[Editor’s note: Next Thursday Jonathan is launching a new online class called Writing Through the Wardrobe. Participants will read through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with a writer’s eye, learning how to apply C. S. Lewis’s techniques to their own writing. Find out more at TheHabit.co/Wardrobe.] The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers interviews Heidi Johnston, author of Choosing Love. Heidi Johnston is the author of Choosing Love, a book that tries to tell teenage girls the truth about relationships. Jonathan and Heidi discuss the various roadblocks to writing—particularly procrastination and imposter syndrome—the task of writing to tell a truer story, and the wellsprings of originality. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 4 of The Habit Podcast. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

We are really excited to partner with Belmont University’s College of Theology & Christian Ministry to put on this free event one week from today—a writers round engaging in the topic of mental health & human wholeness. If you happen to be in the area and are interested in what it looks like to sing about these things, then we’d love for you to join us. There will even be free cookies afterwards. I mean, what more could you ask for?

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers interviews Lore Ferguson Wilbert, author of Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. Lore Ferguson Wilbert is the author of Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. She has been blogging since 2000 at Sayable.net. In this episode, Jonathan and Lore talk about the idea of touch as the mother of all senses, the exceeding vulnerability of Jesus, and the surprisingly symbiotic relationship between tenderness and resilience. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 5 of The Habit Podcast. And click here to visit Sayable, Lore’s blog. Jen Yokel recently wrote a review of Lore’s book—you can read that here. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

I was giving a lecture in Oxford the other day, and took the opportunity, as I often do, to drop into the Eagle and Child. It’s a fine old 17th-century pub, unspoiled by “improvement;” it still has a couple of those lovely wood-panelled “snugs” which encourage camaraderie and close conversation—and, most famously, “the Rabbit Room,” where C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their friends met on Tuesday lunchtimes, for the kind of sparring, cajoling, but ultimately encouraging conversation that was at the heart of their informal club, “The Inklings.” As Lewis said of these pub sessions in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves: “The fun is often so fast and furious that the company probably thinks we’re talking bawdy when in fact we’re very likely talking theology.” It’s a pleasure to raise a pint to their memory in that room, and to imagine the free flow of their talk, to think of how the solid goodness, the conviviality and welcome that Tolkien evoked in the Prancing Pony, might owe something to this place. Indeed, life sometimes imitates art, and, on one occasion, Tolkien recalled, “I noticed a strange tall gaunt man, half in khaki, half in mufti, with a large wide awake hat and a hooked nose sitting in a corner. The others had their backs to him but I could see in his eye that he was taking an interest in the conversation.” Moments later, the stranger leaned forward and took up the thread of what was being said, and was discovered to be the poet Roy Campbell, who had come from South Africa to Oxford specifically to seek out Lewis and Tolkien. Tolkien reflected that it was just like the moment when Strider is revealed at the Prancing Pony, an episode from the unfinished New Hobbit, which he had only recently read to his fellow Inklings. So, as I sat in that dark little snug, nursing my pint, in the same corner (if not the same chair) as that wayfaring poet, I savoured the way in which literary inns enhance one’s appreciation of real inns, and vice versa. It's a pleasure to raise a pint to their memory in that room, and to imagine the free flow of their talk, to think of how the solid goodness, the conviviality and welcome that Tolkien evoked in the Prancing Pony, might owe something to this place. Malcolm Guite The other good thing about “The Bird and Baby,” as the Inklings called it, is that it is just a few doors down from the Oxfam bookshop, which, as one would expect in Oxford, is always well-stocked, and sometimes I pop in there on my way to the pub. On this occasion, I picked up a nice hardback edition of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, a choice of which both Tolkien and Lewis would have approved. Enjoying the happy combination of beer and Beowulf, I recalled that “Beer and Beowulf” was the name Lewis gave to his Anglo-Saxon tutorials at Magdalen. How much more attractive a title than “Linguistics 101: The Vowel Shift!” Before I drained my pint, I recited (under my breath) a little tributary sonnet to Lewis: From “Beer and Beowulf” to the seven heavens, Whose music you conduct from sphere to sphere, You are our portal to those hidden havens Whence we return to bless our being here. Scribe of the Kingdom, keeper of the door Which opens on to all we might have lost, Ward of a word-hoard in the deep heart’s core, Telling the tale of Love from first to last. Generous, capacious, open, free, Your wardrobe-mind has furnished us with worlds Through which to travel, whence we learn to see Along the beam, and hear at last the heralds Sounding their summons, through the stars that sing, Whose call at sunrise brings us to our King. This piece was originally posted here at Church Times.

There’s nothing like viewing the world through the lens of another language to show you how limited your own can be. We can’t ever fully merge two lexical frameworks into one, and our translations often fall short of the original concept. Some vocabularies don’t concisely reach into others. All this is to say that the Welsh word Hiraeth is one I’m still learning how to wrap my English arms around. I’ve mentioned it here before, as have others. It’s most often described as a nostalgia or, better yet, homesickness—but not one that can be easily cured by a plane ticket. It’s a homesickness for a home you’ve never been to, one you’ve never seen or can no longer return to, sometimes even one that never existed at all. It is simultaneously grief and desire—a restless dissatisfaction with what is that comes from a weary confidence that something else used to be. Can you feel the shortcomings of the English language here? Can you grasp the depth of the Welsh—how seven letters could scrawl out so much of what it means to be human? It’s going to take something more creative than a line from Webster to define. There’s one more definition I’ve recently added to my collection of possible translations, and it may just be my favorite one yet: I’m homesick most For a place I don’t know But I knew before, I knew before —Joel Ansett So Denver-based singer-songwriter Joel Ansett writes in the opening track of his sophomore album, aptly-titled A Place I Knew Before.  I have no idea if Ansett has any Welsh running through his blood, but I can honestly say that keeping his album in my car disk player (because I still have one of those) over the last six months has changed the way I understand hiraeth in my own life. It’s little wonder that this first song, “Homesick,” describes the gardens of Manito Park in Spokane through Edenic imagery like “the cool of the day” and “angels and flames,” as Ansett wrestles with his own sense of loss and desire. Then the lament turns to a question: Try to remember your voice Deep in my mind. I have a choice: If I could picture the place I am from Would it change who I become? —Joel Ansett From this question, an entire album of pictures unfolds: lyrical sketches of life lived between grief and desire, the same loss and longing for home we all know so well. With each song comes different images of people, relationships, and places. He writes of marriage, illness, and the breakneck speed of modern life. He plays through movies that run in our minds and resists our tendencies to view other peoples’ stories in the cinematic simplicity of black and white. We see in a geranium what Ansett describes as “beautiful to me but dying underneath,” and we know the truth of the flower rings true for the world. He describes in vivid detail those joys that distract like Cadillacs driving past and those joys that offer “a glimpse of glory, something I knew before”—and the homesick heart feels the pierce of hiraeth everywhere. The love of the Father is dwelling here, now, in the bent world, in the gardens that typify Eden yet still fall short, in a voice that speaks beyond the limitations of language, in a love that not only moves towards the pain but takes on our pain. Hannah Hubin For their broad scope, all these songs have one thing in common: in some way or another, they’re all marked by the restless dissatisfaction of hiraeth—a desire for the sick to be healed, the broken to be restored, the wound tight to slow down. Like Ansett, we desire whole human relationships we don’t now know, but somehow, written down in the beginnings of our history, we knew before. We rage against our limitations, our distracted hearts, and our distant friendships like languages narrower than we were meant to speak. Like Ansett, we find ourselves both wounded and wounding, and “we wait for someone to move toward the pain.” We desire to love more deeply than this fallen flesh lets us, and we grieve our inability to comfort those also grieving. My heart is aching but I finally found a cure If you’re a breaking wave, maybe I could be the shore I’d give up all my dreams if you would tell me yours Oh it hurts me; it hurts me not to know you more. —Joel Ansett The hiraeth soul knows that this place is not home, that these relationships do not perfectly satisfy, that our communities are ever breaking and healing and breaking all over again. We celebrate what is beautiful and we grieve that the beauty is never whole. And then comes one last song—the final picture. The album that opened in the gardens of Manito Park ends “running through the gardens to the east of Cheesman Park”—and the listener knows this is more than just a transition from Seattle to Denver. Chasing rabbits with my son ‘til it’s too dark And he can’t understand the fullness of my love Tell me it’s the same with my father up above.I feel broken Weary of the wars I can’t escape Tired of hoping For the promised morning light to break And then I heard you, calling out my name Singing “Do not be afraid. I will be your dwelling place.“ —Joel Ansett Ansett doesn’t leave us without a second garden. This final picture is one both of the place we are from and the place we are making our way home to again—though we see it now only through the fading dusk. But, in answer to Ansett’s earlier question, does it change who we become? The truth is that it is already changing who we are now. The things of heaven cast their shadows on earth, and though Cheesman Park is no Eden, in this moment we catch these Edenic patches of evening light. The homesick heart isn’t home yet, but this final song reveals more than the hope that we’ll make it someday. It reveals the holy presence here as well, manifested in the voice Ansett tried to remember back at the beginning of the album. The love of the Father is dwelling here, now, in the bent world, in the gardens that typify Eden yet still fall short, in a voice that speaks beyond the limitations of language, in a love that not only moves towards the pain but takes on our pain. And this, I believe, is why Ansett has offered a better description of hiraeth than I’ll ever find in a Welsh dictionary: he’s added a missing piece to the truth of our own nostalgic hearts. Between the grief and the longing of homesickness can also lie a third thing—a contentment—and the listener, left there in the love of the Father falling like shadows over Cheesman park, with the ferocity of hiraeth burning in his heart, still east of Eden, is not without a dwelling place even now.

