There are times when I’m driving home from a friend’s house, from an evening filled with good food and wine, laughter, great conversation, and friendly competition in boggle or speed scrabble or dutch blitz, and I’m almost overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness, of aloneness. I’m always surprised by it. It makes me wonder what I was hoping for, what I wanted from that night. Last week, my friend Andy Osenga wrote a blog post after seeing the new Batman movie, about how it revealed to him (again) that he was putting his hope in the wrong things. He wrote, “Was I really putting my hope in some movie, you might say? Hoping it would do do what? I don’t know, honestly, but I do know I was disappointed that I wasn’t different after watching it, that it hadn’t changed me. Which means, at some absurd and obviously flawed level, I was putting my hope in a movie. And this is something we all do. Whether it’s Batman or the new Coldplay or U2. We can put our hope there. Or we can put it in our pastor’s sermons or our small group’s honesty. We can put our hope there. We can put it in the girl that got away or in making love with the one we married. We can put our hope there. We have some bit of hope that it will change us, make us better. Or we’re trapped in some cycle of secrets and habits we can’t escape. Maybe this thing will curb our appetite for the sins that we feel define our secret selves, or at least it will let us not think about it for a while. Or at least it will make us feel. We’ve been so numbed for so long, for some unknown and hated reason, that we can’t feel anymore, and maybe this thing will connect us, revive us. And at some point we’ll have to look at this thing, this movie or relationship or feeling, however truly good it may be, and say: “is this all?” read the rest of Andy’s post here When I read that the other night, this quote from C.S. Lewis came to mind: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Eric Peters has been one of my favorite songwriters since I first discovered his Scarce album a few years ago. This is “Long Road to Nowhere ” and it’s just one great song off an entire album of great songs. Right now (possibly at this very moment) he’s hard at work recording his next album with the ubiquitous Ben Shive. Check out the blog for the new record and stop by his website where you can get involved with the making of it.

In a recent post, a reader asked why so many people here in the rabbit room were so enthusiastic about author/novelist/theologian Frederick Buechner, so I thought I’d start a post that would let people discuss what it is they love about Buechner, or even why they don’t get what all the fuss is about. I’ve found that Buechner’s writings are a love it or hate it affair, and I understand people who find it too difficult to climb over his eclectic fence given the strong flavor of his work and the way he nudges the envelope of orthodoxy. But for my money, there’s no writer who brings the story of the bible to life for me the way Buechner does – especially the characters who inhabit those stories. Through Buechner’s eyes, characters like Jacob, Job, Pilate, and even Jesus himself jump off the Sunday school flannel board and break through the confines of the morality tales we’ve tried to make of their lives. They become unpredictable, dangerous, sweaty, and human. Whether I’m reading Buechner’s telling of the Jacob narratives in his novel “The Son Of Laughter”, or his short biographical sketches of familiar biblical characters in “Peculiar Treasures”, or even the way these characters show up in his other books like “Telling The Truth”, these people we think we know so well and that we’ve often reduced to pietistic symbols and straw men all of sudden come alive. Pilate feels dangerous as he regards Jesus through the haze of the smoke of his cigarette. We see Sara’s toothless smile as she doubles over laughing at the announcement that she will soon bring Laughter into the world from the geriatric ward with medicare footing the bill. We smell the sweat and feel the spittle as Jacob wrestles with the Angel by the river Jabok. We ache to be the one who places a pillow beneath Jesus’ head in the stern of the boat. Somehow in the way he dusts off these old biblical friends we always thought we knew so well he helps me not only pay attention to their lives, but calls attention to my own life, and in the process I too am dusted off and come alive in ways that are dangerous, unpredictable, and human. For this alone I would love him, but there’s also his sharp wit and uncommon observations that defy convention and provide an endless fount of wonder. But of course his greatest gift is in telling his own story so courageously and truthfully that it invites us deeper into our own stories and ultimately connects us to the grand story of God’s redemptive work in our lives. I could say more, but I’m more interested in hearing from you. But let me close with this thought. Though some find fault with some of his conclusions, and even though I myself don’t agree with everything he writes, the truth remains that at a time in my life when Christianity looked so shabby and untenable to me, when Christian belief seemed so unbelievable and void of vibrancy (all this because of a toxic church environment that I was in), God brought Buechner to me and in his writing I rediscovered my love for Christ and passion for walking out a faith that is alive and full of wonder and holy mystery. Many years later my wife and I had an opportunity to hear Buechner speak at Calvin College. He simply read some passages from his books, but as I looked over at Taya, I found that like me, her face was wet with tears. Note: Three of Buechner’s works, “The Magnificent Defeat“, “The Sacred Journey“, and “Godric“, are currently available in the Rabbit Room store.

“Dreams” — this is my favorite song off of the Slugs, Bugs, & Lullabies album. Why? Simple. It’s got pirates, mad killer bees, and Zorbians. Yo ho ho. Any questions?

I’ve spent a lot of time lately feeling unwanted, unknown, and unloved in general. I suspect a lot of other singles deal with such feelings and I have to remind myself often that I’m not the only person that feels and fears these things. Usually it’s an annoying tickle in my mind that nags at me, reminds me that when I get home no one’s going to care how my day was, no one’s going to be around the house to talk to, no one’s going to care whether or not I have a good night. But for the past week, the usual empty echo of singleness has been magnified. I’ve just moved into a new town and on top of all those other struggles, I feel out of place, awkward, and often plain useless. I wrestle with feeling abandoned sometimes by friends and often by God. I sat down to write this evening, wanting to express some of that struggle, and was interrupted in the middle of it because I wore my green shoes. As I sat in Starbucks, minding my own business and looking for some inspiration in Buechner’s Whistling in the Dark, a young man approached me, told me his name was Monday, and asked for a moment of my time. He was nicely dressed and groomed and very polite but as soon as he begged my pardon, I knew what he was up to. He was a proselytizer. Ugh. There needs to be a better word for these people, something meatier, something like ‘busker’, after all isn’t this the spiritual equivalent of busking? Whatever you call them, they get on my nerves. On one level, I’m glad they’re out there. I’m sure there’s good that comes of their effort and I’m always polite when they approach me but my point of irritation begins when I tell them that that yes, as a matter of fact I will go to heaven if I die tonight and I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and that doesn’t satisfy them. They persist as if my confession can’t be taken at face value. This drives me nuts. I will admit however that there is another part of me that secretly admires these people for engaging in a zealous sort of evangelism that I think any of the apostles would have cheered about. I especially admire those street corner preachers that are mad as hatters and stand on their boxes all day shouting the gospel (or their version of it) to the masses. Isn’t that, or something very like it, what the prophets of old did? So there I sat, and there stood Monday, both of us knowing how awkward the other felt. Then he said something that threw me. “I’m on a treasure hunt. Do you mind if I sit down and ask you a few questions?” Despite my irritation at the interruption, I smiled and assured him that he was welcome to ask. He sat opposite me, placed a book on the table, and opened it. Oh great, I thought, he’s going to start quoting scripture at me. He didn’t. The book wasn’t a bible, it was a journal of sorts. He had the date written at the top of the page and listed below it a small jumble of words that I couldn’t read. “I’m on a treasure hunt,” he said. “I ask the Lord to give me clues and I write them down then go out to look for the treasure.” Alllllrighty then! At this point, it’s all I can do to keep from laughing and rolling my eyes. I’m in pure patronization mode. “So what clues can I help you with,” I ask. “The first thing I wrote down today before I walked in here was ‘green shoes’ and I see that you’re wearing green shoes.” I was, and agreed with him that it was so. Then he read off a few more of his clues. “Does the name ‘Alex’ mean anything to you?” he asked. It didn’t but this was getting more entertaining by the minute. He continued scanning his list of clues, occasionally asking me about one or another until we got to the end and determined that none of the rest of his clues had anything to do with me. Monday scratched his head and said, “I guess it’s just the green shoes then.” He closed his book and apologized for having taken up my time. Then he said something that caught me completely off my guard. “God wanted me to let you know that you are a great treasure and he loves you very much.” The genuine way in which he said it, the lack of agenda, the humility with which he spoke, the undeniable timeliness of the message, it all converged on me so thickly it was dizzying. I was dumbfounded, I couldn’t speak, I could scarcely breathe, and it was all I could do to hold back tears. Not five minutes earlier, I had been struggling to make some sense of the loneliness and anger I was feeling. I felt unloved, unknown, useless and abandoned. Then, in walked a stranger who sat down and told me I was a “great treasure.” “Do you know Jesus?” he asked me and I told him that I did. “Thank you for your time, brother.” He offered his hand, I shook it, and he walked out. Today the Creator of life took time to reassure me that I’m not alone, that I am loved, that I have not only value, but great value. Who am I to argue. Thanks for noticing my shoes, Monday, and may God bless your treasure hunt.

