Do you ever find yourself thinking, “I really want to dig into scripture, but I just don’t know where to start”? Did that one poem from Isaiah give you goosebumps, but then when you tried to read more of the whole book, you got lost and unmotivated? If you answered “no,” well then good for you! But if you answered “yes,” you are in good company, and Russ Ramsey might be able to help you. Russ has done a very good thing in the world: he has condensed the narrative arc of scripture into three elegant and helpful books called The Advent of the Lamb of God, The Passion of the King of Glory, and The Mission of the Body of Christ. These books provide accessible, inviting entry points for those among us who would like to become more scripturally literate. In fact, scriptural literacy has become very important to Russ, both as a pastor and as a writer. Every once in a while, I have an interview with someone that is so good that I can’t bear the thought of editing it down too much, so I break it into two parts instead. This interview was one of those; it was a conversation I have taken with me, and it is my hope that you can find some gold in it for yourself. Here’s Part 2. Drew: What’s the story on how you found yourself writing this book series? Russ: Well, the Advent book was formerly called Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. When we moved it over to InterVarsity Press, I had Behold the Lamb as well as Behold the King of Glory with CrossWay—which is the second book in this trilogy, now called The Passion of the King of Glory. And the third book is called The Mission of the Body of Christ. The Advent of the Lamb of God consists of twenty-five chapters—so that you can read one for every day of December—that take you from Eden through the nativity story and the baptism of Jesus. And all these books were written in a storytelling voice; I never make “eye contact” with the reader, so to speak. It sticks to a “once upon a time” sort of voicing. Drew: Yeah, I had been wondering about your choices with narrative voice. Russ: Right—well, I wanted to tell a story. For the most part, I wanted to stay away from making application. There may be some application through the narrative, but what I don’t ever do is say, “Now, dear reader, the moral of the story is…” and so on. The Passion of the King of Glory is forty chapters so you can read one each day during Lent. It consists of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus: the four gospels synthesized into one narrative. I had written Behold the Lamb of God and released it through Rabbit Room Press as a companion to Andrew Peterson’s record. If you’ve ever been to a Behold the Lamb show, the first half of the show is this collection of people on stage all telling the same story through their own art, then they come together later and join their voices. So what I wanted to do was add another voice to that mix in the long form of a book. And of course, once I finished writing through the nativity, I realized that some of the best parts still lay ahead in the story of Jesus’s life, and that’s why I went on to write The Passion of the King of Glory. And then when I finished writing through the resurrection, I knew that I still wasn’t done with the narrative of scripture; there’s the post-resurrection appearances, the ascension, and the book of Acts. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I’ve struggled to understand the narrative arc of the book of Acts. Like, I get that there are missionary journeys, but in terms of a cohesive sequence of what happened, I wanted to learn more and gain focus. So I researched it, brought in narrative components from the epistles—I think in Galatians, Paul talks about confronting Peter to his face—it’s not in the book of Acts, but you can piece together when it happened. Stuff like that, I put it all together to tell it again in a storyteller’s voice. That book, The Mission of the Body of Christ, is thirty-one chapters to be read during any month you choose during Pentecost or Ordinary Time. And then when you put all three books together, you get a cohesive guide to the story of scripture from Eden to Rome. All the chapters are about the same length, between 1,500 and 2,000 words—relatively short, about eight pages. I’d love for them all to be in a single volume one day. Drew: I didn’t realize The Passion of the King of Glory was a Lenten reading. Russ: All these books have section headings, where I group chapters together into “eras.” In The Passion of the King of Glory, there are four or five different eras I grouped the chapters into, from the earliest part of Jesus’s ministry when he was virtually unknown until he becomes famous. I mean, it’s weird to think about Jesus being famous during his life. Look no further than passages about the crowds pressing in and thousands of people gathering to hear him, and you’ll see that he was the hottest ticket in town. And then he was rejected, and he went into hiding and left Galilee and went to Jerusalem and Judea and stayed there. The last eleven or twelve chapters are then focused on Passion week. There’s this phenomenon in scripture where with The Advent of the Lamb of God, so much of that story in the Bible is told from 30,000 feet. It’s about humanity’s longing for a Messiah and our continual rebellion. And then periodically, it zeroes down into “an angel visits Mary” or “there’s no room in the inn at Bethlehem.” Those little details come into focus to give you the story, but so much of it is rather lofty. But with the Easter story, most of it is told in very granular detail. That’s one of the differences, then, between those two books—The Passion of the King of Glory is so detail-laden, by nature. So I really gave it the time to mine the details inherent in the gospels. Drew: How would you describe the narrative tone of The Mission of the Body of Christ? Russ: One of the things I loved about writing that book is that there’s this profound reminder that the story of scripture did not end with the resurrection of Jesus—it ends with the great commission, the sending out of people who would tell the story as Jesus’s ambassadors. In the gospels, there’s this moment in time where Jesus is on the scene: he’s leading, equipping his disciples, healing people, and teaching in the temple. And then, when he’s crucified, his disciples scatter and hide in fear. And yet, when Jesus resurrects, he appears to them and tells them, “I want you to be my witnesses in the world.” So they haven’t failed him to the point of being disqualified, which is a beautiful thought to me. Peter, who swore to Jesus that he would die alongside him, ended up denying knowing him when he faced the questions of a girl next to a fire. He folded, he collapsed. Jesus uses his post-resurrection time to appear to people and invite them to tell the world about him. Part of the story they had to tell is that they are duplicitous, sinful people who failed him; but it is not by our strength that we go out and proclaim his name—it is by the power of the Holy Spirit. So you see this Spirit at work in the book of Acts; people bear witness to Christ, they suffer so much and are rejected, but there are little victories along the way where hope comes into the picture like it never has before. One thing I love about that story is just how complicated it is. In a world that seems on its surface to be quite committed to rejecting Jesus perpetually, you somehow see so many places where these ordinary people who have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit just have to trust that what they have received is true and that God will prevail over the schemes of men. We read through Western eyes, and we don't understand how radical the gospel was in bringing together people who were separated by culture: men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. The gospel bringing those people together is as radical a message of equality as the world has ever seen, and it was confounding—offensive—to people. But for those who believed, it became the very fabric of who they were. Russ Ramsey I love learning how the Apostle Paul worked. We can read Paul as the guy who just wrote all these epistles, this teacher. But man, he was tenacious. He did things that were very confrontational and bold in the face of power. One of my favorite stories from the book of Acts is when Paul and Silas are thrown in jail in Philippi. They were preaching the gospel and people instigated this riot against them, so they were publicly beaten and thrown into prison. That’s the night when the Lord opens the prison cell but they don’t leave, and the Philippian jailer becomes a Christian because sees them—he had thought everyone had fled, so he thought, “I’m going to die. My bosses will kill me for this, so I might as well kill myself.” But then Paul says, “No, we’re still here.” What I love about that story is that Paul invokes his rights as a Roman citizen and says, “You did not give me what is required for a Roman citizen. You beat me publicly and arrested me without a trial.” And all of the sudden the magistrates and authorities have a tiger by the tail: they’ve got this guy in prison and they know they messed it up and that legally, they did the wrong thing. So the jailer comes to him and says, “The bosses say you can go.” But Paul says, “Nope. Not without an apology.” He sits down in his jail cell and says, “You tell your bosses to come to me and apologize, and then I’ll go.” Paul is fighting for the Christians who will come after him. He is demanding that he be treated justly and he’s invoking the law of the land to do it. I love that story because he is risking so much by being what I’m sure his jailers would call unreasonable and belligerent. But he’s not—he’s being a Roman citizen. They’re the ones who messed it up. When he demands that they apologize to him, they actually do! And he was doing all that to fight for those who would come after him. Drew: Which reminds me of the Philemon story, too. Russ: Yeah! I wanted to start the book with a story that I felt encapsulated the implications of Jesus’s resurrection. If the heart of