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by Malcom Guite Tolkien has rightly described the world of story, and especially the mysterious world of fairy tale, myth and legend, as being like a great branching tree: deeply rooted in the past, rooted in the very origins of language and the earliest mysteries of our creation as human beings, but branching out from the past into the present as each new generation absorbs the sap of the old tales and puts out branches, unfolds leaves—which are themselves new creations, new developments and yet rising out of the earliest stories, organically related to the whole, not so much inventing novelties as teasing out and opening up seeds of potentiality hidden in the earlier telling. Every storyteller is part of a long lineage of storytelling adding to something which is still unfolding, still becoming a great, many-voiced marvel. Nowhere is this more true than of the great body of stories that has grown up around the figures of Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Gawain, Perivale, and of course Galahad, known collectively as “the Matter of Britain.” The first reference to Arthur by name goes back to a 7th century chronicler called Nennius, who tells us in the Annales Cambriae that “in 518 occurred The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur Carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for three days and three knights on his shoulders and the Britons were victorious.” So from the outset, Arthur was a Christian figure, recalled here in a battle between Christian “Britons” (Celts, probably Welsh) against the then pagan Anglo-Saxons. It is only by the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 11th-12th centuries, in his Historia Regum Britanniae , History of the Kings of Britain, that Arthur is mentioned as a King, that we meet the mysterious figure of Merlin and hear the story of the sword in the stone. After that there is a great flowering of stories and romances about Arthur and his knights of the round table, across Europe. And it is in the twelfth century, just as the church was beginning to reflect more deeply and attempt to divine the great sacramental mystery of holy communion, that the deepest motif of the matter of Britain, the legends of the holy Grail come to the fore. Writers like Chretienne de Troyes and Robert de Boron give us the marvelous backstory of the Holy Grail, the sacred vessel itself: how it was the vessel that held the wine at the last supper; how it also held Christ’s blood from the cross; how it was given by the risen Christ to Joseph of Arimathea, who had given Christ his own tomb; how, driven out by the first persecution of Christians, he came with the sacred vessel and with the spear of Longinus, the spear that had pierced Christ’s heart, to Britain, to these strange islands at the very edge of the known world; how these sacred relics were kept hallowed and apart by Joseph’s kin, the keepers of the grail, until a Christian King should arise, how that King was Arthur. And even as this tale grew and deepened in all its meanings and implications, reaching its roots into both the Christian Mysteries and the pre-Christian myths and legends of these islands, so many other tales began to gather around Arthur and his knights: tales of magical adventure, of love, enchantment, and transformation. And soon, as in all true storytelling, these stories began to explore great themes of our exiled humanity, bereft of Eden, yet full of hope. That story of loss and recovery began to find expression in the joyous attempt in Camelot to found a true Edenic community; how the tragic flaw, the crack in the lute manifest in the doomed love of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the power-lust of Mordred, began to unravel that fellowship; and how in and through it all Christ stayed present in the grail, how the spear which wounded him became in the end a means of healing, how the numinous and mysterious figure of Galahad, himself the son of Lancelot, was able, in the achievement of the grail, to bring healing and grace even to the sins of his father. And so we too can come to the tree of tales, climb out on one of its branches, and begin to unfold some new leaves. Malcolm Guite Many storytellers, named and anonymous, contributed to the gradual exfoliation of this legendarium. In the course of that telling, many of the beautiful and suggestive myths and legends of pre-Christian Britain—the magical woods, the ladies of the lake, the wizards and dragons and shapeshifters—were all brought into the story, and ultimately into the light of Christ to find their transfiguration and fulfillment. In the fifteenth century the great storyteller and compiler, Sir Thomas Malory, bequeathed a gift to every English speaker and reader by drawing these disparate strands of story together from French, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin, translating them and weaving them into a single astonishing narrative: a many-voiced Romance published by Caxton in 1485 called The Morte d’Arthur . This became the great, prime source for subsequent writers, but still the tale unfolded, still the new branches and leaves kept growing. In the nineteenth century poets like Swinburne and Tennyson took up the tale, in the twentieth century writers as diverse as T. H. White, Charles Williams, David Jones and even in his own strange way T. S. Eliot all touched on, drew from, or retold the Matter of Britain. Not only Charles Williams, but the other Inklings like Lewis and Tolkien all drew from, reflected on, and retold the story. Indeed, the best and most beautifully written account of how the story grew and developed and how it might develop further is to be found in The Arthurian Torso , a book written by both Lewis and Williams which Lewis published after Williams’s death, containing Williams manuscript for “The Figure of Arthur,” the book he was writing about the Matter of Britain and never lived to complete, followed by Lewis’s own commentary on Williams’ two volumes of Arthurian poems. And so this central tale, this great Christian romance, this mysterious baptising of the imagination of Christian and pre-Christian Britain continues to unfold today. I was delighted to hear that the Rabbit Room would be publishing The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad and honored to be asked to contribute to it. Indeed, the invitation extended to me by the Rabbit Room really comes from Malory himself, for he goes out of his way to invite new stories: he tells us that “Galahad had many further adventures in the wild wood which have not been told.” And so we too can come to the tree of tales, climb out on one of its branches, and begin to unfold some new leaves. Indeed, for me personally, the invitation to contribute to The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad has a special significance. I had for many years been contemplating taking up the tales of the Matter of Britain myself, but I was not sure how to begin or what form to use. Writing my ballad of Galahad and the Naiad for the Lost Tales suddenly gave me the key—the ballad form would be perfect for my project, and since writing that piece I have embarked on the bigger project and am well into a full retelling of Galahad and the Holy Grail. There is, I thank God, no “authorized version” of the tales of Arthur, no definitive text from which no one can depart. There is instead a myriad of stories, a myriad of approaches, tones, styles, and possibilities, and the Matter of Britain remains for every writer what it always was for every knight: an open invitation to Adventure! Click here to learn more about The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad . Featured image by Ned Bustard Malcolm Guite is the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and author of various books on contemporary spirituality. In addition to this, he is a poet and singer-songwriter and fronts the Cambridge-based band Mystery Train. Visit www.malcolmguite.com where you can read Malcolm's blog, some of his poetry, or find out more about his music and media appearances.

by Ashely Artavia Novalis [Editor’s note: Our friends at Square Halo books have a brand new collection of essays called  Wild Things and Castles in the Sky . Together, these essays form one cohesive guide for choosing books for children. Today, we’re grateful to share with you an essay from the book written by Ashley Artavia Novalis, in which she demonstrates how stories of suffering provide safe, creative spaces to experience empathy and process pain.] When we were young, my sister and I couldn’t wait for our weekly trips to the public library. While our mother worked on the library’s computers, we set off to work of our own. Wandering through the rows of books, starting in historical fiction and then rounding the corner through fantasy and adventure, I took careful inventory before making my week’s selection. And each week, I ended my search in the same spot. After I had chosen a few new books for the week, I would circle back to the bookshelf closest to a large, round window facing the main road. My finger would scan a few rows up from the bottom and land on a gold-foil spine that read The Easter Story . This beautifully illustrated book by Brian Wildsmith tells the story of Jesus’ last week of life on Earth from the perspective of a little donkey that carries him around Jerusalem. I checked out The Easter Story every chance I had. As a sensitive and creative child, I was captivated by the colors and details of Wildsmith’s illustrations and moved by watching the donkey observe the final days of this good man’s life (I had never learned the story of Jesus’ death, so I was especially amazed). I resonated with the little donkey, encountering this terrible thing happening to this fascinating person in a strange, unknown world. Tracing my fingers across the gold foil parts of each picture, I would turn to the page of Jesus being put to death on the cross and cry. Thinking back, I’m sympathetic toward that young, eager reader. The story of Jesus’ death means something much different to me now, but at the time, I was a child making sense of the hard things in the world around me, and this story of injustice, death, and betrayal gave me an avenue to do that. From an early age, I was aware of the profound impact storytelling could have. Having spent nearly a decade working with children across professional and social settings, books have been some of my greatest resources. I have particularly come to value stories that depict suffering and hardship in deeply honest or creative ways. I’ve seen these kinds of books generate meaningful discussions, encourage empathy, and provide safe, creative spaces to process pain. From the time children learn to sing about Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and how none of his friends were able to help him, they are acutely aware that there are cracks in creation. Ashley Artavia Novalis Understandably, we sometimes hesitate to introduce books with heavy topics to children, or we desire to limit their exposure to stories about loss, death, fear, or poverty. We would love to be able to protect them from some of the darker realities of this world. While age-appropriateness is certainly important here, stories of adversity are a meaningful part of a child’s library and not as far from the child’s imagination as we would think. From the time children learn to sing about Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall and how none of his friends were able to help him, they are acutely aware that there are cracks in creation. Beautiful children’s stories do not hide that truth or offer cheap fixes. Instead, these stories give room for children to explore the heaviness of pain and the goodness of hope. The Christian Scriptures also give us examples of honest stories that don’t shy away from brokenness. They present us with opportunities to work through the tension of the beauty of creation and its fall—to wrestle with the permeating effects of sin and the reality of hope. Good stories of adversity give children a framework that helps them make sense of the world around them. From picture books to young adult series, stories of adversity are not limited to a single genre or age level, and even the term “adversity” could refer to anything from divorce to deep sadness, from bullying to homelessness, injustice, disease, or abuse. Often the Christian tradition generalizes these kinds of life experiences as “suffering” or “brokenness;” I use all of these terms interchangeably here. My goal is not necessarily to make a case for which specific elements make a good book on suffering, but to show what a good story that includes suffering does for the child—how it can teach, encourage, guide, and enrich a child’s mind and life for years to come. In the last few years, childhood development icons like Fred Rogers and Margaret McFarland have resurfaced in the spotlight. This well-deserved recognition, along with decades of research in the childhood development field, has brought us to a place where the importance of social-emotional learning is increasingly on the minds of those who love, teach, or serve children. In Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , the child’s mind was at the center of every decision: the way Mister Rogers entered the room, stared into the camera, or paused to listen. In the memorable episode about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, there is a noticeable shift in the neighborhood. Daniel Tiger and Lady Elaine have a sincere conversation about what “assassination” means, and how the characters in the neighborhood are all coping differently with the scary news. “When you feel sad, sometimes you don’t feel like a picnic,” Lady Elaine reassures Daniel Tiger when he just wants to stay home. Another somber moment happens when Lady Elaine explains to X the Owl that thinking about doing a bad thing, like shooting someone or getting very, very angry about something, is different than doing it. This episode is a masterclass in how families can help children grieve and serves as a prime example of one of Mister Rogers’s key philosophies behind the neighborhood: “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.” In the same way, good stories of adversity provide a language for suffering. Children experience emotions deeply; just like adults, they have many ways of naturally expressing those emotions. Unlike most adults, however, they are still in the process of developing the ability to express themselves through words. This relationship between language and emotion is a key component in social-emotional health, and children’s books are an abundant resource here. This can be learned through metaphors (Harry feeling “as though he too were hurtling through space” after watching someone he loves being murdered in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ), illustrations (a monster following a boy around in Jonathan James and the Whatif Monster ), or mindfulness of the body (Digory’s “lump in his throat and tears in his eyes” in The Magician’s Nephew ). Play—often referred to as the work of children—is crucial in developing and practicing this kind of language. I would suggest that reading is a type of play that encourages imagination, requires participation, and creates a playground (in the pages of a book) for rehearsing their growing emotional vocabulary. And in providing children with the ability to put words to their big emotions, we offer a way to begin to manage them. When Digory, on the journey given to him by Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew , is preoccupied with thoughts of his sick mother, he blurts out, “But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Aslan responds, “My son, my son. I know. Grief is great.” Digory’s worry and grief is not solved in his conversation with Aslan, but through this acknowledgement and shared language of suffering, he becomes more certain he can complete his journey with “new strength and courage.” This scene shows us another way stories of adversity teach children: they provide a way forward, a means of hope. This isn’t to say that every story with hardship or evil must have a happy ending where each conflict is neatly resolved. On the contrary, those kinds of easy fixes can lead to unhelpful or misguided conclusions about the realities of our world, thus minimizing the effects of suffering. True hope doesn’t overlook suffering; it perseveres in the presence of it. In some stories, this hope is obvious, like a man once dead coming back to life or peace being restored to a kingdom. Other times, hope comes through more subtle images, like the flags hanging through the streets at the end of the Second World War in Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars . The reader is left with questions unanswered, and this is where hard conversations about the world begin: where are all the people who had to flee for safety? How will the Jews be treated now that the war is over? Will their country be able to rebuild, and will life be like it was before? We are often tempted to avoid these conversations with children because we want to keep thoughts of the evil in our world away from the child’s imagination. But the child’s imagination is one of the first avenues through which they process those evils and think through those unanswered questions. By providing hope and a way forward amidst adversity, good books add to the child’s imagination the idea that, as G. K. Chesterton writes, “these limitless terrors [have] a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies . . . that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” Good stories of adversity also build self-awareness, develop understanding for others, and give opportunity for empathy and neighborly love. Stories that reflect hardships or pain that a child can personally relate to can help build crucial identity and belonging, while seeing another’s perspective of suffering grows a child’s ability to sympathize with an experience unlike theirs. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop asserts that the best books go even further and ask for participation from the reader. Rather than simply looking into another’s world, a child is invited to enter in, to feel as another would feel, and, I would add, to respond in neighborly love. Though this essay is far from a comprehensive list of the benefits of including stories with adversity in a child’s library, the most meaningful stories that I have read share these common threads: they provide language for suffering, give a picture of hope, and encourage empathy for one’s neighbor. The Christian Scriptures themselves demonstrate this framework for responding to the cracks in creation. Through the psalms, we’re given ample language for suffering: from “My tears have been my food day and night” (Ps. 42:3) to “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?” (Ps. 10:1), God constantly provides a way forward for his people, a hope for the future through the promise of all being made new. We are given individual stories of suffering throughout biblical history that we can see ourselves reflected in or use to understand others. Finally, the reader of the Scriptures is challenged to “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15) and “to love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). And God enters into our pain with us: in the story of God, the response to all the suffering, violence, doubt, and death is the incarnation of Jesus. As participants in the incarnation and those given the sacred task of stewarding the imagination of children toward goodness, truth, and beauty, we gain much when we invest in stories of adversity that help children make sense of the world around them. Curated and edited by  Leslie  and Carey Bustard with  Théa Rosenburg ,  Wild Things and Castles in the Sky  explores topics like classic literature, imagination, art history, race, poetry, young adult novels, faith, and more. The aim and hope is that these essays would encourage parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends to share the power of a good story with a child they love. Click here to learn more about the book. To learn more about the book from its editor, listen to  Leslie Bustard’s conversation with Jonathan Rogers on The Habit Podcast. Want to dive deeper into the subject of children’s stories with heavy themes, like grief and death? Check out this beautiful Hutchmoot session with Sara Danger and Walter Wangerin, Jr. Ashley Novalis has spent a decade working in early childhood settings through non-profits and public school programs. Most recently, she works in child and adolescent behavioral health through a local counseling agency. Ashley is passionate about mental health advocacy, social justice, and good empanadas. She lives with her husband, Joshua, in the East Side of Lancaster City, PA, where they love reading books, watching Netflix, and attempting to garden.

by the Rabbit Room Every once in a while, the Rabbit Room team has the good fortune of crossing paths with someone whose creative work is shockingly aligned with our own. These moments re-invigorate us not only in our own mission and vision, but in the desire to share the good and lasting work of kindred spirits far and wide. Most recently, this wonderful convergence has taken place with Andrew Brumme, who is directing a new documentary series called Taste and See that will blow your mind and change the way you think about breakfast. If, in some blessed alternate universe, Robert Farrar Capon had decided to make a documentary with Terrence Malick, guided by the foundational wisdom of Wendell Berry, then they would have made something like the pilot of Taste and See. Yes, it’s that amazing. Put more succinctly, and in the words of the official website , Taste and See “explores the spirituality of food with farmers, chefs, bakers and winemakers engaging with food as a profound gift from God. Their lives in the fields, in the kitchen and around the table serve as a meditation on the beauty, mystery and wonder to be found in every meal.” The first and most obvious thing to do once we got in touch with Andrew Brumme was to host a special preview screening at North Wind Manor. We held that event in March, and its success indicated to us that we weren’t the only ones who were smitten with this entire project—tickets to the event sold out swiftly and those in attendance fell in love with the film. And now, we’re inviting you to see it as well. You see, one of the most exciting parts about this new documentary series is the way the filmmakers have chosen to go about sharing it. In keeping with the spirit of the project, they have opted to premiere the pilot film in a series of virtual screenings beginning June 3rd and lasting two weeks. But these screenings consist of so much more than just sitting in front of your TV—the Rabbit Room has partnered with Andrew to create an event guide for your own Taste and See evening with your friends and family, in person or virtually. With your virtual ticket, you’ll receive several discussion questions to explore with your friends after the screening as well as a simple and thematically significant recipe you can try out together as a way of embodying the core values of the film. Plus, each screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director Andrew Brumme , author Norman Wirzba , and Rabbit Room founder and president Andrew Peterson , moderated by Lindsey Patton . Expect to hear plenty more from us about Taste and See over the next few weeks leading up to the screenings. We’ll be sharing an in-depth interview between Andrew Brumme and our content developer Drew Miller, a sneak peek into the panel discussion mentioned above, a lovingly crafted review of the pilot film, and more. Stay tuned! Click here to order your virtual screening event tickets, on sale today for screenings beginning June 3rd .

