Like a white gull, caught in the cross-purpose of an opposing breeze, I hang, suspended upon grief and this searing joy. Weightless, effortless, aloft on these mercies, I hover ‘twixt heaven and earth, love greater even than that which wrings my heart burgeoning beneath these wings. Such gift, this graceful breath, inkling of the ageless I was made for. Ah, then! unbound at last from Time’s enslavement, my heart will be home in Undying. A liberated thing, from which sorrow has chastened the last temporal taint, feathers sheathed gold in the sacred fire of that morning light. No tears shall spring but they are summoned by joy, when Love’s sweet satisfactions are complete. Not yet, but the holy warmth of this early sun, stealing with summer gladness over my upturned face, swears that such things will be—this and the shout of gulls and the salt tang of sea, hinting verities scarce imagined. And while I wait— here where yesterday rests most thankfully and tomorrow sleeps unthought of— my soul is awake, keeping time, so lucid it might be heaven itself. Here, where hope first found wings, hope rises anew, replumes, resurrects immortal. Wounded with love, exultant in sorrow (for sorrow, after all, only means one has loved) my cloistered heart rekindles to the day, inhabiting eternity in this present moment. One great pulse of wings, one mighty cry of desperate joy, and I am off, flying free.

I read Robert Farrar Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb last year and it sort of rocked my world (or maybe it stirred my pot?). Ever since, I’ve been fascinated by the notion of food and communal eating as a kind of sacrament. Reading the book even moved Jennifer and me to cook our own “supper of the Lamb” on Good Friday and invite close friends to share it with us. It was a special evening that I won’t forget. It’s funny, and amazing, how a book can open up an idea like that and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by ordinary things that seem a little more magical than they did before. Something as simple as dinner can be a holy thing. I came across a great article on this theme, gustatory grace (yes, I had to look it up), and had to share it with you folks. It’s from The Paris Review and it’s about food, film, literature, and grace. Read and enjoy. Here’s an excerpt: One way of understanding the sacraments, perhaps best articulated by liturgist Gordon Lathrop, is that simple things become central things. When Christians refer to the bath and the table, they refer not only to the specific sacraments of bathing and eating, but they point also to the sacramental character of every bath and every table. The setting apart of one table and one bath shows forth the splendor of all tables and all baths. That setting apart is the calling of Christians but also the vocation of the writer. The attentiveness of the writer is shown in how that writer lifts to the level of extraordinary the most ordinary of people, places, and things. Click here to read the entire article.

I can’t remember if we’ve ever posted this here before, but I was just reminded of it and had to share. Andy’s got a new record called Beyond the Frame coming out in about a month. This song isn’t on it (it’s on his last record, The Law of Gravity) but “Skinny Jeans” is. You’re going to love it.

Chris Slaten is a name that might sound familiar. He’s been lurking in the corners of the Rabbit Room for almost as long as I can remember, and for the past several years, Ben Shive has been working with him, producing his new recording project. When I finally got a copy of his CD in the mail, I anxiously put it in and listened while driving home in my wife’s car. I loved it immediately. It sounded like a sweet mix of Paul Simon and Josh Ritter. When I got home, I left it in the car on purpose so it would ambush Jennifer the next time she went for a spin. When she came home later, she got out of the car demanding to know the name of the gorgeous CD and who it was. She too had fallen head over heels for it. Now it’s your turn. Chris has released the record under the pseudonym “Son of Laughter” and you can read more on the story behind the name at his website. The title of the record is The Mantis and the Moon. It’s available now in the Rabbit Room store for just $5 and it may the best CD to ever feature an insect so prominently. I think you’ll love it as much as I do. Here’s the title track. Enjoy. “The Mantis and the Moon” by Son of Laughterhttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Mantis.mp3 Chris is currently booking a series of house shows. If you’re interested in hosting one, please contact him at sonoflaughtermusic (at) gmail (dot) com.

[Editor’s Note: I met Matt McCullough a few years ago when I joined a tiny group that meets each week to read “books we should have read but haven’t.” Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of reading through a lot of great books with Matt and he’s become a good friend. One of the books I’m most proud to have introduced him to is Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow. Matt’s a pastor at Trinity Church here in Nashville and he’s also a fine writer. I commend to you the following post and urge you to pick up a copy of Jayber Crow if you’ve never read it.] Once each quarter I teach a new members class for people interested in joining our church. It’s become one of my favorite responsibilities as a pastor. I’m a believer in church membership, no question. But I’ll be honest: every time I teach the class I cringe a bit along with my audience at some of the things we discuss. Concepts like authority, exclusivity, and discipline just don’t sound right on a pre-reflective, aesthetic level. They evoke a yuck factor ingrained in us by the often unnoticed influence of our Western culture—literature, film, music, pop psychology—and its celebration of the unfettered individual. (Chapter 1 of Jonathan Leeman’s The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love is helpful for tracing out examples of this influence.) I know that some of these ideas have always been distasteful to fallen humans. Self-denial is nauseating to the self-centered. That said, I don’t think we’re guilty of ear-tickling if we look for counterbalancing images, images that make sensible the beauty that’s in a community defined by the goals of membership. And to that end I’ve really come to appreciate the world created in the novels of Wendell Berry. Retraining Our Tastes Berry is not the sort of author to whom you turn for help crafting your church’s statement of faith. His works aren’t the right genre, and he isn’t the right author. But novels are especially well-suited for retraining our aesthetic tastes, for putting flesh on ideas that otherwise may remain sterile and abstract. Set in an isolated Kentucky farming community called Port William, Berry’s works portray the beauty of a bounded life, a death to the options of Elsewhere, the embrace of a concrete place and its people. It’s no accident that Jayber Crow, my favorite of Berry’s novels, is subtitled The Membership of Port William. Like all common graces, a community fostered by the willing limitation of one’s horizons can turn idolatrous, breeding an insularity Alan Jacobs has recently described as unchristian. And it’s also true that there is a darker side to small town life. Those familiar with the works of William Faulkner will find Port William to be an ideal world by contrast. And yet Berry’s novels are especially useful for illustrating the liberating submission that’s always involved with membership. In Jayber Crow, Berry’s characters show what it is to belong to a community, by which I mean more than the welcome and affirmation typically communicated by the word today. To belong to a community is to be at its disposal, to have given over all you have to be used for whatever your community needs. It is to be implicated substantively, not just sympathetically, in the ups and downs of a place and its people. It is a submission of yourself—your identity, your interests, your ambitions—to the needs of those to whom you’re bound. The book’s heroes reject the notion that you make your own identity rather than receive it. They know and embrace who they are through their connection to things larger than themselves: their community, the land, the march of history, the mysterious purposes of God. They find joy, peace, and freedom in accepting their subsidiary status. One of the barriers to this sort of belonging, of course, is the selfish ambition that dwells deep in all of us. Rather than submitting ourselves to community, ambition drives us to subordinate all things to our personal gratification or our relentless effort to build a name for ourselves. Berry’s villains in Jayber Crow depict this impulse vividly. They’re not the sort of villains who steal, kill, and destroy. They’re characters like Cecilia Overhold, a woman who marries into Port William from the upper crust of the town next door and can never forgive “the failure of the entire population of Port William to live up to [her] expectations” (209). She’s described as a woman who “thought that whatever she already had was no good, by virtue of the fact that she already had it” (209); she lives as if “there is always a better place for a person to live, better work to do, a better spouse to wed, better friends to have” (210). In the midst of a vibrant, gracious, and happy community she is discontented, angry, and lonely. Troy Chatham is perhaps even more to the point. His character emerges in detail as a young farmer who rejects the old ways, never imagining that “the reference point or measure of what he did or said might not be himself,” never belonging to the place but convinced the farm exists “to serve and enlarge him” (182). Throughout the story, Chatham leverages the present for the future in his all-consuming desire to “be somebody,” using and abusing all the resources he could claim in service to his exalted self-image. He is a man who utterly fails to recognize his limits or his dependence on what is outside of and bigger than himself. Jayber Crow is a nostalgic book, and—for all its beauty—a sad one. The world it describes is for the most part a lost world. It was held together by traditions no longer valued and an isolation no longer possible. Which is to say much of its staying power rested on personal preference for its traditions and to some extent an ignorance of alternatives. Pale Reflection Bound in time, Berry’s world offers but a pale reflection of the local church ideal, a community where members’ submission to each other is rooted in the message of the gospel and the power of God’s Spirit. Against his redeemed community, Jesus has promised us, even the gates of hell are no threat. But Berry’s stories bring to life truths at the heart of the community we’re aiming for when we emphasize church membership. A thriving, covenant-shaped local church requires precisely the sort of self-abnegation Berry celebrates and is opposed by the same self-exaltation he portrays in all its ugliness. Too often we try on new churches like we try on new clothes and for much the same reason. We’re looking for style and fit, for what meets our needs and makes the appropriate statement about who we are. We put our churches in service of our desire to be somebody, and our commitment doesn’t outlast the better options of Elsewhere. But this posture—beside its offense to the cross—leads to self-absorption, restlessness, and isolation. By contrast, there is freedom in coming off the market. There is sweet rest in belonging to one people, for better or worse, and there is the opportunity for displaying costly, Christlike love. We’re called to die to our narrow interests and to what we might hope to enjoy or become on our own. But we’re called to a truer life in our identification with Christ and his body on earth. On the terms of 1 Corinthians 12, we must embrace our status as a mere hand, ear, or foot, helpless apart from the other members and happy so long as Christ is exalted and the body is thriving. This is boundedness, for sure, but it’s liberating, and it’s beautiful. [This article was originally printed at 9Marks. Jayber Crow is available in the Rabbit Room store.]

If you’re a writer, count yourself fortunate that Mark Twain is no longer around to read your book and write about it (I’m looking at you Stephanie Meyer). James Fenimore Cooper (author of The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, and others) wasn’t so lucky. In a famous essay titled “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” Twain skewers Cooper (and his work) without mercy, and while he’s harsh (and hilarious) there’s plenty of wisdom for any writer to take note of in his list of charges. What follows is the first part of the essay in which Twain lists each offense. Do yourself a favor, though, and read the rest of the essay as well. You can find it here in its complete form. Excerpted from “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” by Mark Twain Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in ‘Deerslayer,’ and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record. There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction—some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require: 1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air. 2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop. 3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale. 4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale. 5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it. 6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo’s case will amply prove. 7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale. 8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale. 9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale. 10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together. 11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated. In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall: 12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. 14. Eschew surplusage. 15. Not omit necessary details. 16. Avoid slovenliness of form. 17. Use good grammar. 18. Employ a simple and straightforward style. Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale. Read the rest of Twain’s criticism.

It is what it is? I hurt my back again. It makes me really weak and ineffectual in many tasks. It got me thinking about my moral weakness. My injured back is a good chance to recognize the fact of back injuries, to acknowledge my weakness, finitude, and need. It’s not an occasion to begin to make peace with pain in such a way that I embrace and advocate for back injuries. That would be perverse, against human flourishing. My moral brokenness is a reality to mourn and reconcile in God’s merciful solution and (coming) resolution. It is not an aspiration, or an identity feature to be embraced. A crooked line is seen as such by the existence of a straight one. A bad map doesn’t mean there are no destinations. We are going somewhere. And, while “God draws straight lines with crooked sticks,” he is remaking us into the image of his son. A holy poem. We are bent and broken, but remade to be whole in God. Our weaknesses in every way are a call to imagine the wholeness we are being recreated for. In our weakness, let’s keep our eyes on the horizon, turning bent backs to the darkness. There we’ll see the sun rising on a New World and will all stand tall in that light.

