In the last few years I’ve had an increasing fascination with hiphop music. (Yes. You read that right.) I suppose it started when I was working with teenagers and one of them was a fan of Lecrae (this was years before his Grammy wins). Christian rap? No thanks, I thought. But I listened, and after a while I found myself interested. It didn’t win me over at the time. It was mainly a means of finding common ground with kids, but it got me started. A couple of years later, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida album became a favorite and that led to a fascination with Jay-Z’s mashup Viva La Hova. I was secretly addicted to that album for several weeks, and I had no idea what to make of it. I just couldn’t stop listening. Then Josh Garrels Love and War and the Sea in Between came along. I played “Farther Along” and “Ulysses” and “Beyond the Blue” a million times like every other folk/acoustic-steeped, middle-aged guy, but my other favorite track on that record was “Resistance.” I love that song. I think it completed the bridge for me. It was clearly hiphop, yet it was also clearly something else, something closer to what I was used to. And after I admitted to myself how much I loved that song, it got a lot easier to look for similar stuff elsewhere. A few months ago I talked to Randall Goodgame about the new Sing the Bible record he’s working on and he told me a hiphop artist named Propaganda was coming to the studio to record something for the album. That name rang a bell, and it didn’t take me long to remember that when we premiered N. D. Wilson’s short film The Hound of Heaven at Hutchmoot, Propaganda was the man at the center of that, the narrator reciting the text of the poem. I remember Nate telling me I should listen to some of Prop’s work, but I never followed up on it. I’ve rectified that now. Check out this video of one of his spoken word performances. The more I listen to and learn about Propaganda, the more I like him. Spend some time on Youtube and you’ll see what I mean. Even if you aren’t a hiphop fan, check out his spoken word videos and interviews. And if you do much digging, you’ll learn he’s part of an organization called Humble Beast, which is an awful lot like the Rabbit Room. Here’s their mission statement: Humble Beast exists in humility to disciple God’s people and advance God’s kingdom through beautiful acts of creativity and theology for the worship of the triune God. Out of this mission comes Humble Beast’s four major distinctives: Creativity, Humility, Theology, Doxology. Check out their website here. It’s home to my other favorite hiphop artist, Sho Baraka (more on him in another post, I hope). Last Friday, Propaganda’s new record, Crooked, was released. I listened to it straight through, twice—and it made me cry both times (seriously). It’s an album about problems and anger and frustration and the complicated nature of relationships, but it’s not only about how crooked the world is, or about how crooked our hearts are, it’s about making things right. Prop’s ability to paint a landscape of America in all its darkness and light reminds me of the best of Springsteen, and his ability to diagnose social issues with appropriate anger yet without losing hope recalls the best of U2. And it’s all done in his own unique and articulate style mixing spoken word, rap, and R&B together into a symphony of sound and words. If you love poetry and wordplay, you owe it to yourself to pay attention. I realized a few days ago that the reason I’m drawn to hiphop is the same reason I’m drawn to storytelling in general. Storytelling is the most powerful way in which I experience the perspective of others. Whether I’m reading a novel, or a poem, or watching a movie or documentary, or listening to a hiphop album, I’m in the skin of another person, seeing the world from their eyes, feeling the tension of their particular lives and struggles. And through the process of seeing better what others see, I better understand what I see myself (and what I’m blind to). This is what art does. It has the power to transplant us into the mind and experience of another, and if we’re paying attention, we might learn something of ourselves—we might change something of ourselves. Crooked’s messages are hard to hear at times, but that’s as it should be if we’re looking at the true nature of the world (or of our hearts). But what makes the album great is its acknowledgement that the brokenness of the world is systemic to all creation and answerable, reparable, only by the coming of the Kingdom. In an album full of ironies and arguments, the consistent underlying theme is that we’re all broken and in need of the Gospel. And in that, Crooked reminds me of Light for the Lost Boy more than anything else. Musically, the connection might be tenuous, but emotionally and thematically, both of these albums tickle my soul in the same way. We wake in the night in the womb of the world We beat our fists on the door We cannot breathe in this sea that swirls So we groan in this great darkness For deliverance Deliverance, O Lord –“Come Back Soon” by Andrew Petersonhttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/01-Come-Back-Soon.mp3 Longing for escape and hoping in salvation Yeah, hoping in salvation Waiting for the day He make the crooked way straight [Chorus: Audrey Assad] We march on a crooked road And we raise our eyes And we raise our eyes Justice is going to roll Like a river wide Like a river wide —“Made Straight” by Propagandahttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/13-Made-Straight-feat.-Audrey-Assad.mp3 Did I even mention that Audrey Assad makes an appearance? If you’re like me, you’ve got an iTunes library full of acoustic folk-rock music that you’ll love until the day you die. So I get it if you’re skeptical about branching off into something as musically foreign as hiphop, but I’d encourage you to stretch your boundaries. There’s good music being made out there, and I’m glad I’ve discovered the Humble Beast artists. They’re doing good work. Check them out. Crooked is a fantastic place to start. Crooked is now available for free at Humble Beast.

Every Moment Holy is scheduled to print in just a few weeks. This past weekend at the Rabbit Room Writers Fellowship, we read through one of the liturgies to close our meeting. I thought I’d share it with everyone this morning so you can get another peek at what we’ve been working on. It’s written for writers of fiction, but I think it works well for writers of any kind. If you’d like to be one of the first to get your hands on Every Moment Holy, consider becoming a Rabbit Room Member (members will receive a free copy as their 3rd quarter thank-you gift). A Liturgy for Writers of Fiction from Every Moment Holy Writers: Lord, let me love this world into being Leader: Even as you, in the infinite poetry of your thoughts and the inexhaustible joy of your love, spoke a universe into existence, into life, into the complex motion of its myriad particulars, so grant the grace that I might trace by my thoughts and words the echoes of some infinite pattern of your creation. Take these my small offerings: my pen, my paper, my words, my willingness to be still and present. Fill my imagination. Be to me both fire and wonder, inspiration and guide. Take these my small offerings. Take and multiply them into a story that might stir or salve, that might shape or strengthen, that might name hidden wounds or secret hopes, that might open hearts to your mysteries. May your Holy Spirit meet me in the process of creation, for even as you called into being all things from nothing, so would I now step into the nothingness of an empty page, trusting that your Spirit might be manifest in this act of faith and stewardship. Lord, let me love this world into being, and let me love each of the characters I create, even those who choose to harm, who choose their own pride, their own strength, their own glory above what is right and good and true; let me love even those who turn from righteousness, who eschew grace. May I allow them the dignity to become themselves within the world I have created, and may I not impose my own will upon these creations, but leave room for them to make real choices of consequence to themselves and others. May they have something like a breath of life in them, and not be the shriveled fruit of my own moralizing. Shape me by these labors. May I return from sojourning in this world of the imagined, made—by the long practice of empathy—more fit for acts of mercy and service in this true world of your creation. Lord, let me love the reader, ever writing for their good, writing words that might, in the employ of your Spirit, bring life and hope and conviction. And when I have written lines that are but my own vain ramblings, or when I am too enamored of my own cleverness, grant me the humility and the courage to make the hard choices, to amputate my own ego. Reveal these deficiencies to me before I send my words out into the world, that I might not add to the noise. But if I do, may it please you by your grace to turn even my darkness to light so that even the fruits of my pride and insecurity would be redeemed for the good of your people and the furtherance of your kingdom and the glory of your name. Lord, let me love this world into being because you are the author of stories within stories within stories and of poetry within all of creation and you have made us lovers and stewards of this gift of story. We who live out our small stories within your greater story would also tell, by your grace, such stories as would somehow awaken hearts to wonder, to beauty, to truth, to love. It is in the name of Jesus that we ask this. Lord, let me love this world into being Oh Spirit of God, be active! Lord, let me love this world into being. Oh Spirit of God, breathe life! Lord, let me love this world into being. Oh Spirit of God, brood over the waters of my finite imagination! Call new worlds and stories into being. Oh Spirit of God, breathe life! Copyright 2017 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey

As you know, metaphor and simile are not at all the same thing. The distinction between the two makes all the difference in the world. Let’s compare them using the song: “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine You make me happy when skies are gray You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you So please don’t take my sunshine away” Ahhh. What a simple, sweet use of metaphor. Now imagine if this precious song were written using simile instead: “You are like sunshine, my only one like sunshine You make me happy when my mood is as gray skies You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you So please don’t take my one who is like sunshine away” Doesn’t quite have that same ring, does it? This is because, of course, similes use “like” or “as” to compare two different things while metaphors compare these things by declaring them to be the same, even though in a literal sense, they are not. I like to personify ideas in order to understand them. Please excuse the forthcoming use of metaphor to describe simile, but I can’t refrain. Simile is sensible. Simile walks into the room with a nicely ironed shirt and combed hair, and would be outraged at himself if you were to tell him he has a little bit of food stuck in his teeth. He is careful to regard the world just as it is, never letting his feelings get the best of him. He religiously abides by the law of analogy, fully aware of how all things are alike to one another, yet unalike. His world is ordered into a handsome hierarchy of Being, and he knows just where he fits in, because he has given it extensive thought. He gives everything extensive thought. He is, one might say, anal retentive. Metaphor bursts into the room proclaiming that she is a rag doll breaking apart at the seams, there’s a tempest raging in her heart, and everyone she has ever loved is a stranger. Clearly, Simile would have none of that. There is no quicker way to violate every one of his rules. One thing may share similarities with another, but by no means can one thing be another! He would tell Metaphor to calm down, that she is clearly not a rag doll and that it is an impossibility for the blood-pumping organ in her chest to contain within itself a tornadic storm. To which Metaphor would reply, “You don’t get it. You don’t understand me.” And this is crucial. Metaphor does not have time to arrange her world into neatly chosen comparisons; she has emotions to express. Implicit in this urgency is Metaphor’s wisdom: there is a truth to life truer than literal truth. She knows that when the situation calls for it, she must do greater justice to the truth of the moment than Simile will allow for with mere factual comparison. Metaphor knows that it is not enough to say, “You are like sunshine,” but that love compels us to say, “You are my sunshine.” This is called emotional intelligence. (Quick disclaimer: I have deliberately exaggerated both Simile and Metaphor to make a point here. Similes can be delightful, and very emotionally sensitive, while metaphors can be dry and boring. In addition, the gender roles implicated in each example are in no way meant to be prescriptive.) Now, when metaphors are constructed one on top of another in an overarching narrative, something wonderful happens. No longer are these comparisons constricted to momentary sentences—it becomes possible for characters, plots, and scenes to take on metaphorical qualities. Here we’re moving into the realm of symbolism, where entire stories become enchanted with layers upon layers of meaning. I’m a sucker for stories like these. One such story that has greatly influenced my imagination over the years is the Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away, which illustrates the gifts and snares of commerce between the human and spirit worlds through the decisions of its main character, Chihiro. Throughout the story, Chihiro must protect and retain her own humanity by practicing the virtues of hospitality, courage, and wisdom towards the spirits she encounters, not all of whom are well-intentioned. By the end of the film, she has grown into a true poverty of spirit. I have found that, by analogy, Spirited Away has much to say about how I as a songwriter relate to the ideas and intuitions that enter my imagination, many of which are archetypes much older than me (timeless spirits in a sense). In this way, I believe it is an instructive film for those of us especially concerned with tending to our inner imaginative worlds. In my next post I will examine two vignettes from Spirited Away and make a few observations about what we can learn from them. I will then explore some metaphors for the imagination itself and ask specifically Christian questions about what it means to accept and embrace the poverty of our imaginations in the image of the cross of Christ. And, of course, Metaphor will accompany me for the journey and make some insights of her own along the way. Stay tuned!