the story is that Christ is risen and we are his witnesses in the world, what’s the story in scripture that best represents the outworkings of all that? I went to Philemon, because here’s a place where both a wealthy slaveholder and his runaway slave become believers because of the ministry of Paul. And it fundamentally changed who they are to each other. That was radical. They couldn’t have been more different in their social standing from one another. When you look at the details in Colossians and Acts, you learn that the church in Colossae met in Philemon, the slaveholder’s home. When Paul had the letter to the Colossian church delivered, he had it delivered with another letter, and that’s the one to Philemon about his runaway slave, Onesimus, who delivered the letter! I mean, talk about drama: there was a moment in time when Onesimus the runaway slave was standing at Philemon’s door and he had on his person the letter to the Colossains and the letter to Philemon, about Onesimus, from Paul. It’s just so shrewd. Drew: That’s mind-blowing. Russ: It is! I mean, it changes everything. And Paul has a heavy hand in that letter—I’d love to do a piece on humor in scripture, because it’s never joke-y but it is ironic and dry. Drew: Could you call it polemic, even? Russ: Well, Paul says to Philemon about Onesimus, “He’s your runaway slave. He ran to me. I understand that he took some things from you when he left. Just put that on my tab. You know me—I’m the one who preached the gospel to you. So put on my tab whatever you think he owes you.” It’s funny to me because there’s no way Philemon is going to actually take Paul up on that. Drew: Of course—because Philemon owes Paul everything. Russ: Yeah, that’s the beauty and humor of it. I love the confrontation of the gospel. I love that it caused Philemon and Onesimus to encounter each other again, not as slave and master, but as brothers. We read through Western eyes, and we don’t understand how radical the gospel was in bringing together people who were separated by culture: men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. The gospel bringing those people together is as radical a message of equality as the world has ever seen, and it was confounding—offensive—to people. But for those who believed, it became the very fabric of who they were. Check out The Advent of the Lamb of God, The Passion of the King of Glory, and The Mission of the Body of Christ in the Rabbit Room Store, and visit Russ Ramsey’s website by clicking here.

Nashville’s Hymnmoot last Friday was blessed by the presence of John Cal, both in a delicious rhubarb pie and in one of his signature, Hutchmoot-style anecdotes that made his pie all the tastier. Below is the text from his story for you to enjoy. Daniel Murauskas was always better at making pie than I was. Crisp crusts, beautiful lattices, perfectly thickened fruit juices. His whipped cream was always creamier, his meringue, meringue-ier. I wasn’t sure whether to attest his pie prowess to his height, his GPA, or how much he could bench press, all ranking numbers significantly higher than mine, but being in the presence of a Murauskas pie somehow always seemed to leave me feeling lacking. “It was probably because he grew up in South Dakota,” I’d tell myself. “People in Hawaii don’t bake.” And it’s just convenient to have another thing to blame on my childhood and my parents. I wanted to bake as a kid. For my tenth birthday my parents got me a bread machine. Sun dried tomato and pesto sour dough, braided challah, honey wheat—I’d bring loaves to the church potluck and hear the housewives swoon. The next year, for Christmas, my father bought me my first cookbook, Julia Child’s The Way to Cook, and I mastered La Riene du Saba, The Queen of Sheba chocolate cake, that I made in triplicate and brought to school for Valentine’s Day. My teachers swooned. By college, when Dan and I met, I had a half dozen or so cookie recipes memorized: chocolate chip, peanut butter, sugar, all the important ones. At friends’ houses, I could produce a couple dozen snickerdoodles as a hat trick, and from start to finish we could be dolloping dough to dunking in milk in less than twenty minutes. But then Daniel would bring a pie, and even with a cookie’s unbridled deliciousness, you simply cannot compare a homemade pie to snickerdoodles. Even the really sad flavors of pie, like canned cherry crumble, trump cookies on the buffet line of life with almost no effort. His apples were tender, while mine remained crunchy; his pecans toasted, while mine remained pekid. Blueberry, key lime, chocolate silk, all delectable and lovely, but where Dan really shined was during rhubarb season. With cranberries, or strawberries, or roasted and dipped in caramel. Who thought the red-headed cousin of celery could be so tempting? I was told once that we are all part of the body of Christ, some hands, some feet—all important in the kingdom—but this self-imposed pie deficiency of mine left me feeling like an appendix: inflamed and expendable. There is, of course, too much to deal with in college with all that literary analysis, all those algebraic theorems, and whether or not Casey Perkins would go to the movies with me on Saturday night; and so for years I carried around this sadness, this lacking inside me. Without knowing, I held my sorrow intimately close. And we forget about it. This acute sense of longing just becomes normal, just how we feel. We forget that though all the signs point to love and redemption, we often don’t think very well of ourselves. Years later, after college, after graduation, after I left Nebraska and relocated to Oregon, Daniel happened to be passing through town, visiting a distant Aunt in Portland, and asked if he could stop by for a visit. I had just moved into a new home and he’d be around for the house warming. We were having burgers and potato salad, cookies, and cake, but Daniel was coming, and he asked if he could bring anything. “I could make a pie,” he offered. “Great,” I said, one of the many words I use as a blanket to my real feelings. Fine, sure, yeah okay. They all work in a pinch. He was happy to get the ingredients on his drive up, but I offered to get them, to wield what little power I still had over him. I bought the expensive local butter from the co-op and fresh raspberries from the farmers market. When he arrived, I even brought him to the house of a friend who grew rhubarb in their organic garden so that he could pick the best stalks himself and have them baking en croute mere minutes from when they were picked. We're so used to hoarding what we have. We think there's not enough, but the path to joy—that path I so often choose to ignore—says that sparrows and wildflowers are treasured, fed, and clothed in beauty. John Cal I don’t know where we learn that we need to be all, do all. Somehow we learn to be empowered with the idea of power. “All of this can be yours,” the Great Deceiver said to Jesus in the desert. “Your eyes will be opened,” said the serpent in the garden. I know these words are lies, and yet why is it that like the rich young ruler, I am left in despair when I already know the path to joy? Why is it that I am still so impressed with a grand and lavish temple gift as if it is more pious, more devout than two small mites? It all happened very quickly: dough was made, crust was rolled, fruit chopped and dusted in sugar and cornstarch. “You use cornstarch instead of flour,” I said, trying to glaze the judgment in my words, as to not reveal my covetousness. “Flour works too,” Daniel said, dotting the top of his fruit with tiny knobs of butter. “I usually just use whatever I have in the house,” he continued, his casual banter only magnifying the insufficiency rumbling inside me, but this was it, my chance to weasel some pie secrets out of him, to manipulate my way into the win. “So, I know what I do, when I make pie,” I said with internal quivering, “but what ratio do you use for fruit to thickening agent?” “Well, you know it’s different for every fruit,” Daniel said. “Apples can have a lot of water in them compared to rhubarb, but it’s around a teaspoon of cornstarch or a tablespoon of flour for every cup of fruit.” And that was it. In an anticlimactic moment, it was like there were no secrets at all, like a veil had been ripped to reveal everything I had been longing to know. All I had to do was ask. “Yeah,” I said, still trying to cover up my deficiencies. “Fruit can be so temperamental. Even when you do everything right, you can still end up with soup and a soggy crust.” “Wanna know this trick I just learned?” Daniel said with a twinkle. We found a bowl, two eggs, milk, and a few tablespoons of sugar. He beat them together and poured them over the fruit. “Custard,” he said as he poured. “I don’t do this all the time, but it makes the pie seem really fancy, but it’s really easy. The juices just get absorbed by the custard and make a really tasty sauce.” It seems silly now that all I needed to do was ask. We’re so used to hoarding what we have. We think there’s not enough, but the path to joy—that path I so often choose to ignore—says that sparrows and wildflowers are treasured, fed, and clothed in beauty. And yet it’s so hard to put down this fear I carry. My pie still isn’t as good as Daniel’s, though I did use his recipe tonight: rhubarb and custard. Still, my resolve to this truth wasn’t gleaned from comparing or ranking our measurable ingredients, but instead because what Daniel had he freely gave, because that’s the way real joy works. It believes there is enough, and that we are enough, and that if we let ourselves be brave enough, if we simply remind each other to be braver, that if we, in our weakness, carry the corners of this great canvas we each have been entrusted with, then it might be possible to step back, even in our insufficiencies, and see the big, beautiful picture we are creating together. “Huh, that really is easy. Thanks Dan,” I said before returning to my cookie making. Then, without missing a beat, he weaved a beautiful lattice from the scraps of dough that were left, making sure that nothing was wasted.

