When I walked into the theater on March 9th, I was a skeptic. I’d seen some really weird looking previews that I filed into the “what the heck was that” drawer and tried to forget about, until a friend pointed me to a few facts that the trailer failed to mention. First, the movie was directed by Oscar-winner Andrew Stanton of Wall-E and Finding Nemo. Second, the script was co-written by Pulitzer Prize and Hugo Award-winner Michael Chabon of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. Third, the film is an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series which was the direct inspiration for Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Dune, Avatar, and basically every space opera trope of the 20th (and 21st) century. As weird as it looked, I had to give it a chance. When I walked out of the theater on March 9th, I was teetering on the verge of conversion. I felt a little like I’d just seen a new Star Wars movie, with a dash of Indiana Jones thrown in, but I was bothered by some perceived second act clunkiness, some thinly written scenes, some general goofiness, and, oddly enough, a nagging suspicion of its “almost-greatness.” My reaction was ambiguous, but I couldn’t shake the film. I couldn’t shake the feeling that for two hours, I’d been a kid again, peering wide-eyed into a fantastic world just beyond the world I could see. I went home that night and lay in bed, kept awake by visions of four-armed Tharks, warrior/scientist princesses, tall ships that sail on light, and the possibility that somewhere there was a world where I could be more than the broken man I am. I started to wonder if anyone else was feeling the same way. After all, the film hadn’t gotten very good reviews and the media was calling it the biggest flop since Ishtar (ouch). To my great relief, I discovered I’m not the only one. A quick perusal of Twitter and a few internet haunts quickly revealed that the film was connecting with audiences on a worldwide scale. In fact, it was the biggest movie in the world, despite the fact that it opened with split reviews and a baffling marketing campaign. It took in over $100 million in three days. But you wouldn’t know that from what you see reported in the media, because American audiences didn’t know what to make of it. The film cost a whopping $250 million to make and it was being cast as a box office flop. Sadly, those headlines seem to have colored many peoples’ perception of the movie, even if they haven’t seen it. All the bad press got my hackles up because 1) John Carter, while imperfect, is a far cry from a bad movie, 2) I’m tired of seeing great tales like Serenity fall by the wayside because of poor marketing or the failure of studios to understand their own films, and 3) I’m a sucker for an underdog—especially an underdog that looks, sounds, and feels like a good old-fashioned Star Wars movie. But during the past week, I began to doubt myself. I must have enjoyed it primarily because I wanted to enjoy it. Right? I decided to find out. So this weekend I went to see it again, and this time I took my wife. I intended to watch with a critical eye, to put it under the microscope, so to speak. And because I trust my wife’s judgment of such things, I wanted to pay attention to how she was reacting. She knows a good story when she sees one, and she knows a bad story when it’s falling apart. So off we went. And this time I was paying attention. The result is that I’m now a wanton convert. What I found on the second viewing is that, once more, it turned back the clock and made me a kid again. I recall very clearly how I used to watch Star Wars over and over and over again and each time I’d pick up on some nuance or some missed mention of a race, or place, or character, or motivation. And each of those small things hinted at the vast world lurking beyond the story on the screen. I remember picking out the scant mentions of Alderaan and wondering what those clues hinted at, thinking that if Leia was a princess then surely that implied a king. I remember studying every scene on the Death Star and trying to puzzle out the rank insignia on the uniforms. I remember listening to every mention of Jabba the Hutt and trying to work out what might happen to Han in Return of the Jedi. I loved how much detail there was and how it drew me into the story and the world and the people who lived there without ever trying too hard to explain itself. And so this weekend there I sat, paying rapt attention to hints of Thark history, to the use of the word “Jeddak,” to the cultural significance surrounding the river Is. I found myself wondering what sort of life Dejah Thoris had led as a scientist in the moments just before she appeared on screen. I geeked out a little when I realized that the airships, sailing on sunlight, were positioning themselves to cast an opponent in shadow in order to deny maneuverability, just like real ships on the sea cast one another in a wind-shadow for the same effect. Andrew Stanton has somehow managed to remember what George Lucas, Michael Bay, James Cameron, and countless others have forgotten in the last thirty years. He’s put into John Carter a sense of wonder, and pure-hearted adventure, and realness, not only of the world, but of the characters. They hint at things that the story brushes past, they imply relationships and histories that we can only guess at. Not everything is explained, and not because the story is incomplete, but because Stanton is trusting his audience to keep up. He doesn’t always succeed, but I’ll take that trust over the on-the-nose storytelling of Avatar or the Star Wars prequels any day. I came away from that second viewing with the sense that I could watch it over and over again and each time catch something new, some fresh perspective, some previously unrecognized reference that can enlighten everything around it. And the ending left me breathless. It left me wanting nothing more than to be taken back to Barsoom as directly as possible. Och-ohem och-tay wyees—Barsoom (yep, I’m a nerd). And I was delighted to turn and find my wife with a similar grin on her face. (I haven’t even mentioned the C. S. Lewis references!) I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so refreshed by a movie. It’s good, clean fun. No sexual overtones. No gore. No pointless, stylized, slo-mo violence. No bathroom humor. Just good adventurous storytelling. Princess Deja Thoris is the best female lead this kind of movie has seen since Leia, or Marion Ravenwood and, as anyone who’s read my books knows, I’m a sucker for a strong female heroine. It’s the kind of movie that makes kids want to grow up and be storytellers themselves, and I can think of no higher compliment than that. Let me leaven some of this praise by saying that, yes, it does have its problems. No, it’s not a perfect movie. It drags a bit in the middle. It’s full of strange, hard-to-pronounce names that are hard to tell apart from one another. It’s goofy to a fault sometimes (which was endearing on a second view). It makes no scientific sense. But all those things are true of Star Wars too, remember? I dearly hope Andrew Stanton gets a chance to address those issues and give us a proper Empire Strikes Back. But despite the great word of mouth and great viewer ratings, and despite the fact that it’s made nearly $180 million dollars in ten days (still the number one movie in the world–outside of the U.S.), it’s being labeled a flop and it’s not getting nearly the attention it deserves by an entire generation of young boys and girls. We constantly rail against the Hollywood machine for churning out the same old sequels and tired action movies and morally bankrupt comedies, and yet here we’re presented with something that’s potentially timeless, and by virtue of dollars spent, Disney is being told that no, this isn’t what the public wants. What the public wants is Transformers IV, and Twilight, and Saw XI. That makes me sad. If I had kids of my own, we’d be off to Mars—-no, Barsoom—-this weekend. And I’d spend half the movie watching them watching it, just to remind myself how great it was to be a child lost in an adventure. Thank you, Andrew Stanton, for making me young again, even if only for two exhilarating hours. Here’s a fan-made trailer that does a much better job of encapsulating the movie than any of the official trailers did.

If you haven’t yet read Matt Conner’s interview with Eric Peters’, you should; it’ll give you a deeper appreciation of how important this recording is to Eric. Eric puts his heart and soul and, more importantly, his pain into his music, and that’s what makes it such a rich experience for the rest of us. For months now, I’ve been lucky enough to hear snippets of Birds of Relocation coming out of Ben Shive’s studio (The Bee Hive) next door, and I can’t wait for the world to hear it. I think it’s Eric’s best work. Read the interview, get the full context of the song you’re about to hear, and then wait anxiously for March 27th when Birds of Relocation takes flight. Here’s a first listen to one of the tracks. It’s still an early mix, but it’s already fantastic. “The New Year” by Eric Peters from Birds of Relocation.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/TheNewYear.mp3

Birds of Relocation is the new album from Eric Peters and by his own description it is “shockingly bright.” Then again, the artist often described as authentic and vulnerable is quick to assure me that he’ll never be far from theshadowy valley. If you’ve taken in the beauty of albums like Scarce or Chrome then you realize just how beautiful Peters’ hopeful expressions amidst sorrow can truly be. Via Kickstarter, many of you enabled Eric to record Birds of Relocation, an album informed by an famous ornithologist that Eric relates to on a personal level. Here’s the story of Eric’s near-crippling journey between one album and the next and the joy he found in having you all along with him. RR: In the past year, your need to create has branched out quite a bit. Why do you think that is? EP: In 2010 and 2011, I read a couple of books that greatly affected, encouraged and, honestly, changed me, or at least drew me out of my self-built confines. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok and Richard Rhodes’ excellent biography of ornithologist, failed entrepreneur, and artist, John James Audubon each revealed and awakened something in me that, because I was either too dense, too dark, or too oblivious, I had avoided simply on the grounds that I was afraid–or if not from fear, then from my penchant for lending an ear to the foul voices in my head. I was afraid to try something new, like painting. I’m drawn to color. I need light. Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, with those bright, short, bold strokes, set off mesmerizing, vivid scenes of swirling, breathing movement. The shades, the textures, the colors, the light–my word. It was ultimately in reading Audubon’s story that I recognized a bit of myself: his love for birds and being outdoors, his early failure as a businessman, his fight to keep hoping amid depression post-bankruptcy, and, thankfully, his ultimate decision to lean into his talents of drawing and painting, which led to his self-publishing an immense seven-volume work, The Birds of America, an opus that took him fourteen years to complete. By leaning into the talent he loved and knew he possessed, he trusted himself to his art, to his craft, and, I believe, it made him a better man. At the very least, he left the world works of lasting beauty. “Hopes are shy birds,” he wrote in his journal, “seldom reached by the best of guns.” For me, painting is a new expression, one that I don’t profess to be particularly skilled or talented at, but one that’s a joy nonetheless. I’m finding that I paint very much like I write songs: big scenes, quick and short strokes, abstract and arcane at times, but with every new glance the work reveals a new layer that, at first, might have gone unnoticed. I’m so grateful for this season, this ripe, fruitful time, to proclaim, “To hell with fear,” to move–to MOVE!–this is such a vital aspect of my story, to hack away at the bonds of crippling mental paralysis. I might very well fail, but I’m going to try to move, for my movements dismantle hell, its lies, its plaguing voices, its breaths of fear. RR: In the past few years you’ve been through some dark places in your life and a lot of that went into your last album, Chrome. Do you feel like you’re on the far side of that valley now? Is this record an answer to those old struggles? EP: Birds of Relocation, in many ways, feels like a response, a bright and vibrant reply to Chrome. This is my ninth studio album, and it’s quite possibly the most thematically cohesive and consistent of them all. I look on these eleven new songs and marvel at their mere existence, how they came to be, the places and depths from where they came, their playful levity, their breadth, their thrill at being, their not giving up on me–their life. By now I’ve learned that I am never, and never will be, far away from that valley. For better or worse it’s the nature of who I am, the way of my brain’s workings, its faulty connections and misgivings. But light, as we know, can explore and explode its way into the darkest of darks, illuminating long lost, forgotten, or cringing hope. From the dawn of my songwriting days, I have written about the waxing and waning of hope–some things won’t change–but with this album I feel that presence, the reality of actual life, a contentedness of soul. There is a sadness that never ventures far from my side; I don’t know why, I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s always present with me, loitering. The question is a matter of what I do with it, how I respond, it’s the where and when of choosing to hope, which voices do I listen to and lean into. I see the songs on Birds of Relocation as heralding the beauty born out of struggle, grief, sorrow, sadness, and depression–all pointing and leading to the infiltration of long-awaited light. RR: You used the phrase that you never will be far away from that valley. Is this the first album that you’ve been settled into that idea? EP: I believe so, yes. Though it was not easily identifiable to me early on, it is a reality I have slowly been learning about myself since the writing and recording of Scarce (2006) when I felt my general depression began to clearly make its presence known in my songs. 2008-2009 was a mentally brutal year. Friends had affairs, there was a rapid trilogy of deaths in our family, there were hurricanes, I was struggling to find work even though I had just released a brand new album (Chrome, 2009), and I bore what, at the time, felt like the humilitation of having to take a temp job and having to deal with general career disappointment. Couple all that with my chronic low self-esteem and my learning how to be a parent to two very young boys who seemed more like wedges than bonds between me and my wife. I reached a low–though pivotal–point during the summer of 2010 when my anxiety and darkness crippled me nearly to the point of being unable to function. I remember at one point not being able to physically move, think clearly, or make any decisions, thinking assuredly–and believing it–that, with the exception of my wife and boys, the world would be better off without me, that I was inconsequential, and that no one would care if I were gone. I immediately called a very dear psychiatrist friend of mine who had reached out to me earlier that year, and I asked for help. To ask for help is humbling. I began seeing a counselor late that summer, and soon thereafter I went on medication. These actions changed my life. Though I’m still susceptible–I never expected to be cured–I have a clearer thought process now. I’m more consistent. I’m less prone to utter apathy and acedia. I’m able to enjoy my life more. In short, I’m able to be grateful. Seeing clearly is a new grace. The apostle Paul had his “thorn,” which he wrote would be with him his entire life; mine happens to be depression. I’m prepared to walk on with that thorn in my side, but now I’m armed with age, knowledge, hindsight, modern medicine, dear friends, and a wife whose grace has been incalculable. I have the necessary components to function. These eleven new songs are shockingly bright. I’m just glad folks are willing to go on the ride with me, to follow me through the dark. RR: That’s beautiful to hear about the songs being “shockingly bright”. Do you have a favorite example from the new album? EP: “The New Year” caught me off guard in a really pleasant way. The song feels like an addendum to another of the new songs, “The Old Year,” an exclamation point, a sort of “I’m staking my claim,” anthemic and epic. My producer, Ben Shive, was a huge part of bringing that out. RR: After Chrome, I’m assuming there was a legitimate thought of setting the guitar down. Was there a point where you considered leaving music, as a career, behind? EP: I’m always thinking I need to hang it up, or find a stable nine-to-five. And then I think, for good reason, that a cubicle job would ruin and crush me. Apologies for the melodrama, but in some ways I believe that would be true for me. I hear people speak of their “callings” and their assuredness in them. I can’t say I can always relate to that level of confidence. Some days I feel I am doing what I am absolutely born to do; then other, darker, days, when there are no shows on the calendar, or I go months without an adequate paycheck, I wonder what on earth I am doing wasting my life, or wasting anyone’s time with my so-called art. As narcissistic as this sounds, the reality is that I enjoy writing songs that I would want to listen to over and over again. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to me to write songs that cater to a certain crowd, group, or demographic. I can’t be that person. I can only be Eric Peters, a.k.a., Pappy, Eeyore, glass half-empty guy. Ha, that probably explains much of my commercial failure, eh? RR: Can you give us an idea of what you felt when the Kickstarter campaign became successful and you crossed that threshold? EP: Relief. The initial push during the first two weeks was thrilling, then there was about a week-and-a-half (of a four week campaign) where it nearly stalled, and I was only halfway to the goal ($12,000). In my typical Eeyore, Pappy way, I immediately conjured a worst case scenario: I was going to be the first of my friends to fail to reach their goal. Figuring nobody cared anymore, I would hang it up, get a job flipping burgers, and move on with life. Thankfully it didn’t play out that way, and I have this opportunity to share eleven new songs with people. It was probably more stressful than I should have made it, but in the end it was gratifying to know that folks do, indeed, care about my music. RR: Any concrete plans after the release? EP: No immediate, major plans, other than to embark on what I’m hoping will be a lengthy fall CD release tour, ideally with a small band to help bring these songs to form. In the meantime, I will continue painting, taking photos, and offering the fruit of that work for sale on my website. And let us not forget Good Neighbor Lawncare, my side business. #BirdsofRelocation #EricPeters

