In the ancient world, fasting came before feasting. The great festival of God’s Incarnation, the Christ-Mass, was being celebrated in the Church by about 220 A.D. It was natural to the Early Church that a season of self-examination and repentance would lead up to this festival. By the fourth-century A.D., the four Sundays preceding Christmas were set aside to prepare for the Coming of Christ. They called this season “Coming,” Adventus in Latin, Advent. Over 1600 years later, the Church still celebrates the four weeks before Christmas as a time of special focus on the spiritual life. This year, I’m offering a devotional guide for the Advent season. Inspired by Herman Melville and Eugene Peterson, I call it The Harpooner. The Harpooner guides you through this holy season. Short Bible readings, traditional prayers, and a brief homily will help prepare you for Christ’s visitation. It’s available in ebook form as a PDF or an ePub file. It can be read on your e-reader, smartphone, computer, or tablet. The print version is available in paperback. The devotional is 25 chapters long, with an introduction, about 72 pages. You can get it here, or at Amazon.com/author/mckenzie

I was mad at God. It was the 30th of November, a date by which I’ve traditionally completed all of my Christmas shopping, planned my holiday meals, decked half the halls and basically thrown myself heart and soul into the preparations for the season I love best. It’s not that I’m so organized: it’s just that where Christmas is concerned I can scarcely contain my joy. The excitement starts percolating somewhere around about Halloween, and it’s all I can do to hold myself back until after Thanksgiving from draping tinsel over the mirrors and crowning every picture in the house with a branch of holly. I love Christmas so much that I cry when we put the tree up and I cry when we take the tree down—and that never a day before Epiphany. I get so tender over the season, in fact, that the very angle of the light on a late December afternoon is enough to bring tears to my eyes. But that year I just wasn’t up to it. I was worn out with sorrow, with protracted waiting and exhausted hopes, crushed under a disappointment that felt like a physical blow. Not exactly a recipe for a happy Christmas. And it was all God’s fault. I told Him so, standing at my window, looking out over a diamond-shot dawn that tangled itself among the velvety arms of my favorite cedar tree and suffused the rising mists with a pale golden light. Christmas, with all its gilted joys and tender associations, would only make things worse. “I can hardly bear the thought that my Christmas rose has such a thorn.” I whispered it to the windowpane, and then I immediately thought how silly that was, for the manger itself leads to the Cross and it was a crown of thorns that drew drops of blood as red as holly berries. I knew all that, had sung about it for years, had written little pieces acknowledging the sorrow brooding over that stable in Bethlehem. I had even speculated about the angels’ perspective on the matter, posing that they “may well have bent low in wonder, but could it be that their eyes were dimmed with tears?” I knew that sorrow was a part of joy, as inextricable as the Cross is from the Resurrection, and that any earthly hurt can make us keen to that loving heartbreak of God. The sorrow had just never been so tangible, so odiously unavoidable. And my thorn had such an ugly name: Barrenness. It takes a good, stout Old Testament word to express the arid disgrace of it: the Bible is painfully good at looking things in the eye and calling them what they are, and those first faithful ones certainly knew a desert when they saw one. What better depiction of the wasting dearth of disappointed hopes than a weary land hopeless for rain? For a long time I shied away from that word. I held it at arm’s length and buoyed up my spirits with a sanguine hope for “next year.” But on that late November morning, options dwindled and hopes all but extinguished, I stared into its lifeless expanse and realized with a horror that seemed to drain all the life out of me that this was the wilderness into which Jesus was asking me to follow Him. It was the last place on earth I wanted to go. I wanted the desert of waiting to give way to a desire fulfilled. I wanted Him to be glorified, yes, but I wanted Him to do it by giving me what I longed for. The fact was, He had let me down. Early in the newborn days of the previous January He had whispered a word to me, a potent assurance that seared itself on my mind in an unmistakable way. He had comforted my storm-tossed heart with a passage from Isaiah that seemed to echo down through the centuries with a shout of triumphant hope and explode right into the very midst of the quiet room in which I sat reading with burning eyes. The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; ran my trusty old King James, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. The words were a cooling shower, steaming and hissing on the dry ground of my desert place of longing, and I sensed the silent movement of God’s voice like a breeze among the brittle grasses: It’s alright to be sad about that. Now—let Me make something beautiful. “Way to go, God,” I wanted to say. “You’re really going to be glorified this time.” And what better way to show Himself strong than to make possible that which had proved impossible? To utter a resounding “Yes!” where circumstances had said such an inexorable, “No.” I could hardly wait to see what He was going to do. And here I was almost a year later, disillusioned and disenchanted, in one of the darkest places I have ever known in my whole life. Nothing had changed—nothing but a heartbreaking flare of medical hope that had ended in ashes and a desire that had grown too heavy to bear. I felt bereft; bereaved and utterly forgotten, with no one to blame but the Author of the universe. But there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years when it comes to playing the blame game with God: He can take it. “Reviling is also a kind of praise,” says the poet; “pour out your grievances,” says the psalmist. I have to believe that God prefers even insolence to apathy, feigned or otherwise—or worse yet, a pious stoicism. Complaint, at least, is personal; murmuring is abstract, which is why I think God must hate it so: it destroys intimacy. Astonishingly, when I’ve been most angry and honest with Him, His benevolence ends up appearing most poignantly to me. And in the first tender days of that particular Advent season, in the gathering glory of this great Giving and Coming, a bright-winged shadow seemed to gather and fall over me and a breath of wind stirred through the barrens of my wilderness. There is beauty in this place, He began to tell me again and again, in precious and particular ways, and I clung to that word like a drowning swimmer. If there was beauty here, I had to see it, for without its promise in my life I knew I would perish inwardly, even if it took a lifetime to do it. If there was no beauty here, there was no beauty anywhere—the thought chilled me to the marrow of my soul. But God’s mercy is new every morning, and visits us in a thousand unforeseen ways. The words of a favorite carol bore fresh grace to me the first time I heard it that year: And so through every time of life, to him who acts with reason, The beauty of all things doth appear. All things! Even this wasting patch of earth? Even this bewilderment of pain and desire? Even the hard-crusted face of suffering and surrender? Yes, yes and yes! came the answer on all sides, as if the very rocks and stones of my desert cried out in praise of God’s harmony of things. Almost against my will, I went back and looked at that passage in Isaiah again—and I saw something I had never seen before. Those verses speak not of exchange, but of transformation. The desert in this case is not merely traversed for a season and then gratefully left behind—it is remade. Renamed; plowed and sown and domesticated. This from the hand of the God who “calls things that are not as though they were” and who makes new things out of nothingness. The wilderness shall blossom as the rose. “All right, Lord,” I said. “Have at it.” And He did. On the first Sunday in that December we attended the Advent Procession at the cathedral downtown. The service is an ancient one, steeped in monastic tradition, wherein the choir travels around the church, singing at all the points of the compass, symbolizing the passage from darkness into light that our Lord’s Advent fulfills. I am such a visual person that it is very meaningful to me, with all the anticipation building to the final glorious Latin hymn sung on the steps leading up to the altar. The most enlightening moment, however, was in the middle of the service, in the midst of a song I had never heard before. From the back of the cathedral came the exultant springing of music and words, buoyant as birdflight: People, look east! The time is near Of the crowning of the year. Make your house fair as you are able, Trim the hearth and set the table. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Guest, is on the way. An overwhelming longing seized me, deeper and more wordless than even my longing for a child, and I sat there in the pew with tears standing in my eyes and my heart nearly pounding out of my chest. A year ago I had imagined myself welcoming the baby we had so long prayed for by this time, but in that moment of blinding, choking joy, there in the holy hush of a cathedral with angels’ voices filling the air, the Lord sang His own longing over me: Welcome Me! Prepare for Me! Incarnate your love in practical ways—love your loved ones for My sake! Open wide your heart and your home and receive Me more joyfully than ever before! It was both a gift and a charge; a glad challenge my tired heart suddenly—miraculously—roused to meet. I felt as though strong wings were lifting me from beneath; as though a cup of joy had been held to my lips and a gentle voice commanded me to drink my fill. As though the wilderness itself was breaking into song all around me. Furrows, be glad! Though earth is bare, One more seed is planted there: Give up your strength the seed to nourish, That in course the flower may flourish. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Rose, is on the way. That moment threw a quiet mantle of wonder over the rest of the season, tingeing every act with a significance I had never known. A few days before Christmas I was up on a ladder wiring greenery onto a chandelier in anticipation of the loved ones that were soon coming, humming Lo, How a Rose under my breath (anything that had anything to do with roses seemed inherent with meaning that year), when suddenly I stepped down, clippers in hand, under the thrall of a singularly beautiful thought. I went straight to the phone, dialed the wholesale florist I use, and promptly ordered a huge box of blood red roses. When my husband came in with them later I literally danced around the table as he set the box down and lifted off the lid. They were breathtaking: an utter luxuriance of crimson and velvet, couched in a bed of tissue-soft wrappings. But ever so much more than that: they were to me both an image and an offering; an honor to the Author of this glad revel we were keeping in His name. Those roses were my personal statement of faith; my version of perfume, lavished before the coming King. I nursed them through two harrowingly warmer-than-usual nights and one downright balmy day, but at the end of it I had the joy of spreading out on the porch with my floral supplies and clipping and wiring to my heart’s delight. I made a big wreath of ivy to hang in our bedroom window and trimmed it with snowy white hypericum berries and sprigs of cedar flanking the perfect blooms. I tucked roses among the greenery over pictures and into the big arrangement of holly and pine in my grandmother’s white porcelain compote. I laid them in beds of cedar along the mantle and I worked them into the wreath on the front door. And for the dining room, I fashioned them in rings upon pedestals of oasis and set pineapples—that time-honored symbol of hospitality—down in the center. I can’t remember when I’ve had such fun decorating, or been so pleased with the results. And this in a year when I wasn’t sure I was equal to Christmas at all. On Christmas Eve our home was bursting at the seams with family and friends-like-family. After the blessing, I read the beloved old greeting penned by Fra Giovanni in 1513 which has become a standard in our home. But never had the words seemed so appropriate: There is glory and beauty in the darkness, could we but see! And to see, we have only to look. I could vouch for that a hundred times over—but as I looked around the circle of beloved faces, I knew that every single one of them could testify to it as well. These were no untouched souls—many of them so much older and wiser than me by far—but faithful men and women of God who had taken His hand and wandered through deserts of their own. And every single one of them had come up with Him rejoicing—regardless of the circumstances. They had seen a light in that dark place that the world could not offer or explain away. And they had never been the same. The rooms rang with laughter and the snapping of fires and sounds of feasting and good fellowship that day. But loveliest of all to me were the sounds of the children, running through the hall, squealing in their games in the backyard. They lined up for the old-fashioned treat of oranges with soft peppermint stick ‘straws’ (now an institution, even among the teenagers) and they pulled English crackers in the den by the tree. One three-year-old lass required my help to pull hers and toppled over backward in a cloud white batiste and astonishment when it gave way—I have to say it might just have been the most beautiful sight of the day in a day full of beauty. I will never forget that Christmas, or the fundamental shift that happened down inside of me. How it literally changed everything and how the wilderness flowered before my incredulous eyes. My desire had not abated a whit; if anything, it was heartier and haler than ever. But the wild anger had gone, and in its place there bloomed a fresh-flowered hope that all would be well: not because life is perfect or every desire has been accomplished, but because He is. Because He came among us, and He’s still here when Christmas is over. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth, and worketh righteousness: In the years since that has been the standard I have borne in all my preparations for Christmas; a torch flaming in the darkness and a voice in the wilderness. And He does meet us, in our most broken places, year after year, with the marvel of His advent. And He does work wonders—miracles of quiet righteousness—even if they are so hidden in the depths of our hearts only He can see them. But wonders, no less. Wondrous as a heart breaking with longing and joy at the same time; inexplicable as a barren place blossoming with roses. Ah—with God, nothing shall be impossible. originally published on the Art House America blog, November 2012.