Of the six of bedrooms I can remember from my childhood, only two were completely my own, and the time I lived in both of them was less than two years. The rest I shared with my sister. In college I had five different roommates in three different dorm rooms and one apartment, then I got married. So I guess you could say I never really had a room of my own. Until now. I’m not complaining about having to share my room over the years. My sister and I were very close growing up, and still are. In fact, if we ever had two kids of the same gender who were close in age, we probably would have made them share a room. I think all of my kids are in for a rude awakening some day because they’ve never been forced to share living space with another human. You learn a lot by having a roommate, and technically I still have one since I’m not planning to give up sleeping with my husband anytime soon. Let me explain the situation a little more. In October I helped lead a session with three of my friends from Hutchmoot. It was called Voices of Grace: Encouraging Women’s Voices in Artistic and Christian Community. I spoke about how women bear a unique version of the image of God, and how the world needs to see and know this feminine reflection of his holiness. Then Father Thomas McKenzie told us how the Fall had severed the first relationship between a man and a woman, and how that brokenness has impacted the church ever since. After Thomas was Helena Sorensen, who drew from Virginia Woolf’s essay, “A Room of Her Own,” by talking about what women need today in order to become artists, as well as many of the hurdles she’s had to cross in order to become a fiction writer. Then Jill Phillips inspired us with an update on her recent vocational change, along with a charge for women in every phase of life, to use their gifts to bless God’s kingdom here on earth. I was thankful to see how the Lord brought all our points of view together into a cohesive and challenging message for this special community of people, and I was very blessed by our time together. And I was especially proud to have two of my kids in the audience that day, along with their Dad. But little did I know that my husband left the session even more impacted than me, because he came home and began daydreaming of a way to gift me someday with a “Room of My Own,” just for writing. I'm blown away by the creativity and talent on display within these four walls and I feel inspired to add my own voice to this already singing choir. Janna Barber Our oldest son is a sophomore in college, so for the past eighteen months, with the exception of Christmas break and two months in summer, his room has sat empty. We’d talked about what to do with it, but never made any concrete plans until I decided to go away for a long weekend with some girlfriends. We had discussed turning it back into a spare room, like it was before Ben was born; back when Sam still called it the “Spare Oom,” quoting Mr. Tumnus from Narnia. Or perhaps it could be an office/ workout/ craft room, we mused. But as soon as I put my trip to the mountains on the calendar, and unbeknownst to me, John got to work on his big surprise. He sent out messages to friends and family asking for gifts, ideas, free labor, and even a secret address for out-of-towners to send packages to. Meanwhile, I kept working. For the past several years I’ve been writing wherever I could fit myself and my little Chromebook: in the bedroom, at the kitchen table, in various coffee shops, or even sitting on our sofa in the living room—trying to finish a book of my own. But now, thanks to his hard work and the thoughtfulness of many wonderful friends, I can sit in my own comfortable spot, think my own thoughts, and work on my own projects, undisturbed. Yesterday I sat in the comfy secondhand chair John found for me online, and opened handwritten cards from six of my friends. The day before that I wrote for a little while at the desk, and the day before that I just sat here and drank a cup of tea while listening to a podcast. There are several pictures, paintings, and drawings from friends adorning the walls, along with framed inspirational quotes, a refurbished bookshelf, a new Keurig, and loads of teabags. Not to mention the hand woven blanket, carved wooden sign, and antique window—all prepared especially for me. Every time I’ve come down here in the last five days, I’ve smiled. I look at the bright blue wall and freshly made curtains (sewn by my daughter, Laney), breathe in either the scent of a fresh candle or my new Oil Diffuser, and feel at home. I think about how wonderful it is to have friends who know and love you, who are happy to care for you in tangible ways. I’m blown away by the creativity and talent on display within these four walls and I feel inspired to add my own voice to this already singing choir. I still don’t have a book contract, a publishing agent, or even a finished manuscript, but I’m beginning to feel more like an author than ever before. There’s something about having a designated place to work that makes this job feel more legitimate. Who knows if I’ll ever make more than two hundred dollars for my work, but so far writing is the best job I’ve ever had. And now that I have space of my own, to focus specifically on the task at hand, I feel confident I’ll write more words and tell more stories. I can’t promise they’ll be fiction, like the ones that came from Woolf’s room, but I hope you stick around to hear them anyhow. And thanks for reading these.

