so the most you can offer is a grounded, focused, truthful effort.” There might be other, even better, descriptors, but that’s what struck me in that moment. It’s an inner calling to make things excellent, no matter what the turnout or response. And there’s also a beauty to realizing I’m turning in a less-than-stellar assignment only to receive a gracious “A”. It keeps you humble, or at least it should (rather than being lazy), and it keeps the ego in check in thinking it all depends on you. Has anyone else found this concept to be true in their own lives – their own masterpieces being ignored while watching other unexpected pieces finding themselves on center stage?

As the teaching pastor of a local church for nearly five years now, I find myself repeating certain phrases or going back to various word pictures over and over again depending on the week’s message. And since our church is highly focused on the work (and word) of reconciliation, one of the oft-kicked around phrases is “working our way back to the garden.” But I heard a phrase recently that has thrown me for a bit – perhaps taking me deeper in my understanding of this aspect of spiritual formation. Someone used the term “true selves” in reference to our position in the garden. And I immediately fell in love with it. So much of the teachings and writing concerning the Christian discipleship or spiritual formation is about working toward something new. We are usually called (out of fear) to turn from our old ways, our old man, our earthly self and invited to move toward eternal life or to have our sins forgiven, et al. Growing up, there was a lot of talk about a need to be disciplined to learn these new ways, to become the new man (with the help of the Holy Spirit, of course). And it was oftentimes a frustrating journey of my feeble attempts to grow new limbs and learn to walk again like an infant. Yet with this new analogy or understanding of our “true selves,” I realize now that it’s more than that. Sharing the gospel with someone or training someone in discipleship is not having to learn some new way of doing things or it’s not something to work toward necessarily. Instead, what if it was about calling people back to being their true selves. It’s about teaching them who they were created to be, seeing their place in the grand narrative and realizing that there’s a better way to live – one which they were originally intended to do/be in the first place. There’s a freedom in a perspective like this and it’s something I feel I’m coming alive to myself. And it’s something I hope to add to our vernacular at the Mercy House.

I intended to continue on the Moral Imagination series by referring to portions of Tolkien’s excellent essay, “On Fairy-Stories;” but the essay itself deserves its own series of posts.  I’ll start backwards, by reflecting on the latter half of Tolkien’s essay, in which he describes four gifts of the true fairy tale: Fantasy, Escape, Recovery, and Consolation. The term “fantasy” is often used to denote that genre for only very weird geeks who dress up (ahem) like their heroes in wizard’s robes, carry around swords, and go to odd conventions. In other words, it’s usually accompanied with an eye-roll so forceful that there are documented cases of blindness-by-condescension-toward-fantasy-lovers. Fantasy, Tolkien argues, is “not a lower but a higher form of art, indeed the most nearly pure form.” Great news for the geeks among us. But why is this so? Fant Against those who think that Fantasy is a waste of time or even evil, because it creates a “lie” (a story that didn’t happen), Tolkien argues that Fantasy is “a natural human activity,” because being made in the image of a Creator, making stuff is a natural human activity. The Fall may have damaged us severely and causes distortions in creative activity, but our right and inclination to do so is not lost, and in Christ, it may be redeemed. God created a world; Christ created us new; we create secondary worlds. I opened my book, Harry Potter & Imagination, with a quote from a Christian man complaining thusly about the Harry Potter stories and fiction in general: I recommend that people stop wasting their time reading fiction (lies) for entertainment, and that parents teach their children by good example to spend more time reading wholesome nonfiction with literary value (including the Bible) for education. To that, I think the old fairy-tale ending is a sufficient counter-argument, and in line with Tolkien on Fantasy: The Dreamer awakes The shadow goes by The tale I have told you, That tale is a lie. But listen to me, Bright maiden, proud youth The tale is a lie; What it tells is the truth. “They are not lies,” Tolkien said to C.S. Lewis, when the latter used that label for Myths. By “they are not lies,” Tolkien wasn’t saying, “These myths literally happened.” He was saying, “What they tell is the truth.” The traditional folk-tale ending is saying, “Sure, this tale did not actually happen; but it still tells you the truth” – the deeper truths of life about love and sacrifice. Fantasy is a gift of the true fairy-story because the desire, ability, and right to create is a gift from God, and through our creating, we communicate the truth about God.

In the front flap of Peter Rollins‘ new book, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossibles Tales, he writes: “Religious writing is usually designed to make the truth of faith clear, concise, and palatable. Parables subvert this approach. In the parable, truth is not expressed via some dusty theological discourse that seeks to educate us, but rather it arises as a lyrical dis-course that would inspire and transform us. In light of this, the enclosed parables do not seek to change our minds but rather to chnge our hearts.” In the ensuing thirty-three short parables – most averaging less than five hundred words – Pete creates a space for us to encounter Truth through story, to let it infect our own stories in such a way so that they are changed. In the introduction, Pete continues this thought: “A parable does not primarily provide information about our world. Rather, if we allow it to do its work within us, it will change our world – breaking it open to ever-new possibilities by refusing to be held by the categories that currently exist within that world. In this way the parable transforms the way we hold reality, and thus changes reality itself.” I had the chance to hear Pete share several of these stories, in his easy-to-listen-to Irish brogue, when he was in Nashville for a day or two back in March, and hearing his voice when you read them makes the reading experience more enjoyable. Leading up to the release of the book, Pete taped himself reading several of the parables and uploaded them to YouTube, which you can watch here, here and here. I’ve been reading a couple parables a day for the last week or so, letting them soak in. Here is one of my favorites Finding Faith There was once a fiery preacher who possessed a powerful but unusual gift. He found that, from an early age, when he prayed for individuals, they would supernaturally lose all of their religious convictions. They would invariably lose all of their beliefs about the prophets, the sacred Scriptures, and even God. So he learned not to pray for people but instead limited himself to preaching inspiring sermons and doing good works. However, one day while traveling across the country, the preacher found himself in conversation with a businessman who happened to be going in the same direction. This businessman was a very powerful and ruthless merchant banker, one who was honored by his colleagues and respected by his adversaries. Their conversation began because the businessman, possessing a deep, abiding faith, had noticed the preacher reading from the Bible. He introduced himself to the preacher and they began to talk. As they chatted together this powerful man told the preacher all about his faith in God and his love of Christ. He spoke of how his work did not really define who he was but was simply what he had to do. “The world of business is a cold one,” he confided to the preacher, “and in my line of work I find myself in situations that challenge my Christian convictions. But I try, as much as possible, to remain true to my faith. Indeed, I attend a local church every Sunday, participate in a prayer circle, engage in some youth work, and contribute to a weekly Bible study. These activities help to remind me of who I really am.” After listening carefully to the businessman’s story, the preacher began to realize the purpose of his unseemly gift. So he turned to the businessman and said, “Would you allow me to pray a blessing into your life?” The businessman readily agreed, unaware of what would happen. Sure enough, after the preacher had muttered a simple prayer, the man opened his eyes in astonishment. “What a fool I have been for all these years!” he proclaimed. “It is clear to me now that there is no God above, who is looking out for me, and that there are no sacred texts to guide me, and there is no Spirit to inspire and protect me.” As they parted company the businessman, still confused by what had taken place, returned home. But now that he no longer had any religious beliefs, he began to find it increasingly difficult to continue in his line of work. Faced with the fact that he was now just a hard-nosed businessman working in a corrupt system, rather than a man of God, he began to despise his activity. Within months he had a breakdown, and soon afterward gave up his line of work completely. Feeling better about himself, he then went on to give to the poor all the riches he had accumulated and began to use his considerable managerial expertise to challenge the very system he once participated in, and to help those who had been oppressed by it. One day, many years later, he happened upon the preacher again while walking through town. He ran over, fell at the preacher’s feet, and began to weep with joy. Eventually he looked up at the preacher and smiled, “Thank you, my dear friend, for helping me discover my faith.” #PeterRollins #Story #Parable #PeteRollins #Truth