[The digital audiobook of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative is available in the Rabbit Room store. Ebook available via Amazon.] This past spring when my friend Stephen Gause (record producer, songwriter, and one of the kindest men I’ve ever known) invited me to work with him to turn Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative into an audiobook, I jumped at the offer because I wrote the book to be read aloud. Much of my own editing during the writing process came from reading what I had written aloud. If it sounded like writing, I rewrote it. I wanted this book to be something people could read to each other because beautiful are the feet and voices of those who bring good news. There’s something rich and lovely about one person telling the story of the coming of Christ to another. The story reaches so far back. Back before Father Abraham had any sons, the God of the universe made him a promise. He would be the father of a great nation, and through him all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. One night God brought him outside his tent in the desert and said, “Look toward heaven. Count the stars if you’re able. So shall your offspring be.” (Gen 15:5) I grew up hearing stories like this. But something came alive for me when one night in college I found myself in the Middle East not too far from Abraham’s desert, lying on my back, staring up at that same starry sky. In the desert, the night is a magnificent thing to behold. The Lord silenced me with his glory. I thought about this oath God made to Abraham. Here was a man who for his entire life had been unable to have children with his wife, though God’s promise to him was all about descendants. I thought about how hard this would have been to accept, how improbable was the math. And then I pictured Abraham stepping out beneath the brilliant canopy of stars flung across the heavens, and I imagined the Lord silencing his doubt with the same glory he was now using to silence me. What a mercy that must’ve been to Abraham, for God to meet him in his doubt with this display of glory. Though Abraham couldn’t begin to count the stars above, his life was in the hands of the one who made them. Every story God tells is filled with glory. Like Abraham beneath the stars, I want to see it. I want to be captured by the wonder of impossible promises coming true. I want to read the pages of Scripture with my eyes open to the beauty of mercy and grace. I want this for you as well. One of my highest hopes for this book is that it will deepen your understanding of the wonder and glory of the story of the Bible. As a pastor, biblical literacy is one of the most important goals of my work. I want people to know what the Bible says. The challenge this book presented was this: how do I tell the arc of the story of God’s redemptive purpose in sending his son in a way that’s faithful to the text of Scripture, knowing I must abridge or omit many wonderful and important moments? This puzzle took me through the process of embracing what this book is and what it is not. First, let me tell you what this book is not. It is not complete. My focus is specifically to tell the story of the need for and the coming of Christ, so I’ve left a lot of Scripture untouched. Second, this book is not a substitute for the Bible itself. In Deuteronomy, the Lord instructs his people to tell their children about him continually—when they’re tucking them in at night, when they’re walking down the road, when they’re sitting down to eat. (Deut 6:4-9) They were to have the stories of Scripture posted everywhere—on their doorposts, wrapped around their arms, emblazoned on their foreheads. There was the text of Scripture—the Law of Moses—and then there were the stories people told about it, those “did you hear the one about” moments. This book is a collection of those moments. Last, this book is not exclusively a Christmas book. We haven’t told the Christmas story well if we’ve limited its relevance to one month of the year or its scope to a few chapters from the Gospels. This book is designed to guide readers through a contemplative season of Advent—twenty-five chapters, one for each day of December—taking the reader or listener from Eden to the manger outside Bethlehem. I hope that taking twenty-five days in June or a weekend in October to read it would prove just as meaningful. Now I want to tell you what this book is. First, it is meant to be a servant of the Bible. I’ve packed the print version of the book with hundreds of scripture references. Since I paraphrase pretty freely throughout in order to maintain a unified voice, those references are there to lead readers to the truer, taller tale Scripture unfolds with perfect sufficiency. As much as I was able, I infused my prose with allusions to the phrases and imagery of the Biblical text. Second, this book is my story. Every measure of brokenness reflected in these pages is in some measure the story of my brokenness. Every need that rises to the surface is in some way a need of mine. Every tendency toward rebellion, every cry of desperation, every prayer for forgiveness and every hope of redemption rings true in me. In Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, I’m telling the story of how God loved and rescued me. I believe Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away my sin, and for that I am eternally grateful. [Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative is available in the Rabbit Room store, both in hardcover, and now in digital audiobook format.] Here’s a sample from Chapter 1.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ch1.mp3 __________ https://twitter.com/russramsey http://www.facebook.com/russ.ramsey

“There is but one sin,” wrote G.K. Chesterton: “to call a green leaf grey.” Which is to say, every kind of sin derives from a willful refusal to see and enjoy the beauty, the glimmers of transcendence that surround us. The serpent, remember, stood with Eve in the beauty and abundance of Eden and said, in effect, “Can’t you see that God is holding out on you?” To refuse to see beauty—to call a green leaf grey—is to say that God is not good. Beauty is a kind of grace. It comes from outside and changes something on the inside, and it usually comes as a surprise when it does. When I experience beauty I am very aware that something is happening that I could have never ginned up within myself. I feel gratitude. I feel longing. I feel that there is more going on than I can account for. But I can’t feel pride as a result of experiencing beauty. Consider by contrast other aspects of religious experience—truth, say, or morality. When I understand truth (or think I do), I am in constant danger of considering myself better than those who don’t understand that truth. When I practice morality, I am in similar peril. I don’t wish to belittle either truth or morality; beauty wouldn’t be much good without them. I mean only to suggest that when it comes to understanding what grace is and how it works, beauty is a pretty good guide. Beauty is sneaky like grace, fulfilling desires and healing hurts we didn’t even know we had. It slips past our defenses. Beauty isn’t quite irresistible (we all make ourselves blind to beauty from time to time), but even the hardest heart would have to be vigilant indeed never to be affected by a wide sky or a bright eye or a well-turned poem. In the end, however, the real work of earthly beauty isn’t to fulfill our longings but to stir up longings it could never fulfill. Beauty sidles up and whispers, “What do I remind you of?” Then it slips away and leaves us wanting more.

Okay, I know, I know, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet—but I’m going to talk about Christmas music anyway. Buddy Greene is one of the nicest and most likable guys in Nashville. Every time he drops by the RR office, whether it’s to buy a book, play a harmonica, or just say hello, he’s all smiles and laughter from the moment he walks in until the moment he walks out. And he leaves smiles and laughter behind when he’s gone. One day last month I got a humble email from Buddy telling me that he had just finished recording a little Christmas album and he wondered if I’d give it a listen. Now let me be honest. My fear was that I was in for an hour of weary Christmas classics and carols adapted for the harmonica—and I wasn’t sure how much harmonicated “Jingle Bell Rock” I could handle. I should go ahead and admit that I don’t really like Christmas music in general. There are a few exceptions, of course. I love Harry Connick. I love Jill and Andy Gullahorn’s Christmas CD. I loved last year’s Over the Rhine Christmas record. And I love . . . well . . . I suppose that’s about it (I’m not including Behold the Lamb of God here because I think that’s something more than Christmas music, if you know what I mean). So it’s with great surprise that I’ve found Buddy Greene’s December’s Song added to that small rotation of favorites. Somehow, it’s a nice fit beside those other Christmas records. It seems right at home there. It’s a little bit folk, a little bit bluegrass, a little bit hymnal, a little bit jazz, even a little bit crooning Bing Crosby. I love it. So I’m going to shut up and let you hear some of it. Check out the song below. “Canticle of the Turning” by Buddy Greenehttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Canticle.mp3 Buddy just released the record to the public last week. You should check it out. Here’s the link.

“Come, let us worship God, wonderful in his saints!” So ended Michael Ward’s introduction in our program today for the C.S. Lewis memorial service. And that is exactly what we did. I read those words as I sat in my straight wooden chair beneath the rainbow filtered light of the soaring stained glass windows in Westminster Abbey. The organ hummed the opening music amidst the swish and whisper of the gathering congregation. I watched almost a thousand people filter in to celebrate the life of C.S. Lewis. Wielder of words, weaver of stories, and humble-hearted friend, Lewis wrote and spoke from the Love that was the light by which he saw the world. In honoring his life today, we blessed the beautiful God who was the heart and Joy of it all. Come, Holy Spirit, and send the heavenly radiance of your light. Come, Father of the poor; come giver of gifts; come, light of all hearts. Amen. This was the opening prayer. I have a thousand things I want to write later on. I thought hard about reason and imagination once more as I listened to Alistair McGrath and Malcolm Guite speak on Lewis’ ideas on those topics yesterday. But tonight, as I write this short post, I’m basking in the way that the life of Lewis, an author I love, one of the first people I hope to meet in heaven, showed us the life of God. There was such joy in the air today, such a taste of the life that will someday come. The Dean’s prayer: Almighty God, Father of lights and author of all goodness: we give thee humble praise for the life and work of thy servant C.S. Lewis, and beseech thee that, as he has helped us to look to a world beyond this world and to hopes better than our own, we may come with him to the fulness of everlasting joy which thou has prepared for them that truly love thee, in the heavenly courts of they Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. “Further up and further in!” roared the Unicorn, and no one held back… And soon they found themselves all walking together – and a great, bright procession it was – up towards the mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on those mountains: there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the other, going up for ever… The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giant’s staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty…” —part of the excerpt from The Last Battle, read aloud by Douglas Gresham. I felt I got a little “further up and further in” today. Lewis is the one who calls us that way, and I think “roar” would be a good way to describe it, as he does the voice of the unicorn, Jewel. Every aspect of his life was a shout and a song calling us further into the great Reality he apprehended in imagination and described with his powerful reason. God bless C.S. Lewis. I remember him with thanks today. And I’m ready to follow him deep into the mountains and life of God.