by the Rabbit Room This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with singer-songwriter, podcaster, and essayist Matthew Clark. Matthew Clark  is exceedingly thoughtful and well-read, and all that thinking and well-reading makes its way into everything he makes—and every conversation. His most recent project is an album called  Only the Lover Sings , and a companion book of the same title–a compilation of essays by various writers inspired by the songs on the album. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 20 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network . Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by Sarah Bramblett A Jennifer Trafton print of a quote from Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga adorns a shelf in my daughter’s room. Vibrant colors speak over the nursery, “It’s a story the maker has always told, and the story, my child, is true.” The Rabbit Room celebrates that beauty; good stories echo the True Story. Some of the best stories I’ve discovered in my daughter’s first year-and-a-half have been shared in seven-minute segments by a family of animated dogs. Bluey is a kids’ show from Australia that landed in the US in 2018 and quickly became a sensation. There’s an Airbnb that resembles the characters’ home, celebrities make guest appearances (I’m particularly excited to see Lin Manuel Miranda’s cameo in Season 3), and the show has won well-deserved awards. While I don’t know much about the show’s creator, Joe Brumm, or his beliefs about faith, I do know that for our family, Bluey echoes the story the Maker has always told because the story centers on love. Bluey highlights the beauty in ordinary, everyday love. The jaunty music and charming animation work together to enhance the stories of the Heeler family: sisters Bluey and Bingo, their dad Bandit, and mum Chilli. Kathryn VanArendonk compares Bluey to other children’s TV shows: “All of it is about imagination, but almost none of it is all that imaginative. Bluey is the only one that knows how hilarious play can be, how silly and intense, how trivial but life-changing.” Some episodes seem to be created primarily to celebrate beauty in storytelling. In “Camping,” Bluey meets Jean Luc, and though they don’t speak the same language, they imagine together. They build a mansion from plants, plant a seed as “farmers,” and hunt a wild pig (Bandit). Jean Luc’s camping trip ends before Bluey is ready. Ever insightful, Chilli counsels Bluey through her sudden sadness (all during a middle of the night “bush wee” for Bingo). Bluey asks if she’ll ever see Jean Luc again and Chilli responds, “Well, we’ll never know. The world is a magical place.” The episode concludes with a time-lapse of the planted seed’s growth, and every time I watch, I’m better able to see the world’s magic. Similarly enchanting, in “The Creek”, the kids venture far enough outside the playground to stretch beyond Bluey’s comfort zone. Her bravery is rewarded with the simple and refreshing beauty of a creek. I love when children’s literature (and television) trusts the kids to enjoy the splendor of creation and creativity. The plot in “The Creek” is not the most profound. Kids aren’t directly handed a moral. But the point of the episode is so seamlessly delivered: beauty is a worthy risk. The reward often cultivates imagination. The point of the episode is so seamlessly delivered: beauty is a worthy risk. The reward often cultivates imagination. Sarah Bramblett In Bluey, love is the fuel for imagination, even when imagination becomes the “villain” in the story arc. Bluey’s colorful imagination drives the family’s adventures, creates hilarious games for friends, and writes stories, but it often distracts her from important things. The Heeler family plays “Hide and Seek,” knowing that Bluey tends to lose focus. As predicted, Bluey’s mind wanders and she is entertained by a toy called, Cheeky Chattermax. Parents of small children are given a nugget of empathy—the toy is really annoying!—and a nod of truth: distractions have downsides, even when the diversion is imagination. Despite the occasional drawback, Bluey’s family doesn’t shame her for her imagination, and one of my favorite features of the show is that it echoes the idea that love doesn’t shame. The rule-follower in me strives to follow and respect the recommendations that my child shouldn’t be exposed to any screen time at such a young age, but the story-lover in me knows that I need quick, good, true stories. Our modern parenting culture seems to thrive on shame. The internet should be a trove of helpful advice and community for parents. When I google questions like “how to keep my toddler from climbing?” or “can my child overdose on blueberries?” I should get helpful “here’s an idea” or “you too?” responses. Instead, every search leaves me with the overwhelming sense that I’m doing everything wrong. By merely asking the question, by watching the show, by ever feeling tired, by not letting myself feel the whole spectrum of emotions about being tired, I’m a failure. Instead of creating a culture that fosters friendship, many of the answers and algorithms feed shame and competition. Bluey is different. Bandit and Chilli have phones, and the Heeler family asks great questions about technology in “Bob Bilby.” Bluey’s parents get tired (“Mount MumandDad”), and they don’t always want to play with their kids. In my favorite episode, “Baby Race,” Chilli reminisces about Bluey and her friend Judo as babies racing to walk. In a flashback, a more experienced mom, Bella, comforts Chilli: “There’s something you need to know.” Chilli hesitantly asks, “What?” Bella replies, “You’re doing great.” Remembering the scene, Chilli tells her daughters, “From then on, I decided to run my own race.” There is a principle that’s commonly taught to young writers: “Show, don’t tell.” Mommy Blogs tell me I’m doing everything wrong; Bluey shows me that truth and beauty are abundant in the parenting adventure. In the same way, the first few Hutchmoots I attended made me want to devour the Bible, not because someone was telling me I needed to read more Scripture or humble-bragging about their own quiet time rituals, but because I saw people genuinely love the Word and I wanted Life in the Big Story . Shameful places make us feel alone, but when I watch Bluey , I feel comfort and the courage to be authentic. The episodes of Bluey offer me the hug of friendship, and I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’s quote “Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another “What? You too? I thought that no one but myself….” Bluey asks “you too?” Good art reflects a life we can relate to while encouraging us to become better versions of ourselves. Lucy Pevensie makes me want to see Aslan, even when the other children cannot. Star Wars compels me to resist the empire. The Great British Bake Off actually lures me to believe I can efficiently create an exquisite seven-tiered cake (I can’t). Bandit and Chilli invite me to enjoy playing with my daughter. Bingo and Bluey inspire me to love as I grow into my emotions. Bluey isn’t always a perfect show, and it doesn’t always reflect a perfect family. Watching Bluey won’t turn me into a perfect mom. But the magic of good stories is that they seep into the heart. Bluey reminds me to imagine. I picture life lived with a whimsical soundtrack. I’m encouraged to delight in everyday happenstances. The best elements of Bluey then become true, or as Bluey and Bingo would say, “for real life.” Sarah Bramblett has a PhD in English Rhetoric and Composition and resides in Kennesaw, Georgia with her husband Lane and daughter Shiloh (a "joy tornado"). Sarah was an intern for the Rabbit Room while in undergrad and still believes in the life-giving power of Story; she loves passing on that power to college students who don’t think they can write.

by John Barber In Drew Miller ’s aptly titled new album There Will be Surprises , unexpected delights lurk around every corner, and the result is a musical and lyrical feast. From the opening phrase, “Father, your world’s on fire,” to the powerful closing track, Miller takes us on a winding journey that explores the complexity of God’s providence and His goodness. Miller is a powerful lyricist whose songs strike at the core of our deepest fears and longings, yet the album’s beautiful melodies underscore its themes of hopefulness and light. With shades of James Taylor in his vocals, Miller adds a plaintive winsomeness to these songs. Adding to the balance of thematic heaviness with Miller’s beautiful vocals is Evan Redwine’s delicately layered production. This is a great album to listen to on headphones. The opening to “Hidden,” for example, has a gorgeous stereo mix that complements the lyrics perfectly. While Miller sings about a God who feels hidden, Redwine punctuates the song with hidden details that require unearthing. Thematically, Miller zeroes in on the topsy-turvy nature of the true world, such as on one of the album’s highlights: “Nothing’s Right Side Up.” In the song, Miller contends that the world we’re living in now is the one that’s upside-down. He sings, “When they tell you to fast, feast / and when they tell you to weep, you’d better laugh / ’cause the story isn’t over, and we hardly know the half.” This is the album’s closer, and it’s equal parts hymn and dirge with a sprinkling of Tom Waits. Miller compounds his subterfuge in “This House is Burning Down,” which contains metaphor after metaphor about the world around us coming down, but, about halfway in, it makes a wonderful turn: “And as our voices drown in death’s deafening churn / and blood cries from the ground, repentance and return / there will a light be found.”  You see, in Miller’s estimation, there is so much more than what we can see right now. This album is not about surprises for the sake of surprises; it’s about finding redemption among the wreckage. Like Miller sings in “New Wine”: “The old sign at the dead end is where the next life begins.” Though the album begins, “Father, your world’s on fire,” it ends with this beautiful directive: “When they say all hope is lost, dance.” Miller’s exploration of truth is at turns serious, clever, and deeply theological, but, without fail, it’s always hopeful . If you’re struggling to understand or come to terms with the world as it is, this is a record for you. It’s not enough to simply acknowledge the reality of our fallen world. We need to look for the surprises that God has in store for us in the middle of it all. “Father, your world’s on fire/ and look how it shines.” VISIT: Drew Miller

by Pete Peterson I’ve read the Lord of the Rings so many times I have sizable swaths of it memorized. It doesn’t require much to get me reciting lines about the sound of horns echoing dimly in dark Mindolluin’s sides, or to call out a foul dwimmerlaik for his deeds and trespasses. I’ve loved Tolkien since I first read him. I always will. And I know I’m not alone. That kind of love for Tolkien is behind a lot of the anxiety I hear when people talk about Amazon’s forthcoming Rings of Power series. To be fair, they come by their anxiety honestly. Everyone has seen at least one story they love treated poorly, and the experience often leaves a scar. It hurts. I get it. I’m optimistic though. My wife will tell you I’m positive to a fault when it comes to these things. But the disappointment doesn’t deter me. I’ve got to steel myself against it if I want to find the rare wonder. And despite evidence to the contrary, I believe there’s always a new wonder out there waiting to be found. Tolkien would agree with me, I think. He championed the idea of humans as sub-creators—images of God who take creation and reshape it into endless lesser creations. In this new Lord of the Rings series, people are doing exactly that. They’re borrowing from the master’s legendarium and fashioning new tales and new characters and new visions of the world they love. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien gives us the “Cauldron of Story”—a great kettle into which all our tales and histories are tossed and boiled. They stew and combine, and in each generation, new flavors are added, and new soups are tasted and served up for the good of those who gather. Sometimes what boils up might only taste like a faint trace of the original bones in the broth. But often, a storyteller pulls out of the mix something that tastes familiar and satisfies. That’s the wonder I wait for. You can read the rest of Pete Peterson’s essay “ Forge the Ring, Pass the Soup ” at Christianity Today’s website. Reposted with permission.

by Carolyn Arends My first experience with a book club of sorts was more like a boot camp. It happened over 25 years ago when, much to my delight, I found myself serving as one of the opening acts for Rich Mullins on a 63-city tour. Rich was enormously generous. I would later learn that there is a certain hierarchy to almost all tours, an appropriate and respectful deference to the headliner. Typically, an opening act’s sound is quieter, the lights less bright. Everyone follows these implicit rules—everyone except Rich, apparently. Every night he wandered out on stage, usually barefoot (so he wouldn’t disappoint the fans who had come to count on his shoeless-ness), to introduce me to his audience, command for me their attention, and generously ease my way into the spotlight. Alongside this open-handedness, however, Rich insisted on a simple but demanding rule: If you wanted to be his friend, he had a list of certain books you were required to read. He was not negotiable on this. That’s how the Brother’s Keeper Tour became, for me, the Rich Mullins Book Boot Camp . Over the three-month tour, I worked my way through Rich’s list. Dakota by Kathleen Norris. John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany . There was a third book—the title eludes me now—set in the pioneer west. And then the fourth and most important title in the Mullins canon: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. I was only a few pages into Orthodoxy when Rich charged into the green room one night to read one of his favorite sections aloud, struggling to get the words out over his guffaws. “Huh,” said one of the players in Rich’s band. “I’ve been trying to read that book for weeks and I didn’t realize it was funny.” It’s likely we never would have discovered Orthodoxy’s riches without both the insistence and the guidance of a friend who had learned to love it well. Carolyn Arends Orthodoxy , written in 1908, is truly as witty as it is profound. But for me and a bunch of the other ragamuffins in Rich’s orbit, we needed help to really get Chesterton. It’s likely we never would have discovered Orthodoxy’s riches without both the insistence and the guidance of a friend who had learned to love it well. That’s the potential magic of a Book Club—whether one joins voluntarily or is conscripted. These days, it brings me much joy to help oversee the Renovaré Book Club . This year, which happens to be the 25th anniversary of Rich’s passing, one of the four books of the season will be Orthodoxy. While the Renovaré Book Club selection process is committee-based and rigorous, I confess I campaigned for Chesterton with unabashedly-biased vigor. It makes me smile to know that the hundreds of folks in the Club this season will be, at least indirectly, beneficiaries of the Rich Mullins Book Boot Camp. You are warmly invited to be one of those beneficiaries. Each year, we’re delighted when the good folks at the Rabbit Room invite us to reach out to you about the Renovaré Book Club, because we believe our communities overlap in some beautiful ways. So let me tell you just a little more about the titles we’ll be reading from October to May: Book One: Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with Dallas Willard and St. Ignatius , written by South African pastor and author Trevor Hudson. In this just-released book, Hudson draws upon his close friendship with Dallas Willard and his long experience with the Ignatian spiritual exercises to invite us into transforming, real-time encounters with the risen Christ. It’s powerful stuff, and we’re thrilled that Trevor himself will be facilitating our journey through the book. Book Two: Orthodoxy , by G. K. Chesterton. In a 2015 piece in The Atlantic , James Parker describes Orthodoxy “as a masterpiece of Christian apologetics … ontological basics retailed with a blissful, zooming frivolity, Thomas Aquinas meets Eddie Van Halen.” Renovaré staffer and Chesterton aficionado Justine Olawsky will help us get the jokes and mine the treasures. Book Three: Learning Humility: A Year of Searching for a Vanishing Virtue by Richard Foster. This book comes out in December, just in time for the third slot in our season. Using the Lakota calendar as a framework, Foster (Renovaré’s founder) provides us with a look into the insights he gathered from sources ranging from Native American culture to Julian of Norwich to Scripture to personal friends. Richard himself will be facilitating our reading, alongside his friends Brenda Quinn and Bob Fryling. Book Four: The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, by Sojourner Truth and Olive Gilbert. First published in 1850, this book gives us access to the powerful faith, perspective, and experiences of Sojourner Truth, an African American preacher, abolitionist, and women’s rights advocate. Renovaré team members Tina Dyer and Grace Pouch will guide us through this remarkable narrative and its associated history. We begin October 3rd, and registration is open now. (In fact, if you register by September 9, you’ll get Early Bird Pricing.) Membership in the Club includes weekly podcasts and exclusive resources from the authors/facilitators, online community, and the option to join or start an in-person or video discussion group. In the spirit of our old pal Rich, we sure do hope you’ll join us in the Club.