How do you change a person’s mind? We live in a polarized age. Even when tectonic events happen in our society, like the Ferguson Uprising or the Sandy Hook massacre, it seems inevitable that we will all hold the line in our ideological trenches, most if not all of us failing to cross the No Man’s Land to have even a conversation with those on the opposing side. So how do you change a person’s mind? The film Just Mercy leads us towards an answer. May our revolutions be embodied before they are ever televised. Kale Uzzle The film investigates this question via the relationship between Bryan Stevenson (protagonist and author of Just Mercy) and Tommy Chapman, the loathsome District Attorney played convincingly by Rafe Spall. Chapman, a white Southerner perhaps ten years older than Stevenson, is smarmy and condescending, surpassing even the open vitriol of Sheriff Tate. His suggestion for Stevenson to check out the “Mockingbird Museum” on his way out of Monroeville, the county where Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, is dripping with contempt, particularly as it comes after Chapman’s flat rejection to give Stevenson any help in re-opening and reconsidering McMillian’s murder case. This rejection contains within it every ounce of Chapman’s greater refusal to even entertain the thoughts of a black, Harvard-educated attorney from the North in what he believes to be a settled matter in his Alabama county. As the movie progresses, this relationship becomes the crucial turning point of the story. Stevenson fails to convince Chapman of the need to reconsider the evidence in their first meeting. At one point, he shows up at Chapman’s house to plead with him to consider being on the side of justice, even if it costs him his reputation. You can sense the weight on Chapman’s mind but, once again, he refuses to engage the conversation and boots Stevenson off his property. At the film’s zenith, a final courtroom showdown between Chapman and Stevenson, the weight finally becomes too much to bear. As Stevenson asks for the Circuit Court to dismiss all charges against McMillian, the judge asks for Chapman as the District Attorney to represent the opposing arguments. After a long, painful silence, he finally changes his mind, opting to join Stevenson and the defense in asking for the charges to be dropped. Even having read Just Mercy when it came out a few years ago, this scene moved me, certainly because of the actors’ performances, but perhaps more so because of the nature of the victory. Stevenson certainly gives an Atticus-Finch-level speech to set up the scene but, in the end, he doesn’t beat Chapman by the force of compelling courtroom rhetoric. He doesn’t exactly “win” at all; he convinces his opponent to forfeit, to pay the price of losing a very public case in order to remove the moral weight from his shoulders. Why does this work? Why does Tommy Chapman—who, by the way, was re-elected three additional times after McMillian’s exoneration in 1993, finally retiring in 2012—change his mind about his need to hang the murder of a teenage white girl in rural Alabama on the head of Walter McMillian, a black man sitting on Death Row awaiting execution? How do you change a person’s mind? Bryan Stevenson, like Martin Luther King, Jr. before him, managed to do so through the practice of prophetic persuasion, the public embodiment of a value so completely that it compels enough cognitive dissonance in the observer to allow them to consider that they might actually be wrong in how they are viewing or behaving in a given situation. This practice includes speaking boldly, but words are a mere accompaniment to and interpretation of clear and effective action. Walter McMillian Contrary to much of how we think about ourselves as rational creatures, our minds actually tend to follow our bodies and hearts. As James K. A. Smith writes, “We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.” Our worldview may be reinforced by the intake of information but it is changed by practice, by the embodiment of previously unseen realities. In some sense, it is the body that changes the mind—both my own mind and that of the other. Prophetic persuasion practices that which it preaches even before it begins to preach. It incarnates into the world, letting the mouth bear witness to what the body has already practiced. We love in action and let our words offer the interpretation of that action. St. Francis instructed us to “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” This is not an excuse not to speak. Rather, it is a call to put a thumb on the precise scale our age is most tempted to neglect—that of quiet, sacrificial action not intended for Insta stories or Twitter likes. It is a call to allow our words to come only when our bodies and our bank accounts are already on the line. It is to preach a lived word instead of a theoretical one. It is to exit the clean offices and kitchen tables of our minds and enter the messy world on our hands and knees, praying and working for the world yet to come. This is the power of Bryan Stevenson and others like him today—his talk shines through with the light of his walk. He speaks as one with authority. I want the same to be true in my life and in my generation as a whole. May the words we speak, tweet, and share come from the deeper well of a heart transformed by experiences lived and sacrifices made. May our revolutions be embodied before they are ever televised. May our persuasiveness be the fruit borne by seeds planted in struggle and watered by our own tears, sweat, and blood. May the first mind we change, even if it is the only mind we change, be our own.

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers interviews Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher, co-authors of the book Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women. Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher are co-authors of Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women. In this episode, Jonathan, Elyse, and Eric discuss writing as an antidote to reducing other people to categories, the church’s responsibility to defend victims of sexual abuse, the cowriting process for Elyse and Eric, and how they have chosen to navigate a politically fraught topic. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 6 of The Habit Podcast. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