From time to time I am asked about why I write stories and novels when there is “no spiritual value in it.” I disagree with the idea that there is no spiritual value in literature, both in and of itself, and as a furrowing force for the later harvest of truth. Here I want to focus on the latter. May I present some guy you’ve probably never heard of, Dr. Martin Luther: “I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.” Martin Luther, Letter to Eoban Hess, 29 March 1523. Werke, Weimar edition, Luthers Briefwechsel, III, 50. HT: Justin Taylor So bouncing off of Luther’s quotation, and in an effort to directly answer the charge that love of literature is an attack on the sufficiency of Scripture, I write. Scripture is sufficient. Preaching is needed for people to hear. If someone is deaf, they cannot hear. Since the Bible is in words, we need to develop ears to hear by understanding the use of language, words, and meaning. Reading good literature cannot help but aid this. The Bible is not one long letter written in outline form with footnotes. It is made up of multiple genres and replete with figurative language and creative literary expressions. Reading widely has many benefits, and helping us to understand the Word of God on a few different levels is only part of those benefits. The fostering of wholesome imagination alone is a deeply beneficial spiritual blessing. Bathed in test-tube modernity we chart and graph truth until it is a mere set of facts with no power, no beauty, no glory. The truth is that we are saved by a story–by news. It is an unbelievable story from the hand of the sovereign Author of life. Am I saying the Word of God is not important? No. It is infinitely important. It is the Book of books, God-breathed, inerrant. But it is a book. Books are read. By people who can read. And reading to understand usually requires extensive and wide reading. Am I saying the illuminating work of the Spirit isn’t necessary? No. The Holy Spirit illuminates his Word, but he uses our faculties as he does in so many other of his actions. Can he overcome our ignorance of poetry and allow us to understand and teach well the Psalms? Sure. But I don’t think willful ignorance of helpful resources is his prescribed method. Can God heal? Yes. Does he usually heal every ailment directly by miracles? No. He usually calls doctors and others to serve, and they learned how to do this by engagement. We must engage with words–stories, literature, poetry, figurative language, etc.–if we are to properly understand, appreciate, and help others to love God’s Word. Is there a danger in our post-modern culture of over-emphasizing the value of stories? I think so. Particularly if we are so obsessed with ourselves as the point of view characters that we lose sight of the Authorship (and Authority) of God. If we inflate the importance of our own finite perspective and correspondingly diminish the authority of the Word of God (which, sadly, is a very fashionable fad right now) then we are on the wrong street going the wrong way. But let us not be guilty of the very problem this post-modern fad has succumbed to and that is the problem of overcorrection. Stories do matter. They matter deeply. And we benefit greatly from expressing stories to one another, both wholly invented and parabolic. Let us do both. Let us love the Word. Let us also, for the glory of God and the Gospel of Christ, love words. The Bible is in words. When we love literature (different genres, as in Scripture: poetry, songs, wise sayings, letters, narrative, etc.) we become better equipped to hear. It is discouraging to hear “biblical” teaching from a man who has read so little and understands language so poorly that he falls into trap after trap of understanding which just a little reading would aid. Is it essential to be widely read? No. God in his mercy can superintend. But if you are handling words (the Word of God especially –and we are all called to this) then it is wise to have a more than surface understanding of how that works. In my view Christians ought to love books, love words, and love expression. This is how truth is conveyed. Art enables this. In other words, as with justification by grace through faith, I agree with Luther. Thankfully for him, Luther isn’t down here to be frightened by my agreement. That’s my two cents worth. Anyone have some insight to add? I would love to hear what you think.

Nashville, TN (AP Wire) Eight Nashville-based singer-songwriters, collectively named The Square Peg Alliance, recently uncovered the rare fossilized bones of a Cretaceous vodka-swilling winged super-raptor during a two-day run of concerts in the American midwest. Casualties were reported. Andrew Osenga, evidently springing to his nine-toed feet in a spontaneous sprint to the bathroom, accidentally tripped over one of his own guitar cables during a St. Louis, MO concert featuring himself and the other seven ego-centric artists. According to Andrew Peterson, a svelte, maelstrom of a man by most accounts, Osenga’s antics resulted in a large and terrifying hole in the church stage. Artists Randall Goodgame and Jeremy Casella, seated nearby at the time of the incident, immediately fell through the hole into earthen depths beyond the furthest reaches of light and hope. Neither have been heard from since. SPA President Andy Gullahorn, speaking through tears, issued this statement mere minutes after the melee: “I am and always will be a fan of vodka. And super-raptors.” Upon further inspection of the riddled breach, Jill Phillips, the lone SPA female, sliced her shoulder on one of the uncovered fossilized talons while reaching and wailing down into the depths for her alleged friends. Jill survived the ordeal, thanks in part to the quick thinking of Christian songwriter and master gardener Eric Peters, who used the paper cheat sheets containing his lyrics to stanch Phillips’ bleeding. A hero to some, still a violent bore to others, said Peters, “I’ve been meaning to wean myself from the cheat sheets for years now, anyway.” St. Louis police officer, Reggie Pride, was the first to respond to the scene of the incident. His closer investigation revealed what appear to be the perfectly intact wing bones and skeletal remains of one of history’s most lethargic creatures ever to roam the pre-homosapien earth. Though it possessed wings and razor sharp teeth, Majora Rubyopterix supposedly rarely left its home, opting instead to remain idle in its typically low to the ground nest so as to avoid any exertion of energy. It survived by catching and eating bugs or smaller herbivores passing in front of its nest. Pianist Ben Shive, a hobbyist in paleontology, attested to the raptor’s affinity for apathy and distilled, fermented potatoes. “Those particular raptors had it made,” stated Shive. Osenga, simultaneously a hero to the paleontology world and a villain to the church whose sanctuary is now a federal excavation site, remains obstinate about the incident and subsequent historic discovery: “I didn’t ask to discover anything except for maybe new, heretofore undiscovered musical notes. I just wanna play my Gretsch and rock out. Is that so wrong?” Federal, state and local authorities, in conjunction with songwriter’s guilds, are posing their own separate investigations and audits of the event. Meanwhile, reports have it that the various Square Peg Alliance artists’ CD sales and concert bookings have more than tripled in the aftermath. Purchase Eric Peters’s garden music now before it is sold out.

I’m dragging today, and am fighting my daily bout with the post-lunch lethargy (a good reason my friends call me “Pappy”) as Ben and I are up at the studio adding touches to a song called “I Had To Tell You”. The A/C is on today, and we give thanks. I’m struggling to stay focused and to engage myself in the process of listening closely and contributing ideas. I’ve avoided the computer until now so as to force myself to actively participate. It’s not that I’m disinterested, but that these hot summer afternoons absolutely zap what little energy I already possess. Must. Keep. Eyes. Open Ben is overdubbing more hammer dulcimer over a piano part he played a few moments ago. We’re going for a Raggedy-Andy sort of sad to prop up the lyrics that include these lines: I’ve had chains wrapped around me for the last seven years I crowned myself Messiah since Messiah was not near I shook my fist at heaven, I told God to go to hell There was so much that I had to say, but had kept it to myself These are potentially expensive words. I see how they could easily be misinterpreted or taken out of context without knowing the story’s backdrop. Hence, they may be expensive in that customers might want their money back after purchasing a “Christian” album expressing such sentiments. I have no idea how the song will be received, as it is hopefully as honest in its narration as the true story on which it is based. The reality of humanity is that we owe to grace as great debtors. In our worst moments, we curse the blessing of our own skin, our own breathing in and out, the universe and Maker alike. In our best moments, we remain desperately in need of that which is beyond our frailty or capacity to bring anything good to the Mercy Table. I struggled for weeks (and still do, to an extent), in the process of writing it, to allow the main character the red-blooded freedom to tell God, “I hated you that day.” That is not the sort of cheap, plastic, pre-fab line that floats easily upon the waters of this industry. I am trying to be as honest as I can, since I so personally and closely related to the story of my friend’s losing and losing, while in the midst of such tremendous anger, hostility towards God, loss of income and business, found himself spewing those very words with all the venom and bile his hard, tired heart could muster. And in the process, God still showed up with all the mercy and hope He ever possessed. And redemption occurs like fire through the open windows of a dry and brittle house. So it is with beggars and new beginnings. The story of any one of us is, in some measure, the story of us all. These are the stories I hope to tell you.