by Lisa Dean The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. -Psalm 23:1-3 Last April, my family of four returned from the sun-warmed beaches of South Carolina to our home in East Tennessee. Refreshed by a week of sitting on the shore with a book in hand, I tackled the chores waiting for me—washing laundry, filling the fridge, and tucking suitcases out of sight. As the week passed, my renewed vigor for the tasks of motherhood and homemaking dwindled along with my motivation. “Why keep up the pace when there’s always more?” I thought. One afternoon, I abandoned the dishes in the kitchen sink and stepped outside the backdoor to look up at the trees, a sea of greenery waving in the wind. Feeling unfulfilled by the mundane work of the day, I sought comfort in the idea that there was more to come—more to learn, become, and do. For years I had hoped that God would make plain to me the tasks or type of work he wanted me to accomplish. He gave me a beautiful family and fulfilling relationships but I craved clarity about my future. Was God ever going to communicate the specific calling he had for my life? I prayed as I had countless times before and asked God to direct me. I longed for another way to contribute to his kingdom work even as I felt guilty for not finding complete contentment in everything he’d already given me. Standing in my backyard on that April afternoon, my eyes drifted down to the novel I’d left out on the picnic table: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. I remembered the lessons I’d learned when weeks earlier I tucked the book into my beach bag, staked out a spot to sit by the water, and relished one character’s journey to understand his calling. He didn’t agonize over the impact each job would have on his future. He didn’t stay still in one spot waiting to receive supernatural direction. And he didn’t pass over an opportunity because he considered it too insignificant or lowly of a task. Lisa Dean When I considered what it would look like to live out God’s calling on my life, I expected events to happen in a certain order. God would make plain his desires for me, and then, with a renewed sense of purpose, I would work to follow his instructions. Before reading Jayber Crow I hadn’t considered that these steps could be reversed. It was many years after starting his job as a small-town barber when Jayber reflected and recognized his calling to the profession. “Surely I was called to be, for one thing, a barber. All my real opportunities have been to be a barber… and being a barber has made other opportunities.” As Jayber took on the role of barber and later that of gravedigger and church janitor, I took note of what was absent in his decision-making. He didn’t agonize over the impact each job would have on his future. He didn’t stay still in one spot waiting to receive supernatural direction. And he didn’t pass over an opportunity because he considered it too insignificant or lowly of a task. When God called Abram to leave his home, Abram began packing. God called Noah to build an ark, and Noah got to work. The Bible shows us how God gave certain people special tasks, but I began to wonder how this infrequent occurrence of call and response had shaped the expectations I held for my own life. What if, more often than not, God’s people find their calling by looking for evidence of how he has guided them in the past? As he contemplates his life, Jayber would seem to agree: “I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises…. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led…” I understand Jayber. I’ve harbored my share of desires and goals too, and I join with him in marveling that many of the best things in life have come not as the result of rigorous planning and preparation, but as surprises. And still, I attempt to draw a roadmap from here to contentment. Sitting in church, I’ve heard more than one pastor say, “Do you want to know God’s will for your life? Okay, here it is…” Without fail, I sit up straighter and poise my pen to take down the direction I’ve longed for. “…that you give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18) or “…that you should be sanctified” (1 Thess. 4:3) or “…that you act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). The disappointment of not receiving direction about a specific college major, job, or mission tends to overshadow the gravity of the instruction I do receive. Confessing my inability to control the future or what it will bring, I’m persuaded to believe that how I follow God in the present moment should be of more concern to me than the desire to know where I’m being led. Lisa Dean I’ve been guilty of tossing aside the words of wisdom that tell me how to live out my calling. Instead, I search for advice that will help me make plans for what I’m called to do. Reflecting on his life, Jayber recognizes that he has “never lived by plan.” He says, “…when I have thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been on the edge of it, carried along.” Confessing my inability to control the future or what it will bring, I’m persuaded to believe that how I follow God in the present moment should be of more concern to me than the desire to know where I’m being led. When his last living relatives died, Jayber went to live in an orphanage. Sometimes he would wake early, set his eyes on the horizon, and see “a good old brick farmhouse with trees and brick outbuildings” that looked “like a vision of Paradise.” As he considered the “beautiful house at the point of the meeting of earth and sky,” he would let his mind go there to “make itself at home.” That point where earth and sky intersect — God crossing over from heaven to human dwelling — is my hope. My mind can settle there and linger on the future that is to come, the life after life, and find solace without a stitch of discontentment. I may not receive specific instructions from God regarding the type of work or tasks he wants me to accomplish in the future, but I find assurance knowing I am called to belong to Christ. As I remain in him, I trust that he invites me to join him in the redemptive work he is already accomplishing. My path may be riddled with blind curves, barriers, and steep hills leading down into pitch-black valleys, but when I pause to contemplate these truths, I find confidence in knowing God is not only with me but that he actively “leads me… He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” If you’ve ever felt lost while waiting for God to reveal his calling on your life, I invite you to join me in this prayer: God, I give you my expectations about the future, and you give me daily bread. I trust that you are using my work for your kingdom’s purposes. Even now I can look back on my life and see how you’ve guided me to this point. Help me to remember that my life’s calling — to belong to you and accomplish the tasks you present me day by day — is fulfilled as I follow you. Thank you for giving my life purpose and direction. Amen. Lisa Z. Dean is a wife, mother, and avid reader of fiction who loves writing to explore the ideas of biblical peace, eternity, and the presence of God.

by Jason Gray “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.” When I learned of Frederick Buechner’s passing, it rolled through me like a subterranean tidal wave. And it’s no wonder! Nobody, other than my parents, has shaped my life—heart, mind, and spirit—more than Frederick Buechner through his writing. I knew I wanted to say something about what Buechner’s work has meant to me, but I’ve been daunted by the prospect of distilling the depth of this man’s influence on me into a readable post. It’s taken me a minute to gather my thoughts and I’ve accepted that whatever I write will be both too long and not long enough. I decided to break it up into two posts, starting with how I first encountered his work and then another about some of the big ideas he introduced me to that continue to shape me. I’ll begin with the beginning. In my favorite of his books, Telling Secrets , Buechner wrote of two rooms in the White Tower of London. The first is the beautiful, bare, open, and expansive Chapel of St. John which he describes, saying, “you cannot enter it without being struck by the feeling of purity and peace it gives. If there is any such thing in the world, it is a holy place.” The second room is just below the first: a tiny dungeon known as “The Little Ease”—a claustrophobic space four feet by four feet designed to prevent any wretched soul who had the misfortune of being imprisoned there from being able to either stand or lie down in its cramped, dark, airless confines. To Buechner, each of us is the White Tower and the two rooms represent our spiritual condition. Are we living from the quieted, open, silvery light-graced stillness of the White Chapel? Or have we stowed ourselves away in The Little Ease of our own fear, striving, and shame? Where I came from, the church perfected cancel culture long before it was a hashtag. Jason Gray I didn’t realize it, but I was suffocating in my own “Little Ease” when I first discovered Buechner’s work. I was a young believer, about six years into my life as a Christian, and was working as a youth pastor. I found myself disillusioned by a church culture that pushed rigid piety that divided the world up into neat categories of spiritual/sacred and unspiritual/secular. Anything in the latter categories was strictly condemned, and that list was long . Faith, as far as I could tell, was defined as something like the mental discipline of being certain of things unseen but hoped for. This kind of faith was the highest ideal, and the certainty aspect of it was the highest part of this highest ideal. Now, I was young, and so… maybe I projected some of my own overwrought idealism onto the whole affair. Or maybe not. Who can say? But the message I absorbed was that doubt was the cardinal weakness, which made my church a dangerous place to bring my questions, of which I had a list that was also long and getting longer by the day. If I dared to voice them, it either elicited concerned looks or was met with answers that felt hollow, shrill—all treble and no bass—and that was designed for ending conversation rather than going deeper into it. I know they meant well, and that this was their best attempt at pursuing holiness, but all this posturing fostered a culture where what you actually thought had to take a back seat to what you should think. Among other things, this made it difficult to have a sense of connection with the real people in the pews beside me, separated by our façade of “shoulds” and “should nots.” I felt increasingly isolated in a room full of people who called me their brother. It all felt a bit unhuman. Ironically, it didn’t feel holy, either. But where else could I go? I’d experienced something undeniably real in Jesus, and the church was where I was supposed to get to know him better. So all I knew to do was keep my loaded question to myself and try my best to be who I thought I “should” be. Over time this cut me off from my sense of connection with God as well as from my own heart. It also made me afraid. If my brothers and sisters knew the thoughts running laps around my brain, I’d likely be excommunicated from the family. Where I came from, the church perfected cancel culture long before it was a hashtag. Buechner’s voice was soothing and troubling at the same time. I remember feeling like the sentences were long and meandering in a way that made me slow down to keep up. Jason Gray That’s who I was when I walked into my local Christian bookstore one day, the internal dissonance driving me to the verge of chucking the whole religious endeavor. And then like a man stumbling upon a treasure buried in a field I found it: a slim little book on the shelf with the imposing title, “Telling The Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.” I wasn’t looking for it, I don’t know why it caught my eye, I don’t know why my little conservative bookstore stocked it considering the limited shelf space that was typically reserved for titles by the superstar pastors du jour, but there it was and there I was, and without knowing anything particular about it other than feeling drawn to it, I bought my first book by Frederick Buechner. I didn’t know at the time that what I thought was a mere book was actually a key to my jail cell. It felt like I picked it up on a whim but looking back I can’t help but see it as divine intervention. It was a cloth-bound hardcover with unevenly cut pages filled with a kind of writing I’d never experienced before. Buechner’s voice was soothing and troubling at the same time. I remember feeling like the sentences were long and meandering in a way that made me slow down to keep up. It felt intensely personal, like I was eavesdropping on someone’s innermost thoughts, and the way he spoke about his faith was frank and unadorned but also saturated with mystery and beauty. I’ve discovered a pattern over the years that whenever I can no longer make sense of my faith, God brings along someone—a mentor, a friend, more often than not an author—who, just in the nick of time, articulates belief in a way that makes it believable for me again. C.S. Lewis, Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright—each of these and others have been voices that helped me hear the voice of God. But Frederick Buechner was the first and has been the most constant. From the start, I experienced Buechner as a pilgrim so confident that the one who began a good work in him would be faithful to finish it that he wasn’t afraid to be curious—pushing out beyond the safety of well-trod conventions to explore the outer edges of truth and find the true shape of it. Buechner’s faith was colorful and rich with darkness and light, belief and doubt, childlike wonder, and raw, earthy humanity. It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t safe. It was beautiful. It was ugly. He quoted Shakespeare as much as he quoted the Bible. He heeded the words of Edgar from Shakespeare’s King Lear: “…speak the truth, not what we ought to say…” It all felt real. It felt human . And for those reasons it felt holy. “Oh,” I thought to myself. “I didn’t know faith could be this .” The words he wrote became a trail of crumbs that not only led me back to the heart of God, but also back to my own heart. And just like that, the door to my Little Ease flung open, and I stepped out. It was the “speaking the truth, not what we ought to say…” quality of his writing that was most liberating. To speak of the light without the darkness is only half the truth at best or a full-on lie at worst. “If there’s no room for doubt there’s no room for me,” he wrote, naming the conditions of my Little Ease. The holiness of Buechner’s saints—Godric, Brendan, Bebb, even Jacob—emanates not from anything particularly virtuous about who they are but is rather a symptom of God’s delight in the essential belovedness he bestowed on them. Jason Gray Like the best comedians who say what we’re all thinking but are too afraid to say ourselves, Buechner never side-stepped controversial topics but instead wrote about them in a way that added nuance and complexity. Like Jesus himself whose best lines often began with, “you’ve heard it said this or that…” before dropping some new paradigm on us with, “but have you considered this?”, Buechner’s writing often addressed sensitive truths by introducing some left of center insight that reframed the whole conversation, reminding us that truth is not a commodity for us to use as we please but is larger and more mysterious than any of us can bear on most days. Pastor Tim Keller speaks of reading so much of C.S. Lewis’s work that he came to have the mind of Lewis in him. After nearly 30 years of reading every book, hunting down articles and interviews, scouring the internet for video clips, and finally driving halfway across America to hear him speak, I can say that in a sense I have the mind of Buechner in me—and what a mind! It has been a deep well I draw from daily to slake my thirsty spirit with a grace, wonder, and a truthfulness that is both tender and relentless. David Bowie recalls John Lennon telling him : “’Y’know, when I’ve discovered someone new, I tend to become that person. I want to soak myself in their stuff to such an extent that I have to be them.’ So when he first found Dylan, he said, he would dress like Dylan and only play his kind of music, till he kind of understood how it worked. And that’s exactly how I feel about it as well… I did that, too. I lived the life, whatever it was… It was a process of becoming, of transforming into the thing you admire and want to be. To find out ‘what makes it tick.’ Then, hopefully, you’ve absorbed that knowledge…” It was something like that for me. I ruminated on Buechner’s writing until in time I even got pretty good at generating Buechneresque observations of my own improvisationally. I became a bit of an evangelist, trying to get everyone I knew to read his work. I still remember what Sara Groves said when she returned my copy of The Son Of Laughter , Buechner’s novelization of the Jacob narrative—“It was brilliant. It reminds me how much we’ve domesticated these characters. The way he writes them… they’re so crotchy sweaty.” Ha! Her observation is true, there is an almost grotesque quality to the humanity of the saints Buechner wrote about. But it’s exactly their “crotchy-sweatiness” that shows forth the source of their saintliness more clearly. The holiness of Buechner’s saints—Godric, Brendan, Bebb, even Jacob—emanates not from anything particularly virtuous about who they are but is rather a symptom of God’s delight in the essential belovedness he bestowed on them. And through Buechner’s eyes you can’t help but see why God loves such characters, or even fall in love with them yourself when you read their stories: Jacob the recalcitrant hustler, Bebb the sincere charlatan, Brendan the navigator driven to the edge of the world to fill the father shaped hole in his heart—all of them holy scoundrels and fools and blessedly unaware of it. On the topic of saints, Buechner wrote: In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.Many people think of saints as plaster saints, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil deed their whole lives long. As far as I know, real saints never even come close to characterizing themselves that way. On the contrary, no less a saint than Saint Paul wrote to Timothy, “I am foremost among sinners” ( l Timothy 1:15), and Jesus himself prayed God to forgive him his trespasses, and when the rich young man addressed him as “good Teacher,” answered, “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18).In other words, the feet of saints are as much of clay as everybody else’s, and their sainthood consists less of what they have done than of what God has for some reason chosen to do through them. When you consider that Saint Mary Magdalene was possessed by seven devils, that Saint Augustine prayed, “Give me chastity and continence, but not now,” that Saint Francis started out as a high-living young dude in downtown Assisi, and that Saint Simeon Stylites spent years on top of a sixty-foot pillar, you figure that maybe there’s nobody God can’t use as a means of grace, including even ourselves.The Holy Spirit has been called “the Lord, the giver of life” and, drawing their power from that source, saints are essentially life-givers. To be with them is to become more alive. (Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) By that definition, Frederick Buechner was a saint, and my time spent with him has made me more alive. More than that, it’s literally saved my life. Prone to melancholy, I’ve regularly wrestled with my own depression over the years. There have been times when the circumstances of my life were painful and hopeless enough that I considered tapping out early. But then I’d remember Buechner. When you look at his work as a whole, what emerges is the sense that in one way or another all of Buechner’s writing is circling the impact site of a single moment in his life: his father’s suicide when he was 10 years old. His father is the ghost haunting every book he wrote, the wound that never quite healed. Just as I carried other pieces of Buechner’s mind in me, I carried that wound vicariously in my own heart. In moments when I was overwhelmed by my own pain, the wound would act up like an arthritic joint on a rainy day, making itself known as a question rising up out of my compassion for the little boy that Buechner was: “I’ve seen what this decision does to the heart of a son. How could I do that to my own children?” This question kept me alive on more than one dark night of the soul. About depression, Buechner wrote: One of the most precious of the Psalms seems to be one of the least known as well as one of the shortest. It is Psalm 131. “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,” is the way it begins, “my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.”To be in a state of depression is like that. It is to be unable to occupy yourself with anything much except your state of depression. Even the most marvelous thing is like music to the deaf. Even the greatest thing is like a shower of stars to the blind. You do not raise either your heart or your eyes to the heights, because to do so only reminds you that you are yourself in the depths. Even if, like the Psalmist, you are inclined to cry out “O Lord,” it is a cry like Jonah’s from the belly of a whale.“But I have calmed and quieted my soul,” he continues then, and you can’t help thinking that, although maybe that’s better than nothing, it’s not much better. Depression is itself a kind of calm, as in becalmed, and a kind of quiet, as in a quiet despair.Only then do you discover that he is speaking of something entirely different. He says it twice to make sure everybody understands. “Like a child quieted at its mother’s breast,” he says, and then again “like a child that is quieted is my soul.” A kind of blessed languor that comes with being filled and somehow also fulfilled; the sense that no dark time that has ever been and no dark time that will ever be can touch this true and only time; shalom —something like that is the calm and quiet he has found. And the Lord in whom he has found it is the Lady Mother of us all. It is from her breast that he has drunk it to his soul’s quieting.Finally he tells us that hope is what his mouth is milky with, hope, which is to the hopelessness of depression what love is to the lovesick and lovelorn. “O Israel, hope in the Lord,” he says, “from this time forth and for evermore.” Hope like Israel. Hope for deliverance the way Israel hoped and you are already half delivered. Hope beyond hope, and like Israel in Egypt, in Babylon, in Dachauyou hope also beyond the bounds of your own captivity, which is what depression is.Hope in the Father who is the Mother, the Lady who is the Lord. Do not raise your eyes too high, but lower them to that holy place within you where you are fed and quieted, to that innermost manger where you are yourself the Child .” (Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) Though Buechner wrote with a great transparency about suffering, his work was also steeped in deep joy. Even the story of his conversion is punctuated by laughter. After wandering into a church service presided over by George Buttrick, …with his head bobbing up and down so that his glasses glittered, he said in his odd, sandy voice…that the coronation of Jesus took place among confession and tears and then, as God was and is my witness, great laughter, he said. Jesus is crowned among confession and tears and great laughter, and at the phrase great laughter, for reasons that I have never satisfactorily understood, the great wall of China crumbled and Atlantis rose up out of the sea, and on Madison Avenue, at 73rd Street, tears leapt from my eyes as though I had been struck across the face.” (Buechner, The Sacred Journey , 1982) Perhaps this is why Buechner wrote these beautiful words elsewhere: “ The worst isn’t the last thing about the world. It’s the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best. It’s the power from on high that comes down into the world, that wells up from the rock-bottom worst of the world like a hidden spring. Can you believe it? The last, best thing is the laughing deep in the hearts of the saints, sometimes our hearts even. Yes. You are terribly loved and forgiven. Yes. You are healed. All is well. “ (Buechner, The Final Beast, 1965) About Joy, Buechner wrote: “ We tend to think that religion is sitting stiff and antiseptic and a little bored and that joy is laughter and freedom and reaching out our arms to embrace the whole wide and preposterous earth which is so beautiful that sometimes it nearly breaks our hearts. We need to be reminded that at its heart Christianity is joy and that laughter and freedom and the reaching out of arms are the essence of it. We… are made for joy and anyone who is truly joyous has a right to say that he is doing God’s will on this earth. Where you have known joy, you have known him. “ (Buechner, The Hungering Dark , 1968) In his book, The Wounded Healer , Henri Nouwen described a spiritual leader as one who ventures into the dark first in order to show others the way through. I suppose you could say the same about the one who ventures into the light (which is just as perilous as the dark and maybe more so. Go ask Abraham, or Paul, or even Jesus.) In this way, Buechner has been one of the great spiritual leaders in my life. His unflinching way of looking into the dark is what made the light he testified to believable. When I read his words it registers on some deep level that I’m conversing with a man who’d made a pact with God (and whoever else might be listening in) to speak the truth as fully as he understood it regardless of whatever else he ought to say, solemnly swearing to tell that truth with a hand held over a heart broken by the joy at least as much as by the sorrow of life. Because of this, since I opened that first book, I’ve been able to trust him as a messenger of God to lead me, with each sentence he wrote, further and further away from my Little Ease and deeper into the open spaces of Love in my own inner Chapel of St. George where I’m able to commune with God no less than with my own heart. #semifeature