Last summer, I had the great privilege of interviewing one of my heroines, Andi Ashworth, upon the occasion of the re-release of her book, Real Love for Real Life by the Rabbit Room Press. You can find the interview here, and I really urge you not only to avail yourself of the gentle wisdom of her replies to my questions, but to purchase and read and share her book as well. (And while you’re at it, check out Janna Barber’s heartfelt review.) Andi has a perspective on caring as a lifestyle that is truly revolutionary. She brings the most practical expressions of love—things that might otherwise be considered mundane or insignificant—out into the light and shows the opportunity they hold to communicate the love of God to the people in our lives. Her words were such a gentle challenge—at once a cup of cold water and a bracing tonic. I’ve said this elsewhere, but the offering of this book to a weary and care-starved world is a gift of care in itself. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Reading this book and conducting this interview have made me think deeply about the application of these things in my own life. I’ve been affirmed down to a soul level in things I’ve intuitively felt, but have received very little cultural validation in. And I’ve been challenged to remember the preciousness of the lives that so beautifully intersect with mine, and to keep thinking about how I can love them in creative, concrete ways. But I have also been reminded, in a very poignant way, of the manner in which I’ve been on the receiving end of all this practical love. I am quite honestly overwhelmed at the ways the people in my life have communicated God’s love to me. They have been the hands and feet of Christ in the moments of my greatest need. But their gifts have not only shone out in the darkness; they have crowned the happiest times, as well, the most radiant example of which was my wedding day. Philip and I will be celebrating our anniversary next week, and with it always comes the yearly remembrance of the astonishing ways that our people loved us during that time. Indeed, their gifts reached back well into the earliest days of our engagement. I think I’d had Philip’s ring on my finger for scarcely a week when we decided that we wanted to hold our reception at our soon-to-be home, the beloved old farmhouse which he had occupied up until then with a handful of roommates. To be sure, the roommates were scattering: one was going into the reserves and one had seen the handwriting on the wall and began looking at houses almost as soon as Philip and I started dating. But they were leaving eight years of bachelor living in their wake. The house was fine and sturdy, and had been generally well-cared for, but it was going to take an enormous effort to make it livable to my standards (as in not smelling like dirty socks and paring the collection of sofas and cast-off recliners down to an absolute minimum), much less prepare it for a wedding. The place needed a complete overhaul, from the tip of her highest gable to her boxwood-skirted porch. And we had less than five months in which to do it. When the idea initially seized us, it seemed the most natural, the most beautiful thing in the world: to host all our friends on the first day of our life together in what was to be our home. It was like something out of a book, something our great-great grandparents might have done. As soon as we started assessing the situation, however, and making lists, I was completely overwhelmed—to the point that I started second-guessing our dreams. There just didn’t seem any possible way that we could pull it off. And we couldn’t have. That’s where our people came in. As soon as Philip’s parents heard of our hopes, they literally rolled up their sleeves and got to work. I think Philip’s dad almost lived here with him over those months, quietly going about the doing of things I wasn’t even experienced enough to have thought of. Philip’s mother threw her gifts into the reclaiming of a beautiful, well-established yard that had seen over a decade of neglect. And I can’t tell how many times I would come here after a long day, ready for a long night of work on some project or another, to find the kitchen—my one-day kitchen—absolutely redolent with the aroma of a home-cooked meal and my soon-to-be mother-in-law beaming at me as she drew a pot roast out of the oven. There is simply no telling how those happy little suppers around a formica-topped table fed my soul during that time, and gave me energy to tackle my to-do list with a strengthened heart. My parents joined the effort, as well. There was hardly a Saturday that this old place was not abuzz with willing workers; the ring of hammers and power tools were the rule of the day. And my mother was incredible: in between managing my social schedule—which had suddenly erupted into a happy mêlée of parties and showers and dress fittings—and assuring herself that my trousseau met the requirements of a proper Southern girl, and basically trying to keep up with the visions of a very starry-eyed, albeit opinionated bride, she was at the house, pulling honeysuckle vines out of ancient crepe myrtles and weighing in on paint chips and helping me plant my flower garden. My Daddy took about 87 sofas to the Goodwill; my brother cut grass and pruned bushes and trimmed up all our liriope-lined paths so that they would be in full, green lushness for our wedding day. Among about a thousand-and-one other things, Philip designed and built a rose trellis in the side yard, through which our guests would pass (and we would enter our reception) and a friend gave us established rose bushes from his garden so that they would have time to clamber up the latticed sides. It was all so amazing that I really think I was unable to take it in at the time. I was overjoyed and deeply, deeply grateful. But it’s in retrospect that the lump rises in my throat and the wonder burns my eyes with tears. Friends helped us pull up carpet, helped us paint the rooms, helped us move furniture and hang pictures. In essence, they helped us make a home, which is one of the most beautiful things a person can do for another. It was like a long, drawn-out house-raising. And there, in the midst of it all, was my groom, working day and night to prepare a place, not just for our wedding, but for us. For me. Even in all that sweet tumult of work and waiting, the precious image incarnate in Philip’s labor was not lost on me. At my trousseau tea (and, yes, I am telling you, there are still some Southern girls who have trousseau teas!) just days before the wedding, a sweet friend asked what I had left do to. I think she was expecting a litany of final fittings and bridesmaids’ gifts and packing for my honeymoon. But when I told her I was planning on making curtains for the bathroom, she was incredulous. “No,” she said, with as firm a look as I believe her kind brown eyes were capable. “No, Lanier. You are a bride. This week that is all you need to be. I am making your curtains.” She would not leave until the fabric was safely in her hands, and as I passed off all those yards of white muslin, I felt like a physical weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was an act of pure love, and, as such, bore the fragrance of God’s love to me. She gave me the gift of hours in my bridal week, for which I was deeply grateful. There is hardly a morning I do not think of it, as I pull back those soft drapes on the eastern light of a new day. Philip and I are still incredulous about what happened here the day before the wedding. I had always cherished a dream that the people I loved would all have a hand in my Day of days, would each have their fingerprint, as it were, upon this most unforgettable moment of my life. But I had no idea it would be like this—folks descended on this old place from the four corners of the compass. I remember wandering around in a complete daze, marveling at all the activity, my ever-present wedding notebook hanging idly at my side. One extremely talented soul had been named artistic director of the affair, and he had taken all my Avonlea-ish visions and translated them into living reality. That day he presided over a small army of women on our back porch, up to their elbows in roses and shell-pink zinnias and hydrangeas they had brought from their own gardens. Some were arranging flowers for the reception tables; others were fashioning exquisite little nosegays of old-fashioned perennials for the wire cones to be hung on the ends of the pews at the church. I have a mental snapshot of one of my bridesmaids on the patio amid a sea of daylilies and Queen Anne’s lace which another friend had gathered from her pasture that morning, and just beyond her, a small army of teenagers throwing out fresh pine straw in all the beds around the house. I went inside and found my sister twining thyme and Russian sage into a curving letter ‘I’ to top our wedding cake, and saw one of her friends hanging over the stair railing, grasping a can of Brasso in one hand and an arm of our rather age-patinaed chandelier in the other. Midway through the day, my mother had a meal of fried chicken and vegetables brought in for everyone, with leftover cakes from my trousseau tea, and lots and lots of iced tea. And just about the time we were all indoors and lined up to make our plates—it started to rain. I couldn’t believe it! An outdoor wedding reception was the only thing we had accounted for—there was no Plan B. I stood at the den windows watching the downpour in disbelief. I knew there was much more to getting married than a perfect wedding day. But I had never so much as considered the fact that it might rain! The faithful crew at our house, however, was undeterred. Nothing daunted, they simply finished up their lunch and plunged into a new round of tasks, trudging around in the rain as if there was not a thing in the world to worry about. My sister and another friend soaked themselves weaving ivy garlands and hanging them on the front gate; many of the women were likewise drenched, festooning the reception tent with curtains of tulle and ribbons with rain running down their faces and arms. It rained again the next morning—June can be such a fickle girl in Georgia! I’m very much afraid that by that point I was too far gone with the joy of what the day meant to really care about the weather. (My mother knew she had lost me and my opinions the day before when she had innocently asked what I would like to put the dried lavender in, which would be distributed to our guests to throw as Philip and I left the reception. “Oh, I don’t care,” I said, with a wave of my hand. I think that was her first moment of real panic surrounding my wedding. From there on out, she knew she had to go on without me.) I remember sitting with my coffee on my wedding morning, looking out at the dripping day, asking my mother rather absently why it was raining. “I’ll be right back,” she said. I heard her bedroom door close, and in a few moments it opened again. “Your Daddy said it was going to be all right,” she told me with a brave smile. I little knew then how brave. Quite frankly, that was enough for me. I floated on through the morning in a bridal haze of utter preoccupation. My bridesmaids started arriving, tripping daintily up the front walk under umbrellas, and the beloved friend that had agreed to do my hair managed to set me down before a mirror and get to work. Another dear one, who also happened to be our wedding coordinator, stopped by on her way to the church and repacked my suitcase (which was a complete mess) and the florist dropped off my headpiece. The whole house was a happy beehive of feminine industry, and there I was, useless and cow-eyed in the midst of it all. My mother came in when I was dressed, just as my sister was lowering my diaphanous veil, and her radiant face did not bear the least trace of the anxieties she had known that day. It wasn’t until I returned from my honeymoon that I learned what went on at my house the morning of the wedding. A friend had procured some emergency cabana tents, and he and my dad and brother set them up in the rain. My mother had her work cut out convincing the cateress (a Charleston maven of the old school, who had literally come out of retirement to do my wedding) that moving the reception to another site was not an option. Seeking our ‘artistic director’ for moral support, she found him on a ladder by Philip’s trellis, calmly wiring wild rose canes and blossoms over the lattice. Looking down at her with rain pouring off the brim of his hat, he cheerfully concluded that there was nothing more to do but press on and pray hard. (He actually pressed on so hard that he missed the wedding. I remember catching a glimpse of him at the back of the church when we were having our pictures made, no less dapper for his late drenching, smiling with all of us over the joy of the breaking clouds outside and the summer sunshine that was pouring in through the tall windows.) Yes, it did clear up. The good Lord heard that host of prayers and was kind enough to part the clouds on our account. On the way to the reception, Philip and I saw a double rainbow spanning our way. It was like a kiss from God. And when we pulled up before the house—our house—my mother-in-law greeted us on the front walk with the dearest words in the world: “Welcome home!” So many memories from that day seem to swirl in a cloud of tulle and sweet peas and blushing organza. It was everything I had ever dreamed it would be—from the children in smocked dresses chasing each other under the trees, to the lemonade on the front porch, to the hot tea served from a dear one’s family heirloom of a silver service—because people who loved me had made it so. And in the goodness of God we danced on the lawn in the summer sunshine that day and sealed the vision we shared for the kind of home we wanted to establish: one that would literally overflow with the very love that had launched us into our life together. That love laid a hallowing touch on the smallest details of our wedding, and demonstrated to us in an unforgettable way that, indeed, Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his . . . through the features of men’s faces.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the artistic process as much as by an artist’s completed work. Whether it’s interviewing a musician about her craft or reading an essay about the writing life, I’m consistently drawn into the thought process, the equipment used, the joys and frustrations. When I recently came across a Dave Eggers column (which is not recent) about his own writing process, I knew I was in for something worthwhile. I first read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius back in 2000. His memoir is tragic, manic, hilarious, disconcerting, and emotional. It’s also my favorite book. I’ll never forget the impact of that first time through an Eggers novel, and it’s a journey I’ve taken several times since. A Heartbreaking Work, winner of the Pulitzer for non-fiction in 2000, was the first of several celebrated releases by Eggers. What is the What won the Prix Médicis, Zeitoun won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and his latest, A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the National Book Award. He wrote the screenplays for Away We Go and Where the Wild Things Are, and he also founded McSweeney’s, which if you don’t know, is a source for wonderful literary things of all shades. I write all of this not only because I greatly admire Eggers, but because he’s a remarkable writer. This is important because to read his take on “the writing life” is to get a glimpse into something rather unremarkable. Despite the awards on the bio, a peek behind the curtain reveals an ordinary man with an ordinary routine sitting at an ordinary work space dealing with ordinary struggles. In short, Dave Eggers is human. Here’s the article. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And here is where I spend seven or eight hours at a stretch. Seven or eight hours each time I try to write. Most of that time is spent stalling, which means that for every seven or eight hours I spend pretending to write—sitting in the writing position, looking at a screen—I get, on average, one hour of actual work done. It’s a terrible, unconscionable ratio. Click here to read the rest of Eggers’s piece. #DaveEggers