A while back a couple of little girls came into my wife’s library and asked, “Do you have any sad books?” What a great question. There’s a lot to love about sad stories. For one thing, sad stories remind us what really matters to us. We feel sadness at the loss (or else the absence) of things we value. I don’t suppose they knew it, but the girls who asked my wife for sad stories were looking to affirm the things that mattered most to them by feeling what it would mean not to have them. By looking to enter into another person’s sadness (even a fictional person’s sadness), they were looking to experience their own lives more fully. That’s why I love sad stories. In children’s fiction, nobody does sadness like Kate DiCamillo. The same ache haunts The Tale of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, The Magician’s Elephant, and Because of Winn-Dixie (I haven’t read her other novels). In each of those stories, the hurt, the loneliness, and the sadness nourish the souls of characters and readers alike. There’s a great moment in Edward Tulane in which a grandmother tells an awful fairy tale: a beautiful but self-absorbed princess is turned into a pig and eaten. The granddaughter is shocked at the suddenness and brutality with which the story ends. “No one is living happily ever after,” she complains. “But answer me this,” the grandmother says. “How can a story end happily if there is no love?” It’s a great question, and one we needn’t protect our children from. Without love, there is no hope for a happy ending. The good news is that we live in a world that, though broken, is still shot through with love. Every sadness, every hurt is redeemable. Which is why we need not pretend that hurt and sadness don’t exist. My favorite sad children’s book is The Hundred Dresses, by Eleanor Estes. Wanda Petronski lives on the wrong side of the tracks. She comes to school every day in the same ratty blue dress. She sits in the back corner of the classroom where the rowdy boys sit. But she’s too unsure of herself to be rowdy. The popular girls don’t pay Wanda a lot of attention except for a game they play every morning in the school yard: “Wanda,” Peggy would say in a most courteous manner, as though she were talking to Miss Mason or to the principal perhaps. “Wanda,” she’d say, giving one of her friends a nudge, “tell us. How many dresses did you say you had hanging up in your closet?” “A hundred,” said Wanda. “A hundred!” exclaimed all the girls incredulously, and the little girls would stop playing hopscotch and listen. Every day she wears the same dress, but every day she claims to have a hundred dresses in her closet, “all lined up”—velvet, silk, every color, every style. The girls’ persistence in tormenting Wanda every morning is matched by Wanda’s persistence in her outlandish sartorial claims—not just a hundred dresses, but fifty shoes, then sixty, plus hats and coats to match. Eleanor Estes’s portrayal of schoolroom dynamics—especially the not-quite intentional hurts that children do to one another—is spot-on. There is so much sadness in this little eighty-page book, which was first published in 1944. Wanda has no answer for the popular girls whose lives are so easy by comparison—only those face-saving claims that are all the more humiliating for their overt falsehood. A hundred dresses, all lined up. I have heard forgiveness defined as “The fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it.” I could never quite make sense of that idea until I read the end of The Hundred Dresses. Wanda’s generosity toward the girls who have so sweetly bullyragged her is genuinely moving. I hope you’ll get hold of a copy and read it for yourself. What are your favorite sad stories?

As you may have heard by now, Farrar Straus & Giroux recently published the prayer journal of a very young Flannery O’Connor. William A. Sessions, an old friend of O’Connor’s and, deo volente, her official biographer (he’s been working toward an O’Connor biography for twenty years or so) found a black-and-white marbled composition notebook among her personal effects. That notebook, as it turns out, was a prayer journal that O’Connor had kept while she was earning her MFA at the University of Iowa, from January 1946 to September 1947. She was twenty years old when she began the journal and twenty-two when she gave it up (“There is no more to say of me,” she wrote on the last line). I’m deeply ambivalent about the publishing of this journal. Of course I am fascinated by the insights that it offers. The Habit of Being, O’Connor’s collected letters, includes very few letters from her Iowa years, so this prayer journal paints an intimate portrait of her inner life at a time of life from which we have few other sources. On the other hand, the portrait is so intimate that it often feels like voyeurism to look. I was discussing this with my wife last week and she remarked, “You sure are protective of her.” Maybe so. But I have a journal I kept when I was twenty, and if I had any reason to suspect that anybody might publish it when I’m dead, I would go burn it right now. Not that my old journal is especially juicy–and neither is O’Connor’s. But I was still learning how to be my grown-up self at twenty, and so was O’Connor. If you have ever read the first few stories in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, you have some idea of what I’m talking about. Those first stories–“The Barber,” “The Wildcat,” “The Geranium,” etc., made up her Master’s thesis at Iowa. They’re very good stories, but they don’t have the astonishing power of the stories that O’Connor was producing even a couple of years later. During those Iowa years, she was still figuring out how to be Flannery O’Connor. It has always hurt my feelings that the editors put those Iowa stories at the beginning of The Complete Stories instead of relegating them to an appendix. The spiritual fervor of her prayers is strong; even stronger is her desire for ever greater fervor: Dear Lord, please make me want You. It would be the greatest bliss. Not just to want You when I think about You but to want You all the time, to think about You all the time to have the want driving in me, to have it like a cancer in me. It would kill me like a cancer and that would be the Fulfillment. Even a casual reader of O’Connor can see the connection between this personal, spiritual longing–cast in a violent,  grotesque form–and the vision of O’Connor’s fiction. O’Connor is frank in asking God for literary success. “ I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do.” “ Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted.” And yet she is not concerned merely with worldly success. She prays at one point, “Please let Christian principles permeate my writing and please let there be enough of my writing (published) for Christian principles to permeate.” And yet she is suspicious of her own motives. In the throes of beginning Wise Blood she prays: Oh dear God I want to write a novel, a good novel. I want to do this for a good feeling & for a bad one. The bad one is uppermost. The psychologists say it is the natural one. let me get away dear God from all things thus “natural.” Help me to get what is more than natural into my work–help me to love & bear with my work on that account. If I have to sweat for it, dear God, let it be as in Your service. I would like to be intelligently holy. I am a presumptuous fool, but maybe the vague thing in me that keeps me in is hope. The honesty in these prayers is remarkable. At one point, after she has said something witty but caustic about another person, she writes, “But I do not mean to be clever although I do mean to be clever on 2nd thought and like to be clever & want to be considered so.” I know how she feels. Elsewhere she writes, I say many many too many uncharitable things about people everyday. I say them because they make me look clever. Please help me to realize practically how cheap this is. I have nothing to be proud of yet myself. I am stupid, quite as stupid as the people I ridicule. Please help me to stop this selfishness because I love you, dear God. Writers are famously insecure. Still, it may surprise readers to see Flannery O’Connor call herself stupid and admit her need to be thought clever. Several times in this prayer journal, O’Connor worries that she is just mediocre. Ponder that one in your heart. If the Iowa fiction shows that O’Connor wasn’t yet the writer she would become, the Iowa prayer journal shows that her unique inner vision was already fully developed–or nearly so. I wish I had time to give a full accounting of this remarkable little book (by the way, it is only about 40 pages long, and even those pages don’t have a lot of text on them). Instead, let me direct you to some of the better reviews that have been written: Marilynne Robinson in The New York Times Casey N. Cep in The New Yorker Marian Ryan in Slate A Prayer Journal is now available in the Rabbit Room store (ships in early December).

Josh Bishop shared this post at Story Warren and I thought you guys would love it as much as I did, especially the ending. –S.D. “Sam” Smith Some time ago, after I was given a collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, I asked my 8-year-old niece if she wanted to read one with me. Lilly said no, she doesn’t like fairy tales: “They have the worst endings. ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ Stories shouldn’t end that way because that’s not what happens in real life.” She has a point: That isn’t at all what happens in Real Life. Stories about Real Life are stories about alarm clocks and rush-hour downpours and staining the back deck; stories, in the words of another author, about “exports and imports and governments and drains.” Worse, these are stories of sorrow and loss. There are also moments of beauty and wonder and love, to be sure, but every story about Real Life eventually ends in death—guaranteed. Real Life kills off its characters with less restraint than even George R.R. Martin. It’s not that those stories about exports and drains are bad or unnecessary, but that they aren’t real enough. They’re incomplete; the curtain closes before the final act is done. This world presents us with a kind of relentless, creeping materialism that crowds out the possibility of a deeper reality. In contrast, the best stories peel back the curtain on our world—which masquerades as the only life there is—to show us that Aslan’s deeper magic is more real than we ever thought. This is why it’s so important to give our children an ending that’s truer than Real Life. By telling stories in which our heroes and heroines and repentant villains live happily ever after, we can create in our children an expectation that this is how good stories should end. True, these stories will leave them profoundly dissatisfied with Real Life. And when they confront the fact that the world doesn’t really work that way, we can show them how their disappointment points to a better story, a deeper reality. Happy endings create a holy longing for the kingdom come. That hunger is a kind of grace that we must feed, even as we point to its satisfaction in Christ. In truth, the world will have a happy ending. Our stories resolve with a feast and a wedding, where we will share the buffet line with such fairy tale characters as soldiers turned tillers and a lion that eats straw like an ox. On the final page, the bear and the cow sit down together for a cup of tea. At the restoration of all things, we will find that the knight has slain the dragon and has made the fair maiden his bride. These are the true endings. Let’s give our children something more beautiful than the dross that Real Life has to offer. Let’s give them this: Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. To my ears, that sounds exactly like happily ever after. —–   —–   —– Image by Paul Boekell