by Matt Conner It’s been a decade or more since I had my first conversation with Ron Block , but I can still recall the primary subject that afternoon: identity in Christ. That is because nearly every chat I’ve been privileged to have with Ron has, in some way, circled back around to that idea. Ron is best known as one of the world’s finest banjo players and a member of the Grammy-winning Alison Krauss and Union Station. As the band’s spiritual rudder, Ron has penned several songs within the group’s catalog in addition to other collaborative releases and his own solo work. Even with such accolades and achievements, however, Ron’s driving force for those who know him remains what he now calls an “abiding dependence.” You can now add published author to Ron’s resume with Abiding Dependence: Living Moment by Moment in the Love of God due October 4 (via Moody Publishers). I asked Ron to have yet another conversation recently about the source and significance of that phrase and how success in the music industry has informed his spiritual formation. I’ve known you long enough and at least well enough to know that this concept of Abiding Dependence has been a core consideration for you for a long time. Do you remember what sparked this as a life goal and passion for you in the first place and when that was? We reach for a light because the room is dark. At first, this means we look to other people, or our skills, accomplishments, or possessions to light up our sense of worth, security, and meaning. It works, but only to a degree, because all those things fluctuate, sometimes wildly. I had a mostly good childhood, but there were quite a few jagged events by the time I was 13 that knocked out my sense of worth and security. I started playing music, and in my teens, it became a kind of lifeline giving me a sense of worth. But by my late twenties, it wasn’t working any longer and I was having a kind of inner crisis. I started playing music, and in my teens, it became a kind of lifeline giving me a sense of worth. But by my late twenties, it wasn't working any longer and I was having a kind of inner crisis. Ron Block I knew there were answers in the Bible. I’d read it and heard it preached much of my life. But this involved taking off a lot of preconceived ideas – my “theological glasses” – and reading it as a child, taking the words seriously. Life, others, and my own thinking processes had trained me to think of myself in a certain way. But in this I found Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, and others often contradicting my view of myself, telling me I was more than I thought I was. “You are the light of the world,” “child of God,” “holy and dearly loved,” “a new creation” — all this began to change how I thought about myself. How would you define “Abiding Dependence”? Can you unpack what you mean by those two words? More than anything, abiding is about recognition. We recognize God’s reality, his presence, his goodness, his love, and the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe. We recognize we’re in Christ, and Christ is in us. We recognize we’re branches in the Vine, partakers of the divine nature, that in Christ lives all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form, and we’re filled full in him. This recognition is a daily practice. We grow in it, and grow up in it. It’s the opposite of independence, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency. In it we turn to the ground and source of our being, the God who causes his life to flow up into his branches, producing love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, humility, faith, and self-control. Yes, sometimes we forget, and we fail momentarily. But we never have to stay there. We can turn and recognize him again and again. To live this way is to worship in spirit and in truth. Trust, reliance, and faith all flow out of that simple recognition of the omnipresent, transcendent, immanent God who is over us, for us, with us, in us, and lives through us. It feels like anyone can relate to this and also feel the counter-cultural pull, but you referenced music-as-lifeline as something that no longer worked at a certain point. It does feel like the music industry would be a heightened arena. Did that accelerate these lessons learned—the nature of your vocation? The counter-cultural pull today is, “How I feel determines my identity,” which is the modern viewpoint. When I was growing up the pull was “How I do and what I do determine my identity.” As a teen, I knew I had to play music full time. I had a deep-down sense of purpose and a fascination with it, and still do. But on a parallel track was this issue of identity and worth. I felt good when I played well, when others were moved by what I did. And yes, this did accelerate my lessons learned. At this point, I had no idea that the Gospel was more than just “Jesus paid my sin-debt so I can go to Heaven” and also that God would take care of my needs (Matthew 6). It hadn’t entered my little bear brain to think about where I was getting my sense of worth. Through my teens and twenties, I continued on an upward track, playing in bands, making better and better music. In 1991, I was asked to join Alison Krauss and Union Station. I considered them some of the most innovative and highest-level players and singers in the genre, and I was thrilled, to say the least; it was creative, well-played music, and they were thrilled to have me. The world is full of temporary sources of identity, but there's only one source that never changes. Ron Block But I didn’t realize what was happening in my sense of worth. What goes up must come down. A fluctuating source of identity and worth will raise you high but also throw you down. It’s unstable, especially if you’re as perfectionistic and as hard on yourself as I was. A worth based on circumstances or on other people is a house built on sand. By 1994 or thereabouts I was beginning to hash this all out with God, and it wasn’t pretty. This wasn’t the only factor in my internal crisis. But the main point was that I found I didn’t have sufficient love, joy, peace, patience, or much else, because although I trusted the sacrifice of Jesus to get me to heaven, and trusted God for outer needs, I didn’t really know how to trust God for my daily, moment-by-moment inner needs. Anything can be turned into a source of identity, worth, and security – relationships, career, money, our skill sets, our IQs, our education, our coping mechanisms, and even ministry. The world is full of temporary sources of identity, but there’s only one source that never changes. Can you tell us about the format of the book and why you chose that route? Moody felt a devotional-style book would work best for this first book, and I agreed. This was originally going to be solely an “identity in Christ” devotional, but I soon realized I couldn’t write on identity without first writing about who Jesus was and is, why he was born, how he lived his daily life, why he died for us, what the resurrection means for us.  There is so much more to the good news than “Jesus died so I could go to Heaven.” There is a daily, experiential life with God that comes by recognizing him, turning to him, having fellowship with him, listening to him. Other aspects of what we call “devotional life” have to arise from that recognition, or they can easily become “dead works” if God’s reality and presence are not the hub. The first 12 or 13 days of the book focus on the life of Jesus in the Gospels. A central fact is that although he was God, he set aside his privileges as God and lived solely as a man having to recognize and trust in the Father within himself. He said, “….the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19). He said, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.”  Jesus had to recognize, trust, and follow the Father because he was living as us. He was revealing the pattern, and so he says later, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” He lived as a branch in his Father so that we could learn to live as branches in Christ. After those devotional days focusing on Jesus, the book begins to diverge into what this means for how we see reality, our worth, our identity – always with that idea of recognition of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit as central. Abiding Dependence was the best way I could find to describe this truly Christian way of living. You can order Abiding Dependence here from the Rabbit Room store .

by Kevin Burrell My mother wept when Elvis died. I was an eight-year-old kid watching a woman shed tears for a person she’d never met, and frankly, it didn’t compute. I couldn’t fathom that a person’s life and lyrics could possibly reach through a needle on a vinyl record and find resonance with total strangers. It was only when Rich Mullins died, twenty-five years ago today, that I finally understood. 1997 lacked the social-media capacity for instant viral news, and so, like many others, I didn’t find out about Rich’s fatal Friday night car crash in Illinois until that Sunday morning, when a student in my youth group told me. How could so many people feel in those moments that they had lost a close friend? Though I did meet him twice briefly during his amiable barefoot after-concert conversations, we were still strangers (or as Rich would write, “prisoners in these lonely hearts”). And yet his lyrics, essays, and extemporaneous concert homilies exegeted so many of the key moments of my life. There were songs sympathetic to a broken relationship, or resonant with a lonely season, or faith-bolstering in episodes of fear. His music still anchors my winding-mountain-road soundtrack, and I blame his song “The Color Green” for a pricey speeding ticket. Rich’s music inspired me to buy a hammered dulcimer and embrace the agony of trying to keep a 56-string instrument in tune. I defaulted to guitar, and led my student ministry in sing-alongs of “Sometimes by Step” (the full song, people, not just the chorus) and “Nothing is Beyond You.” Rich was not a performer so much as a fellow pilgrim, accessible and real and Indiana-clay earthy. He spoke the common language of a sinner-and-saint ragamuffin, a unique place from which to serve as what Amy Grant called, “the uneasy conscience of Christian music.” His blunt perspectives on the idols of easy suburban discipleship called us to a more obvious but more difficult climb, and he led the way, barefoot. Today, I’m a pastor who writes about birds. When I think back to how this odd synthesis came about, I realize that Rich probably fanned that flame of “ornitheology” as much as anyone. With a heart captivated by the glory of God, he mined the poetry of the natural world, birds included, singing of “a single hawk burst into flight” or the “fury in a pheasant’s wings.” He imagined the lively wren incarnating the transformation of a hollow heart. He centered a whole song around the image of an egg hatching. He borrowed from many scriptural bird references like the mystery of an eagle’s flight (Proverbs 30:19, in “Love’s As Strong”), the simple provision of sparrows (Matthew 6:26, in “Hard”), or the contrast of bird nests with the life of a homeless savior (Luke 9:58, in “You Did Not Have a Home”). There’s a slowness and attentiveness that invites discovery, and the slower we go, the more we’re likely to see. I think I learned that from Rich. Kevin Burrell Recently in a radio interview, I was asked how people find the time to birdwatch. My answer was, first of all, that you need to go to places where, uh, there are birds. This rather obvious advice is easy to apply, because birds are ubiquitous; right now as you read this sentence, there’s probably one outside your window, just waiting to be noticed. (Go ahead and check if you want; I’ll wait) But the second part is harder. You have to slow down and look up. There’s a slowness and attentiveness that invites discovery, and the slower we go, the more we’re likely to see. I think I learned that from Rich. He would sing, “There’s so much beauty around us for just two eyes to see. But everywhere I go, I’m looking.” He exemplified a creation-attentiveness that saw the divine fingerprint in the bluffs on the banks of the Cumberland, warm light on cold Dakota hills, or crashing waters on the New England coast. Those who traveled with him, whether on tour or in the woods, say that the experience often involved an impromptu examination of grass patterns, stargazing, or even the study of moss. He relished the “motes of dust in these beams of light.” Rich truly slowed, enough to hear the prairies calling out God’s name. Rich was criticized by some for writing the song “Here in America” on the beauty of the American landscape. His reply: “There are people who think it’s a waste of space to write a song just about America—about how America is a beautiful place to live. But I think it’s a waste of eyes not to notice.” That bird outside your window right now would concur. After all, Jesus told us in Matthew 6:26 to “consider the birds.” It’s probably not the most important command in the Bible, but hey, it’s a Greek imperative, and so I take it as a savior-sanctioned hobby. At Rich’s encouragement, “Everywhere I go, I’m looking”—not just for birds, but for the lessons they reveal and the sparrow-watching Savior they portray. Well the eagle flies And the rivers run I look through the night And I can see the rising sun And everywhere I go I see you. Fellow Ragamuffin Jimmy Abegg said, “I think if it weren’t for his faith in Christ, Rich could have been a pantheist.” But for Rich, landscapes were the lens through which to see the grander realities of a King and a Kingdom. “There’s more that rises on the prairie than the wind and more that pulses in the ocean than the tide.” Antelope, goldenrods, and canyon walls framed a greater portrait— an eternal power and divine nature so clearly on display as to leave us without excuse (Romans 1:20). He used our physical setting to raise our spiritual sights, something greater than the stuff of earth. “While we live in the world that you have made, we hear it whisper of a world, of the world that is to come.” Rich’s lyrics spoke of a world shaken forward and shaken free by the realities of a Cross and a Resurrection. His poetic observations of the natural world were always a signpost to a greater hope, a thirst that would “soon drown in a song not sung in vain.” He held forth the created order rightly as a lens through which to savor a deeper longing and remember an earnest promise. Rich had a better capacity to describe that beauty than most of us will ever have, but this also allowed him to clearly see the heavy discontent of the land of his sojourn, and a longing for a better home—heaviness and hope borne out in tandem, in both his life and his music. There’s fury in a pheasant’s wings And it tells me the Lord is in his temple And there is still a faith that can make the mountains move And a love that can make the heavens ring Rich’s natural capacity for creational slowness drew us all further up and further in, to a world intent on pouring forth speech and revealing knowledge and boasting in the splendor of the one who made it (Psalm 19:1-3). And in doing so, he whetted our appetite for a capital-H Home. Twenty-five years later, I remain grateful for this troubadour who exhorted us to see the intricate worthiness of God’s creation while still yearning for the one-day experience of all things new. At Jesus’ encouragement and Rich’s example, I will continue to consider the birds. Kevin Burrell is a pastor, husband, and father in Charlotte, NC who writes about birds and faith in his spare time at ornitheology.com . In recent years his pastoral responsibilities have begun to include an increasing number of “Hey, what bird is this?” inquiries.