When I first launched the website for The Fiddler’s Gun one of the things I wanted to do was to find a way to flesh out the world and the story for people even though they hadn’t read the book yet.  What I came up with is a feature I call “Letters to Peter“.  The idea springs from a portion of the book in which the heroine, Fin Button, is away from home and has the opportunity to write letters to her childhood friend, Peter LaMee. So for the past couple of months I’ve been imagining what those letters might have said.  It’s been a ton of fun for me to be able to write about my characters in a new voice and in a new format.  In addition to letters written to Peter I’ve been keeping it all fresh by creating letters and documents from other people and places that illuminate other aspects of the story.  A mystery of sorts has slowly been revealed and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. If you haven’t yet stumbled onto any of Fin’s letters to Peter, go check them out at The Fiddler’s Gun.  I hope you enjoy reading them half as much as I enjoy writing them.

Carolyn Arends is one of my favorite writers (not to mention one of my favorite people). Here’s a snippet of a great piece she wrote for Christianity Today this month: “At a concert in Erie, Pennsylvania, I sang a song called “In Good Hands.” Afterward, the church’s custodian stopped by. “When you was singing that song about Jesus’ hands,” he said, “the sun was In these tough times, I worry that violins and stained glass and folk songs may become extraneous. Many people are in a state of financial frostbite; just as blood flow to the extremities is restricted to save vital organs in a case of hypothermia, resources for less essential items must be diverted during an economic crisis. Who’s going to buy tickets to a film festival, ballet, or concert when there isn’t enough money for groceries? What business do I have writing songs when there is practical work that needs doing? Do the arts matter? Are they expendables or essentials?” Read on and take heart. .

There’s a form of human despondency that runs so deep, that a man gives up. Such a level of despair is manifest in many ways but most tellingly, we see it in the eyes. These eyes view the world lifelessly. Once we may have noticed the acute acid of pain; now we witness only numb existence. Torpid nothingness has become preferable to the smoky sting of life’s heartaches. Such eyes reveal a petrified heart, a statue without feeling. Such a man unwittingly escapes that which causes his pain by embracing something—anything—that deadens the life within him. As the infectiously optimistic cab driver, Solo, peers into his rear view mirror, he looks deeper than most into the sad eyes of his forlorn passenger, William. Within the first few minutes of Goodbye Solo, the narrative exposition is complete. William requests that Solo drive him to Blowing Rock, a real life destination a couple of hours west of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the city in which this movie was shot. He’s willing to pay a premium fare, more than five times the norm, to the first unquestioning cabbie that accepts his offer. William makes it clear that the cab fare is for a one-way trip. He won’t need a ride back. This film is about the nature of friendship. Solo, played gregariously by Souleymane Sy Savane, an African-born French model, intuitively understands that his grizzled passenger, William, played by Red West (once a body guard for Elvis Presley), is navigating rough waters and may be nearing the waterfall. We might assume that Solo’s irrepressible good spirits are extended to everyone. Still, he discerns that William needs a friend more than the average loner and he reaches out with good cheer. The culture in which Solo was raised dictates that young families care for and take responsibility for the older set, which may also, in part, be driving his generosity. But his persistence made me think there was something more. As I watched this movie twice, it was impossible to ignore my own internal tension concerning friendship. Specifically, how do I choose my friends? Mostly, I think, it happens naturally. Like most, I gravitate toward those that mirror my own sensibilities. It’s easy to embrace those with whom we share beliefs and personality characteristics. It fits. It seems organic. Harder, it seems, is to extend the hand of friendship to those we perceive as weird or that exhibit personality characteristics, beliefs, or values that seem somehow off kilter, at least through the eyes in which we view the world. Long ago and far away, I remember coming upon the end of a grade school fight. Tommy had been pulverized by a class bully and he was blinking away tears. He was on the ground, nearing the end of a forced recitation of The Greenie Poem. Tommy had a bowl-cut. When he talked, he sounded funny, a little like what I imagine Owen Meany from John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” sounded like. He had a nervous tic. He didn’t have any friends because he didn’t fit in with anybody. I helped dust him off and invited him to come with me to The Valley Alleys, our local eight-lane bowling alley. We bowled a game or two, which I financed out of my allowance money. I tried to be a friend, and felt like I had done a good deed that day. I’d like to say that Tommy and I became best friends and he turned to Christ because of my influence, but that didn’t happen. After that day, I don’t remember ever speaking to Tommy again. That’s not to say that it was a conscious decision. In fact, I simply don’t remember thinking about Tommy much until this film brought him to mind. And I realized once again, that being a friend, the kind of friend that isn’t so organic, often requires intentionality. Goodbye Solo is directed by the quietly emerging Ramin Bahrani, who was also responsible for two other critically acclaimed films, Chop Shop, which I have seen and recommended here in the Rabbit Room, and Man Push Cart, which I haven’t seen, but have in my Netflix queue. If Chop Shop and Goodbye Solo are any indication, Bahrani is a director who likes exploring people that have been marginalized by society. His narratives don’t follow a paint-by-number screenwriting. His stories venture off the smooth highway with compelling characters that don’t use maps and drive too fast on washboard roads. How nice it is to watch a movie featuring a character that doesn’t know the word cynicism. Solo is the most likeable movie character I’ve seen since Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. In one form or the other, most of us carry an array of masks. How pure and refreshing it is to observe a character that hasn’t learned the art of sophisticated deceit; guileless not in the sense of avoiding white collar crime or robbing banks, but in the sense of being no less than his authentic self. Most of the dramatic tension in Goodbye Solo comes from Solo’s largely rebuffed attempts at friendship. William is a good ol’ boy in the meanest sense of the phrase, who would rather not say anything. He’s settled into a state of uncomfortable numb, which is to say, he doesn’t want to be bothered, even by a man with good intentions and a good heart. If you dare speak to him, you run the risk of cultivating his ire. Like an infected scab, pus and blood will ooze.  In a series of  ignored verbal volleys, Solo finally pushes one too many of William’s buttons and he gets shoved: Who the f___ said you could touch anything that belongs to me? Phew. We had to know it was coming. See, that’s the problem. William is long beyond a desire to be touched. He simply wants to simmer in the analgesic of repressed pain and anguished sorrow, on the backburner of life. We learn that he once had a wife and a son. Like the good ol’ Southern boy version of Scrooge, somewhere along the line, he was changed for the worst. Now, the world must pay. Those that pay the highest price are those that—deliberately or not—awaken the hibernating black bear. And yet, despite all that, and despite William’s own unspoken plan to end it all, we see melancholy flickers of life, like vague radio signals from a distant planet. We catch glimpses of William’s journal, which shows us in black and white, that there is latent sensitivity and something resembling kindness, in this cantankerous old character. We realize that this man’s incisive observations as captured in his journal, belie his outward bluster. William visits a boy, ostensibly his own son, at the teen-age boy’s movie theater job. William speaks kindly to the boy, who doesn’t have a clue that he is speaking to his own father. William details the snippets of their cordial conversations in his journal. It’ll break – your – heart. I’ve seen plenty of good movies this year, but of the movies I’ve seen, I can’t remember caring about two characters more than in this movie. The script is wonderful, and obviously allowed for appropriate ad-libs from these perfectly cast characters. The movie is filmed beautifully with the final scene appropriately shrouded in fog. The last act will give you something to ponder for days. The film may not be easy to find, but I highly recommend it as one worth seeking out. Check your local indie house or art theater. Alternatively, catch it when it’s released on DVD, on August 25, 2009. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. Original, profound, thoughtful, and even funny. Consider it a recommendation, from one friend to another. Here’s a link to the trailer.