Who was Martin Luther? What did he do when he nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on Oct 31st, 1517? What did he intend when he sought to ground the Christian life in a theology of the cross, rather than a theology of glory? This seminar from our friends at Covenant Theological Seminary marks the 500th year of the Protestant Reformation by considering the late Medieval context of Luther’s Reformation. The seminar will explore his theological, pastoral, and biblical writings, seeking to make application for the Christian life in our “post-everything” culture. Through lectures, review of primary and secondary texts, and conversation in community, attendees will seek to understand Luther’s theological program, considering key features of his thought, such as the doctrine of justification, the theology of the cross, law and grace, prayer, hymnody, and vocation. Professor David Filson is a pastor-scholar who serves on the pastoral staff at Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. David is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. candidate in Historical and Theological Studies at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and a visiting lecturer in Apologetics and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte and Atlanta. David blogs at www.christwardcollective.org, www.reformation21.org and www.teachinglikerain.wordpress.com. He is also a regular panelist for the podcast, East of Eden: The Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards. This weekend seminar is part of a larger course which continues each evening the following week. Covenant Seminary students, alumni, and auditors are eligible for that week-long course. For more information about Covenant Theological Seminary Nashville and the Masters of Theological Studies degree offered in Nashville, please connect with the site director, Rob Wheeler at rob.wheeler@covenantseminary.edu. Times & Dates Friday Aug 4, 6–9pm Saturday Aug 5, 8:30am–5:00pm The cost to the public is $45, but Rabbit Room readers can use the discount code “rabbitroom” to register for only $15. For more information, and to register, click here. Source: We Are All Beggars: The Life & Theology of Martin Luther Tickets, Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite

When we invited Ned Bustard to illustrate Every Moment Holy, we asked him to embrace the look of medieval woodcuts with all their symbols and iconic imagery. But because the book is about recalling the sacred in our everyday lives, we also wanted him to find ways to take that old style and inject it with modern sensibilities and contemporary elements. Ned is fast at work carving the linocuts for the book and I thought it would be fun to show you a little of his work in progress. This first image goes with a liturgy titled “A Liturgy for Domestic Days,” and it perfectly captures the intersection of old and new, sacred and mundane. Note the image of Christ humbly scrubbing the bathroom floor. And here’s a look at the process of carving a linocut. This is the illustration for “A Liturgy for Arriving at the Ocean.” Each of the images in this piece have specific meanings in Christian symbology. Yes, even the mermaid. This is the final, carved block that will be inked and used to print the illustration. No one ever said it was going to be easy. Ned only has about twenty left to carve, and they are all going to be amazing. The book will be off to the presses in the next couple of weeks. Pray for us as we pull the final details together. Click here for more information about Every Moment Holy.

My Wendell Berry journey began with reading his essays. I was enthralled with his ideas of husbandry, his distaste for computers, and his reluctance to rely on coal for energy. But when I read Hannah Coulter last year as part of a church book group, I was less mesmerized. Although I found the book beautiful and sweet, it was also painful for me to read. It touched on some deep wounds from childhood regarding family and community. I grew up in a log cabin on twelve acres of woods in Georgia. I was homeschooled. I was very secluded from the world. It was both hard and joyous to leave that place. It was hard because it was everything I knew and loved. It was joyous because it was freedom from what at times felt like a prison. In Hannah Coulter, Hannah and her husband talk about the children that grew up and never returned to their family farm as if they were lost—to Hannah and her husband, to love and community, and maybe even to Christ. I’m not sure that I can get on board with Berry’s picture of staying. Yet at the same time, I do see in my friends and at times myself, a fear of commitment, a selfish desire to “make the most out of life,” and a worldly view that cheapens community and demeans the simple life of devotion to one’s family and place. My debut album is called In Search of the Sea, and it is all about leaving and going on an adventure. The longing for an exciting life is not hard to defend—our culture is saturated with it. “Make your life the best movie possible.” That’s what I hear from my TV and also from some of my favorite authors and speakers, many of them devout believers. But I find something missing from that view and almost sigh in relief when I read that it is not only okay but perhaps even admirable to look at life a different way—a slower way. The song “Hey, Annaliese” is about a girl who is always leaving. She’s been running away from being known and loved. The chorus says: Hey, Annaleise there’s a place you can land here, there’s a place you can stay, there’s a place you can grow.Don’t be afraid, afraid of the shoreline, afraid of the down time, afraid of slow years. In the end, I refuse to take a strong stance either way: I love adventure and travel too much to stay in one place, but I also long for deep relationships, commitment, and a physical place to call home. When I think of loyalty, I think of Ruth in the Old Testament. She was loyal to a person instead of a place. She clung to Naomi, but left her father’s land and religion. As a Christian, I know my first loyalty is always to Christ, and he might send me all over the known world. He might also ask me to stay in one tiny place for a very long time. Perhaps “a time to stay and a time to go” is a line that should be added to Ecclesiastes 3. Perhaps if we answered this question (to leave or to go) definitely, then we would be avoiding a real relationship with Christ and never learning to truly follow him. So what do you think? When have you left or stayed and what came of it? “Hey, Annaliese” Music Video: In Search of the Sea, will be available July 21st on iTunes. Until then, you can pre-order it at: http://www.hettymusic.com.

When we were rounding out the record at the end of the process Jeff mentioned this hymn written Frederick Whitfield in 1855 and recorded it as a short interlude to go after “Come Away With Me.” Jeff on piano, and myself on guitar. It’s a fitting melody after the thoughts of God’s love to us in “Come Away With Me.” It’s a short bit, only a chorus, because it’s meant as a response, but below are the lyrics in entirety. One of the things I love about many of the old hymns is how they speak of who God is and what he has done. When a modern worship song or an old hymn goes on too much about what we should be doing for Jesus, we’re not being fed with the very thing that stirs and empowers us to do: faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. This hymn, which sounds at first as if it’s all about how much I love Jesus, is really about who God is and what he has done; we love him “because he first loved me.” “O, How I Love Jesus” from Ron Block and Jeff Taylor’s Trouble Go Down (available here) There is a name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth; it sounds like music in my ear, the sweetest name on earth. Refrain: O how I love Jesus, O how I love Jesus, O how I love Jesus, because he first loved me! It tells me of a Savior’s love, who died to set me free; it tells me of his precious blood, the sinner’s perfect plea. [Refrain] It tells of one whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe; who in each sorrow bears a part that none can bear below. [Refrain]

You know we love our books at The Rabbit Room, so here’s a little help finding your next favorite. Welcome to Rabbit Reads, a new weekly series where we offer a recommendation from our overflowing shelves and open the floor for discussion. Anything can show up here: old and new, novels and memoirs, comics and kid lit. We just promise it’s something worth your time. Let’s get started with a book that’s been on our radar for months… Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau, 2014) Memoirs / Law / Social Justice Why We Love It: “Ms. Parks leaned back, smiling. ‘Ooooh, honey, all that’s going to make you tired, tired, tired.’ … Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked to me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, ‘That’s why you’ve got to be brave, brave, brave.’” I don’t know how to begin talking about Just Mercy. Sometimes I could barely make it through a chapter because I needed to stop and let anger and grief do its work. Sometimes, I flew through the pages, spurred on by glimpses of hope. Bryan Stevenson’s dedication to living out justice and mercy through his vocation is inspiring, and his memoir gives us a front row seat to corruption and healing, fear and hope. Stevenson, a Harvard Law School graduate and founder of Equal Justice Initiative, has dedicated his life to advocating for the forgotten in American prisons. He’s argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court, defended the wrongfully convicted, and spent over 30 years challenging racial and economic inequities in the U.S. justice system. But the beating heart of the story is one of his early clients, Walter McMillan, an African-American man wrongfully convicted of a young, white girl’s murder in Monroeville, AL. (The irony that this takes place in Harper Lee’s hometown is not ignored.) Stevenson retraces Walter’s story in riveting, readable prose — the bizarre circumstances that led him to death row, the evidence for his innocence, and the six year journey to his exoneration. The story feels too crazy to be true, but it is, and interspersed throughout are stories of other clients — mentally disabled adults, poverty stricken families, and neglected and abused children serving time in horrible, adult prison conditions. Statistics and evidence abound (it is a lawyer’s story, after all), but the particular people, their names and stories, compel us to see the humanity we share. It hurts to read a story like this. Behind the author’s compassion for broken people, a rage burns against a broken system. Instead of murderers and thieves, he presents humans with resilience, concerns, families, a sense of humor. And though fear and prejudice is on full display, he shows us beautiful moments of healing— a racist prison guard broken by empathy, a couple who chooses to love a child convict. And there is the beauty, a hint of light through the iron bars. Go Deeper: Since its 2014 release, so much conversation has surrounded this book. Here’s the author’s popular TED Talk “We Need to Talk about an Injustice.” It gives a good 22 minute backstory to issues discussed more deeply in the book. Have you read Just Mercy? Feel free to discuss your thoughts in the comments. [Just Mercy is available here in the Rabbit Room Store.]

I recently had the privilege of editing a manuscript for my friend, the artist and writer Kari Gale. Kari writes a lot about pilgrimage and her forthcoming book describes the ten weeks she spent on Iona, a small island off the western coast of Scotland that has become nearly synonymous with Celtic Christianity. Though the island measures only one by three miles—an area smaller than my town of Silverton, Oregon (pop. 10,000)—Iona was the heartbeat of monastic life in Scotland and northeastern England for hundreds of years. It was the adopted home of Saint Columba, who arrived from Ireland in A.D. 563, perhaps as penance for taking up arms as a monk. Over the next three decades, Columba oversaw the foundation of some sixty monasteries in Scotland. The Book of Kells, the famous illuminated gospels dating from around 800, was probably begun on Iona. Also familiar are the high stone crosses, which some scholars believe first came into popular use there. In one passage in her manuscript, Kari recalls sitting on the rock ruins of a medieval nunnery and feeling welcomed into the ongoing spiritual life of a community that hasn’t been officially active for hundreds of years. I could easily imagine the women who for generations had quietly gone about their lives of daily prayer, work, and worship in that place. The spirit of those nuns—as well as the monks and laypeople of ancient Iona—seems to have permeated the island’s very soil and stones. What animates the whole project is a hunch that we still live in a God-saturated world. John Pattison Which got me thinking: What is the half-life of holiness? Does holiness accumulate in a place over time, and can it be felt by the people who live or visit there, even many years later? And is this part of what Celtic Christians meant by “thin places”—those sites where the membrane between earth and heaven, the visible world and the invisible, seems especially porous? My New Project As I mentioned in a recent blog post, I am working on a book project about the re-enchanting of ordinary life. Prior to finding clarity on the project, there were weeks when I sensed I was writing “around” a central theme—in blog posts, in my journal, or on whatever scrap of paper was close at hand—but I couldn’t articulate what that theme was. Reading the above passage in Kari’s manuscript flipped a switch for me. I wrote down a string of questions I wanted to explore further. Those became the book’s superstructure and, eventually, a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. What animates the whole project is a hunch that we still live in a God-saturated world. Celtic Christians believed that even the most common tasks (washing dishes, milking the cow, baking bread, etc.) were performed with the help of the Trinity and in the company of angels. A walk to and from the fields was an opportunity to talk to God with the intimacy of Adam and Eve in the Garden. We too can meet God in the “thin places” of our everyday lives. This is the spirituality that animates Slow Church within the day-to-day stuff of life. My book may start in Ireland and Scotland but it moves progressively closer to home. The wilderness, the neighborhood, the Church, our families, our bodies, the borderlands of our own souls: if we are attentive, these are seams through which we glimpse firsthand the presence of the God who still pervades and sustains all things. The Half-Life of Holiness My new book isn’t about Celtic spirituality, though it is profoundly informed and inspired by it. Learning about my spiritual ancestors—not to mention my actual ancestors (the name “Pattison” can be traced back to a Gaelic kingdom that included Iona)—has given my project clarity and momentum and enthusiasm. For example, Kari’s simple, quiet, lovely recollection of the nunnery spurred weeks of my own writing. My initial question, “What is the half-life of holiness?” was stuck in my head for weeks. Contemplating it invigorated my thinking about place, time, impact, and the Church…so much so that I had created separate pages in my pocket notebook to capture the stream of questions, quotes, and thoughts on those subjects. To give you a sense of where the book is going—and to reveal a little about my own process—here are some of those notes I made in my pocket notebook. (Pretend they are handwritten.) Each represented a trail to be explored in more detail later: Place I’m fascinated by the idea that Spirit-filled care for a particular place leaves a trace. It’s the fingerprint of God left by Christians who see themselves as the hands of God on earth. What’s just as thrilling is the belief that what is true for Iona is possible for my own community: Silverton as a thin place. Wendell Berry wrote in one of his poems: “There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.” Those of us who pledge allegiance to Jesus are invited to join God in the re-sacralization of our places. This includes our homes, our neighborhoods, our common spaces, our places of business and education, and everything in-between. It includes people as well as the built environment. It also includes the water, air, soil, and rocks, and everything that lives in, on, and above them. Sometimes our job is to actively cultivate those places into a new flourishing, reclaiming our Edenic vocation as thoughtful stewards of Creation. At other times our role is to exercise self-control and to leave well enough alone. Time We are engaged in work we didn’t start and won’t see the end of. God was here before us and will be here after. We know the past, hope for the future, and try to live faithfully in and to the present. One of our hopes is that people will come after us who want to love our places as much as we did. Emily Dickinson: Forever – is composed of Nows – ‘Tis not a different time – Except for Infiniteness – And Latitude of Home – “Forever…is composed of Nows…” This doesn’t diminish the importance of the present moment but rather sanctifies it. This reminds me of the distinction made in Greek between chronos time and kairos time. Chronos is chronological time, kairos is the right or opportune time. (Richard Rohr describes kairos as “deep time.”) Is chronos time contained within kairos time, is it the other way around, or are they both contained in each other? Can time be a thin place? Impact Taking the long view is a reminder to cease my striving, slow down, and, when necessary, to submit my desire for “impact” and “legacy” to the requirements of the person and place right in front of me. Wendell Berry (again): Suppose we did our work like the snow, quietly, quietly, leaving nothing out. Church The nuns, monks, and laypeople on Iona—as well as the saints that were their traveling companions—are part of a “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). I want to take this as an invitation to learn about the “saints of Silverton.” These are the mostly anonymous men and women who loved well a place I hope to call home until I’m called Home. Life for Celtic Christians was an ongoing conversation with the supernatural. I’ve seen this dismissed as quaint superstition even from some spiritual writers I respect. That seems arrogant. What if God, in God’s generosity, meets us in the times, places, and ways in which we expect God to meet us? Some Christians in the U.S. today meet God in a great worship set, in the speaking of tongues, or by rehearsing the evidence that demands a verdict. For Celtic Christians, Christ, Mary, and the saints were present realities—and I have no reason to doubt them. RNS headline: “Author of Slow Church believes in ghosts” I also wrote down “The Columba Option,” though I doubt it will get as much traction as the original. Thankfully, we don’t always have to wait hundreds of years to experience the impact of someone’s quiet faithful presence. In Part 2 of this piece, I’ll introduce you to my friend James Helms, whose family has been working with neighbors to weave a fabric of care in northeast Portland. But, as we will see—and as James would be the first to tell you—he and his family are part a continuum of faithfulness that began long before they moved into the neighborhood. Image Credit: A painting of the Iona nunnery, by Kari Gale. From her forthcoming book and used with permission. Go Deeper: I’d love to connect and hear about the work you’re doing in your own neighborhood. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to the Slow Church blog. As a way of saying thank you, you’ll also get a free copy of the ebook, Growing Deeper in Our Church Communities. #CelticChristianity #ThinPlaces #Church #Iona #Place #BenedictOption #FaithfulPresence #Time