If you were at this year’s Hutchmoot, you will undoubtedly remember the moment a roomful of people came alive to a new voice among the mix of Square Pegs and Friends. Arthur Alligood hadn’t picked up a guitar in over a year, and even then was uncertain how the night would go. After playing two songs, the songwriter described the night as a “glorious moment” and one that would lead to newfound inspiration. If you’re new to Arthur’s music, his ability to stand out even in a songwriter’s circle speaks to his incredible ability to connect so deeply and meaningfully. His music is now available in the Rabbit Room store. Look for a sample of one of his songs at the end of the interview. You just played Hutchmoot and told us it was your first time playing in a while. Just how long has it been? I think I played a show last September if I am remembering correctly. It was miserable, I do remember that. There are not many things worse than being away when in your heart you just want to be home. So, its been a little over a year since I’ve performed. I desperately needed a break from the touring machine. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still on break. But I can’t imagine a better way to reenter performing than to share a couple of songs at Hutchmoot! I feel grateful to have been invited to play. I’d like to attend the entire retreat next year, if I can get a ticket. I hear they go pretty fast. For those who weren’t at Hutchmoot, the room came alive and people started clapping along to “Darkness to Light.” How was that moment for you? Concerts are moments. They’re moments in and of themselves, but they are made up of little moments depending on how many songs you play, how many stories you tell. I usually close my eyes when I play and try to push everything aside and sing from the brokenness within me. This is the only way I know how to do it. Towards the end of my first song, “Darkness to Light,” people just started clapping out of nowhere. It was a pleasant surprise for me and felt a bit like a pat on the back or a nod or a smile of agreement from a friend. Also, it seemed to me in those seconds that the crowd was clapping in beat because they felt compelled to join with me somehow. The artist/audience barrier seemed to evaporate and suddenly we were all in it together. It was a glorious moment for me personally, one I will never forget. A lot of times you don’t know really if people are connecting with the songs at all. This little moment let me know people were making the connection. As a songwriter, there is nothing better than that, to connect with your listener and in a sense be understood. You said you hadn’t performed for some time. Can you talk about the need for a break a bit more? I just lost the desire to play for people. For years I played quite a bit, touring all over, trying so hard to make a living at music. Though I had some successes here and there, things never seemed to work out. To be honest, I pushed too hard and fractured the relationships that have always been most dear to me. This last year has been a healing process, and I’m still not out of the woods in any sense. Therapy continues to be helpful. I’m not sure where things will end up, but I feel I’m in a much more healthy place personally. I’ve learned so much about myself, my tendencies and my pressure points. So in terms of playing shows in the future, I’m not totally sure. I don’t want to completely close that door, but I now have clear boundaries set concerning it all. So, don’t expect me to tour any time soon. But I would love to play Hutchmoot again next year, if Pete will be nice enough to let me play again. Given the lessons you’re learning, is there any song that has taken on new meaning from your past? My song, “Bring My Heart Out” from my most recent album One Silver Needle is much more dear to me than when I originally wrote it. At the time I was sitting comfortably within the calm before the storm so to speak. I had just won this songwriting contest and was writing for a new album, which was the grand prize for the contest. I remember I was putting a ton of pressure on myself to write good songs and quick. After writing “Bring My Heart Out” I took note that I didn’t necessarily “feel” the song. The song is about stepping out towards the truer self, the one we tend to hide in fear and pride and selfishness. Now, I hear the song and realize something or someone was trying to get my attention. The journey inside of the song is what the last year of my life has been about. I’ve had to bring my heart out so that it could breathe. The fear and selfishness was suffocating. Given what you said earlier, is there any vision of what’s coming next for you musically? I see the occasional flashes of light in the dark. I am content with these at the moment. I’m not sure what they mean and I have decided not to try to read the signs anymore. It’s exhausting trying to decipher every little thing that comes along in life. My wife says that I will always write songs. I agree with her. The very act is something I cannot escape. I guess this means that it is truly a part of me and something I am supposed to do. For now though I am okay with the scarcity. I actually sat down just the other day with a guitar and formed the makings of a new song, but the next flash could be months from now and that is fine. At some point I would like to make another album. How far that is down the road I don’t know. I suppose I’ll keep walking till the lights burn brighter and longer and I receive a fuller vision. I have never been more content with near blindness than I am now. [I Have Not Seen the Wind and One Silver Needle are now available in the Rabbit Room store.] “Darkness to Light” by Arthur Alligood [audio:DarknesstoLight.mp3] I’m waiting for the morning Waiting in the night When that sun comes over the mountain She gonna turn this darkness to light Now its been a long throw since we first took to this soil We found an itch to scratch real quick and called it war All this fighting it ain’t nothing, but a symptom of our sickness and we still ain’t found a cure We keep walking down that same path that worn out, crooked way Stepping over all of history’s little tracks Falling it don’t come first pride will push you to the edge and once you start falling can you ever go back? How do we answer our children when they wonder what went wrong? Do we scratch our heads and tell them no one really knows why? Do we go back to a garden, a perfect little world to two lovers who couldn’t keep it right? #ArthurAlligood

Several years ago I joined a couple of friends to form a reading group in which our chief aim was to read books that we should have but have not. Paradise Lost was the first we read and there’s been a long list of others since. It’s been a good thing for me because the group has forced me to read quite a few books that I certainly would not have otherwise, and in the process I’ve discovered some of my all-time favorites. Then last week at breakfast, Jonathan Rogers (who has for years cruelly and evilly spurned invitations to our reading fellowship) said something that made me shake my head in exasperation. He said something to this effect (and I welcome him to correct me in the comments): “I’m done reading books I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like it, I don’t finish it!” Now, in defense of such an indignant and Rogersian argument the following point was made: Let’s say one reads two books a month, religiously, for the rest of one’s life. If such were the case (and I think that’s a pretty liberal estimate) that means that in my lifetime, I will probably only get to read about 1000 more books. Given that frighteningly finite number, doesn’t it make sense that I’d want to guarantee each of those reads was enjoyable as possible? But I don’t think the answer is as simple as it seems. I’ve had to “push through” quite a few books that, in the end, were far better than I anticipated they would be. Paradise Lost, The Inferno, Les Miserables, Crime and Punishment, and Frankenstein are all books that were not only difficult but, at times, downright unfriendly. And yet, having now finished them, they’re in my list of favorites. More importantly, they’re the sorts of books that go on paying dividends for years in philosophical, literary, and lingual currency. I’m glad I pushed through. Very glad. Books like those have changed the ways I write, read, and think. On the other hand, I’m almost finished “pushing through” Robert Jordan’s titanic 14-volume fantasy series, The Wheel of Time (most of those 14 books are 600-1000 pages). I’m still enjoying it—sort of. I’ve got about 1400 pages left to read of the story and I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that it’s not worth the effort. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and call it right now. That story isn’t worth the time I’ve spent on it. But I’ll finish it, because I’ve come this far and I really do want to know what happens. So what is it exactly that makes a book worth “pushing through”? And how do you judge whether it’s worth the investment? Part of my answer is that I rely on a community of people with like tastes. In general, if the folks I know, and whose opinions I trust, assure me that a book is worth my time, I’ll push through it, even if only to be able to dislike the book honestly (such as with The Hunger Games—a book I have read and can now dislike in good conscience). I extend the same idea to books that have stood the test of time. If a book was written 50+ years ago and people are still talking about it, well, then there’s a mighty good chance that I have something to learn from it—even if it turns out that I dislike it. Books like Kafka’s The Trial or Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer fit this bill. I loathed reading them, and yet I can’t deny that I’m better off for having done so. I’d be interested in hearing how others make the decision of whether or not to push through and finish a difficult book. I suppose my fear comes down to this: If I read only that which I find easy and enjoyable, I run the risk of spending too large a portion of my final 1000 books on those like Robert Jordan’s which will never be of any real benefit greater than that of a cheap thrill. In the end I’d rather read 1000 books that challenge me and force me to grow and think in new and exciting ways, rather than 1000 books that were merely easy and enjoyable. Books I’ve “pushed through” that were very much worth the trouble: Paradise Lost (Milton)(Wow.) Les Miserables (Hugo)(I rarely recommend abridged books, but this one is an exception.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo)(So much bigger and deeper than I expected.) Frankenstein (Shelley)(Wanders, but good grief, what a visionary story.) Gilead (Robinson)(For some reason, I couldn’t finish it the first time I tried. On a second try I couldn’t put it down.) Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)(Some of the political philosophy was tough, but Tolstoy is a genius of human insight. Shockingly relevant to 21st America.) A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)(One of my top 5 books. Ever.) Moby Dick (Melville)(How I learned to love whaling.) Catch-22 (Heller)(Bogs in the middle. Finishes big. One of the funniest books I’ve ever read.) The Book of Sorrows (Wangerin)(Heartbreaking and bleak) Mind of the Maker (Sayers)(Dense in the beginning, but altered the way I think about writing.) Harry Potter (Rowling)(Almost gave it up after disliking the first two books. Then it became great.) Books I wish I’d given up on: The Shack (Young)(I will never get these brain cells back.) The Hunger Games (Collins)(Despite what you’ve heard, this is a book about a girl sleeping in trees.) The Tommyknockers (King)(There’s an evil Coke machine that kills people. Seriously.) The DaVinci Code (Brown)(Face, meet palm.) Books I’m still trying to push through: For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)(Great sentences. Paced like cold molasses.) A Soldier of the Great War (Helprin)(Sidetracked, but I’m anxious to go back.) For the Time Being (Dillard)(This is weird. Wait. What?) Books I failed to push through: The Reivers (Faulkner)(This won a Pulitzer? Really?) Twilight (Meyer)(I gave up after 27 pages . . . but I wish I’d given up sooner.) Books I’ve pushed through and disliked but am glad to have read: The Trial (Kafka)(Kafka didn’t want it published. I see why.) The Moviegoer (Percy)(A book about apathy. Well done—I didn’t care.) The Stranger (Camus)(Good book, but I can’t seem to take Existentialism seriously.) Note: The the preceding list (while by no means complete) is interesting to me because it reveals that in my case, “pushing through,” tends to be a good investment—which is a relief!

As the Advent season approaches, Behold The Lamb of God will be a popular topic of conversation around the Rabbit Room. Andrew Peterson’s album and subsequent tour has become a beloved tradition for many at Christmas time. The addition of Russ Ramsey’s book added a new dimension, telling the Advent narrative in 25 chapters as a lead-in to Christmas Day. This year, we’re proud to introduce the special Behold the Lamb of God audiobook, read by Russ himself. The book was always intended to be read aloud, so the audiobook presents the material in the way it was intended to be taken in. The way in which we hear a story can alter it entirely, and Russ hopes the familiar becomes fresh in this new offering. What’s the hidden challenge in making an audiobook? Is the process different than you thought it would be? Because I wrote the book to be read aloud, the actual process of recording it in the studio went pretty smoothly. It had been a while since I had read the book, so it took a little bit of time to get back into the rhythm, but once I did I enjoyed the entire process. It makes a huge difference working with people who know what they’re doing. This really was a community effort. My good friend Stephen Gause [record producer] offered to help me make the audiobook. We recorded it in his studio over the course of four sessions. Andrew Peterson came in and read the foreword he wrote, and Andy Osenga played some guitar swells for the bumper music. Roy Roper, who designed the beautiful dust jacket for the book, lent his talents to creating the cover art. You said the book was meant to be read aloud. What is it about the oral version of a story that changes the dynamic or meaning? Two things about that. First, much of my own editing during the writing process came from reading what I had written aloud. If it sounded like writing, I rewrote it. I wanted this book to be something people could read to each other because beautiful are the feet and voices of those who bring good news. There’s something rich and lovely about one person telling the story of the coming of Christ to another. We personalize the stories we read in the ways we read them, and for a Christian to read aloud the story of the need for and the coming of Christ, they read the story of their own lives. I certainly felt that way reading it in the studio. Second, words work in mysterious ways. They carry not only information, but emotion, gravity, humor, etc. Devices like alliteration, when read aloud, engage not only the mind, but the imagination. One of my personal favorite lines from the book comes in chapter three, which tells the story of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. The line is: “But there in the garden, the serpent spoke a sentence, subtle and slow, creating a slippery slope of uncertainty and suspicion.” When you read that line aloud you hear the serpent hiss in a way I hope brings a sense of foreboding for what’s to come. What’s been the response to the book so far? Do you have a favorite response? Has it been what you’d hoped for? When you release your first book, you hope it is something people will connect with. Folks have reached out to tell me stories of how they’ve used the book in their churches, small groups, and family devotions. I love it when people tell me reading the book has become an annual tradition. I wanted it to be a servant of the story of Scripture—something that would help people worship Christ during the holidays. If people come back to it after one reading to read it again, that gives me hope that I didn’t get too much in the way of the story God has been telling down through the ages. Do you have a favorite audiobook of your own, a book that came alive in a new way? I listen to tons of audiobooks—in the car or while exercising. Its often the only way I can get in any “pleasure reading.” My favorite would have to be John Cleese’s version of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. He reads it like a demon dictating letters into a recorder. It is utterly sinister—a little too convincing. By the way, we should mention that you have a companion book on the way: Behold the King of Glory. When you first wrote Behold the Lamb of God, did you picture a sister book like this in the beginning or did that come later? Yes. In fact, when Andrew and I first started talking about me writing a book with Rabbit Room Press, it was an Easter book. This was back when he released Resurrection Letters, Vol. 2. I wanted to write a book about the last eight days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. I mapped it out and everything—40 chapters, one for each day of Lent. But the whole time I was working on it, i felt like I needed to write about what led up to that week. That’s when we started talking about writing an Advent book first. This year I’ve been writing the Easter book, which I’m calling Behold the King of Glory: A Lenten Narrative. Crossway Books has agreed to publish it, so I am writing as much as I can to meet the deadline for the first draft early next year. It is written in the same voice as Behold the Lamb of God and picks up where the advent book left off, covering the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Man, what a story! #BeholdTheLambofGod #RussRamsey