I had an email from a friend this morning who saw something in my life and felt called to point it out. It was about how Gina and I parent our kids. I am not always good at receiving this kind of feedback. It’s embarrassing. It makes me feel weird to think people are watching, noticing things. This is so often the avenue of judgement and accusation. Many people don’t understand that the name “Devil,” means “Accuser.” It comes (literally) from the idea of throwing stones. On the other hand, both God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are described as our Advocates. It is a Trinitarian task to advocate on behalf of those who are in Christ. Loving people includes loving confrontation. If I hate my children, I fail to confront them with their rebellion and sin. This is the case even—no, particularly—when what they are doing comes naturally. That’s what sin is and Christians are called to die to sin in order to live. Failing to correct, refusing to say the same thing God says about our sin, is a way of hating our children, and hating each other. That being said, are the fellow Christians speaking into your life more like Accusers or Advocates? An Advocate will call you to come clean and do right, but keeps coming back to making an argument on your behalf. An Accuser can’t see past your sin. An Advocate can see who you’re becoming. An Accuser can see the worst of what you’ve done. An Advocate sees the long story of your life. An Accuser says, “I know you’re guilty.” An Advocate says, “I’m on your side.” That email I mentioned was from an Advocate. He couldn’t wait to share with me things he saw in our home life that were beautiful to him. He was eager to heap praise and to point out what God was doing. I needed that. Because, as I wrote to him: “It’s easy enough to believe only the mess of imperfection that we can see of our lives, and be blind to the good things God is doing. Thanks for seeing that and for taking the time and energy to point it out.” I don’t want to condone and celebrate sin. I want to avoid hitching a ride on the bandwagon where rebellion and death are celebrated. But I want to be an advocate for my brothers and sisters in Christ. I want to see more than sin and the sinner. I want eyes to see also the emerging (and already-positioned) saint. I want to be an ally, one who isn’t surprised at seeing sin in others, but one who is quick to extend grace. My categories of Advocate and Accuser are not air-tight by any means, but here’s my question: Would you more easily be described as an Accuser, or an Advocate? I’m not entirely comfortable with how long it takes me to think about how to answer that. So, onward…toward grace. And a beautiful place to start is with our children. —–   —–   —– This post originally appeared at Story Warren.

I knew this would happen. We flew from Nashville to Stockholm on Tuesday, arrived in a fog of half-sleep, ate some pizza for comfort more than hunger, and collapsed as though we might sleep for days. But then this. This tossing and turning in Sweden’s summer midnight, which is never totally dark, this weary awakeness in which I’m so tired I can’t sleep, where I’m obsessively and compulsively working out what time it is at home, working out how many Swedish crowns equals a dollar so I’ll know how much I really paid for that pizza, a head game made all the more irritating because of my ineptitude at math. I’m not cranky, truly. Just jet-lagged. I couldn’t be more thankful to be here, safe and sound, with my sweet wife and three sweet kids in this little borrowed Stockholm flat, all four of them sleeping much better than I can right now. And so I give up on rest this first night of our adventure, and my thoughts turn to what led me here. There’s a long version and a short version, but I’m going to give you the ultra-short version: sometime late last year I realized that I was exhausted. There’s no better rest for me than being alone with Jamie and the kids, so we kicked around the idea of making this Sweden tour a family affair and trying to book enough concerts to pay for all of our plane tickets this time (this is my seventh tour over here).  We realized furthermore that Aedan will be 15 this year, which means we’re running out of time for a trip like this. Well, one thing led to another, and we decided that if we’re crossing the dadburn Atlantic we may as well make it count, which led us to booking concerts in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In addition to the shows (fifteen of them, I think), I’m trying to finish The Warden and the Wolf King while I’m here, and I’m really hoping that walking these ancient lands will season the story in the best way. “So much for rest,” I hear you thinking. But just having the family close by will be for me like riding the eye of the hurricane. The trip only began yesterday, but I’ve already learned so much about life and the Lord and how faith might work. See, I’ve wanted to play in the U.K. for more than a decade, but it’s never worked out. I’ve wanted to bring my family to Sweden since my first visit ten years ago, but it’s never worked out. This year, though, we felt such urgency about the trip that we decided not to wait for the concerts to show up. Rather, we looked at the calendar, chose a window of time, then told as many people in the U.K. and Sweden: “We’re coming this summer and we’re looking for help.” Not, “We’d love to come, but we can’t unless we get X number of gigs.” Not, “Let’s wait and see how this pans out, and maybe it’ll work.” We just decided to make our plans as if it was a done deal. This isn’t a blog about how to book a tour in Europe, of course, because what worked in this case might not ever work again, for you or for me. But now that I’m sitting in the half-light of Stockholm at 4:56 a.m. listening to my family sleep, I think back to a meeting with my manager and booking agent in January in which we decided that we weren’t going to wait for this to happen. We were just going to do it. It felt like Indiana Jones and the leap of faith. I know some of you guys have always wanted to write a book. You’ve always wanted to ask that girl to marry you. You’ve always wanted to actually build a friendship with that neighbor, or start that ministry, or right that wrong, but things just never worked out. You’re waiting on the Lord, when maybe the Lord is waiting on you–he’s not waiting to bless you; he’s already done that and will continue to, regardless of your zeal. And he’s not waiting to “show up,” because he’s already there. I mean, what if he’s waiting for you to have a seismic shift in your understanding of what it means to be his child, what it means to  trust him, to finally realize that the sky’s the limit–like the father of the prodigal son saying to the self-righteous one: “All that I have is already yours.” Finally, I want to ask you to pray for us. In sixteen years of touring I’ve never left home for two solid months. Nashville never seemed so beautiful than the day we left, and I had to resist the urge to hug random strangers on the street. Leaving for this long is an awfully romantic notion, but in the end I’m really just a homebody who travels for a living. And if this is as crazy of a trip for me, imagine how crazy it must feel for Jamie and the kids! Crazy, indeed. So yes. Pray for us. Pray for the audiences, for safety, and most of all please pray that we would be ever mindful of the great love of God as we carry that love to everyone we meet. That’s what I’m thinking about here in Viking land today. Or tonight. Wait, what time is it in Nashville? Aw, forget it. (Skye’s face in this picture is hilarious, by the way.) If you live in Sweden or the UK and you want to know where we’ll be, click here. If you want to follow me on Instagram, where I may or may not post pictures from time to time, click here.

[In Story Warren‘s most recent and peaceable incursion here upon the hallowed shores of la Chambre de Lapin, Alyssa Ramsey taught us to sing. Here, she is showing us a magic trick. The trick of seeing magic. –S.D. “Sam” Smith] —–   —–   —– “Are there real fairies in the world?” I looked up from the mushrooms I was chopping to study my five-year-old daughter’s face. The cock of her head and squint of her eyes matched the skepticism in her voice. Not long ago, a Christian man who my daughter loves told her that fairies don’t exist. She’s been afraid to believe ever since. She was waiting for my answer. “I don’t know,” I said. It was the truth. *      *      * Our little family has been watching the BBC’s Planet Earth series. It is chock full of stunning photography, incredible facts, and fascinating creatures. We cannot take our eyes off the screen, except when the fascinating creatures start eating each other. At those times my daughter and I always become engrossed in some important task like picking lint off the couch cushions. One thing I’ve learned from Planet Earth is that I know next to nothing about the natural world. The more discoveries we make, the more deliciously mysterious and miraculous the world becomes. My favorite moments of the series are when the narrator says things like, “No one knows why,” or “We aren’t sure how.” I have nothing against good science that studies the world’s processes and phenomena. My father retired from a career in science and now teaches it to middle schoolers, so I grew up in a home that respected the natural world and encouraged learning about it. But I’m instantly skeptical of anyone who says, “We’ve got this completely figured out.” Or “We know everything there is to know about this.” Or, if you like, “Fairies don’t exist.” I think a more honest response to learning about the world around us is to say, “I know enough now to see that the world is more miraculous than I ever imagined. I wonder what else might be out there.” (The last thing I want to do is suggest that wonder has any meaning apart from its proper faith-direction. S.D. Smith wrote beautifully about the dangerous “mirage of Godless Delight.” I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already —  its truth underscores everything written here.) Holding onto that kind of wonder takes some effort. It takes humility. It helps to hang around children. Children have a gift for pressing us for the why until we come to the inevitable conclusion: “I don’t know. It just is. God just made it that way.” I think it’s good to be stumped. It’s a way to peek through the wardrobe doors, to open our minds to powers too terrible to understand, to remember how small we are. It’s a way to reawaken wonder. I also think it’s good to return the favor. Ask a child what light is made of. How is it made? Ask her why she craves it so. Ask a youngster how the 17-year cicadas know that seventeen years have passed. Did you know that the water in a typical cloud weighs more than a whole herd of elephants? So how do they hang in the sky? How can a spider spin silk so fine that it floats on the slightest breeze, and yet fiber for fiber is stronger than steel? Have you seen the waves and the sand glow at night with the light of tiny creatures? How do they make their light? At the moment of conception, how do those two cells know what to do? How do they know to multiply and cluster and form into complex organs and tissues? And 22 days later, how does the cell cluster that has decided to be a heart know that it’s time to start beating? Humans like to give names to these phenomena. Some we call instinct. Others are chemical, electromagnetic, or atmospheric events. But naming a thing, studying it, and even understanding something of how it works does not diminish the miracle of it. What makes it work the way it does? What and where and when is the source of its power? You know the answer. It’s the same answer the Lion gave to Lucy to explain how he was alive again after she had seen him die: Magic. Not magic of the dark, sorcerous, forbidden variety, but of the “Let there be light” variety. If I were from another world and walked through a wardrobe to find myself on Planet Earth, I would be convinced that I had discovered a magical place. I would marvel at the sparkling, frozen crystals falling from the sky, no two of which are the same. I would wonder why the sea reaches for the moon and what prompts a caterpillar to build a cocoon. I would let the world’s magic carry me away into wild imaginings, into dreams of what other delights and dangers such a place might hold. I would write a song, or a story, or a poem. But I was born here. I have learned the names that humans use to tame the world’s wondrous phenomena. If I’m not careful, I can quickly grow accustomed to the magic around me. Then I read about Narnia, and I long to step into such an enchanted place. I peek my head into wardrobes standing in dusty corners of antique shops, straining my ears for a distant horn blast. Or for the roar of the Lion. Admit it — you’ve done it, too. But in all our trudging along, wishing to be swept up into a wondrous world, have we ever stopped to think that maybe we’re already on the other side of the wardrobe doors? *      *      * The world is full of living things that feed on light without consuming it, that drink the dew, that adorn themselves with opulent colors and intoxicating scents, that brighten gardens and bewitch lovers, that cover the earth with golden sneezing powder, and that send out their wispy-winged children to float on gentle spring breezes. Are there real fairies in the world? I don’t know. But I’m not going to stop my girl from looking, because in her wide-eyed search for hidden wonders in the world, she’s sure to find some magic. Photograph by Doug Perrine, Alamy