Wednesday night was creepy. After my duties were done in Sacramento I drove north through the center of a wide geographical corridor whose walls were distant mountains. The fields that lay between the ranges were patched with bright green crops, hemmed by fences and torn by brush lined creeks. Except for the mountains, it looked like parts of Kansas I have seen. I had no place to be until about four o’clock the next day, and I was in (for me) uncharted territory. I’ve been to all fifty of our United States, and can easily recall distinctive impressions of each of them—Maine in winter with its sharp blue skies and numbing wind at the Portland Head lighthouse, where a man with a bagpipe played his mournful, majestic tune for the Atlantic; the rattlesnake coiled up on the trail in Albequerque; a field of soybeans in Indiana at dusk, swarming with so many fireflies you could almost drive without the headlights on; a hitchhiker who wanted to be dropped off on the shoulder of the interstate at the border of Tennessee and Alabama, where he said the woods were full of clean streams and thick old trees where a man could live quite happily for the rest of his life. So now it was time to see what Northern California had to say. I had no hotel reservation, no advice from the locals as to what to avoid and what to seek out. The corridor of cultured land ended and my little rental car had no choice but to climb into the green backed mountains. The sun was setting. The towns grew sparser, and fewer exits boasted food or lodging. I started to imagine sleeping in the car, which wouldn’t have been that bad of an option except that I failed to bring my Swiss Army knife on this trip so I wouldn’t have any way to defend myself against the monsters of the wood, human or otherwise. I pulled over at an exit with a motel called the Neu Lodge. “Neu” is fancier than “new”, I suppose. Right next door was a restaurant incongruously named Brewster’s Mexican Café. I rang the buzzer at the olde screene doore and listened. A lady in hair curlers with a cigarette between two fingers poked her head out of the back room, where an equivalent of Donahue prattled from the television set. I asked for a room. She told me the price. I winced. It was about twice as much as I had expected, so I said no thanks. She asked what I had planned to pay. I told her, and she said, “Cash?” All I had was a credit card, so she waved me on, saying that the credit card fees were too high. About thirty more miles up the road was a town called Dunsmuir, where, according to the welcome sign, a traveler like myself could find the best water in the world. I passed a Travelodge, then drove on through the little town to see what there was to see. A few empty bars, a few teenagers trying to look natural while smoking cigarettes in front of the vacant pizza joint, but other than that the streets were empty. It was barren as a ghost town. The town is situated on the side of a mountain, hunkered several hundred yards below the interstate and several hundred yards above whatever river it is that provides that impeccable water. It’s an in-between town. A town in stasis, mocked by the always moving rivers above it and below, the traffic and the water, forever going somewhere while poor Dunsmuir languishes. I decided to stay. The town at night was so odd and quiet that I thought I might check in to the motel and go for a walk before going to sleep. That’s where this tale gets creepy. Around ten thirty I made sure my key card was safe in my back pocket, lit my pipe, and went for a walk, during which I planned to pray, to think, and to work out some song ideas that have recently formed. The main street of the town is bordered by houses for several blocks (much like the mountains that bordered the plains near Sacramento). The blinds were open in many of the windows, and I could see people sitting on couches, silhouetted by light from their televisions. I could hear snippets of conversations. Then, only a block or so down from the hotel, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. A little boy. A toddler wearing nothing but his diaper, standing on the sidewalk, alone, at night. He saw me. I looked up and down the street, hoping to see a parent nearby, but there was no one. “Where’s your mommy and daddy?” I called. He shrugged and pointed down the street. “Where do you live?” He shrugged again. I crossed to the center of street, speaking loudly to him so that anyone nearby would know I wasn’t being sneaky. Finally, from a nearby house, I heard a woman call for the boy. She emerged from the house, marched down the long steps to the street, and swooped him into her arms. “Everything okay?” I asked. “Yeah,” was all she said, and the screen door clapped behind her. I walked down the hill, past the residences and to the town proper. The businesses were asleep for the night, but the prowlers of Dunsmuir were not. A two big Ford pickups blatted by, turned the corner, and disappeared. A white Volkswagen Bus puttered past in the opposite direction, looking for trouble, or love, wondering how it ended up so far from the California beaches where it belonged. The teenagers driving these vehicles slouched in their seats, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that unless they did something drastic they would grow old and die in this little town. I reached the end of the town, still unsettled by the sight of that little boy, and decided to head back. It was at this point that I realized what a Hitchcockian scenario I was in. A traveler, alone, choosing a motel in this purportedly quaint little town for the night, unaware that he would never, ever leave. Suddenly my room at the Travelodge seemed the only safe place in the universe. About halfway back I heard voices. Two drunk men, staggering down the main street calling for someone, or something. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it sounded like a pig call: “Soueeeee!” In broad daylight it might have been funny, but now, echoing through the barren streets, it was unpleasant and even a little frightening. I wondered if I should’ve woken up Jamie to tell her where I was. The drunks staggered on and turned down a steep street that went to the dark river below. The Volkswagen passed me again. A woman appeared, walking toward me and talking to herself. She passed me without a word, without acknowledging me with even a glance, making me wonder if perhaps I was invisible—had any of the town’s residents paid a lick of attention to me? I remembered the mother of the little boy. She had answered me. Good. I wasn’t a ghost, then. When the woman passed, I could smell in her wake marijuana smoke still clinging to her clothes and hair. Then I heard two cats fighting in the distance, an inhuman, garbling screech. Behind me, in one of the dark houses, a baby screamed, and screamed, and the sounds of the cats and the child grated against one another and against my ears, and made the world seem for a moment like it was very near its end. I sped up. I could see the Travelodge sign a few blocks ahead. Then I saw something that once again stopped me in my tracks. Across the street, in a gravelly, abandoned parking lot, something was staring at me. I was not alone. I was being studied. A deer, a buck with a fine crown of antlers nodded its head as if in greeting. He took a few steps nearer, so that he stood on the opposite sidewalk, watching me curiously, as if he expected me to pull a sugar cube from my pocket and offer it to him. One of the giant pickup trucks rumbled by, passing directly between the buck and me. The driver looked neither left nor right, oblivious of the encounter playing out on the streets of his town. We were both ghosts, the deer and I. The sound of the truck faded, and still we stood, regarding each other. The deer trotted across the street at an angle away from me, his hooves making hardly a sound on the asphalt, and disappeared between two houses. I lit my pipe again and strolled back to the motel, thankful for beauty, and for grace, and the way they prowl and glide the dark streets of lonely towns, even those tucked deep in the mountains, dispelling fear and worry, blessing the traveler with the assurance that there is yet a Great Good in the world, unstoppable, unquenchable, lithe as wind and bold as light. Have no fear. By the way, I had a fine omelet at a café in Dunsmuir the next morning. The town was charming, and the water was delicious.

The Photographs album was my first exposure to the ‘other Andrew’ (or would that be the other other Andrew?) and man, I was just blown away. This album has seen so much time in my CD player that it’s finally been rendered unplayable and placed in the frisbee drawer. Never fear, thanks to the goodness of digital media it now lives happily inside my iPod and thanks to the magic of the Rabbit Room Song of the Day, one of my favorite songs off that album, “When Will I Run”, is presented to you right here in all its glory. Cue the music and someone tell Springsteen that he needs to cover this song.

“I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity, this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.” –Marilynne Robinson, Gilead “Traditional” is a word that often comes with negative baggage these days. We too often equate “traditional” with “old-fashioned” or “out of date.” It’s a word too quickly applied to things we consider to have passed beyond their true relevance; things moving quickly toward irrelevance. Traditional publishing. Traditional music. Traditional education. Traditional family. Traditional values. You get the idea. But in the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” T. S. Eliot argues that the word “traditional,” especially as applied to art, is not a negative label in any way, but is instead a positive and even desirable one. He says that “no poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” He argues that art is, by necessity “traditional,” that new works are predicated upon the old, each new poet standing upon the bones of the dead. He’s telling us that tradition is important, and to be “traditional,” is not to be old-fashioned or conservative or rote, but to be informed by and to stand upon the long history of literature and creation that has come before. There is, perhaps, nowhere that this is more apparent than in poetry. Dante, Milton, and Eliot himself are each formidable poets taken alone. If Paradise Lost, for instance, were the only piece of poetry you’d ever read, you might still consider it a masterwork of thought, language, and imagery. But you’d be missing half the story, because when a work like Milton’s is taken in its full historical and artistic context, it’s elevated to far greater power by virtue of the foundations on which it stands—foundations like Virgil, Homer, Ovid, Isaiah, and Job. Works like Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy are strewn with allusions to the works of elder poets and writers. They are packed with references to myths, legends, historical figures, and events that we’ve all but forgotten. Eliot has said that while the immature poet imitates, the mature poet steals, building into his work bricks fashioned by his forebears. This is true of all art. It draws its power from context, requiring a knowledge of tradition in order for us to fully appreciate its current implications. Now—I’d like you to imagine that we are living, as Marilynne Robinson suggests, in Troy, within an epic poem. I want to suggest that the world, our world, is itself a work of art, and that our very lives are paintings and poems, frescos and songs, all founded on that which has come before us—all rooted firmly in tradition. The world we inhabit, right now, the rooms we sit in, the walls around us, the sunlight coming in through the window, this all makes up the great work of an age. So what might that have to do with the New Creation that the Bible promises us will come? What if we are, at this very moment, the tradition and context out of which that new work is about to be forged? Is it possible that we are the tradition and foundation—the metaphors, the symbols, the nearly forgotten tales—waiting to be written into the great work of an age yet to come? I’m going to come back to that suggestion, but before I do, I want to change direction for a moment. I’ve mentioned Eliot and his essay about the importance of tradition, of the importance of the past in literature. But I want to talk for a bit about the opposite end of the spectrum. What about the importance of the future? Great stories exist, not merely within the boundaries of their “presentness,” but often beyond it. What do I mean by that? Well, Tolkien is a great example. The Lord of the Rings has a very clear sense of tradition. It has its own sense of the past, both within the story, and within the structure and language that author uses to tell it. Tolkien is famous for the extensive history he built as a foundation for his tales and languages. Some make the case that he was more concerned with his imagined history than his imagined story. In Tolkien’s case I don’t know that you can separate the two, and that’s one of the reasons I love his stories so much. His writing on the other hand owes its form to myths and Old English legends, epic poetry like Beowulf. Taken all together, that’s the story’s past, the tradition it’s built on. And indeed, the Lord of the Rings could scarcely exist without it. The “present” of the story is the tale it tells, with which I assume you are all familiar. But it’s the story’s future, its end, that I’m interested in here. It ends as many great stories do, not with finality, but with a new beginning. The Third Age of Middle-earth has passed away, and the Fourth Age has begun. But Frodo and Gandalf don’t simply end, do they? They sail away to Valinor, the Undying Lands, beyond the boundary of the story proper. We’re left on the shore, left to wonder. We’re left with wonder. When we turn the last page of the Lord of the Rings, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the story is still going on somehow, even though we aren’t privilege to its details. The same can be said of the Chronicles of Narnia. In both these cases, it’s as if the storytellers have led us just so far along a road, showing us sights and marvels along the way, and then on the last page of the book, the author plants a signpost, as if to say to us that the story goes on that way, just over that hill, and there are untold tales that we will never know because, sadly, we must follow another road back into our own world, into our own present. We love to mourn the end of a good book don’t we? We love to imagine what might be if only the author had kept on writing. There’s something wonderfully tantalizing about the idea that the authors of our favorite books might have further stories to tell us if only they were still alive to do so. But all we’re left with are the signposts left behind to point us toward things we can only dream of. These “signposts” are important. Personally, spiritually, culturally, they mark the ways we’ve come and the ways we hope one day to go. And I think the well-built signpost endures, becoming in time like an eroded marker left by a long-forgotten civilization. The well-built signpost may even become a tradition. Flannery O’Connor wrote hundreds of letters in her lifetime. They’re collected in a book called The Habit of Being and they provide a fascinating document of a sharp and gifted mind. Only days before her death at the age of 39 she wrote the following words to a friend: “Don’t know when I’ll send those stories. I have felt too bad to type them.” She died a few days later and those untold stories went with her. I can’t help but sit back sometimes and imagine what they might have been like. She left that letter behind her like a signpost planted in the road, as if to say: “the stories go on, but I, for the moment, cannot.” I think that’s why that death feels so wrong to us. Death ends a story that we know is meant to go on. When someone dies, we’re left to stand on the shores, and we wonder. We wonder because death is itself a signpost, an Ebenezer stone, a cairn, a marker left to map the way from dust to dust, testifying to the length, breadth, and depth of the Curse. But if we look closely, we can see more than merely an endpoint. We must see instead an arrow. The signpost does not announce the journey’s end; it proclaims the destination lying a bit further along the road. And these signposts we leave behind, whether stories, or civilizations, or individual lives, are becoming, every moment, the legends and poems and monuments—the traditions—out of which a future age will draw a new masterpiece. N.T. Wright has said that “all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into the mist.” You see, we are standing every day in the presentness of a story, of an epic. It’s going on all around us. It’s full of characters major and minor, good and evil. It’s full of wars and miracles, love and hate, great beauty and terrible suffering, and it’s so big that none of us can comprehend its full measure. We live in the present story built on the bones of the dead. And just as the hope of Abraham and Israel led to a new covenant in Christ, ushering in a new age of human history, so is our own hope, our own story, the foundation of a greater work yet untold. Because in this story, in our story, the Author isn’t dead, the Author hasn’t retired and turned in his pen. He’s got stories left to tell. He’s planted signposts all over the world, down through the Ages, that tell us the finale is still up ahead, “soon to be released,” as it were. You and I are the tradition out of which the Author is building something new, an epic for the age to come. The job of the artist in the present is to reach backward into tradition with one hand, anchoring himself there in order to reach forward into the mist with the other—then he closes his fist, taking hold of all he can, and brings into his present a new signpost and plants it firmly. If he does his job well, that signpost may one day become the anchor onto which other artists will cling and reach even further. As Eliot said of art, a new masterwork does not simply do away with the traditions out of which it’s born. New work is built on work that has come before it and it is interpreted in that context. Jesus says very much the same thing in Matthew: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill them.” In Christ, the old is not merely done away with. Creation is not swept away and forgotten. It is instead redeemed. In Christ, the things of earth will be put to new use, considered in new ways, in light of new information. The old does not merely pass away, it passes into and is redefined by a new way. As Christians, this is our hope. It’s fundamental to what we claim to believe. What we create in this present world, what we do, who we love, and how we live, will all one day be the context for God’s New Creation. We are the tradition out of which the epics, folk-tales, legends, art, and songs of ages to come will arise. And that means that what we create here and now matters. Our food matters, our stories matter, our architecture and music and poetry all matter. It means that the world itself, its trees, its canyons, its vast oceans all matter. All Creation waits to be redeemed, to be bought back by its true Master and considered with fresh eyes in the light of new information. We are surrounded by the mettle out of which God will one day form a new Heaven and a new Earth. This world, our present, is the iron out of which something bigger and bolder is being wrought. So if I write a story, I want it to point out into that mist where the Author of my faith is laboring over things that my mind cannot yet fathom. If I build a boat, I want it to leave someone with a longing to sail it, because that longing is pointing toward undiscovered shores in the distance. In everything, I hope to leave signposts that will point toward the world to come. It’s not my job to define that world. It’s my job to leave behind the bricks and mortar with which the master will one day build new wonders. It’s my job to leave the Ebenezer stone, to erect the signpost that points and says “It’s that way, just over that hill, and we’ve only a little while until we see it.” Each work of art, no matter how small or how meager, each act of love, each child, each sunrise, these are all traditions pointing to the way things were and signposts pointing to the stories we will one day tell. They are the nouns and adjectives and verbs, the metaphors, allusions, and similes of books waiting to be written. We can’t write them yet, because we haven’t been there, we haven’t seen the new country, we are the old tradition waiting to be called into new meaning. The Author isn’t done with this old place. He’s got big plans. Leave signposts. A couple of months ago I watched a documentary called “I Think We’re Alone Now.” Do you remember Tiffany, the singer in the ‘80s? The documentary is about two Tiffany stalkers, one of whom is named Kelly. Kelly is hermaphroditic, a person with the physical traits of both genders. Kelly’s parents divorced when she was a child and they had joint custody of her. When she stayed with her mom, she was made to dress like a girl. When he stayed with his dad, he was made to dress like a boy. As an adult, I don’t think Kelly has any idea who he or she is. Her story is profoundly sad. Kelly’s an alcoholic, a drug addict, a lonely, broken person with shifting ideas of who she is and who loves her and who she can love. As I watched, I wanted so badly for someone to tell Kelly that brokenness and pain and confusion don’t have to be the end of her story. That moment, of course, never came. The credits rolled, and I went to bed wrecked by an ache, wrecked by way I saw the Curse played out in Kelly’s life. I couldn’t sleep, and so I got up and wrote this signpost. It’s called “For Kelly.” When you stand naked In front of the mirror And you see in your flesh A terrible question wrought And you cry and ask: “Who will love me?” And you scream demanding: “Who has done this?” When you plug up your ears To keep out the silence, Strain to hear the voice That knows your beauty. For you are a living symbol Of all that must (and shall) be amended. I carry my portion of our curse Where no one can see, But you, like a prophet, Live yours, wrestle it, As we avert our eyes. You expose the division In the heart of creation. And in your pain, In your twisted flesh, I am reminded Of the world to come, Wherein nature Shall be untangled Then raveled once more In its best and truest And final form. Know, too, that your own Shall be whole; The unanswered question Knit to your bones Shall be supplanted By an exclamation and then— Your glorious body Shall proclaim the end Of all divided things. I use this as an example. It’s built on that which has come before it—a movie, which was in turn built on Tiffany’s music, which was in its turn built on something before that. And each of those previous creations have reached into the mist and pulled something back, have planted their own signposts pointing the way of the human soul and its longings and aspirations, and now, with this poem, I have added my signpost to theirs, hopefully pointing farther and higher toward the unseen destination that lies around the bend. The world needs to know that the road is taking us somewhere. Pain and loneliness and suffering and hatred will not have the last word. What is the Cross if not a signpost on which is written “Come this way. Come over this hill?” The Author is fast at his work. He’s leaving signposts, and he calls us to leave them too. Tell the world it matters. Remind the world that it’s one day going to be remade. It’s going to be rewritten into the epic of the universe, the ballad we will sing in the streets.