by Ned Bustard I was at the SING! Conference this past week and had the pleasure to promote both Rabbit Room Press and Square Halo Books . During my time there I can’t say which I enjoyed more: seeing people exclaim “I have that!” as they point at the Every Moment Holy banner or watching the looks of those unfamiliar with the books realize what a treasure they are. But my favorite memory was talking to a guy in a cool NeedToBreathe t-shirt who nonchalantly pulled out of his backpack an original hardback version of volume one for me to sign. Now, I love the full-size, hardcover version with the gilded edges, and I always encourage folks to buy that one since it best captures Doug’s original vision for these books, but if I was going to a huge conference like the one the Gettys put on with all the groovy books on sale, I would never give up that much real estate in my backpack. So, kudos to him! And while I admire that fellow’s commitment to Every Moment Holy, I suddenly realized that the Every Moment Holy:r Gift Edition had an important role to play in the Body of Christ. I always tell people that as soon as Andrew Peterson explained the project to me, I knew I had to be part of it. It spoke to the very heart of me as an artist and as a Christian. What I didn’t know was how much it would mean to other people. I honestly thought it was going to be too low-church for the high-church folks and too high-church for the low-church folks. I have never been happier to be proven so very wrong. Even this past week at the SING! Conference I had the joy of talking to people who had tears in their eyes as they told me how much these two books have meant to them. I also had the fun of “repenting” to people who hurled faux rebukes at me for not having given them advance notice that I was going to be at the event so that they could’ve brought their copies of EMH with them for me to sign. As we look forward to the release of the Every Moment Holy Gift Edition, I want to share with you two things about it that I particularly enjoy. First is the size: this new one gives me waves of nostalgic glee as it reminds me of the prayer books I would use as a child growing up in the Reformed Episcopal church my grandfather pastored. The second thing is that we were able to squeeze in a brand new linocut illustration. In a perfect world, I would want to illustrate everything Doug ever wrote, but that would end up making the book suitable only for churches with large lecterns. One liturgy in particular that many people bemoaned the lack of illumination was “A Liturgy Before Taking the Stage.” In the new Gift Edition, we now have that one pictured. In that print, an African-American man is shown (my friend Steve Prince helped me with that part when I was busy drawing the block at another conference we were both attending) standing in the palm of God as a spotlight shines on him, hung from the glory clouds of Heaven. The man holds a platter with his modest offering of bread and fish for his King. Around him are possible tools of his service on the stage—an open Bible, a microphone, and a guitar. So, if you are going on stage, off camping, attending the SING! Conference, or live in a tiny apartment the size of the ones my daughters rent in New York City, make haste and pre-order the Every Moment Holy Gift Edition RIGHT NOW .

by Jeffery Overstreet I’m four years old and staring at a screen. A bizarre figure flails about on a stage, hands and feet jerked by strings. That long nose seems strangely familiar. It’s Pinocchio, but not the Pinocchio I know from my Little Golden Book paraphrase of the Disney movie; this is some kind of public-television dance production. This memory is a fragment, as fleeting as a three-second GIF. And nothing more than that sticks with me. Several Pinocchio narratives exist, and I don’t recall which this production presented. Was Geppetto violent or peaceful? Was the wooden boy a terror or just a gullible idiot? Did the Blue Fairy set him free? Did Jiminy, Pinocchio’s talking conscience, sing about wishing on a star? I don’t recall. All I remember is the anxiety. The tightness in my chest. How my fingers twisted and tugged at orange strands of shag carpet—it was the early 1970s, after all. Something in me was desperate to see this frantic puppet freed from his strings. * * * Screens were the first windows through which I witnessed a world beyond the safe, familiar sphere of home, family, and church. I watched Sesame Street , Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood , morning game shows, Saturday cartoons, and not much else. So why does this Pinocchio moment stay with me like a surreal dream? This peculiar anxiety—I felt it again a few years later when I discovered a dragonfly struggling in a spider-web; I spent an hour picking at the web with a needle, trying to release her. This was not empathy : an imaginative engagement with unfamiliar suffering. This was sympathy : I knew, somehow, what the puppet and the dragonfly were feeling. I could relate. I could not yet discern, at that age, the particularity of my childhood. My home was full of love, my parents generously encouraged my imaginative growth. But we lived within overlapping spheres of evangelical fundamentalism: church, school, and extended family. Obedience and discipline were priorities everywhere. (Paddles for spanking students hung on the wall like swords behind the Christian school principal’s desk.) I learned to fear failure within this system, and to fear even further the world outside my “traditional Christian community.” And yet, in this memory as blurry as a Polaroid a half-century old, I already have a sense that I am living a life on strings: tethered, directed, bound. The figure in that flickering black-and-white screen is me wrestling with an intuitive sense that I am not sure how to be free, not sure how to become fully human. * * * Fast forward. I’m bombarded by ads for not one but two new Pinocchio adaptations: a Disney “live-action” remake from director Robert Zemeckis (with Tom Hanks as Geppetto), which is earning dismal reviews; and a darker, stranger (and probably far better) version from Guillermo Del Toro (with Ewan McGregor as Jiminy the narrator). Every time I see the puppet’s funny name fill the screen in stylized letters, I feel a pulse of anxiety. Intrigued by my visceral response to the story’s resurgence, I sat down last week and pressed “play” on Disney’s 1940 classic. And as I watched, I was surprised and enchanted: I realized that I had never seen the movie all the way through before. The figure in that flickering black-and-white screen is me wrestling with an intuitive sense that I am not sure how to be free, not sure how to become fully human. Jeffrey Overstreet I’ve known the basics since childhood. Let’s review: In short, the angelic Blue Fairy grants the wish of a kind-hearted woodworker and turns his smiling marionette into a string-free wooden boy. But what will it take to finish the job—to make Pinocchio fully human ? He’ll have to pass some ethical tests with a convenient cricket acting as his conscience. And, of course, he starts failing tests right away: He lies, which makes his nose grow. What surprises me most is how quickly the story moves on from the nose incident. Lying isn’t Pinocchio’s biggest problem. Disney storytellers seem more interested in dramatizing the daunting challenges for which the little blockhead is unprepared. As soon as he obediently marches off to his first day of school (education represents what good boys prioritize here), Pinocchio is set upon by con men: a fox nicknamed Foulfellow (nicknamed “Honest John”) and a dopey cat named Gideon. These partners in crime dupe him into joining the circus of a showman, Stromboli, who promotes Pinocchio to the delight of audiences. He’s an overnight sensation! But backstage, the truth is quickly revealed: Pinocchio has been sold into slavery. He’s locked in a cage and abused. The lesson is clear: To abandon school for fame and fortune is to bargain with the devil. If you disobey your father and follow ambition and vanity, you’re bound by subtler and more destructive strings. Pinocchio gets a second chance, but goes wrong again, falling for more false promises. This time, peer pressure plunges him into the reckless revelries of Pleasure Island, where cigar-smoking and billiards represent heavy depravity. Before long, Pinocchio has been sold to a labor camp for trafficked children, where foolishness transforms them into literal jackasses. They’re left braying for mercy. A second lesson: If, in your freedom, you prioritize pleasure and popularity, you may find yourself strung up by your own heart’s own worst impulses. It can be jarring to track this narrative’s dark turns. Disney is famous for sanitizing fairy tales, but this remains frightening stuff. Still, the source material is far more troubling: Carlo Collodi’s original novel casts Pinocchio as a living terror from the moment he opens his eyes. And Geppetto is no saint either: He assaults another character twice in the opening chapters, and we learn he has a reputation for abusing children. A little research reveals that Pinocchio, in Collodi’s first draft, dies as a consequence of his misdeeds, hung from a tree by his enemies. Obedience driven by fear and rebellion driven by disrespect—either action keeps us bound to cruel puppeteers. Jeffrey Overstreet But there is so much more to Disney’s version of the story than episodic moralism. From its opening anthem “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the song by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington that became the Disney studio’s signature anthem, the movie celebrates enchantment. It’s preoccupied with the idea that there is some higher power out there eager to bless dreams with “the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing.” And it insists that our capacity to receive that blessing has something to do with the “still, small voice” of conscience that wants to keep us on “the narrow path.” Pinocchio is set “free” at the beginning of the film; he’s granted a mind, a heart, and agency. But he will learn right away that freedom isn’t enough. Independence can be every bit as dangerous as it is rewarding. As Nelson Mandela wrote in Long Walk to Freedom , “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” The path to being fully human requires the cultivation of conscience. Obedience driven by fear and rebellion driven by disrespect—either action keeps us bound to cruel puppeteers. And there are other kinds of strings as well. Pinocchio’s journey to wisdom culminates when his struggle in captivity enables him to feel sympathy for Geppetto, who has been imprisoned in the belly of a whale. There, we find that freedom can also lead to isolation. This puppeteer himself is now bound, controlled by strings of despair. * * * It’s unsettling how relevant this movie seems today. Yes, those lessons about lying are heavy-handed. But we apparently still need them. There’s something timely about watching two smooth-talking opportunists prey upon Pinocchio’s ignorance and try to steer him away from school. We are surrounded by increasingly outspoken enemies of education and intellectual discipline. And it makes sense to prevent rigorous teaching among the populace if your success depends on exploiting and controlling them. I had to laugh when I realized that Pinocchio becomes dizzy and disoriented under the influence of… what? Could we call it Honest John’s “fox news”? But these “teachable moments” are not what make the movie so memorably meaningful to me. = The more that artists inspire our own speculation, and the more they draw us into the creative process, the more we will feel invested in what’s happening. Jeffrey Overstreet What excites me most about Disney’s glorious rendition is how the animators, discovering just how much freedom they have to experiment with innovative tools, refrain from reveling in lurid violence, preferring curiosity and play. When Pinocchio dives in search of Geppetto, the filmmakers slow down, take time, and explore. They invite us to enter into childlike play, which leads to unexpected and (this is important) unnecessary discoveries. We might even call this sequence gratuitous : Pinocchio’s encounters on the ocean floor aren’t essential to the plot. They’re a grab-bag of the animators’ favorite inventions. And they make Pinocchio’s world more convincing. That’s because our own world is not overly concerned with the plot. Our world is full of playfulness, full of extravagance, full of incidental delights. Roger Ebert wrote about another strategy that demonstrates the animators’ virtuosity when he deemed Pinocchio one of The Great Movies : In Fantasia and especially Pinocchio, Disney broke out of the frame, for example in the exciting sequence where Pinocchio and his father are expelled by the whale’s sneeze, then drawn back again, then expelled again. There is the palpable sense of Monstro the Whale, offscreen to the right. Consider the implications of this. Pinocchio asks us, the audience, to keep on animating beyond the borders. The movie’s seven directors anticipate that our imaginations will collaborate with theirs. This strikes me as an act of artistic humility, and more—generosity. They are inviting us to find more in Pinocchio’s world than they have created. The more that artists inspire our own speculation, and the more they draw us into the creative process, the more we will feel invested in what’s happening. The experience becomes more communal. And that can only strengthen how capable we are of believing that what’s happening in the movie is relevant to us. Since my first encounters with this desperate marionette, Pinocchio and his world have been teaching me about art-making, truth-telling, and the promise and perils of freedom. They reinforce a deep Gospel: Our Maker seeks not to bind us, but to free us—not only from strings but for our help in setting others free. Jeffrey Overstreet is a writer of fiction, memoir, reviews, and arts journalism — and a teacher of creative writing, film studies, and cultural engagement for people of faith. Visit LookingCloser.org for more information.

by Kevan Chandler We Carry Kevan started in 2016 as an experiment in travel and friendship. Some guys and I wanted to go to Europe, and everywhere we planned to visit wasn’t going to be wheelchair accessible. This would normally be a problem because I am in a wheelchair, but we decided to not let that stop us. Leaving my chair behind, they carried me in a special backpack for three weeks as we danced through the streets of Paris, hopped fences in the English countryside, and hiked an island 7 miles off the coast of Ireland.  Since then, we have spent the past six years as a nonprofit answering the two biggest questions we got from families who watched the adventure unfold: Where did you get this backpack? And where did you get these friends? The first question was easy. So far, we have distributed 800 backpacks to families in 35 countries, and that number keeps growing every day.  But people long for deeper connections, too—friendships that will say, “I’ll do whatever it takes.” So we build relationships with families who get backpacks, and we share our stories around the world to inspire others to be these kinds of friends. And most recently, we started a new video series called Who Are We, in which I interview the “We” of We Carry Kevan. I figured, who better to ask about friendship than my friends?  I had the honor of going for a walk with Jonathan Rogers and Doug McKelvey, as we discussed art and friendship and how the two practices cultivate one another. Check it out (and see if you spy Pete in the background, too), and many other interviews about different aspects and keys to deeper friendship.  Here is Part 1: And here is Part 2: Kevan Chandler is a writer, speaker, adventurer, urban-spelunker, world-traveler, and founder of We Carry Kevan, an organization that aims to redefine conventional ideas of accessibility.

by Dawn Morrow On most weekend afternoons the year I turned seven, you could find me in my room pacing the purple shag rug while a library record spun on my old turntable. That summer, the last track on the b-side of a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf was on heavy rotation. It’s the first time I remember hearing the story of Pandora’s Box, and I was enthralled. Over and over again I listened while curious Pandora opened the box and bad things escaped. Hunger, madness, despair, violence, greed—shadowy bat-like creatures, spiraling out of the box and surrounding poor Pandora before they flew away. The image haunted my dreams for years. But Pandora closed the box just before everything could escape, trapping the one remaining thing inside. Pandora’s Box was my introduction to the concept of hope, and I was hooked. At seven, I didn’t know many of the monsters that flew out of Pandora’s box yet, but I knew long silences over dinner when my father chose a can of Budweiser rather than the water or tea my mother offered. I knew a growing tension marked by closed-door “discussions” in the kitchen. I knew it was just my mom and me most nights in our little NJ rancher. And still, it came as a surprise when my dad tucked his long, lean body next to mine where I sat, reading, in his favorite chair—the one he fell asleep in most nights, dog in his lap, T.V. on, empty beer cans on the end table. He said all the right things: he loved me, it wasn’t my fault, they just couldn’t be married anymore. Fear, shame, anxiety, abandonment. The shadows lengthened. “Hope is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul,” wrote Emily Dickinson, and that’s how I pictured it: a tiny fluttering bird, trapped, delicate, and weak. I had no idea how such a fragile thing could do any kind of battle with darkness, but I desperately wanted it to. I had no idea how such a fragile thing could do any kind of battle with darkness, but I desperately wanted it to. Dawn Elizabeth Morrow “The doctor found something; it’s not good.” It was the Monday just after Thanksgiving during my first year of business school and my mom, still groggy from sedation, was calling with the results of her colonoscopy. By the end of the week, we had a diagnosis: stage four colon cancer, already metastasized to her liver and lungs. It would eventually kill her. Sickness, death, loneliness, despair. Four years later, in early December, I sat on a daybed while she slept in her recliner nearby. White lights from the Christmas tree we’d decorated together lit the room. Day by day, her body was trudging in time with death’s slow march. She slept more and more, her fingers and toes grew cold, her breath hitched. On the morning after the death rattle started, I woke up early and recited the creed I’d known since childhood: I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord. I believe in the Holy Spirit…the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. For twenty-five mornings, as my mother died in the next room, I had returned to the most basic hope of the gospel. It was the thread holding my days together. In those early mornings, I found the hope I practiced was fundamentally different from the frail little bird I pictured as a seven-year-old. This hope was strength. This hope was endurance. This hope actively clung to the fringe of faith on the threshold of tragedy. Hope, by its very nature, thrives in the liminal places of life—between the promise and the coming true. It’s the hush before the curtain rises, the space between lightning and thunder, the Sabbath between death and life. It’s the quiet spaces in prayer when we wonder if we’re talking to ourselves. Hope is not fragile. It exists to wrestle with our doubts. Sometimes it’s tattered, with a bloody nose and a black eye, but it always stands back up. Hope is a practice, a repetition, a habit. Years later I watched, weeping as Notre Dame burned. I’d stood under the rose window the summer before and listened to the bells ring. As the Cathedral’s spire fell, people gathered on the banks of the Seine and they sang: Ave Maria, pray for us. It was the habit of hope, cultivated from liturgy to liturgy, and in their hour of grief, they returned to it. Practice hope and may you return to it again and again. Notre Dame in Flames One April the gargoyles awakened, carved chimera breathing fire, alive for the first time in nine hundred years. They rose, wings outstretched, on plumes of smoke high over the city. For miles around people stopped, craning their necks to see fingers of fire wrap around the cathedral’s spire, and topple it like a child’s block tower Thousands of miles away, I watch, transfixed by flame-tails trailing across darkening sky, the sunset overshadowed by the orange-red glow of the church as it burned. Not long ago I stood under the rose window, spellbound, bell-song resonating deep in my chest, calling the faithful to prayer. In Paris, the people press in, held back by police lines and firemen. They watch the glow ebb and flow, as if it breathed, and they sing, as desperate as Orpheus to bring her back: Ave Maria, Pray for us. They raise the song like a knight’s sword at the dragon’s throat. Dawn Morrow writes poems for people who think they don't like poetry. Although she holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University, an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill, and a BS in Engineering from the University of Iowa, she’s a Jersey Girl at heart. Her poetry has appeared in the Molehill, vol. 5, published by Rabbit Room Press and SLAB Literary Magazine.