“You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows this well.”  – Psalm 139:13-14 I watched the ceiling tiles pass overhead as the radiology nurse wheeled my gurney into the room where she would perform my echocardiogram. I remember thinking the dimly lit room felt familiar. This was my first echo and I knew I hadn’t been in this room before. But I had been in one like it. More than once, too. But when? And then I remembered—my babies. My wife and I have four beautiful children. During the doctor visits leading up to each of their births, she and I were taken into rooms just like this one—peaceful, spacious, warm, and clean. We’d take our places—she on the paper-covered bed, me in the chair beside her, both of us wide-eyed with nervous excitement waiting for the doctor to come in and show us something we could hardly believe was possible—a live video of our unborn child kicking away in my wife’s womb. The first time we went in for an ultrasound I remember being surprised that the equipment wasn’t larger, given the task it was built to perform. The sonogram machine stationed next to the bed didn’t look like much more than a low-profile computer cart with a few unfamiliar accessories neatly resting in their places. Surely a wonder like the one we were about to experience would require my wife to be squeezed into some sort of giant hi-tech tube. Or if not that, shouldn’t there at least be a luminous belly-shaped dome on a large mechanical arm controlled by a technician behind a wall of glass? This room had neither. There was just a computer, a display screen, a moon-shaped wand, and a squeeze bottle of warm lubricating gel. I’ll never forget one particular visit late in the pregnancy with our first child. The doctor pressed the jelly-covered magic wand against my wife’s side and we saw our baby’s face as plain as day. We saw two eyes, a button nose, puckered lips, and wisps of hair swirling in the amniotic fluid. Next the doctor showed us tiny little legs and arms, knees and elbows, fingers and toes. Then, with a bit of flourish, she showed us the evidence of our baby’s gender. This little stranger was my son. This was too much to absorb. A son. My son. What would he need from me? Everything. What could I give him? Not nearly enough. But there in that room, in that moment, a confidence arose in me that whatever this little boy needed I would find a way to get for him. I was going to have a son. Everything was happening so fast I wanted to stop time. But the doctor resumed her tour of our son’s still forming body and showed us something I can even now close my eyes and see. She showed us his heart. We all stopped talking for a sacred moment and watched it fluttering away there behind his little ribs. The chambers pumped in such a precise rhythm that it had to have been made and set in motion by a master clock-maker—one little heart beating in the womb just inches away from another beating in his mother’s chest, keeping him alive. What a wonder. *** Long ago Jesus said, “As the sower sleeps and rises night and day, his seed sprouts and grows and he doesn’t know how.” (Mk 4:26-27) I had no idea how my son’s heart knew to beat. But it did. It looked so meticulous yet so fragile. If it stopped, who could start it again? When did it start to begin with? Seeing my little boy’s chambers and valves keeping time to some mysterious cadence no ear has ever heard awakened a new kind of reverence in me for the Author of Life, and with God as my witness that reverence remains. *** I heard the door open behind me. Someone else was in the room with me now. The radiologist came around to the foot of my gurney before saying hello. She had a kind face and a motherly way about her. She asked for my name and birthday. These were the two questions every nurse, doctor, or staff person were required to ask to make sure they had the right patient. The correct answers, of course, were written on their charts. They were also on my armband. We both had cheat-sheets. I thought it was funny that these routine questions were two of the most profound, existential, and eternal questions one human being could put to another: “Who are you?  When did you come into this world?” But I knew she wasn’t asking for my hope and dreams here. She just needed a name and a date. I said, “I’m Russ Ramsey and today is my birthday.” “Really? Well, it is, isn’t it?” she said looking at her chart. “Happy birthday then. What brings you here on your birthday?” I’d been running a fever for three weeks. For the first ten days I assumed it was a virus. But after the standard seven-to-ten day lifespan of a virus came and went, the fever remained as strong as ever. A few days later I made an appointment with my doctor but couldn’t get in for another week. When my appointment eventually came, my doctor listened to my story with a look of concern. He told me no one should have a fever that long. When he checked my vital signs, he discovered that I had a heart murmur. He asked me if I knew about it. I did. Doctors found it during a routine physical when I was in High School. Back then they weren’t too concerned. I had a misshaped valve but my heart seemed to be working fine. Overall, I was a healthy seventeen-year-old boy. But that was twenty-two years ago. My doctor explained that it was a rather pronounced murmur and was concerned that one of my heart valves might be providing a place for a blood-born bacterial infection to grow. The human body is designed to be an inhospitable place for pathogens, but in those places where our physiology decided to break with the norm, as with, for example, a misshaped heart valve, bacteria can sometimes find a place to hang on and multiply. My doctor sent me over to the lab to have enough blood drawn to run some cultures to see if this was what was going on with me. Those cultures came back positive, meaning I did have bacteria in my blood. As soon as he saw the results, he called and told me he wanted me to go to the ER. I needed to be admitted to the hospital because an infection like this could only be treated with IV antibiotics. That was what brought me in to the hospital. What brought me in for the echocardiogram was another story. In the process of going through all the tests and physician consults, my doctors—a team which had quickly grown to include representatives from internal medicine, intensive care, infectious disease, cardiology, and, to my surprise, cardiac surgery—shifted their focus from the bacteria and fever (which they were now successfully treating with IV antibiotics) to that murmur everyone wanted to hear. My hospital was a teaching hospital—one of the best in the country. This meant I was in the hands of some of the best physicians around. It also meant I rarely if ever saw just one doctor at a time. Usually four or five of them would come in together—residents and attending physicians. They’d take turns listening to my heart—often two at a time—and almost all of them would say something like “Wow. That’s quite a murmur.” as they stepped aside to let another sortie of stethoscopes come in for a landing. On the third day of my hospital stay, a small team of cardiologists came in to see me and broke the news that there was a possibility I might need heart surgery. If that bacteria had attached itself to my heart valve, it might have done some damage. They wanted to have a better look. That was what brought me in for the echocardiogram. *** I am a pastor. I spend time tracing my way through the old, old story of God’s redemption—from the foundations of the world to where I and the people I minister to live today. I pray. I study Scripture and try, by God’s mercy and help, to communicate what’s there in such a way that it hides itself in the hearts of the hearers. I counsel people. And I administer the sacraments. A sacrament is an outward physical sign of an inward, spiritual reality. I can think of no better word to describe what happened there in that radiology lab than to say it was sacramental. *** The nurse covered the wand with the warm gel, like a priest preparing the elements. As soon as she touched it against my side the sonogram screen, which up until now had been blank, filled with indecipherable swirls and streaks of gray. Then, as though coming into a clearing, we saw what we had come to see—my heart beating in real time right there on the screen. Neither of us said anything. She made some notes and took a few measurements and I just watched in amazement as it pulsed away with clock-like precision. I could see the distinct chambers on the right side of my heart contract and relax. I watched the tricuspid valve open as my aortic and pulmonary valves shut. Then, as quickly as they shut they opened again as my tricuspid closed. This was what my heartbeat looked like. The valves worked in perfect union, each functioning in their intended role to draw blood from my lungs and send it through the rest of my body. I doubt I will ever forget the wonder of what I saw on that screen. The radiology nurse stayed on the right side of my heart for what felt like a few minutes measuring and taking notes before moving over to the left side. That’s when I saw what had brought me in to see her. I saw my mitral valve—the valve that lets the oxygenated blood into my left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber. Once the left ventricle is full, the mitral valve is supposed to close up tight to keep the blood from regurgitating back into the heart. That’s what is supposed to happen. When we saw my mitral valve, my nurse stopped taking notes and measurements, and we both just watched it in silence. My mitral valve looked nothing like the others I had just seen. Those looked like tiny little gates opening and closing to a metronome. But my mitral valve looked like two pieces of spaghetti flapping around with no apparent purpose or design. This wasn’t right. She knew it, and I knew it too. I said, “That’s my murmur, isn’t it?” She kindly rebuked me. “You know I’m not supposed to read this for you. That’s for your doctor.” The force of her response was an overreaction to what she was seeing and we both knew it. I told her, “I’m not asking you to read it for me. But you and I both know a murmur brought me here and all I’m asking you is if that’s it.” She eased up, “Yeah. That’s it.” “It’s sacramental,” I said as she went back to her measurements and notes. *** The physical reality there on that screen told me two things: there was a problem with my heart and there was nothing I could do to fix it. I thought about the spiritual parallels. If I left my heart alone, who could say what would come of me. But to fix it I needed help, someone who understood the heart, how mine worked, how it was meant to work, what specifically in mine was broken and what of it could be redeemed. I thought about how the Psalms say we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderfully, our bodies are filled with redundancies that keep us alive when parts of us are failing. After he had a chance to look over my echo, my cardiac surgeon told me I might as well not have a mitral valve for all the good mine was doing. My other chambers and valves were working four times harder than normal to make up for it and they were under constant pressure, stretching and squeezing to compensate. But they were getting the job done, and probably had been for years now, he said. Might for years to come too. Maybe. Fearfully, we’re also fragile. My particular blood-born bacteria latched on to that misshapen valve and chewed it up. One doctor, while talking to me about how active I should be until surgery said, “You need to understand that the heart you have now is not the same as the one you had before you got sick.” I said, half-joking so I could digest what he just said, “Wow. If this had happened a hundred years ago…” “You’d die. No question.” he said, finishing my sentence. *** But this is not a hundred years ago. This is today, and today I live a few miles away from one of the best hospitals in the world with a team of physicians and surgeons who have seen guys like me come through their operating rooms many times. They tell me that while it is major surgery for me, it is very routine for them in the sense that the surgery I need is one they perform often. Still, to think that I with my failing heart can fall as I did into the hands of someone who not only understands how to fix me, but then has the courage to dare to open up my chest and do it is a fearful and wonderful sacramental thought that points me to the unmerited grace of God and reminds me that this has been done for me once before.