Amadou Diallo was nearly, literally, home free. In the early morning hours of February 4th, 1999, four police officers dressed in plainclothes and members of the now-obsolete Street Crimes Unit, confronted Mr. Diallo in the doorway of his Bronx apartment building. The West African immigrant had just returned home from getting a quick bite to eat after finishing a long day of work that ended at midnight. An American resident for just over two years, Diallo had lived in the States long enough to know the police were going to need his identification. It turns out reaching for his wallet became the very gesture that killed him, at least per the officers’ sworn statements. Each testified that Diallo, he believed, was pulling a gun. In response, the officers fired upon him again and again (and again). Forty-one times, in fact. Diallo’s body lied in the doorway with nineteen bullet wounds. Two police officers emptied their weapons entirely; a third fired five times and another four. Officers would testify that he somewhat matched the description of a serial rape suspect they’d chased for a year. It would be another year before they caught the real offender. The overwhelming amount of firepower involved, as well as the mistaken identity, led to a media frenzy and anti-police protests in New York. Concerns of police brutality and race became common talking points in the wake of Diallo’s murder, and every officer was charged with various crimes, including second-degree murder and criminally negligent homicide. The four, all Caucasian, would be placed on paid leave before eventually being acquitted of all charges. The testimony of one—officer Sean Carroll—said he wept and held Mr. Diallo’s hand as he died, knowing he’d misread the situation. * * * The soundtrack of my childhood is saturated in Springsteen. As a child of the ’80s, I came to the catalog a bit later than legendary releases like Born to Run or Darkness on the Edge of Town. I would discover those much, much later. Raised by a single mother who loved road trips and singing aloud, nearly all of my Springsteen memories include the rolled down windows of a late ’70s Ford LTD—a car so large it required its own zip code. My mom was an administrative assistant for most of my childhood. My neighborhood was called Mobile Manor—emphasis on the “mobile,” since it was a literal trailer park—on the outskirts of Chandler, a booming metropolis of hundreds in southwestern Indiana, situated between cities named Boonville and Daylight. Mom was committed to small victories for our family, making memories despite the lack of resources, often in the form of short day trips to St. Louis or Cincinnati in that LTD—sandwiches (bologna, Kraft singles, white bread) in the cooler, motel rooms that open to the outdoors, strategically scheduled activities advertised with “kids free” or “family day.” On those trips, with the windows down and the music up, my right arm was a stunt plane, winding and looping and swirling alongside the steel tank my mother was driving, performing aerial tricks in response to the melodies and gusts of wind. The music was the best part, full-throated refrains from the up-and-coming duo, Yvonne and Matt, which covered all your favorites. We were equals on “Eleanor Rigby” while my mom would take the lead on all things Tina Turner, singing in agreement to lines like “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” as she likely thought of my absent father. She’d sound feisty singing and driving on that old bench seat. Springsteen provided plenty of emotional resonance in those days. Sure, the captivating snare of “Born in the U.S.A.” was an obvious hit, but my mom loved to explain to me the sentiments behind Springsteen’s other early hits. She’d sing along to “My Hometown” while driving past the familiar touch points of her own past. She’d honor “Glory Days” with a conviction that conveyed its truth. Yeah, they’ll pass you by. We are baptized in these waters and in each others' blood. Bruce Springsteen Springsteen’s songs have always felt familiar, even familial—musical narratives featuring real people in real places with real struggles. Three-dimensional characters in three-minute melodies. Springsteen in many ways, via many songs, told my mom’s story, a hardened protagonist shaped by hard times trying her damnedest to accomplish hard things. Bruce reminded her she wasn’t alone, and without words, she told me he’d be there for me, too. It was the beginning of my love for Bruce and a lasting gift from my mother. * * * It was the song I’d never heard that made me cry. Four years ago I saw Bruce Springsteen for the first and only time. Pete Peterson and I grabbed a couple nosebleed seats in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena and marveled at the Spirited (with a capital S) three-hour-plus affair. He delivered twenty-eight songs that spanned every album from Darkness on the Edge of Town to High Hopes that night, but it was an unknown tune, “American Skin,” that made me cry. Midway through this new (to me) song, the E Street Band and traveling ensemble, with their sum total of twenty-something performers, fell completely silent and an auditorium packed to the rafters with adoring fans was hushed as a library. You can get killed just for living in it. You can get killed just for living in it. You can get killed just for living in it. He wouldn’t stop singing that line. It was moving. It was unnerving. It was painful. “What is this song?” I turned to ask. “You’ve never heard ‘American Skin’?” Pete responded. No, I had not. The lyrics told the story: the first verse from the perspective of a policeman who’d accidentally shot the wrong man, the second verse from the perspective of a worried mother tasked with raising a young black son. The connective tissue is a truth-telling chorus that resonates just as strongly today as it did when it was written in ’99. Twenty years later, these words could have easily been penned in 2018: Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it a wallet? This is your life. It ain’t no secret No secret my friend You can get killed just for living in your American skin. Springsteen wrote the song in response to Mr. Diallo’s murder. The powers-that-be of the time did their best to politicize it, calling for a boycott of Springsteen (who went on to sell out ten consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden). Springsteen was called every name in the book in op-eds in major NY papers, and the police chief himself called for all cops to refuse to provide security for his shows. Yet the Boss himself stated at the time that he never intended for the song to be politicized or to send an anti-cop message. He simply did what he always does. He told a story. Real people. Real places. Real life. And as always, he’s in the middle of it. The third verse: Forty-one shots I got my boots caked in this mud We’re baptized in these waters And in each other’s blood * * * It’s here in “American Skin” that I find what I love most about Bruce Springsteen. There are 100 songs I could highlight in his vast catalog, each a shining example of songcraft or narrative. But “American Skin,” in particular, binds together despite our dividing lines. Springsteen doesn’t invent a narrative here. Criminal files tell the story. Court transcripts spill the details. The bloodstains and bullet holes in the doorway aren’t metaphorical. Springsteen sets this nightmare reality to song and paints a contemporary picture before introducing the turn that puts you and me on the same stoop—just a few minutes after midnight. “I got my boots caked in this mud,” he sings with all manner of emotion. He’s stepped in it. We’ve all stepped in it. Our shoes give it away; we were at the crime scene, too. We’re all complicit in this murder, this system, these fears that work so well to divide. Our boots are caked in this mud —the mud of racism and classism and sexism. Us versus them. Fear of the other. Fear of one another. This beautiful gospel of Springsteen reminds us once again of what is true. His stories continue to do what they’ve always done. They convict and connect. They hurt and then heal. “American Skin” shares the vivid details of someone else’s story because I’m too entrenched in my own to bother to reach out. Once again, Bruce’s songs awaken my once deadened senses. We are baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood. Yes. Yes we are. Amen. #BruceSpringsteen

Cave Pictures Publishing is an ambitious new comic book imprint that offers a little bit of everything: a dystopian fantasy, a superhero team, a zombie saga, a wild west tale…and an adaptation of the classic George MacDonald fairy tale, The Light Princess. I had not yet read MacDonald’s original story, but of all the comics in Cave Pictures Publishing’s new lineup, it was the title to which I immediately gravitated; the stunning illustration and design on the cover pulled me in. And the interior did not disappoint! This is a sparkling new adaptation that draws heavily from classic motifs and structures, yet defies convention and plays by its own rules—kind of like MacDonald himself! Meredith Finch’s earnest script elaborates on MacDonald’s original text, building extra story and serialization into what was a fairly short story, but it taps exactly the right sources: classic fairy tales and scripture, the same sources that fueled MacDonald’s imagination. The story’s original tone and themes are intact, but fleshed out with added texture for the artists to build upon. And the artists are perfectly cast. Renae De Liz pencilled the book, creating the visuals for the characters and environments. Those pencils have a perfect sense of place, pacing, and momentum to guide the reader through the book, and Ray Dillon coated those pencils with a stunning layer of fairy-tale color and design, as well as some incredibly stylized lettering. The two artists make a great team, especially for a book like this. The story plays out against grand, elegant settings, splashed in gentle-yet-striking lighting and color that make it pop off the page. The resulting effect is deliciously atmospheric, whether we’re looking at a shining jewel of a castle or the grimy abomination of a witch’s tower. Reading the first issue of this series makes me excited to seek out the original MacDonald story and also to read the second issue as soon as it is published—and as far as literary adaptations go, that might be the ultimate combination. The Light Princess #1 is coming in early 2019. Stay tuned to Cave Pictures’ website and social media for all the latest on their upcoming titles!