I once heard a wise woman talk about enjoying things during times of want that had been stocked up in times of plenty. Like myself, she was a gardener. She told a tale of a lovely patch of strawberries. I could tell she was incredibly proud of this patch and I understood why. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction that comes from hard work flourishing and growing into a great bounty. Most people who take on the toil of seeing this process through to a harvest also find ways to preserve some of this seasonal glory. At least that is the case for me. I, like many gardeners, have taken to learning the art of canning. It wasn’t until moving to our current home that I had room for enough plants to have extra produce left over for storage. I had only tried small preservation tasks at our old location. We rented a home for many years that had one lone mulberry tree growing in the corner of the yard. Once I discovered it, everyone knew not to bother mom during mulberry season. I would get up early to pick berries before taking the kids to school and then heading to work. And when I got home, I would check to see what new berries had readied themselves during the day. Aside from my busied schedule every spring, my stained fingertips were also a good indicator of what time of year it was. My children likely thought I was a little obsessed. But that opinion would always change with the expectation and joy of mulberry pie come Thanksgiving and Christmas! So I was overjoyed to find mulberry trees when we moved to our current home. Even though our children were grown and leaving for lives of their own, mulberries were a memory of their childhood for all of us. When our daughter moved across country, I baked her a mulberry pie to take with her on the long road trip. That, in turn, helped create one of my favorite pictures. It’s a picture of her on a late-night travel stop, having a few moments of rest before the next leg of the journey. She was tired and road worn, but very happily eating mulberry pie. When an infusion is turned into jelly, and that jelly is warmed by toast on a frigid winter morning, it becomes the taste of the sweetness that lingers in the airs of May. Gina Sutphin When we moved to our current home on a large plot of land, discovering the number of things that could be stored away to anticipate for later became a personal mission. I captured the scent of a spring breeze by making an infusion with flowers from the honeysuckle bush. When an infusion is turned into jelly, and that jelly is warmed by toast on a frigid winter morning, it becomes the taste of the sweetness that lingers in the airs of May. I captured the emerald green color of summer’s leaves and grass through the blanching of green beans processed in my pressure canner. I captured the amber hues of fall through the process of caramelizing pears into a rich butter, warmed and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. And these colorful jars progressively filled our shelves throughout the growing season. But then came the winter, and the earth had nothing left to give. This morning I was thinking about that wise woman I heard tell of her strawberry patch. Her tale also told of a joyful morning spent eating strawberry jam on biscuits with her children. It was an overflowing bounty from two seasons before. And even though there had been strawberries in the current season, she had been unavailable to pick them. Events of great sorrow had set things into motion that caused her to be away during the harvest. But like the wise woman of Proverbs 31, she had food that she had brought with her from afar. And now, while it was yet still night in her life, she was rising and providing joy on biscuits for herself and her children. I may have become good at the craft of preserving when it applies to fruits and vegetables, but I’m not so good at doing it in the area of personal joy and happiness. Joy can be experienced in the moment, but it seems to slip away like sand through my fingers. I can be prone to letting discontentment be a more normal state in the day to day living of life. I long for that to change, so I’m trying to take lessons from people like this wise woman. I’m trying to learn how to preserve joy in the same way I have preserved these jars of mulberries and pears. It’s winter here in Ohio. The earth is cold and waiting for its next season of plenty. But here on this chilly morning, with thoughts of those strawberry jam-laden biscuits swirling in my head, I pulled some mulberries from the freezer. A cobbler was made, and without any current signs of life from the mulberry tree out back, its fruits were enjoyed and brought happiness even though the tree currently has nothing it can offer. I want my heart to be more like the preserved fruits of the mulberry tree. My prayer is that I can have a greater trust in the Gardener and his methods of helping me have a greater harvest. With a greater and deeper harvest of joy and happiness, there will be extra lingering on beyond the moment. Then, in times when I am currently depleted and have nothing new to give, it will be there waiting for me. It will be tucked away in those pretty jars on the shelf of my heart, and there will bounty ready to open and enjoy and share with those around me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about paths, by which I mean the ways that we follow to get from one place to another. The more I reflect on what a path really is, the more I see them everywhere, both in their presence and in their disappearance. At this point, I’m wondering what isn’t a path. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s not that I have some abiding interest in maps, roads, and geography. I can hardly navigate Nashville’s interstate system. My interest lies less in the quick engineering of roads and cities than in the paths that spring up slowly as passages of memory, more entrenched with every footfall. And now I’m sounding like Robert Macfarlane, whose book The Old Ways has gotten me down this road in the first place (pun earnestly intended). In this book, Macfarlane adventures down the many ancient paths that crisscross the British landscape and beyond, recording his travels and observations about how these paths came to be and what they mean. Let’s set the tone with some of his philosophizing. Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It’s hard to create a footpath on your own. . . They relate places in a literal sense, and by extension they relate people. Macfarlane, p. 17 The literature of wayfaring is long, existing as poems, songs, stories, treatises and route guides, maps, novels and essays. . . A walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells. Macfarlane, p. 18 As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker’s feet rise and fall between paces, and as the deer continues to run as it bounds from the earth, and the dolphin continues to swim even as it leaps again and again from the sea, so writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a running stitch, a persistence of the same seam or stream. Macfarlane, p. 105 Now, consider this simple definition of path that I offered earlier: “The ways that we follow to get from one place to another.” Following Macfarlane’s footsteps, allow yourself to imagine the meaning of place less concretely. With this expanded definition, can you think of some examples of paths that exist in realms untraversable by feet? Here are some observations I’ve made while thinking on this question: Aren’t stories like paths, made and remade in their telling and retelling? When I pick up an old favorite novel and reread, aren’t I retracing my steps and the steps of many others before me? How about songs? Or even melodies, for that matter? Take “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and imagine every note as another step. What is that beautiful melody but a beloved, well-trod path? How can we remember it but by singing it again? If the Lord's Prayer is a footpath, then there must be a massive tree at its entrance with names upon names etched on it—the names of saints and sinners, rulers and martyrs, priests and confessors throughout the ages. Drew Miller And maybe most compelling of all, prayers and liturgies. If the Lord’s Prayer is a footpath, then there must be a massive tree at its entrance with names upon names etched on it—the names of saints and sinners, rulers and martyrs, priests and confessors throughout the ages. And if each word is a foothold, then these words are nearly inextricable from the earth itself, fixtures that have become one with the landscape. How can we walk this path—thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven—without sensing, palpable in the air, the great company that has gone before us? We could go the scientific route, too. Our bodies follow familiar paths every day, like the path from waking to sleeping, from hunger to satiation, as well as the more sophisticated paths that we call “habits”—I write this at the conclusion of my morning coffee, for instance, which can claim no small amount of responsibility for this post. More subtle still are “neural pathways,” traveled by nerve impulses from neuron to neuron. Those can claim full responsibility! So maybe you can begin to see why I can’t stop seeing the world in terms of paths. Hopefully, I’ve passed this problem on to you, as well. And as long as I’m at it, I’ll pass along another problem: the disappearance of these paths. Ready for a massive overgeneralization? Every new piece of technology outsources our pathmaking. History’s trend is to pave our paths, reducing the cultural memory required of us to navigate the world. Here’s what I mean. Long, long, long ago, stories only existed in people’s memories. They were transmitted through the spoken word. With each retelling, the story both solidified in the memory of the teller and made its imprint on the memory of the listener. Then, long, long ago, we invented writing, and gone was the need to remember our stories in the same way. They were written down and preserved, word for word. And then, long ago, there came the printing press, allowing stories to be shared and circulated with even less expense of memory. You could replay a similar story in music, with the introduction of notation, then our ability to record and reproduce sound, and then, well, Spotify. Let me be clear: I am a huge fan of the written word. And the printing press, and recording studios, and (with some reservations) streaming services. Not all outsourcing of pathmaking is bad. My concern surfaces when we privilege sheer accessibility over sustained, shared knowledge. And I get the sense that our relentless quest for this accessibility has taken a toll on us, in the form of a sort of willful forgetfulness. If we want to replace the many winding paths from point A to point B with one straight, paved road, we will have to be willing to forget the accumulated memory of those paths. If we want to replace encyclopedias with quick Google searches, we will have to be willing to forget the slow, painstaking work of human knowledge. If we want to replace communities with consumer markets, we will have to be willing to forget that we belong to one another. I find it all too fitting that in describing such a leveled-out world, Wendell Berry uses the metaphor of severed paths in the search for home: . . . Nobody who wanted to go home would ever get there now, for every remembered place had been displaced; every love unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant to make way for the passage of the crowd of the individuated. . . Having never known where they were going, having never known where they came from. Berry, “The Objective” A dire picture indeed. The implicit question in such a dire picture is, “What is the way forward?” Two popular answers to that question are aggressively advertised to us on a daily basis. The first is to forge our own path. Forget the old ones—they were riddled with the many evils of injustice—and let’s start from scratch with our newly enlightened perspective. This answer isn’t entirely wrong. Any way forward must reckon with the failures of what lies behind. But we can’t do that reckoning by just obliterating the old. The second popular answer is to entirely forsake the new in order to reinstitute the treasures of the old. This option would have us believe that innovation is never to be trusted, it’s only ever safe to go where we have already gone, and the way forward is in fact backward. And the instinct behind this perspective isn’t entirely wrong, either. But it goes very wrong when it succumbs to untempered nostalgia, replaying the “halcyon days” at the expense of the present. In fact, in a strange twist of irony, all its zeal for remembering the past lands it in another kind of forgetfulness altogether—forgetfulness of the future, and consequently, forgetfulness of hope. The best answer I’ve found is at once under-publicized, mundane, and miraculous. You’re probably already doing it, but it always helps to remember what it is you’re doing and why. Tell stories. Sing songs. Cook and share meals with your friends. Remember and proclaim. The beautiful thing about these treasured paths is that they are made and re-made in the very act of walking, and Sara Groves is absolutely right that “the path is worn, but to us it’s new.” The miracle that happens in these mundane creative acts is that our lives are stitched back together even as we turn around to glimpse the potentiality of healing. Grace works that way, and it imbues our memories and imaginations just as much as our hearts and souls. With the very first faithful step down the path of a treasured story, we are making that story realer to ourselves and to one another. Is this not what we’re doing when we worship, partake of the sacraments, and practice communion itself? So go out and listen in the old for intimations of the new, and in the new for intimations of the old. Be open to surprise from any direction. Join your own voice in the resounding, inextricably woven, vast memory and anticipation of creation. Etch your name on the tree that marks the path.

Eric Peters has a talent for calling to lost and discarded things—as anyone who loves his music can attest. Turns out that gift extends beyond his skill as a songwriter. His photo collection in the recent re-publication of Far Side of the Sea: A Photographic Memory reflects twenty-five years’ worth of wandering and watching for fragments of civilization that the rest of the world has forgotten. Here, he gathers them like cast-off scraps and builds them into something new. Each photo is paired with a thoughtful vignette, often told from the viewpoint of the picture’s subject. Those who are familiar with Eric’s album Far Side of the Sea will find its songs woven through the words and photos, connecting them to a larger narrative. The book in turn expands the album, illuminating points of inspiration and adding to the contemplation behind the songs. In that way, it serves as a lovely companion piece—like world-building for a record. A personal favorite is the photo-essay pairing titled Gravity that calls to the song of the same name (alternately titled “Vincent In Reverse“). The picture looks over a pair of tombstones set against a wheat field, as the passage beside it muses on the life and legacy of Vincent van Gogh: Did he own any hope that his impasto heart, the thick swabs of Cobalt blue and confessional ochres, the gilt moons, the birds—my God, those crows!—and the many slants of light would one day shine into countless souls who would be just as much in need of that gravity and radiance? Eric Peters Eric Peters gathers lost and discarded things and builds them into something new. Shigé Clark Just as Eric does through song, this work draws attention to the unnoticed and seeks to give them story. It heralds the neglected and strives to imbue them with dignity and hope. The passage for Gravity begins, “I thought of him alone with his oils”—a beautiful encapsulation of the unique way in which the author approaches the world. Of course he did. Of course he walked by these nondescript headstones with their unexceptional backdrop and thought of Vincent van Gogh. Of course he stopped to take a picture and reflect on the intersection of despair, and legacy, and beauty, and hope. In one of my favorite fantasy series, there’s an order of knights who live by the ideals, “I will remember those who have been forgotten. I will listen to those who have been ignored.” I can’t help but think that Eric could be a proud member of this order—because these are exactly the ideals that this book inspires. It encourages the reader to stop and interact with the world in a deeper way. Take note of the seemingly unremarkable. See beauty in what others would call ugly. Find meaning in what would otherwise be ignored. And that’s a shift in perspective most of us could use—I know I could. Click here to check out Far Side of the Sea: A Photographic Memory in the Rabbit Room Store.

It’s no secret that we at the Rabbit Room are huge fans of the BibleProject. Their work, in all its forms—immersive videos, fascinating podcast conversations, the Read Scripture book and app, and so much more—testifies to a remarkable integration of beauty, truth-telling, and infectiously playful wisdom. They just released a new video that knocks it out of the park. Every color, motif, and word is chosen with the utmost care, resulting in five minutes of densely-packed teaching that will clarify the way you see the symbolism of trees all throughout the Bible. One primary purpose of the Rabbit Room is to uphold and shamelessly geek out about deeply good, gospel-inspired creative work being done wherever we find it. So if you’re new to the BibleProject, consider this your introduction. And if this isn’t your first rodeo, consider supporting their work by donating or sharing with your friends—they are a completely crowdfunded animation studio. Visit the BibleProject website to learn more.