According to C.S. Lewis, a scholar faces three enemies during a time of war. As I was reading through those tonight, I realized they are also the three enemies most of us face in the “war” of our day-to-day lives. I’ve selected a few quotes for your perusal. If you want to read the rest, check out his essay “Learning in War-Time” collected in The Weight of Glory. The first enemy is excitement–the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defence is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come. … The second enemy is frustration–the feeling that we shall not have time to finish. If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of leaning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical. You would be surprised if you knew how soon one begins to feel the shortness of the tether, of how many things, even in the middle of life, we have to say ‘No time for that,’ ‘Too late now,’ and ‘Not for me.’ But Nature herself forbids you to share that experience. A more Christian attitude which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God’s hands. … The third enemy is fear. War threatens us with death and pain. No man– and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane — need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things, but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination. We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called Life. But there is no question of death or life for any of us, only a question of this death or of that — of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war to do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. [This post originally appeared on Rebecca’s excellent blog, Little Boots Liturgies.]

Have you ever read a book you enjoyed so much that you delayed finishing it, even to an absurd extreme? I’m reading a book like that now, The Dragon’s Tooth, by one of my favorite living authors, N.D. Wilson. It’s not really a life-changing book (as his Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl is), but sometimes that’s better. It’s a really fun, true-hearted book. And that’s what I need right now. But do I need to end it? My full reading attention is not on The Dragon’s Tooth right now. We recently had a lovely baby girl. Well, I suppose it was mostly my wife who had her. But I was there, cutting cords like a very minor celebrity at the grand opening of a new human. (I had other responsibilities as well.) I’ll spare you the litany of excuses as to why I haven’t finished this book. But, for now, the last fifty pages hang out there like an unresolved note. A little tense, but playfully inviting. Promising. I love that it’s out there, waiting to be read. I don’t feel a great need to rush in and end it. But this isn’t exactly novel for me. I realize this is something I sometimes do. I am comfortable, at times, with not finishing some of my favorite books right away. I want the experience to extend, to freeze time in the grand, cooperative world of the author’s words and my imaginary visions. I find myself not wanting this union to end, forestalling the time when we once again break up into our various confederacies. Stay with me, Dear Story, just a little while longer. I hate spoilers. I will employ the irritating “La-la-la! I can’t hear you!” method of disrupting a person’s blabbing revelations of a book they wish to discuss in more detail than is appropriate in mixed company. (Mixed between the Have-enjoyeds and As-of-yet-have-not-enjoyeds –groups that should only be mixed under careful, sterile, laboratory conditions.) But hey, if you’re like me, and you sometimes don’t finish what you started, then no worries. Another Human Bean: “Have you read The Dragon’s Tooth by N.D. Wilson?” Sam Smith: “Yeah, I love that book.” Another Human Bean: “Don’t spoil the ending for me.” Sam Smith: “Don’t worry.” But really, there are very few books that fit into this category. The Dragon’s Tooth is excellent, but another part of my delay in finishing it is that the sequel is coming out soon. I’m shortening my inter-series wait every day that I don’t finish the book. But seriously. There’s one book in my library which I have read twice, and recommended to probably fifty people. But there’s something I haven’t told those fifty people. A small qualifier to my statement that I’ve “read the book.” I haven’t been able to read the last few pages. The book moved me, very deeply moved me. When I first read it, it got to me (masculine disguise language for you-know-what) multiple times. I felt like I couldn’t handle whatever she was going to say at the end. She had me in her heart, or I had her in mine, and she wasn’t even a scientifically “real” person. But she was and is real. Hannah Coulter is real. Am I crazy? Maybe this reveals an unwillingness to accept reality and the different stages of life, like the aging of children, the death of grandparents. I’ll ‘fess up to that. Maybe I’m a coward, unwilling to forgo the guidance of the author, saying, “Hold my hand a little longer, won’t you?” Lewis said, “We read to know we’re not alone.” And we’re not, but we can feel like it when we read, “The End.” Then it’s back to our own story, which is shaped by the one we just finished. We are all we have ever read, and more. Not alone, but sometimes lonely. I know the end is never really an end, but that we’re left to our own imagined ever-afters. I need to grow up and finish reading Hannah Coulter. I need to go to her deathbed and hear her last words. Maybe, as with Jacob, there’s an arms-crossed blessing to be had. But I think I’ll remain convinced that finishing a wonderful book, or a fantastic series, is one of the happiest sad things we do. Do you do this? Or, do you have any other reading quirks? I’ll read your comments to (hopefully) know I’m not alone. (Image above: Joel Courtney –he of Super 8– in a still from The Dragon’s Tooth book trailer.)

Last summer I was at my trusty Starbucks working on a Rabbit Room post when I got a phone call that changed the last five months of my life. It was my manager, Christie, asking if I’d be interested in going on tour with Steven Curtis Chapman. I remember pacing outside, processing the invitation. I knew I had to say yes, but I tried to play it cool and told her I had to think about it. In truth, I did have to think about it, but only because I was so excited; knee-jerk excitement can lead to bad decision making, and I wanted to be sure that it was the right thing for my family. I came home for lunch and told Jamie about it, and her knee-jerk excitement affirmed my own. A day or two later I accepted the invitation and not long after that the Songs and Stories tour with Steven and Josh Wilson was confirmed. To make the deal even sweeter, Steven asked Ben Shive to be his piano player for the tour, which meant I would be on the road with one of my best friends. I spent the rest of the summer and fall swinging between disbelief and mounting excitement until the day I showed up for rehearsal. Contrary to my cynical expectation that the tour would somehow fall through, I was undeniably there, in the rehearsal studio with Steven and Josh and a world class band. The Crew Today I’m sitting in Starbucks again, this time in Lakeland, Florida, a day away from the end of the tour, trying to think of a way to sum up the last forty-five shows. It would be easy to write a full post about each of the 12 other guys on this tour: Tyler Cook, the guitar tech (and member of the band Neulore), who, when he’s not tuning one of the 5,000 guitars, is usually reading something by Dostoevsky; my friend Harold Reubens, who runs the front-of-house audio with astonishing skill and humility (as he does on the Behold the Lamb tour); Michael Pierce, one of the production crew, who’s as quick with his one liners as he is to serve; Jesse Blinn, Show Hope advocate and road manager, who never seems to run out of kindness or energy; Casey Webber, who has been my own road manager off an on for a few years, managed the ridiculous amount merchandise and joyfully coordinated all the Show Hope volunteers; Tony Fransen, the lighting designer and production manager, whose burst of laughter could be heard from almost anywhere in the building throughout the day. The Band Then there’s the band: bass player Brent Milligan, a crazy talented, artful producer and player, who encouraged me more than he knows; drummer Ken Lewis, who never missed a beat and never failed to crack me up, inspired me with his passion for the church and his family; and of course, there’s dear old Ben Shive whose friendship and camaraderie to me are impossible to overstate (as are his talents). Josh Wilson, he of the incredible beard and mad guitar skills, was delightful. He’s a fellow preacher’s kid, so I have a feeling he and I would have been friends in junior high, and would have probably gotten in a lot of trouble together. One of my favorite parts of the tour was the deep conversations we had about songwriting and community, about doubt, and faith, and gratitude. The Point Man The point man on the tour, though, was Steven. He’s the one carrying a 3 hour show, doing interviews every day, talking about Show Hope, meeting adopted families every night, recording, writing, and treating each of us kindly in spite of his crazy schedule. Quite a few people have asked me how on earth I ended up on this tour. If you read the first paragraph of this post, you have the short answer: I got a phone call. The longer, truer answer is that the Lord out of his great goodness, blessed me with the friendship of a good man. I’ve jokingly referred to this tour in interviews as my own personal “Steven Curtis Chapman Appreciation Tour”. I didn’t grow up paying much attention to Christian music, but it’s hard not to know who Steven is. At some point, most of us have heard his music, whether it was someone singing “I Will Be Here” at a wedding, or a duo covering “Listen to Our Hearts” at church, or cranking “The Great Adventure” when it came on the radio. He’s had more number one singles and more Dove Awards than any other Christian artist, which is truly remarkable, whatever you may think of those kinds of stats. The Third Option And yet, though everyone seems to know him, I’ve never heard a single negative story about the guy. I’ve been in Nashville for 15 years now, and, well, you tend to hear less-than-flattering stories about folks from time to time (I’m sure there are a few about me floating around out there), but I have yet to hear one of those about Steven. What that might lead a rascal like me to conclude is that either a) Steven is so squeaky-clean he must be hard to like or b) he’s a complete wreck and he’s hiding it. I didn’t realize until this tour was underway that there’s a third option. Here it is: Steven is a wreck, he’s not hiding it, and because of the mighty presence of Jesus in his life, grace abounds to those around him. It’s the great, confounding reversal of the Gospel of Jesus. If the word we preach is one of attainable perfection, of law, of justification by works, then when we fail, our testimony fails with it. But if we preach our deep brokenness and Christ’s deeper healing, if we preach our inability to take a single breath but for God’s grace, then our weakness exalts him and we’re functioning as we were meant to since the foundation of the world. Steven isn’t super-human. He’s just human. But what a glorious thing to be! An attempt on our part to be super-human will result only in our in-humanness–like a teacup trying to be a fork: useless. But if the teacup will just be a teacup, it will be filled. Humans were made (as was everything under the sun) for the glory of the Maker. Why should we try to be anything but fully human? Let God fill us up and pour us out; let him do what he will, let us be what we were meant to be. That gives us the freedom to sing about what’s really happening in our hearts without being afraid of sullying the good name of God. If our hearts are contending with the forces of darkness, clinging desperately to the hope of a Savior, then to sing boldly about the battle is no shame to us and all glory to our King. The proof is in the pudding. Everyone I know in Nashville who knows Steven has said to me something like, “I love Steven. He’s a good man.” But from the first week of the tour I discovered that Steven isn’t a good man. He’s as sinful as the rest of us. He wears his weakness on his sleeve. He’s quick to share his pain and his struggle. That doesn’t make him mopey–he’s quick to share his joy, too. But what’s so wonderfully subversive about the Gospel is that our ability to honestly bear our grief and woundedness just makes room for God’s grace to cast light on all that shadow; it makes room for us to love each other. When we encounter that kind of grace we come away remembering not just the sin but, overwhelmingly, the goodness, and the grace, and we say, “I love that guy. He’s a good man.” What we’re really saying is, “I love that guy. God is so good.” The Vav Principle Most of us know about the accidental death of Steven and Mary Beth’s daughter, Maria. It’s a tragedy that didn’t just happen four years ago, but as anyone who’s dealt with grief will tell you, it’s a tragedy that’s happening now. Death has no place in this world, and it’s right for us to feel its wrongness. But every night for more than forty concerts I’ve stood in the wings and watched Steven sing (often through tears) about God’s trustworthiness. I’ve watched him tell thousands about his pain, heard him remind the audience of the promise of Heaven and the peace of Christ. He rewrote a verse for his song “Yours” after his daughter’s death: I’ve walked the valley of death’s shadow So deep and dark that I can barely breathe I’ve had to let go of more than I can bear And I’ve questioned everything that I believed But even here in this great darkness There’s a comfort and a hope that’s breaking through So I can say even in life or in death, God, we belong to you It’s hard to imagine more honest writing. But it isn’t just honest. It’s faithful. And that’s what’s inspired me that most. Father Thomas McKenzie said in his recent Rabbit Room Podcast that there’s a faithful kind of doubting and an unfaithful kind of doubting. The unfaithful kind sees doubt as evidence that Christianity is a farce and should be dismissed. The faithful kind of doubting costs us something. It harnesses the questions like a sail in the wind and drives us on rather than away. It reminds me of Chesterton’s quote: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. One of the beautiful paradoxes of Christianity is that it is at once incredibly simple and infinitely intricate. Faith bridges the chasm between our understanding and the truth we feel in our bones. Michael Card’s book A Sacred Sorrow talks about the Hebrew word vav. It’s a word that means “and yet”, and is a crucial ingredient in almost every lament in scripture. Again and again, when you read the psalms, you hear the psalmist crying out against God, shaking his fist at the skies, demanding justice, wailing and abandoned, all but accusing God of being unworthy of our worship–basically, the psalmist is throwing a fit. Then, as if he’s exhausted himself, he says vav. “And yet, I will praise the Lord.” In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I believe in my bones that you are good. Your intentions for me are loving and kind. I believe in your presence though it feels like you have forsaken me. And yet. And yet. And yet. Those two desperate words may be the most faithful prayer we ever pray, and our most triumphant battle cry, though we whisper them through tears. That’s been the greatest gift of this tour to me: Steven’s example of faith and faithful doubting. He doesn’t just stand on the stage and talk about the death of his little girl and his family’s continuing pain–he follows it up with vav. Every night when Steven closes the show with “Blessed Be the Name of the Lord,” it’s like he’s bellowing “And yet!”, and he does it with authority, because we can all sense what it costs him to say it. “You give and take away! Blessed be the name of the Lord!” More than once I have thought, “This wouldn’t make sense if the Gospel weren’t true. But there it is.” I have felt more than once that we’re in a battle, and that Steven is the commander of our little unit, waving the flag of God’s goodness in the face of the darkness. And I have felt more than once that I would take a bullet for him. I’m grateful beyond expression that Steven invited me on this tour. Let this meandering post be my thank you to him and to the band and crew that worked so hard and so well to make every concert happen, if only to make space for the “and yet” to be proclaimed every night. It was my honor to have worked with such good men to tell such a great story.