Christmas can be a time of joy and celebration—but it’s also a season of lament for many of us. For my family and me, we’re just past a season of grief; lament always remains a prayer on my lips. We live in a broken and hurting world, after all, and if we’re not currently grieving, we know someone who is. I don’t know your story, and mine may be vastly different. In many ways, my story is simple, expected. Death is a reality we all have to deal with at some point, and my family is no exception. Maybe your journey through the valley of the shadow of death is messy, complicated, confusing. No matter what your story is, this truth remains: The God who came at Christmas is a God who knows our grief. **** On December 23, 2010, I got a call from my parents while my husband and I celebrated an early Christmas with his family. My mom’s voice shook as she spoke, and I walked down the stairs of my in-laws’ condo to talk to her on the phone. She told me she had turned yellow with jaundice, and doctors believed it was caused by something serious—cancer possibly. The next day, she’d be admitted to the hospital and then have surgery on Christmas morning. Shortly after we arrived at Newark airport, we made our way to the hospital. As I entered my mom’s room, her deep yellow skin startled me. I don’t remember much about that visit, except feeling tethered to her bed when we needed to leave. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t want to be there, either. But uncertainty held me like a heavy chain. What if she never makes it out of surgery? What if this is the last time I see her? On Christmas Day, a Buddhist doctor performed the Whipple procedure, a complex operation removing a portion of the pancreas and other organs. We sat in the hospital lobby waiting for the doctor to finish the surgery. Friends dropped off Panera for lunch. We munched on chips and ate forkfuls of salad, talking through tears about the turn of events. White lights glowed on the Christmas tree near the window while carols played in the background. Every once in awhile, the sounds of a chime rang through the hospital, letting everyone in the building know a baby had been born. I remember thinking how odd it was that a place like a hospital could be filled with such joy and such sorrow at the same time. In the same place and at the same time that my mom was being cut open to remove cancer, new life cried out in a nearby room. I suppose it’s a fitting way to spend Christmas Day—listening to the announcement of a baby born in the midst of our own grief. My mom made it out of surgery. Doctors called the procedure a success, but confirmed that her sickness was in fact pancreatic cancer. Although surgery likely helped prolong her life, thanks to too much Googling we knew the nearly impossible odds of beating this type of cancer. Over the next few months, my mom went through an aggressive chemo and radiation regimen and was in and out of the hospital. She seemed to handle the roller coaster ride as well as we could hope. While she never functioned again at one hundred percent, at times the disease seemed manageable—or maybe “manageable” just means we got used to it all. Six months after her surgery, I got a call from my parents again. At that point, I dreaded seeing their names when the phone rang, because bad news often followed. My dad had blood work done and doctors saw something they didn’t like. After more tests and appointments, the results were clear. Cancer—multiple myeloma, a cancer I knew nothing about at the time but learned it was relatively treatable, although it required a less than pleasant treatment plan. In December of 2011, a year after my mom’s diagnosis and six months after my dad’s, my mom began her second round of chemotherapy, and my Dad had a stem cell transplant to treat his cancer. While their cancers were quite different, they were for sure in this together now. They even scheduled their oncologist appointments together. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' is as surely the Word of God as 'all things work together for good.' Sarah Hauser We spent much of that holiday season in the hospital with my dad. I flew back and forth to New Jersey, grateful for a job where I could work from home, but wishing that didn’t mean setting up my laptop during chemo treatments or in waiting rooms. Rarely had I stepped foot in a hospital before then, but I quickly grew accustomed to the winding hallways, smells of disinfectant, and beeping machines. My dad eventually went into remission, but in the late spring of 2012, my mom elected to stop the treatments that made her more sick than the cancer itself. At that point, it was a waiting game. Her doctors didn’t want to give her a timeline, because no one really knew how long it’d take. But she pressed her oncologist for answers, and in the summer of 2012, I vividly remember my mom saying, “The doctor doesn’t think I’ll be around at Christmas.” There had always been one more treatment, one more appointment, one more thing to try. Until there was nothing left to try. I’ve never dreaded a Christmas so much. Advent wasn’t waiting for the birth of a Savior that year. Advent meant waiting for my mom to die. **** During that time, I read The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It’s set as the prequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and in it, Digory’s mother is sick. As Aslan prepares to send him on a mission in Narnia, he asks Digory if he’s ready. “Yes,” said Digory. He had had for a second some wild idea of saying, “I’ll try to help you if you’ll promise to help my Mother,” but he realized in time that the Lion was not at all the sort of person one could try to make bargains with. But when he had said “Yes,” he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out: “But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at his face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great.” As I read that, I wept. I wept with Digory, a fictional character whose words felt all too real. I questioned Aslan, wondering why he did things the way he did and why in this story (spoiler alert) Digory’s mother gets healed. Why didn’t God heal my mom? I can point to situations where God worked through my parents’ cancers in a way that may not have happened in their health. But couldn’t God find another way? Even as many of my questions have gone unanswered, I’m reminded of this: our God is not a distant God. He’s not apathetic. He takes up the state of humanity and fixes it. He relates so deeply to the human condition that he became human. He knows better than anyone that grief is great. **** Matthew 1:18-23 tells us this: Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Jesus. Yahweh is salvation. Immanuel. God with us. Those two names proclaiming to the world what God would do and how he would do it. Yahweh would save, and he would do it by being with us. With us so much that he became one of us. In a sermon on Matthew, Tim Mackie says, “Precisely at the lowest moments when you think God is totally absent, Jesus invites us to see that’s exactly where Immanuel is.” I suppose it's a fitting way to spend Christmas Day—listening to the announcement of a baby born in the midst of our own grief. Sarah Hauser “God with us” doesn’t just mean Jesus is in our hearts, like a security blanket we may have carried around as a child. It means he knows our grief firsthand. When you’ve walked through sorrow, have you found solace in a friend who’s gone through the same thing? There’s a knowing, a comfort, a deeper connection that happens when someone else has walked the same road. We saw this when Reverend Eric Manning, the pastor of Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston where nine parishioners were shot to death in 2015 met together with Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life congregation, where a shooter recently gunned down eleven people. Despite vast differences, they knew each other’s suffering all too well. There’s a level of mourning with those who mourn that can take place with someone who knows in the depths of their soul what it’s like to walk through what you’ve gone through. Find those people. Maybe you’re that person for someone else. We need to have people and be people who can weep with those who weep. But let’s also remember this. Jesus came to earth and experienced all we experience. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” He didn’t only suffer and die. He wasn’t only tempted, yet remained sinless. He doesn’t stop at mourning when we mourn. Yes. He does all those things. But friends, he rose from the dead. This season of Advent celebrates the birth of the Christ. He is Immanuel. He is a God who knows our grief, who was born as a baby to a hurting world and grew up to die a criminal’s death. But the story doesn’t end with him in the grave. For God is with us, and Yahweh is salvation. Isaiah 53:2-5 says: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. Unlike even the best of friends who know how to weep with us, our God not only weeps, but he heals. He’s a God who hears our lament but will turn our lament to rejoicing. He’s a God who not only listens but brings justice. He’s not only a friend who grieves alongside but a Savior who rescues. Matthew bookends his gospel with this truth. When Jesus gives the Great Commission in Matthew 28, he promises, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20). God is with us, not in an ethereal, fuzzy-feeling way but as a Savior who knows what it is that you’ve been through, who is God, who came to earth, lived a hard life, and died a torturous death—a Savior who rose from the dead declaring victory over sin and death and who one day will make all things new. **** My husband and I spent our first three Christmases together caring for and pleading to God on behalf of my sick parents and our own heartache. A couple months after that third Christmas, on February 12, 2013, my mom died in her room with our family around her. I’ve questioned and wrestled, wept and prayed. And I still do. Moments of grief catch me off guard, even though we’re five and a half years past her death. I don’t have easy answers or a pretty bow to tie around the end of this story. You don’t put a bow on death. At the same time, I’m grateful for my dad’s healing. Years after his initial diagnosis and treatment, he remains cancer free. New health challenges have arisen, including Parkinson’s disease and a litany of surgeries, but God can heal. Why he chooses to in some situations and not others is a question I’ll always ask. Yet this I know: our God is no stranger to grief. We can wrestle and weep and plead with God just like David, Habakkuk, Job, and so many others. He can handle it. The same God who inspired the writing of our favorite psalms of praise also inspired words of gut-wrenching grief that his own Son uttered on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is as surely the Word of God as “all things work together for good.” But resurrection followed his cries. And we can be just as certain the same is true for us. Resurrection is death’s undoing. It’s death’s defeat. It renders death utterly powerless. 1 Corinthians 15 says, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead…The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (v. 21, 26). For those in Christ, grief will not have the last word, and lament will not be our final prayer. Even while we weep, we can rejoice. Revelation 21:4 tells us, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” He knows our grief. And one day, that grief will be no more. Click here to read more of Sarah Hauser’s writing. Artwork credit: “Grief” by Gene Gould

In a season overwhelmed by Christmas music, sometimes it’s hard to find something unique. But still, we’re always looking for those gems that offer new reflections on the old story, and that’s why we’re pleased to introduce you to Folk Hymnal, a communal music project from our friends at the Church at Charlotte. The project is headed up by Tim Briggs, a pastor who loves to write songs, even if performing them isn’t his strength. “I am the producer and writer of the songs, yet I don’t perform on it,” he explained in an email to me. “Quite frankly, I don’t have a musical background (although I’m a competent guitarist) and I can’t sing very well. I found myself wanting to share the songs with the world but couldn’t figure out a way to do so. Until I thought of this idea: just have my friends sing the songs!” Somehow it’s perfect that this first album is Incarnation Songs, a Christmas collection that represents the beauty of community working together to bring forth something beautiful. If you’re looking for some new acoustic Christmas music similar to Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb of God and other beloved Rabbit Room artists, Folk Hymnal is a group well worth discovering. You can listen to their EP on Spotify or support them directly with a purchase from Bandcamp. We look forward to hearing more from this collective in the future!

