What are you looking for?

After the mad rush surrounding the Oscar Nominations from late last year and a bushel of great movies like “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Into the Wild,” “Away from Her,” “Juno,” “La Vie En Rose” “The Kite Runner,” “Once,” “Lars and the Real Girl, “Atonement,” and others, there was a dry spell that lasted too long. Sometimes the selection of interesting movies is like a banquet table. There’s so many choices, it’s hard to decide. Other times, I can’t find even one movie of interest at my largest local multiplex, the AMC Oakview Plaza 24 (with stadium seating and popcorn that has become far too expensive). And that coming from a guy that has fairly eclectic taste in movies. These capsules should be looked at, not as reviews, but as one guy’s brief summary from which you should feel free to comment: Smart People – Just released, it’s fair and could have been better. It features characters that are depressed for nearly the entire movie. I don’t mind characters that are depressed, especially if they have some redeeming qualities and somehow learn something or grow, but this movie showed the characters rather one-dimensionally. Further, they were one dimensional stereotypes, which makes for predictable movie watching. Ellen Page, the young pistol from the the movie Juno, played a similar character in Smart People–smart, cranky, witty, but slightly toned down from the Juno character. Things We Lost in the Fire – Excellent. Highly recommended. Performances by Halle Berry and especially Benicio Del Toro were exceptional. That guy can act. In a role that could have easily produced a performance that was over the top, Del Toro’s character was restrained and throttled. There were some slow moments, but overall it was a realistic, honest picture. In contrast to the characters in Smart People, this movie featured characters with nuance and shades of gray. Because they reveal themselves, I hoped good things for them. The movie follows the journey of two main characters and their responses to life altering events. It’s directed by Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, who uses interesting close-ups to punctuate deeply felt emotion. I was so impressed by her direction that I ordered Brothers, another Bier directed film and the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Audience Prize. Martian Child – Better than I expected. As learned later, the reviews weren’t flattering, but I really enjoyed it. John Cusack rarely disappoints. His characters are usually so darn likable. His real life sister Joan Cusack plays his on-screen sister. As a father that raised a son with a disability, the movie resonated deeply with me. It has a lot to say about loyalty and finding the value in people, even when it isn’t immediately apparent, or even when it takes a lot of digging, encouraging, or a lot of whatever. My experience has been that the deeper one digs, the more good one finds. Love removes obstacles that prevent people from thriving. Cusack’s character adopts a little boy who believes he’s from Mars, but ironically, it’s a movie that is remarkably human. Namesake – I really enjoyed it. I’m giving it an 8, on a 1 to 10 scale. Even through it was an Indian produced, directed, and acted film, there were a lot of universal themes. Ethnic cultural protocol is often more global than might initially be thought. With grace and dignity, the movie tracks the life of one family. There’s beauty in the scenery, and beauty in the love and caring of family members, though it’s not always demonstrative. Like Things We Lost in the Fire, issues of regret are one of the major themes found in this movie. Stranger Than Fiction – It’s one I totally blew off when it was in the theaters. Will Ferrell benefits from a first rate script and good supporting performances from the other cast members and turns in a great performance himself which is far afield from his comedic tendencies. It’s a new twist on the often tried “writer becomes part of the narrative” conceit. It’s an amalgam of genres, containing elements of comedy, romance, drama, and fantasy. It’s sweet, intelligent, and weighty; by weighty, I mean that there are important moral questions that the respective characters confront. And they aren’t wrapped up in resolution with pretty paper and bows. Stardust – I didn’t enjoy Stardust as much as I expected. I thought it came off of the rails a few times. There were too many special effects and too many characters that were too poorly developed. In short, it was hard to follow. It was a decent idea that could have been done better. I thought the young Cox actor was very good, as was Michelle Pheiffer. On the ol’ 1 to 10 scale, Im giving it a 5 or 6. Gone, Baby Gone – It’s the Ben Affleck directed movie. Casey Affleck starred and it was, by a wide margin, the best performance I’ve seen from him–ever. It is a very good movie, which could have exploited parents’ fears more than it did. It was a tad too long, but still good. Ben Affleck might be a better director than he is an actor, which is both a compliment and a little jab. The Bucket List – Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It was better than I expected but not as good as it could have been. Both actors pretty much played to type in this life and death flick. Classic Special: Shane – It’s a classic western starring Alan Ladd. For a western, it was surprisingly nuanced and ambiguous. Like many Westerns, there’s the obvious question of right and wrong, yet with Shane, there are many questions bubbling underneath. It’s far more sophisticated than most Westerns. Ladd’s character is subdued and a man of few words, so we are forced to judge him by his actions, which are often noble. Yet we also learn that he has a notorious past. He’s a man of mystery, but also great good. Where does he come from? Where is he going? What motivates his actions? It’s questions like these that separate it from standard western fare and place it on Top 100 lists. Left Field Documentaries, Otherwise Known as Netflix Specials That I’ve Seen Recently: 49 Up – The latest installment of an English sociological documentary in which a group of British people are interviewed every seven years, beginning at age seven, for a fascinating take on life, love, and human nature. The idea is incredibly fascinating. The work tracks the ups and downs of these people’s lives and puts them on display every seven years. In 1964, Michael Apted interviewed a group of 7-year-old kids in England, all from different backgrounds and with big dreams, and has tracked their lives every seven years since. I don’t think riveting is too strong a word to use. Whether you are a trained sociologist or just intrigued by the way in which human dreams play out, you will find this film engrossing. Mr. Death: Fred A. Leuchter Jr. – Bizarre. Bizarre. Bizarre. It’s about an engineer that designed electric chairs and other capital punishment methods–ultimately losing his career when he researches the Holocaust gas chambers claiming the Holocaust did not happen. This is one of the most off-beat films I’ve ever seen. I watched it with my son because my wife–well, there’s no way she would have been able to watch it all. We alternately laughed until we quite literally couldn’t breath and watched our jaws drop to the floor in sync with the sheer absurdity of it all. Unknown White Male – Filmmaker Rupert Murray tells the true story of Doug Bruce, a man who woke up on a New York subway with no clues as to who he was, other than a random phone number and a British accent. It’s the worst kind of amnesia called retrograde amnesia. For the person that has it, it’s as if their entire past has been erased. They literally don’t remember who they are. Friends and family are strangers. If one is a believer, are they still a believer if they do not recollect why or how they believe? This provocative documentary explores the nature of identity with a real life subject that you won’t soon forget. Have I missed anything? Which of these have you seen? Whether your take is different or similar to mine, post away. What have you seen and do you recommend that isn’t on my list? Your interaction is valued and appreciated. Without it, these posts don’t mean much, so please jump right in. In The Rabbit Room, we toss around words like beauty and truth like chicken feed on the farm but ultimately, that’s the structure by which most of us hope to frame the art that we view. It’s what moves us. It’s at the very heart of why we invest $18.00 each month in a Netflix membership, or join a book club, visit an art gallery, or stare at the moon like a lover. It’s the very heart of who we are and how we were created.

My son is in bed sleeping peacefully, finally. After several days of him being lethargic and downright cranky with a cold, I did a fatherly thing and took him to the doctor’s office this morning, whereupon the boy was diagnosed with a pair of ear infections. “Oh, so THAT’s the problem!”, both parents cluelessly exclaimed. Antibiotics underway, he is sleeping quietly, the first in quite a few nights. Parents are tired, but still awake. Danielle is sitting at the dining room table – currently a makeshift sewing workspace – and is making a few burp cloths, baby blankets and a hooter-hider (for the discreet nursing mother) for a friend’s baby shower tomorrow. She usually puts things off until the last minute. Tonight is no exception. The woman procrastinates like no one else I know. No one, that is, except for me. There are a couple of lights on in the house, the wood floor under her work area is a tangled mess of discarded fabric scraps, thread remnants and snippets of rick-rack, and she, occasionally singing along with her iPod, has no idea I’m writing about her now. I like that degree of obliviousness. I like that she knows how to sew. I appreciate the massive skill she possesses in this arena. Not many people know this about her. She’s really good at it, and if asked, will downplay her skill each and every time, and will also be quick to point out her various works’ minute flaws rather than the solid fact that she took sundry pieces of fabric and material and sewed them together to create something unique and handmade whereas there was nothing but remnants before. She will always overlook the finished product for the immaterial flaws which no other eye will notice but her own. She, like me, is a perfectionist. It drives me bonkers, both hers and mine. She makes people out of strangers, and keeps ragged stitches from ripping. I have been working on a new song for the past 3 days. I’ve had the chorus stuck in my head ever since its melody first entered my brain; usually a good sign. I am taking a break from it now in hopes that writing something else, something about this moment, here and now, will wend its way into the verses of the song on which I’m working. I’ve played this particular chorus over and over, ad nauseum, throughout the house walking around the place with 12-string guitar in hand, humming it and outright singing it aloud at times. My wife has led on that she’s pretty well ready to hear something else. Although she did admit to me earlier today that this same chorus has been stuck in her head too. Ah, a doubly good sign. I wrote a sweet little song about my wife 10 years ago that, in the end, turned out to be a cajun-zydeco, redneck two-step. I’ve been thinking about this the past few nights I’ve played that song at shows, and realized that I haven’t written her a “love” song really since then. Hence, the new song. I remember how easy that earlier song came to be; in a frenzy of pen to paper (ah, the good old days), a stream of consciousness. I rummage to find things to say now, not because I am without things to say (well, barely), but how much more vital choosing the right words is to me nowadays, and how words carry a greater weight than they did 10 years ago. I am struggling to say something new, something that has maybe been forgotten, something hidden deep in the veins of the cloistered self. To uncover and say something that is neither neurologically inept nor saccharine sweet; that is the work I find myself embroiled in. I find that harder to do these days because I feel like I’ve used so many words, almost as if I’ve used up my vocabulary. Plus, I hate repeating myself. I have always been a person of few words, never really knowing what was too much or too little to say. Silence always seemed the wiser choice. But silence can get you into trouble too. It is quite a common occurrence, whenever I offer my thoughts to a group of people (this happened just the other day in a meeting of fellow singer-songwriters), that I manage to hear myself saying who-knows-what and then realize that what I said was ridiculously idiotic and made no substantial sense, nor offered anything new to the conversation. The group passed over the thought as if it were never uttered. Probably a good thing. I am painfully self-aware and have the confidence of a snail. It is in moments like those that I, already a man of few words, feel I say too much. Beauty in this world is not always an easy quality for me to see. I often have to make myself look for it, it seems, the older (and crankier?) I get. How many times have I found myself cursing the ground I walk upon, cursing the fuel companies for nearly $4 for a gallon of gas, cursing people, cursing the skies when they rain too much or too little, cursing the words I choose or choose not to say. It takes work to train the eyes to see what may not be readily visible or what may be lurking beneath the surface of things. After all, the spiritual world is supposedly paralleling our own, just out of sight of our own narrow field of vision and our own comings and goings. Here, I consider my wife’s sewing skill, and how she must first wash the various pieces of fabric she will eventually sew together because, if not, they will tear apart upon first washing of the finished work. It is an age-old truth. New wine into old wineskins. New life into old lives. New sight into old eyes. Saying nothing of threadbare souls, fat men and the eyes of needles, button-holes or Singer sewing machines, thank God for wordlessness, for stitches, and a seamstress to create something out of nothing.

One of the things I love about being a part of the Rabbit Room is the permission it gives me to be a little self-indulgent. I can talk about the real stuff that moves me or tickles my mind that I don’t really feel like I can talk about anywhere else. I only hope that it’s useful to at least some who take the time to read and that, like me, they find an unexpected treasure that helps bring clarity in a world of numbing chaos. I don’t take your time or trust for granted! So in the spirit of a little self-indulgence, I want to talk about my new Tom Waits record. For those unfamiliar with him, Waits is an artist/composer/actor whose trademark gravelly voice was described by one critic as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car.” If you’ve not heard of him, you’ve most likely heard others cover his songs (“Downtown Train “ sung by Rod Stewart, “Jersey Girl” sung by Springsteen, etc.) I’m planning on writing about Tom Waits’ music in a later post, but for right now I just want to focus on his voice. My parents recently got me Tom Waits’s newest record entitled Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards. It’s a three disc set of his songs that didn’t fit on any of his other records, which is really saying something considering how quirky and out of left field Waits’ records are. Working my way through the set, I got a big grin when I got to track 3 on the second disc. The song was called “The Long Way Home”, but it wasn’t the first time that I’d heard it. I first heard “The Long Way Home” sung by Norah Jones and loved it as one of the better tracks on her “Feels Like Home” record (now you know. I listen to Norah Jones). It hit me as a sweet little song about taking a long walk home in order to spend more time with her walking companion. That’s just how it always hit me. But hearing Tom Waits sing it was a revelation. It was like hearing it for the first time and the lyric took on a whole new personality when growled by the world-weary voice of Tom Waits. It turns out that Tom wrote the song and that it’s about the kind of person who no matter how much he tries, he’s more or less fated to have to learn things the hard way, to always have to take the long way home. At least that’s the way the song hits me when Tom sings it. I listened to both versions back to back and the lyrics are the same, but I never really heard them when Norah was singing. And that’s just the trouble with a sweet voice like Norah’s – you’re likely to miss the point. Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a great artist with a lovely and interesting voice. But a great voice isn’t always what’s best to sell a great song. In some cases, it might even be a detriment. In an interview on the Stop Making Sense DVD by the Talking Heads, David Byrne says that the better a person’s voice, the harder it is to believe them. I thought of the difference between artists like Celine Dion, Josh Groban, and Michael Buble in contrast to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and of course Tom Waits and decided that maybe Byrne is on to something here. I hope AP doesn’t mind me using him as an example, but he and I have talked a number of times about music critics who have dogged him for his voice. But to me, Andrew’s voice is perfect. I love it for what it is and I think it’s beautiful, believable, and sincere. It has a gentle sweetness to it. I love that voice because it’s the one that has consistently brought the heart of God to me. The same is true of Rich Mullins and Mark Heard. For different though similar reasons, it’s why I’m drawn to the voices of Daniel Lanois, Damien Rice, Sufjan Stevens, and most of the artists I love.  It’s the imperfections that make these voices so compelling. Norah’s version of “The Long Way Home” is really good, but I believe Tom Wait’s version. Norah’s is pretty, but Tom’s broke my heart and made me present to my own life and the way that I seem wired to always have to learn the hard way. That gritty, rasping voice of his moves me to tears almost every time he employs it in the service of a sad and hopeful song. If I might be so bold to use the word, I would say that it’s the ugliness of Wait’s voice that makes the song’s beauty more convincing. And increasingly I find it’s this very thing I look for in books, movies, music, or any other kind of storied art. Take Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Road, for instance. It’s one of the bleakest and most brutal books I’ve ever read, and yet it’s exactly this that makes the tenderness and hope of it so believable. The older I get the more I appreciate contrast: hope shines brighter set against the darkness of despair (The Road, The Lord Of The Rings); tenderness makes more sense to me in the context of brutality (as in the film Life Is Beautiful); the more I see the virtue in a good Tom Waits song. I think the application (if I can be so self-indulgent as to propose one) is that it’s not the best, strongest, or most beautiful parts of who we are that are most compelling or even useful in the employment of God’s Kingdom. It’s our frailties, brokenness, and even the ugliness of our deepest secrets and struggles that will make the hope we proclaim believable. It’s this that puts God’s grace on display and shows the world what the work of Grace really looks like in a real person’s life. Sometimes, this very thing might even happen in something as unlikely as a Tom Waits song. (If you’re interested, you can listen to the two different versions in iTunes by clicking here for the Tom Waits version and here for the Norah Jones version.)