We’ve already built an airtight case against Twitter here which some people tried to respond to but all I heard was “Blah, blah, blah I just ate lunch, here’s a picture of it on tinyurl.” I can safely assume that, by extension, the case has been made against blogs, Facebooking, MySpacing, Youtubing, all so-called “Christian” pseudo-alternatives to these social outlets and anything else people enjoy. (Has some one made a “Christian” knock-off of Twitter yet?) By the way, there’s a new program for all the people who join Twitter and then don’t come back after one week. It’s called “Quitter” and it’s the fastest growing trend in trendy Twitterland. And that guy who took my name and never uses it is really irritating as well. So is hypocrisy. And ants. But what about Emoticons? You know…these things: 🙂 😉 🙁 😕 Are they to be rejected as we have so scientifically made the case to reject other fun things? Here follows a bold prediction: In ten years all written communication will be in the form of emoticons. This begs the question: Are emoticons of value? Let’s do what thoughtful people do (for a change) and compile a list of emotipros and emoticons. Emotipros: 1. Cuteness. I am a man, so I’ll stop right there. E-nuff said. 2. I’m pretty sure no one else noticed this, but some of these things kind of look like a person’s face. 🙁  <— frowny face. Look closely. 3. Allows people to make use of that part of the keyboard which does not have letters on it with success. I don’t know about you, but I get lost over there in the land of :;'”<,.>?/}[. It’s confusing. What are you supposed to use for what? The answer is emoticons. That’s what. Emoticons: 1. Anything popular with teenagers is bad. This is a pretty infallible rule. 2. It replaces written communication. Instead of saying, “I feel so sick today,” you get some green little face –which is not better. 3. Most men look from side to side to see if anyone is watching before punching in an emoticon. And they should. So, it’s a shameful thing. Gents, no eye-contact, or hugging. And if you must hug, don’t make eye-contact. 4. They’ve cheapened the “Have a Nice Day” smiley face. It used to mean something. So it’s 4 to 3, and Emoticons lose. Now, stop it. Cheers.

We are so used to running from temptation because we are so often unbelieving. We don’t believe in the power of Christ in us, so we cut, run, and hide. Temptation is opportunity. Without it we would live out our little, comfortable lives doing little religious things to make ourselves feel good. But temptation gives us the necessary opposite circumstance; temptation gives us a real, tangible choice: Am I going to trust God in this tempted moment and reverse it? Or not? Temptation is the battle cry of the enemy. And we must engage through faith, reliance, trust – or cut and run. We are told to “flee fornication.” We are told to flee these things: love of money, seeking to be rich. But how to flee? Paul goes on, “But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses” (1Tim 6:11-12). We flee by fighting the faith-battle against temptation. Likewise, where we are told to “Flee fornication” we are given the method how to do so: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1Cor 6:18-19). Again, we flee fornication by simply recognizing who (and Whose) we are. Resisting temptation requires a reversal in our self-outlook. Every temptation gets its power by our false thinking: “I am an independent self who chooses good or evil.” We take our little human self as the origination point of good or evil. Big mistake. That’s exactly the view the devil wants us to take. We then attempt to manipulate our circumstances in order to achieve righteousness. We tell our accountability partner to call us every few hours. We put holy lock boxes on our computer or televisions. In fact, we do everything but trust in Christ in the moment to live His righteous, perfect, pure life in us, through us, as us. This Christ-avoidance, this spitting on Christ by disregarding His love and power in us, leads us on the straight path to more and more sin. We must ask ourselves in the moment of temptation: “Does Christ live in me? Am I complete in Him? Do I have everything I need for life and godliness? Am I one spirit with the Lord? Am I weak, but He is my strength?” None of this will appear to be true in that moment when our desires or fears are stirred up. But we say it. “Christ lives in me, through me, as me. Right here, right now. Thank you, Jesus, that You are my righteousness in this moment.” That’s where our only choice originates. Are we going to affirm in faith that Christ within us is our righteousness in every temptation? And then, having affirmed the truth, step out on it and act as though we really trust that it is true? This battle is not just for our growth; it is a fight for the eternal well-being of every person in our lives. The world is watching and waiting for those of us who will stand in who we really are in Christ, for those who really rely on God’s saving power, for those who  don’t merely give lip service to faith. Temptation is our opportunity.

When I was a boy, an old man told me a story that I’ve always loved in spite of the fact that it was almost certainly a lie. He said he was walking across a long railroad trestle one dark, dark night when he heard a train coming. He had come far enough that he knew he couldn’t turn around and outrun the train to the far end of the trestle. He considered running toward the train in hopes of beating it to the near end, but without knowing how far he was from solid ground, that was awfully risky. He decided his best bet was to crawl over the edge of the trestle and hang there until the train passed by. So there he hung by his fingertips as the train rumbled past—the engines, then the freight containers, then the coal cars. Coal car after coal car after coal car clattered over the trestle, mere inches above his head, while he grunted and strained and sweated, praying that his now-numb fingers could keep their purchase long enough for the train to pass. When the caboose finally clackety-clacked by, the man discovered that he lacked the strength to pull himself up. It was all he could do just to hang there, arms extended and straining against their sockets, and not plummet to the ground below. His lantern was long gone, having vibrated off the trestle about the time the engine thundered past. So he dangled there in the dark, waiting for daylight to come. It was a miserable night, filled with terrors both real and imagined. But he held on until dawn, when he was disgusted to discover that he was hanging only a few yards from the end of the trestle. His feet dangled only two or three feet from the ground. The old boy played the story for laughs. But the ironic twist at the end doesn’t change the fact of the genuine terror of hanging there in the dark and the silence, unsure if you’ve got the strength to make it through to morning—and unsure of what will happen even if you do make it that far. The real reason I love that story is that, in spite of all appearances, the outcome never hinged on the man’s success or failure at “hanging in there.” The outcome came from the solid truth that terra firma was right there, ready to receive him. We devise all sorts of strategies for hanging in, holding on, but even the best and truest of those strategies aren’t nearly so true as the fact that God is holding on to us. We grunt and sweat and struggle in the dark—and there’s always the possibility that we will lose our grip and fall—but we don’t dangle more than a foot or two from the palm of God’s hand.

God’s opportunities are always coming our way. Weekly, daily, hourly, we are being handed situations by which God wants to manifest Himself through us. What many believers don’t know is that these situations often take the form of a temptation. Look at Jesus. He was “driven” into the wilderness to be tempted, as Mark says. Satan came to Him and hit Him with the desire for fleshly indulgence, the desire for accolades, and the desire for power. Satan’s basic temptation was “use your power for yourself. Get what you want.” Jesus reversed each temptation, each negative, by turning it into a positive. He reversed the flesh-will in Him by saying, essentially, “Not My will, but Thine be done.” He went from a self-oriented outlook to God-vision. Later He does this by calling Peter, “Satan.” Jesus strengthens His own faith on Peter’s tempting Him to avoid the Cross, reversing the temptation into more faith-power. He reverses Philip’s fear of not having enough bread, culminating in a miracle. He reverses Martha’s fear that Lazarus has been dead too long, and gets her to speak out that reversal for herself, to which He adds, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus “learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” It was the contrary, negative temptations that were His opportunities to press forward in faith. Walking on water. The Gadarene demoniac. Jairus’ daughter. The woman at the well. The adulterous woman of John 8. The prostitute washing His feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. The Pharisees were shocked, and Jesus reversed the temptation to fear man’s opinion by recognizing that the Father in Him was the for-others Life; God was concerned not about the opinion of self-righteous judges, but the repentant woman. To the contrary, the disciples were always seeing at situations, but not seeing through. Jesus continually asks them, “Where is your faith?” They weren’t reversing their fear and using it as an engine for faith. That’s our basic situation in any temptation. We can give it power by cowering, or we can see it as opportunity to advance the Kingdom. If we cower, the outcome is eventually sin and shame, a weakening of our power, a temporary abdication of our kingship and kinship, our oneness with Christ. The power of sin is the Law; human effort attempting to be good like God. The Pharisees were constantly shocked at Jesus’ behavior; they thought He should run away from sin. And so we lose opportunities, not only for growth but the occasion to be bread for others, when we cower in the face of temptation. We lose the opportunity to show forth God’s love and power in us. Or we can use temptation as a handle. Like Jesus, we can reverse it. I can see this when my children are fighting. My temptation is often to rush in there and stop it by using my power, by control, manipulation. Because that’s what fear does in me; that is my particular psychological programming. In that moment I have a choice to either manifest Satan to my children (fear, control, manipulation) or to reverse the fear and see that God has some beautiful thing to teach my children in that moment, not the least that a Father is patient and kind and wise. So I reverse it. I give God my fear, and the desire to control. I say, “Lord, what do you wish to speak through me to my children?” And then I step out in faith that He will do so. Reversing temptation in this way isn’t merely about our growth, though of course we will grow. It’s about others. The way I respond in financial difficulty, whether by fear or by reliance on the One who provides, will affect others. Faith spreads like a good infection. That’s what I want my children to catch. That’s what I want my wife to feel from me. That’s the thing I want to transmit to the world. There is a God. He is faithful. He is kind, wise, truehearted. He indwells the believer, and is readily available in every moment. We can trust Him in each and every situation. That’s the purpose of temptation. Norman Grubb said, “Temptation is God’s calling card.” The devil is only a pawn in God’s school for us – God’s school of faith.