I am fickle. I am also dramatic. The combination of the two often leads me to make inane decisions and impulsive choices. That’s the reason I took four full months to make the decision to leave the church that I founded eight years ago. The Mercy House has provided my identity for almost a full decade now: serving and shepherding and living life alongside the most creative, missional, loving community of people I could ever hope for. The Sunday morning gathering was often the last thing we worried about in leadership meetings because everyone was so busy with ministry throughout the rest of the week. In short, I had the easiest job any pastor could hope for. But my time had been coming. For the last couple of years, I’ve journaled about a longing to write full-time. Book ideas were written down but never spoken aloud. New endeavors were silently hoped for as an introverted side began to emerge–much to the surprise of my extroverted, church-planting, social butterfly self of old. Those thoughts were always deemed foolish, selfish, childish or, at the very least, something to get to later. But for the last four months, I’ve considered the leaving that just happened this last Sunday. “More than a season” is what I knew I needed if I were going to be able to trust my instincts. And for four full months, I wrestled silently and maintained a steady resolve that it was time for me to go. The church was in great shape, new leadership was ready (and desiring) to take over. The exit would be seamless. Then came the last two months of notice I gave the church. The date that I would leave my post, March 4, was coming up. From the outset, everyone was so supportive. “We’re so excited for you. We love you. We support you. Can’t wait to see what God has for you in this new phase of life.” Those were the statements from all corners of the church community coming in the form of cards, e-mails, phone calls, and meals together. It was echoed this last Sunday when I felt the love and support of a community telling me it was my turn to step out and follow a calling that God had for me, even if it took me away. Then came the fear. Yes, the fear. I knew it would come. I told those closest to me to expect it. They would ask, “How are you doing with everything?” I would respond, “I’m excited about this new step, but I know I won’t always feel that way.” Why? Because the fear always comes. Forty-eight hours ago, I was giddy with excitement to finally be able to write about long-held ideas. In fact, I recently read through an old journal from five years ago. On a trip to Ireland, I’d marked the exact same “Write This Someday” list that I still have today. But now everything feels different. It’s hard not to cave to the fear. I’m sure you know the questions: What have I done? Did I make the right move? Even worse are the statements: No one will care what you do next. Nice job. You just abandoned any platform or influence you have. It was all enough to make me wonder if I could secretly run in on my last Sunday and declare, “Just joking!” Could I get my job back? Can I take a mulligan? While I knew that was silly, I also wondered whether I should start looking for another ministry job or even a “regular job.” Never mind that I had built up enough freelance work to write full-time in the first place (so it’s not a total faith-filled leap with me at a desk in a cabin in some woodlands wondering where I’ll find my next meal), I just know that I am scared of it all. Quick aside: This is nothing new for me. I once went away for a four day monastic retreat to pray, write, and create some space in my life. I fled after ninety minutes. (I wrote about it here at the RR about four years ago.) For the first time since I can remember, I now have space. For the first time, I will have the room to chase all of the goals I say that I’ve held. For the first time, I have to follow through. I am always so inspired when the rest of you follow through. I read posts about a man writing songs about being an astronaut and know that I have my own ship waiting for me to board. The songwriters, poets, authors and creators here of all types have been a source of inspiration for me since the outset of the Rabbit Room, but only to the point where I nodded my head and thought, “Someday.” Now that I’m past the point of excuse, I find that I don’t want to do this after all. Only I know that I do. Today is the first day of my new life, and here I sit: coffee in my Rabbit Room mug, The Murph is in the printer (my weird cat who oddly sleeps inside the printer tray anytime I write), laptop ready. Suddenly I don’t want to be here. I know enough to know that we often don’t want to be in the place where obedience becomes necessary. I also know this is where I am supposed to be. At this point all I can do is trust and hope the things that I write find their own platform. And even if they don’t, I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be the worst thing if they end up as text files on a hard drive on some old computer. The point here is about the journey and I suppose it’s time I start my next one.

I could tell by the tone of my mother’s voice that something had happened–-even over the phone I sensed the gentle sadness–-and I knew with a pang of kindred sorrow what it was. Aunt Ruth had died. Quietly, my mother told me, in her sleep. 104 years old and the last of my grandmother’s sisters. The last of a generation that was mighty upon the earth. I never thought the Aunts would die. It never seriously occurred to me to fear it–they were too foundational to the proper functioning of the world in general and my life in particular: like Corinthian columns fluted and lovely and made to bear the enormous weight of life with seemingly effortless grace, especially in such a precision of placement as these five sisters had aligned themselves. Even frail little Aunt Ruth, an invalid these forty years, had borne her load manfully, with a core of iron and steel beneath her thin housecoat. Out of all these mighty pillars only she had remained, her faded, almost transparent little body but thinly veiling the light and fire of a still-vibrant mind within. And now she was gone, too. The last time I saw her was on a broiling day in late August, nearly as stifling indoors as out in typical Deep South fashion. But it was a warmth that enveloped me like an embrace and distilled with it the essence of summer days long-ago but not lost. We came in through the kitchen and the scent assailed me even more potently than the heat had done, for it was precisely the smell of every other Aunt’s kitchen, a kind-of incense of sausage and cornmeal and Wesson oil, with simmering field peas thrown into the mix. (Grandma’s kitchen always seemed heavier on the sausage-side for some reason, and Aunt Tiny’s, of course, was imbued with the perfume of caramel icing.) Though there were no field peas simmering that day, nor any other indication of domestic activity, there had been enough over the years, I imagine, to steep the very walls with nourishing aromas so that they exuded a collective memorial of the sovereigns in print aprons that had presided there for so long. Aunt Ruth was lost in a recliner and a pale green afghan and her eyes wandered listlessly while the conversation went on because she could hear so little of it and see nothing at all. But the minute my mother asked for a tale or a reminiscence from the past those eyes came to life. They sparkled; they shone like a girl’s in the first headiness of youth. The little hands worked excitedly and the honey-sweet voice droned on and on about the old days with a lilting that was like music. She told us about the first automobiles that they saw down on the river roads, and how every time a car went past their old farmhouse it would honk for sheer neighborliness and all the children would come running out to see it and wave. How the first time she drove a car herself she was twelve years old and her mother was sick and she had to go and get her daddy. How on her honeymoon in ’29, she and Uncle Bugg drove to Washington D.C. in a red Ford Roadster and went up for a tour in an airplane. She spun a magic that afternoon in her simple words so fraught with happy remembrance, so that the steamboats on the Altamaha wavered into existence once more and plied their course through the murky waters. And the live oaks that arched over the deep tram road down in the swamp rang with the voices of children long-since departed, swinging across the chasm like so many monkeys. Even the terror of the stunt flier that crashed into the Number One bridge before their very eyes when they were picnicking on the river as a family had a certain conjuring of grotesquerie about it, like something one might encounter within the pages of Flannery O’Connor. Her manner changed with the telling of that tale; her voice dropped low and the bright eyes were hooded with an unforgotten horror. A dark thread amid the brighter ones, throwing color and joy and light and goodness into sharp relief. Philip fed her just the right sort of questions, shouting politely across the room, and the glances he and I exchanged expressed our mutual enjoyment. How often, after all, does one have the opportunity to spend the afternoon with someone who can boast of over 100 years’ worth of experience in this world? And yet, as we sat in Aunt Ruth’s parlor that day we could have been in the ‘Front Room’ of any of the Aunts. There were the same 1950’s-era portraits of long-since grown children on the wall, the same best furniture, the same aura of gentility and dignity. Each of the sisters’ homes had their own unique stamp, but some indefinable likeness in Aunt Ruth’s parlor invoked all of them at once. From this distance they all seem to have been painted the same pale, limey green, though I know they were not: Aunt Tiny’s was splashed with the color of her bold and vivid oil paintings, and Aunt Babe’s had pale carpet which was stiff on bare legs and religiously unsoiled. Grandma’s had marble-topped tables and a beautiful antique lamp dangling with crystal prisms which was the absolute only thing in her house she ever worried about us breaking. Nevertheless a uniform impression of coolness reigned on those sultry afternoons when we’d sit in state in one or another of them and give an account for ourselves: our grades–first in preeminence–and then our music and perhaps our ballet recitals or tennis matches. (Too many ‘extra-curriculars’ were somewhat suspect, the general consensus being summed up in my grandmother’s fear that we might be ‘jack of all trades; master of none’.) And they wanted to know about our friends, which says the world of their genuine interest in our lives. My grandmother knew every one of my friends by name, though she’d never met most of them, and she kept such a detailed mental account of them that whenever we talked she could ask me if Jenifer was still in the marching band or where Ann was going to school or if Amanda and her new husband had bought a house, a fact which, naturally, I took for granted at the time, as we do some of the most precious and genuine things in life, but which strikes me now with a sweet stab of belated gratitude. (We didn’t always sit in the Front Room, of course. Only on such calls of ceremonial reckoning. On other occasions we’d settle comfortably in rockers and recliners under the ceiling fan in the den, or in aluminum folding chairs out in the back yard. But no matter where you ended up, you always came in through the kitchen. No one ever entered an Aunt’s house any other way. And no one ever knocked–a bang of the screened door and a trilling “Yoo-hoo!” was the only announcement that was required.) I was in a state of resolute bliss that August afternoon at Aunt Ruth’s, overwhelmed alike with her memories and my own, and every sense sated with time-erasing impressions. I clung to the moments almost desperately, dreading the time when we had to go, back on the highway, back to the city and the present age and the noise and confusion and hurry. I wanted to be a little girl again with a new piece to perform on Aunt Ruth’s piano–always a bit trying as I was constantly reminded that Aunt Ruth had done the very elegant and appropriate thing of going to Conservatory. (Though I really think as a child that I had some nebulous notion of Aunt Ruth sitting in a starched white dress in a room of potted palms and tall windows.) It would have been wildly inappropriate for any of her sisters to have done something so purely ornamental; but for Aunt Ruth it fit her personality like a fine, kid-leather glove. The whole afternoon was a gift, a window opened mercifully, if briefly, upon my past, granting me glimpses of things I thought vanished forever. Aunt Ruth was enough like my grandmother, in voice, in appearance, even–though so shrunken and tiny–to make me believe for one sweet moment that a beneficent Providence had brought her before me once more. I wanted to throw my arms around Aunt Ruth’s neck that afternoon, and kiss her wrinkled cheek in tearful greeting, for Grandma’s sake, and for her own self-effacement in looking so much like her to me. That’s what I was doing inside as I knelt beside her chair and pressed the beautiful claw-like hands that were once so proficient in Chopin and Schubert in my own young ones. For even now, so many years after Grandma’s death, it’s only the irrefutable sight of her tombstone that makes me realize she’s really gone. And Aunt Babe laid to rest just down the way. Aunt Mary Mac nearby and Aunt Tiny over the hill. And now, at the last, little Aunt Ruth, sleeping beside her parents till that trumpet of the Lord rouses them all together. It just cannot be. These were the Immortals. These were the Amazons: diminutive ladies with their cool, fresh front parlors and their very decided opinions on the cut of a roast and the year’s crop of mustard greens and the latest Washington politics and the dispensations of the young lives in their charges–lives loved better than their own. They are the stuff of legend, and fittingly so. For the world will not see their like again.