Once a month, our resident comics expert Jonny Jimison will weigh in on a graphic novel you should add to your library! Comics are more than superheroes, explosions, and ever expanding universes. There are imaginative stories, beautiful art, and compelling characters to discover hanging out in the graphic novel section of your favorite bookstore. Here’s Jonny . . . Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez (Nobrow Press, 2017) Graphic Novels / Kids and YA Why We Love It: Imagination is a powerful, magical force—but the more I understand that, the more aware I become of the ongoing battle for the control of its limitless power. Offered to God and sparked to life by truth and beauty, our imaginations light up the night—but there are dark forces fighting to warp imagination into a self-serving, self-destructive perversion. Nightlights by Lorena Alvarez is the story of a young girl named Sandy who faces that battle for the first time. And what a battle it is. When the attack is parried—when the enemy fails to control my imagination on his own terms—he has other strategies. One is convincing me that flights of imagination aren’t significant, but frivolous and unimportant. Another is getting my imagination hooked on the addictive affirmation of others. Both of these attacks are addressed in Nightlights. These are heavy, heady concepts, but Alvarez delivers them in entrancing, thoughtful, lovely, horrifying, wildly inventive images. This is cleverly constructed, cinematic visual storytelling that carried me on a wide-eyed journey and left me thinking and growing. Adults, read this book before showing it to children. It doesn’t pull punches, so it might not be for younger readers. And your imagination will appreciate this story too— as a reminder of the battle you’re in, and a reminder of what you’re fighting for. It’s a reminder of the wild, joyful power of the imagination you wield.

Take a few moments to scroll through Facebook or watch the news, and it’s tempting to despair. That’s how I’ve felt over the past week, with every new bit of information about last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville. Clashing ideologies, supremacy, racism, hate, power, and so many images of people doing violence not just with bodies, but with words. Some days it’s all too much to take. Some days, it’s hard to believe brave souls are out there doing their part to heal the wounds, dismantling oppression one merciful act at a time. It’s hard, tiring work, but it’s worth knowing about. It makes us all a little bit braver. That’s the kind of story told in Just Mercy (see our Rabbit Reads recommendation). Bryan Stevenson’s account of judicial inequality is compelling and eye-opening, but most of all, his thoughtful arguments and steadfast dedication give me hope. And if you’re like me, you could use a little bit of that right now. There’s a lot to say in the conversation about race and justice, and we want The Rabbit Room to be the sort of place where those conversations flow freely. That’s why we’re inviting you to read Just Mercy with us this fall. Starting September 5th, Laure Hittle and I will be hosting a conversation as we read through the book. Every Tuesday, we’ll share some questions to spark discussion about the stories in the book and ways we can practice reconciliation and justice in our families, churches, and all the places we call home. Here’s the reading plan: 9/5 – Intro, Ch 1-4 9/12 – Ch 5-8 9/19 – Ch 9-12 9/26 – Ch 13-16 10/3 – Break for Hutchmoot / Catch-up 10/10 – Epilogue and Post-Script, Wrap-up week We hope you’ll join us! Pick up a copy in The Rabbit Room Store, and invite your friends to join the conversation. See you on September 5th!

One of the new additions to the Hutchmoot program this year is Nashville artist, Wayne Brezinka, who will be leading a couple of art workshops. Wayne is not only one of the most talented visual artists in the city, he’s also one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. This story was recently featured on Nashville Public Radio and it’s a great introduction to Wayne’s work. In a portrait of a young Elvis Presley, painted by Nashville-area artist Wayne Brezinka, there’s something odd going on in that trademark pompadour — 40 years after the superstar’s death. The three-dimensional hair is striped with green, yellow, blue, red and white wires. Those wires were ripped from a 1950s-era phone system in the home and office of Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker. In fact, it’s likely they’re the very wires that carried the voice of Ed Sullivan, when he called Colonel Parker to discuss Presley’s now-famous appearances on Sullivan’s TV show. Click here to read the full story.

There are some stories we find when we’re kids that follow us well into adulthood. They’re comforting and familiar, but slowly reveal new beauties every time we encounter them. In this week’s edition of Rabbit Reads, I’d like to introduce you to one of mine: a 60s fantasy novel turned 80s cartoon turned one of my favorite books. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (Viking Press, 1968) Fiction / Fantasy Why We Love It: “The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.” It might be one of my favorite opening lines in fantasy writing. It’s wistful and lovely and sets the tone for a book I return to when I need a cozy, familiar tale. I first discovered The Last Unicorn in animated form when I was a little girl, but I didn’t know about sehnsucht then, that longing for another world. But the first time I read the original novel as a young adult, the story took on a whole new meaning. It begins in an eternal spring wood where a unicorn wonders, “Could I really be the last?” and leaves home to find others like her. She’s alone in the world and caught off guard — even offended — by the humans who look right through her majesty and only see an old mare. The immortal unicorn finds herself in a new age, where creatures like her have faded into legend, forgotten in the noise of everyday life. But not everyone is blind to the wonder. Along the way, she meets a bumbling magician, a peasant woman, and a lazy prince. She walks through the world as an eternal, ethereal presence, and nobody who encounters her leaves unchanged. Even the proud unicorn, still immortally herself, is altered by the kindness of her human companions in an ending that grows more bittersweet every time I read it. I love Beagle’s writing. It feels like old-fashioned high fantasy, but can turn contemporary and anachronistic at the turn of a page, giving the fantasy footing in our own world. And in this place where magic is nearly forgotten, she is the rare, real, and true thing. It’s the unicorn’s story, but I’m more drawn to the human characters who ruminate, fight, love, and grow, swept up in her fairy tale and becoming braver and stronger in her presence. So back to sehnsucht. Before I had a name for it, I felt it when Molly met the unicorn for the first time, greeting her with anger — “It would be the last unicorn in the world that came to Molly Grue!” After her outburst, the forgotten woman weeps, because in that moment, touching the unicorn’s mane, her little girl hopes become real and alive. In that moment, she’s reminded there’s still a little magic in this old world yet. And so am I.

In Part 1 of this piece I talked a bit about my new project on the re-enchanting of ordinary life. I also reflected on whether faithful presence might leave a trace that can be felt many years later. Thankfully, we don’t always have to wait hundreds of years to experience the impact of someone’s quiet fidelity to a place. My friend James Helms and his family are working with neighbors to weave a fabric of care in the Madison South neighborhood in northeast Portland, Oregon. But as we will see—and as James would be the first to tell you—he and his family are part of a continuum of faithfulness that began long before they moved into the area. From Madison South… Madison South is situated near the confluence of two interstates. This probably isn’t the neighborhood you think of when you hear about “Portlandia.” It hasn’t been overrun (yet?) by hipsters, bagpiping unicyclists, or artisanal knot stores. At a time when low- to middle-income neighborhoods are disappearing inside the city limits, Madison South is, by-and-large, still a working-class neighborhood. Most of Madison South is on the “wrong” side of 82nd Avenue, a street that is seen by some—when it is seen at all—as a kind of dividing line between “desirable” and “undesirable” Portland. Madison South does have its challenges, some of which, including prostitution, drugs, and inadequate infrastructure, are worn on its sleeves for all to see. James and his family moved there in 2005 after he got out of the military. “Coming from a cloistered base,” he told me recently, “it felt like we’d moved to the slum.” He and his wife bought a house on the internet, planning to flip it. But one thing after another slowed their progress until all of sudden it was 2008 and the housing market was in freefall. There were other changes too. In particular, God was softening James’s heart for the neighborhood. James is a member of the Navigators, an interdenominational ministry with an emphasis on evangelism and discipleship. One day, when James was reading his Bible, he came across Jesus’s command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). James wanted to take that command seriously with those living closest to him, but he wasn’t sure how. “I moved into it with a whole lot of ambiguity,” he said. “For six weeks I woke up every morning and went into the front room, which has this big window that looks out on the front yard, and I’d pray that God would start to open up doors so I could love my neighbors.” …to The Rocky Butte Community Something special happened after James had been praying for six weeks. The Helmses were planning a garage sale. One afternoon, when James was walking to the end of the block to hammer in a sign for the sale, he heard someone calling his name. He looked around and saw a man on a ladder against the side of a house. The man’s name was Jerome. They’d met a year before when Jerome’s kids had been selling magazines for a school fundraiser, but James didn’t know him well. (He really didn’t know any of his neighbors well yet.) So he was taken aback when Jerome climbed down the ladder, ran over to him, and gave him a huge hug. Then Jerome said, “For two weeks God has been telling me to talk to you, but I just didn’t know how to do that.” An important friendship was born. This was a turning point for James and his family. “I kept praying to God to open up doors in our community,” James remembered, “and those prayers were answered every time I intentionally stepped into my neighborhood.” The Helmses responded by moving more of their life into the front yard. For a year they hosted monthly barbecues in the front yard, gradually drawing in more and more neighbors. By the second year, neighbors asked if they could start hosting too and so the meal rotated houses. Relationships formed and deepened. The Helmses found many ways to tangibly love their neighbors. They also found opportunities to collaborate on larger projects, including a community garden, a neighborhood newspaper, two street murals, and more. As connections increased, more people saw the abundance that was already present in Madison South. In fact, residents informally re-branded their neighborhood as the “Rocky Butte Community.” The name honors both the area’s most prominent natural feature—a hill that offers one of Portland’s most comprehensive views of the city—and the community being knit together on ground-level. A few years earlier James had written off Madison South as a “slum.” Now he is eager to point out the neighborhood’s complexity, assets, and diverse vitality. “The area has a great mixture of brokenness and beauty,” he said. “We do have our messes—largely due to 82nd Avenue—but there are also cool green spaces. It’s also the intersection of disparate socio-economic groups and religious influences, including a Catholic monastery, a megachurch, and a Zen Buddhist community.” The Helmses don’t talk about selling the house anymore, and James is now part of Nav Neighbors, a Navigators initiative with the vision of transforming not only individual lives but families and whole neighborhoods. Every Step a Prayer I am the co-author of a book called Slow Church. What we mean by Slow Church begins and ends with deep presence—with God and with one another. Deep presence with God and neighbor isn’t the means to an end but the end itself. Faithfulness to even the most inspiring vision must submit itself to the requirements of faithfulness in this moment and with this person. This is slow, small, daily, often unglamorous, often invisible work. And “it takes time, over time,” as one Slow Church friend put it. But it all matters. The residents of the Rocky Butte Community are both characters in, and co-authors of, God’s story of reconciliation in their place. James, his family, and their neighbors are making contributions to that story, one faithful encounter after another. I obviously don’t know how many of those particular contributions will be known hundreds of years from now, but I believe something of them will be felt. Yet James is quick to note that they are part of a continuity of faithfulness in the parish that began long before they moved there. For years, the mail carrier for the neighborhood was a guy named Dave. Though he didn’t live in the area himself, Dave had come to love and know the people on his route. He was aware of the neighborhood’s struggles but also its beauty and its potential for greater wholeness. Dave met the Helmses when they moved onto the block. Later, he witnessed firsthand how the neighbors of the Rocky Butte Community were coming together in ways he’d been hoping for for so long. One day, Dave lingered at James’s house before continuing on his route. He told James that he had been praying for 10 years that someone would move into the neighborhood and have God’s heart for the people there. He’d been praying for the Helmses before he even knew them. Dave said, “Every step on this route was a prayer.” If you visit the Rocky Butte Community today you’ll see two street murals. One of the murals features silhouettes of characters from the neighborhood: several beloved pets, a neighbor who can often be seen gardening in his front yard, a neighbor who dealt in illegal substances but was a frequent front yard barbecuer and whose family was often present in the community. Only the locals know that one of the figures in the mural never actually lived in Rocky Butte, though he has been a real part of its story. It’s the man who for 10 years delivered letters and packages in the neighborhood and hoped for its flourishing. It’s the mail carrier for whom every step was a prayer, and in every prayer a drop of holiness. Image Credit: Dave’s silhouette on the mural in the Rocky Butte Community. Photograph by James Helms. Go Deeper: I’d love to connect and hear about the work you’re doing in your own neighborhood. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to the Slow Church blog. As a way of saying thank you, you’ll also get a free copy of the ebook, Growing Deeper in Our Church Communities. #Church #Portland #SlowChurch #FaithfulPresence #Time