The Christmas season is filled with imagery of Jesus as a helpless infant, and with good reason. There is not enough wonder, surprise, and praise to match the occurrence of God incarnate deigning to appear in the world as a baby, of all things. How magnificently ridiculous it is to think of the infinite and incomprehensible choosing to wrap itself in rolls of pudgy flesh and set itself in the arms of people like you and me. “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head” In so many ways, it is a gentle story. Perhaps it is the soldier in me that surfaced to cast the tale in a separate light. It takes a concerted effort to remember that, in everything we do, there is a spiritual battle raging for the soul of this world and its people. The angels said, “Peace on earth,” and yet the Son of God also said, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” It just happened not to be the sword anyone was expecting. I think of how the angel host filled the shepherd’s field and how their praises might have thundered through the heavens. I think of how the glory of the Lord shone bright, white-hot in that moment. I think of how Christ’s entrance into the world may have looked through spiritual eyes, even as He laid down His sweet head in a manger. All the air now tastes of iron as the dust is tainted red. Frantic shouts across the valley rise in notes of mounting dread. Though we fight with all our fervor, we are falling to our foe, jagged creatures, dripping darkness, ripping through us row by row. They arose from deep within us, all our failures taking form, and they tore through all we treasured in a lurching, seething swarm. We have struggled toward the castle, but we cannot find the way, and the creatures hum and hunt us, turning soldiers into prey. Not a man has stood before them, they have slain both swift and strong. In the hundreds we have fallen to the fury of their song. For the song is one of anguish, draining all our will to stand, and it soaked into the soil like a poison in the land. We can lift our legs no longer. Pain is burning in our breath. In their eyes we find no mercy, only shadow. Only death. Faces turn to find the castle, voices cry out for the King, but with all the span between us, who could hear our suffering? All our swords have fallen heavy. Trembling, we cower back as the creatures chant and cackle, setting for the last attack. Then a shout upon the hillside draws our eyes across the land. Silhouetted by the sunset is the figure of a man. He lifts up his sword, defiant, hulking shadow, edged in light, and he spurs his steed to gallop, charging down into the fight. Raise your heads and see, my brothers! Shrink away in fear no more! For we have not been abandoned, And the King’s son comes to war.

“Why don’t we have a little sing-along?” For many years, those words filled me with irritation. A lazy evening after dinner trying to decide what to do—watch a movie? Read? Play a board game?—and then would come Mom’s inevitable suggestion of a family jam session. None of us seven children ever met the idea with enthusiasm. It wasn’t that we weren’t capable. In our household, learning how to play an instrument wasn’t so much an option as a rite of passage, a way of life. It would begin when Dad, a consummate guitarist, would show each of us at a young age how to stretch our little fingers to play a C or G chord. As time went on, some of us branched out to piano or bass. But we did it all out of a sense of obligation. Playing music was a chore, something you slogged through to keep Mom happy. And so were the family sing-alongs. Despite our lack of enthusiasm, my parents doggedly kept the sing-along tradition alive— whether it was playing on a random Saturday night or on Christmas Eve, when the whole extended family would gather, pull out tattered red songbooks, and go through the litany of Christmas carols. When sing-alongs went well, they’d inevitably end with Dad playing rousing renditions of Beatles classics. When they went badly (which was quite a lot of the time), they dissolved into morose chaos. Dad would step in and try to coach one of us through a difficult segment of sight reading, or attempt to set completely off-key musicians back on track by humming the correct note. Sometimes, one of us would just quit playing mid-piece. Tempers flared, kids slumped in their seats and barely mouthed the words to songs or simply fled the scene altogether. Mom, unperturbed, always asked for more and looked forward to the next sing-along. Wise woman that she was, she saw what we couldn’t back then—the beauty of making something beautiful (if flawed) together, the way each of us improved our playing slowly but surely over the years. It seemed the more we forgot about playing everything exactly right, the more joyous and exciting the music became. It drew us towards each other and became an expression of love rather than an exercise in duty. Maria Bonvissuto And it went on this way for a while. But then came one Christmas Eve a year or two ago when all of us—brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, twenty-somethings, teenagers, and toddlers—squeezed once more into my family’s slightly-too-small but cozy living room for our annual holiday sing-along. And, wrapped in the warmth and music and cheer, I found myself happy to be there; not only happy, but looking forward to doing it again next year. Not only looking forward to it, but getting up and playing and singing wholeheartedly. The feelings of awkwardness and obligation to entertain had disappeared. To my astonishment, my brothers weren’t running away at the first chance they got either. An element of chaos certainly still reigned, but it was chaotic merriment. The joy of making music and basking in each other’s presence suffused the room. Little ones banged drums and cymbals, the older ones took turns improvising on the piano, and everyone joined in for a raucous rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” We’d never sound like a well-oiled symphony, but that would have spoiled the atmosphere anyway. It seemed the more we forgot about playing everything exactly right, the more joyous and exciting the music became. It drew us towards each other and became an expression of love rather than an exercise in duty. St. Paul tells us “…be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Ephesians 5:19). As I ponder those words and the role music has played in my family, I can’t help but think that our ludicrous sing-alongs have helped me understand just a little better how to live in God’s love—how He doesn’t demand lives of absolute perfection with no mistakes, but rather lives of love and perseverance when we mess up the sheet music horribly. Of how He longs for us to play the music of our souls for Him not out of a sense of duty, but rather out of joy, because we simply want to be with Him and make Him happy. Like my Mom sitting there patiently, pleased with even the most imperfect bit of music we had to offer, He watches our struggles great and small and is pleased with the baby steps we make towards Him. Our souls are as chaotic, messy, and imperfect as those early family jam sessions were. And yet, if all we can muster is a simple, hesitating tune plucked out on guitar instead of a masterful piano concerto, He still delights in it. He doesn’t ask us to put on a performance. He only wants us to lose ourselves in the music of His love and beauty. I’m still not exactly sure how I went from begrudgingly participating in the family music-making to fully embracing it. Maybe it was growing up and leaving home, which makes you re-think everything you once rolled your eyes at as a teenager. Maybe it was seeing our family slowly spread to different corners of the country and yearning for that tight little community we once took for granted. Maybe it was simply because these gatherings—filled with laughter and choruses sung in slightly off-key unison—keep the darkness and uncertainty of life at bay and make me believe that beauty really can save the world. Whatever it was, I’m grateful my parents guided us gently and persistently to see the true beauty of making music in community. And in moments when we’re all together singing, I seem to hear echoes of a day when we’ll all gather around the Lord’s everlasting table. The odd notes, jarring voices, and imperfect melodies will melt away. And the music our souls will make for Him will be one long, riotously happy yet piercingly beautiful, sing-along of love.