This is a lecture that Mark Andrews (Pixar’s director of the forthcoming Brave) gave to a group of students at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). He’s talking chiefly about the art of storyboarding, but I found that most of what he says applies directly to the art of writing as well (or any other artistic medium). The video is in two parts. In the first, he shows his storyboard of his treatment of the Icarus myth. In the second part, he discusses the choices he made and how he went about putting the story together. The quality isn’t the best, but the advice is spot on. Well worth the fifteen minutes if you’re a storyteller.

Someone pointed me to this letter the other day, and the author (James K. A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College) gave us permission to re-post it here. As someone who has been in hundreds of churches over the years, I resonate with much of what Smith says. I’ve wanted to write something similar before, but didn’t because I didn’t want it to be seen as some veiled critique of my own church—a church I love. This is a touchy subject, and it’s easy to get opinionated without affording much grace toward the music leaders. I agreed to lead the songs one Sunday at our church a few years ago, and by the time I had chosen the songs, learned the songs, chosen the keys, prepared the slides, called the band, rehearsed with the band, soundchecked with the band, and played in the service I was exhausted. My week was shot. I learned two things: 1) music leaders at churches work harder than most people realize, and 2) never agree to lead songs at church again if you hope to get anything else done that week. However, it doesn’t do to keep silent if something’s really detrimental to the spiritual nourishment of the church. I’ll just come right out and say that I happen to agree with all three of his main points. What do you think? An Open Letter to Praise Bands, by James K. A. Smith Dear Praise Band, I so appreciate your willingness and desire to offer up your gifts to God in worship. I appreciate your devotion and celebrate your faithfulness–schlepping to church early, Sunday after Sunday, making time for practice mid-week, learning and writing new songs, and so much more. Like those skilled artists and artisans that God used to create the tabernacle (Exodus 36), you are willing to put your artistic gifts in service to God. So please receive this little missive in the spirit it is meant: as an encouragement to reflect on the practice of “leading worship.” It seems to me that you are often simply co-opted into a practice without being encouraged to reflect on its rationale, its “reason why.” In other words, it seems to me that you are often recruited to “lead worship” without much opportunity to pause and reflect on the nature of “worship” and what it would mean to “lead.” In particular, my concern is that we, the church, have unwittingly encouraged you to simply import musical practices into Christian worship that–while they might be appropriate elsewhere–are detrimental to congregational worship. More pointedly, using language I first employed in Desiring the Kingdom, I sometimes worry that we’ve unwittingly encouraged you to import certain forms of performance that are, in effect, “secular liturgies” and not just neutral “methods.” Without us realizing it, the dominant practices of performance train us to relate to music (and musicians) in a certain way: as something for our pleasure, as entertainment, as a largely passive experience. The function and goal of music in these “secular liturgies” is quite different from the function and goal of music in Christian worship. So let me offer just a few brief axioms with the hope of encouraging new reflection on the practice of “leading worship”: 1. If we, the congregation, can’t hear ourselves, it’s not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular “form of performance”), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there’s nothing wrong with concerts! It’s just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice–and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of “performing” the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can’t hear ourselves sing–so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become “private,” passive worshipers. 2. If we, the congregation, can’t sing along, it’s not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and “be creative,” offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can’t sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And while you may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song. 3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it’s not worship. I know it’s generally not your fault that we’ve put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to model worship for us to imitate. But because we’ve encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we’ve also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity–even with the best of intentions–it’s difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as “offerings to God,” we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we’ve adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship. Please consider these points carefully and recognize what I am not saying. This isn’t just some plea for “traditional” worship and a critique of “contemporary” worship. Don’t mistake this as a defense of pipe organs and a critique of guitars and drums (or banjos and mandolins). My concern isn’t with style, but with form: What are we trying to do when we “lead worship?” If we are intentional about worship as a communal, congregational practice that brings us into a dialogical encounter with the living God–that worship is not merely expressive but also formative–then we can do that with cellos or steel guitars, pipe organs or African drums. Much, much more could be said. But let me stop here, and please receive this as the encouragement it’s meant to be. I would love to see you continue to offer your artistic gifts in worship to God who is teaching us a new song. Most sincerely, Jamie You can read more from the author at his blog. Many thanks to James for allowing us to re-post his letter.

“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket. I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” –From The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams I sat in the theater, huddled around the stage with a hundred strangers, and watched as the narrator sauntered out of the darkness and smirked at us. Those words, the first of his opening soliloquy, made me nod and smile and whisper to myself, “I’m going to enjoy this.” I’m not sure what it is that keeps me from the theater. Every time I go, I’m glad I did. But it seems I usually hear about productions after they’ve come and gone. There’s no marquee next to the mall to remind me of what I’m missing, and there’s no stage version of a Fandango app to feed me show times and reviews. So, too often, plays by local theater companies slip by under my radar until I hear about them from someone else long after the curtain has fallen. But seeing Studio Tenn’s production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and most recently, The Miracle Worker (now playing), reminded me once again what I forget all too easily: that the stage is a magical place. For all the explosions and special effects and cinematic trickery that movies offer, there is no substitute for sitting twenty feet from a cast of actors and watching their lives unfold and fall apart right there in the room with you. It’s easy to maintain emotional distance from an eighty foot movie screen, but when you sit in front of a gifted actress and watch her weep, hear her heaving breath, see the quivering of her lips, the redness in her eyes, and the pain in her voice, there’s no getting away from it. That’s the power of the stage. It’s right in front of you. It’s inescapable. In demands your attention. Tennessee Williams knew that when he gave his narrator those words. He’s telling us that the stage may not look like a St. Louis tenement, the room may not have walls, the actors may be mere pretenders in the end, but despite all of that, something real is about to happen. Something important is going to be said. He’s going to paint a picture of the truth with a palette of illusion. And he’s going to do it right in front of our eyes. That’s a bold goal but it ought to be the mission of every storyteller no matter the medium. My job as a writer is to whittle my story down to the bare truth at its heart and then build around it the best illusions I can muster, illusions that support and even illuminate without distracting. The failure to understand this is precisely why so many films fall flat—the storyteller is enraptured by his own illusion and forgets to paint the truth. If there’s not a kernel of truth at the heart of the story, then all the action sequences, precise prose, and emotionally manipulative music on earth can’t save it. And the opposite is true as well. If your story has a solid foundation, then the audience will want desperately to believe in your illusions. They will want to believe because they’ll see the truth in the story. They’ll forget that the set doesn’t look like a St. Louis tenement or an Alabama mansion. They will pay no attention to the props as they roll onto and off of the stage. They may even forget that the theater around them exists at all, because for a precious few hours the truth is unfolding before them, inescapably, right in front of their eyes. When the lights come up at the end of the show, they’ll feel like they’ve returned from some far away place, having briefly been voyeurs at the window of another life. The truth of the story has sold the illusion. And they believe it. That’s great storytelling. That’s what every teller of every tale ought to aspire to. If you’re in the Nashville area, check out Studio Tenn’s website (www.studiotenn.com) and find out what’s playing; they’re casting spectacular illusions.

A pearl-bright morning lit the sky my first Sunday in England as I set out to find the church in the village where I spent my first few days in the UK. A walk down deserted, cobble-grey lanes brought me and a few friends to the open door of the church. The main door, sturdy as fortress gate, was still closed for “choir practice,” so we turned through a narrow entrance to our right, thinking it would lead to the balcony. But the higher we climbed, the farther went the stair, and the narrower too. Lancet windows let in a cut of light now and then, but the passage narrowed and darkened as we climbed the chipped stairs until we were almost on hands and knees at each step. Go back? Never. The height and mystery egged us on, faster and faster, until, with a startle and stumble, we arrived at a square little room. It was crammed with people. We eight joined eight more, six elderly men and two women, all of whom stared wide-eyed at our accidental intrusion. The bell pulls looked like caterpillars. But there was no time to tarry. “Mind your feet,” rasped one old man with a wild halo of grey hair.  “Stand back against the wall!” cried another in a neat, fair isle vest, his pleasant, square face red with excitement. We obeyed in an instant, wondering what was about to fill that little room. The wild-haired man nodded emphatically, catching the eye of his comrades and with a sudden coordinated movement, they were off. And it was music that filled the room, for we had stumbled upon the village bell ringers. Each held a sturdy rope threading up through a small hole in the plaster and beam ceiling and with jerks of solemn purpose, they now tugged and released. The ropes sprang upward through their hands as the bells above leapt to life and bellowed a Sunday greeting. Rosy in face and panting a little more each minute, the ringers glanced back and forth at each other, eyes quick and lit by their effort. They began to call, back and forth, with words that sounded to me like sailors guiding a ship, merry sailors steering great bell ships to the port of fine music. “Heave one!” cried the bushy-haired man, his shirt now untucked so that it billowed with every vigorous lift and tug of his arms. Round and round they all went, brisk, business-like, all self and sinew given to their work until with one great lift of his eyebrows, the serious man cried, “and HOLD!” The ropes ceased their rodent like dart into the ceiling; the bells swallowed their music and the eight solemn ringers wiped their wet brows. We peppered them back with kindled curiosity in this rare, tower world into which we had stumbled. They answered back in slow, friendly words, passing a basket of candy round and round the room. The  man with the expressive eyebrows made an eager and kindly host, proffering a binder with countless sequences of six numbers, each a tune or pattern for the bells. “There are countless permutations,” he rumbled, his face still smileless, but his blue eyes flashing interest with every peek at us they got from under his brows. “We must practice hard once a week… when the village will let us.” He rolled his eyes and the rest of them laughed and the flashing of his eyes seemed almost to provoke a smile. One glance at the clock nipped that in the bud. The time had come for the next round of music and he made a rush for his bell. “Stand back!” they started again, but this time we needed no prompting. My eyes roved more freely this time as I stood in stiff-muscled silence in the corner. The room was tiny; we sixteen filled almost every inch, but it was a tower room with a high ceiling and narrow windows sliced through the stone so that the high cool walls were washed in daylight. The sun made a muddy gold of the dust on every surface; books and papers piled on sills, old pictures impossibly crooked on the wall, their frames filled with the proud, sturdy faces of ringers past. On the stone just behind me, I found this framed prayer: Gracious Lord, source of all skill and beauty, who has entrusted to us the ringing of your bells, give to us the needful skill and grace for the faithful performing of our art, that the sound of the bells may awaken in the hearts of all who hear them the desire to worship you in spirit and in truth: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen This last round of ringing proclaimed the start of service, so we prepared to troop down the stairs lest we be late. Our hands were cordially shaken a dozen times, more candy was pressed upon us, and, if we could ever make it back from our studies, the offer to come of a Monday evening and learn to ring the bells ourselves. If I can ever defeat the mountain of essays to be written, I just might do it. To learn “a needful skill and grace for the faithful performing of my art,” is good practice for writing, for learning. For life. And the fun of joining that merry group would be a gift in itself. Bless those bell ringers. The Oxford Chronicles: Bod Card The Oxford Chronicles: The Tutorial

If you’re not familiar with Josh Ritter’s music, here’s a piece I wrote about my discovery and ensuing fandom of his songwriting. He just released a new EP of lullabies called Bringing in the Darlings, and this video from one of the songs was fairly mind-blowing. Here’s what one of the folks at Etsy.com had to say about the making of the video: The stop-motion animation for “Love Is Making Its Way Back Home” uses photographs culled from over 12,000 pieces of construction paper to animate a nighttime drive. A team of nearly twenty artists, editors, directors and product assistants ushered the video into being. The group started with storyboarding and computer animation before converting the digital graphics to paper cutouts (frame by frame), photographing those 12,000 cutouts and then stitching them together into four minutes of paper animation. As production designer Sam Cohen said, “We had to determine ahead of time which images to cut as positives or negatives, how to anchor the cutouts to the paper frame that surrounds it so the pieces wouldn’t fall out, as well as a host of other problems. It was definitely the most labor intensive video we’ve been a part of.” It was produced by Erez Horovitz. I haven’t heard the record yet (I bought it on vinyl and am awaiting its delivery), but I dig this song in all its moody happiness. The video is inspiring in the best way. Makes me want to get busy and make something beautiful. Check out Josh’s website here.