[Editor’s note: In case you didn’t know, Malcolm Guite has an excellent collection of poetry for the seasons of Lent and Easter—one poem for each day, including classics like Dante, contemporaries like Rowan Williams, and the work of Guite himself. The collection is called The Word in the Wilderness, and it makes an excellent companion to the Lenten season. To give you a taste, here’s a poem of Guite’s called “Dancing Through the Fire.”] Then stir my love in idleness to flame To find at last the free refining fire That guards the hidden garden whence I came. O do not kill, but quicken my desire, Better to spur me on that leave me cold. Not maimed I come to you, I come entire, Lit by the loves that warm, the lusts that scald, That you may prove the one, reprove the other, Though both have been the strength by which I scaled The steps so far to come where poets gather And sing such songs as love gives them to sing. I thank God for the ones who brought me hither And taught me by example how to bring The slow growth of a poem to fruition And let it be itself, a living thing, Taught me to trust the gifts of intuition And still to try the tautness of each line, Taught me to taste the grace of transformation And trace in dust the face of the divine, Taught me the truth, as poet and as Christian, That drawing water turns it into wine. Now I am drawn through their imagination To dare to dance with them into the fire, Harder than any grand renunciation, To bring to Christ the heart of my desire Just as it is in every imperfection, Surrendered to his bright refiner’s fire That love might have its death and resurrection. For more excellent poetry and observations throughout the season of Lent, check out The Word in the Wilderness in the Rabbit Room Store. Artwork Credit: Sky Fire by Georgiana Romanovna

Every now and then, a book comes along that rings all your bells, shivers all your timbers, winds your clock, melts your face, shakes your foundations, and smacks you upside the head to remind you that stories are altogether a form of magic—and if that’s true, if stories are magic, Helena Sorensen might as well be Gandalf. The Door on Half-Bald Hill is just that kind of book. It’s mythic. It’s personal. It’s tender. It’s terrifying. It’s fantastical. It’s historical. It’s pagan. It’s prophetic. It’s meticulously grounded, and yet gloriously transcendent. What is this book, you ask. Rightly so. Steeped in the landscape and lore of an ancient Celtic people, the book imagines a world on the brink of an abyss as its people struggle to find hope in the face of destruction. They look to their leaders for answers, but the answers they hear are hopeless. They look to the past for guidance, but the salvations of the past are powerless in the shadow of the Crone. They are a people desperate for hope, and desperate for answers. Like the psalmist they lift up their eyes to the hills and ask “Where does my help come from?” Enter Idris, the young Bard of Blackthorn. The book is a portal into his odyssey of awakening and discovery. In the same way that luminous works like C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces and Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale nearly defy description yet leave readers with the indelible impression that the author has moved Heaven and Earth to impart a glimpse at the mystery in the heart of the world, The Door on Half-Bald Hill charts a course all its own as it stretches boldly toward the universal and numinous. This tale is defined and mapped by the author’s crystalline voice and confidence as she beckons us on a quest, not for an answer, but for a question—a question that can alter the course of history and change the world forever. Helena first approached me with this story nearly four years ago, and it’s been a delight to watch the book grow and develop as she’s refined it. She’s an incredible writer and her powers are on full display here. She’s crafty, patient, and deliberate, and I’m in awe of the way she’s so carefully put this story together. Her encyclopedic knowledge of her source material and the elegance with which she unspools her endgame are wonders to behold, as are the tender, human touches with which she chisels out her characters and their struggles. The starkness and strangeness of the world of Tír Ársa and the mythological texture of the story convinced me that it was crying out for illustration, and that led me to Stephen Crotts. He’s done the wonderful cover work and interior drawings, and I’m delighted with the atmosphere they evoke. There’s something in his work that hearkens back to Doré’s etchings from Paradise Lost or the Divine Comedy, calling to mind tales ancient and primeval and signifying of eternal mysteries on the cusp of revelation. I’m so excited to get this book into the hands of readers so they can experience characters like Idris and Corann and Muriel and come to love them like I have. Helena has worked long and hard to give us something special, and it’s my great delight that Rabbit Room Press is able to present her gift to the world. Years in the making, it’s finally ready. May it wreck you and remake you in all the best ways. Click here to order and experience the story for yourself. The Door on Half-Bald Hill Paperback by Helena Sorensen coming Spring 2020 from Rabbit Room Press When the Bloodmoon rose, death came with it. Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills. The Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate of Blackthorn returns from the underworld bringing omens of despair, and Idris, the young Bard of Blackthorn, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover questions no one has ever dared to ask. But time is short. And the Bloodmoon is rising again.

Our March 3rd Local Show lineup is going to be a party. One big reason for that is the zanily skillful presence of Zach & Maggie, who will be making their Local Show debut. Allow us to introduce them to you. The music of Zach & Maggie is at once playful, captivating, and stealthily intelligent, drawing on the sounds of dusty accordions, fiddles, and mandolins in equal measure to traditional drums and bass in order to achieve endearing narrative songs. Once you start listening, you’ll find it hard to stop. Click here to purchase tickets to the next Local Show and here to peruse Zach & Maggie’s website.

The poet Christian Wiman writes, “Lord, suffer me to sing these wounds by which I am made and marred.” Only a few days remain in the year, and I stand singing on a Sunday morning. This world is a weary place, brokenness marks every face. Dear ones are lost and bodies languish, divisions drive our souls to anguish. Injustice mingles with the soil, we eat the bread of anxious toil. Hear our cries, show us favor, we need hope, we need a Savior. —”Lord Have Mercy,” Laura Frost My voice trembles, and I feel my jaw tighten. The notes ring in my ear, but not as loudly as the words. Weary. Brokenness. Injustice. Anxious. I hear those words scrape at my soul, tearing away at the armor I clothed it in when I stepped into the church. We need hope. I fumble through that last line and try to blink back the emotion flooding my face. The voices around me carry the lyrics I can’t seem to say. It seems a fitting way to end a hard year—a song of desperation sung with a shaking voice, a few tears, and a community who cries out with me. Show me the scars as you sing of his goodness. Then I might believe. Sarah J. Hauser I wonder if Israel experienced this as they sang psalms of lament together. As they traveled the long and wearying road to worship in the temple in Jerusalem, they sang, “In my distress I called to the Lord” and “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!” I can’t imagine what it’s like to carry their history as an enslaved and oppressed people. I sing in the comfort of a heated building with cushioned chairs, and my journey to worship involves a ten-minute drive, not a days-long trek. But I have cried out to God in sorrow, and the chorus around me offers a reminder that I’m not the only one. **** Other refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, oh, leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me. All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring; Cover my defenseless head With the shadow of Thy wing. —”Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” Charles Wesley The Duke of Edinburgh clenches his jaw, his eyes locked in place in a futile effort to dam up the tears as he listens to the people of Aberfan sing. They’re standing over a mass grave lined with scores of small caskets. **** “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” the psalmist writes. Just five verses later, he says, “I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:1, 6). The movement from pleading to rejoicing in such a short space seems too paradoxical to make sense. How do you sing to God when he feels so far away? How do you recount the goodness and generosity of God while mourning what’s been lost? **** Every week I walk to the front of our church and take a small cup of wine and a piece of cracker. I sit in my seat alongside my husband and kids and rehearse the story with my family again. “What does this represent?” my husband asks our kids. “Jesus’s body,” they reply. “And this?” He holds up the cup. “His blood.” They know the routine, their responses often rote. But we tell the story of his death and resurrection again and again, praying each week it sinks in a little deeper. It does for me, at least. There’s no resurrection without a death and no healing without his wounds. They need to know about the wounds. As we talk through the meaning of the elements with our kids, my four-year-old son starts singing, “Nothing but the blood of Jesus!” His high-pitched preschool voice rings more loudly than I’d like. I shift in my seat and ask him to whisper. But I don’t want to quiet his song too much. **** The Gospel of John tells us the story of Thomas’s initial disbelief in Jesus’ resurrection. Even though Thomas was one of Jesus’ closest companions, part of the inner group of twelve, he still doubted. When the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord,” Thomas says, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:25). I’m like that too, I think. I need to see the marks to believe in the healing. Thomas’s story speaks to all of us cynics. Tell me what God has done for your soul, yes. But show me the wounds he’s healed, the sea he’s turned to dry land, the fire used to purify, the death he’s brought to life. Show me the scars as you sing of his goodness. Then I might believe. **** On October 21, 1966 in the coal-mining town of Aberfan, South Wales, a huge pile of debris from a spoil tip broke loose and flowed downhill. It buried everything in its path—including a school. 144 people were killed; 116 of them were children. Netflix recounted the story in their series, The Crown. I paused the episode several times as I watched, and at one point I had to leave the room. I couldn’t help but weep as parents dug through the sludge in search of their children. I have three kids of my own. I cannot imagine. The show goes on to portray the different responses the Royal Family had to the tragedy. In the episode, Prince Philip—the Duke of Edinburgh and husband to Queen Elizabeth—visited the town and attended a mass funeral. After his return, as he pours a drink and unpacks a few belongings on his desk, the Queen asks him how it went. He shakes his head. “Extraordinary,” he replies. “The grief. The anger—at the government, at the coal board, but at God, too. Eighty-one children were buried today. The rage—on all the faces, behind all the eyes…They didn’t smash things up. They didn’t fight in the streets.” “What did they do?” the Queen asks, her eyebrows furrowed and her face looking almost confused. “They sang—the whole community. It’s the most astonishing thing I’ve ever heard.” **** Song in the midst of grief seems as impossible as resurrection after death. But in fact a man dead four days walked out of a tomb, raised to life by one who himself would soon do the same. So let us sing the whole story, for the doubters among us need to touch the scars to see the healing. Let us sing of the wounds of a Savior raised and sing of our own wounds pleading—and believing—he’ll bring life once again. Sing the wounds, the ones that mar us and the ones he will make whole. This post originally appeared on Sarah’s personal blog.