Contrary to popular belief (trust me, I’ve polled it), I did not sit down one day and think, “Ah hah!  I shall write an adventure novel of the Revolutionary War and my heroine shall be named Phinea Button!” The real story, if you choose to believe it, is that some years ago I decided to try something different for Christmas.  Simply buying gifts and handing them out wrapped in plaid paper had grown too ordinary.  That’s when I thought, “Ah hah!  I shall build treasure chests and I swear to you that is the truth. So I started building treasure chests in September of that year and as I finished them I did my gift shopping and filled one for each of the families of my siblings and parents (four in all).  I even tracked down some nifty old handmade padlocks to lock them up with. My parents live on a farm of some four or five acres and my plan was to bury each chest in a different spot on the farm and then draw a map that led to each one.  The chest-building turned out to be the easy part of this diabolical plan.  The hard part was drawing the maps.  I hand drew each one with a calligraphy pen using all sorts of local landmarks, and folklore, and inside humor to make them unique and then in the corner of each map I reserved a spot for a small poem of sorts that would eventually lead to the buried treasure. In October and November that year I snuck home four times with a chest in tow and carried it out into the woods to inter it.  Each chest lay near a landmark that could only be identified by following the clues on the map.  One was an odd copse of trees, one was a pair of trees with a rope tied around them, I forget what the third was but for the fourth, I decided to make the ‘landmark’ an old grave marker (a tribute to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). Back in my woodshop, I hammered together a cross out of two crude boards and then sat back to consider what name I ought to carve into it.  It had to sound antiquated and I wanted it to have a distinctly American quality.  I considered names like Cletus, and Hank, and Buddy but my mind finally came to rest on Phineas Button.  I set to work carving it out and when I finished sat back to admire my work. That’s when I saw my mistake.  Like a bad tattoo artist, I’d been concentrating so hard on the actual work that I hadn’t seen the misspelling right in front of me.  I’d left the ‘S’ off of the end of Phineas.  Thus was Phinea born. At first I was angry with myself and irritated at the prospect of having to make a new marker.   But the more I thought about it, the more I thought the name was an interesting one.  The omission of the ‘S’ transformed it and made it feminine and I began to wonder why a woman would have such a name, and who she might have been, and why there was a treasure chest laid in her grave instead of a body. The story grew from there.  All the maps and clues to the buried Christmas chests eventually referred to the vague and long-dead persons of Peter LaMee and “Fin” Button. That Christmas morning when all the presents had been handed out I stood up and admitted to my family that I’d been too poor to buy anyone gifts.   Luckily though, I had discovered four strange maps, each accompanied by a strange old skeleton key and I offered them as gifts instead. The treasure hunt that ensued is one of my favorite Christmas memories.  But even after the holidays had come and gone and the world returned to the sedentary cycle of work and sleep, Phinea wouldn’t leave me alone.  The characters and events of her life became more and more real to me until eventually a New Year’s resolution pact between my brother and I compelled me to set her story down in writing. Though that all happened years ago, each time I visit my parent’s farm I still sneak out into the woods to stand by the old grave marker and smile.  Little did I know at the time that the treasure chest filled with Christmas presents that we pulled out of her grave was the smallest of the gifts Phinea had to give. Check out the website for more information on the book. TheFiddlersGun.com

I was digging through my backpack a few weeks ago when I found a letter someone had evidently handed me after a concert (this happens sometimes, my apologies to previous post-concert letter givers). It was addressed to “TheProprietor”. I was intrigued. Here was someone familiar with the workings of the Rabbit Room. It was written by Janna Barber, and she mentioned her interest in writing the occasional piece for the Rabbit Room. I took her up on the offer and here it is, her first post, about an encounter with the legendary Bill Mallonee of Vigilantes of Love. I hope you enjoy it. –The Proprietor It was a warm July evening and the sun was just beginning to set. I opened the front door and wandered outside, just in case. A cool shuffle of air passed over the grass on the front lawn, and that’s when I heard it: Muriah’s soft strokes Holy mother Mary when the wine gives out and the land is parched, stricken with drought; I’ve never seen it look quite like this before. Yes and ask your Son cause I heard He’s strong He’s got a real good heart and loves everyone. An open heart is always an open door. It was just a warm-up, but for me that’s when the show started. I had been a fan for over ten years, since my husband introduced me to the Vigilantes of Love in college. John and I had just started dating, and at first I really didn’t like the sound of Mr. Bill Mallonee’s voice. Up to that point in my life, music had only been about pretty voices and singable melodies. This daughter of a Baptist preacher from small town Arkansas had NOT been raised on Dylan, and the only Springsteen songs she knew were soft rock radio favorites, like “Human Touch” and “Dancing in the Dark.” Thankfully I was an English major, so although his voice turned me off, his lyrics caught my attention. I began listening more closely. What I found was poetry. What I found were images so real they were there when I closed my eyes at bedtime. Visions of me holding a hammer, driving nails into a tree, my pale arms struggling to swim in a river as big, strong and muddy as the Mississippi, and then there were the skeletons, with their white boned arms and fists that would not stop banging on the inside of my closet door. We decided we needed to see this guy in concert. We drove six hours to Dallas with a carload of friends. We sat front and center at a round table in the Downstairs Café. We saw the long haired, overweight Native American who pounded his table the entire concert. We sang along to every song. We hung around afterward and shook Bill’s hand. We listened to Counting Crows cranked as loud as possible to keep us awake on the nauseating I-30 roller coaster home. We relived the broken guitar strings and the way Bill turned the key in his own door made of air. We wished he would not have hit himself in the head so many times. We wanted to go back the next Friday. John and I were married a year later, and he shyly introduced me to one of Bill’s most controversial songs, “Love Cocoon.” We continued to gobble up every new album. There were so many songs. Songs of love and commitment, of traveling and touring, songs about fathers, songs about sons, and songs of disillusion, depression and freedom. Bill’s heart broke on every album as he tried and failed to find a more commercial type of success. When we moved to Maryland for six years, our concert going slowed down a bit, but we managed to catch a couple of Bill’s solo shows. The first was with Over the Rhine at a college in PA and the second was a house show in Western Maryland, shortly before we moved to Tennessee. My teary eyes matched Bill’s that night when he sang “Apple of your Eye,” though I was barely aware of anyone’s sorrow but my own. The source of my hurt was the end of a pregnancy by miscarriage. The source of Bill’s, we discovered after our move, was the end of a marriage, by divorce. A year passed and we found ourselves getting ready for another house concert, and this time we were hosting. It was an early birthday present for John, and we had invited some friends from church. The concert had also been posted on Bill’s website and John had received e-mail from local fans who said they were coming. We made some snacks and cleaned the house, arranged the living room and waited. John and I, then married for seven and a half years, had talked a lot about Bill’s divorce, how it affected us to hear those old songs, many of them written for his now ex-wife. We also read what Bill had to say, in various e-mail threads, and the follow-up comments made by fans. Some people said they could no longer support him as an artist, but we came to the conclusion that he‘d tried his best to make things right. Although, I had to admit the matter of his new wife didn’t sit well with me, and these juvenile, evil step-mother feelings made me anxious to meet Ms. Muriah Rose. The musicians arrived around six o’clock and we greeted them with sincere smiles and awkward handshakes. As we began to help unload their run down Honda, something rather strange happened. Muriah noticed a tiny hummingbird, trapped in the garage, struggling to get out. She was visibly disturbed by its distress and I was disarmed by her compassion. We all stopped our work and gathered around to watch for several minutes, until someone finally figured a way to get the bird out. John found a long handled duster and gently coaxed the hummingbird down the narrow space of wall between the two garage doors. It was a rather long process and as we waited and watched his quiet work, we whispered about how rare it was to see this fragile creature so close and still. We wondered what in the world had brought it to our door. When the bird was close enough to reach, John cradled it in his hands and walked out to the driveway to release it. We were all standing in a circle around him, now thinking perhaps the poor thing was dead – it lay so still in his hand. Suddenly, the bird took flight. And what a flight it was. It shot straight in the air, way past the tallest oak trees bordering the backyard. Smaller and smaller she grew, until she was gone. It was another long while before the instruments were set up and Bill was ready to start the show, but by the time we finished, no one else had shown up. I felt a bit sorry that it might be just the two of us (six if we included our kids and my parents, hanging out together downstairs), but also thought how cool a private concert would be. We decided to wait a bit longer and eat some of our snacks, so the guys wandered out the deck and Muriah and I sat at the barstools in the kitchen. Unexpectedly, we both began sharing our hearts as if we were old friends, recently reunited. Muriah opened up about how she and Bill were doing as newlyweds. I told her about my heartache the last time we’d seen them perform. We talked about the sadness of failed marriages and unfruitful pregnancies, how hard it is sometimes to see the good in it all. Of course John and Bill got along well, but Bill’s used to sharing his life with strangers. Finally, we admitted defeat and our guests began to sing and play. If it made a difference to them that the living room was empty that night, I couldn’t tell. Bill’s passion came through in every song and he held nothing back from the stories he told in between. Muriah provided the perfect backdrop, and the two seemed to play for themselves just as much as the rest of us. They filled the house that night with more hope than should fit in a beat up, rusty hatchback. Hope we would need for the nine months we had just discovered lay ahead. When they left for the hotel that night we asked about getting together for lunch the next day, but in the morning felt a little less sure of our newfound kinship, and never made the call. We were a little paranoid about looking like desperate fans, so we decided to let the final fragrance linger while we got back to our lives in the real world. Eighteen months passed and John was leading a small group in a friend’s home once a week. We decided to have Bill and Muriah come back, hoping to give them a real crowd this time. The home we chose was much smaller, but the room was filled with many new listeners. Bill charmed everyone that night with his stories and songs and Muriah brought with her the same warm support as before. This time, we did meet for lunch the next day and there was nothing uncomfortable about it at all. At least not from my perspective, but I was a bit distracted, by my one year old and his lovely blue eyes, as he finessed his newly acquired walking skills, gliding from chair to chair.