Hello, friends. I started writing for this outfit called For the Family a few months ago, and my most recent post is about how much our family loves Randall Goodgame’s new record. I thought you might like to see it. And speaking of that good fellow, don’t miss the live Stage-It show Randall has planned for this Saturday morning! Our family has been profoundly blessed and wildly delighted by Randall Goodgame’s recent album, Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs. Here are a few reasons why. 1. The Book! We are people of the Book. We love the Bible and want its truth on our lips and in our hearts. Our kids have been singing the Word of God all over our house since we got our copy of Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs. It’s deeply satisfying to my wife and I to know our kids are storing up the treasure of God’s Word in their hearts. 2. The Music! The music on this album is phenomenal. A lot of family/kids music is hokie, repetitive, irritating, and worst of, feels canned. Randall Goodgame is an incredible musician and has brought together a team of brilliant musicians, including Grammy-riddled banjoist Ron Block (of Alison Krauss and Union Station fame), Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, Buddy Green, a bunch of great kids, some monsters, some bees (trust me), and a host of others. Most fun of all, the African Children’s Choir out of Uganda lends its talents to the record. This is the real game-changer. Having spent a lot of my childhood in Africa, and most of the rest in Appalachia, this music is the real deal. It’s melodic folk-pop with a perfect dose of African rhythms (think Paul Simon’s Graceland) and a hint of bluegrass. It’s musically marvelous. 3. The Humor! It’s got some fantastic humor. I know, I know. It’s kind of hard to see how it’s possible when it’s an album of Scripture songs. I don’t want to ruin any surprises, but just trust me. Like all the other Slugs & Bugs record, this one has some moments of pure hilarity. One such moment of hilarity includes an appearance by the wonderful author of The Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones. Read the Rest at For the Family…