The season of Lent is a forty-day period mirroring Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness. During this time, participants devote special attention to the ache of incompletion, suffering, and trial in their lives, both collectively and individually. Hemmed in by Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, Lent begins with the dust of mortality and ends with the broken bread of the Last Supper. As Lent is traditionally considered a season of “prayer and fasting,” it’s often associated with gloom, giving up chocolate or coffee, and other forms of funlessness. But it’s important to remember that self-denial is not the ultimate goal—in fact, and rather counterintuitively, the hope of Lent is that by acknowledging the depth of our ache, we would be led to greater depths of joy. N. T. Wright said it beautifully: “Following Jesus means denying yourself, saying ‘no’ to the things that you imagine make up your ‘self,’ and finding to your astonishment that the ‘self’ you get back is more glorious, more joyful than you could have imagined.” So with this Lent playlist, we offer you some songs that have stirred in us both a greater recognition of our own need and a deeper hope for the restoration that is to come. Illustration by Ned Bustard, from Doug McKelvey’s liturgy for “Those Who Weep Without Knowing Why” Click here to listen to our Lent playlist on Spotify. And here on Apple Music. “Dust We Are and Shall Return” by The Brilliance A beautiful arrangement of a traditional Ash Wednesday liturgy. —Chris Yokel “Fell Like A Feather” by Amy Stroup The line “the light stings as it tears through unbelief” feels about as Lenten as it gets to me. —Kelsey Miller “Carbon Ribs” by John Mark McMillan His album The Medicine is still a staple in my Lent to Good Friday listening, mostly because it doesn’t shy away from the grit and reality of life on earth while reaching for the mystery of indwelling spirit and resurrection. This song in particular captures that tension and longing beautifully. —Jen Yokel “The Trapper and the Furrier” by Regina Spektor This visceral song exposes the falseness of worldly power with a grief and weariness that whets my appetite for justice. —Drew Miller “Let It Fall” by Over The Rhine ‘Cause rain and leaves And snow and tears and stars And that’s not all my friend They all fall with confidence and grace So let it fall, let it fall While I know that this song is from a Christmas album (Blood Oranges in the Snow), it’s articulated the concept of loss for me over the past few years in a way that no other song has done. It’s kind of sat with me in my grief and let me ugly-cry. But it’s also reminded me, over and over again, that, in Gospel-economy, falling into the ground is a death unto life. —Lanier Ivester “High Noon” by Andrew Peterson The Lenten season is an annual invitation for us to respond to the events that ushered in a new reality. I’ve always loved Andrew’s song for the way it beckons us, “Let the people rejoice / Let the heavens resound / Let the name of Jesus, who sought us / And freed us forever ring out.” —Matt Conner “Hard To Get” by Rich Mullins This is my favorite song Rich ever wrote, and he died before he could record it, but I think the rough demo version he taped as he played his guitar in an old church perfectly captures the raw ache of the song. At one point he invokes Jesus’ sleepless night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the sweat mingled with blood, the anguish, the utter loneliness of a God who understands the depths of our loneliness. But to me this song feels most like Holy Saturday—the dark space of waiting and confusion and hard, hard trust between the crucifixion and the resurrection, between despair and joy, when we know there are answers to our questions but we can’t quite feel them yet. “I know that it would not hurt any less even if it could be explained.” “I can’t see how you’re leading me, unless you’ve led me here to where I’m lost enough to let myself be led.” The most honest Christian lyrics I’ve ever heard. —Jennifer Trafton “Learning How To Die” by Jon Foreman Jon Foreman meditates on the fact that life is really about coming to grips with our mortality. —Chris Yokel “The Ghost of Tom Joad” by Bruce Springsteen The Grapes of Wrath is one of the great American novels (go read it NOW if you haven’t), and this Springsteen song, which is inspired by Tom Joad’s speech to his Ma near the end of the book, is a great illustration of our longing for justice and equity in the world. —Pete Peterson “Weeping Mary” by Loud Harp This short, meditative hymn reminds us that the season of Lent is meant to simplify and focus our over-complicated lives. It doesn’t offer long, theological statements within its lines, but instead brings us back to this elementary truth: Jesus offered rest and a light burden when the world offered sinking anxieties and mournful weeping. —Chris Thiessen “Parrot in Portugal” by Sandra McCracken Originally released during Lent last year, this song is a gorgeous example of hope born through suffering. The sense of liberation these melodies carry is the kind we can only find by reckoning fully with our sorrow—the result is a freedom with that distinct taste of having recovered one’s true name. —Drew Miller “Anytime” by Neil Finn This is a perfect Ash Wednesday song about the unpredictability of death and the longing to be part of a bigger story. I once sang it at our church’s Tenebrae service. “Although you’re still a mystery, I’m so glad I’m not alone.” —Jill Phillips “Enough” by Jill DeZwaan A lovely prayer that reminds me of truths that I constantly seem to lose track of. This song confesses a need to depend on the sufficiency of Christ—even for the very act of depending on the sufficiency of Christ. —Jonny Jimison “Jesus, Remember Me” (Taizé) In Luke 23, one of the criminals hanging beside Jesus says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This is the humble plea of a sinner and a prayer of faith. Taizé is an ecumenical communi­ty in France. Their community and many other Christian communities and churches use this song as a medita­tive chant. These simple words and tune come from the hand of Jacques Berthier, one of the primary composers associated with the community. —Rob Wheeler “God Rested” by Andrew Peterson I would choose “God Rested” from the Resurrection Letters Prologue. The music builds behind the steady lyrics, like something grand is approaching and the singer doesn’t know. The whole song ends like a bated breath and makes you lean forward, waiting. —Shigé Clark Click here to listen to our Lent playlist on Spotify. And here on Apple Music. What are some songs that express the season of Lent for you? Please share in the comments section!

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers interviews Jen Pollock Michel, author of Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of “And” in an Either-Or World. Jen Pollock Michel is the author of three books, most recently Surprised By Paradox: The Promise of And in an Either-Or World. In this episode, Jonathan and Jen discuss the role of paradox in writing, the difference between either-or and both-and, and the difference between mystery and paradox. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 8 of The Habit Podcast. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

As Valentine’s Day came closing in, Jonathan Rogers sent out the following letter on The Habit Weekly. In August of 1988 I went to a watermelon social on the back porch of Furman University’s dining hall. I was more or less minding my own business when across the way I saw a girl who was so beautiful I could hardly believe she existed in the same world where I lived and moved and had my being. I don’t even know how to talk about this without sounding like the worst sort of Hallmark card, so I’ll spare you. I didn’t speak to the aforementioned girl at the watermelon social, but I spoke to her eventually, and eventually we got married and raised six children together. That face that was such a marvel to me in August of 1988 is now more familiar to me than my own face. But every now and then, when we arrive separately at a party or a school event or church, I’ll catch a glimpse of my wife from across the room, and I’m astonished all over again. I’m that nineteen-year-old boy, and she’s that eighteen-year-old girl. The amazement that such a creature exists at all is compounded by the amazement that she’s the most familiar thing in the world to me. Wendell Berry knows what I’m talking about: Sometimes hidden from me in daily custom and in trust, so that I live by you unaware as by the beating of my heart, Suddenly you flare in my sight, a wild rose looming at the edge of thicket, grace and light where yesterday was only shade, and once again I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before. —”The Wild Rose” Valentine’s Day is just three days away. It’s time to get serious about those love letters and love poems. I offer the same advice I gave this time last year and the year before that: Don’t try too hard to put your feelings into words. All those things you feel about your beloved—those are the least unique thing about your relationship with that person. If you don’t believe it, go read the greeting cards at the grocery store. Your feelings, which seem utterly unique when you’re feeling them, are so common that the nice people at Hallmark and American Greetings make a good living selling them at three dollars a pop. If you want to write a Valentine that gets results, start with memory, not emotion. If you give an account of a memory that you and your beloved share, some little scene from your story, you can hardly help but be original and intimate. Be specific. Be concrete. The emotion will take care of itself. If you need a little extra direction, here’s a writing prompt for your Valentine: Wendell Berry writes, “I am blessed and choose again/that which I chose before.” What has caused you to choose your beloved* again? Write about that. *If you aren’t in a long-term romantic relationship, that’s all right. You love somebody, and that love is a choice. Write that person a Valentine. ——————— I’ll be honest, I usually skip Valentine’s Day posts. But, I mean, it’s Jonathan Rogers, so this one I read. The advice he gives is beautiful, and the story more so (having encountered his amazing wife, I can support that not a bit of it is embellished). As is Jonathan’s way, he ended the message with a call to write. As is my way, I completely ignored what he wanted me to write about (I can be cantankerous like that). Somewhere between the lines, the message struck me with what it had to say about love’s connection to memory, and I took about a week wrestling with that connection to offer a response. At the end of every episode of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan asks his guests, “Who are the writers who make you want to write?” Though he might never forgive me for ignoring his actual prompt—and of course it’s unwise to invoke the wrath of one so closely aligned with the alligators—I hope it may assuage him to know that he’s on my list. Love Is This He said love resides in memory. I suppose it can exist in afterglows, in glass-pressed pictures tinted rose, and how the heart holds the mark of a strike far longer than our simple skin, how it can keep a moment sinking in. I guess the scents and touches linger after. The tumbling of your laughter across the grass, the past—fast-fading flash of light— the weight of you inside my arms, our foreheads pressed together, how you never shrank from adoration or ever met my kiss with indignation. I suppose it has some merit, all the dreams we stuff inside each other, straining seams and scribble-scripting words into the reams of all our stories, to make some sense of things that fail and fall from present tense. I guess love cares for memories, if even one can carry them until the road is done, can bear them underneath the heat, and run the race—perhaps alone. Too often it all falls to one to own. But I have watched how memory gathers rust, how time can grind its finer points to dust, and leave it brittle under winter’s gust. And I think more, by now, that love is this: the thing soft-sighing when the memories twist and decompose to sorrow, “Yet, you will find me here again tomorrow.”