I’ve sometimes wondered if many of the books I read are not just piling up more perceptions in my dusty mind cluttered by too many options. Parenting books are a good example. I’ve got a shelf full, and I’ve learned a lot from them – I think.  But in applying those principles I’ve often fallen short. There are certain scenarios with my children that too often have tripped me up, and occasionally my will seems frozen in place as some old reel-to-reel tape appears on my tongue and spits out its ratta-tat-tat song and dance. A revelation I had awhile back about deep seated fear for my children, and its subsequent healing, went a lot further and deeper into me than any parenting book ever could. As my life goes breathlessly on the only way I seem to really learn by is experience and those inner bursts of knowing called revelation or epiphany. Experience is a hard teacher, but a good one. 20 Steps to Becoming More Like Jesus just never seems to work out for me. I start out fine, but the Bic runs out of butane at around step three. I think part of the problem is in having thousands of bytes of often contradictory information in my brain; my thought processes just can’t handle that much analysis to spit out the proper action. So I hit a hard situation, try to get through it on my own butane, and the flame goes out because I keep vacillating between dozens of mental options. Joni Mitchell sang of “the crazy you get from too much choice, the thumb and the satchel or the rented Rolls Royce.” That wide variety of options causes brain-freeze in me. This is why mere mental process and logical thought can’t get me through even a single day. Trying to do it all right isn’t the same as living in the Now. “Trying to get it right” involves the underlying opposite assumption: “I am going to get it wrong unless I try really hard.” Now, what we take by faith takes us. We manifest that which we really believe. If I believe something is going to be hard, say, parenting, or a gig, or some household job like fixing a door, it will be. My seeing will drive the circumstance, and so my experience will reflect my negative faith. In that sense we often do create our own reality. I believe wrongly, and then strive in my effort against the reality I have created by my wrong believing. But here’s the crossroads choice. I can live in the Now, in the moment, and expect God’s revelation for that moment. I can see my kids fighting and contact that place inside me where God is love, where Christ is faith, and rest, and wisdom and understanding, and I can know exactly what my children need in that moment without my mind short-circuiting on dozens of options. In any situation I can throw negativity out on the trash heap and know I can do all things through Christ. All it takes is to get out of the future of “what might happen” and into the Now of “What is the need of this moment?” I’m all for reading books. I love to read. But the inner attitude I allow determines what I do with all that information, determines whether it short-circuits me or is used by God as a means of opening my mind to deeper revelation, deeper life, and a deeper and more joyous Now.

Okay, seeing as how we have had posts here on the Rabbit Room about westerns, vampires, rock stars, chimps, Michigan, fame, banjo players, apples, poetry, and who knows what else, I figured it was high time for a post about classical music. So as a starting point, I would use the word epic to try to describe Mahler’s symphonies. At the performance I saw there were one hundred and eight players on stage, and the piece is almost eighty minutes long. Compare that to another piece on the same program that evening, Haydn’s “Fire” symphony, for which thirty-two players were required and lasted a brief seventeen minutes. The sixth symphony is sometimes called the Tragic Symphony, a title Mahler himself attached and then later removed, desiring the work to be experienced on the basis of the music itself, without the aid of a program. The concluding paragraph from the program notes that night offer a concise summary of Mahler’s work. “Mahler excelled at plumbing the depths of tragedy, in part because the tragedy is not unrelieved. Even in this, his most tragic work, he presents love, nostalgia, serenity and ecstatic vision, which is what makes the tragedy so excruciating when it is all subsumed by the hopelessness of the conclusion.” The ending evoked the same visceral reaction in me as did the ending of one of the best films of 2007, No Country for Old Men. I have argued – and will continue to do so – that No Country for Old Men ends on a hopeful note. An uncertain note, yes, but still a hopeful one. Mahler ends his sixth symphony on what could easily be called a nihilistic note, which makes the beauty and peace of the ending of his ninth and final symphony so breathtaking. (Warning: I am now stepping fully into music nerd territory.) All throughout the piece, over and over again, you hear an A major triad, held for two bars, changing to an A minor triad – hope and despair, if you will. Sometimes the A major to A minor chord is played by the full orchestra, and other times it is providing a foundation for a melody played over it, always changing from major to minor, major to minor. But then, in the last minutes of the piece, we hear only the A minor chord. The presence of hope, the major chord, is gone. And the ending, a strong fortissimo with everyone in the orchestra playing the A minor triad, quickly dying away under a timpani cadence to a final string pizzicato on a soft unison ‘A,’ is devastating. As I was reflecting on the despair of the final bars of the piece, Psalm 88 came to mind. Quick Hebrew lesson (with thanks to my friend Michael Card for this information): We’re all familiar with the Psalms where the author cries out against God, demanding to know what on earth He is doing. The questions that most of us find ourselves asking, at some point in our lives, are there expressed: Why does evil exist, why do the wicked prosper, why am I oppressed, where is God, and on and on our questions go. All of these Psalms, Mike told the small Bible study he was leading, have the “vav adversative,” usually translated “and” or “but,” somewhere in the Psalms. For example, in Psalm 73, after reading the psalmist’s complaints, we find, “but then I entered the sanctuary of God,” and, “saw the whole picture.” The one thing they all have in common is that the “vav adversative” does not appear in the same place. Sometimes we see it at the front, sometimes in the middle of the psalm, and sometimes not until the very end. But they all have it. All, that is, except Psalm 88. Psalm 88 starts out with a plea to God for salvation, saying, “God, you’re my last chance of the day.” After a heart-rending cry for help – “I’m written off for a lost cause,” “You’ve dropped me into a bottomless pit… I’m battered senseless by Your rage,” “Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?” – the psalm ends with a soul-rending cry of despair, “The only friend I have left is darkness.” No resolution, no hope, no rest. Only darkness. Only despair. I’ll end this with a song featuring Andy Osenga, Jeremy Casella, and Sandra McCracken, written by Jeremy, based on The Message’s rendering of Psalm 88, “Last Chance.” And next time you have an hour and half to immerse yourself in the listening experience, check out Mahler’s 6th on iTunes. If you have a chance to hear it live? Do whatever it takes to get there. [audio:LastChance.mp3]