A few years back, I taught woodworking to teenage boys. They’d come into my shop with big ideas about the table or the bookshelf they intended to make and they’d start cutting wood and hammering nails and glueing boards and as they went I’d see a growing sense of dissatisfaction in their faces. That crestfallen look was there because the final work wasn’t as pristine as the glimmering idea they’d walked in the door with. So I’d help them. We’d backtrack and talk about drawing workable plans. I’d introduce them to important tools like the tape-measure because “No. You can’t just guess.” I’d show them the importance of structural support and strong, solid joints. Later, rather than sooner, most boys would end up with a functional version of their original vision. But in the end, a table (or a bookshelf) is a lot more work than a teenage boy envisions. Without any doubt, though, there was always one part of the process that was the hardest to teach: Sanding. In woodworking, sanding is something that is almost impossible to do enough of. It’s also tedious. Trying to get a teenage boy to sit down and sand a board thoroughly is a trial. Heck, trying to sand thoroughly is hard even for me. It’s just not much fun. But a fine job of sanding will elevate an acceptable piece of work out of the swamp of the hobbyist and onto the higher ground of the artisan. In writing, we’ve got another word for sanding; it’s called revision. For the past month, I’ve been knee-deep in editorial work for The Molehill Vol. 2. I’ve read a lot of great essays, short stories, and poetry. I’ve also written a lot of notes and letters about what needs to be sanded down, refined, reinforced, and polished. Revising is a skill, and it’s one that anyone who writes needs to spend time learning, because revision is the abrasive force that rubs the burrs and imprecisions out of a piece of work so that its texture, grain, and natural beauty can shine. The following are a few notes on things that I, as an editor, find myself repeatedly trying to sand away. I hope they’ll be useful to anyone who wants to look more critically at their own writing. 1. Writers’ Tics: Most writers have certain words, phrases, and sentence constructions that they unconsciously lean toward. Over the course of an entire work these “tics” can become repetitive to a reader, though the writer may not notice them at all. For instance, one of my own “tics” is that I often lean heavily on the use of a “series.” In other words, I tend toward constructions that list, delineate, or present multiple examples, arguments, or iterations that will support, reinforce, or underscore my point. Other people may just use the word “really” a lot, or “dappled,” or “blackness.” The important point here is that none of these things are wrong taken alone, but when they evolve into patterns, they become distracting. Learn to recognize your own “tics” and cull them. 2. First Sentences: This one usually applies to essays. Often the first sentence is clearly the writer trying to get himself into the work by telling himself what he’s writing about. This is fine if it helps you begin the process of writing, but don’t forget to go back and delete that sentence once you’ve finished. Example: “Well, after last year’s topic, I thought it would be fun to go ahead and write something different. It occurred to me in early May that cicadas might taste good with ketchup.” I’m not sure that sounds like a winning essay (or maybe it does) but it certainly doesn’t need that first sentence. It’s nothing more than a ramp the writer has built in order to propel him toward what he really wants to say. No problem. But once the essay is done, take down the ramp. We don’t need it anymore. 3. Adjectives and Adverbs: First let me say that I’m not quite as militant about these as Strunk and White are (if you haven’t read The Elements of Style, get thee to the Rabbit Room store and buy a copy without delay!). However, a writer needs to consider each and every one of them with suspicion. A sentence is usually not enhanced by the addition of a bunch of modifiers. Choose yours carefully. Above all, though, be sure that your descriptive words and phrases are not getting in the way of the meaning of your sentence. If in doubt, try removing all your adjectives and adverbs; strip your sentence down to its most basic subject and verb and see if it’s making sense. I sometimes see writers getting lost in their own labyrinthine constructions. And if the writer is getting lost, you can bet the reader is too. 4. Subtext: This is where revision becomes your best friend. When we write, we often end up saying exactly what’s going on, exactly what characters are thinking, exactly what characters mean. We explain the importance of events or symbols or metaphors. We do this because we, as writers, often need to remind ourselves what we mean while we are in the act of writing. But it’s of utmost importance that during revision we go back and cut out all of those reminders. If we’ve done our jobs properly, reminders won’t be necessary. The meanings will all be planted firmly in the subtext, between the lines. The reader will intuit what the writer has left out—and that’s a mark of good writing. Simplified example: “Mary glared at Tom. She was angry at him but all she said was “Thank you.” This example is greatly simplistic, but if the imagined scene leading up to this sentence is well written, all that is required of the sentence is: “Mary glared at Tom. ‘Thank you,’ she said.” Or potentially even just “‘Thank you,’ she said.” Good writing doesn’t tell the reader how a character feels. Good writing shows the reader how a character acts and reacts, and then the writing gets out of the way. Trust the reader to infer the subtext. In addition to all these things, remember that editors are fallible–even me–especially me (as anyone who’s sent me an email about a typo knows). So if you’re working with someone to revise your work, be bold, be confident, stand up for what you’ve created, but don’t defend your work merely for the sake of pride. Think carefully about why you’ve made certain choices—you may be right, but there may be a better way. Think carefully about why an editor may disagree—he or she may be wrong, but may also be sensing an issue that needs to be addressed. Every minute you put into these considerations is a minute well-spent. It may be tedious—sanding usually is—but if you’ve taken the time to create something, it’s worth taking the time to love and refine it as well.

[I first met Alyssa Ramsey through The Rabbit Room. Pete Peterson read an essay of hers at Hutchmoot one year and it blew everyone away. She’s a wonderful person and writer, and I’m grateful that she’s one of our contributors at Story Warren. This essay is one reason why. –S.D. “Sam” Smith] My kids and I saw quite a sight at the library the other day. It was an impressive display of mimicry and showboating by a rather cocky young fellow on the rooftop patio. He strutted around with his chest puffed out, trying to impress a girl. He was unabashed in his affection for her. She was playing hard-to-get. Undeterred, he preened and posed and rattled off every pick-up line he had ever heard in rapid succession. He was a mockingbird. I could tell he was a city bird because his song was a masterful blend of police siren and multi-tone car alarm. He was just doing what he was born to do: imitating a song that had already been sung, adding his own voice, and making the song his own. Mockingbirds aren’t the only mimickers out there. Here’s a video of an Australian lyrebird imitating everything from magpies to power tools. Such masterful mimicry can sometimes be troubling. Some folks found a similar lyrebird in the wild—the wild!—doing a perfect rendition of a chainsaw. It turns out he had learned the sound from a group of foresters whose work was approaching his home. So this remarkable creature, capable of mimicking any number of sounds, was singing the song of its own habitat’s destruction. People are mimickers too, of course. Babies learn to talk by imitating sounds. Children learn social behavior by copying their siblings or peers. Every act of creation we do—whether it’s making a meal, or decorating a nursery, or writing a poem, or saying a prayer, or constructing a Lego castle—at some level everything we do builds on what we learned from someone else. Our contribution, then, is not so much to write new songs as it is to add our voice to old ones. And hanging on our every word are little people who don’t know how not to go astray. By what they hear from us, they are finding the notes and rhythms for their own song. And the song they will hear most clearly from us is the one we sing with our everyday lives. What do my kids learn about love from the way I talk to their Daddy? The way I do their laundry and cook their meals? What do they learn about God from how I discipline or comfort or enjoy them? What story am I telling with the things I don’t say? These are the songs that will sink down deep inside them and frame their very souls. And soon they will add their own voices, repeating the themes we have written in their hearts. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” – Eph. 5:1-2 Must we be perfect, then? Not perfect, but truthful. That means telling the truth even about our mistakes. It means singing of forgiveness even in our failure. It means declaring restoration and not destruction. Because Truth tells us that we were made for more than the song of the chainsaw.

“Little by little, one travels far.” —J.R.R. Tolkien When we launched the Rabbit Room back in 2006 (was it really that long ago?) we had no idea where it might lead. It began as an ugly little WordPress blog that was an invite-only affair. Almost no one seemed to care about it, not even those of us writing the content. But by tiny steps, it grew. In 2007 Andrew took a risk and had a much more fully featured blog designed. He invited a few more writers onboard and took it public. If you’ve perused the archives, you’ll see that that’s where their humble beginnings lie. By small steps, the community grew, and so did the website. The store was born—initially just a few of us selling used books we found around the country, primarily to justify the amount of time we spent lurking in musty book stores. Then there were podcasts, then the Rabbit Room Press, then Hutchmoot, then a Rabbit Room office because running things in the basement was getting more and more difficult, then The Molehill and more Hutchmoots and well, here we are. We’ve always wanted to keep the Rabbit Room simple and focused on things we love, so we’ve been against any sort of advertising on the site (banner ads and the like), but all those little steps have had huge costs attached, and thanks to the Amazon economy of zero margins and free shipping, it’s getting harder and harder to stay competitive and meet those costs. People often ask how they can best support the Rabbit Room, the work we do, the content we create, and the people involved. The first and best answer is to support the authors and musicians that we feature. By purchasing their work through the Rabbit Room store, you can be sure that the artist is receiving the lion’s share of the profit, and the rest goes toward operating expenses of the Rabbit Room itself. Many people, however, have asked how they can contribute in a larger way, and that brings me to the next small step along the way: Rabbit Room membership. Let me tell you what Rabbit Room membership is not. First, membership is not necessarily a way to save money and get free stuff (a la Amazon Prime). It’s our intent that membership provide a way for those who wish to help support the Rabbit Room to do so in a clear, simple, and direct way, and for us to be able to offer some material thanks in return. Second, it’s not an effort to create exclusivity. Yes, there will be a few things (like t-shirts) that will only be available to card-carrying members, but we aren’t interested in creating exclusive content. We aren’t interested in leaving people out. That would run contrary to everything we’re about and, trust us, we aren’t moving in that direction. So what is a Rabbit Room membership? What does it cost and what’s included? Primarily, membership is a way for those interested in supporting the Rabbit Room to be able to help us continue doing the kinds of things we do, like Hutchmoots, and Molehills, and podcasts, and Wingfeather Sagas, and N.T. Wright concert/lectures, and more than a few other things we’ve got up our sleeves. It may also be a great gift for a friend, or a way to introduce a family member to the community. It’s a way to be involved and invest in the community. So there you have it. That’s my pitch. We want to keep on taking these small steps. We want to see how far the road leads us. If you’d like to join the fellowship, we’d love to have you along. Membership runs from the date of purchase until May 1st, 2014. The price is $80, and it includes the following benefits: —A free t-shirt available only to members. The designer is still working on the shirt, but trust us, it’ll be cool. —15% off all purchases in the Rabbit Room store. —Two free used books (of our choice). We’ll grab a couple of good ones off the shelf and surprise you. —A free copy of The Molehill Volume 2. We’re busy editing it together right now and it’ll debut at Hutchmoot 2013 (ships to members as soon as it arrives from the printer in late September or early October). —Official Rabbit Room membership card (which bears your super-secret membership code for savings in the store). —Free access to certain Rabbit Room events. This will not include Hutchmoot, but it will include some stuff that we have yet to announce. We’ll notify the membership whenever we’ve got something cooking. If you’d like to become a certified Rabbit Room member, click here.