I spent a lot of time on the road in 2016. Too much time probably, considering that I was out there talking about the virtues of slowing down and staying put. During one 120-day stretch, I traveled one out of every four days, curating discussions about Slow Church in neighborhoods and churches from suburban Seattle to rural North Carolina. Over four months, I did 22 formal events—and had numerous informal conversations—in ten states, some by myself and some with Chris Smith. Our consistent message: Don’t be overly enthralled by the fast and the flashy. The kingdom of God is like yeast and the mustard seed. The small stuff matters. Even the smallest acts of human faithfulness to God’s mission are slowly and patiently being woven into the great biblical drama of the reconciliation of all things. John Pattison Faithful presence in place can be difficult, slow, unsexy, and often heartbreaking work—though it could be the most rewarding work of your life as well. It almost certainly won’t put you on the cover of Christianity Today. It can’t be distilled into the “six easy steps to anything.” But it matters. Every life you touch, every person you equip to love and serve others—it matters. Some of the change may be invisible to you, but you never know where your influence is going to stop. Even the smallest acts of human faithfulness to God’s mission are slowly and patiently being woven into the great biblical drama of the reconciliation of all things. Though I talk about this stuff all the time, even I have to be regularly reminded of the truth of it. In July 2016, I spent several days in Chicago. It was my first time in that great city in a long time. I had rented a car, and so I spent a lot of time driving around, through one neighborhood and another, and out to the wealthy suburb where I was staying with some friends of friends. What I saw through my windshield was a city deeply segregated. Neighborhoods of enormous monetary wealth next to vast neighborhoods of striking economic poverty—with apparently no mixing of the two. And what I heard on the TV and radio were statistics of a city soaked in blood: 324 murders in the first six months of the year alone. On my last day in Chicago, I went to a Cubs game with my friend Tim Soerens. Tim is cofounder of the Parish Collective, an organization that connects and supports churches and community practitioners committed to the work of neighborhood renewal. Tim lives in Seattle but he happened to be visiting Chicago the same week as me. By the time we met up at Wrigley, my heart was in despair for the city. But I was shocked as I listened to Tim describe his own visit to Chicago. Unlike me, Tim had gotten out of his car. He had walked the streets and met pastors and laypeople, people of passion, creativity, and goodwill. In those same segregated neighborhoods that I had grieved over, judged at face value, and nearly written off—all from the safe confines of my rental car—in those same neighborhoods, Tim had heard and seen stories of life and hope. I despaired; Tim was energized. Violence, poverty, and systemic racism are real, obviously, but Tim had seen the Kingdom of God sprouting forth in the granular, in the everyday stuff of life. A Spiritual Dark Ages? We’re hearing a lot right now about the so-called death of the American Church. I’m currently reading Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option (Amazon | IndieBound), which makes the case that we are entering into a spiritual Dark Ages in this country. This book was featured on the cover of Christianity Today, and it has a good chance of being the biggest-selling book on the Church written in our lifetimes. Dreher suggests that what the dwindling number of true Christians need to do is to band together to protect orthodox Christianity from the barbarians at the gates. I’m not exaggerating; this is its central metaphor. I’ve been a Dreher fan for a while, but The Benedict Option is gloomy. There is an extent to which the Christianity we’ve taken for granted in the United States is fading from view. But that’s not the whole story. Not even close. I’d like you to imagine something with me. Picture in your mind’s eye a map of the United States. The map is lit by huge external lights, the flood lamps of cultural and political Christianity. These external lights are the reason the United States has sometimes been mistaken as a “Christian nation.” We recognize this place. It is bright and familiar. For many American Christians—though not all—this spiritual geography is safe and predictable. Now imagine those flood lamps begin to dim. The country gets darker. Attendance in many denominations and churches drops. We see the rise of the so-called “nones”—the growing number of people, including many young people, who report on surveys that they have no religious affiliation. Christian culture warriors see themselves beaten back on one cultural battlefield after another. The external lights of mainstream, cultural Christianity grow dimmer and dimmer until, by a particular set of standards, the country as we knew it disappears. The spiritual landscape once so familiar, predictable, navigable, and, for some, safe, is now plunged into darkness. Let your eyes adjust and you may still see the faint silhouette of the United States…but not much else. But keep watching. Do you see that? A pinprick of light. It’s not coming from outside the country, but from the inside. In fact, it looks like it might be coming from the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago. Then you see another pinpoint of light. It’s not large, but it’s steady. It’s coming from the Golden Hill neighborhood of San Diego. First in ones and twos, and then in fives and sixes, these pinpoints of light appear on our map of the United States. There are two or three in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, one in the Springwater neighborhood in Portland. Small but steady lights appear in Wenatchee, Boone, Johnson City, Appalachian Ohio, and Syracuse, in Silverton, Oregon where I live, and wherever it is that you live. More and more of these pinpricks of light are coming online now—in the tens and twenties or more. They are giving shape and detail to the country, but they are doing it from the inside. What you’re seeing, of course, is the Church. This isn’t the abstract “Church of Seattle”—these are small, humble, unobtrusive communities of Jesus-followers weaving fabrics of love and care in their particular places, in parishes in cities and suburbs and rural communities. Some of these neighborhood expressions were already there, but, like the Milky Way, they had been blocked from our view by the background light of cultural and political Christianity. But there are new things happening too, and what will emerge over time is a constellation (or perhaps a whole galaxy) of God’s Kingdom Come. From Jesus Moment to Jesus Movement There are many who are afraid, and who maybe even despair, as attendance drops in churches and denominations throughout Europe and North America. I want to acknowledge the real grief and uncertainty people are experiencing over these shifting demographics. . . . beyond our rental car windshields, beyond the statistics, in ways perhaps still too subtle to be registered on the “Geiger counters” of popular Christian culture, something is stirring. John Pattison There are neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest where less than 1% of the population wants anything to do with Jesus. By and large, these folks aren’t belligerent toward Christ. They’re indifferent. The old church building on the corner will be relevant to their day-to-day lives when it’s eventually converted into a brewery. For now, they assume that what is being preached there on Sundays is irrelevant (if not antagonistic) to their Monday through Saturday life of finding meaningful work, raising a family, nurturing community, cultivating beauty, pursuing justice, and making this world a better place. I understand this impression. In some ways my hopes for Slow Church were borne out of my own dissatisfaction with church experiences that made no connection between what happened for one hour on Sunday morning and what happened in my home and neighborhood the other 167 hours of the week. I wanted a Jesus Movement, not a Jesus Moment. Even so, I think reports of the death of the American Church have been greatly exaggerated. I feel an incredible sense of hope and excitement. Because beyond our rental car windshields, beyond the statistics, in ways perhaps still too subtle to be registered on the “Geiger counters” of popular Christian culture, something is stirring. I’ve been in over 70 different neighborhoods since Slow Church came out, and I’ve seen it firsthand: God is on the move. In one faithful encounter after another, the seeds of the gospel are being sown. We don’t know what shape the American Church will take—probably, from our limited perspective, it will take many different shapes, as churches, rooted in their places, embody Christ in ways that can be known by the people in those places. What I do know is that we are being invited to be God’s diversely gifted co-participants in this future—a future that is as big as the universe and as intimate as our own front yards. Conversation Starters What are some signs of hope that you’re seeing in the church and the neighborhood? What are the “rental car windshields”  in your life that may be obscuring your vision of what God is doing in this time and place? How can you get out of the car–either literally or metaphorically–to see what’s happening in the granular, in the everyday stuff of life? Go Deeper: I’d love to connect and hear about the work you’re doing in your own neighborhood. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to the Slow Church blog. As a way of saying thank you, you’ll also get a free copy of the ebook, Growing Deeper in Our Church Communities. #RodDreher #Church #Culture #Neighborhood #SlowChurch #ParishCollective #BenedictOption #Nones