Most of the light in the universe is invisible to the human eye. We see an estimated .0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum, and that estimate is based on what we can measure with current information and technology. The eye takes in a tiny fraction of what is real and present. Or, stated differently, the scope of what we cannot see is vast. In the days before Jesus’ earthly ministry began, John the Baptist preached a message of repentance. Though the concept of repentance has gotten tangled up with penance, John’s message was not about a return to morality or a need for sinless perfection. (The work of redemption begins and ends with God.) What John preached was the need for a shift in perspective, for a radical change of mind. The scope of what we cannot see is vast. Helena Sorensen God’s covenant people believed that they understood what God needed and wanted. They believed they understood what they needed and wanted. John asked them to prepare themselves for a shockwave. In the work of Christ, everything would be changed; all history would spin on a new axis. John asked for an acknowledgement of their limited vision. He asked them to open their hearts and minds. Eye had not seen. Ear had not heard. But the Spirit was making ready to reveal it through the Son. The information presented to us in this narrow column of visible light is heartbreaking. Is it possible to take a hard look at the world without quailing? But we don’t stop there. We make predictions based on our limited sight and react accordingly, in fear. Creation groans with the longing of billions of souls who cannot see beyond the frame of their own suffering. As we enter the season of Lent, I am asking for an open heart and an open mind. I am seeking the renewal of hope that comes with a strengthened imagination. I am looking hard for what is happening just beyond the reach of my eyes. Begin the song exactly where you are, For where you are contains where you have been And holds the vision of your final sphere. And do not fear the memory of sin; There is a light that heals, and, where it falls, Transfigures and redeems the darkest stain Into translucent colour. Loose the veils And draw the curtains back, unbar the doors, Of that dread threshold where your spirit fails, The hopeless gate that holds in all the fears That haunt your shadowed city, fling it wide And open to the light that finds, and fares Through the dark pathways where you run and hide, Through all the alleys of your riddled heart, As pierced and open as his wounded side. Open the map to him and make a start, And down the dizzy spirals, through the dark, his light will go before you. Let him chart And name and heal. Expose the hidden ache To him, the stinging fires and smoke that blind Your judgement, carry you away, the mirk And muted gloom in which you cannot find The love that you once thought worth dying for. Call him to all you cannot call to mind. He comes to harrow Hell and now to your Well-guarded fortress let his love descend. The icy ego at your frozen core Can hear his call at last. Will you respond? —”Through the Gate,” Malcolm Guite Helena has a new book coming out this spring called The Door on Half-Bald Hill. This poem was taken from Malcolm Guite’s Lenten book of poems, The Word in the Wilderness. Click here to view it in the Rabbit Room Store.

Our March 17th Local Show is one week away, and we would be remiss not to take this opportunity to introduce you to the inimitable Joseph Bradshaw. A Joseph Bradshaw song is dense as a Steinbeck novel, light as a Wes Anderson film, shocking as a Flannery O’Connor short story, and smooth as Hank Williams himself. He assumes intelligence in his listeners, weaving in equal parts drama and dry humor to communicate immersive, personal narratives that strike at the vulnerable heart of the human condition. Come on out to the Local Show on March 17th to hear for yourself.

Twelve years ago this month, Waterbrook Press released On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Book 1 of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. I counted it a privilege to be allowed to write the Rabbit Room’s release day review of the book. At the time, the Rabbit Room was barely six months old. There was no Hutchmoot, no Rabbit Room Press, no Local Show, no Chinwag, no North Wind Manor. There was just the blog, with a small but very loyal readership. In March of 2008, the Rabbit Room was just a little seedling of a dream that Andrew Peterson had planted in the world for mere love of things that are good, true, and beautiful. The Wingfeather Saga was another of those seedlings. The Wingfeather Saga wasn’t what you’d call a blockbuster. It was more of a slow burn. The people who knew it loved it, but there are only so many seats in the blockbuster-making machine, and a lot of books that deserve to be blockbusters don’t get blockbustered. Through a series of events that I won’t detail, Waterbrook wasn’t able to continue the Wingfeather Saga beyond Book 2, and Books 3 and 4 ended up being released by Rabbit Room Press. But the people who loved the books kept loving them, and they kept telling their friends, and the slow burn kept burning. The people who loved the books kept loving them, and they kept telling their friends, and the slow burn kept burning. Jonathan Rogers The seedling that was the Rabbit Room has become something more like a tree; birds can nest in its branches. And thanks in large part to the community that has grown up around here, the readership of the Wingfeather Saga has grown so that it does make sense for Waterbrook/Random House to re-release all four books of the Wingfeather Saga in hardback with new covers by Nicholas Kole and forty new interior illustrations by Joe Sutphin. Books 1 and 2 release today. Books 3 and 4 release later this year. So here’s to the Wingfeather Saga. And here’s to you, Rabbit Roomers, for your role in making this re-release possible. Here’s that release day review from March 2008. I still mean every word of it. Janner Igiby lives in Glipwood, a nothing little village in the land of Skree, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. Manhood is on the horizon, but Janner finds it hard to feel much hope for the future. Skree is ruled by foreign oppressors, snake men called the Fangs of Dang, servants of a shadowy emperor named Gnag the Nameless. The Skreeans are weak and weaponless. They’re even tool-less. Any Skreean who needs to use a hoe has to borrow one from the Fangs (and fill out the requisite paperwork). And from time to time, the Black Carriage arrives in Glipwood to carry young Skreeans toward an unknown fate across the Dark Sea. But once a year the Sea Dragons sing just off the coast of Glipwood. With their song, life reasserts itself in the hearts of Skreeans who have long since learned to numb themselves: A middle-aged man named Robesbus Nicefellow, who had wasted his life balancing records for the famed button merchant Osbeck Osbeckson of Torrboro, decided that he wouldn’t spend another day working behind a desk; he had always wanted to sail. Mr. Alep Brume, who was sitting beside Ferinia Swapelton (proprietor of Ferinia’s Flower Shop), turned to her and whispered that he’d secretly loved her for years. Mayor Blaggus silently swore he’d never again pick his nose. All of the passion and sadness and joy of those who listened wound into one common strand of feeling that was to Janner like homesickness, though he couldn’t think why; he was a short walk from the only home he’d ever known. A homesickness for a place he has never been. A nostalgia for a happiness he’s never experienced. The dragons’ song is a moment of otherworldly beauty and hope—of abundant life. There’s something very big at stake here: you get the feeling that the Fangs would have a hard time maintaining their grip on Skree if the Skreeans heard this song too long or too often. And yet the song does its work on a small and personal scale too—in the realm of personal dreams, of unspoken crushes, of nose-picking. Such juxtapositions are the stuff of Andrew Peterson’s new novel, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (Book 1 of the Wingfeather Saga). Here is a world where the everyday, the mundane is barely adequate to conceal deep longings that point to deeper truths. It is altogether appropriate that Dragon Day is the day when Janner and his younger brother and sister defy the Fangs. It starts out as an accidental defiance, but its effects are profound and irreversible. The plot unspools from there. I won’t say much else about the plot, but I will say that the Igiby children discover things about themselves, their family, and their fellow villagers that they never imagined. They’ve always known that their grandfather Podo is a retired pirate; but, as they learn, that isn’t the half of it. Their mother, an unassuming householder, has a stash of treasure. And the father they’ve never known—they learn to know him too. Their wildest dreams aren’t wild enough. In On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Peterson has created a rich, strange, wonder-filled world that somehow manages to be homey at the same time. He has drunk deeply of Tolkien, and yet this is not a derivative book. This book describes a world that is much bigger than the book itself. You get the feeling that Peterson isn’t telling all he knows about Aerwiar (that’s the name of this world)—not because he’s withholding, but because there’s so much to tell. In frequent footnotes and asides, he alludes to little details of Skreean life, customs, and history that don’t play a part in the story itself but add depth and texture, giving the impression that this is one of many stories one might tell about this world. You’ve read tight, precisely structured books in which no sentence is wasted, no action is introduced without its equal and opposite reaction, no minor character is so much as mentioned unless he’s going to be significant before it’s all over. Those books have their pleasures, but they aren’t the pleasures you should expect from this story. This story is wild and overgrown. I mean that as high praise. It has a well-built plot and beautifully drawn characters; it also has throwaway lines and rabbit trails. Picture a well-constructed grape arbor. AP has proven himself a skilled craftsman, building a solid and pleasing structure. He has also had enough confidence in his art to let the vine grow on the arbor-—lush and organic and not altogether manageable. Life is busting out all over the place in this book, often expressing itself in ludicrous details. The bookstore in Glipwood has a category for “Books about Blacksmithing and/or Pie.” In the game of handyball, competitors try to score goals without using their feet, even to move. There is a statue outside town of a man enjoying his soup. The reader never finds out why. By dwelling on the ridiculous aspects of The Dark Sea of Darkness (even the title is a little ridiculous), I don’t mean to give the impression that it’s a ridiculous book. It’s a deep, beautiful, satisfying book, and my heart is still full of it. Ironically, the ridiculous touches make this fantasy story feel more real; experiencing Aerwiar for the first time is a little like experiencing this world for the first time, as a child. You’re not born knowing what’s normal and what’s ridiculous. So you’re forced to take a lot on faith. A pearl comes from an irritated oyster? OK, if you say so. But it sounds like you’re pulling my leg. And of all the crazy stories ever told about where babies come from, none of them is crazier than the true one. As a reader of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, you’re thrown into a ridiculous, wonderful world where there’s much more than meets the eye. Sort of like what happens when you come into this one. You can take it or leave it. For my part, I’ll take it. Click here to view the new edition of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness in the Rabbit Room Store. And click here to listen to Jonathan Rogers (circa 2008) read his review out loud for the Rabbit Room Podcast, now re-aired as a bonus episode of The Habit Podcast—including an introduction by Andrew Peterson (circa 2008) impersonating Alfred Hitchcock with relentless zeal and determination.