A while back I was in the library checking my email on the public computers. The patrons of the library’s public computers constitute what may politely be called a cross-section of humanity. At my library, they don’t just let you sit at whichever computer you like. They assign you one, and it’s right next to the person who sat down just before you did. Which is to say, there isn’t any of that natural spacing of the discreet whereby two people in an elevator stand in the back corners and the third person stands in the middle right by the door. No, at the library computers you’re spang up against the next fellow. The fellow I was spang up against was managing his account at an online dating site. He was a white-haired, paunchy old boy with a long, straight nose that bulged off to the left just at the tip-end, putting me in mind of a train that derailed right before pulling into the station. Every half-minute or so, he chuckled at something some dating prospect or other had written in her profile, wagging his head each time and cutting his eyes over toward me. Clearly he hoped I would ask him what he was laughing about or otherwise engage him in conversation. I was determined not to. I was in a bit of a hurry–just trying to check my email and get out of there–and I wasn’t up to it anyway. Soon my neighbor wandered away from the dating site and to a medical self-diagnosis site. He stopped chuckling and instead made little murmurs of interest–or maybe it was concern. I didn’t take the bait. I was locked on to that email. At last the man nudged me with his elbow. He pointed at his screen. “How would you pronounce that word?” he asked. I looked at his screen. “Splanchnoptosis, I guess.” I went back to my email. “Splanchnoptosis,” he repeated. “Prolapse or backward displacement of an organ in the abdomen.” He rubbed his ample belly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I’ve got,” he said. I glanced in his direction and gave a quick, sympathetic nod, then looked off, hoping he would get the message. The man turned his chair to face me. “You probably didn’t know that you can cure cancer with baking soda, did you?” It finally occurred to me that whatever my email said, it wasn’t going to be nearly as interesting as the things this old boy had to say. I turned my chair too, and we were face to face. “That’s right,” he said. “Some doctors in Italy taped pouches of baking soda under the armpits of women with breast cancer. Six weeks later, the tumors were gone. No surgery. No chemo. No radiation. I saw it on YouTube.” He crossed his arms triumphantly, as if he had been one of the Italian doctors who made the discovery. “It’s all about the pH levels.” He extended a thick right hand in my direction. “I’m David,” he said. I shook his hand. If I told him my name, I’m quite sure he didn’t hear it. He was off again. “But there’s no money in baking soda, is there? Where would the medical-industrial complex be if everybody was controlling their pH levels with baking soda and wasn’t getting cancer? What would the doctors do? You can’t make the mortgage on one of those doctor houses by selling baking powder, can you?” David looked behind him as if to be sure nobody was eavesdropping, though he was speaking so excitedly now that I suppose everybody in the computer room could hear every word, unless they were wearing foam earplugs. He leaned in close. “You know who built all the hospitals, don’t you?” I shook my head. “The Rockerfellers. That’s who. The same Rockerfellers that are in charge of everything else. You think that’s a coincidence, that the Rockerfellers built all those hospitals and the Rockerfellers are in charge of our health policy? You want to know why you didn’t know baking soda is the cure for cancer?” He snorted disdainfully. “Ask the Rockerfellers. Only they won’t tell you.” David gestured toward the people who were lined up outside the computer room for early voting. “It’s like I told one of the women out there,” he said. “I said, ‘Do you really think you’re smart enough to vote? Do you think you can outwit the military-medical-industrial complex? Because that’s who runs things around here. Do you think you’re smarter than the Rockerfellers?’” To think my natural inclination was to ignore this guy. “But there’s no telling what women want, is there?” David said. I wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question. “I know what women want,” he said, “and I know how to give it to them.” He leaned in even closer than before and assumed a confidential tone. “They just want somebody who will listen.”

Sam Smith just posted an interview with Thomas McKenzie about his forthcoming book, The Anglican Way. Here’s an excerpt, but please check out the entire interview on Sam’s website. SS: When I’ve heard you preach, you have always emphasized the Gospel. Is the Gospel hubbub of late just another fad? TM: The Church only has two things to offer the world: Word and Sacrament. These two, together, are how we proclaim the Gospel. The Word is the voice of the Gospel, the Sacraments are the body. The only reason for the Church to exist is to proclaim the Gospel, in word and deed. We’ve been about this work for 2000 years, and I don’t expect us to stop until Christ’s return. I don’t think Gospel preaching and living could be considered a fad. I don’t see that there’s been a hubbub of late, but I might be missing something. Read the full interview here. And click here for more information about the book and how you can help support it.

“Real work always includes a respect for the material at hand. The material can be a pork loin, or a mahogany plank, or a lump of clay, or the will of God, but when the work is done well there is a kind of submission of will to the conditions at hand, a cultivation of humility… Adolescents are workers bent on self-expression. The results are maudlin. Simpering songs. Sprawling poems. Banal letters. Bombastic reforms. Bursts of energy that run out of gas (the self tank doesn’t hold that much fuel) and litter house and neighborhood with unfinished models, friendships, and projects. The adolescent, excited at finding the wonderful Self, supposes that life now consists in expressing it for the edification of all others. Most of us are bored.” —Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor “Art consists in drawing the line somewhere.” G.K. Chesterton Question: What makes golf a fun game? Answer: The rules. That and, in my case, the occasional lucky shot. When you know the boundaries of a game, you can spend your energy and enthusiasm within those boundaries. There is a kind of freedom only possible inside a strong gate. This line of thinking is almost a thought crime these days, but I proceed, thinking like a criminal who has come to appreciate a well-built border. At some point it became a cliche of creativity to advocate “coloring outside the lines.” I have a small concern about that and it involves the fact that those pictures are usually horrible. I say “usually,” and not “always,” on purpose. Obviously there is something to the desire to be unbounded, at liberty, and it’s certainly not all bad. Some conventions are simply prisons, and crummy ones. But the old saying, “Don’t remove a fence until you know why it was put there,” is apt. I’m not saying that we should never buck convention, or that we should always follow every norm. (In fact, rebellion is so conventional now that returning to the ordinate virtues of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness is the real rebellion.) But I am saying we should perhaps be slower to insist on our own way, our own, individual interpretation of a thing. We should, perhaps, be slower to assert our own wills in every area of life: including areas of creativity. A ruthless commitment to artistic self-expression can be, along with other dangers, incredibly tedious. I hear talk about how terrible “organized religion” is, but all I can think about is how much worse self-absorbed, disorganized religion is. The man who avoids church, but instead goes into the woods to worship, is probably worshiping the one and only member of Woods Church. That might sting, and sounds judgmental, I know. I think that might possibly reflect how committed we are in our civic religion to Self. So often the thing I most need liberation from is my own way. The elevation of My Own Way to creedal status in modern life is an elaborate invitation to a Cyanide Banquet. It is, I will argue, a tremendous virtue to teach our children to color inside the lines. This is because we want our children to be free. They cannot be free and self-worshiping at once.