Last week, I penned a sonnet, and it was seriously one of the hardest things I have ever written. My husband all but dared me to do it, throwing down the bright challenge as we walked on the beach one night, and I accepted it with a mixture of excitement and terror. Excitement, because there’s nothing like the wordplay of poetry that wakens all my sensibilities and helps me distill those feelings that “do often lie too deep for tears.” But with the thrill came the cold fear that accosts me every single time I sit down to write—the mute despair that not only could I “not do it again”, but that I never had been able to do it in the first place. I confided to Philip that I’ve always felt I couldn’t say I wrote poetry until I’d tackled the sonnet—and I’m so afraid of sonnets. The exquisite discipline of the form shines a terrible light on my insecurities and inadequacies—so terrible, in fact, that I don’t think I would ever have attempted it if my husband hadn’t nudged me to try. I simply don’t believe that other people struggle with creativity the way that I do. I imagine every other artist that has ever lived simply gushing creativity in an endless torrent of words or notes or color—no matter what they insist otherwise. When I hear someone say what a struggle it is for them to create, I can’t help but imagine this huge, universal conspiracy to keep me from giving up. At any rate, I got to work—what else is there to do? I dumped all my images and impressions and candidates for metaphor into my notebook and then I alternately thought and determinedly did not think about it for a couple of days. Tuesday morning I sat on the seawall with a blank page—and a suddenly blank mind. Panic fluttered, raven-like, about the fringes of my mind and that pernicious despair started to rise, drowning sweet ambition in a flood of self-consciousness. Who was I kidding? What did I have to say? And if I somehow managed to corral these wild horses of emotion into measureable verse, of what use could it possibly be to the world? In the death grip of such doubts, I laid down a line. Then I scratched it out and scribbled another. I added a word; I took two words away. I fought for that quatrain like my life depended on it—for, of course, in a small way, it did. The next day, I did it again, and it was even harder. The despair was icier; the fear of failure suffocating. If the first day’s task was difficult, this one’s was impossible. Like wrestling angels to the ground—and I was way too timid to demand a blessing. When that quatrain was in the bag four hours later, I was completely exhausted—and strangely kindled. Elated. On the day after I came to my work with a quaking heart, prepared for long travail. I sharpened my pencil and took a deep breath—and the next thing I knew, it was done. The words tumbled out in a final heap, and I sat there in the sun, reading and re-reading just to make sure, utterly astonished. It wasn’t perfect, of course—but it was finished, and I knew it. And I was content. I left that place where I had written my sonnet a little weak in the knees—it seemed holy, somehow, sanctified by a battle of spiritual proportions. Almost what the ancient Celts would call a “thin place,” a place where the veil between the seen and the unseen fades. It occurred to me the next day that writing that sonnet was a lot like the overall experience of my creative life. It was a microcosm of the fears I face, the tooth and nail battle for every line, the sudden, rare, bright cascade of words. Not only that, it was a lot like prayer. In living metaphor it spanned the distance between supposedly separate realities, and connected my creative life and my spiritual life in a tangible way. My struggle to wrestle a heart-full of disparate emotions into fourteen lines of verse reminded me keenly of my walk with Christ: I come to Him with all these messy yearnings and inclinations—some holy, some not so much—and through the travail of prayer, He helps me sort and order them: confess, toss, keep, and listen. Tweak my desires and emotions into something a little more in tune with the song He’s singing over my life. One of the biggest surprises of my adulthood was that the Christian life is hard. “All noble things are as difficult as they are rare,” said Spinoza, and it’s a rite of passage to learn it. I’ll never forget reading Sayer’s translation of the Purgatorio about ten years ago and coming across the passage where Dante and Virgil are scrabbling up the mountain on their hands and knees: “My son, “said he, “drag thyself onward—look! . . . His words were such a goad, I strained to follow, and with desperate pressure Crawled on—crawled up—and on the terrace stood. “Oh,” I thought, with a glorious sense of relief. “It’s supposed to be like that.” Indeed, sometimes it is. But it was hard for me to reconcile the challenges of a faithful walk with Christ with the “first fine careless rapture” I had known as a teenager in my earliest acquaintance with Him. Likewise, when I began writing seriously as an adult, I was rather disheartened to realize that stories didn’t seem to spin themselves out of thin air the way they had when I was seventeen and unfettered with grownup anxieties and insecurities. But there’s just something about travail that makes the prize all the more precious. A woman who has delivered a baby “no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” Even the dizzy enchantment of scribbling stories by candlelight in my bedroom as a girl cannot compare, sweet as it was, to the satisfaction of that one sonnet that I sweated blood over. And nothing has made Jesus more precious to me than the hard passes we’ve come through together: the doubts He’s not despised, the weaknesses and failures and sudden flashes of eternal joys we’ve weathered together. One of the things that I love about writing is that it images my faith—it brings forth something that wasn’t before in answer to Something that always has been and always will be: “calling things that were not as though they were,” lending unseen realities “a local habitation and a name.” And one of the things that has helped me connect my art and my faith in a profoundly tangible way has been the concept of Spiritual Discipline. Artists and Christians are no strangers to discipline. Though it may not be a popular word in our day, discipline is the backbone of our efforts and aspirations. In keeping with tradition, the arts are known collectively as the Disciplines—though I find it interesting that it wasn’t until the Renaissance that we got highfalutin enough to make a distinction between the “artistic” crafts, like painting and poetry, and the so-called “non-artistic” crafts, like bread-making and ironwork. Twyla Tharp has made a masterful case for artistic discipline in her book The Creative Habit, and I would encourage anyone remotely serious about pursuing creative endeavors to give her words a good, long think. Remember, an act does not have to generate money in order to be legitimately creative, nor does it have to be applauded by the masses. Obedience to an inner call is the only standard worth considering. The roots of Spiritual Discipline run deep, back to the earliest days of our faith. For generations, the saints of God, ordinary men and women who loved God in an extraordinary way, have made an effort to connect the two worlds we inhabit—the seen and the unseen—by simple practices that have come to be known as the Spiritual Disciplines. By doing certain things again and again, things that can be tasted or touched or experienced, God’s people have faithfully practiced their faith in Him. They have literally acted out what they know to be true; they have trained themselves with things like prayer and fasting and worship and solitude to remember what is real, even when they cannot see it. Like skilled athletes, they have worked hard to bring their lives closer and closer to what God had in mind for us all along, to make that gap between the seen and the unseen smaller, to lift their hearts and minds up to heaven, and to bring the miracle of Christ’s actual life in us down to earth. There is no set “list” of Spiritual Disciplines—I would venture to say that there are as many candidates for discipline as there are saints to perform them. They are not punishments or penances or ways to make God love you more—that’s impossible; that’s legalism. Legalism is a fraud, a fake, a shriveled imposter beside this benevolent giant of our tradition. Legalism is like one of those programs into which you can plug all the elements for “writing” a formulaic novel, claiming one way to a prescribed end; Spiritual Discipline flaunts a thousand doors opening on a fathomless beginning. Spiritual discipline is nothing more and nothing less than a practical, physical act that places these very human bodies of ours in willing submission to the Divine. It is not an appeasement for wrong-doing but a celebration of relationship. The disciplines move us, as Dallas Willard says, “to live as our hearts tell us we should.” Discipline puts skin and bones on our love—it is to our faith what the barre exercises are to the ballerina or the scales and arpeggios to the concert pianist. The artists never grow out of these things—they always need them to keep their bodies and fingers limber, flexible, familiar with their craft. We, too, need hands-on rehearsals; we are tangible, touchable human bodies, and we need to practice what it means to be a new creation. I don’t even begin to claim any sort of mastery here—the very idea is laughable—but I can say to the degree that the lines between creativity and spirituality have blurred in my life, my work has taken on a holy significance, releasing me into a place where I can draw closer to God in the hours spent alone at my desk, hours that I otherwise might be tempted to view as selfish or meaningless or downright foolhardy. We are created in the image of a Creator, and Art is one of the ways that we enflesh our identity. The act of creation is at once humbling and ennobling—and it’s as intensely personal as it gets. When God made the world, He did the creating out of the full expression of His three-fold identity, as inseparable from His creation as the mother and father are from the child they have conceived. There is such a tender image of the intimacy of the Godhead in that simple phrase, “Let us make man in our image.” Man’s creation, like God’s, is one of the most intimate things—if not the most intimate—that we are capable of. That’s why I believe that creativity itself is a valid candidate for a Spiritual Discipline: because it becomes a physical act by which we incarnate some aspect of an invisible relationship. Bringing our creativity under the banner of a Spiritual Discipline can help us—particularly if we are the type of person who sees things clearly in image and symbol—to come into contact with this mystery of co-creation, to touch the God-spark of originality embedded in our human frame. If you think about it for a moment, it’s really staggering that we are made this way—we are made to want to make. We are made to want to be just like our Father when we grow up, and to leave some imprint of ourselves on the world behind us. There is no compulsion about the thing; it is an invitation, an introduction to our truest self. When God was giving instructions to the craftsmen for the building of the Tabernacle in the Old Testament (Ex. 35), He repeated this refrain: All who were willing and had the skill. It’s two sides of the same blade—Will and Skill. The Will carries the sense of presenting what we have and what we are as material for practical devotion. The Skill, while one might argue has its original source in the divine spark, the unique giftings of our personality, comes down in the end to practical discipline. There is no skill where there has been no blood, sweat, and tears. As Twyla Tharp says, “Art is a vast democracy of habit.” If the Will means offering up, the Skill means showing up. And when our personal acts of creation take on the significance of a spiritual transaction, an act of devotion, I think we begin to glimpse what it can really mean to be not only created in the image of a Creator, but co-creators with Him. We serve a gracious God who is not threatened by our artistic attempts or human talents as the classical gods and goddesses always seemed to be, but who invites us wide-armed into this place of infinite possibility with Him. But if creativity is an invitation, it’s also a limitation. In the most glorious of all the glorious paradoxes by which God has expressed His limitless heart to the world, we find our freedom protected, preserved, actualized by boundary and limit. Chesterton imaged it as children playing on the side of a cliff, the dangerous precipice of which is hedged by a sturdy fence: we go over the fence to our peril—but within the fence, party down, kids! I think it’s not only helpful, but essential, to translate this truth into our creative lives if we’re going to find real satisfaction, both as believers and artists. Seeing all my different passions developing as a teenager, my grandmother used to caution me against being “jack of all trades, master of none.” Though I laughed indulgently at the time, I’ve grown to see some wisdom in her words. Part of the discipline of creativity is an essential selectiveness: the sonnet limits itself to one metaphor, which is developed and then manipulated with a twist; though tastes vary, a story generally arcs through a beginning, a middle, and an end; while the possibilities are endless within the notes of the musical scale, a ballad differs by definition from a concerto or a piano sonata. Choices are made, which give us the grand tradition upon which other works of art are built. Likewise in our creative lives, we are making choices every day, whether we realize it or not. It’s taken me a long time, and a lot of heartache, to come to the conclusion that a Yes to one thing is, by default, a No to something else. If our souls were made to dance among the stars, our bodies are still maddeningly finite entities, locked in time, bound by a very temporal 24-hour day. It is by boundary and limit that we, paradoxically, inhabit our own artistic infinity. One of the boundaries that has helped me integrate my creativity and my spirituality is the sister-discipline of solitude. I’m a true monastic at heart, but it has been extremely hard for me to come to a place where I’m not crippled by guilt in my efforts to live in a way that, as Macrina Wiederkehr so lovingly put it, is kind to my own soul. To make choices with my days—even small ones—that are not only good for me emotionally and creatively, but that keep my heart calibrated to its true North. In a world that is whirling faster than ever, I long for soul anchors, rituals and ancient rhythms that connect me to my Center. One of the things I do, in an effort to make my days more liturgical, more centered, is to try and keep the traditional monastic hours of prayer—I want to emphasize try.  Some days it doesn’t happen at all, and there’s not a single day have I kept every one of them. But the “interruption” of a few moments of prayer in the midst of a busy day keeps me connected to the Source that makes my work meaningful, whether it’s doing the laundry or cooking a meal or writing a novel. Two practical helps have been Seven Sacred Pauses, a layperson’s guide to the monastic hours by the Benedictine sister Macrina Wiederkehr, and Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours, a series of prayerbooks divided into the seasons of the year. Another anchor is the commitment I’ve made to show up at my desk for at least two hours a day. After years of struggling to justify the habit, it’s finally become a debt of honor—whether anything “productive” comes of it or not, I’m learning to accept this discipline as part and parcel of each day’s obedience. In a more general sense, I seek sincerity in my choices between various opportunities: to let my Yes be Yes and my No, No. Again, this has been a thorny path for me (you can ask my husband!), but to the extent that I have learned to extend grace to my own heart—in other words, not saying Yes when my heart is saying No—my days are saner, more centered, and my love more genuine. Say No, the Lord told me a few years ago, until you can say Yes with freedom and joy. It’s taken me a long time to make peace with this facet of my personality; to admit without shame—even to a roomful of like-minded rabbits!—that I seem to forget everything I know about myself and about God without relatively enormous amounts of solitude. I say relatively—I think previous generations didn’t feel quite so hagridden to justify “wide spaces” in their own hearts the way we do in this efficiency-enamored era of ours. But all I know is that for as long as I can remember I have been haunted by something I have only recently begun to refer to as the Monastic Ideal—a phrase I lifted from an Elizabeth Goudge book—the sense of stepping back from the world in order to make something beautiful by which to love the world. This is from one of Goudge’s first novels, The Middle Window, a book I would love for this passage alone, it was so life-changing: “That’s the monastic ideal,” said Judy, “and I’ve always thought it rather selfish—a creeping away from life.”“Then you have misunderstood it,” he said. “The monastic ideal is a core of sanity in a loathsome world, a core of sanity that spreads. Again and again men have gone into solitude to create beauty, and the beauty, created, has revolutionized a whole country.”Judy was still unconvinced. “But if nothing can get through the mountains to contaminate your Utopia, how can the beauty you create get out into the world?” “If you light a bonfire in a sheltered valley the protection makes such a huge blaze of it that those outside see the whole sky lit up.” When I read those words, something elemental in me leapt to answer them. I wanted to be that bonfire in the sheltered valley, the branches consumed by holy fire! I wanted to create from a place of soul-sanity, a place where I might glance some gleaming shard of God’s image that the world might not see otherwise—and could not see, but for the darkness of this God-haunted solitude at my center. It was a moment of epiphany. And like all epiphanies, it was followed by the difficult task of following where its bright finger pointed. Last August I was a slump. It had been one of the hardest seasons of my life, and I was living through the three remaining weeks of exile before my husband and I traveled to the coast, to an island that is my spiritual home if there ever was one. I was treading water, really. And in a total funk with my writing. Anyway, before we went I was sitting in the vet’s office with one of my dogs or cats—I can’t remember who now—and I pulled up Sarah Clarkson’s blog on my phone. (In case you didn’t know, Sarah Clarkson is one of my favorite people on the face of this earth) I started to read her latest post, a beautiful and heartfelt piece (of course!) written from Scotland where she’d journeyed on a writing trip. (Do read the piece—it’s called “Write the Rainbow.”) She was staying with this lovely, saintly, Goudge-like old woman, and while she was there, Sarah read the woman’s memoir, a chronicle of a life of adventuresome devotion. One afternoon, in a tumult of inner questions, Sarah set off on a long walk. Remembering how Venetia (isn’t that a lovely name?) wrote in her book that, occasionally, when she really needed guidance, God had given her mental signposts in the way of pictures or images or stories. Sarah made bold to ask God for the same thing: a picture of what she was to do for Him, of what her writing life looked like. In Sarah’s own words: Instantly, I do mean instantly, a Millais painting came to my thought. It has long enchanted me for its vivid, startling image—that of a blind young girl sitting amidst a glory of a golden field with two rainbows like stairways to heaven behind her. Not a bit of it can she see. But in that painting, a small child sits next to the blind girl, peeking out from under her cloak, neck craned in awe at the glory, telling the blind one of all the beauty. And I knew in that image that my task, as a soul, but particularly as a writer, is to be that child. Write the rainbow, God told her. Tell this broken world of things they cannot see… I read that and my heart burned with kindred longings. But I was also mad. Sarah was having all the adventures and, besides, she’s a better writer, so, of course, God would give her a noble charge like that! But the notion of God speaking in pictures lingered, and I made up my mind to pray about it just as soon as we got back to the coast and I had my mind and heart still again. Accordingly, I survived the intervening weeks. And then, miraculously, we were there again on our island. One morning—I think it was the first, I was so eager—I got up quite early and went for a solitary walk along the marsh. I optimistically took my little notebook, on the off chance that I “got something.” And away I sauntered, under the summer trees, into the golden stillness and warmth of a quiet August morning. When I got to the farthest bench on the path, I sat down and looked up into the live oaks above my head. “All right, God,” I said. “I read about how You spoke to Sarah, how You gave her a picture of what it is You want her to do. You gave her an image of her writing that was unmistakable and it was very precious to her.” Silence for a moment as I gathered courage. “I’d like to ask that You would do the same for me. I’d like a picture, please—I’d like an image of what You want to do with my writing, of what my work looks like, if anything.” More silence, and in a kind of frantic despair, I spoke again. “I mean, maybe You love Sarah more than You love me—I mean, I would, if I were You—” At that moment—I am not kidding—I was interrupted by such a gust of wind that my mouth literally dropped open. It came out of nowhere and roared through the tree over my head, sending leaves skittering from the branches in frightened little shivers. It was not so much angry as reproving—I felt reproved by it, and in the instant that it subsided, the cicadas, which had been maintaining a low, steady hum—so low and steady, in fact, as not to be noticeable—suddenly raised their pitch, and with it, their volume to a high, insistent whine, for all the world as though they, too, were protesting my petulance. It was almost deafening for a moment or two. After it subsided, I sat in a chastened quiet. “I’d like a picture, please,” I murmured, humbled. Nothing came. My mind was a jumble of nothing. I knew that Philip was waiting for me for breakfast, so up I got, trying not to feel discouraged. God does not always answer, of course, and when He doesn’t . . . As I walked along back to the hotel, smiling at the beauty around me, clutching my little notebook tightly, a picture flickered into my mind: wavered, faded, materialized. And then it faded again, as I dismissed it with a smirk. Nothing more than a picture from one of my childhood books. One of my favorites, in fact, but obviously so firmly established in my memory that my brain, hunting feverishly, had found it without effort. Oh well. God doesn’t have to speak to me the way He speaks to Sarah and to the saintly Scottish lady . . . It never really occurred to me to wonder why that image, out of literally billions that must inhabit my brain. Especially when I had not seen it, or so much as thought of it in years. I can be kind of dumb that way, I guess. At any rate, a couple of weeks later I was sitting at my desk, grinding out my Hutchmoot talks—at great pain and effort, I might add. I was feeling like such a fake, a failure, a poser, a fraud . . . and I just laid my head down on my desk in complete and utter defeat. “I just can’t do this, Lord,” I told Him. “I’m not one of these brilliant souls and I don’t know why I’m speaking at Hutchmoot and I don’t even know why I’m on The Rabbit Room…” That kind of thing. And as I moaned and mullygrubbed, that same picture from the island morning came back into my mind. As at an audible charge, I immediately got up and went downstairs to the bookcase. I knew right where it was: The Tasha Tudor Bedtime Book, one of my all-time favorites as a little girl. I turned to the well-known page with a trembling heart (and trembling hand), and stared at the illustration of “The Star Dipper.” It was just as I remembered it: the little cottage, the girl and her mother gazing up into the night sky, the corgi at their feet—and above them in the warm blue, the radiant formation of the Big Dipper. I read the story again with tears in my eyes. The story goes that a little girl lives with her mother in a cottage at the edge of the wood. It has been a long, hot summer, and her mother is ill. Her mother sends her to the well to draw her up a dipper of water because she is so parched, but when the little girl endeavors to do this, she discovers that the well is dry. Undaunted, she sets out with her dipper into the dark night, certain of finding a hidden spring she knows of in the wood, the waters of which run cool and clear. Off she goes—but it is a dark night and the way is very difficult. Much more difficult than she had anticipated. It is so difficult that she fears she has lost her way. The branches tear at her face and her dress, and the stones cut her feet. She is near despair, but the thought of her mother and her great thirst drives her onwards. At last she comes out into a little clearing and there it is: the Hidden Spring. With joy she fills her tin dipper with the crystal water, thinking what healing it will be to her mother. Immediately, she proceeds to return the way whence she came, but somehow it’s not quite as dark. The lowly dipper glows with a faint light, just enough to guide her way. As she goes, she encounters an old man, bent with years. He begs a drink of her from her dipper, the night is so hot and the springs are all dry. Quickly reasoning that there is enough for her dear mother and enough for the poor old gentleman, the girl lowers her dipper that the man might have a drink. The water is so pure and cold that he is revived at once, and thanks her with blessings. Resuming her passage through the wood, the little girl notices that there is even more light than before. “Could it be that the moon has risen?” she wonders. But, no—it is the light of her little dipper, no longer tin, but shining silver in the dark night. Next she encounters a little dog, so tired and weary it can hardly beg, its tongue hanging out of its mouth for thirst. Without a word or a hesitation, the girl kneels and allows the dog to lap from her dipper, wherein she is thanked accordingly, as only doggies can do (and, to surmise from the illustration, he follows her home, which makes my heart glad, of course!). As she once more resumes her homeward journey, the little girl is amazed at the brightness shed across her path, for her dipper, no longer silver, has turned to a brilliant gold that lights her way. When she reaches her own cottage, she rushes in to her mother’s bedside and holds the golden dipper to her lips. The mother drinks with grateful alacrity, and the water is so cool, so refreshing and healing, that she feels well at once. The little girl sets the dipper on the table while she tells her mother of her adventures, but as she does, a kaleidoscope of light and color begins to flash about the room, like the sparkle of gems, and, suddenly, the once humble dipper flies out the window and shoots up into the night sky, no longer an earthly dipper at all, but a heavenly one, made of diamonds, so that all who saw it would remember the little girl’s hard passage through the dark wood and the loving gift she found there, bestowed with such generosity to all she met. Before I was done with the story, I knew what God was saying to me. I knew that He wanted me to write and keep writing. And I knew what He wanted me to do with my writing, in one of the clearest, tenderest moments of insight I have ever had: Fight your way through the Dark Wood. Find the Hidden Spring. And bring back the Sacred Water you find there for the good of all. Find the Hidden Spring. Since that time, the image of the Hidden Spring has given me courage again and again to just keep doing this thing—to make it my sacred charge and pilgrimage, whether a living soul validates it or not. This work is not of me—this great Thirst is not mine to quench. That doesn’t mean that the Dark Wood is not terrifying at times. But that gives me strength, even when I’m plunging through it—to know that the Spring is there and that it flows with the original Creative Love that set the stars in the heavens and calls them each by name. It’s a deep, bone-level call, at once rigorous and refreshing. I did not make the Spring; I do not fill it with water. But it’s there. And Love will show me the way to it. I can count on that. Mine is only to do as I’ve been charged and leave the matter to God. Carey Wallace expressed the harmony between creative discipline and spiritual discipline in a way I won’t forget: …An artist’s failure to work is rarely mechanical—fingers that fail to curl around a pen or a brush—but spiritual: a fear that has rendered them artistically blind or deaf. The solution to them all is to draw closer to God, the source of all order, rest, and freedom, and of every image, sound, and word. Go then, saints beloved of God, and find your Hidden Spring—the world is parched for its water. I’ll be brave for you, if you’ll be brave for me.