In a recent email I sent out to those on my email list, I talked about Centricity’s recent decision to release “Everything I Own” as a radio single. We are offering you the radio version for free and I thought for long-time fans it warranted a little explanation. So here’s the longer version of what I wrote in that email: “Centricity Records has bravely decided to release “Everything I Own” as the next single to radio. I say brave because it’s not the typical kind of song you’d expect to hear on radio (both lyrically and musically). But it is a song that we feel says something important, so we’re opting for a single that has more heart than it does dance mix potential. 🙂 Centricity played the song for some of radio’s big decision makers who felt that most stations would not play the song on account of the lyric “demons of lust” being stronger language than their audiences are accustomed to. I’ll be honest and admit to being frustrated and offended by this initially – how can I hope to minister and really get to the heart of matters if I have to be afraid of how Christian radio’s more timid listeners will react? It’s this kind of thing that I sometimes fear is hurting Christian music as I wonder if we are guilty of “tickling ears” as the bible warns against. Are we trying too hard to give listeners what they want instead of what they need? (This is especially relevant when you consider that lust and pornography are at the top of the list of issues plaguing our culture.) But the story of the gospel is the story of God coming down, meeting us at our level. So after months of prayerful consideration, we all decided that the song’s message was important enough for us to be willing to meet radio listeners where they’re at and make a minor lyric change for the radio version. The song’s value goes far beyond one line, and if changing it helps get this song heard, than we decided it’s worth it. I take comfort in thinking that for those who might hear the song on the radio and go on to listen to the original album version, the original lyrics we changed will actually take on new emphasis! In the end the changes felt less like compromise and more like sensitivity, and as weird as all of this could have been, the new lyric is quite lovely. We hope radio embraces it and that it is a blessing for those who hear the song and take it to heart. With the new lyric we also gave the radio version a musical treatment that makes me wish we would have thought of it for the album version! My friend Matt Patrick added some gorgeous guitar work that really sweetened the track and we have ended up with something that we’re all really excited about. We hope you will be too! We wanted to offer the song to you for free as our way of saying thank you for your support and friendship. It will be available as a free download for the remainder of April on my myspace page (click here, and then look for the song in the music player and click the download button.) If you like it, please share it with others. (NOTE: If you don’t do myspace, you can also download the song from here) Thanks so much for your support! Consider this a little glimpse into the hard work of making artistry, ministry, and industry play nice together.

The air is full of an earthy, livestock smell that is somehow both horrible and wonderful. Small children stare goggle-eyed at carnival games or beg to ride the carousel as impatient mothers jerk them along behind. Teenagers strut around, haughty, obnoxious, hand-in-hand, others, lurking behind, engage in the silent and awkward battle of adolescence. An electric firmament wheels overhead carrying angels up, down, and around, its raucous, momentary gleam outshining the antediluvian glimmer-light beyond. Mad, calliope sounds and the din of a thousand-thousand voices wrap us all in waves of clamor-induced deafness and somewhere nearby a motorcycle’s guttural belch punctuates the night. The county fair. I wander through this landscape of communal madness and wonder if I’m appalled. By turns it’s amazing, exhilarating, lunatic, and abominable. I’m glad it’s here; I’m glad it’s almost gone. I’ve seen enough of the spectacle, it isn’t why I’m here, and I go in search of the Arts and Crafts exhibit. The fair is, in this turn at least, beautiful to me. It is right and proper that a community should hold up its art, its craft, and honor those that offer it–if only for one brief week each year. I find the exhibit at last, tucked into a small building on the outskirts. Inside there is some measure of quiet. The place is empty. I’m alone. I walk through the displays, smiling. Watercolors, oils, a quilt ten years in the making, gorgeous fruits and vegetables canned up for years to come, a dozen colored-pencil permutations of Naruto, etchings and engravings, photographs of sunsets and butterflies and children’s rosy faces, a charcoal sketched self-portrait of a black man in a white room, a pie, a pastry, a clay hand clenched into a fist. Not all are well-executed. Some are plainly awful. But they are all the expressions of a community of people. Each piece hanging is a word uttered of the soul. Some ill-formed, misunderstood and mispronounced but all spoken in hopes of being heard. And I’m alone here, listening. Of all the crowd, only I. Outside, the multitude is engaged with the noise, and the food, and their hundred carnal delights. Bacchus slouches, drunken on his throne, and eats. I’m reminded of the church sign I passed on the way here: “You seek that which consumes you.” I begin taking mental notes of each entry awarded a ribbon and end my tour taking more interest in which pieces were passed over. I believe art feeds on appreciation. People create as a way of self-expression, they are trying to say a thing for which they haven’t words and when a person engages that creative instinct, they deserve to be acknowledged. If they aren’t, the instinct atrophies–they join the crowd outside. I believe this is true on a community level, also. If a society ignores its art, an important part of its identity loses its voice and a silenced voice is fertile ground for frustration, anger, and upheaval. I read in the news that a school district is cutting its art and music programs and I think about that church sign and wonder what is consuming our community. It certainly isn’t beauty or truth. We, as a society, are consuming ourselves with success, money, sex, and self-gratification, a great, eyeless, serpent engorged on its own tail. I leave the exhibit. No one sees me go. The sounds and lights of the carnival swell, pushing everything else from my mind. I buy a funnel cake and make my way through the crowd, toward the parking lot. The metallic squawk of a radio from behind makes me turn. A deputy jogs past, talking into his walkie, his head turned down to the microphone on his shoulder. Ahead of him a group of young people are crowded together, shouting, the sounds of violence almost lost in the scream of the calliope. They scatter as the deputy arrives. I lose sight of the commotion as I turn the corner into the parking lot. On the drive home, I think about the works on display, how few they were, how valuable. I wonder who it was that created them and I hope their voice is strong. It will be a long and silent year before it’s heard again.

Walt Wangerin, Jr. strikes again. Several people in the last few weeks have commented to me about how glad they are that they discovered Wangerin’s The Book of the Dun Cow here in the Rabbit Room. It really is a remarkable book, and I still can’t recommend it highly enough. It won the prestigious National Book Award when it was first published in 1978, and was only the beginning of Wangerin’s career. Saint Julian is a re-telling of the ancient legend of the saint who was cursed with the prophecy that he would one day be the instrument of his parents’ death. Julian flees his home for love of his parents and embarks on a journey into war, loneliness, love, and of course, redemption. That this is a saint’s tale implies that redemption is coming, but the road Julian takes before it ambushes him is long and heartbreaking, making it that much sweeter when it comes. It’s dark, but this book was written with such talent, with such a strong, gentle hand, that I never felt anything but that this story was going to pull me close to the memory of God’s faithful mercy in my own life. Eugene Peterson said of this book: “Walter Wangerin’s storytelling never fails to take us into a world resonant with salvation meanings. With Saint Julian, the worst of which we are capable becomes stuff for the best that God can achieve with us. We read and realize, ‘Why, yes–even I could become a saint.'” John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture: “Saint Julian isn’t a ‘historical novel,’ nor is it a fable, but rather an act of literary sorcery–white magic, to be sure–whereby a medieval tale speaks to our present moment with a force like the ringing of a great bell.” Walt Wangerin, though thirty years older now and sick with cancer, is still writing words that dance and whirl and fling color across the canvas of imagination; he is serving Christ with the gift of his pen; he is loving us with the stories he is writing. And because of the nature of stories, and words, and books, people will be blessed by the work of his hands for many, many years. I write this wondering if Walt will stumble on these words, and hope that if he does he finds encouragement here.

“When I sin it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” With this phrase in Romans 7, Paul divorces his new creation identity from sin. Far from saying, “I sin because I am a sinner (an identity statement), he says he sins because there’s something in him that is “not I.” This “not I, but sin” is the reverse of the great Galatians verse, “Not I, but Christ.” So we find that sin is not basically “I” – and neither is righteousness “I”. This puts our humanity in the middle ground where it belongs, as a vessel, slave, branch – a thing containing, following the orders, and dependent on the life of someone else. Neutrality, not sin or righteousness, is the hallmark of the essential human self. The born-again believer, one who puts his faith in Jesus Christ, has been freed from the slavery of Eph 2:2, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience (the Greek word from Strong’s there is apeithia, which means literally, “the unconvinced”). Jesus said to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and his lusts you will do,” indicating they weren’t following their own strong desires; they were driven by an inner father, a propagator, just as Jesus was driven by His heavenly Father. The Gospel is an either-or proposition. He that is not with me is against me. There are no half-measures here. If we’re not born-again we cannot see God’s Kingdom because we live in darkness, as children of darkness. Whether that darkness is the black muck of alcoholism and drugs or the more subtly insidious blindness of legalistic religion doesn’t really matter; both spring from the same source, a satanic mindset that is desperately trying to become something in and of itself rather than accepting the life of Christ within itself. That’s the sin of Lucifer, the light-bearer. He rejected the Light, and so became darkness masquerading as false light. He would be his own Source. Now, I’m not a dualist. Satan is not God’s evil counterpart; he’s a finite created being who has fallen. But there are too many verses dealing with an either-or: two trees (Gen 2:9), two gods (1Kings 18:21), two gates and two ways (Matt 7:13, 14), two kinds of vessels (Rom 9:22, 23), two kinds of sons (sons of the Devil and sons of God), two princes (John 12:31), two women and two sons (Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac in Galatians), and even two birds (the unclean raven and the clean dove of Noah) and two kinds of foods (clean and unclean). None of these things mix; there aren’t partially clean foods, a partially false god, a partially-allowed bondwoman, etc. There aren’t vessels of half-wrath and half-mercy. To the contrary, the Word continually teaches this either-or approach. “For you were (past tense) once darkness; now you are (present tense) light in the Lord…” Not part light and part darkness. We were sons of the devil, as the Pharisees, operated and motivated by the false spirit of Eph 2:2; now, Jesus Christ, through His perfect sacrifice and resurrection, has made us into new creations; He’s made us into sons of God. We were vessels of wrath, but now are vessels of mercy; once slaves of sin, now we are slaves of righteousness. We are inhabited by Christ, “Greater is He that is in you,” or the alternative, “than he that is in the world.” This is why Paul’s pattern in most of his letters is to write first of identity, then behavior. A rare exception is Galatians, where he goes straight for the throat of the independent-self concept. But in most of his epistles Paul goes on and on about our new identity, what Christ has done, who we are in Him, that we’re kings, priests, holy, perfect, one Spirit with the Lord, that we no longer live but Christ lives in us, dead to sin, dead to Law, and the rest of those jeweled realities. We recognize our true identity first and foremost, and then see that our behavior will flow from that reliance on Christ within us. “For you were once darkness; now you are light in the Lord. Live, then, as children of light.” In other words, you’re on the top of the mountain of holiness. You don’t have to climb step by step to get there on broken glass and nails to become holy. Holiness Himself lives in you; rely, and if you’re relying your behavior will show hospitality to strangers, love for your wives, respect for your husbands, etc. The Pauline pattern: You are this – so step out in faith and rely on Christ in your actions. Be it.” Be-ing precedes doing; doing does not cause being. The other way, Romans 7, is to try to act righteously in order to gain the identity. That’s the point of Romans 6-8, Galatians, and the book of Hebrews – and more. Reliance on Christ within us is better than human effort (because it actually works). At the end of 7 Paul says this: So then I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the Law of sin. Note how he again refuses to identify himself with sin. What does this statement mean? It means when I follow the Spirit within me, when I accord my mind with the truth of being dead to sin, dead to flesh-effort, alive to God, then I manifest or follow the Law of God, which is “love God and neighbor.” That’s living according to my real self in Christ. Conversely, if I follow flesh tendencies as indicators of Reality (thoughts, feelings, reactions to circumstances) then I’m once again thinking I’m an independent “I” that has to be good, effectively cutting myself off from Christ’s power in me. “ In Gal 5:2, Paul says emphatically to believers, “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” The power of Christ in us will not come through us – it is not effective and is of no value – if we put ourselves under the Law, under self-effort, under strain and striving rather than sufficiency and rest in Him. We’re often too busy with do-it-yourself sanctification to let Him use us as His vessels. I was hoping to dig into Romans 8 but felt impelled to talk more about the end of 7. In 8 Paul explores in more detail what living according to the Spirit really means. In 9 he shows that Spirit-directed life leads to the expression of God’s nature through us – “my life (and even my salvation if I could give it up) for others.”