Adam, in his original state, was not a sword but just an untempered hunk of metal. He had to be hammered out in the fire and on the anvil of his wrong choices, like Moses, like Abraham, like Paul. Is it my will that my children make wrong choices? No. In my father-feelings I want them to make right choices and undergo no suffering. If this feeling is given its head it is called “spoiling my children.” I will either let them off the hook or be a drill sergeant and make their choices for them. In such a case they stay like Adam and Eve, pre-Fall, as babies, expecting everything, learning nothing. But suffering induced through consequences for actions produces a good harvest in the end. Now, I’d rather my children always made right choices. But quite often some of the greatest pastors were some of the worst sinners. Truth – Reality as defined by God in His multi-dimensional seeing – exists to our finite minds as paradox. Adam and Eve chose to disbelieve God (the first human sin). Their choices have worked out the predestined plan of God to purify a people who will trust Him and rely on His word no matter what. Someone once wrote to me, “…my quest for righteousness has, to some degree, been for the purpose of pain avoidance rather than out of the wellspring of love for God.” We all start that way. Quite often our conversion to Christ comes from a desire to avoid Hell. On the surface, in our soul-life, we may have some fear/unbelief issues somewhere that the Devil uses as a handle. He may get us to have mixed motives. But as we get more and more in contact with who we really are in Christ, and who He is in us, we see a love for God and neighbor begin to explode outward in and through us. That love is the implanted Christ in these human temples. We’ve got to get past self-consciousness to see Him in ourselves. But in order to do that we have to “be no longer conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We do not think we need mind-renewal until all our old ways of coping begin to break down; our wrong choices begin to breed a multitude of bad consequences. When we finally cry out to God like the Israelites in the Babylonian captivity, that’s when mind renewal can begin. We don’t think we need it until we really see our desperate state, until we are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Mind renewal is simply setting our minds in accordance with what God says about reality, regardless of what we feel or think about it. When we start doing that, we see that our “false motives” and all that are just a bunch of devilry designed to keep us in the old-man consciousness. The sword is being heated and hammered into shape for Heaven’s use. But these human swords have a choice: Will we continually surrender to the Blacksmith? What will be the eternal cost of not surrendering? What will be the eternal reward of a consistent, total surrender? We are called to count the cost. Will we?

I am currently making my way through Frederick Buechner’s masterwork Telling the Truth. The subheading is “The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.” Upon a friend’s recommendation, I found the book online for cheap and set a course once received. I was only a few pages in before audible gasps and sighs were heard by my wife trying to sleep. It’s no secret ’round these parts that Buechner’s abilities are wonderfully poetic – a salve in my currently dry reading time (most books lately have left me wanting). In the midst of this piece, I found something particularly moving for me as a pastor and something I This is from the chapter entitled “The Gospel as Tragedy”: The old ones and the young ones. The smart ones and the dumb ones. The lucky and the unlucky. The eggheads and potheads, the Gay Libs and Hard Hats. They all listen as they may listen even to the preacher if he will take the chance himself of being embarrasssing, appalling us by exposing the nakedness of the poor naked wretches and his own nakedness. The world hides God from us, or we hide ourselves from God, or for reasons of his own God hides himself from us, but however you account for it, he is often more conspicuous by his absence than by his presence, and his absence is much of what we labor under and are heavy laden by. Just as sacramental theology speaks of a doctrine of the Real Presence, maybe it should speak also of a doctrine of the Real Absence because absence can be sacramental, too, a door left open, a chamber of the heart kept ready and waiting. I was so moved by this – the reflection upon absence (that goes on for several more paragraphs) and also the artistic responsibility to accurately and honestly portray that absence as much as the presence. That every poet and writer and pastor and artist and friend and neighbor and family member would be so bold as to proclaim their abundant faith and their crisis of faith, their joys and their sorrows. It’s a sweet, sweet endeavor Buechner describes and something I long to aim toward. #FrederickBuechner

Back, back, back.  Back before the compact disc, back before the personal computer, back before the existence of the mini-van, there was a public library in Tipton, Indiana with a brand new laser disk player, complete with about seven film choices. In my mesh football jersey and yellow swimming trunks, bike resting unlocked in the rack outside, I made my way to the circulation desk to ask for the same thing I always asked for: Would they please issue me a pair of headphones and cue up Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? The short walk from there to the carrel where the TV was wired to the player gave me just enough time to feel something I seldom experience anymore–expectant joy at seeing a movie again. Don’t get me wrong.  I will see a film more than once on occasion these days, but it’s usually for a utilitarian purpose–like I missed something or fell asleep in the middle or thought I hated it only to hear of a trusted friend who loved it–so I go back to have my mind changed. But seldom do I go back because I want to experience the same joy I felt the first time I saw it.  And that’s mainly because lately that feeling of joy is hard to come by.  With a couple of notable exceptions, it seems like movies these days are much more disposable than they used to be–like can openers. Remember how growing up, your mom bought one can opener and it stayed in that same drawer, opening thousands of cans until you graduated and left home?  We’ve been through maybe five already in our first fourteen years of marriage, and they’ve all been mostly plastic and mostly defective– under the pretense of being ergonomic, as if the can-opener people know anything about what makes me comfortable. We don’t really expect that much from our can openers anymore.  And in that little oddity, I see a parallel to movie-making. But Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is on TV right now and I tell you this film must be one of the most perfect movie-making accomplishments of all time.  It’s not my favorite movie.  But I can’t think of many others that beat it in terms of the pace of it’s storytelling, or the way it doesn’t look a bit dated, or the chemistry between Redford and Newman. Or the ending. Oh, the ending! I watch this film now and I’m that kid on his way to the pool stopping off at the public library real quick for a two hour detour.  Again. Except there’s one thing I have added to my experience these days that couldn’t have been further from the mind of the yellow haired boy at the study carrol. Worry. See, these days we live in the land of the Internet Movie Database.  And not only that, it seems Hollywood is short on original ideas. Those two realities, friends, make me wonder how long it will be until some studio genius with a “green light” button thinks Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson should connect for a killer remake of the 1969 original? So I check.  Nervously, I check. Nothing in pre-production.  Whew! Then I go to the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid page to investigate any message board rumors.  And sure enough, someone’s clamoring for a Matthew McConaughey/Brad Pitt remake, only to be corrected by another that Clooney and Pitt would have more chemistry. Thankfully, almost everyone else has the good sense to remind these yahoos that the film has no need to be redone, since when they made it the first time, they made it as close to perfect as any film of the past 30 years. So I ask you two questions today.  Answer either or both, or even one I’m not asking. 1.  Is it accurate to suggest films are much more “disposable” these days than they used to be–and by that I mean, do you suppose the mentality behind making them is that no one really expects a film to carry across generations anymore, so why not just settle for pleasing the current audience? 2. Of which films should we say, “Leave it like it is.  A remake would be a desecration?”

Thunder is rolling behind me like a boulder down a mountain. The lightning is so frequent it feels like there are only flashes of darkness to interrupt it. Appalachia is alive at evening time. Like the stomach of a starving giant, the sky growls. I take cheating glances back through the broad, open windows. Trying to work. Trying to write. I look again. An inelegant tree silhouetted against a blazing peach band of evening sky. Charcoal clouds above and surly earth beneath. Uneven edges –like life. The window-framed beauty entices me away from the false light of this monitor. Monitor? I am watching the images of my mind appear before me in insufficient words. I am feeding this hungry screen with the little somethings of my soul. This machine receives my humble offerings like an understanding woman. Behind me the day fades in glory, trumpets of thunder announce its passing. The king is dead, rest in peace. Tomorrow you rise again. So many things I have put behind me belong there. But here is wondrous thunder and bursts of brightness. Here is sunset. Words can wait. Mine can wait. Here is the evening song of the first Poet. Here is the next line in an undying verse. Before me is my sub-creation. Behind me is Evening by God. Turn around.