From John Baillie’s A Diary of Private Prayer, day one, morning. I removed the “thees” and “thous” as a matter of preference, and adjusted a few words to recast this as a prayer for the whole year. If you’re not familiar with Baillie’s book, I recommend it. I also heartily recommend a listen to Ben Shive’s song “New Year” and Eric Peters’s Birds of Relocation for more helpful meditations on the great mercy of starting fresh. Happy New Year, Rabbit Room friends. Eternal Father of my soul, let my first thought be of you, let my first impulse be to worship you, let my first speech be your name, let my first action be to kneel before you in prayer. For your perfect wisdom and perfect goodness; For the love wherewith you love mankind; For the love wherewith you love me; For the great and mysterious opportunity of my life; For the indwelling of your Spirit in my heart; For the sevenfold gifts of your Spirit; I praise and worship you. Yet let me not, when this prayer is said, think my worship ended and spend this year in forgetfulness of you. Rather from these moments of quietness let light go forth, and joy, and power, that will remain with me through all the days of the year, Keeping me chaste in thought; Keeping me temperate and truthful in speech; Keeping me faithful and diligent in my work; Keeping me humble in my estimation of myself; Keeping me honorable and generous in my dealings with others; Keeping me loyal to every hallowed memory of the past; Keeping me mindful of my eternal destiny as a child of yours. O God, who have been the refuge of my fathers through many generations, be my refuge this year in every time and circumstance of need. Be my guide through all that is dark and doubtful. Be my guard against all that threatens my spirit’s welfare. Be my strength in time of testing. Gladden my heart with your peace, through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

“The Old Year” from Birds of Relocation by Eric Peters There’s so much to be thankful for And so much to be forgotten There’s no perfect secret To the things that bring us joy Ha ha! to the old year Goodbye to the cold fear Gonna cry when I need it, smile when I need it Goodbye, denial The mind is a wanderer It slips off into a false world Never stopping for a minute To take a good look around Ha ha! to the old year Goodbye to the cold fear Gonna cry when I need it, smile when I need it I’m gonna live like a living soul Gonna write it on my wretched bones And stop waiting for happily ever after Ha ha! to the old year Goodbye to the cold, cold fear Gonna cry when I need it Ha ha! to the old year Wave goodbye to the cold fear Gonna cry when I need it, smile when I need it, laugh when I need it Goodbye, denial, goodbye

Yes, it’s time for the year-end list of favorite stuff. Off the top of my head, here’s what I most enjoyed this year. Share you own top 5 lists in the comments. Books Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) – This took me by complete surprise and is now one of my all time favorites. I wish Levin and Kitty lived next door so I could be friends with them. The Wheel of Time series (Robert Jordan) – This probably doesn’t belong on the list, but I’ve been reading these books for about 20 years and just finished them this month. That’s an accomplishment worthy of mention. Sadly, the (14) books weren’t at all worth the time investment. Someone should edit the batch down to 4 or 5 crisply paced books. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars (Doescher) – This is one of my favorite things in the world. If you saw our stripped down production at Hutchmoot, be sure to read the uncut version in hardback (available in the store). We had to cut out some of the best stuff. A Severe Mercy (Vanauken) – C. S. Lewis + Poetry + Sailing + Tragic Love Story = right up my alley. Beautiful book. Till We Have Faces (Lewis) – It took me 50 or 60 pages to fall for this book, but once I did, I was head over heels until the end. Without a doubt it’s my favorite of everything I’ve read by Lewis. Movies 12 Years a Slave – By a large margin, the best movie I saw this year. Great cinema. Saving Mr. Banks – I was completely delighted by this whole movie. I smiled all the way through it. My favorite Emma Thompson role since Beatrice. Mud – I didn’t see this one coming. It reminded me of a modern-day Huck Finn. Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing – It’s hard for me to imagine anyone as Benedick and Beatrice except Kenneth Branaugh and Emma Thompson, but I loved pretty much every second of this movie. Thank you, Joss (and William). Breaking Bad – I binged the entire series a few months ago and it’ll probably be on my list of favorite pieces of cinema (film or TV) for the rest of my life. I’ve definitely never seen anything else on television that can match it. Finishing it was like finishing a classic piece of Russian literature—like Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment. Best show ever. Doctor Who – I think this is the year I finally fell for the Doctor. Love this show. So weird. So wacky. So timey-wimey. And yet so very good. Music Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs – It’s kind of ridiculous how much I enjoy this record. Well done, Randy. Arthur Alligood – I fell in love with Arthur Alligood’s music this year. I can’t get enough of either of his records (One Silver Needle and I Have Not Seen the Wind.) The Mantis and the Moon – Chris Slaten’s (Son of Laughter’s) EP completely blew me away. It actually makes me angry when I listen to it because I want there to be at least 5 or 6 more songs, but there aren’t. Darn you, Chris Slaten. Trouble Will Find Me (The National) – I thought sure Trouble Will Find Me would disappoint me coming on the heels of High Violet, of which I can probably recite every word. But against all odds, the new record is every bit as great and manages to have a vibe all its own. Love it. The forthcoming Caleb (the band) album – I’m kind of cheating on this one. I spent a lot of time this year listening to Ben Shive producing Caleb’s new album in the next room. It’s ridiculously good, and I can’t wait for it to go public so the rest of the world can hear how awesome it is.