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to the students at Lipscomb University, here in Nashville, for a convocation series called “Stories of Lived Discipleship”. You’ll notice right off the bat that the introduction was inspired in part by a discussion here in the Room from last week. Here’s the manuscript, for your reading pleasure (or displeasure). The Old and the New I got in trouble for using a dirty word when I was in the third grade. I remember being in homeroom, sitting at my desk but still managing to be in a huddle of boys talking about the things that are of utmost importance to third-graders. We talked about things that we boys had in common, things that were assumed to be true, so our conversation was not as much an exchange of ideas as it was a passionate, pretentious blab session of stating (what was to us) the obvious. It was plain to such a discerning group of young men that girls, for example, were an abomination. Girls were to be avoided at all costs, partly because they failed to see the sublime glory, the near unbelievable and existential beauty of a big-rig Mack truck. I filled my notebook with pictures of these trucks, these sleek works of diesel craftsmanship. If evidence were needed to convict third-grade girls of being uncultured and deeply, deeply broken, one must only point to Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, and note the dull, unresponsive reaction on a girl’s face. To a third-grade boy, however, it was almost unbearably awesome that a big-rig semi (a red one, no less) was conceived that actually transformed into a robot (a cool looking robot, no less) with laser cannons. I might need to take a brief intermission. I know you’d like me to go on and on about Optimus Prime, but I won’t. The thing we were talking about in the huddle that day, the dirty word that got me into trouble, was Hell. I said Hell in the third grade. The other kids gasped. I’m not exaggerating. And this wasn’t some private Christian school where the moms all wore denim dresses and bonnets. This was a run-of-the-mill Florida public school, where the rebellious kids bandied about all manner of bad words. A kid leapt from his desk, broke away from our huddle, and ran to tell Mrs. Something-or-other about my transgression. There may have been a parent-teacher conference, and there may have been a public flogging; I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything after that last four-letter-word popped from between my lips and whizzed around the room like an unstoppered balloon. So after that elaborate setup, here was the subject of the conversation in which my potty mouth flushed, so to speak: Theology. We were talking about church. After the chorus of praises for Optimus Prime’s awesomeness died down, somehow we segued to talking about church, and sin, and…Hell. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday. I told them this: If you’re good, you go to Heaven. If you’re bad, you go to (GASP!) Heeeeeelllll. And the word echoed off the walls of Mrs. Something-or-other’s yarny, cray papery, primary colory, alphabetty classroom. That was the Gospel as I understood it, as it was implicitly taught to me by my church, my family, my Sunday School teachers. That is the Gospel as most people today understand it. Bad boys go to Hell, good boys go to Heaven. Fast forward about two years. I was nine years old. One Sunday morning at church, on the index card in the back of the pew, I checked the box next to the sentence, “I’m not a visitor but I would like to be baptized.” I knew that baptism was Something I was Supposed to Do. I knew that I had sinned, was a sinner, and that that I needed what to my young mind was a free pass out of Hell. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even pray about it. At that age I only really prayed that I wouldn’t get caught when I was up to no good. I just checked the box and dropped the card in the offering plate when it went by. My dad noticed it (my dad was the preacher, and still preaches today), called me into his office later that week to talk to me about it. He asked me, “When you do something wrong, what do you feel inside?” I thought about it for a minute, trying to think of the Right Answer. I thought back to how I felt earlier that day when I had done something rotten to my little sisters and said, “Guilty.” This was partly true. I usually felt a thrill when I did something wrong, usually a twisted sort of glee, but I had to admit that somewhere in the mix, there it was: Guilt. My dad nodded and said, “Okay. You’re ready.” So that next Sunday during church I sat on my knuckles, tried to keep my back straight, bounced my knees with the toes of my feet firmly attached to the floor so as to keep my fidgeting silent. Then it came. The Invitation. Right on cue, when my dad said, “If anyone here would like to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior…,” the organist glided to her place and played a somber hymn. When everyone stood to sing, I walked down the center aisle and stood next to my dad. I remember the way his belly brushed up against my shoulder, his hand on my neck, as we sang the fourth verse of the hymn just in case someone else, moved by my penitence, had checked the box and would be joining me. While I cried for some reason I couldn’t figure, my dad had me repeat the Good Confession: “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, my Lord and My Savior.” Then I went upstairs and changed into a white robe, descended the steps into the lukewarm baptistery water, and partook of the ancient sacrament of baptism. When I came up out of the water, I remember trying to sense, to really sense the Gift of the Holy Spirit, but nothing really felt any different. I did feel happy. Though my short life so far had been one of vast disobedience, yet I had obeyed in at least this thing. Later I stood at the church doors beside my dad, wearing my normal clothes again, my hair still wet, and shook hands with everyone who walked by. I was a Christian. A follower of Christ. A disciple. Fast forward two days. Word got around that a kid at school had torn a page out of his dad’s Playboy magazine and was passing it around between classes. I relished the thought of seeing it. And later, when I finally had my turn to look, I relished the image on the wrinkled, glossy magazine paper. I carried that image around in my third-grade heart, right next to where the Holy Spirit, I assumed, resided. Christ hated me, I figured. He had cleaned up the neighborhood and moved in, just me and Jesus and the manicured lawns of my temple-of-the-Holy-Spirit heart, and for two whole days things were great. With one good, long, wide-eyed look at that piece of paper, some trashy people moved in to my heart and the whole place went south. At night, in my bed, wrapped up in my Empire Strikes Back sheets, I laid there coming to terms with the fact that I was going to go to Hell after all. I was doomed. The Holy Spirit, in my young boy’s imagination, was nothing more than a weak old man in his pajamas, standing in his tiny front lawn waving a rolled-up newspaper around and cursing the hoodlums that were populating and multiplying in the temple area at an alarming rate. For the next ten years of my life my sense of obedience to God, my belief in God, and my desire for God fought a losing battle with my hormones, my rebellion, my spiteful tongue, my greed. I would’ve told you that I was a Christian. I would’ve told you that I was a disciple of Christ. But ten minutes later I would be lustful or angry or deceitful, and I would’ve seen no problem with that. It was fun, and besides, Christ hated me anyway. And I figured that if he didn’t hate me, he probably should. Either way, he wasn’t someone I wanted to think about, or to be near, or to obey. I wanted to taste of the forbidden fruit in a way that would have shocked Eve herself. (I’m not saying that I did, but that I wanted to. This isn’t a bragging session but a confession.) My sin was not a slip of the tongue, or a lapse in judgment. Mine was a calculated, passionate, boisterous rebellion of the heart. My hypocrisy drove my sense of righteousness in one direction and my sense of wild, unadulterated selfishness in another so that they diverged in a wood like two roads. Instead of turning right or left, I chose the barren rot of the wasteland between. I went to church and smiled at the sweet old people. I told funny stories at family dinner. I was like a caricature of Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver, all smiles for Mrs. Cleaver but up to no good whatsoever. It occurs to me that I was less than a caricature. I was a phantom, or was becoming more like one every time I said “Hallelujah!” with my mouth but in my heart growled “Give me something or someone I can use.” A phantom floating through the halls of my high school without a care in the world but for myself and my vile devices. I don’t picture the Holy Spirit in my life at this time as that angry old man. I see him now as Aslan, bound to the Stone Table of my heart. Anything to keep him quiet and out of my way. The carousing, wicked, mocking beasts I put there are gathered around him, shaving his mane, heckling and spitting. But if you look into his sad eyes you can see the fountain of strength that waits for its moment to burst forth and cleanse the temple. I see the Holy Spirit as a formidable, shining Being laid low not because anyone bent his back but because he is stooping to level the gray city that spread in my heart like mould. He is descending into the fray to rescue what is left of his lost servant, his missing sheep, his prodigal son. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. And suddenly, the light breaks through. I was sitting at a piano in an empty church building. I had sensed for a while the spring returning, the rivers thawing. The snow that covered the wide fields of my heart began to melt and water the seeds so long frozen. A change was coming. I sensed the change coming, and I ached for it as if my life depended on it. And it did. It was a Rich Mullins song. “If I Stand.” Then a few months later, “Sometimes By Step.” Sometimes I think of Abraham, How one star he saw had been lit for me He was a stranger in this land And I am that, no less than he And on this road to righteousness Sometimes the climb can be so steep I may falter in my steps But never beyond your reach Oh God, you are my God And I will ever praise you I will seek you in the morning And I will learn to walk in your ways And step by step you lead me And I will follow you all of my days That song became my most earnest prayer. I remember playing the piano for a band that sang it at a youth conference fifteen years ago, and that night I walked another aisle, even though I was supposedly a sponsor with the youth group. It seems a little hokey to me now, but that night in East Tennessee I committed my life to service to God and his Kingdom. I had finally come to the end of my strength and could run from him no more. I laid my life down, and said, like the horse to Aslan in the C.S. Lewis story, “I’d rather be eaten by you than be fed by anyone else.” He stooped into the fray and lifted my weary body out. He was Hosea, and I was Gomer. He was David, and I was Mephibosheth. He was Aslan and I was Edmund. Like Peter, I confessed his name, then like Peter I denied him again and again and again. Like Peter, I wept bitter tears. And like Peter, I am forgiven. Fast-forward fifteen years, and here I stand. I look at that summer as the time I finally learned to love the person of Jesus, not the idea of him. I think of that as the beginning of my discipleship. Everything up to then was the Old Testament, when things seemed darker, savage and archaic. I was so many of those characters—Eve gobbling up the forbidden fruit, Noah drunk in his birthday suit, Abraham lying to save his own skin, David letting his lust have its way, and the people of Israel and Judah over and over again, loving God then chasing after their idols, then repenting of everything but those mysterious, persistent high places. In my Old Testament days I was plagued by God’s holy Law, in constant fear of him even though he said over and over again that his faithfulness was great, his loving-kindness everlasting. I really thought that I had to learn to be a good little boy or I would be cast into the outer darkness where I would forever wail and grind my teeth together from the unbearable pain, fear, and rage. I feel chills describing that even now. But then, he comes. Jesus appears when all seems lost. He suffers, dies, and rises again, then he sets into motion his Church, his Kingdom. A New Testament. Suddenly my baptism makes perfect sense. Suddenly my church camp dedications and re-dedications become a part of this greater story. Christ in his mercy reaches back that far and redeems it, claims it for his own. People ask me when I became a Christian. I never know quite how to answer that question, which I realize would make my Bible college professors a little annoyed. I was born into a Christian family, was surrounded by and assaulted by the Word of God at every turn. One day I checked a box because I knew I was supposed to, then the next thing I knew I was sopping wet and shaking hands in a receiving line. I sinned, repented, sinned, repented, sinned, repented and sinned some more for ten long years. Then one day, out of the blue, the Lion roared. I didn’t hear it as that at the time. At the time it was a thousand small graces strewn across my path: a surprising urge to read my Bible one morning; a sudden appreciation of my parents’ steady faith; the catch of my breath at the way light rests on the hill; then one night at the piano I heard coming out of the boom box speakers the broken voice of a broken poet, singing about the unwavering love of God. I could go on and on about my life with Jesus over the past fifteen years, which is when my discipleship really began, starting with that summer when in my heart Jesus turned over the tables and drove out the moneylenders. The cleansing of the temple. I have found that I still sin, though I know you must find that hard to believe. I still sometimes clench my jaw and drive my fist into the steering wheel, angry at the persistence of certain sins in my life. “Who will save me from this body of death? But thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The Great Comforter reminds me in a deep, gentle voice that the law has been fulfilled. The temple is clean. He reminds me that I’m not carrying around just the Law and the Prophets, but a New Testament, a promise that hope is not futile, forgiveness is real, that the grace of God banishes my shame and makes the geography of my heart spacious and pristine and inhabited by the very Spirit of God himself. Discipleship is a long walk with the Light of the World blazing inside you. He may lead you to periods of deep rest, he may lead you into frightening places, but he will always lead you to what is best for you, all so that he may bring you closer to himself. He invites you deeper into his heart, just far enough so that you aren’t burned to a crisp by the holy fire, then he helps you grow that much more into who you’re meant to be. Again, he pulls you deeper in, and again you feel like you might just die. And you realize that you have become that much more like him, and you are grateful, astounded by his mercy. You find that what you once thought was killing you is giving you life. It is transforming you. And that word, “transform”, in the weirdest, cheesiest way, brings me back to Optimus Prime. I didn’t mean for that to happen. But Optimus Prime brings me back to that conversation I was having with my third-grade buddies about how scary Hell must be. And that makes me think of how downright ornery I was in high school, which makes me think with great relief about the way the Great Story of the death and resurrection of Christ sank into my very bones. And that makes me think of how dear a friend Jesus is to me now, how tender and steadfast, how gently he abides and assures me that I am his, how he takes away my many fears. And that makes me think of this verse: “…those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” Amen.