When I was at Hutchmoot, people kept asking me if Philip and I lived at the beach. I thought they were teasing at first. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?” I’d reply with a grin. But after the third or fourth time I started to wonder. Sure, we don’t live that far from the coast, and we go there as often as we can. This past summer we were blessed with the opportunity to spend a lot of time by the sea in our darling old Airstream trailer, a 24-foot home away from home, and, consequently, pretty much everything I’ve written over the last six months has made some allusion to the ocean. But it got me thinking. And Hutchmoot itself got me thinking more. When we came back from Nashville, I did something I haven’t done since April: I unpacked. I mean, really and truly. All the other times were holding patterns. For the balance of the summer, I left my favorite jewelry in its travel case and my barrettes and bobby pins in the little brocade bag I’ve had since I was 16. For about six weeks there, between multiple trips, I never even took my toiletries out of the vintage train case that goes with me everywhere. Each time we headed south, towards an island beloved to us both, my heart was a winging bird. And every single time we came home, it was a lump of cold lead. It’s increasingly hard for me to leave this place where I come so fully alive, where I always find something of myself that I left behind on previous visits. In this warm, island world, I recollect my own heart in a way that just doesn’t happen in other locales, and for that I love it with a jealous, grateful passion. Circumstances have required a lot of flexibility over the past several months, but I’ve been emotionally on the edge of my seat—ready to go at a moment’s notice. I realize, however, it’s not just the preponderance of road trips that’s kept me feeling so flighty. I’ve been a little ill at ease in my own house of late, like an awkward coolness has arisen between us. It’s been a heavy year—not the kind that knocks the wind out of you, mind, but one that wears you down gradually until you wake up one morning and feel like the Little Engine that Can’t. It’s left me bruised: tender in places and sore as a risin’ in others. I’ve tried to process it, work through it, rest through it, ignore it, indulge it—the whole gamut. Mostly I’ve just wanted to get away, though. Life’s been taking it out of me, and I’ve been taking it out on my house. But when we rolled in from Hutchmoot the other night and bounced down our rutty gravel drive, I was glad to be home. For the first time in months, I wanted to kiss that stubborn old red clay of ours and caress every doorpost and lintel. I wanted to lie down in the yard by the sagging grapevine and let the walnut trees weep golden leaves all around me. I wanted to open windows and doors to envoy breezes of October and change linens and sweep floors. There had been a tilting of perspective, elemental as the shifting of shadows one notices in early autumn, and the light was falling over my landscape in a wholly-fresh-yet-eternally-familiar way. Hutchmoot has meant different things to me in different years—even the year I wasn’t able to come had its own gifts in the way of long-distance fellowship and connection. But this year I could whittle my heart’s takeaway down into one burning idea: Hutchmoot made me homesick. And I don’t necessarily mean homesick for heaven, which, of course, is inherent in all homesickness, whether we acknowledge it or not. But I mean homesick for my own bit of earth, for my wonky floors and drafty windows and the afternoon light sifting over my own pastures. It made me homesick for black cats that doze on blankets with me in the yard and the way my sheep gaze up at me with calm, trusting delight when I scratch them behind their ears in just the right way, and for the pearl-white Araucana hen (who made a cameo appearance in my Molehill story last year) who likes to perch on the sill of the barn where the siding has rotted away. It made me want to plunge my hands into garden soil and the kneading of bread and into poetry. It made me want to play the piano and sing songs and read books. It made me want to sit long by the fire talking with close friends and to welcome a lonely soul to my table. Homesick, indeed, for the very things that characterize my life, but which I’d lost hold of in all my late weariness of soul. At Hutchmoot, I remembered who I am, in the widest sense. I remembered not only to love what I’ve been given, but to choose it, and that the most transcendent things in life are articulated, incarnated, by earthy reality. I remembered that Now and Here are crammed with glory and that sometimes, oftentimes, the best way to unfurl Hope’s banners over the wartorn landscape of life is to make a bed with a sweet expanse of clean sheets and set a pretty table with candles and wine glasses and something green from the yard to which the fragrance of earth still clings. I remembered that we celebrate, declare, revel in what’s Real with real things. I remembered what I reminded myself in last year’s Molehill story: that everything matters. That it’s all that important. I loved Andrew and Jonathan’s Saturday morning session—they spoke on the glory of God all around us, kindling everything, making everything significant. Andrew really encouraged us to dig into our place, to see it as a unique vantage point where grace intersects with ordinary days, and my heart was stabbed at the thought. “The Incarnation . . . transfigures the whole fabric of life for us and delivers it back to us and us back to it in the seamlessness that we lost at our exile from Eden,” wrote Thomas Howard, and I saw that ideal actualized at Hutchmoot on every side. From legendarily beautiful meals, to candlelight on earnest faces deep in conversation, to music and pipe smoke in the air, I was confronted with the glad assertion that our faith is enfleshed in human faces, human voices, the work of human hands. It’s not some disembodied paradigm too lofty to be sullied with the ordinary stuff of life—it gives that stuff meaning, restoring the bloom of Garden freshness to our endeavors, be they world-class bluegrass concerts or a tune picked out by ear on our own piano at home. Driving back from Nashville I told Philip I felt like Mole in The Wind in the Willows. “Of course you do,” he laughed. (That book is one of our best-beloveds; he and I refer to one another as Ratty and Mole, respectively, and for good reason.) But it was one moment in particular that had caught my mind’s eye: like one of Leif Enger’s “shiny things,” I remembered, seemingly out of the blue, how Mole had caught the scent of his old home in the air one winter afternoon, coming over the fields with Ratty after a day of exploration abroad. He’d abandoned Mole End the summer before for a new life of friendship and adventure, but at this sudden, irresistible appeal, he was seized with a longing that very nearly broke his heart. Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him, in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him. It was not a sermonizing on contentment or even a noble notion of belonging that recalibrated Mole’s inner compass—but a smell. It reminded me of an experience I had back in 2006. At the end of what we now refer to as “The Summer Our House Broke” I called Philip at the office one day and told him that if I didn’t get on an airplane and go somewhere—anywhere—I was going to lose my mind. After months of essential repairs, I was beginning to feel like my house was a physical weight. We’d had contractors literally walking off the job left and right, leaving gutters strewn over the yard and half-scraped clapboards languishing for paint; the roofer had discovered not one or two layers of shingles under the rotten cedar shakes, but five; the dormers had been invaded by squirrels, the original shutters were suddenly leaning at crazy angles, and the guy who came to fix the leak in the attic said he needed to rebuild the pull-down stairs before he’d even consider going up there. Oh, and did I mention that the barn was sinking on one side at an alarming rate? Philip was as keen to get away as I was, and that very night we went straight to Barnes and Noble, immersing ourselves in a pile of travel books we’d pulled off the shelves at random. At first it was empowering enough to say ridiculous things like, “How about Madeira?” or, “There are direct flights from Atlanta to Bermuda.” But, at length, I lifted a book from the stack and said, “What about Maine?” After that, we never considered anything else. Maine in September seemed the very cure for this sudden upflaming of adventuresome desire—the very place to run away and hide from our troubles for a while. We duly found a cottage that was so remote it was on an island of its own, reached after miles of mist-shrouded gravel track. Nothing could have suited me more, and for a week, I sat on the rocks overlooking our own secret bay and read Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Thomas Kelly and The Country of the Pointed Firs and basically found my Center again—and my wits along with it. I was so fully present at our little cottage in Maine that I didn’t even let myself think about what was going on at home or what chaos was waiting for us there. I sank into the peace of that place like a tired child and it was health to my body and wine to my soul. I never wanted to leave. One day, however, in a burst of domesticity, I made gingercake to go with our tea. Such a simple thing, but it filled our cottage with an intoxicating fragrance. I was immediately arrested—plucked, beckoned. Wooed. At the scent of that little cake, my heart was pierced through with homesickness, of all things, and it took me completely off guard. I was overwhelmed, here in this lovely place, with longing for my place. The tide had turned; home was calling me, and I felt in that moment that I could have walked all the way from Maine to Georgia. Barefoot. I love that it was something as homely as a smell that wakened such fierce and elemental desire in me—just the way it was for Mole that night coming over the fields with Ratty. Tasha Tudor said that scent is the strongest memory arouser, and she was right. But there in Maine, I didn’t just want my own kitchen floor beneath my feet—I wanted the bedrock it stood upon. I wanted the declaration of hope that was bread coming out of my own oven and the incarnate love of polished silver and firelight. I wanted to declare that things matter, everything matters, because Love has come and Redemption tarries not. Like Mole, I’ve discovered a vein of vagabondry seaming my otherwise quiet existence, and that’s all right. We mustn’t be too at home, even at home. But how grateful I am that, like him, I have such an anchorage in this life. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome. I’ve found my metaphorical anchorage, as well, in this safe haven of friendship and inspiration known as The Rabbit Room. In company of such tremendous souls, I am humbled into hard work and delight and all the things that make up a life worth living—a life worth giving away. Pete and Jennifer and the rest have called things out of me I didn’t know where there. They have believed in me in ways that I could never believe in myself. They have pointed me to back to fairyland and reminded me that the Truth is too lovely not to tell. And they have reminded me, again and again, in their songs and their stories and their sacrificially sumptuous Hutchmoot feasts, that Eternity isn’t a passive thing, biding Time in some untouchable over-the-rainbow. No—it’s igniting the present moment, burnishing the “gear and tackle and trim” of even our humblest endeavors with a holy glow. It’s the magic latent in all the ordinary of our lives, and our soul’s sweet home away from Home.

Why do we read sad stories, especially to children? James Witmer is a good dad with a good answer.  –S.D. “Sam” Smith, Story Warren Babe is a children’s novel about a pig who becomes a sheep dog. Pig. Sheep-pig! Despite this deeply philosophical foundation, it’s a funny, enjoyable tale. In the last third of the book, there is a scene where wild dogs break in and worry the flock of sheep, killing an old ewe who was one of Babe’s dearest friends. When we finished this sad chapter, I put the book down and looked at my five year old, who seemed to be choking back tears. “Are you sad?” I asked. In a blink she had climbed onto my lap, wrapped her arms around my neck, and was sobbing so hard her little body shook. It was a good moment to ask why we do this. Why do we read stories? Why do we read sad stories? Why do we do this to ourselves when there is already too much sadness in our lives? This time I found the answer close by. “Maa’s story is over,” I told her. “It’s always sad when a story ends. But Babe’s story isn’t over. He keeps living, and more things happen, and some of them are very good things.” We kept reading. We used our imaginations to experience a truth about the world: Stories end, but The Story continues. That’s something she will need to know when the stakes are higher. When she feels alone and adrift in the backwash of loss, she’ll need to believe that life goes on. Not just existence, but life. The story. And in some way, when we near the end of our own stories, we all want The Story to go on without us. There must continue to be laughter, and hard work, and lovers uselessly mired in each others’ eyes, or why have we lived? It is the Great Story that gives ours meaning. For a few moments on a Saturday afternoon, an old sheep and a silly pig, both imaginary, led my daughter and I snuffling into this dark truth, and back out into the sunlight. She was belly-laughing not ten minutes later.