“I am doing a new thing,” God said. “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” The weak things of the world will shame the strong. The foolish things of the world will shame the wise. And the King of Heaven will be born in the muck and filth of a stable, attended by goats and jackasses and hardscrabble shepherds. The hope of Christmas is that God has done a new thing—that he has made a home among people who have a hard time feeling at home here themselves. In the midst of ambition and striving and disappointment and homework and housework, it all seems very unlikely. As Chesterton wrote, “our peace is put in impossible things.” So rather than wrestle with impossibility, we enfeeble our expectations. We reduce Christmas to an experience we can stage-manage, something we can make marvelous for our children, something we can do something about. That sort of Christmas can’t begin to bear the weight of our longings. Let’s all remind each other of what we often forget: God is forever at work, bringing wild impossibility to bear on the things we struggle to keep under our own control. Here’s to something new, even impossible this season and in the new year.

When my mother-in-law was a young girl, a traveling ballet troupe came to her small town in Georgia. Sitting in the hard seats of the auditorium, she and her friends marveled at the grace and the beauty of the dancers. In Newnan, Georgia in the 1950s, a ballet dancer was as exotic as a gazelle or an elephant. The women moved like angels. The men, so strong and lithe, were a revelation. In an especially moving pas de deux, a male dancer took a ballerina in his arms and lifted her right up off the floor and turned around, slowly, slowly. As he turned his back to the audience, a huge mole asserted itself through the seat of his white tights, straining against the stretchy fabric as if it wanted to get out and walk amongst the audience. The way my mother-in-law remembers it, it was about the size of a halved new potato. The little girls spent the rest of the performance watching for the mole to rotate back into view, and stifling their laughter when it did. That was nearly sixty years ago. My mother-in-law still remembers that first ballet she ever saw. But mostly she remembers the mole. There’s more than one way to get exposed to culture.

One day I will take the boat to Ellis Island. I will walk the pier and enter the station. I will see the stacks of abandoned steamer trunks, the rejection papers under glass, the black and white photos of the mustachioed men in their bowler hats, and the women with their parasols. I will study their eyes, looking for hints of their hope, their fear, and their desperation. I will try to imagine them standing on that same floor, not browsing a museum, but looking for a new world. I will climb the Separation Stairs and I will consider Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. I will think about what it means to be a citizen of a Kingdom I must leave everything to enter. And then I will understand that I, too, am an immigrant.

The celebration of Advent, I have decided, is a little like living in the twilight zone. I know this because for a few uncanny hours last week, I actually lived the twilight zone and it was a curiously spiritual experience. On the flight home from England, we routed through Reykjavik. When we took off from Iceland for the long flight home, it was about five o’ clock in the evening. Our plane soared up into the open, navy bowl of the night. Limpid, inky darkness arced above us, stabbed by a single star. But westward the navy paled to turquoise as a great bonfire of a sunset blazed on the horizon. The sun burned just beyond our sight, but her light leapt over the rim of the earth in a flaming line of burnished orange and gold. I pressed my face against the window as we sped toward that light, out of the shadow, reaching toward the bright horizon. We were in great darkness but we saw a great light. Through all the long hours of that journey, we chased it. For awhile we were neck and neck. I thought the night would fade. The black above lightened as we flew onward, the horizon brightened to pure gold and the sky filled with a faint, pearled sheen of blue. I found myself hungering for day, leaning a little forward in my seat, wanting the darkness to finally end. I found the dim, ever-evening oppressive. Perhaps the night could be borne if I did not have such a glorious day in sight, but the light set desire in my bones so that my whole being reached toward the sun I could not quite see. I could not bear to be left in the dark. I feel the same way in Advent. The coming of Christmastime always makes me restless because the beauty of Christ burns so brightly on its horizon and my whole being reaches toward it. The candles and starry Christmas lights, the fir scents and haunting songs of this season come to me as the bonfire blaze of a great celebration. When I was a child, the mystery at the heart of it all felt very close, close enough almost to hold in my hands. But each year it moves a little farther beyond my grasp. The older I grow, the harder I have to reach after that easy wonder of Christmas. Like the sun on my twilit flight, joy sometimes hovers just beyond my touch. Adulthood has made me aware of the darkness, and of myself as one who walks in darkness. Now I enter the yearly rhythms of decoration, of song and feasting with as much vim as I can muster. I pray the great Advent prayers, I lift up my soul and reach with all that I am toward the light of Christ. But I cannot often grasp it. I cannot even force my own heart to feel the joy I desire. Often, I see the beauties of this season as if from a distance. I honor their promise, and yet, I grieve. I dwell still in the shadowlands. Here, care and grief, hard work and failure make an evening shadow of life on earth. I see the great hope burning ahead, but it pains me to know that I cannot hold it yet. I move toward it by faith, trying to form my days to reflect the light instead of the darkness. I choose beauty. I practice celebration. But sometimes I feel that I am chasing a day that will never dawn upon me in this world. I know that in Advent we contemplate a promise fulfilled, but here on earth the darkness remains and we wait again through the second advent of the kingdom begun, but not quite come. Amidst the beauties of this season, I find it often hard to bear the now and not yet of Christ. I thought of this on that strange, twilit flight, for both the Advent season and an old set of troubles and perplexities awaited me at home. For some reason it troubled me that we never caught the daylight. I felt it was an ominous sign. By the time we landed night had taken the world in his strong, cold hands, and day breathed its last over the mountains. I went to sleep that night strangely grieved. I woke abruptly in the wee small’s, fully alert with the unwelcome wakefulness of jet lag. I felt the darkness as a presence that pressed upon me. I remembered the long, strange journey in the twilight and for a bewildered moment wondered if morning would ever come. I turned on my lamp and sat in my reading chair, cold hands curved round a cup of coffee. Since Advent was soon to begin, I took up my Bible, poor, bent old book, abused in my wanderings, worn by my restless hands. I turned to Luke in search of the Christmas story, assuming that devotion would be a struggle on this particular morning. But Mary stopped me in my tracks. Her story, to my great surprise, met me in the darkness of my own heart and challenged me to understand the coming of light in an entirely new way. I sat there in the dark-before-dawn shadows and the restlessness I felt subsided into wonder as I read the tale of the mother of God. I realized that she was everything I am not. That sturdy-hearted girl had a faith that made an open door so that God could join us in the darkness. She opened her hands to mystery. She let God make her a great promise and then she lived the long, dark days of waiting for its fulfillment. She did not strive and doubt; she believed. Elizabeth’s words (in Luke 1:45) to Mary struck me hard: blessed is she who believed what had been promised to her. For the rest of those black morning hours, I read everything I could find about Mary, this one brave woman who took God at his word. Her almost matter-of-fact faith is the first thing I saw, a trust that did not waver but asked the pertinent questions, accepted the answers, and believed. But then, her pondering. Twice it is said of Mary that she “treasured these things in her heart,” or  “pondered them.” In the twilight zone of my own faith, I read those words and learned something about light that I had never taken the time to notice. Idealist that I am, I live hungry. I am always reaching, thinking that the kingdom of God is something I can take in my hands and force to come on earth. I always forget that the kingdom comes first in the heart. Mary reminded me, for she did not look to the outer world to confirm her faith or satisfy her hope. She looked within. A great light had come to dwell within her and she turned her eyes to its beauty. She fixed her inner sight on the presence of God, with us. She turned her eyes from the twilight zone without to the dawn within. Her pondering enabled her to look then, on the outer world, not with the eyes of hungry doubt, but with the eyes of praise. “My soul magnifies the Lord…” This year, with Mary’s help, I think I may be learning how to see as well. Day has come. But it has come as a seed planted in my heart, eternal morning buried in the loamy earth of my soul. Not outside, a thing to be chased, but in, a thing to contemplate. Slowly, slowly it grows. Perhaps the work of Advent is just to join Mary, the first one in which the great Light was sown, in “pondering these things.” I am learning not to reach, but to watch. I cannot catch the joy of Christmas any more than I could catch the daylight on that twilit flight. And even if I could, the day would only fade again to night and the festal stuff of Christmas would shrivel in my hungry grip, a broken goodness unable to offer me peace. But when I look upon the celebration of this season from that still, pondering place within my heart, I see the great Love to which this holy day and all its lovely trapping points. My joy in Christmas is growing again, for morning is indeed within my grasp. It’s just a seed as yet. But it will grow into a day on which the sun will never set. No more fear of the twilight zone for me. I’ll watch and wait. I’ll ponder these things, because I’m with Mary. I believe.

I love the Rabbit Room, and today I’m so excited to celebrate the release of Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs with all of you. Early next year we’ll release Sing the Bible on iTunes and everywhere else, but for now, it’s available exclusively at the Rabbit Room. Featuring the African Children’s Choir, Sally Lloyd-Jones, Buddy Green, Ron Block, Stuart Duncan, Andrew Peterson, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, some bees, and every member of my immediate family (along with some of their friends), Sing the Bible with Slugs & Bugs is a collection of Scripture verses put to music and melody. There are two “books of the Bible” songs and sixteen word-for-word Scripture songs from a few different translations. I tried to find the Most Singable Version of each song, so if you want to be corny like me, you could say they’re all from the MSV. Like most musicians I know, I’ve long admired the way Paul Simon blended African music and American folk/pop on Graceland (1986). And over the last ten years, trips to Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda have continued my education in African rhythm and melody. Additionally, after eighteen years of musical life in Nashville, I’ve become a huge bluegrass fan, often searching for some way to allow a banjo or mandolin to help with whatever I’m doing. So making Sing the Bible gave me a chance to blend African music with Nashville bluegrass. That unique combination served as the musical foundation for the album. A 2012 trip to Uganda played a pivotal role. A Slugs & Bugs concert in Kampala was delayed by rain, and while the audience and I waited for the other schools to arrive, a classroom of schoolchildren rose and quietly made way to the front of the assembly hall. Then they began to sing. They sang a welcome song in classic call-and-response style, with a song leader that could not have been more than 12 years old. It was beautiful. They sang a song about Uganda and another song about Jesus. When they were through, they went and sat down, but amazingly, another classroom of kids—from another school—stood and walked to the front and began to sing! I was mesmerized by the music these kids were making. And right then I prayed I would get to bring some of that home to Nashville. Less than a year later, the African Children’s Choir rolled into Tennessee on their well-travelled African Children’s Choir bus. Their voices vitalize the album’s African melodies and rhythms. On the Nashville side of things, Ron Block’s banjo plays a huge role in the sonic landscape, as does Sierra Hull’s mandolin. The great Stuart Duncan and his violin are featured prominently on The Lord’s Prayer, which doesn’t seem quite as African until you consider the vocalist—my son Benjamin. We adopted Ben from Ethiopia when he was two years old. Even my friend and scripture reader (and New York Times best-selling author) Sally Lloyd-Jones helps keep up the theme. It was so thoughtful of her to be born in Uganda. That’s just like her, really. Always thinking of others. The album is now available in the Rabbit Room store and I hope you and your family enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it. In the next few weeks, I’ll follow up this post with Part Two to focus on the actual Scriptures chosen for the final song list. [Sing the Bible with Slugs and Bugs is now available in the Rabbit Room store.] https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/TrustintheLord.mp3 “Trust in the Lord” from Proverbs 3:5-6