For many months, we at the Rabbit Room have been eagerly anticipating the day that these brand-new, freshly-illustrated, hardbound editions of one of our favorite stories would be ready to share with readers and toothy cows everywhere. Well friends, today is that glorious day. With gratitude in our hearts and shipping supplies standing at the ready, we release these little bits of magic into the world. We hope they bring you deep delight and renew your enchantment with the worlds both within their pages and without. To celebrate, here are just a few of the many wonderful things the Rabbit Room readership has had to say about what the Wingfeather Saga means to them. “Read The Wingfeather Saga to be thrust into a world of adventure, danger, beauty, and wonder, and ultimately to better know the Maker!” —Scott Neville “Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga profoundly works on the reader long after the final page of each book is read.” —Nathaniel Miller “In a home full of teenagers, this series profoundly deals with not just the evil without, but the darkness within. It has given us tools for conversation and hope when the way seems treacherous. I am so grateful for this series!” —Carleen Hobbs “You need to read these because they are the best and most entertaining books since C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series, and you will love them—I promise.” —Janice “The Wingfeather Saga is a surprisingly poignant tale of adventure and family that will have readers of all ages up turning pages into the wee hours of the night.” —Savannah Grace “The gift of the Wingfeathers’ is the opportunity to see yourself in each character’s peril and penance and begin to interpret your own story through tragedy and triumph as the plot unfolds.” —Jonathan Lawrence “Honestly, The Wingfeather Saga moved my soul in ways I never thought possible. I was delighted and shaken to my core by its conclusion.” —Heather May Jordan “My oldest daughter (11 at the time) read the first book and then brought it to me to read aloud to all of her sisters. “This is something we need to experience together as a family,” she said. She was right. It remains one of our favorite family read-aloud series ever.” —Melissa McMahan “The themes of The Wingfeather Saga are so rich, and the books are not only excellently written (and hard to put down), but also such a good reminder of the wonder and hope in life despite struggles, pain, and sadness.” —Kelley Post “These books will teach you and your children to be brave and noble in the face of adversity.” —Caleb Cooke “It inspires young and old readers to harness their imagination and spirit and use it for the good of the Kingdom.” —Rachael Alexander “The Wingfeather Saga doesn’t just let our families know that great evils like toothy cows and Gnag the Nameless exist, but to show us that they can be beaten.” —Allison Lee Redd “These books captured our imaginations and gave our family a more visceral understanding of redemption and hope and how to live courageously in the already/not yet of God’s kingdom.” —Rachel Speer Donahue “So excited for these new editions, probably more so than my kids.” —BethAnne Dunphy “This series will encourage kids of all ages to think outside the box and use their imaginations. It isn’t just a good story, it’s great writing. They’ll learn an appreciation of words through the skillful descriptions of the world Andrew has created. These books make my heart sing! The threads of truth that are woven throughout the saga make for excellent conversations around some difficult topics.” —Meg McAusland “My favorite part of the story for my kids was the relationship between the siblings. There was so much love, but also relational difficulty and frustration. It was a hit from ages 7 up to 45.” —Lanette Young Tyler “It’s a wonderfully fun read for different generations to read together!” —Lydia Percival Meuret “The Wingfeather Saga is like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe taken one step further by a family who knows what it means to truly lay your life down for your friends against great odds and peril. Deeply engaging.” —Tess Cox “Beautifully-crafted, gospel-echoing stories have the power to open our eyes and encourage our hearts, and The Wingfeather Saga has gifted those to me.” —Jomona Williamson “The Wingfeather Saga is a series that begins simply, continues to improve and deepen with each succeeding book, and ends with a journey of perseverance, and hope, and heroism, and rescue in The Warden and the Wolf King (my favorite).” —Sherry Early “Everyone should read The Wingfeather Saga because it’s a story that is wonderful, exciting, sorrowful, joyful, heart-changing, and magnificent—it truly speaks to the struggles, joys, sorrows, & triumphs each of us experience in our own lives!” —Linda Hoover “If you are troubled by the world around you, just wait until you and your children enter the world of Aerwiar where danger, as well as glory, wait around every bend; but fear not, your guide is both trustworthy and courageous and though he will tell the truth, even hard truths, he will also tell it with a gleaming hope, even to the end.” —Kara Chase “The Wingfeather Saga is beautifully crafted story that has terror, humor, compassion, adventure, and of course dragons.” —Marilyn Leslie “My 10yo friend said he likes them more than Harry Potter, and this kid has been an HP aficionado for YEARS. This is the kid who shows up to our community group in his HP robes.” —Bethany Warner “My son loves a good story, but doesn’t like to read books. Once I had read the first book aloud, The Wingfeather Saga was so engaging, my son picked up the next one and read ahead on his own!” —Caryn Caffee “Middle grade adventure novels usually spur young readers to soar to greater heights in their imaginations. The Wingfeather Saga succeeds in that and then propels us into the crucible of taking solid character and selflessness into our everyday lives. Memorable characters, gripping conflict, joy in sorrow, and victory in loss make the Wingfeathers unforgettable and a must own series for every family.” —Sarah Young “This series is a MUST READ for a new generation of believers young and old. Narnian-esqe, Peterson creates a fantastic, fictional world that leaves you longing for heaven and longing for more story. Janner, Tink, and Leeli lead you on many adventures finding out truth about themselves, fighting the Fangs of Dang, and growing into who the Maker made them to be. Join them on a magical and captivating journey!” —Brittany Williams Curd “These books delighted and surprised my kids and me. I love recommending them!!” —Jenn Discher “A series that shows what it means to love unconditionally, trust faithfully, and be brave in the midst of terror; a true adventure for the soul.” —Stephanie Westbrook “Adventuring through the world of the Wingfeathers was one of my family’s most beloved endeavors; somehow we were made more fully alive during our fantastical visits to Aerwiar.” —Stephanie Mueller “My 8yo son said, ‘Dad, I don’t like that book because every night I know I’m supposed go to sleep, but I just want you to keep reading!’” —Stacy Sublett “A book series that leaves my 13 year old son with a face full of wonder and excitement to read them all over again.” —Karla Coffman Sheridan “Everyone should read The Wingfeather Saga, because the stories are true. Not true in the hop-on-a-plane-and-visit-that-place kind of true, but search-deep-within-your-soul-and-feel-the-truth-of-these-stories-resonate-within-your-very-being true.” —Brittany Williams “It’s a whimsical fantasy adventure with beautiful themes of faith, perseverance, redemption, and some of the very best sibling dynamics I have read in my LIFE!” —Shay “This needed series draws you in with frivolity and whimsy, awakens adventure with an important purpose, and nourishes the ache in your heart for this broken world with an example of true greatness, redemption, and hope.” —Blais “Our entire family (including Dad) enjoyed listening to the audio books together; they kept us on the edge of our seats until the very end!” —Maia Chandler “Wingfeather’s deep, experiential themes of brokenness and redemption crack my heart open and hollow me out.” —Laure Hittle “This story causes your soul to long for redemption and remaking… both here and now and in the age to come.” —Sarah Gagnon “This story brings you to a world not too different from ours, where you see brokenness and evil flourish, but inevitably bow to the will of the Maker. The stories are true!” —Heather Denenea “Let’s just say that it did keep me on the edge of my bed the whole time. I finished the second book 2 days ago, and I’m dying for the third. I think these are really great books! Amazing! Original! Extraordinary! It gives me a lot of hope for the future.” —Mandy Erbah “Oh, my children love these SO MUCH! And I had to pre-read to make sure they were appropriate, but I couldn’t stop reading! They are wonderful.” —Rosie Hill “The Wingfeather Saga will take you on a journey in a world that is both foreign and familiar, until at the bitter end, a golden thread of hope emerges; what if the stories are true?” —Jocelyn Marshall “The Wingfeather Saga is a great read aloud for the entire family. Full of adventure, courage, love, and truth. A gift to pass through the generations and read again and again.” —Rebecca Sandstrom “The Wingfeather series are unique books that one reads multiple times, as each time challenges your mind and heart towards right thinking and deeper truths in delightful story form.” —Mary Ann White “This series is so full of truth, beauty, and goodness. A few years ago, I convinced my principal to allow me to test out the Saga with a group of 7th graders. We had so many meaningful discussions on so many different topics. The books make such a good impression on the students that they are now a permanent part of the 6th grade curriculum. All the teachers and students love these books. I highly recommend them.” —April Kadtke Bilton “So many aspects of this story illustrate real-life spiritual truths that will give readers the courage to face their own spiritual battles.” —Jennifer Barker “These phenomenal stories were the catalyst to my son’s enjoyment of reading aloud as a family! Thank you!” —Kristi Salazar “It’s like The Chronicles of Narnia for a new generation!! It captures heart and soul through a fantastical story that brings truth to life.” —Priscilla Burczynski “These books will make you laugh, cry, and every emotion in between!” —Amber Hardison Youngblood “It’s the single greatest book series in the world!” —Eli Jenkins, age 10 “I love the Wingfeather series because—while being a thrilling and suspenseful adventure story full of humor and silliness—it also contains rich characters and themes, capturing the deep longings we all feel as humans to be loved in our brokenness and the ache in our souls for the world to be not as it is, but as it should be.” —Stefanie Mattea Delinois “Andrew Peterson’s storytelling in this series feels like a blend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien told by a Gen X-er: it is deep and rich, with plenty of chuckles throughout.” —Alicia McArthur “The Wingfeather Saga is an immersive fantasy world with some very real truths. You find out that the stories are true.” —Abigail Boles “It’s funny and entertaining, yet uplifting and encouraging in ways I never expected.” —Cosette Schamberger, age 16 “I’m not sure when I have laughed so loudly or cried so visibly when reading a series.” —Sheri Dawn Cornett “One time I was at a book-signing table with AP. A couple came up and said to him, ‘I wanted you to know that when we finished Book 4 of the Wingfeather Saga, we all cried, and then my son prayed to receive Christ.’” —Jonathan Rogers