What Is Love? Part I – Definitions What Is Love? Part II – Gethsemane Jeanne Guyon wrote, “You must see the wisdom of God’s plan in allowing . . . troubles to happen . . . There are two ways of handling little children. One is to give them all they want when they want it. Another is to give them only what is good for them so that they will grow up into maturity and not be spoiled. Your wise Father chooses the best way for you.” (Intimacy With Christ) If we are parents, giving our children a strong sense of being loved through attention and affection is the foundation. But it is also imperative to allow appropriate suffering into our children’s lives. Without it they cannot grow; without it they will be left without empathy, compassion, self-discipline, respect for authority, and will not accept responsibility for their actions. Much of this suffering will have to do with their actions. Actions have consequences; in the lives of our children, negative actions must be allowed to produce negative results. Our love must not be conditional, but we make their circumstances contingent upon their actions. A child who whines continually must be shown that whining produces a negative effect, every time – removal from the society of dad or mom to sit alone on a bed. Some suffering will have nothing to do with their actions. If my son wants something very much, and I believe it would not be beneficial or even detrimental for him to have, I should say no, no matter how good it seems to him. Other suffering has much less to do with what is good for him. Ultimately, I want him to be a benefit to others. I want him to be loving, kind, strong, creative, because I want him to love others, and benefit the world. So he must learn to get up on time; he must learn to not leave his clothes lying on the floor. He must learn to help those younger than himself, even when he doesn’t feel like it. He must do chores of some kind, and learn to do good work with a good attitude, to be a benefit to his future wife and children, and others in the world. Suffering is necessary. Now, to my son, no suffering seems pleasant or even relevant at the time. He cannot see why he must go with me to take the trash to the dump. He is reading! I am interrupting! Why can’t his sister go? It doesn’t make any sense to him. But I know that some form of having to do what he doesn’t want to do is good for him, and good for the other people in his future – wife, children, friends, co-workers, and even enemies. I am an earthly father. I am looking to my son’s eternal future, yes, but I cannot fully see the circumstances there. Mostly I am preparing him for life in this world, knowing that a man cannot always do what he wants, cannot always follow the strongest impulse, cannot long avoid taking the garbage out or getting up at a certain time or being courteous to others. My son may be called on to do great things, like providing for and raising a family, and great things require great character. If I am not preparing my son for this (and in many moments I have not), I am not loving my son. As a parent I am often to sacrifice my son’s immediate wants and desires for what I know he can and must be for others in the future. The heavenly Father has eternal goals and plans for us beyond anything we could imagine. He may be preparing us to rule cities and judge angels, or to write the new royal score for the King’s symphony. Whatever it is, it will require love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, humility, and moderation (the ability to go the right length and no further with our desires) – and especially courage. Why did God put his Son through an earthly life of being colored as a bastard (“We are not born of fornication. We are children of Abraham!”)? He was given to a fate of no reputation, despised, a wanderer, no place here he could call home, driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness alone to be tempted personally by  Satan. He was hated and persecuted endlessly by the religious leaders. His short-lived adulation by the populace came to nothing; in no time at all they were shouting “Crucify him!” And of course we know his end: mocked, hit in the face, whipped, made to carry a heavy beam on a bleeding back, then thick, dull spikes hammered through skin, piercing hands and feet, smashing through flesh and bone, tendons, nerves. More mocking and cruelty. And finally the worst – “My God, my God” (not “my Father”), “Why have you forsaken me?” This was the love of God? The Father knew the end result, saw the end from the beginning. He knew the joy suffering would produce, not only in the life of Jesus but through him flowing outward to an eternal Kingdom of saved people. But Jesus, having set aside his omniscience, had to wrestle with his humanity, his own desires, and subject them to the Father’s will. All Jesus knew was that the Father is good, and works all things after the counsel of his own will, working all things together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose. Jesus said, “Not my will, but thine be done. In essence, “The Father’s will is my will, too, my deepest will.” In Gethsemane, when he finally stood and walked to meet the mob, he knew within himself that he was made for this moment, knowing he was not merely a human being but a unification of the human and Divine.

Some people take on the spiritual discipline of reading a Christian book during Lent. I have been asked what books I would recommend. Here is a short list of titles I would suggest folks consider. If you have a book you would recommend, comment and let me know.Non-fiction The Prodigal God, Tim Keller Abba’s Child, Brennan Manning The Prayer Life, Andrew Murray Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen The Cross of Christ, John StottFiction The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis Silence, Shusaku Endo The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene Gilead, Marilynne Robinson [Editor’s note: Also great for Lent–our own Russ Ramsey’s Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative.]

Oxford may produce cool-minded academics, but I think most new students are all jitters at the first tutorial. The system of learning here is different, individual, and oh so intense at first. There are very few lectures and even those are optional. Almost all learning happens in once a week, one-on-one meetings with a professor who is an expert in your area of interest. During the tutorial hour, the student reads aloud a previously assigned essay, hears the professor’s critique, and is given a reading assignment for the next week. The day of my first one was chill and bright when I set out. A week before, I received an email instructing me to find my way to Dr. so and so’s rooms “in college,” on “this day week.” I left far too early, but this was grace, for I was swiftly lost. I wandered at least two wrong lanes in my hunt for the right college. Oxford is a series of narrow cobbled streets threaded twixt creamy, high stone walls. Massive oaken doors etched by iron studs rise every block or two amidst the stone, and behind these, like tiny, hidden cities lie the colleges. Square gardens and cloisters framed by mossy walls wait behind those doors. Cut glass windows framed in ivy look down on quads that seem set entirely apart from the world. These become fairy walks in the starlight, I’ve seen them. But as I pattered down the street that first day, I forgot that. No fairy tale was coming my way until I figured out which wall hid the right group of gardens. I finally arrived at the porter’s lodge, having hit upon the right oaken door and asked for the rooms of Dr. so and so. I was given kindly but rather vague directions. Miraculously, I found the right staircase and two minutes later, knocked with feigned confidence at my tutor’s door. Steps up to the “Rad Cam,” or officially, “The Radcliffe Camera,” my favorite study spot. A stern, but kindly guard greets you at the door and every backpack (rucksack here) is inspected lest you try to steal a book. When I gasped back to life, I ran to the library, sure that I needed to start immediate reading in order to finish by next week’s tutorial. For the next five days, I worked feverishly, turning every so often to a notebook in which I hoped my thoughts might eventually cohere into an essay. Two days before the tutorial, I wondered how I got myself into this. One day and I stayed up to ungodly hours, trying not to repeat the same phrase in a hundred different ways. The day of the tutorial, I yielded to a sense of doom, give the paper a last edit, and walked to my tutorial feeling that I had taken my life in my hands. I had to read my paper aloud. (I saw every punctuation error as I did.) I came to the last full-stop (what they call a period here in England) and held my breath. This, I thought would be the point when my tutor would express shock at my lack of knowledge and point out the dozen errors I was sure I had made in my paper. “Hmmm,” was all my tutor said. Then, “now that part about MacDonald’s landscapes, that was intriguing. Tell me more.” Slightly dazed, I did. Lo and behold, the axe never fell. There was no great criticism to be faced. A few “footnoting issues” of course, but then, a simple discussion of the ideas I had presented. I was pointed to a book that might set my thinking straight. I was asked what interested me, and assigned a new essay. I walked out, feeling somehow reprieved . . . and a little disoriented. This felt more like tea with a friendly mentor than the academic rigors I expected. I set back to work and found my study a little easier this week – at least I knew what was best to include in the essay this time. I still stressed until the absolute last minute on getting my paper done. But when I read it aloud, there was an extra note of confidence in my voice – my tutor was interested in what I had to say, genuinely curious to see what conclusions I had drawn from the huge amount of reading offered. The next week, I actually claimed something apart from the books I read. Now, I find myself almost on a treasure hunt as I begin the work for each new essay, for the quality of what I learn is dependent on me; if I read well and articulate clearly, the tutorial will be a further adventuring into new realms of study. A glimpse from my study perch in the “Uppper Radcliffe.” I have to be surreptitious about photos, they’re not exactly allowed. This is all so different from what I expected. My initial sense of the tutorial as a meeting with a mentor is far more correct than I thought because of a simple, underlying idea to the Oxford mode of education: every student is a scholar. This is not a title conferred upon you at the end of your studies, it is what drives and defines you amidst them. The experts are simply farther along. This sense of your status as an independent learner is the underlying assumption of every tutorial, the reason that the iconic building of Oxford is not a classroom, but a library. On orientation day, when we new students were first shown our own college, and then shown around town, my friend made an astute observation. “They always show you the libraries first,” she whispered, “they’re the center of everything.” And she’s right, because the discipline of independent, thoughtful reading is what it means to become educated here in Oxford. I have held a muddled idea of what it means to be a student – probably a common misnomer. I have considered a student to be one who collects information. One who is informed by an expert on the right views of the right books. Because of this, I have often felt inadequate because I never took the time to complete my college degree. I felt as if I were somehow lacking a certain amount of information that three or four courses in the right lists of English literature might grant me. Oxford is refreshing my view of education. This is not a place where some “expert” will systematically flood you with a set amount of facts. I do most of my own learning here – I read for around three full work days a week and write for two more. I am guided to the right books in my tutorials, my false ideas corrected as they surface in my essays, but the whole process is one in which I am the active party in my learning. To be a student here is to be a scholar in training, to have my skills honed in the arts of reading, writing, and the intricate consideration of ideas. In the end, education is not the conferral of a set number of facts upon the mind of a student. Education is simply the process by which you are equipped to learn. And once you start, it doesn’t ever have to stop. That’s the gift. I can continue in scholarship no matter where I am, as long as I can read. That is ultimately the education I will take home from Oxford. It’s a good one. The Oxford Chronicles: Bod Card