I wonder if this story is familiar to you. Their bodies are virile and ageless, and they are glad and bold in their nakedness. They go out to meet the morning, and a cool mist rises from the fertile soil. The clear cries of birds linger over the tops of the trees. Every leaf is pristine, every flower saturated with color. The day’s work is a delight to them, and Adam laughs as a gecko shimmies up a tree and blinks. He gives it its name and sends it on its way while Eve reclines at his side. They eat the fruit of the garden, and it is all the nourishment they need. They never tire of its bright sweetness, and the waters of the river quench their thirst entirely. In the evenings, they visit with the Creator. They stroll and chat as the sun sets, and then Adam, filled to bursting with joy, stays up all night to name the stars. They are given one—ONE—instruction. One rule to follow. And as the days or the years pass, they grow tired of paradise. Perfect bliss loses its luster. Adam is bored with the animals, and Eve can no longer endure the flavor of the fruit. Like the greedy ingrates they are, they begin to want more than perfection. More than all needs met, all delights enjoyed. Their desire brings everything crashing down. The earth groans and death slips through the door. The Creator, in horror and rage, curses them for their longing and their choice. He sheds blood and banishes them, hurling them out of Eden and barring the gates with a warrior and a fiery sword. This is how I learned the story of my beginning. The heading over Genesis chapters 2 and 3 in my Bible reads “Man’s Shameful Fall.” Shame on me. I had it all. The only thing left to be gained was deity, and I had to go grasping after that. I sent all creation reeling and stumbling until God reluctantly, angrily, developed a bloody Plan B. I have worn that shame like a veil over my eyes for as long as I can remember. I have felt, at every stir of longing or desire, a check. I already have so much. What sort of wicked ingratitude would spur me to ask for more? I feel like a child who got a tiny plastic bicycle for Christmas. I’d wanted a real one, of course, with a basket and a bell, but how could I dare to want more than what I’ve been given? A little toy bicycle is wonderful, really. I can push it around on the kitchen floor. I can make the sounds of the wheels and the bell with my voice. Who could want more than that? I’m ashamed to say that I do. Not long ago, a friend told me about her obsession with the story of Eden. She was fascinated by all things Eden, stories of Eden lost, and so on. Her fascination led her to my second book, but when she began to read, she didn’t see Eden anywhere. She was confused, disappointed. Why had I told her this was a story about Eden? It was a beautiful place, sure, the best the world of Shiloh had to offer, but it was certainly not paradise. Her questions unnerved me, sending me back to the Biblical narrative. What I found there confirmed my ideas about my book. I had written it right. But it gave me a new perspective on the world of Eden. (It is astonishing and humbling that an artist can tell the truth without knowing it in his bones. I told myself the truth in that book, and I didn’t even know it till now.) Let me try, then, to present the story differently. This time, I will lay aside my shame and my early ideas about the Fall. I will try to draw on the Scripture, but I’ll make a few leaps of the imagination, too. Stay with me. Adam is strong and good, and he is the apple of his Creator’s eye. He has a lovely home, but the management and upkeep of the land are a huge undertaking. Without root rot or spider mites or droughts or slugs, the plants grow vigorously. If Adam isn’t careful, his garden will become an impassable jungle. He enjoys the naming of the animals. By turns they are comical, majestic, and bizarre. To capture the essence of each in a single word, though, is a challenge. It stretches his creativity to the limit. He is lonely. God appears to have thought that the animals might entertain him, but in the flight of birds and the roaring of lions he finds no kinship. He marvels at the speed and cunning of a shark, but he cannot speak its language, nor learn its love of ocean currents, nor find peace in its restless journeying. When God forms woman and brings her to Adam, he is overcome. His desire for her is unlike anything he has ever experienced. And yet, while she is nearer to him in thought and form than any other creature he has encountered, he cannot know her fully. The mystery of her awakens the old loneliness. In the evening, he is comforted. He walks with the Creator as with a friend, and they talk of the curious things the Creator has designed and Adam’s intended uses for them. They speak of the progress of the garden, and Eve joins the conversation. But during the night he is troubled. The animals, for the most part, are sleeping, and the flowers have bowed their heads. Once the thrill of physical pleasure is past, Adam and Eve lie apart. His body cools, and Adam’s eyes drift to the stars. Sleep eludes him, and his thoughts turn to the immense and terrible darkness behind the stars. Something is gnawing at him, some shapeless hunger. He wonders if it has anything to do with the serpent he met in the garden all those days ago. The serpent speaks in riddles, its words leaving a residue of discontent. Still, Adam cannot stay away. That creature seems to see his secret desire. Something is missing, it hisses, and this is not a lie. But, oh, the one rule! The one thing the Creator implored him not to do! He has discussed it with Eve, and they are determined to obey. They reject the serpent’s suggestion—for a heartbeat, for a decade—but in the end, there seems no other answer. They want more, and the fruit is desirable, and they cannot bear their yearning any longer. They take the fruit and eat it, and the juice tingles on their tongues and slides like poison into their bellies. The Creator comes, and this is where we must take a monumental leap. Here we must pause and look a while at the Creator’s face, for his expression in this moment is the one he’ll wear forever. It’s the one we’ll shrink from, dread, worship, adore. It’s the one we’ll approach, or not. Through the veil of shame, I see his eyes burn, his jaw tighten. His is the anger of a parent whose spoiled child has received a hundred gifts and thrown a tantrum, demanding more. His is a righteous indignation. Perhaps Adam and Eve in their shame saw him so. But what if his eyes are pained and soft? What if his mouth trembles? What if, with a little nod of his head, he assures them that he knew this was coming, that he expected it, that he is ready? “Where have you been?” he asks. “I’ve been waiting to talk with you.” Adam refuses to meet his eyes. “I hid because I was naked.” “You look just as you did yesterday evening. Who told you that something had changed?” The Creator waits, studying his children. “Did you disobey me?” he asks. Adam, ashamed, cannot find the nerve to own his crime. “This woman gave me the fruit, and you’re the one who gave her to me.” The Creator looks at Eve. He doesn’t rage or cast blame. He only says, “What did you do?” Her response, twisted by shame, is like Adam’s. If there is anger in the account of the Fall, it is here, when the Creator turns to deal with the serpent. On that creature he pronounces a curse of lasting humiliation and final subjugation. Then, in contrast, and this is crucial, he lists for Adam and Eve the consequences of their choices. He knows about desire, knows that Eve will seek to fulfill hers in motherhood, in marriage, in positions of power. He warns her that none of these things will satisfy. Adam will seek elsewhere—in his work, in his land, in the quest for immortality. All these things God pronounces as futile. He foretells a future of enmity, sorrow, suffering. But he never once condemns them for wanting more. I think he knew what they wanted. I think he wanted the same. If Eden was a place of perfection, of completion, then it is true that Adam and Eve should have had no need unmet, no wish unfulfilled. That’s the way I learned the story. We had it perfect, and we screwed it up. Ours is the hugest, most catastrophic of failures. But if Eden was a place of challenge, of loneliness, if in Eden evil was present, then paradise had failings indeed. If God could come and go, an external and ephemeral presence, then perhaps Adam never felt quite certain of his standing with the Creator. Maybe Adam wanted more from God. We romanticize Adam and Eve in their innocence. Like babies, they were beautiful and simple and easy to love. But if you have ever loved an innocent, you know that that relationship is one-sided. It takes a long time for a baby to grow up, to know you, to love you back. Maybe God wanted more from Adam. In Genesis 3:22, God makes a strange announcement to the other persons of the Trinity. “Man has become like us now,” he says. “He’s not a baby anymore.” He drives Adam and Eve out of the garden, and I think that the driving was something like shooing a toddler away from a dangerous staircase. I think the angel with the flaming sword was something like a baby gate. Mankind had gotten just old enough to totter around and hurt himself and make mischief. But that was only the beginning. Eden was a beginning, a temporary best. It wasn’t heaven. It wasn’t “I in them and thou in me.” We needed time and growth and the failure of the law. We needed desire. And God sent us out into the world to grow up. The Lamb “slain before the foundation of the world” knew he would follow the same path, beginning in infancy, growing, learning his hunger. He would choose relationship, though, and his passion for more of us would carry him to the end, to the point of union, of ecstatic consummation. Could Adam have imagined such intimacy? Maybe not. Innocents understand very little of suffering and redemption. As the years of his life stretched on and on, did he punish himself, condemn himself, for wanting more? Did he grieve the Fall? Did he think that Eden might have been enough if only he’d waited longer, if only he’d asked for less? Did he ever guess that his longing might have been the echo of God’s insatiable desire for him? Did he ever imagine that his choice would “gain for us so great a Redeemer”? And when the world is new again and the children of the King are ancient in their youth again, maybe it’s a better thing, a better thing to be more than merely innocent, but to be broken, then redeemed by love. Maybe this old world is bent, But it’s waking up. I’m waking up. ‘Cause I can hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness Make ready for the kingdom come Don’t you want to thank someone for this? —from “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone For This” by Andrew Peterson

Writing The Battle of Franklin and watching it come to life on stage was one of the highlights of 2016. Director Matt Logan, songwriter Patrick Thomas, and an amazing cast of Nashville’s best talent breathed life into the story in ways that took my breath away and made it even better than I imagined. When I wrote the show, I wasn’t prepared for how relevant this story of familial and societal conflict would be (the 2016 presidential election fell during its opening run), and I think its themes have become even more relevant since. One of the characters in the play says “History is Franklin. History is now” and that gets truer every day it seems. I’m glad the show is coming back, and I hope the audiences that encounter it will go home moved and unsettled and perhaps ready to look at the people around them in new ways. I think there were ten performances last year and each of them sold out. Next month, Studio Tenn is remounting the show for a 16 more performances. If you missed the chance to see it last year, you’ve got another shot this September. I know a lot of you are already traveling to Nashville for the Rich Mullins tribute show at the Ryman on Sunday, September 25th. If you want to make a weekend of it, The Battle of Franklin’s closing performance is Friday, September 22nd. Tickets are available here. Here’s the just-released trailer for the show (and below that a behind-the-scenes short from last year.

On October 5th, you’re invited to join us for an evening of music, story, and celebration at our second annual fundraiser, Rabbit Room LIVE 2017, featuring Andrew Peterson & friends with special guests Fernando Ortega and Sho Baraka. If you’re coming to Hutchmoot, there’s no need to buy a ticket; your seat is included in your registration. For everyone else, this is a chance to taste a little slice of the Hutchmoot weekend. Rabbit Room LIVE is open to the public. Advance tickets are just $10 ($15 at the door). Not local? We’ve got you covered too! You’ll be able to join us on Facebook Live via the Rabbit Room Facebook page. But no matter how you choose to experience the show, we hope you’ll be there to celebrate with us and support the exciting work we have planned for year ahead. Click here to get your tickets. Seats are limited! To make a donation in support of the Rabbit Room, visit donate.RabbitRoom.com.