If there was any doubt of my citizenship in the geek nation, I’m about to erase it. Yes, I am a dweller at the fringe, a fan of the science fiction. In my own defense though, I don’t care for Star Trek so much and I’ve never dressed up as Han Solo (not in public anyway). So why the admission, you ask? Because this past Friday night, my inner geek was in full bloom. The final season of Battlestar Galactica has arrived at last. The show is a near total re-imagining of the original 80’s series in which the last remnants of the human race are on the run from the vastly superior Cylons. Their only hope of survival is escape to a mythical place called Earth, a planet that might not even exist. Amid a wasteland of horrific programming on the Sci-Fi Channel they have somehow managed to produce this one jewel. The cast is A-list, the characters are crisp, the look and feel of it is authentic and, all joking aside, there is no reason to apologize for watching a show this good. Like all good science-fiction, its qualifier isn’t space ships, epic battles, or ray-guns (though all are present), it is the questions it asks. It establishes a compelling premise and uses it to explore all sorts of questions about politics, religion, good and evil, and the nature of man. It delights in following its suppositions to their logical conclusions and punctuating them with jaw-dropping space battles that should make George Lucas hang his head in shame. Where else can you see an intergalactic homage to the Exodus story in which “Moses” jumps a spaceship the size of a city out of lightspeed directly into a planet’s atmosphere where, caught in the gravity-well, it hurtles to the ground, guns blazing, only to jump out again at the last possible second as the human race is liberated from slavery. That episode might be one of the great moments of television history. I’ve got chill-bumps just thinking about it. Yet, more than that, the creators have succeeded in creating an amazing ensemble of nuanced, broken, and painfully human characters (even the ones that aren’t human). Spelinspektionen bötfäller och drar in spellicenser: https://videospelautomater.com/blog/spelinspektionen-botfaller-och-drar-in-spellicenser.html. Saul Tigh, the starship’s executive officer, and fighter pilot Kara Thrace are two of my favorite characters from any TV show. The magic of it is that most of the time I hate them; they are driven by such self-loathing and self-destructiveness that it’s nearly impossible to watch them fall apart without rooting for them and hoping that somehow they will find a way out of their wretched existences. One of the reasons I generally dislike television is that most series are created to be perpetual, you know the main characters aren’t going to die, you know the primary conflicts will resolve in the last ten minutes, you know it’s just going to continue until it finally peters out and signs off with a whimper when the ratings hit the bottom. Not so with Galactica. Like Twin Peaks, Lost, and Babylon 5 the story is deliberately finite. There has been a resolution in place since the beginning and the writers have been writing their way toward it ever since. This makes for much better story-telling by far. Here people die, actions have real consequences, and the end is near. If you haven’t been watching, I cannot stress enough how important it is that you avoid seeing anything from this season, or any other season, until you’ve started at the beginning. Trust me, there are things that you do not want to know until it’s time for you to know them. Vis a vis some recent discussion here at the site, I feel like I should mention that the show is PG-13 for the usual reasons. The show is definitely not for the kids, nor is it for base entertainment–but if you are looking for something that will engage your ways of looking at things, I challenge you to embrace the geek within. The days are numbered. The fate of the human race is written. Who is the final Cylon? I can’t wait until next Friday night. Note: I’d love to discuss some plot points in the comments section if anyone is interested so I’ll put a SPOILER WARNING here. Read no further unless you want your experience ruined.

After last week’s ridiculously fun introduction to the On the Table feature, I’m a little worried that the real deal will never measure up. I have confidence in our illustrious contributors though and am sure it’ll be a piece of–wait for it–cake. Golf clap please. Thank you, thank you. What do you do to jumpstart the creative process when the juices aren’t flowing? A half hour later I picked up my guitar, started humming a melody, got it down on tape, and then wrote the words to A Living Prayer, which is the last song on Lonely Runs Both Ways. The entire song came out in one shot, probably the easiest time I’ve had writing any song (30-40 minutes). It’s a childlike prayer-ish song, simple in construction, not a cathedral of a song, yet I get more email about it than any song I’ve written. Too much effort, strain, produces blockage. We think its the other way around – that when things are blocked we have to try harder. But really, in songwriting as in improvising or playing a sport, what is required is a relaxed awareness. A runner doesn’t start a race by tensing up his whole body; a musician can’t improvise if he is trying too hard; and a Christian can’t be Christ to his world if he is striving like a constipated duck to “be like Jesus.” ________________________________________ This week I’m painting on my Sabbath – anything away from my laptop. I suck at painting, so it’s certainly not a hobby or even something I enjoy. But I’m trying something different.Whatever it is, it’s important to understand that knit into the very creation of man was man’s limit or inability to keep going. As hard as we try, we can’t avoid the natural rhythms for which we were created without “crashing,” “burning out” or “hitting the wall.” The Sabbath was meant for man. it was a gift. We forget these things – that we were made to stop, enjoy, and just be.Therein lies the success, in my opinion, for the ability to continually create. We talk about the need to find inspiration when we have writer’s block, which certainly comes, but I think the first thing to analyze is simply our manmade rhythms in light of the Creation rhythm.” ________________________________________ Quite often I have the seed of idea planted while I’m driving down the road. If it requires detailed writing, I pull over and hammer it out for a few minutes. If a word or two is enough to help me recall, I’ll drive and write at the same time. These aren’t recommendations; I’m just telling you what I do. No project is worth plowing into the rear end of the car in front of you.I keep a file of words. New words, old words, funny sounding words. Melange, mellifluous, sesquipedalian, and contradistinction are all words I’ve never used in anything I’ve written, but would like to. Oops. I just did. I knew that file would come in handy someday. Ideas rarely present a problem for me. My greatest writing challenge comes in focusing and refining ideas. That, and knowing when and how to quit. That’s it.” ________________________________________ I just try to put myself in the path of things that will move me – certain kinds of movies, life experiences, books, music, etc.I know Frederick Buechner’s name gets mentioned here a lot, and his work and way of seeing the world consistently stirs my deeper waters and turns me on creatively. Movies have traditionally done it for me, too. I remember I wrote about three songs the week after I first saw “The Shawshank Redemption.” Good conversation with friends yields about as much fruit as anything else. Prayerful reflection and listening to my life are crucial as well. The main thing is that I never know when or where lightning will strike, so I try to always have my creative antenae up and be prepared to receive whatever comes. I have an iTalk for my iPod that you plug in the bottom for taking voice notes. This is an invaluable tool for me. In a pinch I’ve been known to call home and leave an idea on my own voicemail for me to retrieve later, warning my wife not to listen to that particular message. These tools are useful, but honestly the best ideas are always the ones that won’t leave you alone, and so they are less a thing you try to capture than something that captures you. I don’t know how to find these ideas, or how to be found by them, but I suspect they have something to do with being alert and quiet and creating space in your life for them to live, move, and have their being. Discipline is key, too. Ideally it’s good for me to spend a little time each day being creative. I rarely do… I’m too easily distracted by email, deadlines, my record label’s expectations for myspace activity, or reading celebrity news :-). I try to be disciplined with my input, too. I alternate reading novels and non-fiction, reading scripture in the morning and “extra-curricular” books before bed, movies that afflict me followed by those that entertain me, etc. Learning other creative disciplines (like painting if you’re a musician) I hear helps, too, though I don’t have a lot of experience with that myself.If none of these work, there is always the alcohol and illicit drugs as a last resort. ________________________________________ 1. If I’m stuck at the beginning trying to figure out those first few words, I will sometimes write the words “Dear Travis” or another friend’s name at the top so I’m no longer writing an essay, but a letter. You’d be surprised how little editing you need to go back and do when you’re finished, going at it this way. 2. If I’m stuck in the middle, I’ll write and then read out loud what I wrote, and tweak things verbally—especially if I’m tangling with a structural problem. Sometimes reading aloud untangles awkward phrasing and redundancy and things of that nature. 3. If I’m stuck with the finishing, I’ll usually employ the anti-kick start. I’ll put the thing away for a day or two (if I have the luxury of time). I call this the “marbles in a box” stage of writing. I’ve got a lot of ideas all written down, but they don’t hold together. Instead, they’re all just kind of rolling around together like marbles in a box. A few days away from focusing on those ideas helps me figure out why I want to say them, giving me points into which the marbles eventually (hopefully) roll. 4. I suppose I should add that necessity is the mother of invention. There’s nothing like a deadline to kick start the creative process. And there’s nothing like a deadline to put an end to a previous creative endeavor. I’m a big fan of the discipline of having to take a work as far as you can, but then having to put it aside because it’s time to move on to the next thing. It keeps me from being too perfectionistic and obsessive. I guess the jump-starter here is that having more than one project going at a time can a bring creative burst to the one you need to finish and keep you from getting wrapped around the axle of the thing you should really be moving on from.” ________________________________________ It didn’t happen. I missed my wife. I missed my kids. I missed the rhythm of piano lessons, home school, visits from friends, walks through the woods with my family, unloading the dishwasher, folding the clothes. And I found that sitting in this quiet house with nothing on the calendar but “WRITE THE NEXT CHAPTER” made doing that very thing nigh unto impossible. What I learned was that I’m only really productive when I’m supposed to be doing something else. Knowing that Jamie’s here at home holding down the fort gives songwriting/book writing a sense of urgency, which is part of it, but there’s another not-so-noble part of it too, which has more to do with procrastination and avoiding chores. When I was in Bible college, that I was supposed to be taking notes on the life of Jeremiah made writing another verse to “The Chasing Song” seem wildly appealing. If I know I’m supposed to be mowing the yard, I’m suddenly moved to pick up my guitar and lock myself in the bathroom. We’ve been going to the monthly Cane Ridge (the name for our little corner of Nashville) Community meetings, and after the potluck dinner a city councilman or local historian or high school principal will speak for an hour or so. After I wipe the pecan pie from the corners of my mouth and push back from the table to listen to the latest on the rezoning of some intersection or other, I’m seized with the need to break out my journal and write, say, the synopsis of book two of the Wingfeather Saga. I’m sad to say that I’ve also gotten a fair number of song ideas during sermons, and not because I was listening. It’s always good idea to have a pen and church bulletin handy, just in case. My wife knows that I don’t take notes so when she sees me scribbling during church she knows what’s up. But the people sitting near us must think I’m quite holy.” ________________________________________ When I’m writing a book, I constantly remind myself, “I don’t have to write a book today. Today I’ve only got to solve a few smallish writing problems (e.g., how to get a character from here to there in a credible manner, or how to convince the reader of the two following things).” Taking that matter-of-fact approach gives me a framework in which the more mysterious aspects of the creative process can assert themselves. And the amazing thing is that they always do. I’ve been at it long enough that I have learned to trust the process. I’ve learned not to panic when the right words and ideas don’t come. Beneath the level of conscious thought, there are things happening that we’ll never understand. What looks and feels like writer’s block is often just a part of the process; it’s as if your mind (or heart) is saying, “Don’t rush me…” ________________________________________ 1. Music: Lyrics create mini-movies that run through my mind and inspire colors and imagery. The very words sometimes even become part of my work (copyright infringement?). Melodies put me in certain moods, so if I’m aiming to paint an eerie, lonely moonlit sky (which is one of my favorite things to paint), I’ll go with Ry Cooder or Stevie Ray Vaughan (the instrumental stuff — the gravelly voices of these two greats are not conducive to pensive night scenes). I could name some of my other studio favorites but that would just result in yet another, interminably long list. (Maybe I’ll do that at some point, but not here, not now, for the love of…wait for it…Pete.) 2. Organizing: I must have order. Artists are not the messy-pants goof-offs that you may so often hear that we are. We are a strange breed, a breed who need spatial harmony. Nail bin squared up to the box of old silver forks, drill bits arranged in their little box from shortest to tallest, paints and brushes laid out neatly, clean water and paper towel for my colors, the compartmentalized tray of tack nails ordered smallest to largest and separated into black, silver or copper, wood selection lined up and ordered according to size and color, detached typewriter keys and postage stamps in their old metal film canister containers, oh, and tools! My power drill battery must be on the charger, my hammers lined up like heavy-headed soldiers, and my tin snips and needlenose pliers on their respective hangers on the wall. 3. Refreshment: I have to admit that a tasty beverage does help the process, or at least makes it more celebratory. Sometimes it’s a good strong cup (or five) of French press coffee, sometimes my favorite Swedish tea with cream. Other times it’s a cold microbrew (or five) or a pretty tumbler of red wine. They all have their seasons and their own appropriate times of day. 4. Draw a bird, a moon, or a tree: These are simply my favorites. I have pages upon pages of them in sketchbooks. They are my go-to, I know how to draw them, and nothing makes a creatively clogged soul feel better than being able to create something lovely and to do it effortlessly. It passes the time and provides more opportunity for asking myself, as I squeeze the tube of ultramarine blue, “So Evie,what are you going to do this time that is different than all of the other times?” 5. Take a walk: Clouds turning from peach to violet, budding trees, brightly colored houses with funky yard art, friendly cats, unfriendly dogs, the smell of just-cut grass with that distinctive onion-y tang, neighbors who wave at me; I don’t know if it’s just the mechanical motion of my feet moving or if it’s the general sense of well-being walking gives me that almost always yanks open the floodgates of ideas….I don’t care. All I care about is that it works (and gets my heart rate up). When I arrive back at my little blue door, I leave it open so that the good vibes/presence of the Good Lord/fresh air don’t get left outside. I like to give them plenty of opportunity to follow me in. 6. Tinker: When it comes down to it and I’m at my end, when I’m close to ripping my hairs out of my head one by one, I begin to pick up little bits and pieces of the junk that fills my studio. Remembering where and when I picked up each piece or recalling the story behind a certain ginger canister (the candied kind) or bright green bolt (thank you, John Deere) is often fun enough for me to get lost in. And getting lost is often the best thing for me to do when in this state of near-insanity. This step is especially helpful when there’s a deadline. “Deadline” should probably have it’s own point on this list because it sure does whip me in the rear to get moving. However, I hate that this has to be the case with me more often than not, so I will not afford it its own place on the official list. So there, Deadline. Take that. 7. Pray: Okay, now I look like an impious mess of a girl because I put this last rather than first, but the whole truth is that I am in a constant state of “Lord, I’m open, hit me” while I’m in the creative swing. It’s just dangerous not to be. Stupid, obviously uninspired things happen when I’m not. If I did not have any other assurance that God is real in my life, the moments where art works have come together on my workshop table flawlessly and seemingly without anything I have done — these moments would be the telling of his goodness, and his being my Creator Father. _________________________________________ It works for me and the only reason I can come up with is that I’m the sort of person that likes to look like I know what I’m doing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but if I’m left to my own devices with no one else around I’m far more likely to sit and stare at Conan O’Brien reruns than I am to actually create anything of my own. But if you put me in an environment with other people around, watching me, suddenly I don’t want to look like a bum. I try to look busy. I use that lunacy to trick myself into being actually busy. So I’m afraid that oftentimes what gets me started is something as shallow as appearance. Once I get rolling though, I can usually pump out a good chunk of work. Another thing that really helps me is having a deadline. I’m one heck of a procrastinator and someone giving me a solid deadline is great motivation. I think it probably goes right back to the whole ‘looking busy’ bit of not wanting people to think I’m a bum. One more thing. There is a lot to be said for pure, boring, discipline. When I wrote my first book for instance I gave myself a goal of a thousand words a day, and for the most part I held myself to it. Now a thousand words a day isn’t a lot but there are times when even getting to a hundred is excruciating. What I found, and what really surprised me then and surprises me still, is that the writing I do when I least want to, the writing that is the hardest to churn out, somehow, is often the best. When I go back and edit something that was very easy for me to write, I tend to find that most of it gets cut. It’s bad. But the stuff that I really have to struggle with will many times be tight, succinct, and very well put together. That makes perfect sense when you think about it, but it sure sucks in practice. So there you have it. Do I look busy?”