My wife and I recently spent an evening out discussing our childhood memories of the holiday season. I didn’t have much to share. I am an only child raised by a single mother, so the discussion of Christmas tradition is a short one with me. One year, I remember convincing my mother to leave the decorations in the back of the closet. I didn’t feel like retrieving them and the fuss wasn’t worth livening up a house for two. She still regrets that one. As a member of a small family who put very little thought or preparation into the Christmas season, it’s not a surprise that we got very little out of it. The season consisted of a few presents, an artificial tree, and visits with rarely-seen family members. Rinse, repeat. One year my mother wanted to inject some meaning into the holiday, and it’s the only memory that stands out for me. I remember complaining when my mother said we were going to read the Bible before opening presents. Specifically, we read about the birth of Jesus. I was anxious to unwrap new toys, I’m sure, but I remember sitting there as a frustrated adolescent while my mother opened the scriptures and read aloud the birth narrative. Fast forward several years. My wife and I are now awaiting a birth of our own. We’re just a few weeks away from the arrival of our baby boy. For the last several months, we’ve endured a wide range of emotions, asked questions, considered names, asked more questions, discussed parenting techniques, and prepared our home. We have painted and rearranged, registered and unwrapped, laughed and cried. We have inhabited our own advent season. Advent is the term that the church ascribes to the four weeks before Christmas, but it’s not a religious term. Advent is the Anglicanized form of the latin word “adventus,” which means “arrival” or “coming.” It is the preparation—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—for an arrival of someone or something. The term is often linked to the ancient Roman world where Caesar or a dignitary would visit a region, and the town would spring into action to make way for the arrival of the heralded figure. However, adventus in the ancient world was proportional to how the person arriving was regarded. Adventus could refer to a spouse coming home, a visit from a neighbor, or the arrival of a royal figure. Adventus is not defined by pageantry; instead, it’s one part of the spectrum. For years, my wife and I have largely stuck to the same familial script that I grew up with. Since it’s just the two of us, we often drive several hours to spend time with family. Some years we’ve had to take to the road on Christmas Day just to make appearances in multiple places. The result is a hurried season, an advent without any reflection or celebration. Consequently, the arrival of Christmas came and went, just like it always has. A season without meaning. A season of going through the motions. Our hope is different with our new arrival. For the first time, we’re realizing what it actually means to await the arrival of a baby boy. The Advent story resonates in a deeper way, knowing some of the emotions that must have been present within Joseph and Mary. The nerves, the anxiety, the excitement, the joys, the fears. They’re present with us as well. We’re also ready to bring meaning into the season as we carve out new family traditions. Adventus hasn’t changed since the early tradition; the arrival is as meaningful as you make it. I don’t believe this is about guilt or an attempt to force meaning into the season. The birth of Jesus has been a freely given gift from the beginning, and any attempts to inject meaning for the sake of religion is empty and meaningless. Instead, I believe this is an invitation to realize that the Advent season can envelop you as you wait with hope—or it can slip right by if you are not prepared. May we allow ourselves to breathe in this hurried season, may the familiar come alive in new, vibrant ways, and may we prepare the way for the Lord to fill our lives with love, peace, and joy this Advent season. #Advent

There’s no doubt that the Rabbit Room is full of my people, but I haven’t always known who my people were. The first time I found my people, I was in eighth grade. I didn’t know they were my people at first, I just knew I’d finally found human beings who said out loud the things I was thinking. Looking back now, I can see that those people were more important than I ever realized back then. In the back of the room where our church youth group met, there was a smaller room. And in that smaller room, the arcane was made real. It was my wardrobe, but inside, instead of fur coats, I found a soundboard and lighting controls. Instead of snowy woods, I found the buttons that controlled everything—the music, the microphones, the lights. The characters who occupied that room were like deities to me because they knew what the buttons did when you pushed them and because they got to choose which music played as everyone else walked into the larger room. These guys would fit so well in the Rabbit Room. One that sticks out to me was Chip, one of the adult leaders. Chip was fond of dressing in knee-high leather boots and a kilt, and he would sometimes have a Highlander sword slung on his back. For a 13-year-old, these things make an impression. In that tiny room, guys like Chip introduced me to bands like The Seventy-Sevens, and singers like Mark Heard and Steve Taylor. For a kid who grew up exclusively on Contemporary Christian Music with a little bit of the oldies station for good measure, I wasn’t used to this. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, when names like Michael W. Smith and Sandi Patty ruled the Southern Baptist music dial, I had no idea this other musical world existed. Oh, I knew there were bands like Petra—Christian music’s answer to Bon Jovi—but I wasn’t allowed to listen to them. That was too “hard.” But mostly, I needed music that asked difficult questions: “What about social justice?” “What if I’m not sure about what I believe?” “What about sin?” I’m thankful for the CCM artists that filled my cassette rack back then. They gave me a vocabulary for my faith. But I really needed to move past musical Christianity 101 and look toward something that would help me know how to live; something to convince me that I wasn’t alone. Enter Steve Taylor, a Christian music iconoclast. Steve Taylor’s music is a mash-up of pop, rock, and punk sensibilities (in attitude, if not in sound). It’s a hard sound to categorize because it’s not unusual to find reggae, rap, and hard rock on the same album. What’s unique about Steve Taylor (this was especially true in the ’80s and ’90s) is that you never knew what he would do next. I was a little late to Steve Taylor’s game, but that just made the findings richer indeed. Instead of having to wait for new releases, I had the pleasure of digging through the shelves at Long’s Christian Bookstore in Orlando and buying everything my allowance would pay for. And as I talked with people about Steve Taylor, I began to hear the stories: Have you heard ‘I Blew Up the Clinic Real Good?’ The satirical song about people who blow up abortion clinics? Have you heard his song about racism at Bob Jones University? He’s banned from that campus for life! Have you seen the video for Meltdown? It’s got Blair from The Facts of Life in it! This stuff was mind-blowing for me. But beyond the controversial topics, what always impacted me about Steve Taylor’s music was how he talked about things that mattered to me. Things I’d never heard put to music before. He criticized the idea that all Christians have to look, think, and feel exactly the same in “I Want to Be a Clone” (“Cloneliness is next to godliness, right?”). He made me look differently at the public figures I was idolizing in “Hero.” He made me see that “Jesus is for Losers.” And mostly, he made me feel all right about the doubt that I’ve always carried. Belief was never easy for me (it still isn’t), but judging by the other Christian music I’d been hearing, this was my own personal flaw. I was an oddball. Everyone else got this belief thing with no trouble. My favorite Steve Taylor song was and is “Harder to Believe Than Not To” because it gives voice to what I was thinking (watch the video). I held on to those songs for dear life. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when a Kickstarter campaign for Steve Taylor & the Perfect Foil’s new album was launched. On one hand, it was Christmas come early for me, I’ve been awaiting new tunes from him for twenty years. But on the other, some things bubbled back up to the surface. Since the Kickstarter announcement, I’ve spent a lot of time with Now the Truth Can Be Told, the two-disc collection of Steve Taylor’s work, and I can see how far I’ve come. Now, instead of my people being limited to that small sound booth, they’re here, in The Rabbit Room. Now I’m surrounded by people who say out loud the things I’ve always thought. My people have grown from five to five hundred. And if it weren’t for Steve Taylor, Mark Heard, The Vigilantes of Love, The Seventy-Sevens, Daniel Amos, The Prayer Chain, Poor Old Lu, and on and on and on, I don’t think I’d ever have had the guts to become a part of this place. I’m eternally grateful to all of them for teaching me that belief isn’t easy for a lot of us. I’m grateful for their voices telling me that I’m not alone.

[Editor’s note: On Friday we released a new song by Ron Block, Jeff Taylor, and Rebecca Reynolds (also featuring Julie Lee). Rebecca, the co-writer of the song, also wrote this companion piece. It’s well worth your time.] I wish I could tell you that I never have any doubts about God, but trust seems to run strongest in the very young and the very old in faith, and I am neither. When I say that I doubt, I don’t mean that I doubt everything. For instance, I rarely doubt that God exists. Walking in the decay of a December wood, reading through a journal of this year’s medical discoveries, listening to a Bach aria, scrolling through Hubble updates, I can tell that God lives. The stuff of earth doesn’t provide a complete theology. In fact, it often leaves me with as many questions as answers, because the Almighty will not be pinned to a card like a giant stag beetle. However, the beauties and wonders of the universe do tend to point me toward a Creator. They whisper that He lives within and beyond the dimensions in which my brain operates. What I doubt most often is that God loves me, and usually that doubt rises from pain. It can be hard for me to understand why Someone with the power to stop hurt wouldn’t do it. When pain lasts a long time, I can begin to wonder if my suffering is a result of punishment, or if God just doesn’t like me very much after all. Cognitively, I know this sort of thinking contradicts the gospel. I could point to verses in the Bible and prove to you that this doubt is invalid. Still, there is something deep inside me that struggles here again and again. This Christmas completes a difficult year for our family. Two weeks before school began, my husband was asked to resign from a church that he planted and pastored for ten years. The town in which we live is industrial, and the leaders of our church decided that they wanted to take a more corporate approach to ministry. They explained that they wanted a CEO-type leader instead of a shepherd/teacher. We understood this decision. It is true that our vision for ministry is not business-oriented. (I’m an artist. My husband is a gentle, patient, teaching soul.) However, the request hit unexpectedly, just as I was entering the flurry of a demanding new teaching job, and just as we were learning that my father needed serious heart surgery. For several weeks, I felt like I was falling off a swing. At first I just wanted to die. I could barely even breathe. I was devastated to learn that people I loved considered our investment disposable. It took months to scroll back through a decade of memories, reexamine faces I had thought safe, and realize that things had not been what I had imagined. Then, as the days passed, my sense of rejection expanded from man to God. I thought that maybe friends and leaders weren’t the ones rejecting me, but heaven itself. Maybe God was throwing us away, too. This has been one of the hardest years of my life, but it has also provided a pain that I needed to know. God is using this particular humiliation and loneliness to show me things about his love that I couldn’t have known in safety and comfort. Furthermore, I am not the only one who has ever lived through rejection. As a writer, as a friend, as a mother, God saw fit to train my soul in how an essential sorrow works. Maybe you have lived through a rejection, too. In fact, the world is so full of hurt, it’s likely that you have known pain far more severe than mine. Maybe your spouse was unfaithful, or maybe you lost a close friend to betrayal. Perhaps years of a relationship were pushed aside, or maybe you were shunned by a group of people to whom you had given everything. It’s possible that a parent broke your heart, or that a sibling used you. It could be that a thousand tiny disappointments finally collected until you grew so bruised that you could hardly function at all. As I sit here making words for you, trying to reach my hand out to yours, I wonder if you are sitting in your chair, staring into the computer screen, knowing the full ache of being disposed. Children of this long, discarded night, will you walk a while with me? Would you tuck a weary arm through mine so that we can step in cadence and talk over the bitter questions that rise from such years as what we have had? If you are very much like me, you have already been trying to make things better for a very long time. Do I see exhaustion in your eyes? Have you used up all your strength? That is what most of us do, I think. When trouble threatens to break us, we threaten trouble by working harder. Some troubles overcome by labor, I suppose. But there are other sorts which cannot be defeated by effort, though we spend everything we have upon them. We work, and we work, until one day we wake up and realize that we are working more from habit than from hope. Perhaps your hope has even died. Mine did for a while. I lived with a fear of drowning choking in my throat. I struggled like a man treading water, tangled in ropes, fighting in a vast, roaring ocean. I fought my way through each day encumbered by the bonds of my own labor’s strain. Do you know what this is like? Then come step with me into the night. It’s freezing out here. I’m wearing my duck cloth jacket. The hood has fallen back so that the winter wind stings my ears. You are standing beside me, blowing heat from your lungs into the pink cup of your fingers. The grass below our shoes crunches. Without speaking, we turn our faces up to the expanse, blinking our burning eyes against the void, finding nothing to see at all. How empty it is. I am tempted to squint and try to find an angel in those clouds. I am tempted to do that because this is the sort of void that I don’t like to explore. I’d rather make something up. Where is God in our pain? If He loves us, why would He veil Himself behind the pitch of night? Why would He refuse to come to us in the way that we were expecting? Doesn’t He know that we are so tired it seems as if our hearts are growing back into the earth? Doesn’t He know that we are like Adams being unmade by sadness, being turned back from warm flesh into sod and into stone? We stand like forgotten towns, waiting for a Messiah. There is only quiet and cold between us for the full pulse of an hour. Then, standing beside you, I remember a song stitched from the best old stories. It was woven from the first tales we believed, tales of beauty, and battles, and the kindest of Kings. Those stories once blew against my heart like breath on a fire, like wind on the strings of an Aolean harp. I will sing as much to you as I can remember. However, this tale will require all of your thirst, all your want, all your pining, bitter grief. It will ask you to follow the thread of your pain like a dim lantern, into the trajectory of love, and watch while every honest emptiness is torn asunder by radiance. “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” Those first, best stories were true, Discarded One. While we tend the flocks of our lives on this biting, barren landscape, the ancient throng divides our sorrow, in wonder it now declares: “Love is born. Love is born!” Love is born, and we are chased by it. Even now, in this night of our particular darkness and rejection, in this bleak, freezing, shared silence, grace gathers us ’round like a celestial chorus. We are seen. We are wanted. We are loved. The Holy One is come for you, and for you, and for you, and for me. Fear not. All glory be to God on High. “Come, Children of this Long, Discarded Night” https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ComeChildren.mp3