This post has been brewing for a good long time. Ten years, as a matter of fact. What follows is something of a personal retrospective, probably not of the least interest to anyone but me. Truthfully, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written—how to confine an important decade to a few paragraphs?—and more than once I’ve nearly given up the attempt altogether. As it is, I’ve refined it to death, wrestling over that balance between candor and abstraction (and taking myself far too seriously in the process). And for all that, who knows but that in the end I’ve succeeded at nothing more (or less) than an egocentric ramble. That’s not my intention; what I long to do is memorialize what God has done in my life, to mark this passage with an altar of remembrance and observe an epoch with deep attention and gratitude. Love compels me to try, while joy tugs, colt-like, against the reins of my limitations. At any rate, I’ve given it a go. The very fact that I feel obliged to open with such an accounting may serve as warning enough of the wanderings to follow… It was ten years ago this Maytime that God started something in my life from which I’ve never recovered—and never want to. Anniversaries are important to me, and this May I’ve been blessed with ample time to take a long, backward glance. To remember where I’ve come from; to measure my charts and check my course against where I’m going, where I want to go. For three weeks I have lived by the sea—really lived, in the way I first began to dream of a decade ago. I have put countless miles on my trusty Schwinn (Holly Golightly’s the name), traveling daily the same beloved paths, stretching over a gold and green salt marsh or winding beneath moss-hung oaks, each one a familiar friend. Kingfishers have been my comrades, and snowy egrets, and red-winged blackbirds with their liquid music like flutes coming through water. I have worn my hair in a ponytail and the same gorgeously-comfortable, perpetually-sandy, linen cargo pants (except on the days when I’ve donned my favorite, lucky writer’s frock: perfect shade of sailboat blue and works well on a bike) and I’ve pedaled off with a laptop in my backpack and my wicker bicycle basket stuffed with books and blanket, seeking some sunny refuge where I might warm the bones of my soul and weave a few words into the bargain. (I’ve literally followed the sun all over this island and I’m brown as a nut in consequence—all but my face, which I slather daily with SPF 20. Yes, I’ll admit, it looks a bit odd. I’ve also mastered the art of riding a bike with a tall Darjeeling in hand, for what it’s worth. What would we do without our cups of tea?) And at the end of the day, we’ve stretched on the sand, my husband and I, or on a sun-gilt verandah in rocking chairs, sipping cocktails and reading books—or talking of books and the dreams they have kindled. What is it that Thoreau said—“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?” I certainly can. I have often thought that God all but placed a book in my hands that He wanted me to read, something that would unravel a bit more of the fabric of unexamined belief about Him and the world and other people—and myself. But ten years ago this May, I know He did. It was as if the Holy Spirit propelled me bodily towards the bookcase and pried open my fingers to receive a volume off the shelf. It was a book that had been sitting there for four years, ever since Philip and I had been married, and it was the story of a great love. But one of the lovers did not survive the book. This much I knew. And I did not want to read it. When God gave it to me, however, I did. (We did, rather, for I firmly believe that this is not a book to be read by one spouse and not the other.) And it completely changed my life. It broke my life wide open, broke my heart with joy and beauty, breathed a brisk wind into the sails of my deepest, most intrinsic, most instinctive longings. The book itself is so precious to me I can hardly bear to write about it. I feel so jealous over it, so careful for the pure, golden-hearted rose of friendship it extended to both of us—indeed, a sacred thing. It represents beauties to me which I could never articulate to another living soul but Philip. And that’s all right. I don’t need to in order to tell this story. But ten years ago, A Severe Mercy brought me to my knees—I type the very title with a catch in my throat—and from that low place, I looked upon Love itself. I was in the midst of a real crisis of faith—though I didn’t know to name it such at the time—spiraling into a blackness of anxiety and depression such as I had never experienced my life. I think in my naivety I even doubted such a place existed for a lover of God—such deadly innocence!—though I had the whole counsel of Christendom at my back proclaiming otherwise. But to know of something is not to know it, and it was not until I felt the cold shadows creeping around me that I understood just how terrifying and unavoidably real a “dark night of the soul” could be. Looking back, I can see how the strain of too many years of perfectionism primed me for such a descent, how an accumulation of grace-less ideas about Grace had burdened all the “first, fine careless rapture” out of my walk with Christ. I was exhausted, body and soul, from striving to be and do and think and believe and say and exemplify everything that I was supposed to. Early in my teens, an older woman had extolled me for the example I was to the younger ones behind me, roundly exhorting me to “keep it up.” I know she meant well, dear heart, but I have always remembered those words with a strange sinking of the heart, a chest-tightening reflex of panic, expressive as it was of the pressure to perform that began to circle round me as a teenager—and threatened to choke the life out of me as an adult. At twenty-eight years old my health was breaking; anxiety was uppermost and fear had me by the throat. I was afraid of everything—of life; of my own desires; of love itself and its deathless grasp. When it came right down to it, I was literally afraid of God, in the unholiest sense. All that great, swirling sovereign power—and what might not He do to chasten these competing loves from my heart? So, there I was, my scared, rabbity soul shivering in the darkness, almost too ashamed to ask for help. Almost—and, thank God, not a whit more. I cried into that void, and, instead of accusing, echoing silence, there came a strong hand to clasp and a presence so precious I had never known anything like it and a little gleam of light that made even the darkness dear—because it was Jesus Himself. Jesus like I had never known Him; Jesus, not mad at me for my brokenness, but sitting right down there with me in the middle of the mess. It was into this “horror of great darkness” that A Severe Mercy entered my life. And here is what God began to say to me, by way of that book, in addition to the thousand other sweet influences that were wakened by it, all converging in a glad shout that echoed through every hall and chamber of my heart: You cannot, you simply cannot love “too much.” Man or beast or life itself—it isn’t possible. Love cannot be contained or measured. It simply is and it is entire! Love madly, love with abandon, loved one. Open your heart to the ‘pain of too much tenderness’ and the sting of your own frailties. Only don’t exclude Me—that is all I ask—by your fears or your principles or your careful weighing of consequences. Ground your very human love in my great, boundless one, and do not be afraid. He said much else that I’ve kept and pondered in my heart ever since, but this was the inciting flame—this freedom to love and this fury to live without fear. It changed the inner landscape of my life and would gradually affect the outer one, as well. I literally began to laugh for joy—right there in the midst of my pain—at the outlandish dreams that started to take shape: the things I suddenly knew I had always wanted to do, but had become too hagridden with convention to seriously consider. Dreams of books written and read; of studies and travels; of boats and music and poetry and the footpaths of England; kinships, liturgy, and a livelier life in Christ! Dreams more remembered than devised, it seemed, though I had never thought of some of them before. And in that deep remembering, I found something I had lost along the way, something so precious it had captured my heart with the love of Christ in the first place: namely, desire points. Beauty beckons beyond itself. Longings, whether attainable or not, are sign posts to safe haven, the inconsolable sehnsucht that lures our hearts to the Love we’re made for. There are a lot of traditions out there that imply (or outright teach) that the desires of our hearts are not to be trusted; that anything originating from the inmost being of man is wrong out of the gate and should be subjugated without question. I honestly had come under that persuasion myself, thanks to some fundamentally flawed perceptions of grace—though it took the demolishing of an ideological stronghold for me to realize how dark and tall and menacing it had become, like one of the infernal towers in The Lord of the Rings, casting an unwholesome shadow over the innocent pleasures of life. (I personally think that one of the most radiant moments in that whole trilogy is when Merry and Pippin are sitting amid the flooded ruin of Isengard, drinking plundered beer and smoking pillaged tobacco, celebrating the fact that if the darkness had not yet fallen utterly, it had taken a serious rout.) I do not believe that Scripture teaches or the character of God supports the notion that our desires are bad simply because they are ours. Of course, there are evil desires, desires bent on selfishness and cruelty, but that is not what I mean when I refer to the “desires of our hearts”. Even the most malevolent has some hook, buried howsoever deep, upon which that unseen line of joy can twitch. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is irrevocably drawn from the comforts of his respectable life into the adventure of a lifetime by nothing more or less than the song of uninvited dwarves, circled round his fireside of an evening. It was an ancient song, a song that roused latent ancestral longings he scarcely imagined to possess. “Then,” Tolkien writes, “something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and carry a sword instead of a walking stick.” For once in my life, I could identify with Bilbo’s yearnings and conflicted amazement. A holy restlessness had captivated my heart and unsettled all my calculations, and I began to wonder if I would ever know a moment’s peace again. All of these multitudinous channels of longing, broken loose by beauty’s light touch and running free towards an ocean of abundant living! “What on earth is wrong with me?” I asked God, in a tumult of amusement one morning. We had just hatched our Airstream dream: a gypsy caravan that would make the Open Road our own. And I was amazed. The whole thing had been my idea—and I didn’t even like camping. Or so I thought. Something Tookish is waking up inside you, God said, laughing back into the silence of the room. And I laughed with him. It was too late to do otherwise. (Incidentally, we did chase down that Airstream, a 1962 TradeWind, dreamed up that summer and purchased that autumn for a song. And it’s in that very 24 feet of silver-sheathed simplicity we’ve made house so merrily all these weeks by the sea.) In addition, my ideals of domesticity, already ingrained, were deeply refined through all that sifting of light-pierced darkness, though it took a while to manifest in visible ways. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if it has manifested visibly, for much of my day-to-day life looks the same as it did before—only I don’t let my worth as a woman get muddled with how clean my floors are, or how many times I’ve vacuumed the refrigerator coils (never). And I leave stacks of books all over the house. A subtle, though fundamental, shift in perspective began to move beneath the surface of things ten years ago, an uncovering of identity from out of that broken place, and as perfectionism loosed its stranglehold on my life, I learned to breathe a new air, to embrace my home and the work I did there with a new significance. Increasingly, my work was not so tangled with image as it was dictated by love, which changed everything. It meant that I could leave certain things undone as freely as I could take up others. That one task was not ‘holier’ than another simply because it fit nicely into the groove of an accepted standard. It was just as valid, I saw, to hammer out words on my laptop for people I would never meet as to give an entire day to preparing a beautiful meal for beloved friends. I gave myself permission to write, not for a few hours a week, but a several hours a day. Interminable chore lists languished, trumped by the lure of a poetry book or a garden sketch. I was a homemaker, in the truest sense of the word, but not only that—and this little clause was vastly, wildly, magnificently important. I began to realize that my “deep gladness,” the gift I had to give to the world, was at once simpler and more complex than could be confined to one blanket term—simpler because there was suddenly no need to align myself with one narrow definition or another; more complex because I was, to my growing astonishment . . . more. As much scribbler and wayfarer and dreamer of dreams as housewife, sacred as that calling is to me. Early in our marriage, I wrote an essay in which I attempted, most sincerely, to express the deep joy and satisfaction I felt in the making and keeping of a home. It was undoubtedly earnest, but, as most things seen at nearly a decade’s distance, wincingly flawed. I cringe now to think of some of the blithe assumptions, the poor word choices and slight know-it-all edge to my voice. (Oh, friends. When I’ve sounded like I have all the answers over the years, or even some of them, please forgive me. I don’t.) It’s not that I take my vocation any less seriously or hold my young passions in contempt—I’ve just lengthened my tent stakes, enlarged my thinking to make room for ideas and contingencies I hadn’t considered before. I no longer equate homemaking with the essence of my wifehood, but see it as an expression of it—one among many—and that’s a terribly important distinction for me. Philip and I are co-heirs, co-laborers in this vision of our lives, co-adventurers. And while I refuse to attach any moniker to this wider calling (not sure there is one), I will swear to my dying day that there are no sweeter words in the English language (or any other) than husband and wife. What’s more, I don’t assume that the essence of my personal obedience to God is so much expressed in how I love Him, as in the fact that I do love Him, practically and openly. And if my way looks different from everyone else’s way, and theirs from mine—well then, perhaps we’re getting somewhere. The words of poet Kahlil Gibran express beautifully the way I’ve grown to view my home and the lives lived in it: Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast . . . You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night. Flying and roosting; hangar and runway: these metaphors work better for me than long commentary to express how our home—and, consequently, our lives—look and feel these days. I’m less concerned with appearances than I am with experiences: encounters with God and the with holy, shining wonder of other souls. Loosening my death-grip on the control of my environment that I might embrace the unseen realities—and essential adventure—of the everyday. Less dogmatism and perfectionism and any other ism, for that matter; more starlight and mystery and birdsong and paradox. And less fear. I’m not afraid now to say that Brideshead Revisited is one of the top three favorite books of my adult life as I once was (crazy as that seems), or that I love a good gin and tonic almost as much as a stout pot of tea. Ten years ago I could not bring myself to tell anyone but my husband and my sister that I was writing, much less fling my words far and wide like scattered seeds. I can admit that I have a temper to rival Anne Shirley’s and that I believe to the very marrow of my soul that animals will be in heaven. These things may seem trivial (all but the bit about animals), but they represent a massive overhaul of grace in my life, a work-in-progress that continues to spread like a fresh, southerly breeze over the country of my heart. It’s been a long gestation, this broadening of personal borders. And that’s just the terror (and the blessing) of letting your words out into the world: over time, other people get to see your stretch marks. Interestingly enough, it’s the occasional denigration I’ve encountered that has helped me refine some of these growing realities, which is gift upon gift, even though I am mortally afraid of criticism. But it’s the overwhelming kindness of people I’ve never met, people who take the time to listen and whisper that they understand (you, in short, whoever you are, reading this, God bless you), that gives me courage to keep creating and processing, scratching out one word and trying another. My heart has been in your hands again and again, and you have been so kind. I salute you with the profoundest gratitude and a deep, floor-sweeping curtsey. And so, that plunge into darkness and the light that I found there was an experience I mark time from. Reading A Severe Mercy gave me back my Christianity as high romance, as beauty and longing and pilgrimage along which love might goad my heart with gladness. It helped me recover myself from a rubble of accumulated expectations, helped me see that my soul is more gypsy than I’d imagined. Most importantly, it convinced me that what I’m really longing for in all I love is Christ himself and that a life of love for him could be one of such adventure that the fairy tales of my childhood pale in comparison. “Love God and do what you will,” wrote Augustine so famously. I began, finally, to dare to believe that the two were not mutually exclusive. All these glowing coals a single book stoked and stirred and breathed upon, and, afterwards, we read nearly every book mentioned therein—at least, the ones we hadn’t already, such a company of old friends! I bought and devoured books by Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, Chesterton and, of course, Lewis, branching later into Evelyn Waugh and T.S. Eliot, as a matter of course. My mind expanded in pursuit of my leaping heart, chasing all these soaring themes of Christian thought which bore one unmistakable family likeness: God is not only as good as you’ve hoped—He’s better. I saw it everywhere, from the substitutionary love imaged in Williams’s novels, to the romance of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, to the steel-bright shrewdness of Eliot’s poetry. Such a spangled web of holy kinship! Years later, when I discovered the lectures of Peter Kreeft and the writings of Thomas Howard (our “American C.S. Lewis”), I was not a bit surprised to learn that these two men were chums of our old friend who started it all, Sheldon Vanuaken, author of A Severe Mercy. One night last week we took a long walk along the shore. It was the most enchanted evening imaginable: little shreds of clouds in a star-scattered sky; a slice of moon lending a silver haze to the purple shadows; low tide, and not a single soul in all the world. We walked so far, with the waves lapping at our ankles and the lights of a neighboring island shining out across the way, that, suddenly, we were at the northernmost point, standing on the very peak of the land, as it were. To the right, lay the sound and the estuary flowing into it, with the bridge—my bridge, the bridge that carries me over all that water to the home of my soul—its lovely, graceful arches atwinkle against the dark sky; so familiar, so loved. It seemed to represent—seems even more so now, looking back—all that is dear to me of my past, where I have come from, the influences that have contributed to who I am. The experiences that have shaped my dreams, refined my hopes, and which I always seem to recover when I return to this place. And to the left—the sea, limitless, unknowable, black but for the specks of light shining on the far horizon. Those who go down to the sea in ships . . . I saw hopes we’re gathering courage for: the wayside poems, the lure of unlost islands, the mountainous ambitions, and the hearthside songs of adventures remembered. It all was so keen, there in the wind at the edge of the world, as though we stood upon the shoreline of a tangible hope. I have no idea what it will look like in a practical sense, even as ten years ago I had no idea where the influences then beginning to stir in my heart would take me. If anything, I have less answers and more questions, which is rather exhilarating than otherwise. But it’s been a grand adventure, a hoisting of sails and a breathless scanning of new horizons. I glance back over a wake of faithful Love; I inhabit the present with wonder. And I look to the future with awe, and a (characteristically) crooked smile. The goodness of God staggers my heart; His mercies have stolen it utterly. [This post originally appeared on Lanier’s blog: LaniersBooks.com. A Severe Mercy is available here in the Rabbit Room store.] “Here’s, Hail! To the rest of the road!”