by Andrew Peterson As many of you know, the original Rabbit Room was in the back of a pub called The Eagle and Child, which was right across the street from another Inklings haunt called The Lamb and Flag. From what I read, Lewis and Tolkien changed pubs because they were annoyed that the Eagle and Child had introduced a dartboard. I happen to agree that a good pub’s goodness is due to its hospitality to good conversation. Loud music and television screens and party games have no place in the pubs of my dreams. So the Lamb and Flag, which as I said is right across the street from the Eagle and Child, was a gathering place for four hundred years. That’s a long time for an institution to last, and we got to enjoy its timelessness a few years back. One of my favorite memories from Hutchmoot in Oxford in 2019 was of Pete and Jennifer, me and Jamie, Phillip and Lanier Ivester, and a few others gathering in the Lamb and Flag’s snug to read our poems aloud in honor of the Inklings. Another was on the last night of the conference. We finished up at about 9 p.m. The Lamb and Flag closed at 11. We all began to furiously clean up the church, running trash bags to the dumpsters, cleaning dishes, vacuuming the floors, setting up the church for Sunday services the next morning. As soon as we got the place put back together we hurried through the streets of North Oxford to the Lamb and Flag, got there a few minutes before last call, and were able to raise a pint of English ale in a toast to Christ our King, to the many people who made Hutchmoot happen, and of course to the Inklings who had in some measure inspired the whole affair a half a century before. For whatever reason, Chris Thiessen’s delightful laugh in the alley outside the pub is the thing that stands out in my mind. It’s a good memory. But then, 2020 happened. A lot of people who care about the Inklings were saddened to hear that both the Lamb and the Eagle had shut their doors during the pandemic. Both pubs were rumored to have been closed permanently, and the Eagle and Child was supposedly going to be gutted to make room for a hotel. I couldn’t believe that these places which were so important to so many were going to be lost, just like that. I visited Oxford in 2021 and peeked through the windows of both empty, cobwebby pubs, muttering under my breath about the travesty of it all and wishing I was a millionaire so I could rescue them from certain destruction. We were in Oxford again this summer, and the pubs were still closed. I looked in the alley behind them in case they were tossing out the old benches and tables, because if they were I was absolutely going to find a way to steal one and ship it home. That these places would be forever lost, turned into a hotel lobby or a convenience store, felt so terribly sad. If a dartboard was enough to drive the Inklings out of one pub back in the day, imagine the sputtering indignance that the ghosts of the Lewis brothers, Tolkien, Williams, and the rest would have felt as their favorite haunts were pillaged and turned into soulless commercial ventures. I sputtered with them. It’s sad when something you love fades away. It’s sad when something like the Eagle and Child, a place that felt like it would last forever, is up and gone overnight. The death of a historic pub can represent the death of a million beautiful things in our broken world. That sadness is real, and appropriate, because what we experience in those precious places is a little glimpse of the Kingdom—and then things change and you realize it wasn’t permanent at all. It was only ever a glimpse. By definition, a glimpse is fleeting. But that one rustle in the bushes, the catch in the throat, the sweet memory of laughter on a warm night with your friends—it’s enough to tell you that the Kingdom is real and on the move, and the sad truth is that when the flash of light is gone the dark can feel even darker. That’s why it’s so important to keep our eyes peeled for the white stag, the cup of cool water, the miracle of an onion as you peel it, the Psalm that rises out of scripture like a candle to bless you in the cave. We need those things, and yet those things are just signposts to the giver of all good things. They’re like streams in the woods. We need the water. It keeps us alive. But it’s also a mere stream running downhill to a river, and even the river is a mere river coursing to the open arms of the unfathomable sea. The stream is good, but it’s not the ocean. The pub is good, but it’s not our home. Our hearts are restless till they rest in God, and we are yet pilgrims to the mansion of his heart. Our hearts are restless till they rest in God, and we are yet pilgrims to the mansion of his heart. Andrew Peterson I say all that to say this: it’s an error to confuse the stream for the ocean, or a wayside inn for home. I have missed Hutchmoot these last few years. I’ve missed the great joy of this yearly feast. If you’ve been here before I imagine you’ve missed it too. It’s such a concentration of good and beautiful things: conversation, food, books, music, laughter, stories—all emanating from the Great Story and the Great Storyteller himself. Of course, we celebrate that. We would be fools not to. But Hutchmoot is also just as imperfect as the people running it. We’re all doing our best to make the Rabbit Room amazing, but it’s going to disappoint you. I’m going to disappoint you. We’re trying, in our broken way, to make room for a fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom. And when we all come together, each with his or her gifts, each of us as eager to forgive as to be forgiven, each of us pointing the way home, then each of us can become for another that fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom. The last few years have shaken us all. It’s disorienting when things that seem unshakeable are shaken. The Rabbit Room is most definitely shakable. What the Rabbit Room is pointing to is not. Think of the thousands in Florida who lost their homes last week. It’s literally devastating. But when that devastation happens we’re reminded of what is steadfast and truly unshakeable—as Rich Mullins sang, “everything that could be shaken was shaken, and all that remains is all I ever really had.” And what remains? The purposes of God. The reality of his Kingdom and its steady, unstoppable advance. The indwelling presence of his Holy Spirit in his people, and the presence of his people all around us, stepping into the rubble to rebuild and remake, practicing resurrection till we die into the perfection of our resurrection through his. I learned last week that a hurricane is considered to have made landfall only when the eye of the storm arrives on the shores—not when all those tendrils of the storm spin out across land for days. The bands of the storm of the kingdom of God are here, but the thing hasn’t made landfall until that peaceful eye is overhead. All creation groans with eager expectation for it. So we hammer signposts into the ground of this old world, pointing to the good storm that’s coming, and coming, and coming, and which will one day be here in its fullness. Sometimes, a community of people comes together to recover what was lost. And that is always cause for celebration. And here we are. This morning, my dear British friend Mark Meynell texted me a link to an article. The headline was this: “The Fellowship of the Lamb: How We’re Saving Tolkien’s Pub.” The author of the article was part of a community who banded together to resurrect the Lamb and Flag. He wrote, “As Tolkienologists will know, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings , The Fellowship of the Ring , opens with Bilbo Baggins’s 111th birthday – or his eleventy-first birthday, as Bilbo put it. The new Inklings – locals, Oxford graduates and undergraduates – each paid a minimum of £1,000 for a renewable 15-year lease on the pub. I paid the minimum. Many paid much more – including one anonymous Inkling who paid for extra building work with a generous donation.” “In 1911, a young man named Tolkien arrived at Exeter College, Oxford, to read classics. A couple of years later, he changed courses to read English language and literature, which turned out to be quite significant. We reopen our pub at 6 p.m. on Thursday 6 October 2022, which is possibly, or exactly, 111 years to the day that J.R.R. Tolkien arrived in Oxford.’ So I’m happy to report that while we were setting up this afternoon, the Lamb and Flag reopened, and the familiar sounds of clinking glasses, laughter, fellowship, and celebration filled that place once again. Hopefully, there were no dartboards. That means that literally right now in Oxford, while the proprietor is mopping up and shutting the place down for the night, we’re reopening this thing called Hutchmoot, flinging open the doors for the first time in years. Look around you. Look into someone’s eyes. Catch a fleeting glimpse of the Kingdom of God, because in the words of the late Frederick Buechner, “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would barely fill a cup.” Resurrection happens. Welcome, friends, to Hutchmoot. May it be a glimpse of the Kingdom. #Hutchmoot #semifeature Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter and author. Andrew has released more than ten records over the past twenty years, earning him a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, released in collectible hardcover editions through Random House in 2020, and his creative memoir, Adorning the Dark, released in 2019 through B&H Publishing.

by Matt Conner It’s always a joy to highlight the meaningful work of friends, and we’re excited to support a new one-day event happening soon in Raleigh, North Carolina called The Guild Conference . The Guild Conference is coming up on Saturday, November 5, and it is a creative arts conference and concert designed to care holistically for the craft and character of artists (and those who enjoy the arts). How do you not love that mission? We asked partner Cary Brege to tell us more. “This conference was an initiative started by artists who recognized the need to challenge, support and hold accountable creatives whose lives and artistry have been redeemed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’re creating an experience that encourages intentional rest, resetting, and reflection in the presence of God in light of our call as creative people.” Featured artists and speakers include many of our own favorites including Jess Ray, Sharlene Provilus, Joy Ike, Taylor Leonhardt, Andy Squyers, William “Duce” Branch, Derrick Holloway, and Mission House. You can learn more about the conference at their official site , and they’ve even given Rabbit Room readers a promo code for a discount on tickets: RABBIT. Matt Conner is a former pastor and church planter turned writer and editor. He’s the founder of Analogue Media and lives in Indianapolis.

by Sarah Bramblett To my sisters and me, my dad is the main character. He is presence and purpose, laughter and adventure, wisdom and authenticity. He’s also a protagonist in his job, marriage, and role in the church. By day, he’s Dr. Mark Geil: Associate Dean of Research and Operations and Professor of Exercise Science at Kennesaw State University. He does research on children with movement disorders, so to an under-represented community, he’s a background hero studying unnoticed aspects of movement that translate into better prosthetic limbs and overall understanding. Beyond his day job, he’s dabbled in several fascinating hobbies. His most notable hobby, that of being an extra or stand-in in the movie industry, is a unique culmination of both his career and his many other hobbies. He has “medical experience,” so he’s played a doctor on TV shows. He enjoys writing and photography, so for a brief second in the latest season of Stranger Things , you can see a close-up of my dad’s face taking pictures. All those years of archery at church kids camp somehow enabled him to be an occasional stand-in for Hawkeye (really, it’s probably more of a sizing match-up than a hobby alignment, but hey). Usually, his amazing stories collected from hours on movie sets yield a micro-second glimpse of him on the big screen. We watch movies with hands on the pause button. He’ll point himself out as the fifth guy on the second-to-last row of the UN in Avengers . Extras are labeled “background.” The audience is not supposed to notice the characters who contribute presence, normalcy, and purpose to the shot. But there’s beauty in hearing stories from the background. Sarah: You’ve probably been in about 40 shows and productions at this point? What’s one of your favorite experiences as an extra or stand-in? Mark : I’m a huge fan of comics and the Marvel universe, so it’s no surprise that my favorite moment is related to the MCU. But it might be unusual that it’s one that never made the screen. I was booked as a photo double for Jeremy Renner on the Hawkeye series. That’s someone who takes the place of the actor if he’s not available or barely in the frame. Two days before the shoot, I got a fairly frantic call from the casting agent. “Costumes really wants to see you for a fitting. They’re kinda freaking out. Is there any possible way you could get to the studio?” Naturally, I worked it into my schedule. I showed up at the studio, found my way to the right stage, and met with Renner’s personal wardrobe person. She led me into a room, wheeled in a rack, and said, “You’re the photo double, right?” I nodded and introduced myself, and she said, “Yeah, just to be safe, we really need you to try on everything.” I looked at the rack, and there were the comics come to life. Over the next half hour, I was fitted into Clint Barton’s regular clothes and his fancy clothes and was given random advice like, “Jeremy always tucks in his laces.” Ultimately, it was time to don the real live Hawkeye super-suit. The suit itself was remarkably engineered in about five layers, and it took a very specific process for them to put it on me, with instructions like, “Okay, now I need you to curve your back about twenty degrees and put your hands together over your head with your fingers pointed.” I loved every second of it. I finally stood there wearing full superhero regalia, and even though I had no mirror and couldn’t take any pictures, my childhood dreams were literally coming true. Sarah: I love your lifelong love for these movies and the process. Often, the motley crew that makes up the background is full of aspiring actors, people with no connection or love of movies just looking for a temp job, and a whole host of other characters. Why do you enjoy this hobby? What’s “in it” for you? Mark : You’re exactly right. I almost pity the folks who don’t realize how this works and are desperate for their “big break.” They have this hope that a director will spot just how well they walk across a street 50 feet behind the action and sign them on for their next film, but that just never happens. I enjoy this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m fascinated by the process and the machinations of making movies. Second, well, I occasionally get to try on super suits and such. Sarah: Speaking of the machinations of movies, what’s been your favorite “final product” or movie/show that you’ve worked on that turned out even better and more delightful than you thought it would as you witnessed its production? Mark: I played a doctor in a Reese Witherspoon film called The Good Lie , about the journey of refugees orphaned in a Sudanese civil war. I have some quasi-clinical training, and I’ve been in ORs observing surgeries, so I get to play docs from time to time. The set was a makeshift field hospital in Sudan. I was a little disappointed when the director shuffled me off to the back of the set and asked me to just count some items (which turned out to be packets of denture cleaner, oddly enough). So, I counted my packets, over and over, while the other background got to pretend to treat patients. But in between takes, I got to hang out with a wonderful group of kids and parents from a local Sudanese community, and the film turned out to be quite powerful. And even though I was in the back, I got to see myself quite a bit in the finished product. The attention to detail and the care taken in the craftsmanship are inspiring, and I enjoy the end products so much more having watched the process. Mark Geil Sarah: Often, the places that you film are common areas—parks and parking garages we frequent, or even campuses where you worked that morph into settings like Sudan or New York City. It could be that seeing the set and peeking behind the scenes disenchants the movie experience, but it seems to do the opposite for you. How does knowing how it’s all made increase your wonder and appreciation for the final product? Mark : I wouldn’t appreciate a Bob Ross landscape painting nearly as much if I hadn’t watched him create it. I get the same appreciation on a movie set. A single soundstage might have carpenters crafting a gravity-defying edifice out of 2x4s, hair and makeup departments making realistic looks from decades hence, and set decorators completing the finest detail on a set. I stood in a long line with hundreds of extras for one of the Hunger Games movies to get my hands and fingernails covered in artificial dirt, fully aware that none of the distant cameras would see my fingernails. I’ve watched the crew replace tiny pebbles on the ground of an alien planet, then blow them away in each take, and then put them back all over again. I marveled at Eddie’s trailer in Stranger Things, with so many ‘80s knick-knacks that never made the show. The attention to detail and the care taken in the craftsmanship are inspiring, and I enjoy the end products so much more having watched the process. Sarah: Being a stand-in has seemed to be even more gratifying for you than being an extra, but in those final films, you’re definitely not getting a screenshot of your face in the background. You’re never in the movie when you’re a stand-in, so why do you think you enjoy the work of standing-in for someone else? Mark : It’s so much fun! The stand-in watches the actor rehearse the scene, then steps in and repeats the blocking so the director, lighting gaffers, and camera operators can get everything just right before the actor returns for the actual take. So, you get a much closer view of moviemaking than you ever do as background. The most surreal moment I’ve ever experienced in this hobby was standing in for Renner on Avengers: Endgame in the Vormir scene. Part of the scene is an emotional dialogue between Hawkeye and Black Widow. It’s a really tight shot, so it took ages to set it up. I was standing in the middle of this massive, fantastic alien planetscape, almost nose-to-nose with Scarlett Johansson’s stand-in, while the crew struggled to get a camera angle just right. At one point, there was a long pause, and one of the Russo brothers shouted from across the stage, “Mark! How tall are you?” Even as I shouted my height, I marveled that, just for a moment, a bit of data as mundane as my height played some small role in the making of the biggest movie in history. Sarah: Has your Hollywood experience transformed, in any measure, the way you view your day-to-day roles? How does working in the background impact the roles you’re the main character in? Mark: Well, for starters, I have to talk myself out of abandoning my day job because I keep getting such fascinating offers. (Just kidding. Sort of.) Just today, I had to turn down opportunities to double for an actor in a car chase fleeing the bad guys, to be “hypnotized” in a celebrity prank, and to do a scene that would have had me chew a special pill to make me foam at the mouth. And last month, I had to turn down a chance to be, of all things, a Were-Butt! I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a Were-Butt? But then I come back to reality and I’m so grateful that I get to manage all of these disparate interests. I’m thankful for a gratifying “day job” and the chance to make an impact with it. And I recognize that it allows me the opportunity to pursue other interests, like movies, photography, and writing, without facing the pressure of relying on them to support my family. That also means that I can’t devote the time and energy it would take to get really good at any of them, but I’m content with that. An added benefit is that I’m totally okay with being in the background. I don’t try to squeeze my way toward a camera (like many extras do), and I’m fine if I don’t appear at all. I know this is a tremendous luxury, and I don’t take it lightly. So I always ultimately prioritize my “main character” roles—husband, father, professor, volunteer—knowing I can’t have the side gigs without the main gig. *** The process of creation often includes mundane editing, lonely pondering, late-night anxiety, and thousands of details that go unnoticed. But without the extras, the stand-ins, the lighting crews, and the fingernail dirt dusters, the movies we love wouldn’t draw us in. As I go about my own creation hobbies, both the little ones like occasionally writing or the main gigs like raising my daughter, I think about how wonderfully my dad embraces his movie hobby. Viewing the roles and responsibilities regulated to the background as tremendous luxuries enhances my appreciation for the greater story being told. Sarah Bramblett has a PhD in English Rhetoric and Composition and resides in Kennesaw, Georgia with her husband Lane and daughter Shiloh (a "joy tornado"). Sarah was an intern for the Rabbit Room while in undergrad and still believes in the life-giving power of Story; she loves passing on that power to college students who don’t think they can write.