I remember as a kid hearing stories about guardian angels that excited my imagination and kept me vigilantly on the lookout for angels I might “entertain unawares.” As I got older I guess I was tempted to dismiss these notions as perhaps a bit fanciful. But I have a sneaking suspicion that Taya and I may have met a couple angels the other night. After dropping off our boys at my parents, we were driving home for one last night of sleep in our bed before heading out on a six week spring tour. On our way we hit a deer as we were going 65 miles per hour. It came out of nowhere and there’s no way I could have avoided it, though I swerved hard and nearly ran off the road. The impact rocked our Dodge Caravan and smashed up the front and driver’s side door. The weeks leading up to our departure for the Spring tour had been filled with several difficulties that had left us feeling a little beat up and discouraged. Saying goodbye to the boys had been hard, but we were faring pretty well thinking the worst was behind us when out of nowhere there came a violent reminder of how fragile life is. Not only were we distraught for ourselves but we felt sick over the fact that we had mortally wounded an innocent creature. We were a bit dazed when somebody pulled up to our van and came to make sure we were okay. If there are such things as guardian angels who watch over us and minister to our needs, then I think I may know what ours look like. A woman emerged from the car who was as sturdy as she was stout of heart and looked like she might have fit in with the kind of capable people who pioneered this land in it’s infancy. After making sure we were okay, this strong woman of the prairies asked her driving companion, a skinny girl a little rough around the edges whose eyes were as pretty as they were fearless, to get the tire iron out of the back of her car. She intended to finish off the deer to make sure it didn’t suffer. As my presence of mind slowly began to return I remember thinking I should probably go out and do the unsavory deed instead of her, but I was stunned and frozen in my seat, more than a little horrified at the thought of what she was planning to do. Thankfully, the animal was dead before she could get to it and I was not only grateful that the deed wouldn’t have to be done, but even more so that we would be spared having to see this fearsome woman do it. She then pulled out her cell phone and said she had the highway department on speed dial. Her friend proceeded to pull an orange reflective cone from the trunk that she put out in the highway to help alert the oncoming motorists of the deer that still lay in the middle of the road. Having got the Highway Department on the phone, the first lady reported the incident and then put me on her phone for the police to take my information. She also made sure I got a report number and told me what I would need to do for my insurance company. We thanked her and I didn’t know what else to do but lamely give her a CD which I happened to have in my backpack. She thanked me and they were on their way. We limped our van back home and as the shock began to wear off it occurred to us how bizarre our encounter was with these women. They both struck us as a little quirky and surreal. Granted it could have been because we were in shock, but still – what are the odds of an unlikely couple of ladies stopping to help us immediately after our accident who had the highway department on speed dial, a reflective traffic cone in the trunk, the will to dispatch a large animal, and who left us with parting instructions on insurance procedures before whisking away into the night. We never even had a chance to get their names. Their care for our needs, the suffering animal, and also the other motorists was executed with such swift precision! If there are such incidents of encountering angels, this certainly could qualify as a case study. The worst part of the accident was how it triggered in Taya the awful memory of an accident that she witnessed a few years ago when the car in front of her hit a deer then ran off the road hitting a tree in the ditch. The car was on fire when Taya, a certified first responder, went to the vehicle and pulled a little girl from the backseat. By that time others arrived and were trying to get the grandmother and the other granddaughter who had both died on impact out of the car, but they were unable to do so before the car’s engine exploded and the vehicle burst into flames. Taya held the little girl and comforted her as only Taya can do before the ambulance arrived. As I thought about it, it occurred to me that for that little girl, Taya may always be remembered to her as the angel who pulled her out of a burning car and who spoke peace and comfort during one of the scariest moments of her life. And that’s something worth thinking about. Do angels watch over us? I’m persuaded to believe they do. But I also suspect that God’s care more often than not comes to us through other human beings willing to reach out in somebody’s time of need. Were those two quirky ladies our guardian angels? Or were they just kind people who were willing to make themselves available to us in our distress? Is my wife Taya an angel? Well of course I think she is, but I’m a little biased. Whether there are supernatural instances of human encounters with angelic beings is hard to say, but that God would supernaturally send us help in the form of another human being is indisputable. Maybe each of us will have an opportunity to be a guardian angel to someone in need. I pray heaven help us to recognize those moments for what they are and give us the courage to stop and play our part.

Many years ago, I was involved in a conversation about Jesus junk. Like most here in The Rabbit Room, I’m as offended by Jesus junk as I am moved by its counterpart, art that magnifies the glory of God with beauty and truth. The question we posed was, “Of all the Jesus junk on the market, which piece has the most redeeming value?” I chose the WWJD bracelet. Hey, if I had to pick one thing, the WWJD bracelet seemed as good as any. At the time of the discussion, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets were a hot item at Christian bookstores. In fact, they were so popular that a shopper could probably find one at Sears or Walmart. For all I know, they may still be out there. They were mainstream, baby. The WWJD bracelet shares some characteristics of great art (why are you rolling your eyes). It says something, but the message doesn’t assault us like a 2X4 over the head. At least not in the explicit way that lyrics on Christian formatted radio might. Further, the WWJD bracelet has layered meaning. Besides, “What Would Jesus Do,” some believers think of the initialism as, “Walk With Jesus Daily.” Still others think it means, “What Would Jesus Drive?” Less known is that this phrase found popular acceptance with Christians over 100 years ago in the 1890s. The use of the phrase became popular then as the result of a book written by Charles Sheldon in 1896 called, “In His Steps.” Had my great grandfather been on his toes, he could have made a mint marketing WWJD bracelets to general stores. Similar to other great art, we may be inspired to act or refrain from acting based on the inspiration found in the piece. We may never know how many F-bombs were averted as the result of the WWJD bracelet, but I’m willing to bet that it’s a lot. More than 39 for sure. Finally, as a conversation piece for nonbelievers, they were second to none. Though I grew up in church and became a believer after a 3rd grade youth group teacher used colored construction paper to illustrate the gospel (black for our sinful hearts, red for Jesus’ blood, white as snow for a redeemed heart, thanks Mrs. Raether)–the gospel didn’t become especially alive and vivid for me until a church camp experience when I was in junior high. After that, I started using a saying with my believer friends that was in retrospect half-cheesy, but also–just like the WWJD bracelets–was kind of an accountability tool for us. When we returned home from camp, any time we wanted to call each other on the truth or to encourage each other to “do the right thing,” we started using the phrase Remember Something. It was like a spiritual secret code, similar to the WWJD bracelet. By invoking the Remember Something phrase, we meant to remind each other that we were called to walk a different path than what we walked before. allslotsonline.casino/en/ , log in to Frank slot casino! Casino sign up mirror on our site!. Remember Something was a reminder of camp, and camp was a reminder of Christ. Initially it was part of our inner circle but over time the phrase, Remember Something caught on with the rest of our school friends, believers and non-believers alike. Though our non-believing friends had no earthly idea of the origination of the phrase, they began using it–unknowingly reflecting a truth or reality to which they didn’t necessarily subscribe. To us, it was both hilarious and moving. It would be cool to be able to say the phrase led to specific discussion opportunities with nonbelievers, but I don’t remember anything like that happening. We did have plenty of intimate discussions with our nonbelieving friends, but those conversations came later, mostly in high school. By the time we were sophomores, the Remember Something phrase largely dropped from our vocabulary. Junior high cool and high school cool are two different things, you understand. Every two years, I have a long standing pact to get together for a mini-vacation with two of these boyhood buddies, Bill and Ron, both of whom attended the same high school and private Christian college with me. When we get together, we often slip back into our early days vernacular–including the Remember Something phrase. It’s mostly just to be silly, but deep down I think we understand and appreciate the bond that such a small thing helped create among us, as well as the curiosity and involvement it created among non-believing friends. Thinking back (and maybe to our shame), we didn’t always use Remember Something in the most honorable of ways. Imagine, junior high guys behaving dishonorably? For example, I don’t know that teaching somebody a lesson about sharing their Peanut M&Ms was the best use of our Sunday schoolboy idiom. “Give me some of your M&M’s.” “No.” “Please.” “No.” “Remember Something.” “Oh, all right, here ya go.” Jesus would no doubt have shared His Peanut M&Ms–of course–but as you might imagine, sometimes this phrase became a tool something like a holy sledge hammer for lending legitimacy to the pilfering of somebody’s candy. Or worse. It cloaked agenda (ouch), manipulation (ouch, ouch) and selfishness (triple ouch) within the confines of piosity. What started as a pure expression and affirmation of God’s abiding love sometimes morphed into something not as pretty. The basis for Remember Something was something quite beautiful in an innocent sort of way. But when it became fodder for an agenda–even an honorable, spiritually correct agenda–if felt manipulative, heavy-handed, and controlling. Have you ever experienced art like that? Remember Something.

My wife has been laid up for a week recovering from surgery, and her mom drove up from Ralph, Alabama to help out. Of course, “help out” pretty much meant, “do everything.” Amy was in the bed, and I was slammed with two church services in one week on top of my typically hectic schedule when Grandmama checked in and took over like Michael Jordan. Family dirty laundry disappeared into the morning mist. The children received nourishment and attention, but not from me. “What happened to the mini-van?” Grandmama got out the shopvac and had her way till the Sienna cried mercy, and then she put it in a figure-four leg-lock. Now all the turn signals work. On Monday, I came home from a meeting and went inside to check in. To the tune of every child’s anti-melody, I hear my son: “You are a stooormtrooooper, but where is your maaaask? The diiiiinasaurs are coming and they are so aaaaangry.” Then, from the window of Jonah’s room, I watched Grandmama pulling apart clumps of monkeygrass, planting each one in a row to border our front yard landscaping. This is too much. I leave Jonah to his time-defying musical and go grab my gloves. Together, Grandmama and I raked aside the old mulch. We spread out and cut the black mesh groundcover until we reached two old thorny bushes that Amy detests. I got out my shovel. About this time, my 5 year old boy bangs open the front screen door and carefully rushes down the porch stairs. He hollers, “Woah woah woah, dad! Wait for me!” In his raised right hand, I saw the the tiny orange shovel that came with his Home Depot tool set. Jonah, watching from his window, had seen me with my huge red shovel, and hatched a grand idea. He tiptoed through and still trampled over the monkey grass and planted his shovel in the dirt beside the thorny shrub. “Oh, that’s great, dad!” And one tiny scoop was partially displaced. This went on for one or two minutes, and then he found the scissors and began to trim the grass in the front yard. I finished pulling out the shrubbery, Grandmama and I spread out the mulch, and we were all finished in time for dinner. Later, this passing scene struck me as hugely significant. My son did not consider his own usefulness, rather, he was overcome with the desire to experience that moment with his dad. As an adult interacting with other adults, this kind of behavior would be entirely inappropriate. Mature human beings do not impulsively join others in any activity without some kind of preparation or self-awareness. But as a son interacting with his father, it doesn’t get any better, especially on those rare occasions when I see past the task at hand and enjoy my son regardless of his performance. There are people in my life who are supposed to love me no matter what. I want those people to care for me no matter how I act. If my actions need critiquing, I need to first know that I am loved. Not just nominally, but truly loved and accepted in that moment. Otherwise I am either crushed and defeated, or newly inspired to ramp up the effort to please. Both responses are evidence of a misunderstanding of the Gospel, but I reinforce that misunderstanding in my kids when I see their behavior first, and them second… which I am prone to do. Thank God for the faith and resilience of children!

I wrote a post a while back that never saw the light of day–and for good reason. It was written in a fit of depression as I tried to express my exhaustion with the burden of hope. In it I suggested that hope was something I didn’t want anymore.  In fact, I said that I wanted to crush it dead and rip it out of me. It took a while for me to realize that what I was really exhausted by wasn’t hope, it was myself. I have an ongoing struggle with trying to discern what God wants from what I want. You hear it all the time, people say, “If it’s God’s will, he’ll open a door.” The problem with that advice is that God isn’t the only one opening doors. I can open doors on my own and Satan certainly opens them all around me, all the time. It’s figuring out which one to walk through that is the problem. Quite a few times in my life I’ve tried to walk by faith and walked through an open door only to find a precipice waiting. I’m still bruised from those falls and these days I find it harder and harder to take those leaps of faith. I feel like I’ve trusted God and he’s let me down, let me fall. Why should I bother trusting him again? This week, over lunch, I discussed this with a wise, old friend of mine. How do I tell the difference between what God wants and what I want to see? He chewed his food and didn’t reply for a long time. I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me or not. Then he looked at me and said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” He shrugged, as if to imply that there was nothing more to be said. He was right. My first reaction was irritation, I hate having scripture quoted at me, but as I opened my mouth to offer my ‘yeah, but’, I realized that I had nowhere to go. The mistake I’ve made is trying to find a way to align what I want out of life with what God wants out of me. I have always tried to find a way to serve both desires but I can’t serve both God and myself and I’m sure that far too often I’ve ended up serving only the latter. My efforts to serve myself have been consistently confounded and in retrospect, I don’t know that I have ever sought the kingdom first. Therein lay the root of my depression. When I wrote that I wanted hope to die, what I was really trying to say was that I wanted my self-service to die. I want to be dead to my own desire and alive in God’s desire for me. That’s not an easy prayer. In fact, it’s damnably hard to pray that and mean it. But I pray it. If only by rote at times, I pray it. And my hope is that one day my desires and his will be one.