The sixth and final episode of The Second Muse, season one, is now available for listening. In this episode, Drew Miller interviews Andrew Osenga about his album The Painted Desert, specifically his song, “Mercy.” Over his twenty-year career in the music industry, Andrew has occupied many roles, including artist, producer, session player, and A&R representative. In our conversation, we talk about how his roles as artist and producer have combined to give us his latest gift of an album, The Painted Desert. The album arose from a period of personal hardship and transition for Osenga—he’s said that its “writing and recording was a journey through grief, discouragement, friendship, and healing.” The result is an album shot through with light, even as its narrative deals directly with darkness. If you’re new to The Second Muse, here’s the podcast in a nutshell: the title is taken from a Wendell Berry quote in which he references two distinct muses—the Muse of Inspiration, “who gives us inarticulate visions and desires,” and the Muse of Realization, “who returns again and again to say, ‘It is yet more difficult than you thought.’” It is this second Muse of Realization with which we concern ourselves in The Second Muse, specifically in the context of songwriting and record producing. In each episode, Drew interviews a different artist along with their producer about a song that gave them a great deal of trouble, whether in the writing or recording process or both. The song is then explored from the inside out, breaking down the components of the mix and how each element works towards making the song effective as a whole. You can listen to this newest episode of The Second Muse here. Check out The Second Muse on Apple Podcasts here. And click here to visit the Rabbit Room Podcast Network.

One of the more odd Christmas traditions that my wife and I have developed over the last few years is re-watching all of the Christmas episodes from everyone’s favorite workplace comedy, The Office. During its run and since, the show has worked its way into our pop culture parlance and our psyches. Who can forget Classy Christmas, the epic Jim/Dwight snowball war, or Belsnickel (“Judgment is nigh!”)? Beyond just providing us laughs amid awkward work situations though, I’ve come to realize that watching The Office Christmas episodes has taught me a thing or two about Christmas itself. The simultaneously best and most painfully awkward Office Christmas episodes revolve around the travails of Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin’s hapless boss. After watching the show several times, you begin to realize that underneath all of Michael’s social awkwardness and inappropriateness is this deep loneliness and desire to be loved. He views his employees as a surrogate family and is always trying to get them to bond together, much to their chagrin. In the very first Christmas episode in Season 2, Michael has had to fire an employee in the midst of a tough year for the company, so he wants to make the annual Christmas party the best ever. He gets a tree that’s way too big, gives the Party Planning Committee more money out of his own pocket, and buys Ryan a $400 iPod for Secret Santa, even though everyone was supposed to only spend $20 on a gift. Of course, he also ruins everyone’s day by selfishly changing Secret Santa to Yankee Swap after getting a hand knit oven mitt from Phyllis. Michael, of course, is not the only one guilty of screwing up. The Office Christmas episodes also include Dwight exploiting dads by buying up the hottest Christmas toy of the year and reselling it to them at an exorbitant price, Angela cheating on Andy with Dwight, which Phyllis then uses to blackmail her and boss her around, Jim and Dwight going foolish lengths to one-up each other in their pranks, and a variety of other petty squabbles. So what does any of this have to do with the greater meaning of Christmas? In Michael and his employees, I see myself and all of us. Beneath his immaturity, Michael is desperately lonely and longs for love, and in his attempts to find love, he constantly screws up and overcompensates. In Jim, Dwight, Angela, Phyllis, Meredith, and the others, we see human beings caught up in pettiness, jealousy, and greed. Sound familiar? That’s the story of humanity. And do you know what the amazing thing is? God meets us there. The wonderful thing about Christmas is that it happens in spite of us, and comes as a demonstration of love and grace in the midst of our screwiness. Of course, in watching The Office, we don’t just see the bad side of humanity. We see love as well. We see Pam making Jim a personalized comic book. We see Jim coming back to the Christmas party to wrestle over the pig rib with Dwight. We see Michael apologizing to Phyllis after making a petty display over the fact that she got to be Santa Claus. Christmas is about recognizing the love that has come to us, and then reflecting that same love into the lives of those around us. The Office also reminds me that Christmas doesn’t always look like we think it should or want it to. Growing up in a family that had many wonderful Christmas traditions, it became important for me at some point to fulfill all these traditions in order for it to “feel like Christmas,” just like Michael needs everything to be perfect. In my case, I was trying to conjure up the good sense of mystery and wonder that Christmas brings by creating the perfect environment. While holiday traditions are wonderful, many times when it comes to Christmas we’re often trying to manufacture a feeling or a moment, or else Christmas doesn’t seem genuine. We’re trying desperately, like Michael, to fill this void that only transcendent love can fill. But what does Christmas really feel like or look like? It looks like a couple far from home, with no place to stay, giving birth to a child in an out of the way place, under the shadow of disgrace. That’s how divine love and wonder arrived. Christmas often comes when we least expect it, in the meanest of circumstances, to the unlikeliest people that don’t seem to deserve it, like that annoying colleague you work with. In the end, Christmas seemed to always work out at Dunder Mifflin, the pettiness and in-fighting gone for a moment or two while Angela sang “Little Drummer Boy,” or the gang filed out into the parking lot, playfully tossing snowballs at each other. And whether we are ready or not, Christmas always arrives waiting for us, there in the midst of our humanity, if only we have the eyes to see it.