by Rebecca Reynolds We filled our storage unit with hundreds of boxes during a family crisis. I couldn’t sort through it all at the time because too many objects triggered memories I didn’t have the capacity to process. Here was the stuffed animal of a grown child I’d give anything to go back and parent differently. The scent of a half-burned candle from our first home. A t-shirt I wore while making a mistake that led to years of pain. A church bulletin with naïve but simple, faith-filled notes I’d scribbled in the margin. An old Christmas card from a beloved friend who ended up not being a friend at all. There was a time when simply touching these items unleashed waves of fear, guilt, grief, and regret. Because I had young children during the crisis, I didn’t have time or space to tend to my own emotional wounds. So, I threw it all in storage, and I forced myself to look forward instead of back. I don’t enjoy thinking about all the money we lost renting that storage unit. I also hate remembering the long, slow ache of trying to ignore the existence of those boxes. For years, I felt a clench in my throat every time I thought about opening them. Sifting through all that stuff wouldn’t just throw me into the physical chaos of clutter, it would also involve dealing with relational and spiritual disillusionment, guilt, and shame. I wasn’t sure I had the fortitude to rip open a hundred and eighty Pandora’s boxes. Stories have a funny way of sticking to objects. The wind-up watch I had when I was six still ticks, and when I hear it, I can somehow see almost every object in my childhood bedroom. The biscuit cutter my grandmother used brings back the smell of fried sausage and potatoes. I can still feel the late summer breeze in backyard snapshots of people who have either died physically or who were swallowed alive by political agendas. I have stacks of old prayer journals—hundreds of pages full of sincere requests for God to save and heal people I love. If He is fulfilling those requests, He must be working on a timeline or in dimensions I could not have begun to imagine in my optimistic twenties, my head bent over those pages, appealing to my Father. Unpacking meant facing the intensity of those stories. It also risked realizing that I was losing many of them. When I was a child, the old folks would school me in the history of this ceramic soup pot or in that old war relic until it felt like I’d heard the same explanations a hundred times over. I didn’t understand the intensity in their voices—so determined for a past I had never seen to be preserved. Now, I’m the one entrusted, the steward of all those connections. If I donate an object, I forfeit its meaning in our family forever. I feel like the weak link—the one who was asked to pass the torch, but who ultimately quenched it instead. I guess that’s how it’s always been; what’s been lost between generations has always been greater than what’s been preserved. But how do we transfer family history with any sort of balance? How do we make those thousands and thousands of decisions? Unpacking a box isn’t always just unpacking a box. It can require emotional and spiritual vulnerability, reflection, and repentance. Both the emotions and the responsibilities of simplifying can feel crushing. Unpacking a box isn’t always just unpacking a box. It can require emotional and spiritual vulnerability, reflection, and repentance. Both the emotions and the responsibilities of simplifying can feel crushing. Rebecca Reynolds There’s also guilt. I don’t like being reminded that I was the sort of fool who bought too much stuff in the first place. I bought this unnecessary outfit at Goodwill in 1998. I splurged on name-brand peanut butter in 2003. These are micro-irresponsibilities, but certain financial teachings within evangelicalism led me to believe that any measure of waste distinguishes responsible and godly citizens from people who deserve the needs they are facing. There were so many truths I didn’t understand when I was taught to think like this. I didn’t understand large-scale societal or economic conditions that leave some with almost no margin, no matter how frugal they are, and give others all the room in the world to believe they’ve multiplied their savings through only the sweat of their brow. But even though my understanding has grown, I still feel a finger of shame pointing straight at me as I look at every extraneous possession. I bought things I didn’t always need. It’s hard to know how to process that failure. Then, there’s the lingering pain of wounds I was attempting to medicate through buying things. For example, I’ve always felt too tall, too big, too hideous. When I shopped, therefore, I wasn’t just buying clothes. I was looking for some sort of external magic that might deflect everything I hated about myself. Decades later, I realize those purchases didn’t take away this pain. My insecurity has outlasted everything I bought trying to kill it. So I open those boxes to find futility, shame, and reminders that such wounds don’t easily heal. It’s becoming clear why simplifying was difficult, right? Opening a simple cardboard box can entail: “I am not strong enough to revisit all that raw pain.” “People close to me betrayed me. I don’t want to remember this in detail.” “I would give anything to go back and change this year of my life. How could I have failed so deeply?” “I cannot understand why a God who loves me didn’t fulfill my most selfless and critical requests. He disappointed me so deeply, I’m not sure what to do with that pain.” “I am going to fail at stewarding the family stories. Then they will be lost forever.” “I was foolish, selfish, and wasteful in buying what had no value. Every struggle we face now is my fault, and here is the evidence.” In light of all that, no wonder I’ve been paralyzed. No wonder I decided to keep those boxes locked up for so long and to just keep going forward. And to avoid looking back. Several months ago, my parents decided to downsize, and they asked me to walk through their place and pick out any furniture that I wanted. Mom and Dad are organized and tidy people, but even in their meticulously clean house, I caught a glimpse of the colossal task it was going to be to let go of a lifetime of collected possessions. I don’t know why it had never struck me that every tiny bit we take in must also go out, used or unused, no matter if the object has proven worth the investment or declared a waste. How would they manage this? And how would I manage my own stuff in twenty years when I’m even more tired than I am now? My great Uncle Jessie Lee said, “If you own too many things, your things start to own you.” I felt that threat in high-def. I returned to our home with new eyes and asked my husband to crack open the time capsule. We committed to spending twenty minutes every weeknight sorting papers and photos, and several hours every weekend sorting larger objects. Setting an actual timer for the weeknight tasks is essential for me. Initially, I made the mistake of attempting this deeply emotional work five hours at a time, and that wasn’t good for me. A twenty-minute limit sets a boundary on what the past can do to my heart on any given day, and I need that limit. While searching and sifting, I opened many boxes feeling ashamed and broken, then quickly began to feel more validated than condemned. Re-reading helped me realize why I had been so shocked and so deeply hurt. It helped me realize why I’ve put distance in certain relationships. But other boxes corrected and humbled me. The number of personal letters from people who cared about me is breathtaking. I’m grieved to think of how many I never answered. And I’ve been astonished to find the complex, caring comments that teachers and professors wrote on my papers. I hadn’t remembered being loved on that scale during years when I felt so alone. I don’t have room here to share how all this purging and sorting has impacted what we bring into our home. Maybe in a few weeks, I’ll find time to write that side down as well. For now, though, I wanted to reach out to those of you who have a stack of long-packed boxes of your own. The fear of digging too deep in the Mines of Moria while going back to touch your own past is real. You’re not just lazy. This is complicated. I’m sorry it’s such scary work to do—and also such scary work to postpone. Now might not be the right time for you to tackle your boxes, but when that season does come, I hope your guilt is lightened a bit by knowing that you’re not the only one heading back into such a mess. Even though it’s painful at times, I am feeling lighter as loads leave our house. I’m slowly learning to give past iterations of myself more grace—I don’t know when I’ve ever engaged with the gospel so practically as I have while surveying my broken past. I’m gaining an understanding of my triggers and reactions. And while I’m still not sure why certain hard things happened, or why other good things have not happened yet—this is my life. I carry the impressions of it within me. I survived my past once, and now I’m learning what that survival meant. Twenty minutes at a time, I’m swimming in those waters. So far, I’m not drowning. So far, the progress feels good. Rebecca K. Reynolds is the editorial director of Oasis Family Media and Sky Turtle Press. She is the author of a text-faithful modern prose rendering of Edmund Spenser’s 1590’s epic poem, The Faerie Queene and of Courage, Dear Heart by Nav Press. Rebecca is a longtime member of the Rabbit Room, and she has spoken at Hutchmoot both in the US and the UK. She taught high school literature for seven years and has written lyrics for Ron Block of Alison Krauss, Union Station.

by Trailand Eltzroth “We’ve been invited to a house concert where Son of Laughter will be sharing. I’d really like to go,” my wife said. I didn’t need any convincing. “Awesome, which grandmother should I ask to babysit?” I replied. About a year ago Kathryn and I had dived into Chris Slaten’s (Son of Laughter) music. I have fond memories of listening to “The Meal We Could Not Make” on repeat during the holiday season of 2020. When I find an artist whose work I admire, generally a week or two of repeated listening follows.  The night of the house concert came around. As we drove down streets we didn’t know toward people we hadn’t met, I started to feel anxious. House concerts are unavoidably intimate. I couldn’t help but create scenarios in my mind about how interactions might take place. I can too easily assume what people are like before I’ve even met them. (If you’re like me, please stop reading this long enough to play Son of Laughter’s song “Flesh and Bone”.) My worries were quickly dispelled. We found the front door slightly ajar, closed just enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay but open enough to signify we were at the right place. We entered the house and added our shoes to the mounting evidence of the company we would be keeping. Removing our shoes is an intentional part of our own house rules, so as my sneakers slipped off, I immediately felt at home. In the kitchen we were greeted by our hosts & fellow music lovers, laden with paper-plated goodies and warm introductions. I learned more about our hosts, the Murphys. They lead worship at a local church and are welcoming people. One of our mutual friends—Matthew Clark—had told them that Chris would be passing through and was hoping to play a house concert. You might think that it requires special skills or possessions to open your home for a concert, but I assure you, it doesn’t. The Murphys, while notably full of generosity, aren’t “special” beyond responding to the call placed on their hearts to be hosts. After some small talk in the kitchen, we were shepherded into a living room filled with fold-out chairs and repositioned furniture. As Chris took the stage—or in this case a carpet—we met both Chris and Son of Laughter. I was struck by how a pseudonym or stage name could be enlisted by some to either hide behind or give an air of grandeur. This isn’t the case with Chris. Son of Laughter is not a mask to hide behind, rather it is a tool he uses to announce who he believes we were created to reflect. In this small setting, we had the benefit of receiving the thoughtfully crafted art of a down-to-earth man and fellow believer.  The beautiful intimacy of the experience continued after the concert, into the authentic connections that followed with the others in the room. Trailand Eltzroth As soon as Chris started playing, I was reminded of how wonderful a gift it is to see an artist present their own art in a live setting after being familiar with their recorded work. When you know the lyrics and melody of someone’s music, it’s a lovely feeling to share in the exchange together. As a performer myself, to experience this kind of engagement with your work is deeply satisfying and encouraging. For all in attendance, these moments were multiplied further by the intimate proximity of the living room setting. When we all joined in singing together, we were able to hear our individual and collective voices praising God.  The beautiful intimacy of the experience continued after the concert, into the authentic connections that followed with the others in the room. My wife and I were meeting everyone for the first time but quickly discovered a myriad of shared passions. We met a couple who sat in front of us that lived near a park Kathryn had recently discovered. While the ladies set a playdate for our kids, I met a local pastor who invited me to a songwriter’s dinner. I spoke with Chris about his music but also connected over our shared love of Chattanooga. Unprompted, he asked me about my own music and genuinely wanted to hear it, whipping out his phone to look up my music online and saving me from struggling to talk about my own art. I realized that once the music had stopped, we all resumed being guests in the Murphy’s home as we got to know one another. All of the interactions that night were funneled through the respect and security created by being in someone’s dwelling place and the communal enjoyment and inspiration of meaningful and purposeful art. I’ve felt it rare to find such discussions happening as naturally within a church building, and I wonder if that’s because I don’t put enough effort into remembering whose house I am in. “How amazing was that?” I asked my wife while we were sliding our shoes back on.  “I’m so glad we came,” Kathryn said while carefully closing the door behind us. “That was a beautiful night.” Driving home I recalled when I had first heard of Son of Laughter while reading Andrew Peterson’s book Adorning The Dark . This memory started a discussion of how the enjoyment of intentional art encourages the discovery of other art and artists. As we pulled into our driveway, we were still talking about the songs we had heard, the friends we had made, and the ways we could participate in supporting further impactful evenings of art and fellowship.

by Livi Goodgame We love getting the chance to share meaningful music here at the Rabbit Room. It is an honor to be able to showcase different artists in the community who are not only great singer-songwriters but also great friends. The Local Show is a live, in-the-round concert held at North Wind Manor—also streaming on Facebook and YouTube ! While this month’s show is sold out, join us on Tuesday, November 1st at 7:30 PM (CT) on our live streams to share in this inspired night of songs and stories. We’re proud to present this next Local Show’s line-up of artists: Andrew Osenga, Leslie Jordan, John Lucas, and Zach Bolen. Check out more about each performer below. Andrew Osenga A long-time Nashville musician, Andrew Osenga’s strong vocals and smooth guitar riffs accompany his authentic lyrics and storytelling. His music ranges from soft acoustic melodies with atmospheric harmonies to head-bangin’ ballads with electric guitar solos. He has toured with Steven Curtis Chapman, Andrew Peterson, and Jars of Clay. Bonus: if you were at Hutchmoot, you got a preview of some new music on the way. Leslie Jordan After working as a worship leader for a decade, Leslie Jordan released her first EP this year, titled All That I Need to Know . Her experience leading worship carries itself into her songs. With calming vocals and accompaniment, she seeks to nourish others with music that points to Christ. John Lucas John Lucas is a singer-songwriter from North Carolina. His style ranges from bare-bones acoustic to cinematic melodies, with lyrics honest yet gentle. He has had his work licensed for TV shows, corporate ads, small businesses, and wedding films. Zach Bolen Zach Bolen is a singer-songwriter with an alternative rock style. He is the lead singer for the band Citizens , some of whose songs have become incorporated at church gatherings in recent years. He recorded his first solo album, 1001 , in 2016. Livi Goodgame is a native Nashvillian, a fiddle player, and an aspiring poet who teaches line dancing on the side. She is currently studying English and French at MTSU.