I sat in the theater Friday night waiting for the lights to go down and I pondered the possibility that UP might be Pixar’s first flop.   I’ve come to feel about that moment when the Pixar logo appears much the same as I once did about the glittering green of a Lucasfilm logo.  When it flashes up on the screen, the theater quiets and I can almost hear someone bending low to pull the covers up around my chin and whisper, “Ssshhh, I’m going to tell you a story—and this is one of the good ones.” Ten years ago I realized that the Lucasfilm icon of my youth had tarnished and lost its glitter and become no more than the color of money.  So once bitten and twice shy, I enter the cinema halls of story and light with more skepticism than I once did. I watched the crowd filter in and find their seats and I wondered at what an eclectic pilgrimage they were.  Young boys and girls came hand in hand all covered in blushes, laughter and delight.  They came in families, by the dozens, herding children with candy and eyes peeled wide.  Groups of young men sauntered in adorned with attitudes like costume jewelry, their pants slung low and clattering with chains.  Elderly couples stepped down the aisles deliberate and slow to settle themselves patiently into their seats.  The middle-aged, the old-aged, and the barely aged at all filled the theater and hushed to hear the whisper when the lights went low. What a privilege it is to have the trust of your audience.  Such is Pixar’s legacy that people who would otherwise turn up their nose at a mere ‘cartoon’ came in droves to fill the house based on the trust of a studio’s name alone.  It’s a precious and delicate thing and with each successive film I fear the spell will finally shatter. But UP isn’t a flop.  The integrity of the Pixar name is well intact and may it be so for years to come.  There’s nothing I can write here that can say more eloquently what has already been said in theaters across the country.  UP’s reviews are written in a communal grammar built of gasps, and happy tears, a language filled with the sighs of the long-lived, the breathless wonder of cynics like me, and best of all the laughter and joyous exclamation not only of children but of those who dare to come and sit in the darkness and hear the storyteller’s whisper and remember how to be child-like once more. So if UP moved you the way it did me then I hope you’ll tell us how.  It’s UP (har har) to the audience to write this review.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen some very poorly executed movies.  Is there anything more frustrating than going into a theater with high expectations and watching for two hours as those hopes are slowly dashed to pieces?  Why yes, I’m sure there are things more frustrating but it’s definitely near the top of any reasonable list.  It’s right up there with forgetting to do laundry over the weekend and discovering on Monday morning that you’ve got to go to work in whichever clothes are least dirty.  Maybe that’s just me. The frustrating thing with these critical flops is that they often get a lot of things right.  They have solid ideas behind them that promise great stories and they’re often drawn from source material full of complex and interesting characters. In the case of blockbuster-style summer movies, action and special effects play as big a part as actors.  But flashy special effects do not a good movie make.  Nor do cheesy effects a good movie ruin.  You’d be hard pressed to bring down a good movie with bad effects, although a distressing number of bad movies succeed solely on the quality of the effects work. The story is the same with music, cinematography, editing, lighting and all the other technical aspects of filmmaking. So where is the disconnect?  Why does a movie with a good concept, good actors, and competent technical prowess fail? The issue is that among blockbuster level filmmakers there often seems to be a general lack of understanding of the fundamentals of good storytelling.   The basics are not being covered. One of those basics is Character Arc.  Every character needs to have his or her own particular story within the greater whole.  Each character must start with a problem, struggle with that problem, and find some kind of resolution by the end of the story.  Each character ought to have grown and changed and come out at the end someone other than who he was in the beginning. What many storytellers seem to forget is that this applies not only to the main character but to every single member of the cast.  If a character doesn’t struggle and change then it’s one-dimensional.  Either beef it up or cut it out. Another basic: Scene Structure.  Scenes are the building blocks of a story whether in a book, on stage, or on screen.  A scene doesn’t serve merely to pass on information, a scene must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It has to pose a problem and find a resolution to that problem through conflict.  If a scene doesn’t do that then guess what?  It isn’t a scene. That doesn’t mean that scenes can’t be intercut and it doesn’t mean that they have to be shown linearly, but they have to satisfy those conditions.  They must not only show conflict, they must move toward resolution. When I sit down to write a scene there are several things that go through my mind.  The first is that I need to know what the scene is meant to accomplish.  Maybe it needs to move the action from one location to another.  Maybe it needs to set up a subplot.  Maybe it needs to introduce a character.  Once I know what the scene needs to do, then I go about learning how it does it. The ‘how’ is the job of the characters.  Every character in a scene wants something.  The audience doesn’t necessarily need to know this but the writer does.  Once you know what a character wants, then you decide how they will go about trying to get it.  Maybe a character wants acceptance, maybe he wants to go to sleep, maybe he wants to kill someone.  No matter what is going on, every character wants something.  The storyteller’s job is to figure out what that desire is and use it to propel the scene forward. When you put two or more characters together that want different things or, even better, that want the same thing, you’ve got conflict.  Now you’ve got a scene going. But the scene can’t end with conflict.  Someone has to get what they want and there have to be consequences, a new problem has to be encountered.  If no one gets their way then there’s no forward motion and the scene falls flat.  If no new conflict is introduced then the story is over, you’ve dropped the dramatic ball. These aren’t revolutionary ideas.  These are the bare bones basics:  Character and Scene.  If writers and directors followed those simple guidelines they’d have a much harder time making bad movies.   It’s heartbreaking to go to the theater and see the work and sweat and passion of so many people falling apart because the writers and the director didn’t cover the basics, they didn’t adhere to the most foundational concepts of storytelling. I don’t expect every movie to be great.  I do, however, expect that if millions of dollars and years of work are going to be put into something that it should at least betray evidence that you understand the fundamental concepts that make a story work.  Pixar understands this.  What excuse does the rest of the blockbuster machine have?

We can’t read white letters on a white page. Light needs a dark background; think of all the nuances of shade an artist uses.Without the human race falling into sin, grace would not be apparent. God has purposed to use the Devil as an unwitting errand boy; “Those who will not be God’s sons become His tools,” said George MacDonald. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He made man, made woman. He placed the two Trees in the Garden. Since He knows the end from the beginning, He knew Eve would take Satan’s bait. Why didn’t He show up and rescue her, or give any prompt to Adam? God knew exactly what was going to happen, since He is omniscient. He created the first man and woman knowing full well they would fall, since Jesus is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This doesn’t mean God authors sin. He gives freedom, and creatures in their freedom choose to misuse it. But He “means evil for good.” Joseph said, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,” and later Joseph says, “It was not you (his brothers) that sent me here to Egypt – it was God.” He saw God working in all things and even in the completely evil actions of his brothers. Job – Satan took God’s bait (again, God’s omniscience knew that he would) and ran off to wipe out Job. This was meant by God to purify Job of the last little bit of self-righteousness. There are other passages in the OT that are odd. God says, “Who will be a lying spirit in the mouths of the false prophets for me?” A spirit speaks up and says, “I will.” Imagine what this world would be like without any suffering at all. We’d never experience hatred of evil. We could not choose to love even though we felt like hating the person. No one would ever go on a mission trip. Without the potential of suffering, courage cannot be exercised. Jesus would never have been born. The Devil is our resistance training. A sword has to be heated to white hot levels and then hammered out on the anvil again and again before it gains an ability to be trusted by the swordsman. God is building a people He can trust to never do what Lucifer did. They will become the Bride by seeing firsthand the results of Lucifer’s mindset: “I will be like the Most High.” That mindset can be summed up in one word: Separation. “I am a separate being from God with my own purposes and wants and desires. Not Thy will, but My will be done.” That’s the mindset we as believers have got to burn out on. That’s the source and wellspring of sin in the believer: “I am a separate self who must find fulfillment, worth, meaning, security by my own devices.” Rather, the mature believer sets his mind in this way: “I am an indwelt cup who has been given everything I need for life and godliness. Worth, meaning, security, fulfillment – all are mine, here and now, in Christ, because I am a new creation, Blood bought and washed son of God, an heir of righteousness.” These truths must be eaten and digested and become part of us.