One of my greatest joys as a writing pastor is that every year I am obliged to spend several weeks focusing on the two most earth-changing events in history–the birth of Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection. You cannot make sense of one without the other. I’m currently working on a Lenten Narrative to follow last year’s Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. With the season of Lent starting this week, I thought I’d offer here a chapter from Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative that looks at the incarnation of Jesus through the lens of his purpose for coming: to defeat the death I deserve and raise me to newness of life with him in his resurrection. Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative Chapter 24: The Hearts of Many Revealed The old man was a member of the old guard, the last of a generation of faithful ministers in Jerusalem’s temple. He was something of a fixture—the kind of man who seemed to have always been there. It was hard to say whether Simeon smelled like the temple or the temple smelled like Simeon, but the minds of those who passed him in the street would often drift to notions of smoke and blood and a guilty resolve to attend to their worship more regularly. The old guard to which he belonged was on a permanent watch. They were waiting for something in particular, something unique, something wonderful. The years had taught Simeon patience, so he was good at waiting. Still, he felt an unrelenting sense of urgency. He always had. He was waiting for the consolation of his people Israel. He had been waiting a long time, and his people even longer. They were a nation of sorrows, acquainted with grief. They were despised, afflicted by God. They were wounded. They’d been crushed. They were like sheep that were better at getting lost than staying near their shepherd. And they needed consolation. God would send it. And when he did, Simeon would be at his post, watching and waiting, poised to respond. This was his life’s work. Simeon was a case study in the benefits of careful examination and devotion to the word of God. He was devout—a description best reserved for the aged. He knew how to want what God had promised. He knew how to delight in God’s goodness. And he knew how to wait. He worked in the temple because he believed God was near. He knew God was near. He knew this because God had visited him, telling him he wouldn’t die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. (Lk 2:26) And at his age, it would have to be soon. Joseph and Mary were young, but they were believers. The generations before had taught them well. They journeyed to the temple for two reasons, both ancient—Mary’s ritual purification after childbirth and the redemption of their firstborn son from the Lord. Why did they need to redeem their son? Because God said in his law, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” (Ex 13:1) The consecration of the firstborn son was much more than a shallow routine asking God to give the child a long and happy life. They were recalling their history of slavery and deliverance from Egypt, where God traded the blood of a lamb for the blood of their firstborn sons—a life for a life. This was the basis of God’s claim that the firstborn sons belonged to him. When the parents accepted the sacrifice of the lamb on their son’s behalf, they forfeited their son’s life to God, along with every generation that would flow from him. From that point on, when any first son was born to a descendant of those families, the parents brought that boy to the temple to present him to God because he belonged to God. The parents presented the boy in order to purchase his release and buy him back. (Ex 13:13-15) Joseph and his wife answered the call of their ancient faith to observe the rite of purification for Mary and to redeem their son. Dark flecks of iron-scented blood spattered Mary’s garments as the priest sprinkled her. Stained now with the fresh blood of her sacrifice, she was pronounced clean by the priest. Then she and her husband took up their boy. It was time to purchase his release with more blood. As they moved toward the place where he would be redeemed, they passed an old man with searching eyes and purpose in his step. He clearly belonged in the temple. He looked official. He smelled official. But as he drew near, they could hear him mumbling. He reached for the child. Mary, surprised but willing, handed over the boy. Simeon’s joyful hope was in the promise of a glimpse of the Christ, but God had something better in mind. Simeon actually got to hold him. This mumbling member of the old guard took this new life into his arms as his words rose to a cry of praise. “O Lord, my God! Father of all blessing and honor and praise, you have been so good to your servant. You have been so good to your servant! I’m an old man, my days have been long, but I’m your son. And today, you have blessed me. I can’t believe how good you’ve been! Do you see this boy? Do you see him? Because I see him, Father. And what’s more, I know who he is. As surely as I live and breathe, I’m holding in my arms the Redeemer. With my very eyes I’m beholding your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of a dark but watching world. He will be the light by which the Gentiles will see you and come to know you. He will be the light by which your people Israel will again see the glory of how you have loved them with a love that will not let them go. O great and glorious King, Shepherd of My Soul, Captain of My Guard, I have kept my post. I have not turned my eyes from the horizon because you have promised that your Messiah would come on my watch. And I have seen him. I have held him. I have kissed him. Now I can die in peace. So honorably retire your watchman, O great and glorious King, and bring me home.” (Lk 2:29-32) Joseph and Mary were speechless. They weren’t expecting Simeon, and his blessing wasn’t the standard fare. Most blessings were marked by warm petitions for success in life, but Simeon’s wasn’t a petition at all. It was a proclamation. He wasn’t asking for what might be. He was declaring what was. Every word spoke to this child’s purpose. There was something this child had come to do. They had brought Jesus to this place to redeem him, but before them stood a man proclaiming that this baby would, in fact, redeem them. As his words sank in, Mary and Joseph marveled at what he had said. This moment was a meeting of hearts. For Simeon, the white-hot coal burning in him was finally exposed and began to die out. This was a happy moment. But his smile faded. The joy never left his eyes, but gravity pulled at his countenance. He grew serious. There was more to say because there was more to this little life than met the eye. All that Simeon had said so far was about what Jesus would do. Now it was time to broach the subject of how he would do it. Simeon had a sense of what awaited Jesus. He told Mary a truth she must have already sensed: that Jesus would turn this world on its ear—and it would come at a great cost. Her baby would facilitate the ruin of many in Israel. Like a stump from Jesse’s root, he would jut out and break the toes of any who dared tread upon the purpose for which he had come. Jesus would reveal the hearts of all mankind. The light of the world would shine in every dark corner of every dark heart, exposing every dark secret. And this was a world that had grown quite fond of darkness. It was no surprise that he would be opposed. (Lk 2:34) He told her all these things, but she couldn’t help suspecting that he was holding something back. There was something else on his mind. Something less general, more pointed—pointed at her. And she was right. He had something to say, something that would hurt. But it had to be said, and he was the one appointed to say it. Simeon leveled his wrinkled face to look directly into the young mother’s eyes. “Mary, what awaits your son will be like a sword that will pierce through your soul.” (Lk 2:35) If Mary kept things spoken about Jesus in her heart, this must have been one of them. A sword would pierce her soul. It was the price of being the mother of the Christ. She had to raise this baby, knowing that he belonged to the Maker and had come for the purpose of saving God’s people from their sin. Everything in her culture told her that sin offerings were a bloody business. And thirty-three years later, she would find herself at the foot of the cross on which her son hung. With her own two eyes, she would watch him die, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. (Isa 53:3, Jn 19:16-27) If her son was the salvation of Israel, then he was her savior too. Later, when he was a man, she must have thought about the way he talked of God’s salvation. The way he spoke with such authority. “No one takes my life from me. But I lay it down of my own accord. And I alone have God’s authority to lay it down and his authority to take it up again. This is why he sent me.” (Jn 10:18) There was purpose behind everything her son ever did. It was in his words. It was in his ways. It even seemed that he hung on that cross because he meant to. Her son wasn’t simply dying. He was doing something.

In part one, I talked about the outset of the journey. Part two was a look back at the lack of pattern over the years, which explains the appropriate lack of readiness, which, while uncomfortable, can be very good thing. In this post, thanks to your excellent feedback, I’m going to try and get more specific about the process and try to answer some of your questions. Right off the bat, let me address this question a few of you asked: Which comes first, the lyrics or the music? This question has been asked of songwriters for as long as there has been songwriting, I imagine. The answer isn’t very satisfying, I’m afraid, which may be why it keeps coming up. The answer is “Yes.” Or, if you prefer, “D) All the above.” Sometimes the lyric comes first, sometimes the music comes first, and sometimes they come all at once, like the doorbell and the phone ringing at the same time. When someone claims to have discovered a foolproof method for creating art—other than a willingness to work very hard at it—I doubt either their honesty or their skill. I’d dig into that more, but I want to get us back to the studio. Reading through your questions, I realized the best way to approach this may be to choose a song from the new record and give you a play-by-play of what we ended up doing. On the Steven Curtis Chapman tour last fall, I was desperate to write songs. I knew we would be hitting the studio in a matter of weeks, and I didn’t have a single new song written. Being the opener on a tour is a great opportunity to write because of the abundance of free time. Not only that, it’s inspiring to be rubbing elbows with other songwriters and musicians. I remember hearing Billy Joel say once that when he faces writer’s block he puts on a tweed jacket, brings a notebook to a smoky bar in New York, sits in a corner and pretends like he’s a songwriter; sometimes it’s enough to convince himself. There’s something to be said for that, especially when you’re susceptible to certain voices in your head. It reminds me of George MacDonald’s admonition to know God by obeying him. If you want to know the mind of God, do what he says. Jesus, who knew the Father completely, also obeyed the Father completely. Similarly (though I know it’s a stretch), if you want to know what it’s like to be a songwriter, put on your tweed and write a song. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. Back to the tour. Every time I found a few hours of free time I ducked into a choir room or Sunday School classroom with my guitar and tried to find a song. By the middle of the tour I had written one and started about seven, but I was on the hunt for more. Then one day in soundcheck, one dropped out of the sky. Ben Shive started playing this really cool piano part, then Ken Lewis started drumming to it, and in moments everyone in the room stopped what they were doing. Everyone in the band hurried over to their instruments and without a word started playing along. Brent Milligan put on his bass. Josh Wilson and I started strumming. Harold Rubens at the soundboard stopped tweaking and started listening. Something cool was happening. If you’re a musician or a songwriter, chances are you know what I’m talking about. I’m not usually one for jamming, but sometimes someone discovers a chord progression or a melody or a rhythm that’s like a magic key. It opens an invisible door to a wide field of inspiration and beauty. It’s a rare occurrence, and I imagine it feels quite a bit like the Holy Spirit descending on the house, and we’re suddenly speaking the tongues of men and angels. Lest you think I’m claiming that something I’ve written is that kind of inspired, let me make a disclaimer. First of all, who knows? God can do what he wants, with whomever he wants. But the song as it’s written is never as beautiful as it was in that fleeting, exhilarating moment of inspiration. The song’s potential is shimmering beyond the veil somewhere, while the song that you finally write is almost always haunted by a feeling of disappointment. When people talk about a book or a song being not so much finished as abandoned, that’s what they mean. They had a picture in their minds or a feeling in their heart that they’re trying to bring into space and time, and there’s just no way (yet) to deliver it in fulness. The song in reality is as different from what you imagined as a portrait is from the painter’s subject. At some point (usually thanks to the mercy of a deadline), you have to put down the brush and give thanks for the chance to have made an attempt. This has caused me some grief, and a lot of frustration. There are songs on my older albums (I won’t tell you which) that I had dreams about, but even as we recorded them I could feel the magic fading. It was like trying to shave as the battery in my Norelco died a slow death and left me half-whiskery. (I thought of that analogy because it happened to me about an hour ago.) The songwriting process for me is about trying to find the words and melodies that will get me as close as possible to the summit of the mountain I first glimpsed through the clouds. Most often, I’m nowhere close. I end up in the desert somewhere, turning the map this way and that. But sometimes I end up at least in the foothills, and I go to bed happy; I haven’t summited, but I can at least see the peak and imagine what it would be like to stand there. Those are a few of the thoughts that went through my noggin as we vamped Ben’s chord progression. Over the mic I asked Harold at the soundboard to record what we were doing, and he gave me a thumbs up; he didn’t say a word because he didn’t want to break the spell. Right away, for reasons I don’t know, I thought of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road. It’s an amazing (and amazingly dark) book about a father and son trying to survive the apocalypse. They’re traversing the wasteland of America with hunger at their heels and man-eating wretches on their heels, too, trying to reach the ocean where the father believes they’ll find help. Along the way, he tells his little boy again and again that they have to “carry the fire”. It’s a simple, beautiful metaphor that can mean quite a few things. I started singing that phrase during soundcheck, and pretty quickly staked my claim on Ben’s piano part by asking if I could write something to it. Here’s the recording from that day. Listening to it, you may wonder, “Why all the fuss?” It may not hit you at all. All I know is, it led me to a song. (That’s Josh Wilson playing the pretty acoustic guitar stuff.)https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/CarrytheFireSoundcheck.mp3 It was about a month later that I finally managed to write the verses. They came after a long, hard conversation with a dear friend whose marriage was foundering. He wept, and I ran out of words. I finally tried to put down in a song what I wanted to say to encourage him, and came up with this: Carry the Fire I will hold your hand, love As long as I can, love Though the powers rise against us Though your fears assail you And your body may fail you There’s a fire that burns within us And we dream in the night Of a city descending With the sun in the center And a peace unending I will, I will carry the fire I will, I will carry the fire Carry the fire for you And we kneel in the water The sons and the daughters And we hold our hearts before us And we look to the distance And raise our resistance In the face of the forces Gathered against us And we dream in the night Of a King and a kingdom Where joy writes the songs And the innocent sing them I will carry the fire for you Oh, sing on, sing on (Light up the darkness) When your hope is gone, sing on And we dream in the night Of a feast and a wedding And the Groom in his glory When the bride is made ready I will carry the fire for you A few words might be tweaked here and there before all is said and done, but that’s more or less the lyric. Caitlin asked about getting too comfortable with formulae or song structures, as opposed to (I assume) pushing yourself into unfamiliar territory. I think this is where exercising good old fashioned discernment is the thing. If you’re a lover of good songs, and a student of good songwriting, you’ll eventually learn how and when to break the rules. There are conventions we all recognize (i.e., verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus, or if you rewind to 1989, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/ELECTRIC GUITAR SOLO/chorus), and most popular songs these days fall into some version of that. It’s not a bad place to start, and it’s a tried-and-true way to structure a song. But you also have to be willing to follow your nose. You have to be willing to let the song go where it wants. I think that’s the best question to ask, when you come to a writing crossroads: “Where does the story want to go?” I got home from a weekend of touring yesterday and my daughter Skye (9) had written me a song. It was a sweet, sad song about how she misses me when I’m gone, complete with a verse, a chorus, another verse, a chorus, and a pretty hook of a la-la-la melody. She’s pretty brilliant, and is already saying things like, “I was going to do another chorus, but the la-la-la felt better there.” She’s too young to care too much about song structures, or to feel pressure to conform to the confines of a radio single, or to get hung up on the coherence of an idea. She just sits down at the piano with an emotion and tries to fashion it into a song, without self-consciousness or hubris—just freedom.  It’s a great reminder to me of how best to approach the process. The Kingdom belongs to such as these. This new song, “Carry the Fire” isn’t much like anything I’ve ever written. I’m fine with that. Actually, I’m excited about it. To answer Caitlyn’s question another way, the way to push yourself into new territory isn’t about pushing yourself as much as it is allowing yourself to be pulled along. I was talking with Sally Lloyd-Jones last week, and she described the way she felt going into her new project: “I feel like I’m following clues.” Exactly. Here’s a snippet of the song as it its early stages in the studio. This is a scratch vocal, scratch guitars, and no bass—so there’s a lot more that has to happen before I even start singing the keeper vocal. Then comes background vocals, guitars, mixing and mastering. So don’t judge too harshly. (Pretty please.)https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/CarrytheFireSoundcheck.mp3 ————————— Well, I’ve run out of room here. I guess there’s going to have to be a part four, and I’ll try and get to the rest of your questions there. Thanks for reading, folks!