Admittedly, Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is a very odd film, especially for us Westerners. I always feel a bit disoriented as I begin to watch it, especially since it makes substantial use of Japanese tradition in its characters and symbols. Consequently, it has the unfamiliarity of a different cultural language. There are commonalities between our cultural language and the film’s, of course—that’s why Disney was able to release it successfully in the United States—just enough commonality, in fact, for the unfamiliarity to register more as intriguing than as off-putting. That being said, I feel the need to make a couple disclaimers before I go spouting off my speculations. I don’t have any education in Japanese cultural history. I have undertaken several fruitful Google and Wikipedia searches whose yieldings I have deemed trustworthy, but that is the extent of my research. There is a lot of intuition going on in my commentary, so take it with a grain of salt. And if you can correct me on any false claims, please do so. The logic of the film is based less in narrative than in symbolic layering. It unfolds not as a linear plot but as a series of parables, each with a somewhat wild yet incisive metaphorical meaning. In this post I will give some context for the film and then lend my thoughts to two of its parables. First, context. The world of Spirited Away is alluring and spooky. It deals with the treacherous interactions between two realms: the human realm of day-to-day commerce and the spirit realm of dislocation. These interactions unfold inside a bathhouse on the property of an abandoned theme park. The implication is that the land on which the theme park stands belongs in an eternal sense to the spirits that haunt it. Humans have desecrated these spirits by reducing their land and its long-standing culture to mere commercial pursuits, such as the theme park where the story is set. As a consequence of humanity’s industrial misbehavior, the spirits are now homeless. Where there was once a harmonious relationship of mutual exchange there is now a deep rift. The bathhouse and abandoned theme park embody this rift. Let’s zoom out for a piece of Japanese cultural context: I keep speaking of the “spirit realm.” From my minimal research, it seems that Miyazaki is invoking the Shinto religion here, which is the ethnic religion of Japan. In this religion, all the earth is permeated by and intertwined with a sacred divine essence. This essence and the earth’s physicality are not fundamentally separated as in our Western tradition, but are rather inextricable. The Japanese language does not distinguish singular from plural, so the word “kami” refers both to this one unifying essence and to all the individual gods or spirits embodied in every living thing. In light of this bit of history, the rift between the human and spirit realms in Spirited Away suddenly becomes much more dire. There is of course plenty to be said here of the destructive effects of industrialism on local enchanted places. The underlying logic of this backstory is not unlike Wendell Berry’s lament of the desecration of rural landscapes or J. R. R. Tolkien’s apocalyptic vision of Mordor. Keep that in mind as you read. Now, the spirits are not morally perfect or immutable. Far from it, they are easily tainted by the behavior of humans. They have taken up this bathhouse as their own capitalist exploit, charging money for traveling spirits to come in and receive a good bath. It’s a good business, too, because as a result of humans polluting the earth, the spirits are all very dirty. There have even been theories that the bathhouse acts as a euphemism for a brothel, as the majority of its employees are women and its operations have notably sinister undertones; perhaps more is being commodified here than meets the eye. This theory is complete speculation, however, and cannot be confirmed. The story begins as our protagonist, a ten year-old girl named Chihiro, rides in the backseat of her parents’ car on their way to vacation. They come across the abandoned theme park and begin to explore. Chihiro’s parents find a mysterious, unattended table set with steaming food and begin to eat. When they do not stop eating, they promptly turn into pigs. Understandably frightened, Chihiro runs away, and as night falls, happens upon the spirit realm and the bathhouse. The (arguably evil) keeper of the bathhouse, Yubaba, discovers Chihiro. Haku, a good spirit who has become enslaved at the bathhouse, tells Chihiro that the only way to escape and free her parents is to work for Yubaba. Chihiro complies and Yubaba gives her a new name: Sen. It is worth noting that the name Chihiro means “a thousand searchings,” evoking the curious and adventurous spirit of a child. The name Sen merely means “one thousand,” which represents the stripping away of Chihiro’s identity to a mere numerical value. Throughout the movie, Chihiro, now registering her name as Sen, struggles to remember her old name, lest she forget and never escape the spirit realm. Throughout her time working at the bathhouse, Chihiro encounters many spirits, fair and foul. Each of her encounters act as parables for the obscene ramifications of a commercialized spirituality. Here I will focus on her encounters with two spirits: the so-called Stink Spirit and No-Face. In each, keep in mind the theme of true versus false wealth. The entire staff recoil as the Stink Spirit enters the bathhouse. It is the picture of repulsive: a gigantic, viscous trail of green-brown sludge with a vague, sullen face. Despite the putrid smell, Yubaba commands all the staff to act natural in the face of this monstrosity. Determined for Sen to fail, Yubaba gives her the task of bathing the Stink Spirit. With characteristic innocence and goodwill, Sen leads the Stink Spirit to its enormous bathtub. The Stink Spirit splashes awkwardly into the tub. Sen attempts to get to work, but instead falls deep into the murky waters and becomes stuck inside the Spirit’s slime. Being a surprisingly kind Spirit, it scoops up Sen with its icky hand and shows her with great earnestness what appears to be a thorn stuck in its side. Still underwater, Sen tries to pull it out, but to no avail. She then swims to surface and tells the staff, which has become the audience of her performance, that she needs their help. Yubaba responds urgently, “This is no Stink Spirit,” gives Sen a long rope, and insists that this task will take the strength of the entire bathhouse. Sen dives underwater, ties the rope around the thorn in the Spirit’s side, and everyone lines up to pull the rope with all their might. To the dismay of all, the supposed thorn is revealed to be the handle of a bicycle as it is removed in its entirety from the Spirit. After the bicycle comes heaps and heaps of all sorts of trash, from soda cans to kitchen sinks, enough to fill the entire room. Once Sen removes the final piece of litter, a fishing pole, the entire screen becomes submerged in clear water and all sound fades away. We see Sen’s awestruck face as she beholds the true face of the Spirit. We see him, too: ancient and wise, with a wide, contented smile. In a low, reverberating voice, he speaks two words: “Well done.” Sen looks down to find a mysterious piece of bread in her cupped hands. The scene then returns to the room in which all the staff and Sen stand together, and it seems that the Spirit is gone. Among the heaps of trash, little pebbles of gold glimmer tantalizingly on the floor. Various staff members jump on the gold, but Yubaba knows the Spirit has not yet departed and commands them to stop. Suddenly and without warning, the Spirit, now transfigured as a hundred foot-long, cylindrical body of rushing water, bursts forcefully and jubilantly out of the bathhouse. Here we discover that he was a River Spirit who had been desecrated by human waste. Newly freed, he flies into the night sky accompanied only by the sound of his own laughter. This story speaks for itself. I hardly want to comment because I’m eager to hear what you find in this story. For now, I will make two comments: first, note the baptismal imagery. The Spirit is wounded and suffering. After he is submerged in the water and his wound is fully addressed—which involves the dirty work of pulling out every last piece of garbage he has endured in his long life—it appears that he is dead and gone. He has disappeared. Only then is he raised and transfigured with a new body in fullness of life. Second, why did the River Spirit give Sen a mysterious piece of bread? All I’ll say for now is to watch out for eucharistic undertones there. Spirited Away is constantly playing around with rival conceptions of consumption. Sen quietly and effortlessly receives the piece of bread moments before the bathhouse staff leaps on top of the glimmering gold left on the floor. This film suggests that you are what you eat. We will see more of this in our second parable. No-Face makes many appearances in the film before he causes trouble. He is himself a void, a shadowy figure whose only distinguishing feature is his mask, which looks neither happy nor sad. He hardly ever speaks, but only groans, and he seems to be in a constant state of need. Late one night, a spirit in the form of a frog (there are lots of those in this film—kind of weird, honestly) creeps into the room where the River Spirit was bathed to snag some of the gold left on the floor. No-Face pops out from behind a corner and holds out a pile of gold, ever increasing, in his cupped hands. He offers it to the frog, who naively leaps out to grab it. No-Face then promptly eats the frog and grows larger in size. Creepy, right? As the night goes on and into the morning of the next day, No-Face continues to repeat this behavior. He holds out mounds of gold to staff members, who greedily snatch it, only to be immediately devoured. With each repetition of this, No-Face grows bigger and his appetite stronger. He consumes insatiably and is never full. Now here is where this gets interesting: the entire bathhouse begins to operate according to No-Face’s hunger. From their perspective, No-Face is impossibly wealthy. He produces gold in his hands at will and gives it freely to all who will take it. He appears generous and quickly takes on god-like status as his size increases. I once heard an acquaintance say something to this effect: “The pace of money is faster than the pace of life. When life tries to mimic the pace of money, the inevitable consequence is frenzy and chaos.” This insight plays out stunningly in this scene of Spirited Away as the bathhouse struggles to serve No-Face, constantly striving to return his payments with due efficiency. From outside looking through the windows, it seems that the bathhouse is “booming”—wealth is being produced at an alarming rate as staff hustles around, serving banquets upon banquets of food. From inside, however, we see that the staff has taken to worshiping No-Face. They surround him on bended knee, fearfully singing his praise as he offers gold and eats them one by one. Everyone tries to consume some gold for themselves without being consumed. It’s a chilling scene with an impressive depth of metaphor. Sen is on another quest altogether, which takes her into this scene by mere happenstance. We get the idea throughout the film that No-Face wants Sen more than anyone else, so when she walks into the room, his attention shifts to her. He cups his hands and holds out a huge pile of gold, pleading Sen to take it. She simply says, “No thanks, I don’t need it,” and scurries away. No-Face looks dejected and chases her around the bathhouse. When he finally gets tired, they have a chance to talk. Sen asks him what he wants. He says he is lonely and that he wants her. She says, “If you’re going to eat me, eat this first,” and holds out to him the piece of bread the River Spirit gave her. Despairing, No-Face eats the bread and begins to feel sick. Unable to escape his fate, he runs frantically around the bathhouse, vomiting up every spirit he has eaten up to this point, getting smaller and smaller along the way. He miserably cries out to Sen, “Why did you make me eat that?” Finally, he vomits up the very first frog he ate in the middle of the night and is back to his original size. His appetite seems to have been subdued. He is shy now, embarrassed almost, but Sen invites him to accompany her on the rest of her journey. He found a friend. In this parable we see those rival conceptions of consumption juxtaposed directly. No-Face consumes out of unending lack—it’s all he knows—until he is given a different way to consume. He is cursed by his appetite, and yet he is ultimately healed and cleansed not by denying it, but by the very act of eating. In his encounter with Sen, his appearance of wealth is unmasked as poverty. Conversely, Sen’s seeming poverty in her unwillingness to accept No-Face’s gold is shown to be the true wealth of the parable. And what is the turning point? The piece of bread Sen received from the River Spirit. By eating it, No-Face undergoes an experience parallel to the River Spirit’s: a cleansing from poison, a form of death and rebirth, and redemption. After this breakthrough, No-Face becomes a restrained, good-natured companion to Sen on her journey to reclaim her own name and destiny. Friends, this is rich stuff. All in a very strange and sometimes uncomfortable film. I hope you have enjoyed walking through these stories as much as I have enjoyed sharing and interpreting them. They contain gems of wisdom presented in startling images and symbols. It is precisely the weirdness and apparent irrationality of this film’s symbolism that reminds me of my own imagination, comprised as it is of all the memories, hopes, stories, and hauntings I have ever encountered in my own life. Our imaginations resemble dream-worlds in this way: a bit wacky, screaming to be interpreted and cultivated like a garden into a place of order and growth. In my final post I will describe my own imagination as a place not unlike the bathhouse in Spirited Away, full of motifs and metaphors older than myself and wilder than I ever anticipate. I look forward to asking alongside you what Christ’s way is in these vast interior landscapes of ours: what does it mean to follow his path, to truly take every thought captive to him, to pursue a cruciform imagination? What encounters will we have, and with whom? Until then, go watch Spirited Away and tell me what you think.

If you’ve listened to the last few episodes The Rabbit Room podcast, you know how much we love watching and talking about good movies. But have you ever considered the parallels between a thought-provoking film and a heartfelt prayer? This week’s Rabbit Reads selection invites you to do just that. Film junkies, take note, and add this to your reading list… Movies Are Prayers by Josh Larsen (IVP Books, 2017) Culture / Art / Film Criticism Why We Love It: “Movies can be many things: escapist experiences, historical artifacts, business ventures, and artistic expressions, to name a few. I’d like to suggest that they can also be prayers.” The world is lousy with books on making peace between Jesus and Hollywood. I recall a time when it seemed like there was a “Gospel According to…” take on just about any slice of pop culture—not that this was an entirely bad thing for me. After all, I used to turn to websites with cuss word counters before deciding whether to watch anything above a PG rating. And rated R movies? Nope. What is and isn’t good for us is a constant discussion among film-loving Christians, and I’m so grateful for the work of thoughtful believers like Jeffrey Overstreet and Alissa Wilkinson, critics who aren’t afraid to dig deeper and teach us a better way to engage the stories we take in. After reading his new book Movies Are Prayers, I’d add Filmspotting podcast co-host Josh Larsen to the list. But this book truly gets interesting when you realize it isn’t exactly about “how to watch like a Christian” as much as it’s a meditation, using movies to illustrate the nature of prayer. After establishing his argument that films, like prayers, are expressions of our deepest longings, an artistic groaning beyond words, Larsen breaks the book down into 10 different types of prayers. Lament, praise, anger, confession, and reconciliation all make an appearance, and within each chapter, he guides a quick tour of films that reinforce the theme. Examples from all genres — indie, foreign, blockbuster, and classics — are equally considered, sometimes for just a scene or two. Then at the end, he ties it all together with a critical essay on the movement from fall to redemption in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Movies are Prayers is a quick read and doesn’t linger for long on any one topic, so don’t come expecting deep analysis of specific movies or directors. But the potential for deeper discussion is rich, and a handy index of every film mentioned in the book is helpful if you’re looking to expand your watchlist. Taken as a whole, this book invites us to reconsider what films could be, and it has a lot to teach about our longings too.

"True, lasting healing comes when we step away from the old life and into a more spacious place. This is what the Rabbit Room has been for us..." -Elizabeth Maxon, Rabbit Room supporter & member. We at the Rabbit Room are no strangers to the power of stories and the role they play in shaping our lives. Today is Giving Tuesday and we are using the special day as a moment to invite you to enter the story of the Rabbit Room through giving. Your contribution helps us expand old projects and launch new ones—all in order to create and curate gospel-infused stories, music, and art, for the life of the world. With your help this Giving Tuesday, we are able to dream bigger in our pursuit of that worthwhile mission! Help us reach our Giving Tuesday goal of $10K raised in one day! We asked a few of our members to share their story as to why they felt called to give to the Rabbit Room. Here is Elizabeth Maxon's story. "Hi, my name is Elizabeth Maxon. I’m from the little college town of Clemson, South Carolina and I'm a Rabbit Room supporter. Several years ago, I was standing in my front yard with Jonathan Rogers, who had just led a writer’s workshop in my home, when he looked at me and said – 'Have you heard of the Rabbit Room?'A few months later I was registered for my first Hutchmoot and officially a member of the Rabbit Room. The Rabbit Room community regularly meets me in the trenches of motherhood and ministry. My husband and I work with couples in crisis and people imprisoned by addiction. We’ve found that it is not enough to help them find freedom FROM whatever has entangled them. They also need to embrace their freedom TO live a brand new life. It has been true in our own lives as well. True, lasting healing comes when we step away from the old life and into a more spacious place. This is what the Rabbit Room has been for us – like a doorway leading to a wide open space where the goodness, beauty, and truth of the gospel is not only experienced but engaged. It has transformed our lives and the lives of our children. Every story and song, every illustration and interaction, is a creative expression of God’s deep love for us and an invitation to participate in the continuous recreation of that love. For this reason, we are committed to supporting the Rabbit Room forever and interacting with this community as often as possible. Sometimes this simply looks like listening to podcasts or reading the member emails for recommendations of great films or books. Other times it is planning a family vacation to Nashville to attend The Local Show, a Rabbit Room theater production live, or just spending a morning visiting and dreaming with our friends at North Wind Manor (the kids particularly enjoy slipping into the Harry Potter hideout under the stairs and I particularly enjoy sitting by Tolkien’s fireplace in deep conversation with Elly or Rachel or a new friend I’ve met). We’ve even brought some of the Rabbit Room musicians (like Skye Peterson) to South Carolina for shows! If you’re looking for something to breathe new life into your work, your family, your very soul – I think you’ll find it here with us. It is the kindest, most welcoming bunch of imperfect, but committed, kingdom builders I’ve found. I hope you know you’re welcome too! Here is supporter Cathy McKeon: "We love and support the Rabbit Room for its dedication to Christ-centered community and its nurturing of creativity in the arts, but more than that... It has been such a gift to find this welcoming, generous, and hospitable creative community. We entered long ago through the doors of music and story, but I’ve become more involved through Hutchmoot and zoom calls (member, artists &, and the Poetry Pub groups) and the friendships formed there. I have been inspired by getting to know artists who are living out their callings excellently and unto the glory of God, and I have been challenged and deeply encouraged in my own creative work and faith in Christ by amazing friends who are walking with me on this road. We are so grateful to be able to participate in the life of this community and in the work of the Kingdom." Here is the Larson family: "We have been members and supporters of The Rabbit Room for many years, after first being introduced to this community through the music of Andy and Jill. Our girls read “The Hiding Place” and became obsessed with Corrie Ten Boom, so when The Rabbit Room Theatre put on the play, Eraina and Lucy travelled from Texas to Nashville for the show. It was a highlight of the year. These nights and books and prayers and music are all little conversations that together have a big impact on our family. The Rabbit Room has been a steady help as we encourage imagination and joy and whimsy in our children and pursue what is “good, true and beautiful” together as a family. We are delighted to be members of The Rabbit Room and cheer on this great work.' You can join these folks and support the Rabbit Room by giving today. Click here to donate!