The Habit Podcast is a series of conversations with writers about writing, hosted by Jonathan Rogers. This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Francis Su, author of Mathematics for Human Flourishing. In this episode, Jonathan and Francis talk about revealing the unseen, the ability of math to teach virtue, and what it might mean to re-enchant the discipline of math. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 10 of The Habit Podcast. Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Today, again, I am at the wide sink in our kitchen scrubbing up the dinner dishes. We don’t own a dishwasher, and I don’t think we’ve ever owned one. I grew up on a chore rotation of dishwashing, so it never really struck me as a priority to have a dishwasher. Some days, however, I think about our burgeoning family of recently-seven and wonder if we’ve made a terrible error in judgment. But this is not one of those days. The younger kids are all finally down for their naps, and my wife is out with our oldest on a mommy-daughter date. I have pressing things on my mind, but I know that cleaning up the kitchen comes first, so I settle into it. I’m impatient on the best of days, but this simple ritual of taking fifteen minutes to wash up the dishes has become a haven for me. Maybe I just love the minuscule accomplishments of cleaning small things. It doesn’t take a day or two, or even an hour. In five seconds I can have a clean bowl, and I can set it aside. No matter that after breakfast tomorrow it will be dirty again. I can clean it again, without fuss or much energy. And as each newly-cleaned dish gathers in the drainer, my sense of accomplishment grows and grows. I even begin to think, illogically, that I can just as easily conquer the monstrous obligations lumbering in the shadows just beyond the bubble-clad light of the sink. I make the process of stacking them all to dry a sort of Tetris challenge, to see how many I can fit before I have to hand-dry a few. I may not be good at following up on emails or planning ahead, but I am good at Tetris. I kind of wish that my creative life was more like washing dishes. I set goals for myself all the time (don’t we all?) and try to carve out time to meet them. But it always seems like I’m staring at a pile of dirty dishes accumulating by the minute. I keep lists of my artistic dirty dishes: post that thing on Facebook, write another blog, edit those poems, write another chapter, tweet something so people know you actually have Twitter. Once in a while I even compile these lists into master lists. And since going to Hutchmoot, my pile of books I absolutely can’t do without reading has grown from hobbit-height to ent-height. In recent days I’ve mostly just glanced guiltily at this pile while watching another episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with my wife. I’m this way with messages and emails too. I treat these two inboxes like an overstuffed closet—peeking in and mumbling something about “must go through that next weekend” but secretly fearful that the moment I open the door I will be suffocated in a deluge of information that will only serve to stress me out more than I already am. So I let it all linger behind the little red dot, accumulating guilt as I accumulate messages. And this can often become the way of my spiritual life, acquiring nudge after nudge at the base of my skull: “you know, you really ought to pray/read Scripture/confess that thing/call up and encourage that person more than you are now…” until I finally get a free hour. Then, the moment I crack my Bible open, all the other things I know I need to do crowd in on me, and what was supposed to be a spiritually refreshing time becomes a battle to just clear everything out so I have headspace to talk to God. There are ways to combat all of these things, I hear, twelve rules for living, or was it seven habits? Because what I need most when I’m overwhelmed is a dozen reminders of what I should be doing. But right now I’m not thinking about decluttering my inbox, or sorting my to-do list into five other to-do lists, or scheduling out a better walk with God. I’m finding a measure of comfort in washing dishes. It’s the small motion of caring for the things that have been placed in my care. It’s the same comfort I receive from sweeping the floor, or pulling a weed, or taking a walk, or brushing my teeth, or boiling water for pasta, or building a train track with my sons. Ordering the seemingly small and insignificant in my place becomes an act of defiance in the face of a world that pressures us all to achieve. Chris Wheeler Somehow these things seem so unimportant that engaging in them has become a weird sort of luxury. I could consider it procrastination, but it’s not solely avoidance when it’s housework, right? Of course I have to do them, but I care about them more because they are unseen by an online world, unmeasured by a quantity-based economy, untimed by an efficiency-obsessed culture. Ordering the seemingly small and insignificant in my place becomes an act of defiance in the face of a world that pressures us all to achieve. Every moment really does become an act of worship, something holy, when we focus on taking the time needed to do the next small thing well. The first session I went to at Hutchmoot 2019 was John Pattison’s candid discussion on Wendell Berry’s Sabbath Poems. We talked about how the concept of Sabbath, built as it was out of the seventh day of Genesis 2, was akin to the afterglow of birth. After God created, He established a full day just to delight in His creation. At least one-seventh of our time is to be set aside purely for the purpose of enjoyment of God and His works, without the pressure of striving or achieving. We get to be still and know that He is God, and we are His deeply-loved children. We get the comforting reminder that we are not in control and it’s okay. If we take our hands off the wheel for a day, the world will still turn. God holds this rest out to us as a gift, that we may cease striving once a week. Sabbath, at its core, is an essential reminder to ourselves that we do not make the world go round, nor do we cure the deepest ills in our souls, nor does our work hold sway over our value as God’s children. One day a week, we are to receive. But what about those who find it practically impossible to cease labor due to a particular season of life, or who cannot just stop ministering to the sick, feeding the hungry, binding up the broken, or caring for those in their care? Where do we find rest along the way, until we can partake of another Sabbath? The days are long enough as it is that Sabbath days already seem further and further apart, and even when we find them they are interrupted. We know that we need to prioritize rest better and seek out help from our communities in difficult seasons. But as some of us discussed after the session, we still find respite only in quick gulps, like Midwesterners soaking up an hour of sun during a false spring. It’s never enough. But is it not possible to find rest in the unfolding of our working lives as well? We are constantly lifting up our eyes to our Provider, seeking strength for the work ahead as well as rest in our weariness. We join our work to Heaven’s gift, Our hope to what is left, That field and woods at last agree In an economy Of widest worth. “1982: VII,” from This Day, Wendell Berry I’m hoping, in my idealism, to devote this upcoming Sunday purely to resting and receiving. Yet, even on that day, I will still make a meal, wash dishes, change diapers, take a shower, and play with my children—as acts of delight and defiance, a measure of Sabbath. For Sabbath can be found not only on Sundays, even though they act as a tangible reminder to rest. It can also be found in a moment of letting go of all other pressing concerns and doing the next simple, necessary task well. Through this lens, my habits can become havens. I begin to believe that even when I put my hands back on the wheel, the world will still turn. What if I were to submit myself to the task before me, trusting that what I do now is freely done, for a Father who loves me? What if I trusted that God held all the worries and dreams and chores ahead of me, that He knows my weakness and gives me His strength in the midst of it? What if I believed that something as simple as washing a dish, writing a paragraph of a story, or changing my toddler’s diaper carries eternal significance? That would indeed be a Sabbath-filled life, a life that finds comfort in the ultimate rest ahead. Many are the things that must be daily done. Meet me therefore, O Lord, in the doing of the small, repetitive tasks, In the cleaning and ordering and maintenance and stewardship of things— Of dishes, of floors, of carpets And toilets and tubs, of scrubbing and sweeping and dusting and laundering— That by such stewardship I might bring a greater order to my own life, and to the lives of any I am given to serve, so that in those ordered spaces bright things might flourish: fellowship and companionship, creativity and conversation, learning and laughter and enjoyment and health. As I steward the small, daily tasks, may I remember these good ends, and so discover in my labors the promise of the eternal hopes that underlie them. “A Liturgy for Domestic Days,” from Every Moment Holy

Howdy, folks. As everyone knows, the world has gotten a bit more complicated in the last few days. Thankfully, the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t affect much in the way of the Rabbit Room’s day-to-day operations. But as some of you know, we’re scheduled to participate in several homeschool conventions and a Local Show in the next few weeks. After much thought and prayer, this is what we’ve decided to do in light of these upcoming events: The Great Homeschool Convention in Ft. Worth, Texas, begins today. Our staff is already there and the convention is proceeding as planned. However, we want the Rabbit Room and its staff to model responsible behavior during the event, and as such we’ve asked them to politely avoid handshakes and physical contact with the public as well as to use all means available to ensure that our booth and products are safe and hygienic. Remember that while the virus is relatively harmless to most of us, it can be much more serious for others, and therefore we want to ensure that we do all we can to protect everyone and avoid spreading it as much as possible. To that end, the Rabbit Room has decided not to attend the next two Great Homeschool Conventions (South Carolina, and Missouri). We regret the need to cancel our talks and presence at these events, but we feel strongly that this is the most loving and responsible way to care for our community and the public in general. These events are not critical to our organization, so there’s no need to put anyone at risk. At the moment, we still plan to attend the Cincinnati convention in April, but we will continue to monitor the situation and will let you know if that changes. There’s also a Local Show scheduled for this coming Tuesday, and we’ve made the decision to cancel that as well. All tickets will be refunded and we’ll see about rescheduling the show later this spring. While some may think these measures unnecessary, I think it’s important to point out that the Rabbit Room is an organization that springs from and fosters community, and in that light, our mission rightly ought to drive us to care for, love, and protect that community diligently. By saying no to these three public events in the short term, I believe we’re saying yes to the well-being of our community in the long term. We’re not over-reacting. We’re not freaking out. We’re not claiming the world is ending. We’re just taking a few easy measures to be sure we consider what’s in everyone’s best interest. This too shall pass. And in the meantime, consider this a good opportunity to spend some quiet evenings at home with a book and a loved one.