Christian Storytelling: Part I Christian Storytelling: Part II Christian Storytelling: Part III In Part III, I proposed N.T. Wright’s view of the Scriptures as the first four acts of an unfinished drama as a potentially profitable alternative hermeneutic to the normal ways evangelicals handle the biblical texts. Since I only included a brief paragraph from Wright’s thought on this method, I’ll take some time today to put some skin and muscle on the skeleton.  I’ll note some of his own remarks and push them a bit further myself. Wright quotes will come from his lecture, How Can the Bible be Authoritative? (or PDF, if you’d like). First, let’s allow Wright himself to explain a bit more: Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted authority for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This authority of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency. The next obvious question is, “Where does the Bible stop and where do we pick up?” Let’s lay out the four acts given to us: Act I: Creation Act II: Fall Act III: Israel Act IV: Jesus Wright continues: The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The church would then live under the authority of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act. Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material. So the Bible takes us as far as Act V, Scene 1, but there is much story ahead.  There is no question that this is more difficult than extracting principles and applying them. Wright notes the difficulty well: How can an ancient narrative text be authoritative? How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began “Once upon a time . . .?” But the difficulty of the approach is not what matters. What approach is most faithful to Scripture? Here’s the biggest advantage to this way of thinking about Scripture: It puts us in our proper place in the story. It invites us into the story. The story of Scripture is the story of the world, and therefore the story of every person who ever lived. Think of the film Stranger Than Fiction. Harold Crick has no idea he’s a character in a story. But how much does everything change when he becomes aware of it? When we recognize that the story of Jesus is our own story, that there’s a writer, and that this writer is good, merciful, and loving and can identify with our weaknesses, struggles, and temptations, everything changes. When we understand that we’re part of a story with a happy ending, an irreversible, unchangeable happy ending that no amount of danger or evil can thwart, it makes all the difference. Who wants a set of instructions from a commanding officer, when your day can begin with “Once upon a time…?” Especially when you have direct access to the story’s author. In Part V, we’ll explore the concept of “Faithful Improvisation.”

My son plays happily. He flits easily between two worlds: the world that is and the world he imagines. His conversation assumes the extraordinary. His play is an adventure in make believe. How like faith. Perhaps nothing is more like faith than play. This “admission” would no doubt make Christians raised in an era of apologetic zeal begin to sweat. It may also delight anti-theist scolds, those champions of unhappiness and pretense. But it is no great surrender to say faith is like play. If in a young boy’s imaginative play he sees himself brave and trustworthy in the good fight, then we are glad if he grows into a man who is like that in “the real world.” Likewise, if a little girl tenderly cares for a baby doll, devoting herself to its care while at play, then grows up to become a loving, tender mother, we are happy. And we should be. I call that good. So child’s play is braided into the lifelong chords of faith. Part of life is anticipating, by faith, the right-side-up world. And it is deadly difficulty when it feels like the ceiling’s coming down all around us. Part of the Christian life, perhaps the heart of it, is praying “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This is holy imagination at work. This is a life of imaginative anticipation. Faith is play. It is playing at the most deeply true articles of the human charter. Imagination is an essential capacity of faith. Does our conversation assume the extraordinary? If it doesn’t, can we be Christians? Jesus told us that children show us the way to the Kingdom. I believe he meant to commend both their lack of personal standing (they cannot cling to accomplishment as merit) and their capacity for deep dependence. Children are suited for the Kingdom in their imaginative play. “Make believe” is one of the clearest avenues along the way to making us believers. So, let them play. And join them.

Like I said in part one, this isn’t meant to be a definitive piece on record making, because there are a zillion ways to approach it. I just did the math and realized this is my eighth studio record. That doesn’t include live stuff or Walk or the Slugs & Bugs CDs, nor does it include occasional shorter recording sessions like “Holy is the Lord” (for City on a Hill) or the appendices A, C, or M. I only say that to say that as I look back at all those sessions, one of the only patterns that emerges is a lack of pattern. This may be super-boring, but just for fun I’m going to try and remember a thing or two about the making of those records. Back to pre-production. It was hard work. Since I was so unused to playing with a band, it freaked me out to suddenly hear drums, bass, and perc on my little acoustic songs. I thought they would lose any hint of their acoustic folkiness, which in hindsight is silly in light of how big the drums can be on some of my favorite artists’ songs. Now I’m used to imagining a rhythm section on the songs even as they’re being written, but at the time it was unsettling. (Side note: this album has always been a bit of an underdog, partly because it released on 9/11/2001, and partly because, though I fought it tooth and nail, the label insisted that my face be on the cover—something I swore I’d never do. Still, every now and then I hear from a listener that this is their favorite of my albums. Those same people are probably Cubs fans, like me.) I don’t remember there being much pre-production on this record, either, but we did record the demos at Andrew Osenga’s studio. I barely knew Osenga at the time. He was finishing up an album called Photographs, and played me a song called “High School Band”, which was only about half finished, as I recall. After we finished recording the demos, I asked Osenga offhand if he had any extra songs lying about; I felt like I needed one more for the album. He shrugged and played us an unfinished version of “After the Last Tear Falls”. On the way home from his house I pulled into a mall parking lot, sat in the back of my van, and worked out the chorus. One of these days, for my own jollies, I’m going to put down everything I remember from each record. For now, that’s a quick look at the beginning of the process for each. This album, though, has me feeling delightfully less comfortable for a few reasons. 1) A few years back we watched a documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (one of the best music docs I’ve ever seen), and Tom’s producer joked that every three records you should fire your producer, lest things get stale. There’s no way on earth I’d fire Ben or Andy G., but in light of that comment we all thought it would be fun to see what would happen if we invited our friend Cason Cooley into the process. Cason’s a great producer and a great friend, and he and Ben have wanted to work together for years. I’ve grown really comfortable with Ben at the wheel. Gullahorn’s input is vital, too. Andy and Ben are both amazing, AMAZING songwriters, but their approaches to songs are really different. They hear different things in my songs, and different aspects resonate with them. That makes for a wonderful tension. We don’t always agree, but because of a deep mutual respect, we always truly consider the other guy’s ideas. Bringing Cason into the mix stirs things up a little. He’s listening in a totally different way than I’m used to, and I think it will bring a new color to the paint on the wall. 2) The other thing is, none of these songs have been road-tested. Usually, I’m touring during the writing process. That means I can test the new songs out to see how well they connect. Playing a song for someone tells you volumes about the song. So often, I finish a song in private, feel great about it, then as soon as I play it for someone I see a thousand weaknesses I was blind to before. I think most songwriters feel the same thing. But since I was touring with Steven last fall when I was writing these songs, then I went straight to the Behold the Lamb tour, which doesn’t afford me much time to play my own stuff, and now I’m on the road with Steven again, I haven’t had a chance to play any of these songs live. (I played an unfinished version of “Shine Your Light On Me” at two Christmas shows, but that’s it.) 3) Finally, while Counting Stars was made in concentration (nine days with no distractions), this new album is practically the opposite. We started three weeks ago, then we stopped because of scheduling conflicts. For the rest of the spring we’ll be working here and there, on our days off from the tour. The bad thing is, we can’t gain much momentum. The good thing is, it gives me time to listen to the songs fifteen thousand times, tweak lyrics, mull over arrangements and instrumentation. It also gives me time to write. We have eleven songs, but it’s nice knowing that, should inspiration strike, I have time to add another few to the pot. I said this in the last post: as soon as you think you know what you’re doing, you’re in big trouble. It brings to mind this quote from Rich Mullins, one of my heroes: “I would rather live on the verge of falling and let my security be in the all-sufficiency of the grace of God than to live in some kind of pietistic illusion of moral excellence.” Sometimes it is at the edges of things, at the brink of destruction, at the love-drunk moments before that first kiss, that we feel most alive. Maybe that’s where God wants us: where we’re most vulnerable, and thus most willing to ask for help, to cry for rescue, to joyously admit defeat. Then we know the work is his, not ours. —————————————————— I had a few things in mind for part three, but I’m curious: what would you guys like to hear about? Would you rather I dug into the specifics of the process? Would you like a play-by-play of a day in the studio? The interplay of songwriting and song-production?