Recently I made the statement, “Our biggest sin as believers is ‘trying to do good” and ‘trying to be like Christ.'” What do I mean by that? Shouldn’t we try to be like Christ, and try to be good Christians? Romans 6-8 brings some background for my opening statement. Paul, in Romans 6, states our real identity in Christ. We died to sin (6:2). Our old self was crucified with Christ (6:6). We are no longer slaves of sin; we’re freed now from sin’s tyranny over us (6:6, 7, 18, 22). These are radical statements, but since this is now how God defines Reality we’re to count it as true (6:11). Well, first of all, what is sin? If we look at what righteousness is, it’s “Loving God and neighbor at the expense of oneself.” So, reverse that, and sin is “Loving oneself at the expense of God and neighbor.” We’re dead to that, Paul says, and so we’re to take that statement literally and count it as a foundational reality. Think for a moment of what that means: “I am dead to sin.” But – it’s not enough to know we are dead to sin, and Paul foreshadows Romans 7 in 6:14. Sin shall not be our master, because we are not under the Law, but under grace. What does “the Law” mean? Some say that Paul means the ceremonial Law, but when you get to 7:7 he uses “Do not covet,” straight out of the Ten Commandments, showing he is discussing not merely the ceremonial but the moral Law. If we look at the essence of the Law-based economy, it was “Do this and you shall be blessed – fail to keep the whole Law and be cursed.” It is an either-or proposition; either we succeed totally by our human effort and achieve blessing, or we make one mistake and we’re done for. Both Paul and James point to this principle: Gal. 5:3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. And 2Kings shows that the Law is all or nothing: 2Kings 21:8 I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their forefathers, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.” That’s the “if” of the Law. And in Deut 27:26 “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.” That’s the all of the Law. The Law is an “if” proposition. If you do A B and C, then you will be blessed. If you don’t do A, B, and C, then you will be cursed. The Law is about becoming Something through doing. It is God’s answer to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – Satan’s paradigm. With the Law, God said in effect, “OK, human beings. If you think you can know good and evil and be “like God,” here’s the standard. If you keep all these commands, I will bless you. If you break one, you are under a curse.” If we’d had the brains we’d have said at Sinai, “We can’t do all that! There’s no way!” But instead what was said was, “We will be careful to do all you have commanded.” No problem, Lord. We’ll just be like You. Got it.” And the Old Testament record shows how well that worked. The Law doesn’t work because only God is love; He’s the sole source of totally other-centered love in the universe. Human beings, in their own effort, cannot love in this way. This is why Paul says, “The Law was weak, through the flesh.” Flesh-effort cannot truly love as God loves. We can love those who love us. We can be kind to those who aren’t unkind to us. But only God Himself can say, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing” while being tortured and executed for crimes he didn’t commit; only God can make Corrie Ten Boom reach up years later and shake the hand of the Nazi guard who had caused her so much pain; only God can cause widows of missionaries to go into uncharted territory to find the natives who murdered their husbands and then love them into the Kingdom. That kind of love belongs only to God Himself, and moreover He doesn’t give this love to man as a thing to use; rather, God gives Himself to us as the driving force of love inside these earthen temples. That’s why our Law-based human effort doesn’t work. By human effort we cannot rise above our flesh tendencies, the desire for self-protection, self-preservation, self-love (which loves my family, my friends, my country), and love simply because we are love. Only God can do that. Oh, we can look pretty good. We can be religious, moral, live good lives, even die for our country. But we can’t die for those who are spitting, whipping, beating, crucifying us, Nazi guards and natives who murdered our husbands. That last bit is the measure of real love. Most Christians believe that the Law, fleshly effort, cannot save us. They know we need Jesus as our Savior. But how many realize, and I didn’t for many years, that Jesus Christ is also our sanctifier? “As you began in the Spirit (by relying on Jesus Christ) so walk in Him (by reliance on Christ, the Spirit in us).” And so the point of Romans 7 is to show the hamster-wheel struggle of a believer who tries to use human effort to “be like God” and keep the Law. It is a wheel with no end. The infinite intricacies of the Law knock us down again and again. “I hate what I’m doing! I’m not doing what I want to do!” And so Paul says, “All who rely on the Law are under the curse.” Why? Human-effort says, “I am not good as God is good, and must strive to become like God.” The lie of the Garden and Satan’s boast in Isaiah 14. Paul says, “When I will to do good (will-power), evil is present.” Will-power exertion to be ‘good’ produces wretched-man syndrome – the defeated Christian. And so Paul calls the Law, “the Law of sin and death” and “the ministration of condemnation” (2Cor 3:9). “Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” It’s a death-stage as we forever die to the illusion that we can be like Christ if we just try harder next time. But it’s an important stage; it is the stage by which we learn “I am not like God. I cannot be ‘like Christ.’ I’m as different from God as a light bulb is from electricity.” That’s the crucial thing to learn. As Paul put it, we are “vessels” and as Jesus said, “Branches.” There is no way for a cup itself to slake anyone’s thirst without something in it. There’s no way a branch can produce a single bit of fruit by exertion of effort. All the branch does is rest and stay connected to the Vine. That’s the foundational reality for the mature believer: “I am a cup.” “I am a branch.” It is the foundation of real humility, where we finally dispense with self-commendation when we do this or that good thing and self-condemnation when we fail. And so Jesus Himself, who set aside the use of His Deity and came to live here as a Holy Spirit-directed man knew this reality of human cup-ness and said, “I can do nothing of Myself” and “The Father in Me does the works.” In this humility – through the humiliation of our failure to be ‘like Christ’ – we find our true, inherent, God-created weakness. We were never meant to be good on our own steam, our effort, our striving. “Why do you call Me good? For there is only One who is good – that’s God.” That means there’s only one source of goodness in the entire universe, and it isn’t me, this human cup. To wrap this up, Romans 6 states we’re dead to sin. But a believer, dead to sin, cannot be a clear channel of God’s love unless he knows he’s also dead to striving, flesh-effort based, hamster-wheel-running ‘trying to be like Christ.’ That’s Romans 7. And I guess we can talk about Romans 8 after we finish discussion on this bit – 8, where the lie is conquered and we begin to see ourselves as weak in our humanity but strong in the Spirit.

Mother Nature enjoys a good April Fool’s joke as much as anyone, I guess, and after days of springtime warmth we got hit with another big snowstrom on April 1st that shut down a part of the state. However, it was nice to have a snow day for our last day at home. Today we leave to begin a new adventure: The Spring tour with Shawn McDonald and Downhere. It’s shaped up to be a full schedule of 27 dates in 34 days from Florida to Washington with a only a four day break for Gospel Music Week in Nashville. We are grateful to be a part of such a tour, to be sure, but today we are also feeling a little sad as we prepare to say goodbye to our boys. Taya will be back home for about a week in mid-April, but other than a planned visit during our stop in Minneapolis, I won’t see them for the better part of 6 weeks. This is the hardest part of what I do. Knowing this day was coming, we have tried to make the most of our time together. We had a sweet Easter time as a family and I’ve tried to keep shorter work days the last few weeks. I’ve been especially attentive to Gus, our 4 year old. He’s changing so much these days and I’m afraid of what I’ll miss of his development in this time. He’s my last little boy and he will be a different boy when I get home. And yet we believe that we are on the path that God has for us and that in the grand scheme of things, this is really just a short time apart. We are grateful, too, to have a sense that though there are sacrifices, we have purpose and that there is meaning to our work. I daily pray this is true. We really do have the best of both worlds. The boys will stay with their grandparents, which they are actually excited about. It’s a pretty painless transition for them and we know they’ll have fun. It’s more myself that I feel sorry for. The older I get the more I’m aware of how much I need my family. Can you believe that sometimes I’m actually grateful to be woken in the middle of the night by a scared little boy who needs only a word from dad to help him find the courage to sleep in the dark? Maybe I’m clinging to these days in their lives when I still have the power to make everything alright. One of my most cherished memories is the time that Taya and the boys drove me to Rochester, MN for me to join my first official tour in Spring of 2002 with Sara Groves. Afterward on the drive home that snowy February night, Jacob (then 5 years old) was a little choked up and having difficulty with the idea that they had just dropped me off and wouldn’t see me for several weeks. In his effort to cope with it, he said to Taya: “Mom, can we pretend that we’re driving to pick dad up instead of going home without him?” “Sure, Jacob,” Taya said, “we can pretend that we’re driving to pick dad up and that you’ll see him in just a little bit…” And that little thought was all he needed to help him drift off to sleep for the rest of the drive. It’s these partings that give the time we have together such weight. I’m afraid as I share such personal feelings that there are those who may be tempted to judge our lifestyle and wonder if we sacrifice too much for our ministry. Sometimes I wonder myself, to be honest, though I know in this regard that the times I am home I get to be more present to my boys than many parents, so I think it all evens out. I hope so, anyway. The trick is to be balanced and to jealously guard the time that you do have. These times away are a sacrifice for me, but I pray that God will keep us all and bless our work, and help us to do work that is worthy of blessing. I guess in sharing all this, I’m asking: would you remember us in your prayers? Remember our boys. Remember Taya and I. Pray that our work will have meaning and will be worthy of the sacrifices. Pray that we will be true and faithful to all we are called to do in our ministry both at home and on the road. Thank you.

From the Proprietor: A sure sign that you’re friends with someone is when you don’t mind if they make fun of you. The Captains Courageous and I were on a trip a while back and we decided over dinner to figure out what each person’s worst physical feature was. One had to sit and watch the other two examine him, debate, and conclude which feature a caricature artist would exploit–like G.W. Bush’s pointy ears and upper lip in political cartoons. Only in the company of good friends can you sit and feel loved even while you’re being ridiculed. I’ll post more on that later, because there’s a drawing of each of us with the bad features exaggerated, and seeing it just might brighten your day. That brings me to today’s post. After a few days of really heavy thinking about really heavy issues, I’m going to post something Pete threw together. We’re going to try something new. Once a week, Pete will pose a question and each of the Rabbit Room contributors will post a short answer or thought. Think of it like that show The View, only not annoying and shallow. So for an example Pete worked up the following, in which he posed a question and imagined how some of us might answer. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. What pie is best and how has the loving of that pie influenced your life, work, and weight? Should you correctly answer that Cheesecake is the greatest of all known pies, please explain why it isn’t called Cheese Pie.