by C. Christopher Smith Poetry helps us see things in a new light. Whether the subject of a poem is a thing, an experience, an emotion, or something else, the care with which the poet chooses her words helps us to see that subject in a completely different way. Poetry cannot be read fast; a poem challenges us to sit with its words, to pay attention, to contemplate what the poet has offered us in these words carefully woven together. Of course, none of these tasks come easily in our technological world, where speed and efficiency reign supreme. Several years ago, I started challenging myself to find poems that resonate with a particular passage of Scripture. Approaching scripture in this way illuminated the text by opening up a whole new conversation that included not only myself, scripture, and the interpretations of that particular passage that I had accumulated over the years, but also the voice of the poet channeled through the words of that particular poem. Scripture is not a static text. While it is of utmost importance to those of us who follow in the way of Jesus, the work of reading and understanding scripture is not just a matter of learning what it meant for those faithful ones who have gone before us. The text of scripture and the interpretations we have received are very important, but God also desires to speak to us, through the Spirit, in the present moment. The work of understanding scripture, in its most robust sense, is that of holding together the word of God that we have received in scripture as we have been taught to understand it, with the word of God that is spoken to us in the present, inviting us to live faithfully within all the particular facets of our present situation (our time, our place, and the manifold dynamics that give shape to our lives). “What does a new word [from the Spirit] look like?” asks theologian Willie Jennings. “We will know it by its fruit. That which builds life together, life abundant, and deepening life in God is truly a new word from God. That which speaks the community of Christ and echoes a desire for shared life, shared hope, and redemption from death and all its agents is always a new word from God.” ( Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible , 2017, p. 120) Almost three years ago, I started selecting a classic (i.e., public domain) poem and a contemporary poem to accompany each weekly scripture reading in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), which many larger denominations use in their worship and preaching. When I began this Lectionary Poetry project (published weekly on The Englewood Review of Books website – a sample of a week’s poems can be found here ), I thought that the selected poems would be helpful for preachers working from the lectionary, and maybe a few worship leaders who wanted to incorporate poetry into services on occasion. The work of understanding scripture, in its most robust sense, is that of holding together the word of God that we have received in scripture as we have been taught to understand it, with the word of God that is spoken to us in the present... C. Christopher Smith The RCL follows a three-year cycle (Years A, B, and C, and then circles back to the texts of Year A in the fourth year), and as I am near completion of the cycle, I’ve found that it’s not just preachers and worship leaders who appreciate the poetry selections. Laypeople in churches that use the RCL appreciate having the poems to help them process the scriptural passages that they hear in their worship services. I’ve also added poetry selections that accompany the readings for the Narrative Lectionary, which is fairly popular among churches that don’t use the RCL. Others, both clergy and laity, in churches that don’t use the RCL or the Narrative Lectionary, often appreciate the connection of poetry with scripture passages, even if the timing doesn’t coincide with their church’s worship. Curating these Lectionary Poems each week has become a sort of Sabbath practice for me, a perfect excuse to spend a couple of hours reading poetry. Without this project, I most likely wouldn’t ever find this much time to sit and enjoy poems. Generally, I do this reading and selection on Sunday afternoons or evenings. I try to select poems from a diverse array of poets—women and men; of various eras, ethnicities, and nationalities; Christian writers, poets of other faiths, and of no faith at all—and I’ve tried not to repeat any poem in the three-year cycle. I try to stay away from poems that merely re-narrate or illustrate the scriptural text. Rather, I often find a key word or phrase that stands out in biblical text and seek out poems that explore this word or phrase. Certain poets recur frequently in the three-year cycle of Lectionary Poetry: Malcolm Guite, Nikki Grimes, and Madeleine L’Engle, because each poet has written prolifically in reflection on biblical texts; Emily Dickinson, because she has simply written such a vast body of poetry; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Black female poet of the nineteenth century, whose work I stumbled upon as a result of this project, and who, although she didn’t publish vast numbers of poems, wrote frequently on biblical themes that are strikingly relevant today. I also tried to include a substantial number of poems from some of my favorite poets, including Thomas Merton, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Ross Gay, Lucille Clifton, Denise Levertov, Tania Runyan, and George MacDonald. I’m currently in the process of going back through the cycle of Lectionary Poetry and preparing it to be published as a book—or at least an e-book, in the short term. (Poetry is subject to stricter copyright rules than prose, which makes the publication process full of logistical and legal challenges). Some poems have inadvertently been repeated over the course of the cycle, so I’m fixing those by finding alternates so that no poem will be used twice. The e-book edition will not include the full text of contemporary poems that are under copyright (unless I have permission to use the full text) but rather will link to sites that have legitimately published the poem online with permission. That parameter requires confirming that all contemporary poems have legitimately been published online. Another part of the editing process is surveying the diversity of the poets included in this collection, both diversity across the poems for a given week, and diversity across the three-year cycle as a whole. One perk of the e-book edition is that it will have a scriptural index that will allow readers to find poems connected with a particular biblical passage. This index will hopefully make the e-book a more helpful resource for those who aren’t familiar with the RCL, and for those who are preaching in churches that don’t use the RCL. A few books exist that connect modern poems with passages of scripture (e.g., David Curzon’s excellent 1994 book, Modern Poems on the Bible ), but I’m not aware of any that cover as broad a swath of scripture as the Lectionary Poetry Project does. You can get the Lectionary Poems in your inbox every week, by signing up for The Englewood Review’s free weekly e-newsletter (and a get free ebook in the process!) Or, watch for the Lectionary Project ebook for Year A, which will be available in November. C. Christopher Smith is founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books , and the author of several books including Slow Church (co-authored with John Pattison) and How the Body of Christ Talks . He also is on the leadership team for Cultivating Communities , a project which helps local churches deepen relationships within their congregation and with their neighbors.

by Dave Trout A friend once told me, “I hate tribute albums,” and honestly, I get why people feel this way. Yet something compelled the creative team of Old Bear Records, UTR Media, and Andrew Greer to press on for nearly three years of work to release Bellsburg… The Songs of Rich Mullins . This 18-track album is on the one hand a tribute album, in many ways it’s something all its own. Producer Chris Hoisington was inspired by Rich’s last recording a week before he died—what is now known as The Jesus Record Demos . He wanted to know what would happen if we recorded Rich’s songs in a sparse, raw way—even putting analogue tape into the mix—instead of the full production you get on most tribute albums. What if, he asked, instead of going into a Nashville studio, we recorded these songs in Rich’s old house in Bellsburg, Tennessee? The dream came true. And nearly every artist we asked to participate in the recording said “yes”, from Rich’s friends and tour mates (e.g. Amy Grant, Mitch McVicker, Ashley Cleveland, Carolyn Arends, etc), to Rich’s family members (e.g. brother David Mullins, nephew Jonathan Mullins), to the next generation of artists influenced deeply by Rich’s life and music (e.g. Andrew Peterson, Jason Gray, Sara Groves, etc). The essence of the album is community. You hear some banter before and after some of the songs, there with intentionality. You can tell that these were not songs recorded in isolation, but the tone and beauty of the album feels like a tapestry woven together. Some of my favorite moments are actually found in the imperfections. It’s the opposite of a studio masterpiece; it feels more like you’re hanging on the front porch with dear friends enjoying songs the speak into our hearts. Rich frequently told people that he was convinced that his songs would have a short life-cycle, that no one would care about his music in 10 or 15 years. Now, here we are, 25 years after his death, and it seems like some of his songs are just beginning to connect with us in new and fresh ways. With the help of presenting these songs in a more timeless folk/Americana styling, it’s a joy to see his songs carry forward and maybe even resonate in new ways we could have never imagined. Bellsburg (The Songs of Rich Mullins) is available on all platforms on November 4. Dave Trout is the founder of UTR Media, a non-profit building community around well-crafted, faith-inspired music. His wife, kids, and puppy live in Murfreesboro, TN.

by Jason Gray Note: You can read the first part of Frederick Buechner, God’s Handkerchief by Jason Gray here . Read on for the second part, “The View from Buechner’s Window”. In his book Wishful Thinkin g (1973), Frederick Buechner said of the Bible, “If you look at a window, you see flyspecks, dust, the crack where Junior’s Frisbee hit it. If you look through a window, you see the world beyond. Something like this is the difference between those who see the Bible as a holy bore and those who see it as the Word of God, which speaks out of the depths of an almost unimaginable past into the depths of ourselves.” I suppose you could make a similar case for any great writer, Buechner included: the flyspecks and dust of it are the words on the page, the style of writing, and the articulated ideas themselves—the graffiti scrawled across pages for others to find afterward that, in essence, says, “Kilroy was here.” On one level, Buechner’s writing was merely the articulation of the world as he saw it, written in the good faith that “the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” (Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey , 1982) But on another level, his writing was so much more than the words on the page, beautiful as they were. For me, Frederick Buechner didn’t write books as much as he crafted windows—portals through which the deep mystery of God could call out to the deep mystery of myself. More than the words he wrote about what he saw, the enduring gift of Buechner’s writing is that he fostered in me a way of seeing. There is so much beauty I wouldn’t recognize if he hadn’t given me a way to see it: a world of the holy hidden in the profane, the sacred in the shabby, all of it drenched in grace and a joy that against all odds will swallow tragedy in the end. I believe God didn’t want me to miss these things, so he sent Frederick Buechner into my life to give me eyes to see them. There’s no way I could write a post to do this phenomenon justice, so once again I’ve accepted that anything I write will be both too much and not enough, and I’ve limited myself to just three of the many wonders I’ve seen through Buechner’s window. 1. Doubt as a sacred mechanism for finding truth. I never got the sense when I read Buechner that he was anxious for me to believe anything. More often than not it felt like he simply offered personal observations for the reader to do with as they pleased. One of the features I love most about his writing is the way he’d make a skeptic’s argument better than they might’ve made it themselves, which, of course, made his faith that much more compelling. Consider the way he acknowledges the implausibility of the virgin birth, validating the doubter by meeting them in their skepticism (which is a form of incarnation—breaking into someone’s reality to meet them where they’re at) before suggesting that the immaculate conception is not as preposterous as you might think if considered a certain way: “ The earliest of the four gospels makes no reference to the virgin birth, and neither does Paul, who wrote earlier still. On later evidence, however, many Christians have made it an article of faith that it was the Holy Spirit rather than Joseph who got Mary pregnant. If you believe God was somehow in Christ, it shouldn’t make much difference to you how he got there. If you don’t believe, it should make less difference still. In either case, life is complicated enough without confusing theology and gynecology. “ In one sense anyway, the doctrine of the virgin birth is demonstrably true. Whereas the villains of history can always be seen as the products of heredity and environment, the saints always seem to arrive under their own steam. Evil evolves. Holiness happens.” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) In full view of academic questions surrounding the virgin birth as a tenet, Buechner puts forth the phenomenon of saintliness as a kind of recurring virgin birth wherever it happens, creating space to consider it at least as a principle. And just like that, he honors skepticism while simultaneously chipping away at it, disarming argumentativeness by finding a slim patch of common ground. Another example of his sympathy with/honoring of the skeptic is found in his novel, The Return Of Ansel Gibbs, where doubt is offered up as a necessary part of spiritual authenticity: Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: “Can I believe it all again today?” No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and. . . great laughter. (Frederick Buechner, The Return Of Ansel Gibbs , 1958) And here, his most direct affirmation of doubt: Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) In his book The Alphabet Of Grace (1970,) Buechner wrote, “If there’s no room for doubt, there’s no room for me.” Maybe this is why his writing always set a large table with room for everyone, no matter where you found yourself along the spectrum of faith, as though he really believed that, “Whether you call on him or don’t call on him, God will be present with you.” (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then , 1983) 2. The holy work of paying attention We might be tempted to imagine that the holy things of the world are strictly associated with religion and only come to us via the proper religious channels, presided over by experts in piety. But through Buechner’s eyes, I learned that, while that may be occasionally true (and when it is, it’s more likely in spite of all the religious fuss than because of it), holiness has a mischievous quality to it, showing up in the places I’d least expect. It can also be terribly shy—furtively hiding when I try to look directly at it, best spotted out of the corner of my eye. “ Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God’s holiness is God’s Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God’s mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize. “ One holy place I know is a workshop attached to a barn. There is a wood-burning stove in it made out of an oil drum. There is a workbench, dark and dented, with shallow, crammed drawers behind one of which a cat lives. There is a girlie calendar on the wall, plus various lengths of chain and rope, shovels and rakes of different sizes and shapes, some worn-out jackets and caps on pegs, an electric clock that doesn’t keep time. On the workbench are two small plug-in radios, both of which have serious things wrong with them. There are several metal boxes full of wrenches and a bench saw. There are a couple of chairs with rungs missing. There is an old yellow bulldozer with its tracks caked with mud parked against one wall. The place smells mainly of engine oil and smoke – both wood smoke and pipe smoke. The windows are small, and even on bright days what light there is comes through mainly in window-sized patches on the floor. “ I have no idea why this place is holy, but you can tell it is the moment you set foot in it if you have an eye for that kind of thing. For reasons known only to God, it is one of the places God uses for sending God’s love to the world through .” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) Notice the demureness of glory in this scene from his novel, The Final Beast , when the protagonist prays: “Please,” he whispered. Still flat on his back, he stretched out his fists as far as they would reach—”Please . . .” then opened them, palms up, and held them there as he watched for something, for the air to cleave, fold back like a tent flap, to let a splendor through… “ Two apple branches struck against each other with the limber clack of wood on wood. That was all—a tick-tock rattle of branches… but praise him, he thought. Praise him. Maybe all his journeying, he thought, had been only to bring him here to hear two branches hit each other twice like that, to see nothing cross the threshold but to see the threshold, to hear the dry clack-clack of the world’s tongue at the approach perhaps of splendor.” (Frederick Buechner, The Final Beast 1965) Maybe the most poignant instances of the sacred in the mundane show up in his reflection about a day in the life of Jesus: “ …When he saw a big crowd approaching, he figured he didn’t have enough steam left to do much for them that day, so he went and climbed into a boat for a few hours’ peace, only to find that the disciples were hot on his heels and wanted to go along too. So he took them. Then he lay down in the stern of the boat with a pillow under his head, Mark says (4:34), and went to sleep. “ Matthew leaves out the details about the stern and the pillow presumably because he thought they weren’t important, which of course they’re not, and yet the account would be greatly impoverished without them. There’s so little about Jesus in the Gospels you can actually see . “ He didn’t doze off in the bow where the spray would get him and the whitecaps slapped harder. He climbed back into the stern instead. There was a pillow under his head. Maybe somebody put it there for him. Maybe they didn’t think to put it there till after he’d gone to sleep, and then somebody lifted his head a little off the hard deck and slipped it under. “ He must have gone out like a light because Mark says the storm didn’t wake him, not even when the waves got so high they started washing in over the sides. They let him sleep on until finally they were so scared they couldn’t stand it any longer and woke him up. They addressed him respectfully enough as Teacher, but what they said was reproachful, petulant almost. “Don’t you see that we’re all drowning ?” (Mark 4:38)… “ The Roman officer, the sick old lady, the overenthusiastic scribe, the terrified disciples, the lunatic — something of who he was and what he was like and what it was like to be with him filters through each meeting as it comes along, but for some reason it’s the moment in the boat that says most. The way he lay down, bone tired, and fell asleep with the sound of the lapping waves in his ears. The way, when they woke him, he opened his eyes to the howling storm and to all the other howling things that he must have known were in the cards for him and that his nap had been a few moments of vacation from. The helplessness of the disciples and the way he spoke to them. The things he said to the wind and to the sea. “ Lamb of God, Rose of Sharon, Prince of Peace — none of the things people have found to call him has ever managed to say it quite right. You can see why when he told people to follow him, they often did, even if they backed out later when they started to catch on to what lay ahead. If you’re religiously inclined, you can see why they went even so far as to call him Messiah, the Lord’s Anointed, the Son of God, and call him these things still, some of them. And even if you’re not religiously inclined, you can see why it is you might give your immortal soul, if you thought you had one to give, to have been the one to raise that head a little from the hard deck and slip a pillow under it.” (Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words , 2004) I’ve read that passage maybe a hundred times, and I still feel the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes at the thought of Jesus resting his head on that pillow—such a commonplace thing that I might’ve missed if Buechner hadn’t shown me the resplendent glory of it. Perhaps it’s this most beloved of Buechner’s quotes that best sums up this hunt for the holy in the mundane: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then , 1983) 3. The broken places of our humanity are where the light shines through Buechner’s best characters—whether from his novels, theological works, or memoirs—possess a brokenness that allows a light to shine through them, giving us hope that if God works through characters such as these, maybe he can do the same through the likes of me. I think this is true of Buechner himself, most of all, that broken and holy character who is spilled out on every page of his books. Who would’ve guessed it? It turns out the human condition is the precondition necessary for the divine to break in. Buechner might’ve said it best through Saint Brendan: “ Pushing down hard with his fists on the table-top he heaved himself up to where he was standing. For the first time we saw he wanted one leg. It was gone from the knee joint down. He was hopping sideways to reach for his stick in the corner when he lost his balance. He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn’t leapt forward and caught him. “I’m as crippled as the dark world,” Gildas said.“If it comes to that, which one of us isn’t, my dear?” Brendan said. Gildas with but one leg. Brendan sure he’d misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was cripples all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees. “To lend each other a hand when we’re falling,” Brendan said. “Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.” Amen. #semifeature Jason Gray is a recording artist with Centricity Records. His latest single, out now, is "When I Say Yes".