The Facebook app sneaks those other app recommendations in so smoothly. I went through the emotions of interest to intrigue to disgust in record time as I discovered, scrolling through Facebook, that someone has found a way to commercialize Advent. I figured it was in the best interest of marketing people to continue to ignore advent and start Christmas earlier and earlier each year. But under my “suggested apps,” I read this: Advent Calendar 2013 (there’s the interest and intrigue): Discover a new app every day for the 25 days before Christmas! (there’s the disgust). I had to click on it. The Advent 2013 app promises that you can get into the festive mood while waiting for Santa with daily mini games and daily gifts. I’m not writing here to rail against commercialization. There are plenty of posts for that, and quite frankly, I’m willing to put up with it. Free market, free society, etc. Not to get too political, but I’m willing to put up with the downsides of an imperfect system. Better to spend a few moments thinking about what Advent really is. And this app reminded me that it’s definitely not the “exciting run-up to Christmas!” A friend of mine who didn’t observe Advent once explained why: “I don’t like the time of year where we spend a few weeks pretending Jesus didn’t come.” It’s important to remember that Advent is not that, either. We don’t put on an act and pretend to be solemn. So what is Advent? There are lots of better answers to the question than I can provide, but I had a thought this year that is helping me better get my mind around it. Advent is like starting on page one of your favorite book. You know it’s a great story. You know how it makes you feel. You know the end  but you also know you’re going to love reading it again, probably even more this time around. I’ll just go ahead and put too fine a point on it. To be even more accurate, Advent is like re-reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2006. You know the final book is coming. You have some strong hints and theories about how it will end. That’s pretty much where we’re at in the history of the world, isn’t it? And I love returning to page one of that story every single year at this time, not least because I know it’s not just a story, it’s our story. We may only have bit parts in it, but that’s enough. And it’s a joy and a privilege given by grace alone.

Rebecca Reynolds and I wrote this Advent song during one of our Hutchmoot 2013 sessions. It is part of a larger collection of new but old-sounding hymns we’ve collaborated on with Jeff Taylor. We’re scheduled to go back into the studio in mid-December, and we will finish the record in January and February with somewhere around 15 or 16 tracks. Credits: Jeff Taylor, piano, accordion; Ron Block, guitar, lead and harmony vocal; Luke Bulla, violins. Julie Lee, harmony vocals. Available here. “Come Children of this Long Discarded Night” (Music by Ron Block, Moonlight Canyon Publishing, BMI/Words by Rebecca Reynolds, Wynken Owl, BMI) https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ComeChildren.mp3 Come, children of this long, discarded night Encumbered by the bonds of labor’s strain What burns against the pitch of heaven’s veil? To woo each mortal soul from Eden’s pain? Come, trouble of the slow, forsaken years Bent low from friendless journey o’er the earth While hearts of men have worn to sod and stone, What brightness hearkens like the fires of home? CHORUS: Oh, hear the shining thrill of grace resound! The ancient throng in wonder now declares That Love is born! That Love is born! All glory be to God on high, All peace, good will toward men in Him is found. Come, children of each dark and distant land From stories of a kind and noble king These winds that stir thy thrumming heart’s desire Proclaim the hope that this glad even’ brings. Come, impulse of thy tired, waning joy Come thirst, and want, and pining, bitter grief Lift up your eyes, behold what radiance stirs To remedy each sorrow sprung from earth. CHORUS: Oh, hear the shining thrill of grace resound! The ancient throng in wonder now declares That Love is born! That Love is born! All glory be to God on high, All peace, good will toward men in Him is found. All peace, good will toward men in Him is found.

So, I saw Ender’s Game, the movie, last night. This is not a movie review, but the movie wasn’t too bad, I guess. It’s just when you love a book, and have for 20 years, it’s hard to see it reduced so dramatically. Ditto all 18 movie parts of that massive volume, The Hobbit, ditto The Lord of the Rings, etc., etc. But that’s not what this is about. Please just allow, for the sake of argument, that it’s common for movie adaptations of beloved books to be disappointing, underwhelming affairs that leave us hungry for more. At best, they still feel so much LESS than they could be. This got me thinking about my own life, and how in many ways it’s based on a book. I don’t mean this to be corny, but my story is the story of Jesus, because I’m united to him in his death and resurrection. I’m his, part of his bride; I’m in him and my life is in him. I love him. He is my Master and my God. I get that from a book. Yes, from elsewhere as well, but the story is in the book. My life, in a way, is a book adaptation. It might be easy to go for the guilt jugular here. We all know the popular, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to prove you guilty?” Kind of a, “What have you done for me lately?” approach. But… If you were accused of being someone desperately in need of grace, would there be enough honesty in your life to prove it? A little different, I know, but maybe worth thinking about, especially for all of us “older brother” types. I’m not an open book, because I’m afraid of what you might read in me. Hey, sometimes I’m a poor adaptation of The Story. Other times I’m a breathing testament, a witness to the holy, extraordinary reality of the coming New World. I don’t mean to shame you here, though shame is not alwayss a bad goad, I guess. But it’s kind of exciting to think about really loving a story so much that it transforms us, that we’d be positively cheerful in living it out. Not as a show, but as an outworking of a blooming reality. Usually this kind of thing isn’t done sitting down, or through abdication and passivity (temptations for me). In the best stories, in the best movies, characters we love do things. Action!

Of all the construction disciplines, plumbing is my favorite. It’s quiet—contemplative even. There aren’t so many power tools whining. There isn’t a lot of pounding or hammering. It’s not as quiet as painting, but it’s more cerebral—just the right amount of figuring and measuring without being overly technical. Plumbers spend their days dealing with issues that the rest of us don’t want to have to deal with. If you aren’t grateful for plumbers, you ought to be. I spent one summer working for a plumbing company. That summer with the plumbers yielded more anecdotes than five years here in the leafy suburbs. Some of the best anecdotes can’t even be sufficiently sanitized for use in this forum. They involve a running feud with a tribe of roofers who refused to accord plumbers the respect they deserved. I would say “use your imagination,” but your imagination is probably no match for these roofers or these plumbers. Or, I should say, your imaginative energies are differently directed than these guys’. I hope they are, anyway. There is a hierarchy among plumbers. Those who have paid their dues get to do the new construction. It’s clean work. Pleasant work. You run brand new pipe in fresh-dug trenches and into spanking new houses that smell of sawdust and sheetrock. The gleaming toilets might as well be great porcelain soup tureens. But those plumbers who are still paying their dues find themselves on the service crew. Anything can happen on the service crew. When disaster strikes and things that should have been in the sewer end up in your house, it’s the service guys who get the call. The new construction crew stay warm in their beds, dreaming the dreams of the blessed. On our service crew there was a man named Rusty. He was like a Navy Seal of plumbers. You could drop Rusty into the hottest spot imaginable, and he would do whatever it took to complete his mission. Whatever it took. As a service crew plumber, one learns to quiet the squeamishness that might keep a person from doing what has to be done. But even by those standards, Rusty was something special. I have seen Rusty lie flat in the mud beside a sewer access and thrust his whole arm–fingertip to shoulder–into the foaming, gurgling, sloshing stew. Whatever it took. I have seen the dark waters recede again thanks to Rusty’s resourcefulness and skill and iron stomach. Whatever it took. And yet when Rusty wasn’t plunging his arm into raw sewage, he was the most fastidious person I have ever known. He was forever washing his hands and fixing his hair. If he ever walked past a mirror without stopping and checking his look, I wasn’t there to see it. He kept his beard neatly trimmed, and he rolled up the short sleeves of his plumber’s shirt just so. One day Rusty found himself peering into a deep hole leading into a sewer. It was too dark down there to see what he needed to see. His flashlight was in his tool pouch, and his tool pouch was back at the truck. So he felt around in his pockets and found his lighter. If you know much about sewers, you are probably saying, “Nooooo, Rusty! Not the lighter!” But Rusty can’t hear you. He has pulled the lighter out of his pocket, and he knows as well as you do that sewers give off methane gas and that methane gas is flammable—explosive, even—but for some reason he’s not thinking, and he holds the lighter right next to his face and flicks it to life. There is a pop and a flash. Rusty staggers backwards. His hair is mostly singed off in front. His eyebrows are gone. His beard isn’t looking so hot either. Rusty took the rest of the day off to go to the hairdresser, who did wonders for him. He submitted his hairdressers’ receipt to the owner of the plumbing company, who reimbursed it as a work-related expense. “It was all in the line of duty,” the bossman said.