First of all, Andy P, thanks for writing a post that is longer than any of mine. I’ve long been insecure about that, and now you’re the long-winded one (until I write this post, anyway). And secondly, thank you Marc for getting the conversation going; you’re speaking out your convictions, and that’s good. I have some thoughts on the whole thing. Reliant faith in the indwelling Christ brings love in the heart, peace to the mind. As we learn to “stay ourselves upon the Lord” He begins to express Himself through us more and more. But we can easily confuse what God really wants (reliant faith) with the letter of the Law and get overly focused on sin – one of the main problems in the church today. We’re always studying on what sin is and how to avoid committing it rather than thinking on Who Christ is in me. We’re sin-conscious rather than Christ-reliant, fear-driven rather than Spirit-led. How much cussing in a movie is ok? Is one F bomb acceptable? Can we trade an F bomb in for two S words and a D word? What if there is just one “Hell”? Or, if there is no cussing, is it permissible to see a guy get thrust through with a sword? Or an implied sexual encounter? Where exactly is the line between appropriate and inappropriate? Is that line the same for every believer? Don’t take me wrongly; this isn’t a monologue about how we should enjoy hearing four-letter words in movies, a way to defend Hollywood and live in fleshly sensuality. Most of the time the cussing isn’t necessary – most of us can probably agree on that. And we should definitely live our convictions, speak them out, truthfully, with love – if we feel it’s wrong to watch movies with a lot of cussing, we can speak it out. If we believe something is wrong, then it is wrong for us. But not everyone has the same struggles; not everyone has the same sin-history, so each has a different “letter of the Law” perspective. That’s why some judge cussers and others judge drinkers; we often judge the very thing we struggle with, or used to struggle with, or have had family members struggle with. So we can’t expect other believers to share all our convictions. We’re all at different stages along the journey in Christ – a journey out of fear and judgment and into faith. And of course, some will rightly bring up “Faith without works is dead.” Which is true; faith without an outer expression is not faith – it’s merely passive belief. But people take that James verse to mean “Don’t drink don’t cuss don’t smoke don’t chew ‘baccy and you’ll be a real Christian.” It actually means that if we step out in faith on God’s Word and character and really trust Him, there will be outer manifestation, in our behavior, of that inner reliance. But we don’t focus on the results – that produces a short-circuit where we’re trying to make ourselves conform. Our job is to keep faith-ing in the One who produces the results. God wants to go beyond judgment, beyond fear into knowing He has completely erased our sin history in Christ – that we are now new creations, dead to sin, dead to Law, and alive to God, and that now, right now, He is the indwelling Power in us; “I will cause you to walk in My ways and keep My statutes.” All that to say – some cuss-words in movies aren’t going to destroy or weaken the infinite power of Christ living in me. But if a person’s faith in that indwelling Power is weak, cussing in movies may help weaken his faith even more, because the bottom line is we may be trying to live by a point system rather than walking in the Spirit. “What exactly is sin, and how do I avoid doing it? What exactly are the boundaries for seeing sin in movies? Can I wear a skirt this short? Is it ok to drink a beer?” I know a young believer who says nearly every cuss word in the book. He came out of a really bad and dark childhood and found Christ through some of us who loved him. He’s now a believer and still cusses a lot, though he doesn’t get as hot as he used to. Shall I judge his behavior or should I look at his heart? Shall I chide him for his cussing or encourage him for his growth and let God deal with the mouth? Does God look at the heart of a new creation man or woman, or does He merely look at the outer behavior to make sure it conforms to the divine standard? If His new creation being doesn’t “look right” does God then write it off as a total loss, throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Or does He redeem it by seeing what it means, and through seeing the heart of it bringing it deeper into His idea of what it’s meant to be? If God looks at the heart of His own art, His own creation, shouldn’t we look at the heart of art in general? Shouldn’t we look to see what a movie means? Shouldn’t we redeem art by finding the light that is there rather than the darkness that is present? If God doesn’t throw out the wheat along with the tares, why should we? Now, this is coming from a Dad who doesn’t let his kids watch anything with cussing or sex or very much violence. I understand that encoding a child is encoding a child; their minds are so absorbent – little sponges – so I’m careful with them. And I’m careful with my own mind as well. I hate gratuitous violence, sex, and even cussing. Most of the time it just isn’t necessary. But as a grownup human and grownup believer I’m looking for light – and so I sometimes find it even in dark places. It’s a matter of focus. I used to watch movies looking for anti-Christian bias, and I found plenty of it. But now I look for truth, beauty – I look for the good. And I find it much more than I supposed possible. And, of course, if a believer is watching R rated movies in order to be titillated by the darkness that’s another story (but still the same sin-consciousness problem). Some people (especially many women) have an aversion to violence, and it’s right and good for them to refrain from seeing it. I don’t like watching people get their bodies slashed by swords either, but since I can handle the violence a little better than some I’d rather see it than throw out Braveheart (which contains violence, sex, and the F bomb) and miss the call to love, courage, faith, endurance, purpose, mission, meaning and sticking together when everything is falling apart. Regarding cussing I’ve been through many phases as a believer – cussing and not thinking about it, cussing and struggling with stopping, and finally giving up on struggling and asking God to clean up my mouth. The third option works. When we utilize the third option (God doing the actual work, while we’re doing the trusting) we aren’t worried about being pulled back into it. If we didn’t use our own strength to clean up our mouth, we don’t need to to exert our human effort to keep it clean. Seeing a movie star cuss isn’t going to make me start saying F U D G E (for you Christmas Story fans out there) in front of my kids. Just how powerful is the Spirit of Christ? Who is He, really? And where is He? Well, He’s God. He’s all-powerful. And He lives in me – that transcendent, world-creating God, the God who triumphed over sin, death, Hell, and the Devil. Can He clean up my life? Can He keep me from sin? Does He have the power? Does He have the love? Does He have the desire? Or do I have to keep myself through avoidance, effort, hiding from the world? Am I supposed to be of the world (using human effort and a performance-based mentality) but not in it (hiding out from the world), or the other way round? These are all rhetorical questions, really. I think I won back the long-winded title.

I’m hesitant to enter into this sort of conversation in an online format. There’s a lot to be said for body language, tone of voice, and the way someone’s heart can pour out of a face-to-face exchange in a way that surprises even the speaker. But I guess I was the one who opened up Pandora’s box (no offense), so I’d better offer a reply, feeble though it may be. For those of you who didn’t read my post or its comments from a few days ago entitled “What Connects Us All,” here’s a recap. I recommended Once, the independent Irish film about a songwriter, with one caveat: if you’re bothered by the F word, avoid this movie. One brave soul spoke up and questioned the propriety of subjecting oneself to any film that included [expletive] thirty nine times. I’m assuming the commenter knows that because there’s a website somewhere that keeps a tally of such things for discerning viewers. So the issue is language. Specifically, the foul kind. For starters, I want to make a disclaimer. I’m not a theologian. I’m a songwriter (mainly). I don’t think that lets me completely off the hook, as pertains to my duty to be responsible for the things I write and write about, but it does mean that I’m going to approach this argument differently than, say, a seminarian pastor would, or any logical, systematic thinker, for that matter. It took me years after Bible college to learn to rest in the fact that God didn’t give me the kind of mind that can hold its own in a theological debate fraught with proof-texting. I just can’t do it. I’ve tried, I’ve failed, and I’m finished with it. But I do have a decent mind, and can reason through things in an Everyman sort of way, or at least I hope so. So if you’re of the systematic theology camp, be gentle with me. I’m still learning. Also, keep in mind that those of us who lose our keys daily and cry at the drop of a hat might have something to teach you, too. First of all, I think there’s a difference between Cursing and Using Foul Language. We tend to lump them together, but they’re not the same, I don’t think. Cursing, at least in the Biblical sense, has more to do with wishing death and evil upon someone instead of life and goodness; it is meant as the opposite of blessing. According to two concordances, the word “curse” is used in the New Testament only nineteen times, and after a quick read of each case it looks to me like that’s the sense in which it’s used every time. It doesn’t have to do with the use of certain words that society deems foul, but with wishing evil on someone, by using the inherent power of words to hurt and not to heal. Like I said, I’m no exegetical guru, so if I’m reading this wrong, by all means let me know. I think someone uttering and meaning the words “I hate you” is much more offensive than thirty nine casual uses of the F bomb. I’ll say that again. Words are the overflow of the heart, so words spoken in anger, hatred, and bitterness are far more damaging and dangerous than the flippant use of words that are thought of as dirty. To put it another way, cursing is active; it is the result of energy placed into the utterance. Those who use foul language usually do so out of laziness; they don’t feel like thinking of the right word, so they vomit out the lowest, dumbest form of the vernacular. That’s a harsh judgment, I realize, because the idea of vernacular, of the cadence of speech common to a place, is beautiful in its way, and should be preserved, and even celebrated. But within the regional vernacular, wherever you are, there will always be a hierarchy of bad words, and everyone will know it, more or less. But that list of acceptable words will change depending on which culture (and which social situation) you find yourself in. I speak differently on the stage than I do in the car with Ben and Andy on the way to the hotel after the show. We’re not two-faced. There’s a level of comfort and vulnerability and healthy irreverence that is rightly reserved for time among close friends. In England, from what I hear, “bloody” is as vile as you can get. Not so much the case in Nashville. The F bomb in Ireland is more like “darn” in the U.S. There’s a sexual connotation to us, but language morphs and words lose and gain meanings over the years. I’m not from Ireland, but I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of the thirty nine uses of the word in the film are of the “darn” variety and not the sexual euphemism kind. When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to say the word “fart”. We said “I passed gas.” The word “butt” was similarly off-limits–“bottom” was encouraged. I also remember that we didn’t call it “poop”. We called it–ready for this?–“boopie”. Say that aloud once or twice. Boooopie. It’s hilarious. My parents had a strong sense of which words were okay and which weren’t, and though my brother and I rode right up to the line of propriety in their presence (and leapt across it among our friends), now I completely understand that they were teaching us good manners. They were giving us the tools to be able to function in a society with rules of proper behavior, just like keeping your elbows off the table, and chewing with your mouth closed, and not burping out loud if you can help it (exception: when you’re in the car with just the guys, or if you’re Alison Osenga). That’s how I’ve approached it with my kids. They heard the S word (for boopie) once and asked me what it was. I didn’t hide from it or cringe when they said it. I just told ’em it was a strong word for poop that wasn’t a good word to say (in most circumstances–being trapped on a rope bridge like Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom might be an occasion in which it is called for). But seriously. They said okay and that was the end of it. I could’ve launched into a diatribe about the evils of the S word, I could’ve forbade them to ever think it, let alone say it, but then if my boys are anything like me it would then be imprinted on their brains forever and they would find themselves saying it aloud when they were alone, for starters. By the time ninth grade rolled around, they’d be addicted. I admit, there’s a difference between not using foul language and chewing with your mouth closed. Nowhere in the book of James is there any mention of bad table manners being like a restless evil, full of poison. But when you grow up with the assumption that “cursing” is just using any one of a laundry list of bad words–a laundry list that changes with every generation, no less–then you tend to focus on the “foul” words and not the foul hatred in your heart. Isn’t the heart what God’s interested in? Can you get through life without ever using the F word and still have a roiling darkness in your heart? Absolutely. Can you have light and love in your heart, the ability to encourage, to bless, to show compassion to those around you even if your banter with them includes some of the words on the naughty list? Absolutely. Sure, it’s not proper, preferable, or wise to litter your language with unnecessary expletives, but I’d rather hang with a salty sailor any day than a whitewashed tomb. And speaking of whitewashed tombs, that’s exactly what I was in high school. See, I studiously avoided bad words when my parents were around, but my brother and I constantly ridiculed my sisters. We called them “stupid idiots”, we made fun of the things they liked, we taunted them. My sisters still bear the wounds of the words I said to them twenty years ago. But I didn’t cuss! No sir. Of course, I’m not saying that everyone who’s sensitive to foul language is a whitewashed tomb. That’s not my point at all. If my mom started speaking with an Irish brogue and using words like we’re talking about, I’d fall over dead. Something in the time/space continuum would rupture and dinosaurs in tutus would pirouette across the White House lawn. My mother, God bless her, is carrying the torch of her upbringing and will forever cringe at the word “butt”; I wouldn’t have it any other way. But our friends in Ireland come from a culture that is quite literally foreign to us. Could it be that the F word carries no more weight over there than “stink” does here? And is it possible for me, with the Holy Spirit in me, to watch a film made by these Irish folks and glean the sweet spirit of their heart, or their intent, from the film without being polluted by something that in their culture is innocuous and in ours is at best impolite and at worst offensive? I think so. I know so, in fact, because that’s exactly what happened when I watched this film. I didn’t wake up the next morning with foul language dripping off my tongue and into my cereal. My kids weren’t cursed six ways from Sunday. No, I had a deep sense of inspiration regarding my calling to write songs. I was reminded of the power of good music. I thought about how good it is to make decisions based on wisdom and patience and not infatuation (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you saw the film). Not to make more of it than it is, but my heart was changed for the better by watching the movie. How can that happen, when they used the F word thirty nine times? Because the Spirit in me–guiding my attentions, my decisions, teaching me gently and patiently every minute of the day–allows me to live my life out of faith and not fear. I have so often shushed the Spirit’s promptings in my life because it contradicted what my flesh lusted for. I have ignored it. I have wished it would leave me alone. But I also have managed to listen at times, and have obeyed. I have learned to feebly trust that I am a new creation, that in some mysterious, wondrous way, God inhabits me. If he’s there in my heart, and I choose (with discernment) to spend 90 minutes experiencing a story told by an image-bearer, what have I to fear? (Remember, we’re not talking about my use of the word, but of my exposure to stories that have characters who might use those words.) Now, here’s the other side of the coin. I made the disclaimer about the movie because I realize that we’re all at different stages on the journey. We all have unique baggage that we’re lugging around, and some things that you might not think twice about will send me up the wall like a cat in a dog pound. If I had watched this film when I was in Bible college, I would have been offended to my core. I know what it’s like to be sensitive to foul language, and I sympathize. I’m not writing this to convince you to not be offended. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you, seek counsel, be humble, love wisdom, and pray that I’ll do the same. I have come to know Christ much better over the fifteen years since my Bible college career began, and I find that I am much less worried about some things and am much more sensitive to others. I believe that words have power. They are a gift unique to the crown of God’s creation on earth, and are to be used carefully. The Bible in James 3:6 calls the tongue a “world of evil”, and after many instances of hurting myself and the people around me with nothing more than my words, I’m inclined to agree (it is the Bible, after all). Just tonight after our Bible reading with the kids we compared Genesis 1:1 with John 1:1ff, and talked about how wonderful it is that Jesus himself was the Word by which the world was made. What power there is in the spoken word! What power to heal, to teach, to preach, to love–and what power to tear down, to despise, to kill. I’m not sure how to wrap this up. It’s 3 AM, and I’m still glad I watched the movie Once. And I still think that it’s okay if you don’t understand how I could enjoy it in spite of its language. I enjoyed sitting on the couch with my kids, taking turns reading through Genesis even more. I’m going to bed, cringing in anticipation of being schooled by you all in the ways of rhetoric and exegesis. So be it. AP

I spent a day last week at the Harn Museum of Art and aside from being a lot of fun, it reminded me of some things about myself that I don’t usually like to acknowledge. While I toured the main gallery and considered its theme of “Paradigms and the Unexpected” one of the boys I was with (the security monitor actually) tugged on my arm and dragged me into a small video alcove. “Mister Pete, you’ve got to see this!” The child’s level of excitement convinced me that surely he had found a depiction of something blowing up, or something involving zombies. To his credit, what he was excited about contained neither. He’d recognized something profound even though he scarcely knew why. It was an exhibit of a work by Oscar Munoz entitled, Re Trato. It’s a simple video, a close-up of the hand of the artist repeatedly painting a face, no sound, no music. But there’s more to it than that. He is painting with water on stone and as he ‘paints’ the water slowly evaporates. The face is never complete. The artist fills in the brow, the hairline, an eye, an ear, but when he comes to the mouth and begins to form it, the water of the brow has begun to dry. Once the chin and jaw line are defined, the brow and hairline are gone. The water has dried and only the grey stone remains, unchanged, unformed. Without pause, the artist begins again. He draws out the brow once more, the eyes and a nose. Each thing created, another evaporated. Endlessly he works, again and again, redefining what fades, over and over making more of the stone than the stone would be without him, yet constantly as he works at creation, the stone forgets what it has been and becomes only what it was before. As is often the case in the best art, the work takes on meaning beyond what the artist intended. The description of the work says that the artist’s intent is to draw attention to the huge numbers of people in Latin America that disappear without a trace for speaking out against the government. He paints the faces of these disappeared from their obituaries. On that level, I think he’s certainly succeeded. But for me it goes much further than a political statement. I can never seem to figure out who am I created to be. I’ve been trying to put the picture together over the years, bits and pieces at a time, but each time I think I’ve got one aspect figured out and made permanent, I realize I’ve forgotten something else. Faith, finance, work, family, fun, why can’t they all line up together? Why doesn’t he ever paint a smile on the face? Why won’t he paint me a marriage? I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole with my life and my sin and I can never get ahead or find any relief. My creator has to constantly redefine me, recreate me. No matter how hard I try I can never see the whole picture and worse, it’s so much easier to evaporate and be just the stone than to be the face. I’m fearful that his patience with me will give out and he’ll withdraw his hand and let me fade away completely. I’m sure none of this occurred to the boy that dragged me into the room to see Re Trato. It’s entirely possible that he expected Senor Munoz to paint a Kalashnikov in the man’s hand and was terribly disappointed to find out that it was just the face, over and over and over again. Maybe I’m the same way, waiting on things that aren’t in the picture. On the drive home that evening I prayed, and have prayed many days since, that the Artist will continue his re trato, that he will not withdraw his brush. I want to be more than just the stone, even if that means I don’t get to hold a Kalashnikov. And while I struggle to retain my form, I have faith that someday he’ll paint me in permanent colors. Here is a crude example of Re Trato that I’m hesitant to even post. I say ‘crude’ because this YouTube clip is sped up and very brief. The presentation at the museum is in real-time (28 mins) and is much more graceful and meditative.