“At the same time that he lost everything—the very direction of his own steps—he won the thing he’d held so precious he wouldn’t approach it in words.” An ending and a beginning. Welcome to the discussion of the final part of Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome—“The Raratogans”. As always, feel free to share any passages that were significant to you, or to pose additional questions. Pop quiz (no cheating and no looking back): List all of the literary references from the book, as well as where they were mentioned. 1) What is the significance of “The Rarotongans” (and why was this chapter named after them)? “What I’d have given for a dream or vision now, like Glendon had of Blue—in wavering times, a vision’s what you want! Instead I confess to the most unrefined and selfish longings. I wanted to walk with Susannah and be solid and foremost in her eyes. I wanted Redstart to discover from its roots upward this place where I might be of use.”—p.250 3) What was the gap between the “dream or vision” that Monte wanted to have and the longings that he actually had? “If she [Blue] loves me back, it deepens what I owe. There aint no parity in that arrangement. That’s what I did not see coming.” Glendon—p. 274 4) What did Glendon mean? Do you agree? 5) What three words would you use to summarize the final picture we have of Siringo? Glendon? Becket? 6) If you were to choose a theme song for So Brave, Young, and Handsome, what song would it be? 7) What questions would you like ask Leif Enger about the book? 8) What are your final thoughts on the ending of the book? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

Today is Memorial Day, so it occurs to me that this may be an appropriate memory to haul to the surface. I resubmit it for your perusal. It seems like pirates in are in the news every time I turn around these days. But when this story popped up a while back it really caught my attention: USS Dubuque Seizes Ship Captured by Pirates. You can probably imagine my interest in the report but my association goes deeper than simply being an author who writes about pirates. Almost twenty years ago, you see, I was U.S. Marine Sergeant “Pete” Peterson and I served on the USS Dubuque for a while. Luckily, the time I spent on the De Puke (as we called it) was almost entirely taken up by sleeping, playing Spades, and reading Michael Crichton novels rather than fighting pirates or saving the free world. I remember a tattered copy of Jurassic Park making the rounds from jarhead to jarhead throughout the berthing area and it ignited all sorts of lively debate about how well Steven Spielberg had (or hadn’t) interpreted it. Crichton was considered high literature to us in those days. If I remember correctly, a copy of Congo was being passed along not far behind it. This was in the early to mid-90’s and there seemed to be a new war or conflict springing up every other week. Young as we were, we were anxious for pirates to fight, or an embassy to evacuate, or a “peacekeeping mission” to join. Day after day, we’d run through our drills and study our battle plans and then we’d stand outside the hatch at night smoking our cigarettes as the sea rolled past. Standing outside on the ship’s walkways at night was an explicit violation of the posted and oft repeated rules, but we did it anyway because it was so much easier than wandering through a mile of dark corridors to the authorized smoking area in the fo’c’s’le (that’s pronounced foke-sull, short for forecastle if you’re wondering). Those nights were the darkest I’ve ever seen. In the middle of an ocean there is no hint of a man-made light source. There’s no streetlamp, no spotlight, no glow on the horizon from the city in the distance. It’s pure unblemished night, a beautiful thing, and haunting. It was while standing in that wholly natural dark that I first saw the ocean shine. Below me, in the curling whitewater of the ship’s wake, dull green swells of light shimmered, rolled, and faded away. Bioluminescence is a miraculous thing. It’s an effect caused by millions of microscopic sea creatures that are invisible to the naked eye until their tiny lives are disturbed by something like the passage of a warship. When the ship passes through large groups of them, it sends them whorling and seething in its wake and the violent motion causes them to give off light. In some parts of the world the sea can glow with this “living-light” as brightly as if it were lit from below like a swimming pool. I rarely saw it so spectacular, though. Usually it was nothing but a dim glow, faint ripples and swells in the darkness, scarcely more. In the presence of this natural wonder, we’d toss our cigarette butts to the wind and grumble about the absence of a war in which to prove ourselves and let our talents shine. One night (I think we were off the coast of Myanmar) we were awakened by something that sounded like a jack hammer rapping on the hull. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. We sat up in our racks confused and baffled, looking at one another as if to say, “Did you hear that?” Then the ship’s intercom whined and whistled. “General quarters. General quarters. All hands man your battle stations. General quarters!” This wasn’t a drill. Here, at last, was some adventure. Was it pirates? Were we under attack? Was this an act of war? Whatever it was, the sad truth is that aboard a ship, a marine’s battle station is in his berthing area; while sailors rush to the control rooms, the armory, the flight deck and sickbay, we few, we proud, we stay in our beds and grumble. So we listened as the footsteps of the crew pounded through the corridors above us. We listened to the alarms and announcements chattering over the intercom. We heard our Cobra attack helicopters spin up and launch and fade into the distance and then, of all things, we went back to sleep. In the morning we learned that it had been a local fisherman who’d been spooked by the sight of our ship and fired at us in a panic. That’s the story they told us anyway. I guess machine guns are basic equipment on fishing boats in that part of the world. In the end, no missiles had been launched, no boat sunk, no pirates captured. We were disappointed that it had all been resolved peacefully and we went back to our racks and our Crichton novels and we wondered when we’d get to see some action and have some of that adventure we’d left our homes to find. For me, the action never came. I remember thinking, near the end of my service in the Marine Corps, that the whole thing had been a waste. Except for a few boring days of flight control during the Bosnian conflict, six years of preparation for war had gone totally unused. I was what they call an Air Support Operations Operator. It was my job to coordinate and control fighter planes and helicopters during troop transports, bombing runs, and med-evacs. I’d spent untold hours in training and here I was leaving the Corps without having seen or done any of the things I’d so foolishly hoped to. No battle had been fought, no war was ever joined. I had no shining moment of valor to tell my children of in years to come. What a shame, I thought. When I saw the news report of the old Dubuque last week it plucked a strange chord inside me. I was glad that the Marines had reclaimed a ship from pirates. I was glad that, like those tiny creatures in the midnight sea, they had a chance to shine. I was even more glad that due to their long hours of training, the whole affair was accomplished without a shot being fired or a drop of blood being spilled. But most of all, it made me glad that I spent my own time in the service doing little more than reading Crichton novels and dreaming. I don’t have any telling scars or combat decorations. And I don’t have memories of distant wars won or lost. Instead, I remember the thousand colors of a Mediterranean sunset. I remember the white stone bastions of Malta and the fruited jungles of Thailand. I remember swimming in the Phillipine Sea hundreds of miles from land. I remember waterspouts in the mid-Atlantic dancing together, four and five at a time, like white ribbons hung from the belly of a thunderhead. I remember the deep, sapphire blue of pacific island bays. I remember the Aegean Sea lying flat as a looking glass while Orion and his starry host sauntered through its ageless deeps. By grace, none of these memories are overshadowed by the passage of war, and that is a blessed preservation. War is no adventure; it’s an erasure. Thank goodness for the sailors and marines of the USS Dubuque and all the many others. But all these years later, when I recall the midnight sea roiling in bioluminescent heaves, I thank God that I never did live in that moment of shimmering, swirling chaos. My time of service was undisturbed, only a faint twinkle, never shining. It’s a gift, this dimmer glow, and in the stillness that follows there is a blessing in which to live, and sleep, and fondly dream.