On the second-to-the-last day of September, in the year of our Lord 2011, I came into possession of a hill in the English countryside. I marked the event that evening with all due solemnity and appropriate honors. My husband and I had ostensibly walked out in the late afternoon to watch the sunset from a neighboring slope, but with a few quick modifications, and all the young joy of a first-time hill-owner, I adapted it into a celebration. I cut a few swinging strands of ivy that hung over the rutted path we took from our cottage, and as soon as we had spread our blanket on the grassy prospect, I sat down and began weaving them into a coronet. Philip grinned a little ruefully as I studded it with tiny thistles—the bane of any pasture-keeper’s existence; the amethysts and jasper of the woodland lapidary. But when I opened our tea caddy and produced, not the expected and well-traveled thermos and tin cups, but a bottle of champagne, his smile registered genuine surprise. “This is a momentous occasion,” I said gravely, attempting to loosen the cork and then passing it to him in a sudden fear of flying consequences. “It’s not every day you come into property.” I had wanted it the moment I had seen it: that green, sweeping hill, mounting in an undulation of gentle swales to a point dark among the hedges. The longing had leapt up in me with a thrill of pain and joy and I knew it had to be mine, right down to the least blade of grass. And not the hillside only, but the lane by which I had reached it, overarched by chestnuts and wizened holly trees, and the cottage it led from, buried in a steep fold of the Dorset hills. I wanted the orchard I came through and all its ripe burden of sun-warmed fruit. I wanted the sunlight itself, falling dapple-dazzling in pools of wealth upon the landscape and I wanted the blue bowl of sky arching cloud-swept above. I was inexorable in my demands: I even required the very lambs and ewes with which it was populated, grazing in ceaseless content upon its verdant slope. The transaction had gone through without a hitch—and completely unbeknown to the thoroughly lovely and gracious couple that occupied the land. The husband, a gentleman farmer of the old school, even witnessed the proceedings from afar, hailing me from his tractor as he chugged off down into the hollow, and hadn’t the least suspicion what I was up to. It wasn’t the first time I had experienced such an overmastering and irresistible passion for ownership. In like manner, I had snatched up every last Canova in the Louvre, and the Alpen-crowned sapphire of Italy’s Lake Como. I had collected a red sandshore on Prince Edward Island and a time-forgotten homestead in the Shenandoah Valley and an entire jewel of an island off the coast of Georgia. I had even managed to purchase, in a happy circumstance of exceedingly good fortune, a certain majestic cedar tree, gleaming out from a dawn-lit mist and hung with diamonds of rarest dew. This last was a steal, and genuinely rare, for I found it in my own backyard. The cork flew off the bottle with a festive pop and we watched it soar straight over our heads like a springing lark. I retrieved it from the grass at my side and dropped it into the tea caddy as a souvenir. “I’m landed gentry,” I told Philip, lifting my glass to a level with the departing sun and watching the rose-tinted light flit and sparkle among the bubbles. “In good standing and by all the inviolable laws of fairyland.” In his elegant collection of essays, The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton observes that this insatiable yearning for acquisition in the face of overwhelming beauty is common to the human condition. “A dominant impulse on encountering beauty,” he writes, “is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this, and it mattered to me.’” I had never heard it expressed that way, but de Botton’s words were a wind upon the Aeolian harp of my deepest sensibilities, and I knew by the hints of that far-off song that he was on to something. Perhaps something bigger and truer than even he imagined. He went on to recount how John Ruskin had considered this phenomenon and had concluded that there was an effective and thoroughly respectable means of satisfying such an insatiable craving: to look deeply enough into the beauty to gain an awareness of its specific elements and impressions, and to make the attempt to express it artistically. In other words, to see, and to describe what you have seen. This was Ruskin’s motivation, both in his teaching and his drawing manuals: to help others to see. To open their eyes and to loosen their fingers. To “direct people’s attention accurately to the beauty of God’s work in the material universe.” He espoused two particular mediums for this endeavor, sketching and “word-painting.” (Photography was initially advocated, as well, until it became apparent to him that the general enthusiasm was leaning all-too-precariously towards the temptation to let the camera do all the seeing.) And in both cases, he was adamant on one point: natural aptitude and talent were secondary—even inferior—to open eyes. To teach a person to draw, with strokes of a pencil or with words, was to place a golden key in their hands—they would never look at the world around them the same way again. The old indifference which is the curse of familiarity would give way before the staggering particularity of nature and design. And in the effort to produce a creative response, howsoever imperfect, the beauty could be owned in a way that even physical possession could not guarantee. My contract on the hill was drawn up in the form of a poem. Candidly, I don’t know the first thing about writing poetry; it would be generous to call all previous attempts awkward. But when I saw that hill, when I knew I must have it, I knew with equal conviction that the payment had to be made in verse. It was so far beyond my powers that the added humility of ineptitude seemed appropriate. For three hours I sat there in the sun, a blue English sky above and the beloved, satiny English grass beneath, and waited upon that work. I was aware of every flick of a bird’s wing in the hedges behind me, and the deep, concentrated indigo of the bloom-frosted sloes tangled thick within the branches. A cockerel saluted the world from some unseen farmyard far below and the uniquely pastoral, slightly ovine scent of the countryside rose up to greet me like a friend. I watched the shadow of a tree travel over the velvet surface of a mounded hill to the south and saw the wood doves fling themselves skyward with a bustle of feathers and matronly complaint. And when, at length, I collected my things and started back down towards our cottage and my tea, I could almost hear my own heart pounding in my chest, I felt so alive. I had come to inquire and I was leaving in possession. But ownership is not all, of course, even in this imaginative sense—there is a much deeper magic at play for the child of God. For the true apprehension of beauty, like faith itself, is an exercise in laying claim to what is already ours. There is a low door in the garden wall, and it opens on an inheritance: this is my Father’s world, and He has given it to me. All of the beauty in this astonishing universe of ours has already been lavished by a self-giving Creator. Wakefulness and effort give forth upon our birthright; seeing becomes receiving. Of this sublimity the Restoration-era minister Thomas Traherne waxes exuberant in his masterpiece of meditation, Centuries: “Your enjoyment of the world is never right,” he says, “till you so esteem it, that everything in it is more your treasure than a King’s exchequer full of Gold and Silver…till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.” In short, if we find ourselves wandering through this beautiful world of ours with ink-stained fingers and dreamy eyes and a slightly lopsided ivy crown, gazing about like we own the place, it’s because we do.

What Is Love? Part I – Definitions No discussion of love can be complete without regarding Gethsemane. In this second Garden, the divine love of the Father in the spirit of Jesus wrestled with the soul of Jesus, a war inside one body. This Man who had gone around saying “I and the Father are one” and “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” saw a separate will within himself, self-preservation rising up, self-love. “If there is any other way, let this cup pass from me.” I don’t want to die by execution, have my soul be despised, rejected, and to become sin and have my spirit separated from my Father. Anything but that. Was it wrong to feel this way, wrong to desire a way less painful? Obviously not. Temptation is not sin. “Let this cup pass from me.” He wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, but Jesus wasn’t saying, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” It was, “Please, if there’s any other way, get me out of this.” The Father wouldn’t let him off, because Jesus was born to be a blessing for others, broken bread and outpoured wine. In the end Jesus took the sword of the Spirit and ran it through his own desire to be happy, pain-free, and comfortable. “Neverthless, not my will, but Thine be done.” “Who, for the joy set before him, endured the Cross, despising the shame,” the joy of seeing others freed, renewed, made alive, made fit for the company of Heaven. What choice happened in Gethsemane? All we have are the words of Jesus: “Not My will, but Thine be done.” But we also have the witness of James, who delineates the exact nature of temptation. “Every man is tempted” (including the Man, Jesus) “when he is drawn away by his own strong desire, and enticed.” If there is temptation, there is a Tempter, exciting those desires and pulling on them, stirring us up. To be enticed is to want to do something, to feel the pull of desire, of want. Jesus was enticed to want something other than God’s will for him. He wanted to escape the spirit, soul, and body suffering of the Cross. This was not sin. To want something, and be enticed toward it, is not sin. James continues. “Then, when strong desire has conceived, it brings forth sin…” Strong desire has to be married to something in order to conceive – a choice of the will to have the desired thing, to turn from faith in the sovereign, loving God and instead to reach for what we think is best. It is the choice of Eve in Eden. God hath said, but I am choosing otherwise. We trust our own temporary tunnel vision rather than God’s perfect and all-encompassing sight. In Gethsemane, this second Garden, Jesus made the opposite choice. He gave up the soulish desire for self-protection, for comfort, ease, and gave in to the divine nature within himself: “I can do nothing of myself” (that is, of his own human power). “The Father in me does the works.” In temptation, Jesus always gave in to the divine nature as the Source and Ground of his being, as the sovereign Director who ordered his footsteps. When Jesus meets up with Judas and the guards, we see a completely different man than in the preceding hours – human still, potent with passion and feeling, but his humanity subjugated to the eternal plan and purpose of the Father within him. The divine nature within Jesus won out, as always, even in the most intense situations. The essential questions, “Who am I” and “Why am I here?” were answered in a very definite and final victory as he laid down his soul and body life, allowing Jesus to walk as a King through the torture and death of the Cross. To be continued.

Sydney Lea is the author of ten collections of poetry including Pursuit Of A Wound (2001) which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also published a novel, A Place In Mind (1989), and two collections of essays. Lea is the founding editor of New England Review, where he served from 1977 until 1989. He has taught at several colleges, in Europe and the United States, including Yale, Wesleyan, and Dartmouth. He is the new poet laureate of Vermont. Jeanne Murray Walker wrote of his new collection, Six Sundays Toward a Seventh, “In this book Sydney Lea invites us to take a spiritual journey . . . By the end of Six Sundays, the narrator and the reader step together into radiant light. What is so moving about Six Sundays is not only its wrestling with spiritual questions, but also Lea’s affirmation that life is a spiritual journey and that this journey is of paramount importance.” I was given the privilege of assisting him as editor for his new poetry collection Six Sundays Toward a Seventh – which is the first book in Wipf & Stock’s new Poiema Poetry Series – released the first of January 2012. It is available from Wipf & Stock. The following poem is included in this new book. Barnet Hill Brook Here’s what to read in mud by the brook after last night’s storm, Which inscribed itself on sky as light, now here, now gone- And matchless. I kneel in the mud, by scrimshaw of rodents, by twinned Neat stabs of weasel. I won’t speak of those flashes. Here by my hand, The lissome trail of a worm that lies nearby under brush, Carnal pink tail showing out. Gnats have thronged my face. I choose not to fend them off. Except for my chest in its slight Lifting and sinking, the place’s stillness feels complete. Its fullness too: in the pool above the dead grass dam, The water striders are water striders up and down: They stand on themselves, feet balanced on feet in mirroring water. How many grains of sand in the world? So one of my daughters Wanted to know in her little girlhood. “Trillions,” I said. “I love you,” she answered back. “I love you more than that.” Lord knows I’m not a man who deserves to be so blessed. I choose to believe that there’s grace, that the splendid universe Lies not in my sight but subsumes my seeing, my small drab witness. Tonight my eye may look on cavalcades of brightness, Of star and planet. Or cloud again. And when I consider, O, what is man, That thou art mindful of him, it’s proper For me to have knelt, if only by habit. Pine needles let go, And drop, and sink to this rillet’s bright white bottomstones. To tally them up would take me a lifetime. And more would keep coming. A lifetime at least. And more would keep coming, please God, keep coming. Posted with permission of the poet. Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Christian Storytelling: Part I Christian Storytelling: Part II In our journey through the Christian story and Christian storytelling, we have to take a look at the Bible. Since we’re all big fans of Sally Lloyd-Jones here, I don’t think I’ll have to do much convincing when it comes to talking about the Bible as a story. But whenever the subject of interpreting Scripture comes up, lots of very strongly-held opinions clash. I want to say that at the outset, because I think we can have a very gracious and charitable discussion about how to approach the Bible. What we think of the Scriptures will dictate how we interpret them. I want to propose some ideas (mostly not my own) about how to approach the Bible as a story, but first, I’ll start with two often-held views of the Scriptures and their interpretation. 1.  The Bible is God’s personal letter (or “love letter”) to each of us. The method of interpretation that usually follows this point of view goes something like this: A small group Bible study sits around with Bibles open and reads a verse or a passage. Then the small group leader says, “Let’s go around the circle and share what this verse means to you.” Then each member says a few things about how that verse touches his or her life, and the whole group sits around in amazement that the Scriptures can mean so many different things to so many different people. Now, I don’t want to disparage this outright, because undoubtedly, the work of the Spirit can and does apply the Scriptures to our hearts, even in a given moment in a small Bible study. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest about the potential problems, or the incomplete nature of this method. The Bible is neither addressed directly nor written directly to you or me. Genesis 1 doesn’t start, “Dear Travis.” It is not a letter, but a collection of a wide variety of literary genres, all of which communicate truth in a different manner and require a different set of rules for understanding. You would totally misunderstand Dickens, Shakespeare, or any other writer if you took their book as a personal letter to you; the same is true of the Scriptures. This method can really mess up our theology and Christian practice. So let’s conclude this: The Bible is definitely to us and for us, but it is also a collection of writings in a wide variety of contexts and needs careful consideration for understanding. Taking the Bible as “God’s love letter” lends us to the idea that “It’s just me, my Bible, and the Holy Spirit, and that’s all I need.” In fact, we need the whole community of believers and those who have gone before us. 2. The Bible is a sort of “Guidebook” for our lives here on earth.  It is God’s instruction to humanity. While many would not word their view this way, many folks who reject view #1 hold some form of this view. We’ve all heard that the B.I.B.L.E. is our “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” The Scriptures are all too frequently employed as a rulebook or a topical guidebook to get through life here on earth. Have a problem with patience? Look up every verse that mentions patience. You’re aware of this method. It’s the medicine cabinet method, or the magic book or grocery list method. The method of interpretation that follows is usually centered in some way around the grammatical-historical principle. We understand, contra view #1, that the Bible was written at a certain time and in certain genres.  So we apply a two-fold method of interpretation: (A) “What did this passage mean when it was written?” and (B) “What does it mean to us today?” If we follow step A, we will arrive at “biblical principles.” Once we have extracted the biblical principles out of the biblical narrative, step B will apply the principle to our lives today. The problem with this is that it misses key elements of the purpose and nature of the Scriptures. The Bible is not a book of life principles or “keys for living.” It is not a self-help book or a systematic theology book. It is, by and large, a narrative about Christ told in various forms and genres. This undoubtedly makes interpretation and application more difficult (more about that in Part IV). Now, on to an alternative approach to Scripture and its application. 3.  The Bible is an unfinished drama.  This is the view of the Bible I plan to expound upon in a coming post. N.T. Wright has offered, I think, a much more helpful view of the Scriptures than either of the two views above. Here is how he summarizes this approach to the Bible: Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves. While there are obviously potential weaknesses with this approach, I think there is much to commend it as well. I will explore its strengths and weaknesses in Part IV. In any case, we must keep one thing primary, and this is really the whole point of this post: The Scriptures are about Christ and his story. And it’s about our invitation to participate in that story, which is why this third view is attractive. The Scriptures are meant to show us Jesus and lead us to Jesus. Any approach to the Scriptures that is not centered around seeking Him “that we may have life” will result in the error of the Pharisees. We can extract principles and apply the Bible personally all day long, but if we haven’t started with the understanding that the Bible is the story of Jesus, and that “every story” in the Bible “whispers His name,” we’ll miss the real magic of the Scriptures.