The musical bumper sticker on my car during the ol’ college years would have definitely read “I’d Rather Be Listening To Acoustic Music.” Therein was my initial foray into the early careers of Square Peg artists like our own Proprietor. I found great enjoyment in the Texan college worship scene (early Crowder, Robbie Seay, Justin Barnard, anyone?). And the great unknown (acoustic) rock over which I stumbled came in the form of Jill Phillips. The destination? A Caedmon’s Call show just outside of Columbus, Ohio with some friends. Opening was a young man who called himself Bebo. I didn’t even know there was another opening act. But out steps this young woman to warm up the crowd. The place was serving refreshments and, since she wasn’t Bebo, I went to get more punch. If you’ve ever heard the music of Jill Phillips, you know what I’m referring to when I say that back at the refreshments table, I froze . The initial, inviting strums and rhythm of “Steel Bars” began to play and I thought, “Wow, this is really pretty good.” But then she started singing. I’m glad I never went back to my group of friends because it would have been embarrassing to cry in front of them. “So this is how it feels at the rock bottom of despair When the house that I built comes crashing down And this is how it feels when I know the man that I say I am Is not the man that I am when no one is around This is how it feels to come alive again And start fighting back to gain control And this is how it feels to let freedom in And break these chains that enslave my soul” The song explores the slow, freeing realization of grace and forgiveness in such beautiful ways and I was moved while I myself was just trying to move away to get something to drink. I’ve been hooked ever since. I bought a copy of the album right there and my journey has continued through all the rest. On the brilliant God and Money, again I found myself transfixed by the very first song, “Last Time,” written by Jill and co-writer/collaborator/husband Andy Gullahorn.  It’s another song of sin management and our attempts to get things right with God and really echoed where I was at in my own life. Other beautiful songs like the title track, “You Don’t Belong Here” and “Falling into God” only further served to cement my love for their music. Overall, Andy and Jill’s music have been a vital part of my spiritual soundtrack. It was in a period of absolute depression and devastation that I found Writing on the Wall, which included my favorite Jill Phillips track: “Wrecking Ball.” “Piece together these little mysteries It isn’t hard to see the writing on the wall Triumph and tragedy, only God can be Both the builder and the wrecking ball” It was the story of the Israelites who found that God safely leads through both the wilderness and the Promised Land and sometimes trust in Him is all you have. It was a beautiful reminder during a period when I was completely alone, isolated and angry at the cosmic being who put me there. It’s been a beautiful ride thus far with these two in my (now) iTunes. On her latest, Nobody’s Got It All Together, the sonic trend continues toward vulnerable, authentic artistry of one sinner/saint singing amidst the rest of us. It’s another fantastic effort in a catalog I was lucky enough to find. It’s amazing to me how God uses simple acoustic shows to begin to weave a thread into your life so that he can deliver the perfect song at the right time years and years later.

“Hope, at the end of the day, is what connects us all.” So said Marketa Irglova at this year’s Academy Awards after she and co-writer Glen Hansard won the Oscar® for Best Song. As of the award show I had seen the movie Once, uh, twice. Jamie has a knack for falling asleep during movies, no matter how much she likes ’em. She’ll be wide awake one minute, and all of a sudden all those motherhood responsibilities from the day–homeschooling and cooking and teaching piano lessons to the neighborhood kids–sneak up on her and knock her out cold. (Have I mentioned that I think my wife is a remarkable person?) So there I was on the couch, finishing up Once while my wife slept with her head in my lap. At the end of the movie I was left with such a bittersweet sense of satisfaction that I’m pretty sure my sniffles woke Jamie up. The next day I re-watched the movie and made her stay awake this time, and she was equally moved. (I don’t think I’ve ever before watched the same movie twice in 24 hours.) So this little independent Irish film made my list of favorites, and I don’t think it’s just because it’s about a songwriter. I got the feeling that the movie has the potential to touch the hearts of all kinds of people, because of the very thing Irglova said at the Oscars®: “Hope, at the end of the day, is what connects us all.” You’ll have to keep in mind that in Ireland, the F word is about as common as “the” in the U.S. of A. If that’s a hurdle for you, pass on this one. But there’s something really special about this film. It’s hard to say exactly what it is. Maybe it’s the really good songs, or the independent spirit of the filmmakers, or the extremely likable lead actors (in real life and in the film), or the thematic elements of the story itself. Either way, something good came together, and it was a thrill to see that the Academy recognized it. I love to see the underdog win, so I almost came out of my chair when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won the award. The only downside was that they cut off Marketa before she could say her thanks. But wait! After the commercial break, John Stewart, in a classy move, invited her back out to enjoy her moment and offer her thanks. What she had to say was good, and I had the feeling that it was a fine moment for struggling independent singer/songwriters everywhere. Here’s the chorus: Take this sinking boat and point it home We’ve still got time Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice You’ve made it now Here’s the video, with scenes from the film, and below it is a link to the acceptance speech. Glen and Marketa may live in Ireland, but watching this makes me as proud of them as if they were a part of our Nashville community. Click here to watch the acceptance speech.

These videos were just brought to my attention. They’re from a show called Faith Café, hosted by Scott Denté. I’d never met him before this taping, but I really liked him a lot. Anyway, the first video is of me, Ben and Andy G. playing an acoustic version of the song “The Far Country”, and the second is “I’ve Got News”, which will be on Resurrection Letters, Vol. II. Speaking of which, I had a great meeting with the folks at the potential record label today (I’d leave off the word “potential”, but I’ve been a part of the music business for long enough that I know not to assume anything’s going to happen until the day after it actually happens). They seem to be great people, and I look forward to working with them to get this record into your hands in the best way possible. Oh, and the Resurrection Letters Tour 2008 was wonderful. Thanks to all the churches and promoters who took a chance on a new idea for a concert, and to all the people who showed up. I pray that the music and the readings helped you to remember all over again how deep, wide, and high is the love the Father has for us. Hope you like the videos.

The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis isn’t a comfort type book in the conventional sense, but it does provide an intellectual exploration of why a loving God might allow his children to suffer with pain, seemingly ignoring their prayers. Though it’s a more complex issue than I have the intellect to understand–to put it simply–what I’ve learned is that pain is for my own good. This might be the biggest conundrum of Christian living, the idea that pain, as much as it hurts, is good for us. Several years ago, I made a list of some of the life events that brought me pain. In my forty plus years, it was the worst two year run of pain I’d ever experienced. Here’s the short list summary: dad died, grandma and grandpa died, mother was in the hospital three times for extended periods, a close friend was killed in a stock car race at age 38, brother injured badly in a fall, son in hospital twice with a serious illness, several expensive car breakdowns, aunt died after an extended hospital stay, great aunt died, a favorite cousin–my own age–died of a massive heart attack, home vandalized, my wife and I started primary care giving for my mother-in-law who developed and later died from vascular dementia, office relocation, won a business lawsuit, long-time business partner retired, and we refinanced our home. That’s some pretty hefty pain and stress, deposited on the head of one person in a compressed period of time. I don’t mean to imply that I suffered through all of these events alone. Indeed, much of this pain was shared pain. Some may say simply that this is called life. Hey, those are things–to one extent or another–that have happened or will happen to everyone. Touche’. I agree. It just happened, however, that in my life maybe the statistics of living a charmed life prior to that, finally caught up with me. Rather than spreading these situations over many years, a wacked-out standard deviation placed these events in a relatively short period of time in my own life. I had my share of angry moments. I sometimes behaved rebelliously, acting like a jerk or living as a natural man in some perverse way to “get back at God.” Many times I cried out to God, “Why me? Why another trial to bear? Haven’t I had my share of pain by now?” “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine could have been talking about me. Truly, I still don’t have a pat answer for why God allows still one more trial to follow after a man is already writhing on the ground in pain, spread eagle with his hands towards heaven, crying out for mercy. I just don’t have an answer. What we do know is that God is sovereign and He is good. When doubts arise, I think it’s always helpful to look to what we know for sure about the character of God. We know he loves us and it is impossible for Him to behave towards us with anything outside of perfect love. By that, we can only assume and trust, if God gives us that ability, that he allows us to suffer great pain. He doesn’t provide the answer we seek in prayer because he has a higher purpose–maybe not so clear to us at the time–but very definitely for our own good. I’m perfectly willing to credit myself for blessings that have come from God. Retrospectively, I’ve become convinced that God allows major pain in my life because I’m slow to recognize his grace, so inclined to want to run the show myself, so rarely given to making His will my own. It’s not always correction (I’m getting into deeper theological territory than I belong here). More so, it’s a loving Father, nudging His son in the direction He knows is best. I like this passage, James 1:2-4, which deals with joy and pain: Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Through these periods in which God is silent, I have learned that my vision is often limited. With God’s omniscience and sovereignty, it’s a little humorous that I sometimes think that I know better. Oh, I would never express it that way, but sometimes I live that way. I’m learning that in allowing so much pain to enter my life, God is actually showing me how much He loves me. He wants me to learn and grow. He wants me to learn those things I’ve been slow to embrace. Remember Caedmon’s Call’s song “Where I Began”?: So you have yourself your ninety nine Isn’t that enough for you? Still you followed me to the shadowed valley Carried me on your shoulders too. I’ve done the work of Sisyphus Thinking that I could get over this hill But the one thing I can’t get over now Is the force of your will. It’s true that during those times when grief surrounds us, clouding our vision, we must peer way deep inside of it, although every part of us wants to look away or run. I’ve learned–alas, I’m still learning–that joy isn’t some esoteric, hard to capture emotion–it’s a choice. It’s an act of my will, enabled by the grace of God. I can choose to be joyful. So, what does it look like? For me, prayer has been helpful. In obedience, praising God for specific aspects of His character–that he knows and I don’t, that he loves me and wants the best for me–and to praise Him for loving me so much that he would allow these things. And that often produces the emotion that might be called happiness. But even if it doesn’t (and sometimes it doesn’t) I need to stand on God’s promises in spite of how I feel. Feelings change. God doesn’t.

Easter is breathing in the east. After downing victuals of mildly grease-soaked Mississippi country sausage bathed in Creole mustard aboard a two-week old onion roll, the remainder of a sweet tea from today’s lunch, and a pair of chocolate peanut butter eggs, I can feel my mind slowing to a stock standstill, eager for the pillow. College basketball is hovering on the muted television, today’s newspaper – a less than stellar daily – is scattered across the couch ad hoc to my right, my son is fast asleep in his cradle, and the family cat, Gurdy, as obese as a pumpkin, flopped down from the foot-high perch on the rocker she’s been curled up in for the better part of the evening. At this point, I can hear only the whirring of my computer’s internal organs and the occasional high-pitched timbre of the analog tube inside the television set. And yet, outside our cottage walls, a freight train crowds the night as it lumbers across the Cumberland River atop Shelby Bottoms, bellows its deep fragrance and leaps northward out of the city. I could live no nearer train tracks than I do now; all that sound, all that steel, the grease, and the smell of oiled and burnt railroad ties, lying there in support of momentary passage, heightened commerce and resurrecting such lumbering vessels. Tomorrow begins. Today ceases. The darkness defies the antihero. He suffers in the garden sweating as if with blood. A scrub jay finally ceases its day long ruckus and roosts on a lower olive bough nearby allowing Jesus a night of fitful prayer to himself. He absorbs the scourge of every man. Another man, in a different town, awakens from a dream in which he has passed through the eye of a No. 8 Schmetz sewing needle. He feels blow after fisted blow. A woman defeatedly hails a cab in the early dawn after a night with her married lover. He carries felled timbers to his own demise. You curse the day you were born into this world. He receives humiliation with abandon. I mock life by hoarding it for myself. He kneels and rakes the dust of the ground with his fingers, telling with no words a story we ache to hear and take part in with as much as fullness as an orchard pregnant with vigor and life. We long for it because we need the commonality of that gentle and forever grace. The proud and the religious and the meek and the sore and the ill and the fallen shall inherit the Good Grace of every fervent second chance, with its undoubtable intentions. But seeing, in the rippled dust of the storyline, a little or large part of ourselves, all shuttered and shackled in anguish and desperation, utterly fallible as lumbering vessels, we find ourselves ultimately delivered; delivered as pilgrims unto the New and Free World, Adam unto Eden, Moses unto Promised Land, Endurance unto safe harbor, Jesus unto his Father’s house. May the risen crowd the dawn with shouts of blessing and exultation, for all are blessed, but not all are risen.