Slow-moving cultural forces have combined to make the holidays more difficult than they used to be. As Bill Wright writes in The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, we have become geographically and demographically stratified in recent decades. We are surrounded by people who live like us, think like us, vote like us, and see the world as we do. All the while, we are more isolated than ever. We are reaping the seeds the modern self has sown and the modern self is a lonely self. As cultural alienation and stratification set in, we lose those trace infinitesimal opportunities to be influenced by those with whom we differ. Robust communities have always offered humans opportunities to be changed by a variety of sources, but now we are brainwashing ourselves by likeness. And then the holidays come around. We pack up the car and go back to the places we came from to celebrate the holidays with the people who raised us and we find that we’ve become even more different than we were last year. We discover that there are things we can’t talk about anymore, places we can’t go, views we can’t express. Or, even worse, we do step on one of those conversational landmines and, sure enough, it blows. Suddenly a gathering that started as a celebration of the day God dawned in flesh amid his darkened world becomes a clash of inflamed opinions and old wounds. If you find yourself in that position this holiday season, take a step back. Take a breath and remember that this isn’t only something you’re doing. It is also something our culture has done to you. We are both the victims and the perpetrators of our broken discourses. But what has been done can also be undone. How Can Christianity Help? It is no small thing to have a conversation with someone whose ideas you disagree with (or possibly find repugnant). It can be painful, confusing, and frustrating. We can enter difficult conversations with the most careful intentions, only to be dragged into a tit-for-tat, zero-sum battle of words that leaves everyone wounded and no one closer to the kind of insight that changes people. It is not a foregone conclusion that just because you are a Christian, you will interact with people as Jesus did. Modern people are not short on conversational role models that are at odds with the teacher from Nazareth who gave his time to talking, teaching, listening, challenging, forgiving, and loving people out of their misbegotten thinking. Yet, if we are to pursue the pattern of a God who was incarnated into our broken world to put it to rights, we are going to have to get better at talking to people we disagree with (even when those people are seated around the family table). Yet, in our polarized, digitized, and politicized cultural moment, that is exactly the skill we are in danger of losing. The ability to have unhurried, nuanced, generous conversations is not an optional add-on for the people of God. Too often, we pattern our speech after culture warriors: we use sound bites, slogans, and straw men to “win” our conversations, but these won’t do if we want to understand (and be understood by) those who are not already members of our particular tribe. If we are to overcome the world’s ways of making ideological war, we are going to need more mental, emotional, and spiritual firepower — but not of the kind the world recognizes. If we are to master the taxing task of conversing with those with whom we disagree, we are going to need more patience, kindness, love, laughter, time, wisdom, grace, curiosity, and, above all, humility. The good news is that transforming humans into the kind of people who are characterized by those qualities is exactly what Christianity does to those who would follow the way of Jesus. The question is: What hope and help can Christianity offer to our culture when the kinds of conversations we need have never seemed less likely? Quite a bit of help, as it turns out. Everyone alive bears the image of God All Christian relationships and communication should be built on the bedrock of the image of God. If we raise our conversational houses on that foundation, we will avoid all kinds of errors. The image of God reminds us that all persons have been imbued with dignity by God himself, so we will not subject them to indignity in our minds or words. The image of God reminds us that God is committed to the well-being of our conversation partner, so we must be likewise committed. The image of God reminds us that the person in front of us is a whole person, not just the sum of their ideas and opinions. The image of God is able to both humble and inspire us. It humbles us because God’s image is also both present and marred in ourselves. It inspires us because everyone — even that difficult person we are talking to — bears God’s likeness, is the object of his affection, and benefits at every moment from his care even if they give him no thanks. No one has said this better than John Calvin. To paraphrase his wonderful thought from The Institutes: “The Lord wants us to do good to all people without exception, though most people, if judged by their own merits, are unworthy of it. But Scripture tells us that we are not to look to what people themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God in them, to which we owe all honor and love… Whenever anyone comes to you in need of help, you have no grounds for denying it to him. Say he is a stranger — the Lord has given him a mark that ought to be familiar to you. Say he is lowly and of no consequence — the Lord points him out as one on whom rests the glory of his own image. Say that you owe him nothing — the Lord has substituted that person in his own place, that you might give to him the great obligations that you owe to Christ. Say that he is unworthy of your smallest effort on his account, but the image of God he bears is worthy of your life and all your effort. If he merits no good and has provoked you by injury and mischief, still there is no reason why you should not embrace him in all possible love… In this way only we attain to what is not only difficult but altogether against human nature: to love those who hate us, to render good for evil, blessing for cursing. We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but to look to the image of God in them, which covers and removes their faults and by its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.” The ability to have unhurried, nuanced, generous conversations is not an optional add-on for the people of God. Ask Questions With Humility Don’t forget that you are also a fool. You also have treasured distortions of the good in your own life. You have blind spots and strongholds of falsehood that you guard and protect. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not only in our behavior but also in our thinking. All of us will be subjected to the lifelong process of refining our ideas and removing the dross from our convictions. Are you certain that process isn’t continuing right now with the person you are talking to? Do not forget Jesus’ sobering words for those who would be judges: “With the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” I take this to mean that even when we see our brother’s or sister’s sin clearly, we should be more grieved by, more focused on, and more repentant over our own. The missionary and minister Francis Schaeffer spent his days talking with people from all walks of life who came to his home in Switzerland. He used to say that if he had an hour to speak with someone, he would spend 55 minutes listening and asking questions so that he could say something of actual value in the last five. So when you find yourself in a conversation with someone you disagree with: Why not spend more time listening and less time correcting and accusing? Why not make curiosity your watchword and channel it into genuine questions? When you feel an answer or rebuttal burning inside you, why not prohibit yourself from interrupting in order to gainsay the person you are talking to? Why not listen carefully, repeat their argument, and then ask if you have understood it correctly? If you haven’t, ask them to say it again until you can say their own point back to them better than they said it. If you could accomplish that monumental task, I wonder what would happen to the part of their brain that is gearing up for another battle of misunderstandings? If this became your pattern of listening, what would happen the next time you had something to say? Challenge With Patience Christian conversation is not all about listening and questions, however, because having an opinion is not the same thing as knowing the truth. Therefore, our conversation must involve challenge. That said, we should take off our shoes before we go tromping around in the minds, lives, and attitudes of our fellow image-bearers. We are walking on holy ground. But we must not forget that God’s reality, though it surpasses us, is not infinitely malleable. It is not a ball of clay that will take any shape we mold it into. At times, if we want to be people of the truth, we will have to stand for the truth in our lives and in our conversations, come what may. God’s truth is rich, complex, and full of mystery, so we should always challenge with humility and as much strength and gentleness as we have the maturity to muster. When you have something important to say, don’t just blast your conversation partner with a cannon full of “truth” and see what happens. Jesus told his people to be “harmless as doves and wise as serpents.” What does it mean to challenge with wisdom and strength but without fear and violence? What would it mean to forswear harshness for firm strength (which can accomplish everything harshness can but without the damage)? What if you built bridges from truths people already loved to truths they do not love yet? What would it take for you to discern which hills to die on and which crazy comments to completely let slide? What if you saw your role as sowing conversational seeds without harvesting them all at once? Could it be enough for you to simply drop questions into the minds of your conversation partners without launching a follow-up barrage of answers? Remember That God Changes People, Not You We should remember — especially in our most difficult and trying conversations — that the Holy Spirit is the one who is the Great Counselor who leads people into all truth. God works in people’s lives both in brief, intense moments of insight (perhaps as a result of some impactful conversation) and in long, slow revelations that take decades to come to fruition. Any single conversation might be just one part of God’s ongoing work of redemption in a person’s life. Or it might not. After all, we know that any conversation takes place in the context of God’s larger care for people. God, who made and loves our conversation partner, is ultimately responsible for clearing away the error from their thinking and the sin from their lives, not us. We are invited to play a role in speaking and demonstrating the truth in our words and actions — no small part of that being to simply do no harm to our fellow humans for whom Christ died. C.S. Lewis’s words of comfort in Perelandra are a balm to anyone who feels they have erred in a conversation: “Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad. Have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world. Look! it is beneath your head and carries you." Christians should be able to trust God enough to believe — even if your words don’t produce the results you hoped for — that God was at work before the conversation started and abides with the person long after it is over. The fate of the person with whom you are speaking doesn’t rest on your shoulders, but the God who took the burden of the whole broken world on his scarred back carries you both. Receive and be glad. Andy is a staff member of the Rabbit Room and a former staff member of L'Abri Fellowship. Read more from Andy on The Darking Psalter (commentary, translations, and poetry about the Psalms), Three Things (a monthly digest of worthy resources to help people connect with culture, neighbor, and God), and Pattern Bible (reflection on biblical images in the Bible). Our weekly newsletter is the best way to learn about new books, staff recommendations, upcoming events, lectures, and more. Sign up here.

A few years ago, Leif Enger came to speak at Hutchmoot, the annual Rabbit Room conference. That year, he and I had both gone through sudden medical crises. We bonded then over recovery stories and continued that friendship in the form of a fairly regular correspondence. When I was preparing to release Struck, a memoir about my experience, I asked Leif if he might be willing to read it and write an endorsement. He graciously obliged, providing one of the true high points in my career as an author—support from a literary hero. Recently, as he was in the home stretch of finishing up his wonderful new novel, Virgil Wander, I asked for an early copy so I could write about it for the Rabbit Room. Once again, he obliged, and sent it with the following note: “Proofing the final edit it seemed that Virgil might be my most Christian book, and least evangelical.” After I read Virgil Wander, Leif and I talked about it a bit, and about that note in particular. Russ: Leif, I loved this novel. Absolutely loved it. One of the key characters in Virgil Wander, I would say, is the town in which the story takes place. Greenstone does more than serve as the setting for the story. It contains its characters. It facilitates certain necessary interactions. It frames back-stories in ways that really help the reader understand your characters. What role do you think place plays in the work of telling a story, and how do you approach constructing your settings? Leif: The simplest answer is that I only set stories in landscapes I love. When you love a place you look more closely at it, and then it is a matter of describing it in your cleanest words and allowing it to inform your characters, action, weather, and so on. Russ: How did this work itself out in Virgil Wander? Leif: This mostly happens subconsciously. I didn’t foresee that setting Greenstone on the edge of Lake Superior would translate to most of its characters existing on various other edges, but sure enough they do—Virgil lives on the borders of faith and doubt, speech and silence, lucidity and confusion, civilization and wilderness (bears walk the streets), order and chaos. The inland sea is also a constant reminder that life is unpredictable and fog-shrouded and that tragedy is tethered to beauty and in fact joy. Everything is raw in a place like this. Damage is right out in the open. I’d wanted to write about a character like Virgil–the owner of a failing movie house–since the early 90s, but it wasn’t until I spent some time on the North Shore that I knew where he’d be at home. Russ: You recently moved to Duluth, right? What was that like? Leif: Robin and I had a lovely, strange summer. We sold the farm where we raised the boys, bought a house in Duluth a few blocks off the water and, since we couldn’t close until August, we lived for weeks on our heavy old creaking sailboat at the edge of the Apostle Islands. Mail was unreliable and internet sporadic, so there was an insular feel both sweet and temporary. Russ: In Virgil Wander, I noticed that there are no true “bad guys.” What we have instead are people who have difficult things between them, and must find a way to live in community with each other. I was challenged to see so many of these characters not simply move past their relational struggles to mere civility; instead, your characters seem to be drawn closer to one another by way of what’s broken between them. Leif: That’s a good observation and one I hadn’t thought of—that our flaws can be a point of contact or friendship, a bridge instead of a wall. One of the things Virgil finds himself doing more easily after his injury is listening, to his unexpected houseguest Rune, to Bjorn, to the unlucky handyman Jerry, and ambitious Ann Fandeen. Virgil is simply more accessible than his earlier self knew how to be. Maybe his diminished language gives him forbearance. In any case he hears those around him in a more unguarded way, and because of this they seem to share more of themselves than they might have before. Interesting that it takes actual brain damage for Virgil to act on this capacity! Of course what happens when you listen to people is you are beset by empathy, by a wish to suspend judgment. You don’t see this in the media because argument sells commercials, but in real life it’s common. We’ve all had the experience of meeting someone we expect to dislike, only to be disarmed when they start talking about their kids. It’s a cliché but a true one that more joins us than divides us. Russ: Perhaps this is a good place to ask you to elaborate on what you meant when you described this novel as your “most Christian book, and least evangelical.” Leif: Now, especially, there’s a chasm between that freighted label (Christian) and its origins. I was lucky enough to grow up when “Christian” referred (logically) to a reliance on Jesus, who forgave tax guys and prostitutes, appreciated little kids, pointed out the futility of wealth, and saved his hottest anger for religious leaders who thirsted for power and had no doubt of their own rightness. Now the word Christian (and its cousin Evangelical) is used to describe a dependable Republican voting bloc. What a hijacking. This book doesn’t concern itself with either orthodoxy or politics but with decency, which is faith’s unsung expression. Decency allows a person to say: What if I’m wrong here? I’ve come to suspect that faith needs doubt in order to be real, as there’s no courage without fear. I’m drawn to pilgrims and skeptical of zealots. Years ago I felt differently, but as the song says, I was so much older then–I’m younger than that now. Virgil Wander is available in the Rabbit Room Store.