Note: If you’re running behind schedule on your reading, no worries. Feel free to comment on prior posts as you catch up. There’s no reason the conversation can’t continue! Welcome to Week 5—“The Fiery Siringo”—In which we witness a showdown. “And so it came down to a farmhouse. As it so often does.” Siringo and Becket have a complicated relationship.  They are simultaneously archenemies and closely-tied traveling companions. 1) In what other stories is there an antagonist who reminds you of Siringo? A protagonist who reminds you of Becket? Archenemies with similar dynamics? After exposing Becket’s lack of attention to detail when they encountered the boy (whose father had promised to take him to the ocean) in Ingersoll, Siringo chides, “Well, heavens, Becket! No wonder your medicine’s all dried up.”—p.166 And then in the following paragraph, Becket proceeds to describe in great detail the plants, homes, and people he encounters in the town. 2) What do you think Enger was trying to achieve with the juxtaposition of Siringo’s comment and Becket’s astute observations? “That’s the failure of most people,” he declared. “They don’t want the bad news. Everything’s got to be good news! So they’ll subscribe to the Proverbs, which feel nice and hopeful, and ignore Ecclesiastes, where old Sol is wiser than ever and has finally figured out what all those instructions of his are actually worth.” Siringo—p.166 “All the same,” I ventured, “since we haven’t a choice but can only make the best of things as given, I would rather live among people who try to uphold the Proverbs.” Becket—P. 177 3)  What do you make of Siringo’s take on Ecclesiastes? Do you think it’s accurate? 4)  How do these two viewpoints set up an important dichotomy between Siringo and Becket? Do you see similarities between the two men? “Most men are hero and devil. All men.”—p.190 5)   Where do you see both hero and devil in Siringo, Becket, Glendon, and Hood? Can you think of a believable story in which this principle isn’t accurate? “Twenty people are enough to make a legend.”—p.210 6)  Where in the book does the presence (or absence) of a crowd become relevant? What other factors contribute to making a legend? Bonus question: Where did the title “So Brave, Young, and Handsome” come from? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

Jellybean Highfive stood in front of the back of a room, his back to the front of the wall. Directionally near to him sat a youth pastor on a stool. “It’s going to be epic,” the youth pastor said, raising his eyebrows, which were thin and trimmed and raised. “Really?” Jellybean asked interrogatively. “Fo’ sho’ bro,” he said, grinning sideways and scrunching up his eyes beneath a wide-brimmed hat featuring a baseball logo of a baseball team called the Yankees. Jellybean nodded, thinking about what the experience might be like. Would there be dragons? Would there be maidens saved and heroes made? Would people escape fire and doom and hellish fear to be released into light and love and hope and happiness? He imagined himself in an epic, with long hair and a glorious but slimming beard. A battle-axe-shaped sword in one hand a sword in the other. A shield and a bow and mighty feathered arrows from the slings of Mount Fountain, a lucky emerald amulet of burnished gypsy, and a dream the size of seven hairy kingdoms. “I am the epic,” Jellybean said, accidentally out loud. “Totally,” the youth pastor said. “I feel you.” Jellybean re-noticed he was not in an incredible epic but in a room with a huge number of posters featuring men in skinny jeans and expensive euro-lady-punk haircuts. “Why will it be epic?” Jellybean asked, eagerly like. “Cause we’re gonna have pizza!”

Here follows week 4 of our discussion of Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young, and Handsome. A cowboy doesn’t ask for much, that’s my observation. A flashy ride, pretty girl, momentary glory – for a day or two, I’m glad to say, Hood Roberts had them all.” – p. 145 Not a bad recap of “The 101”—equal parts legend, tragedy, comedy, and tall tale, sprinkled with a dash of romance. I thought my question might be a dangerous one – who doesn’t dread what God might be up to in our pivotal moments?” – p. 109 1) What have the pivotal moments been in the story thus far? How have the characters changed as a result? Now comes the distressing part of the story, and not just because Charlie Siringo shows up. As Glendon said later, Charlie had to show up – it was necessary for Charlie, for Glendon himself, and even, finally, for me, that Siringo wash into the Hundred and One on the edge of the coming deluge. . . No, the distress was all Hood’s.” – p. 126 2) How was Siringo’s arrival on the scene “necessary” for Siringo himself? For Glendon? For Monte? 3) Given that Siringo was pursuing Glendon, why was the distress “all Hood’s”? 4) How is Darlys DeFoe pivotal in the story? My wife got so she couldn’t see me anymore,” said an old man in a corner. “She could see everyone else. Just not me. . . It’s the truth. I walked into the house one day saying Darling it’s me, and she couldn’t hear nor see me. If I touched her she’d see me again, but pretty soon, out I’d fade.” – p. 137 5) The quiet, exposing confession of Siringo seems out of step with his character. What do you make of that? 6) Why do you think Monte stays with Siringo? Bonus Question: What’s the history of the real “101 Ranch”? What aspects of the story seem to be true to life? Where in the life cycle of the actual 101 Ranch does the story take place? Discussion Introduction Week 1: “A Thousand a Day” Week 2: “The Old Desperate” Week 3: “Jack Waits” Week 4: “The 101” Week 5: “The Fiery Siringo” Week 6: “The Rarotongans”

…wouldn’t you want to? I certainly would. He may have died long before I was born, but his books came to me like letters from a kind and witty and child-hearted godfather. Narnia companioned my childhood. Cair Paravel became a home within my thought that I roamed in imagination. The Pevensies were comrades in my play and challenged me to bravery. Talking stars and valorous mice and dryads peopled my dreams. When my siblings and I rigged up the oak tree in our front yard and called it a ship, it was the Dawn Treader I considered myself to be sailing. And it was Aslan’s country I desired to find. Ah, Aslan. Bold and beautiful, never tame. Who can fathom the power of a story in which Christ bounds in, unfettered by the usual assumptions and in a form so wondrous and wild? I loved Aslan. And even as a little girl, I knew it was God I was learning to love through him. When I grew up and began to wrestle with the reality of that God, again Lewis (and the old picture of Aslan) came to my rescue. I have read letters that Lewis wrote to his actual godson, and the kindly, bracing advice, the take-yourself-lightly tone and the urge to throw one’s whole self into the loving of God were familiar to me. I had already encountered that eminently insightful voice in Lewis’s spiritual and apologetic works. Like the kindly godfather he was, he walked me through doubt, assuaged my frustration; his words pulled me back from the brink of disbelief. And the stories that came from that vivid imagination of his taught me to hope that every longing of my heart would one day find its home. So yes, if Lewis were anywhere on earth, I’d trek my way to him, shake his hand, and say the thanks that’s been years in the making. I can’t wait to do it in heaven. But I can make a down payment on that thanks right now. And I simply have to tell all of you about this rather momentous opportunity. I know this is a place where C.S. Lewis is greatly loved, so… perhaps you’d like to join me? C.S. Lewis is about to get a memorial in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey. This is immensely exciting. I’ve written about Westminster before, and the impact its many heroes had upon my heart. For Lewis to be honored there is to add him to that great company, to affirm his works of creation, imagination, and instruction as something heroic. It means that thousands of people will encounter him when they visit, remember his works, or maybe discover them (and Aslan) for the first time. But it’s a project that needs support. You can visit the website to read this invitation: On 22nd November 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s death, Westminster Abbey will be unveiling a memorial stone to Lewis in Poets’ Corner. A two-day conference and a thanksgiving service will be part of the memorial project. The Dean of Westminster has kindly given his permission for this memorial, but the Abbey itself does not finance such projects, and so we invite your support. If you have valued Lewis’s writings and personal example and would like to contribute, please give generously. The total cost will be about £20,000. A list of donors’ names will be deposited among the papers of the Oxford Lewis Society in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. I intend to accept the invitation and I decided to share it with you. I thought a few of you might feel about Lewis as I do. Perhaps you’d love to be part of honoring his legacy, affirming his influence upon the spiritual imaginations of countless people.  After all, he taught us to live our own stories awfully well. So, you can visit the official website here: Lewis in Poets Corner. You can donate to the memorial here. And just for the fun of it, you can also leave me a comment with some of your favorite Lewisian quotes. I’ll start: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” – C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey

One of our favorite records of the past year is Matthew Perryman Jones’ Land of the Living, produced by Cason Cooley. (If you saw the Behold the Lamb of God tour last year you may remember Matthew as one of the special guests.) If you haven’t listened his new record, go with great haste and do so. If you’ve already fallen in love with it, enjoy this short making-of film. If you’re still on the fence, this might be just the push you need.

[Zach Franzen is frequently seen arguing for a culture of gratitude over at Story Warren. Here he is rallying us all to that cause with the irresistible call of poetry about the smell of ironing. He includes his own old-fashioned illustration to pair with Dorothy Aldis’s charming poem.  –S.D. Smith] I recently read an article urging Christians to be more countercultural. By countercultural I think the author meant that Christians ought to get arrested more often and sing “in your face” anthems at their parents and/or capitalists. Of course, we know that a protest culture isn’t precisely counter to our culture. It’s as mainstream as a discontented child screaming and grasping in a Toys-R-Us. Still, Christians ought to be more countercultural, and certainly this extends to our artistic and creative offerings.  One way to push back at our culture is through the simple elevation of gratitude. Christians see gratitude as essential to happiness, but in our Freud and Marx influenced culture, gratitude is the undignified badge of surrender. Dissatisfaction is seen as the way to rally the masses to overthrow corrupt Western power structures and bring in the Utopia. Gratitude (much like a Norman Rockwell painting) is perceived as an obstacle for vital social change. But it isn’t. Gratitude frees us from a preoccupation with self and makes us take pleasure in the good gifts of our Creator. Furthermore, it gives shape to our desire to help the oppressed. One could go on, but the point is that gratitude is a necessary element to human happiness, it pleases God, and is underrepresented by our culture. Let me give you an old-school Dorothy Aldis poem written for children in the 1950s that assumes the pleasure of gratitude. See if the assumptions in this poem don’t strike you with a pang of rightness. Aldis assumes that the reader treasures the smell of flowers and the smell of cookies, then she suggests that the reader make room in their circle of gratitude for ironing smells. If I may steal a theme from Chesterton, it is magnificent to look at the world through a telescope but it is also magnificent to look at the world through a microscope. Tolkien tempered his orc battles and giant spider threats with meditations on the Hobbit’s love of good tobacco and food. Lewis tempered his fantastical never ending winter with the domesticity of the Beavers’ tidy house.  Jane Austen novels, The Little House on the Prairie books, Henry and Ribsy, The Moffats, Frog and Toad; all these stories assume the pleasures of gratitude, and the reader gets to enjoy them by proxy. Thankfully, these books are still widely available, and if you want to provide your children with an emotional affirmation of the statement “be grateful,” then you might think about importing these values from earlier literature. That’s not to say they are totally absent from contemporary writing, but they are mostly absent. I guess what I’m trying to say is that a poem that zeros in on the appreciation of ironing aromas and the glory of domesticity elevates gratitude. Gratitude is essential for children who will one day build and preserve a society. It is absolutely unessential for those children who wish only to deface society.