A few months after coming home from Hutchmoot 2012, I stumbled onto an analogy for my three-year experience with this conference: Star Wars! That’s right, for me, the very first Hutchmoot could’ve been called “A New Hope.” That’s the year Walt Wangerin was my Obi-Wan and through him Jesus placed a stamp on my arm that said “Jedi,” which in the Hutchmoot realm meant artist, and for me specifically, writer. The whole weekend, everywhere I turned I was meeting my people. I’ve never felt belonging the way I did that first year when there were suddenly real life, 3D versions of all the rabbits I’d only interacted with online. There were so many little extra touches which felt tailor-made for me that year. From the artistic, delicate salads to the awkward first introductions to people I’d admired for years. Every session I heard and every note I took seemed like a kiss that came straight from God’s lips and landed right inside my heart. In truth, an angel whispered in my ear one night—out in the field, before the days of the white tent—that the world I’d left behind was gone and this place, these people were my real home. Enter year number two, when the enemy struck back. I was so excited to come back to Church of the Redeemer, home of the Hutchmoot, just at the end of Rainbow Place. I was absolutely positive that everything would be wonderful once more. I couldn’t wait to see my old friends whom I’d gotten to know even better since that first year, and I was excited about meeting new people and making new lifelong friends, just like I’d done the last time. My expectations were about as high as they could be and that should have clued me in—but it didn’t. The hay rug was pulled out from underneath me, just as my bunny feet landed. Here’s what happened. All weekend long, around every corner, there was a question. Have I met him before? Does she remember me? I wonder what they think about me… Did I wear the right combination of artsy-fartsy scarf and devil-may-care hairdo today? Does anyone even notice me down here in the kitchen? How come this particular meal and that particular session are not just like they were last year? Why do I feel so alone, and how did I get to be so mixed up? But the real question in my heart was this: Can I trust all the goodness that happened to me last year? Little did I know there was an actual five-and-a-half-inch red demon riding on my shoulder all weekend, complete with pointy spear and forked tail, yet completely invisible. I never thought to try and knock him off either because he had this cool trick of throwing his voice so that everything he said sounded just like it came from the inside of my head and felt enormously true. “Those people were just being nice when they asked you to come back, they don’t really like you. You’re not any good at this writing thing you’ve been trying to do all year. Well, maybe you’ve got a little bit of talent, but you’ll never be able to write like she can. What makes you think anything that happened to you last year was real? Surely you imagined it all, just like you imagine everything. That’s all you’re good for is daydreaming, you can’t really do anything. And everything you try to do turns out wrong, because you’re never good enough.” Well, thank goodness for my little Yoda, Sally Lloyd Jones. And for the friends I had but didn’t realize, who listened to my whining, understood my frustrations, and cared for me when I wasn’t behaving at all like a grown-up. Despite the overwhelming funk I was in all weekend, there were moments of grace. Like the meal I shared with Leanne and Dave Bruno, where they confidently introduced me as a writer, and the mini-counseling session in the sanctuary provided for me by Ron Block and Rebecca Reynolds. And then there was the time when Katherine Kamin drove me around for a while when my stomach was upset and that other time when the Prinzis laughed at my jokes like I was Steve Martin. Plus the other couple we shared a house with that weekend, the Andrews, who couldn’t help but be real and enthusiastic and sweet, all at the same time. I went home regretting that my poor mood had kept me from enjoying more, but like God often does, he used that weekend to help me reassess what matters most in my relationship with him. What was more important to me, that God gave me the gift of writing, or that He even talked with me at all? Was my telling worth more than my being? Hutchmoot #2 was like a murky green planet for me most of the time, where I did lots and lots of dispiriting exercise and faced many disheartening defeats, but once I came out of the darkness, I realized how much stronger my spiritual muscles were. It didn’t happen all at once, it was a hard year in many other ways that don’t fit this particular essay, but God faithfully used it all to draw me closer to Him. So when I came back to Hutchmoot in 2012, I finally got to wear a gold bikini! Ha. Yuck! Gross, that’s not what happened at all; but I did feel like a real champion when the weekend was over. HM #3 was strangely relaxing and familiar to me, like putting on my favorite pair of warm socks just as the seasons begin to change. I came prepared for things not to be exactly the same as either of the years before, but I was pleasantly surprised to find many things, and people, just as real as I’d imagined them. I was also given the gift of seeing how my attitude toward this work I’d been doing had changed over the years. That first year I was so happy Hutchmoot was happening that I was happy to do whatever anyone asked me, so long as I got to be there. The second year I was so absorbed with my own issues that I missed out on the opportunity to serve others with gladness. The third year everything that happened to me, from being recognized to working behind the scenes, began to feel like gifts again. The Jedi returned home, where she emptied garbage bags and got to know Phil Vischer; and both those things opened up like presents, with equally shiny red bows. And here we are in 2013, two weeks after HM #4 and I know what you’re all thinking: Did Pete and Andrew pull a George Lucas and go back in time to the real beginning of the story? Did it suck as much as The Phantom Menace? The short answer to that is no, and the long one is that every analogy breaks down when you carry it too far, and the truth is that it took me three years to come up with this one, so I have no idea what to make of the rest of this story . . . yet. In the last year, I’ve thought several times about writing all this down and posting it, but I just kept putting it off for some reason. I kept thinking that I needed to have a Star Wars marathon and go over all my session notes in order to get everything just right. I’m sure even now that some of who you know way more about this mythology than me are just dying to get to the end of this post so you can leave me a comment about something I’ve gotten wrong. And that’s fair; I’m no more an expert on that galaxy than the one I actually live in. When I first heard about the Saturday night surprise planned for this year, it was not lost on me that this particular analogy had come to me before I ever knew there was such a thing as a book combining Shakespeare and Star Wars, or that a group of people I loved and belonged to would soon celebrate it as one of the best combinations since Rick Moranis and a big black helmet. Just like I didn’t know ten years ago that reading the Chronicles of Narnia for the first time as an adult would introduce me to a Jesus that I hadn’t grown up with—or rather I had, but had forgotten about for quite a long time. But guess who did? That’s right, the same Lord who brought those pipe-smoking guys together in Great Britain decades ago and made sure their stories stayed around long enough to inspire some brothers from Florida to launch a website unique enough to attract all these rabbits. So come along Flopsy and Hazel, Peter Cottontail and Edward Tulane, Thumper and even Harvey. There’s room for you whether you’re a Max or a Ruby, whether your fur is gray, brown, white, or black; whether you have spots on your nose or even if you’re missing a toe or can’t sing on key. You don’t have to live in Nashville, smoke a pipe, or wear an artistic tattoo to be part of this moot; and the Keeper of our Hutch is kind, gracious and good. He knows just how to take care of you best, and he’s wise enough to show you all the places you need to see. May we walk with him through the galaxies, even those from a long time ago, and far far away…

For the last six or seven months, amid a lot of personal turmoil (which you can—and should—read about here), Russ Ramsey has been working on the audiobook of his most excellent advent narrative, Behold the Lamb of God. The book is written in 25 chapters such that you and your family can read read one chapter a day beginning on December 1st and culminate the narrative on Christmas Day. The book was always meant to be read aloud. It’s constructed in short digestible chapters (about 8 minutes each) and written to be shared by families and friends gathered together. Now, with the new audiobook, Russ has made that experience even easier. The audiobook officially releases on November 5th (next Tuesday). It’ll be available here in the Rabbit Room store as well as at other digital audiobook outlets (for those who wish to support Russ, the best place to shop is the Rabbit Room store). If you’re unfamiliar with Russ’s book, here’s a sample from the new audiobook in which Andrew Peterson reads from the foreword (which he wrote) and tells the story of not only where the book came from, but of why it matters.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Foreword.mp3 Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative is available in hardcover from the Rabbit Room store. The audiobook will be released on November 5th.

Moby Dick is one of those books that everyone knows about but very few people have actually read—though, for some reason, people feel that they ought to have read it. I wish I could release you, dear reader, from the belief that you ought to read any novel. Read novels because you enjoy them. And if you want to read a book just to be able to say you’ve read it—well, that’s a sophomore’s pleasure at best, and too small a return on the investment required to read a book like Moby Dick. If you can remember one key truth, you can enjoy this book. Here it is: Moby Dick is a book about whaling. If you can accept this fact, your chances of being one of the people who finish and actually enjoy reading Moby Dick improve dramatically. People sometimes assume that Moby Dick is really about something else—obsession or predestination or something—and only pretends to be about whaling. As if Melville started with some abstract ideas he wanted to talk about and, casting about for a way to talk about them, landed on whaling. The reader’s job in that case is to decode the whaling language to get to the abstractions. The pleasures of Moby Dick are more akin to the pleasures of a police procedural like CSI or NYPD Blue. A better comparison, really, would be the Horatio Hornblower books or Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. In each case, the audience is brought into an unfamiliar world and told (in great detail) how things work there. And the story hinges on technicalities: tides, winds, DNA, rules of evidence. I love books and movies that explain how things are done. (“So that’s how you steal a car. . . So that’s how lye soap is made. . .”) That’s what I enjoyed about Moby Dick. When you’ve read that book, you know a lot of what there is to know about every aspect of the whaling business—from the uses of whale oil to the recruitment of whalers to crew politics to the exotic ports to the habits of every species of whale. The piled-on detail seems oppressive to many readers; it truly is hard to handle. But the story begins to do its work on you when you stop trying to handle it. Moby Dick is not a book to be mastered. It’s a book to burrow into, to accept on its own terms. If you stay with it, its complexities begin to feel like the complexities of the real world. Melville unpacks the subject of whaling so thoroughly that transcendence—the transcendence that inheres in all human endeavor and in the natural world—has nowhere to hide. Which is to say, we get to the abstractions—destiny, obsession, sublimity [fill in your own abstractions here]—but not before we’ve bumped along through the concrete for many miles. That’s what fiction is good for. It reminds us that there’s something big lurking just below the physical facts of the world we live in, ready at any moment to jump out and get us.

“What is the Molehill?” People ask me the question all the time. I usually tell them it’s the Rabbit Room’s literary journal, and then I find myself wanting to apologize for calling it something as highfalutin as “literary.” But at the very least it’s a bound collection of writing that aspires to literature. So maybe the question I really want to answer is this: “Why is the Molehill?” Why this when the literary world is already filled with more fine journals than most of us have time to read? Good question. Early this year I sent an email to the Rabbit Room contributors inviting them to submit work for this second volume. Over the following months, their stories, poems, essays, and illustrations began trickling into my inbox. I’d read through each one, I’d talk it over with the writer and we’d decide whether it was the right piece, and then we’d begin editorial work—which is as much like a WWF match as anything you are likely to encounter in an email. There were a few pieces that didn’t make the cut, and I was sad about each one of those, but what I found in the process was that two things were happening. First, our small community was being drawn closer together. The Rabbit Room office stands at a sort of Nashville lunchtime nexus where, on any given day, just about anyone could walk through the door to say hello. Often Russ Ramsey would stop in to chew the fat, or Jonathan Rogers would camp out and grade papers, or Eric Peters would park himself in a corner to write songs. And more often than not, those unannounced drop-ins would lead to conversations between friends about a Molehill piece, or a new album, or a new book. But the conversations ran through deeper territories as well, wastelands of personal struggle, sin, and heartache. Little by little, the tiny connections made at that noonday crossroads produced real fruit, namely accountability and encouragement, both in creativity and in day-to-day life. It’s hard to create in a vacuum. So when a friend asks about your work, that vacuum is filled for a time and hopefully the creative act gets a little easier. That’s one of the things I’ve appreciated about working on this volume. It hasn’t been made in a vacuum. It’s been assembled in the life-giving air of a community of writers and artists who know one another, trust one another, and are willing to give their time not only to The Molehill, but to their fellow writers. Second, we were sharpening each other. If I were to submit an essay to a contest or a magazine (or another literary journal), I’d do my best to write it well, and then I’d send it off to be judged by a nameless committee that would either accept or reject it for reasons I’d most likely never know. The Molehill contributors, however, know me (the editor) and they know one another, and that changes the game. There’s a bit of amiable rivalry. Some feel they want to up their game to match Jonathan Rogers’ “The Flintknapper” or Andrew Peterson’s poetry. Others are anxious to experiment in new methods and media. There’s a feeling that we’re all in this together and no one wants to be left behind. There’s a sense of fun, of play, of creating for the sake of creation. And as a result, I think we write a little better, we edit a little longer, and we dig a little deeper into the creative mine in search of the rare gem worth the work of polishing. Those are good, healthy things for a writer when practiced in the midst of a gracious community. I’m proud of each of the writers involved, proud of their work, and proud to call them my friends. In addition to a lot of familiar names from last year (including Walter Wangerin, Jr.), we’ve invited a few new folks along for the fun—gifted writers like Jeffrey Overstreet and Rebecca Reynolds as well as illustrators Jonny Jimison and Zach Franzen. The works of Volume 2 range from a cartoon about pride and stubbornness, to poems that—like Jacob—wrestle with God, to the strange shores of a Georgia swamp where an alligator and an “angel” contend for the soul of a drunkard. There’s no overarching theme, but for the perceptive reader, trends will certainly emerge, trends such as familial remembrance, the tension of creativity, and the extravagance of grace; they are by turns universal and personal, painful and joyful, abstract and plain as the day. Through the shared work of editing and revision, all of the pieces in this collection have been changed, some of them drastically. And that’s what community is all about. Change. We change one another, sharpen one another, hopefully for the better, and sometimes drastically. We learn to trust one another, to see with clearer eyes, to speak with wiser tongues, to write with deeper insight. Within community we become better versions of ourselves, and that goes for craft as well as for character. The Molehill is not a collection of works solicited from disparate literary sources. The Molehill is a gathering of the works of a unique, living community, a community whose members are invested in the refining of one another. So why is the Molehill? Here’s my answer: It is because we need each other. It is because the writers who contribute to it lean on one another for encouragement, for accountability, and for friendship. And they also need you, dear reader, because the act of creation isn’t finished until the creation itself is given away. I don’t know, but I like to think that in some mysterious way only the Spirit can know, maybe you need them as well, and through these tenuous connections between us, we are all, by grace, a community in via to a better version of itself. E collibus montes. Amen.