In the afterglow of Hutchmoot 2018’s dizzying cascade of several dozens of wonderful and meaningful conversations, I can no longer remember who requested copies of the poem I read during Rebecca Reynolds’ and my tag team session on “the holy, hidden potential of human weakness.” Hence the posting of it here. Beyond that fulfillment of forgotten verbal obligations, though—because we as a community tend to skew heavily on the introvert scale and also because I suspect that even the beloved extroverts among us struggle with the same foundational insecurities—I would like to offer the piece to the wider Rabbit Room community. It’s a poem I wrote some sixty hours before my Hutchmoot session. At the time I was harried and discouraged in my attempts to pare a 12,000 word outline down to a manageable 4,000 words. (Spoiler Alert: I failed.) Scanning my eighteen pages of ten-point font notes, I felt a vague and growing unease. Trying to divine my own disquiet I realized, “Okay, these notes do contain some interesting and valuable observations, but I’m mostly only offering abstract ideas about weakness. Is there some way to move this presentation beyond the abstract such that it might actually give someone something to hang onto?” Yes, I could have just rested in the knowledge that when Rebecca Reynolds began her portion of the session everyone in the room would immediately feel connected and welcomed into that warm, encouraging aura she magically projects in a roughly forty-foot radius around her person. But it seemed irresponsible on my part to ask attendees to suffer through the first half of the session without any rungs yet affixed to the ladder we were asking them to climb. I couldn’t see that I was offering—in my notes as they then were—any point of connection that might “incarnate” these important ideas and make them more immediate than abstract. As I was stewing on the matter I did what any of us do when faced with frustration. I checked Facebook. And there I happened to read Helena Sorensen’s post asking the Rabbit Room community whether they were more discouraged or inspired by personal tales of struggles and failures. I skimmed the response thread and I was like: Oh. Yeah. That. Hmm. So I just sat for a few minutes, long enough for all the fears and insecurities swirling chaotically just outside the edges of my vision to catch up to me and begin to announce themselves. And then I started typing, trying to document that sideshow parade of insecurities as they marched up the main street of my imagination. Because the truth is, being asked to speak in front of a group of well-read, thoughtful, sensitive people—who have gathered because they think I might have something to say that’s worth their time to hear—pushes the buttons for almost every one of the fifty-eight floors accessed by my elevator of paralyzing insecurities. Writing this mostly stream-of-consciousness poem was beneficial though, as the process of driving those insecurities into the open and naming them had a settling effect that allowed me afterward to move forward with more focus in the preparation process. (I didn’t shave the notes down to 4,000 words, but I did cut them to about 6,500. The rest of the editing had to happen at the podium. Apologies to those present, for any rather abrupt transitions.) Based on feedback from several of the gracious attendees, I think the poem did also do some valuable work to bridge that gap between the abstract idea and the personal experience. If there’s a practical takeaway here for content creators, it might be that the sense of pressure and stress we feel in such moments of preparation and editing might actually be a friendly voice, warning us that we’re trying to position ourselves as an expert on a particular topic, when what might best serve community is not so much a “voice of authority” speaking from above, but the voice of a fellow pilgrim speaking to us just from the bottom of the next gulley, or from the far bank of the ravine we’re only just now descending into. —Doug ... Shadows circle like crows over my shoulder, and as I get older I feel those wingbeats colder and I can give them names; names that escaped me in my younger days: Fear of failure. Fear of loss. Fear for my children. Fear that the cost of ever finishing another book, or story or poem is more than I can pay. Fear that life from here will fray, growing harder and more confusing. Fear that what’s to come is mostly losing what I’ve had and learning what it means to hurt and how to come to terms with everything I cannot save. Fear that the sometimes tremor in my hand which began about a year ago as I wrote the close- ing pieces for a book of liturgies means that something really might be wrong with me. Fear of finding out that something might be wrong with me. Fear of letting people see what might be wrong with me. Fear that somehow God is done with me; fear that in the years to come my lot will be that of a sailor lost in aimless seas. Fear that all my old regrets might finally catch up to me. Fear that I stand here in front of you presumptively with nothing to say; that my meagre offerings will not be met by anything greater than the voices in my own head and I will be left to dangle disconnected from anything but the cringe-inducing echoes of things I’ll wish I’d never said… So add to my growing, crowing, list of dread: fear of exposure, fear of shame. Fear of being named and criticized. Fear of how I look in anybody’s eyes, including yours, including mine. Fear of endlessly learning the same lessons I already learned as a kid when I was burned so many times by wanting so much to fit in that it hurt. It hurt, and then overextending my hopes again and feeling those rope burns on the skin of my palms as the thing I so yearned for was yanked out of my grasping hands. Fear of what I do not understand: I do not understand what to say, or how to stand, or what in creation I’m ever supposed to do in public with my hands, or how to not come off as too absurd, so add fear of being seen as awkward, which is to say fear of being seen as I am because I am awkward. (I am as awkward in my attempts to fit in or be loved as the wobble of a wooden-legged duck pursued through a mile of mud by a redneck kid in a pickup truck.) Fear of inadequacy. Fear of trying to just relate because the basic mechanics of human interaction was a language I came to too late and somehow failed to learn to imitate believably. And I never wanted to be the fool. I never wanted to be uncool, but I was always uncool. On my death certificate the coroner will doubtless rule: Cause of death: He was so, so very terminally uncool. And when my daughters come to identify my body, they will shake their heads and say, “We thought he would eventually outgrow this awkward stage. How could we know he would only wax more uncool with age? His sucking need for affirmations he could not let himself receive was so pathetic. Let us hope, oh, let us hope, it’s not genetic.” So diagnose my clumsy self protection as a symptom of this constant fear of rejection, paralyzed by possibilities and presuppositions of pending hostilities that might at any time be unmasked and directed at me. And in that crown of utter instability set these stones of other fears and ring them round: Fear that anytime I speak or do not speak or cross the street or wait too long to cross the street or sit across from someone else and lift my fork to eat, I’m being judged, and run the risk of being seen as I am which is to say— of being seen as weak. —©2018 Douglas Kaine McKelvey

Near the end of his life, Pope John Paul II was seated on his chair at the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. He was in his eighties and suffering from Parkinson’s. He had trouble sitting up straight, and even holding up his head was a chore. Yet there he was, in front of hundreds of parishioners and visitors who filled the cathedral to capacity. Thousands, indeed millions more watched him on television outside in the square and around the world. He looked tired and rather glum—not an office-holder of stature, but an old man hunched by the many failings of his body. During the mass, children of multiple nations paraded across the front in their native garb to greet the ailing pontiff. Until that point, you could see the hardships of his health writ large over his countenance. Yet, when the first child mounted the steps of the altar, a subtle but certain joy broke upon John Paul’s face like a ray of winter sun. In that moment, he did not have to be a pope, but a mere man of great age taking thankful pleasure in seeing the young in all their guileless vibrance. I have never forgotten this. Like many local bodies, the church where I attend has alternative activities for small children during the service. Up to a certain age—fourth grade, I believe—the kids are invited out after a few songs to participate in what is ostensibly a more age-appropriate gathering. Very young children, below grade school age, can spend the entire service in the care of kind, dedicated volunteers. This is the situation in many churches, and I think there’s a definitive place for it all. There is nothing wrong with age-appropriate practice. We don’t lade our children with the fullness of the predestination debate, for example. We don’t expect them to understand the depth of iconography behind marriage and sexuality—for goodness’ sake, we hardly scratch its surface as adults. However, my wife and I make our oldest two—seven and nine years of age—sit through the whole service, sermon and all. We do this for a very specific set of reasons. If we have read the book of Hebrews, we know that we ought not to give up meeting together. Concerning why we ought not give it up, we tend to come up short. Corporate worship is, for lack of a better term, special. It may seem vaguely animistic, or at least far too easy, to subscribe to mysticism here, but there is something particular and ineffable about congregational worship. It is there that the embodiment of the Body of Christ is most often expressed. Furthermore, among the ways we perceive the reality of the Church, corporate worship is one of the more tangible and even visceral. I certainly want my children to see this. I’m sure part of our family decision, or at least my half of it, stems from a crotchety, mawkish pride in my own age—a modest thirty-five years among all the epochs of the world. When I was a wee young lad, after all, we had no “children’s church.” We had to sit and listen to the preacher. And we walked fifteen miles to school. And we ate boiled shoes and pine bark in the lean winter months. I want my own children to suffer the same deprivations, in order to build character. The other part of me—the less narcissistic bit—is happy for them to be exposed not only to the stories of the Bible, but to words and doctrines that escape them. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Calvary” as a child and envisioned Union Army horsemen, charging in with swords drawn. Of course! Why should there not be army men charging anywhere and everywhere in the church service? This is what little boys dream of. I was probably in middle school before I gathered exactly what Calvary meant. As with so many things—names, phone numbers, recipes—it’s the repetition that finally gets through our thick skulls. Secondly, and in a way more importantly, I want my kids present in church so that we can be the Church. Not only are they supposed to learn from all those grown-ups hopefully hanging on every word of the Scriptures or lining up for communion, but we as grown-ups ought to learn from them. They receive everything with a sense of novelty. They’re quick to ask hard questions, and they do so without the guile so often hidden in adult debates. When we bring our weaknesses and faults to the Body of Christ, we offer the opportunity for people to see the way in which we must approach the Lord—pitiful, blind, and naked. Whosoever does not come like a little child cannot enter. Adam Whipple Furthermore, they stubbornly refuse to give in to our self-importance. They write little jokes and draw things that have nothing to do with the sermon. They openly sleep. The pastor mentions the Water of Life, and they have to go to the bathroom. People take some degree of offense over these things, mostly because adults chafe at assaults upon their quietude. I know, for I personally fail often here. For example, I find it difficult to concentrate on the finer points of, say, soteriology, while some dear old lady unwraps a single butterscotch candy for eight excruciating minutes. The plastic crinkles in the quiet. My hands close and unclose involuntarily; my teeth grind. I quote verses to myself such as, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!” Deliver us, O God, from Werther’s Original. In regards to noise, kids in church show us something we rarely have the gumption to show each other: weakness. A hungry baby cares not a whit for “Now let us pray” or “Thanks be to God for his Word.” The child mews and squalls, flinging raw sound over our decorum like Jackson Pollock before a canvas. And for God’s sake, we ought to let her. You may recall a scene from the movie Children of Men, in which Clare-Hope Ashitey and Clive Owen carry a newborn through a bombed-out building in the midst of a guerrilla war. Cowering civilians and rifle-wielding soldiers alike stop cold in their tracks at the sound of the baby’s crying. With wonder in their eyes, they make way, in the midst of a firefight, to let the child through. There’s so much in that scene about the mighty power of innocence, but imagine if we held to that same wonderment about children in church. I recently attended my first church business meeting. Thankfully, it was a sheer delight, a poetic scene of a hundred unsung volunteers managing a gigantic sum of money (gigantic to me, anyway) out of plain servanthood and willingness. I’ve heard the horror stories of other church meetings, though. Backbiting, subversion, and sabotage make regular appearances. Imagine if, into all that posturing and sebaceous bravado, there was placed a single clean drop of innocent weakness. What self-entitled pillar of the community would not rise from his laurels to help if, say, a little boy suddenly broke an arm falling off a chair? Now, I know kids can be irritating. Don’t hear me saying that I’m against things like good discipline or those helpful crying rooms in churches. I know it’s embarrassing to have your kid make a ruckus, but for the rest of us listening, I think grace one-ups decorum every time. If these be silent, the stones will cry out. When we bring our weaknesses and faults to the Body of Christ, we offer the opportunity for people to see the way in which we must approach the Lord—pitiful, blind, and naked. Whosoever does not come like a little child cannot enter. It’s true, we’ve given each other plenty of reason to fear showing our weaknesses. It isn’t for nothing the Church is often seen as a pack of wolves. We all bite now and again. Faith in the Lord gives us hope, though, and hope keeps us returning, even to each other. And when at last, old and broken, we see each other as the Children of the King that we are, we can pause amid the ceremonies and the pageantry to take joy at the guileless, helpless young. Like John Paul in that moment upon Christmastide, we can forget our thrones, and our offices, and our fine robes and remember that those young ones are us, and that we all come to God as little children.