I love that scene in The Three Amigos in which Dusty, Lucky, and Ned encounter the Singing Bush. They’re trying to find El Guapo, and, in classic fairy tale fashion, they get vague instructions: go to the Singing Bush and there summon the Invisible Swordsman. Here’s the scene: I love Dusty Bottoms’ (Chevy Chase’s) eye-rolling dismissiveness of the Invisible Swordsman. He stands in the presence of a Singing Bush, yet the idea of an Invisible Swordsman—well that’s just ridiculous. His skepticism, his off-hand treatment of things that are too much for him to understand, has disastrous results. But even if Dusty accidentally kills his own sense of wonder, the wondrous survives. This is a world of marvels that we live in. We grow accustomed somehow to the wonders that surround us—the pearls that come from oysters’ mouths, the spring that emerges from winter’s bare, the heart that turns from stone to flesh when grace and mercy elbow in. Yet the idea that new wonders await is something that we have to be convinced of every day. We scoff like Dusty and—praise be—are proven wrong in our scoffing again and again.

Every holiday season, many of us enjoy the old, old story of Christmas told through the songs of Andrew Peterson and friends. Behold the Lamb of God has become a holiday tradition in the last decade, and the Proprietor serves his audience well by inviting such a talented group of friends to carry the message alongside him. Each year brings a new face or two on the winter tour, and this year Ellie Holcomb is the newcomer. For those who aren’t acquainted with her work alongside husband Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors or her own solo releases (check out her new EP, With You Now), you’ll find that Ellie’s delicate vocals fit perfectly into the BTLOG mix. You’re on the Behold the Lamb of God tour this year for the first time, correct? Yes. I’m in a band with my husband and it’s called Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors, and every year for the past five or six years we’ve done a Christmas tour ourselves, and it has been awesome. But because of that, I have never been able to actually go to a Behold the Lamb of God show. We just always make sure we’re not doing our Christmas show in Nashville on the same days they’re doing Lamb of God. We usually have to make sure we go to a different city. Last year was the first chance I had to go. We had just had our little girl—she was maybe two weeks old— and because I’d had a baby, we weren’t doing our Christmas tour to the same degree. So we ended up being in town on the same night as the show, and I just laughed and wept through the whole thing. It was so wonderful. I was like, “This is the best thing ever!” We were at the Ryman, which is one of my favorite places to see a show. What I felt like happened in that Lamb of God show is that the Ryman, which is a concert hall, turned back into a church, and it was so beautiful. I was pretty hormonal, but I literally laughed and cried the whole time and enjoyed it so thoroughly that I want to go every year. I was like, “I have to go to this every year, Drew!” So to be asked to be part of it this year felt like one of the most surreal things that’s ever happened to me. Well it seems like such an ideal fit. It seems at once like no surprise and yet a pleasant surprise. Yeah, it felt that way to me a little bit too. Like, “Yes, these are my people!” I love all of them. I love all of their work. And holy goodness, I get to do this with them? Unbelievable. I am so thrilled. That’s a great way to say it. I’m curious about your sessions with Ben Shive. What was it like working with him and just being able to get back into the studio and make these songs? Well, first of all, I’ve always loved Ben’s music. And he and my dad actually co-produced the record, so when my dad and I were dreaming up who we would want to partner with, we figured we should get someone outside the family. Ben was our big dream kind of guy. He is able to create a sonic landscape unlike a lot of people, and especially, unlike a lot of producers I know, he’s a musician and a writer and an artist himself. To have him as a part of the team making these songs was our dream. The fact that he said ‘yes’ was a joy. It was an unbelievable experience. I will say this, the first time I went to the Bee Hive, that little building behind Baja, I wasn’t even sure I was in the right place. And to walk in there and see The Rabbit Room in that back corner, I literally felt like I had discovered a mythical place that had come into reality. I’ve followed them on Twitter and read articles they’ve put out and love what The Rabbit Room stands for, collectively, so to see that, I just said, “This is going to be so good.” I had just finished reading The Wingfeather Saga, which Andrew [Peterson] wrote, and so to have Andrew in there from time to time reading with a writing group or whatever, I just felt like there was a celebrity next door whom I was also friends with, so I couldn’t believe I was there. I was like, “How did I get here? This is like some mythical, wonderful, creative space, and I am so glad to be a part of it.” Did I hear that the book series influenced a song? One of the songs that I wrote is called “Marvelous Light,” and there was this one day that we were recording, and when we finished that song I walked out and Andrew’s sitting in the room having a sort of writer’s group and he said, “This sounds great. I’m loving what I’m hearing.” And I said, “Well, oddly enough, this song is based off one of your characters from The Wingfeather Saga.” And he was like, “What?!” [Ed. note: Spoiler alert!] It’s about Podo Helmer—whom I love—and he spends his whole life trying to hide his past from his family and everyone else because he’s ashamed of it. All of a sudden there’s a point that comes where his past is exposed in front of the very people he’s been hiding it from. The line that Andrew wrote after this happened, they’re on a ship and it says about Podo, “and he moved about his days with wonder and ease, because he found that his whole story had been told, and he was still loved.” I remember reading that and I had to stop because I was just weeping, and it is so much of my story. I literally told Andrew, “I imagined singing this song and dancing on a ship deck with Podo Helmer. That’s what I really want to be doing,” which is funny because he’s not real. It was so beautiful. It was like this creative community moment and Andrew was like, “Thanks a lot.” I just said, “I can’t believe I’m getting to record this with you next door.” And so then to be invited to be a part of this tour, it just feels all the more sweet, special and amazing to me, because I feel like in a lot of different ways, the artists who are on the Lamb of God tour have inspired and blessed me, and I know they do that for a lot of other people. So to get to be a part of that community is pretty humbling and it’s a huge honor. #BTLOG #EllieHolcomb #AndrewPeterson #WingfeatherSaga #BeholdTheLambofGod

There was a dead beetle on the bathroom floor the night I got home from Hutchmoot. I thought it was dead, anyway, until I turned on the light. The sudden illumination set off whatever reactions or thoughts would normally send a shiny-backed bug skittering off into darkness. But this bug was going nowhere. It was stuck on its back, flailing in vain for a foothold. It gave up quickly enough – so quickly that I guessed it had been stuck there a long while, exhausting itself with kicking against air. All I could think was, If N.D. Wilson were here, I bet he could tell me the exact manner in which such bugs are hatched, and the likelihood of this particular bug ever coming into existence, and the chances of its story ever bringing it to my bathroom, and the wonder of it ever being my bathroom to begin with, augmented by the miracle of my own existence. But N.D. Wilson wasn’t there, and I was left to try to do justice to the beetle’s meaning and being on my own. Having thus considered the bug for a moment, I couldn’t bring myself to kill it. That actually had less to do with my awe at its existence than with my general disinclination to feel and hear a crunchy death under my foot. I also couldn’t muster the compassion to set six little feet aright and watch them scurry into my bedroom. So I left it to die alone. Here I must ask you to forgive the weakness of my words. I in no way intend to suggest a comparison between beetles and human beings. But the plight of the beetle did put a picture to a certain fear of mine, and it is this: that you were flailing, exposed, and exhausted while I basked in the light, and I did nothing. Hutchmoot is, I think for many of us, a haven. It’s a flood of God’s light and love over our injuries and fears. But sometimes light exposes and chafes what is too raw yet for binding up. It sends you into hiding. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like grace. Sometimes it just makes you mad. I’ve been there. I have watched the happy masses drinking in that light, glowing with it, sloshing it around in buckets of laughter. I have stood at a distance, wondering why it was so easy for them. Resenting them for it. Resenting myself. I’ve been desperate to feel what they felt. It hurts me to think that someone may have left Hutchmoot feeling that way. But if you did, I want you to know that you are not forgotten. I thought of you during the closing session, and I daresay I’m not the only one. I wondered if you sat with a clenched jaw, filling up with bitterness as inaccessible joy and gratitude spilled around you. Or maybe you had to look away when others told how their fears subsided, because yours never did. Such frustration – when you have tasted beauty but not been able to swallow it. And when the Facebook feed filled with the overflow, I wondered if you stuffed your pain and clicked “like” because being honest was too risky. Maybe you just shut it down altogether. Hutchmoot “worked” for everyone else. There must be something wrong with you. Don’t believe it. I want you to know that you really do belong here, and you are truly not alone. I want to ask you to forgive me, friend, for failing to see you. Forgive me if I was too squeamish to come near your crackling pain. Forgive me if you were groping for a foothold, and I switched off the light and walked away. Please don’t give up. When you are ready, come. Please come and let us love you.

Wow. Thank you. Thank you all so much for making Hutchmoot 2013 such an unforgettable weekend. I can hardly believe you let us keep doing this. I mean really, seriously, I can’t believe we get to have this much fun. I’m humbled, honored, and amazed. We’ve made it a tradition each year to collect everyone’s thoughts and blog posts in one spot and I hope you’ll help us continue that tradition by adding your voice to the comments here. What was the highlight of your weekend? (For me, it was either Chewbacca Peters (video anyone?), Arthur Alligood, or the standing ovation you gave to Leif.) If you’ve written something to try to describe or process your experience this weekend, please provide a link here. We’d like to read it. If you’ve posted those thoughts on Facebook please feel welcome to copy/paste them into a comment. We want to hear what you have to say and we want others to hear you as well. And if you’d like to help us thank the Graham family for their generosity this weekend, please send me an email at orders@rabbitroom.com.