Jim Bourdeau has the same cake for his birthday every year—Lemon with Cream Cheese Frosting. The first year I made it I was seventeen, spending my first summer away from home as the baker at Big Lake Youth Camp in Sisters, Oregon, where Jim worked maintenance. His daughter Tammi, who was the Horsemanship Director at the time, came up to me one day after lunch. “It’s my dad’s birthday next week,” she said softly and with no nonsense. “He likes a Lemon Cake with Cream Cheese frosting. Can you make that or should I pick up a cake in town?” “Yes,” I said, without fully understanding what she was asking. “Yes?” Tammi replied in query, unsure which of her questions I was answering. “Yes, I can make one,” I clarified, with slightly less uncertainty in my voice. I had never made a lemon cake before. At the time, I couldn’t recall ever eating a lemon cake before. The cake selection in Hawaii, where I grew up, had never seemed peculiar until this very moment: Dobash Cake, Chantilly Cake, Haupia, Lilikoi, Guava—these are the cakes of my childhood. Yes, we had chocolate and vanilla cake too, but it’s always so startling when the ways you are different are unknowingly pointed out to you. And who has ever considered that the way they are different is cake? I honestly don’t remember much else about that first time I made Jim’s cake, beyond my fear. But it’s been eighteen years now, eighteen lemon cakes, eighteen batches of cream cheese frosting. Last July, Jim turned seventy-two, and though I had just moved away from Oregon, I flew back to crack some eggs and cream some butter. Some years, I candy lemons for the top. Some years, there are shaved white chocolate curls, usually round, sometimes square. Once, I had to work on his birthday, so a friend drove the cake three hours from Portland to Jim’s house for me. He still acts surprised, like he doesn’t know it’s coming, and a couple of days later, I always receive a hand-written note or charmingly awkward email thanking me. As he gets older, Jim has started taking a nap every afternoon. He asks his son-in-law Bob for help with the chores around the family farm that require more heavy lifting. A few years ago, Jim had some health scares, so he and his wife Julie have switched to a largely vegan diet—no meat, no eggs, no dairy. These days, it seems even more beautifully obscene to watch him tuck in to his allowed birthday confection. When summer starts ebbing into July, I begin to dream about Jim’s cake, and all these years later, it’s still pure privilege to be part of this liturgy of his life. Adults rarely bother with the party. It's too much work, and what if no one comes? But to a kid, the laboring toward joy is never confused with work, and they trust that if there is a party, their friends and family will come. John Cal For most of us, as we get older, it gets more uncomfortable to be celebrated, to be made a fuss over, to allow ourselves to be loved. For adults, so often birthdays are about bucket lists, how far we’ve come, what we’ve conquered. Somewhere along the way we learn we have to earn our love, earn our celebration and joy. But somehow Jim Bourdeau leans into us loving him, his wife Julie fussing about what he’s going to have for dinner, Tammi spending the year attentive for a present idea. As kids, we can’t accomplish much—walking, brushing our teeth, maybe even spelling our name, sure, but we can’t have jobs, pay rent, or have drivers’ licenses. A kid accomplishing nothing beyond simply being alive allows themselves to be celebrated because they have not yet been tainted by worth through achievement. They have to let someone else buy their balloons, hang their streamers, and drive them to Chuck E. Cheese. And in doing so, they are intimately experiencing what it’s like to be taken care of. Adults rarely bother with the party. It’s too much work, and what if no one comes? But to a kid, the laboring toward joy is never confused with work, and they trust that if there is a party, their friends and family will come. That sentiment is my favorite part of Jesus’s birthday: that the all-powerful, fully capable, well accomplished God of the Universe in his laboring to bring us joy decided, for his birthday, to make himself helpless. He decided to trust that someone, his friends, his family—that we—would show up and take care of him. How startling to become human, to be human. I can imagine an omniscient Jesus thinking, “Hmmm, I’ve never been born before.” Baseball, swimming, his first sunburn; I wonder how many sensations were new and surprising to an all knowing, eternal God? So often we see his birthday beautifully veneered though stained glass or vellum, but I love considering that at the moment he became human, perhaps more like us than he had ever been before, what he needed most was to be wrapped up from the cold, to be rocked, sung to, and fed. So happy birthday, Jesus. As we share in this merriment, may we remember that in his weakness, he allowed himself to be cared for, that he knew and trusted that someone would show up, and that we did. When I think of it, even now, it feels like my own fifth birthday. Even with my best effort, I couldn’t manage to blow my candles out. And when I was at my most tired and hopeless, worried, and ashamed, my friends began to help. Then, magically, against my better judgment, it didn’t feel at all like they were trying to steal my fun or my glory, but that with their help, there would always be reason to celebrate. The featured photograph was taken by Melanie Waldman at Nashville’s Hymnmoot—a celebration very like a birthday party.

Andrew Roycroft is a pastor and poet from Northern Ireland. New Irish Arts commissioned this poem this year, and artist Ross Wilson contributed a new painting for it. Merry Christmas from the Rabbit Room. God is with us. Darkness, unspeakable and unspeaking Darkness. Silence, not of contemplation, Nor of craning, halt-breathed expectation, But silence of the now non-verbal God, Void quiet, out-of-form condemnation. This is all, for generation after Generation, ten times over, silence, Darkness, a people un-peopled, distant. Now, over the deep of barren gloom, over The depths of a barren womb, life breathes again. An angel breaking rank speaks, “Zechariah! Your wife will bear a son, even now when Tears of youth have dried in age, acceptance Must now give way, for the Messiah will Have one to speak his name – like the gathering Of light in glowering clouds before the sun Casts off the shroud of night, and breaks a Day Whose only end will be consummation On the Final Day. John must speak these things.” This child, unexpected, now new-expected Leaps to greet the One in Mary’s womb to Whom he will witness among darkened minds; Leaps at the sheer presence of this Other, The incarnate God, who now is woven, Worked into human form within his mother’s form. But still, darkness. The keen-eyed Simeon Who will not see death til he sees the Son, Waits in faith amidst the oblivion Of broken law, and these stricken lives Who know no mercy, only sacrifice. And Anna, rising every day, shuffles Through the Temple bounds, praying, that the Lord Would ground these redemption words, long left off. Light, unspoken and unspeakable light Breaks now. The Word at last made flesh, he comes, He comes, the Son of God eternal comes! Into the broken yards of drought-dry bones Into the blasphemy of our godless scraping by, Into our hearts he comes, transcendent God, The Son, the majestic uncompounded Lord, He comes, the timeless One unbounded, The world-by-his-word forming King Can now be found at an address, in the mess Of our neighbourhood, in the flesh of our Personhood, he comes the one who is wholly, Holy Other, he comes to be our Saviour Our Messiah, our Lamb and Lion Lord and light, our deliverer Who will carry our shame though not ashamed To call us brothers. He comes, and all our Words though wide as worlds, and all our songs Though voiced in grandest composition Can never carry the incomparable weight Of this one who comes, whose incarnation Is our hope, our joy, heaven’s confirmation That though light from us was long withheld God has shattered the sin that was our hell He comes, he has come, Immanuel. Painting by Ross Wilson

[Editor’s note: We’ve decided to take the last few days of 2018 to repost some of our favorite pieces of writing that showed up on the blog this year. First up: “What Do You See” by Ginny Owens, a lovely reflection on the deeper meaning of sight and what she sees throughout a single morning.] I’ve spent my whole life trying to find words to describe what nothing looks like. People always ask, “So what do you see? Is it black? Blurry?” No, it’s just nothing. Sort of like when your arm goes numb, and for a minute, you can’t feel anything. My brain just doesn’t communicate with my eyes about colors or light. I started seeing nothing when I was three years old. My condition is hereditary, and a failed surgery ended my seeing journey. I don’t remember anything from before then. Occasionally I have a dream where I can see. But when I wake up, it’s back to nothing. It’s not a big deal anymore to me, but most days I’m reminded it’s a pretty big deal to other people. I recently read a statistic that blindness is one of the top three fears among people in the US, which is hard for me to believe. My top three fears are getting struck by lightning, being stung by a wasp, and dying alone. It’s odd to think that I live every day with many people’s greatest fear. But when I think of it as the fear of seeing nothing, I understand. The misconception is that when you see nothing with your eyes, you see nothing at all. But that’s definitely not true. I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about how I see, but I definitely see. So this is a story about all the things I saw one morning. Names have been changed, and I’ve added just a few “alternative facts.” The day begins as it always does, with the largest, strongest cup of black coffee I can make in my aeropress. Coffee must be the most beautiful rich color, because it makes my life so beautifully rich every single morning. With morning coffee comes reading and prayer – always lots of prayer. Prayer helps me not swear at the people that say dumb things because they think I see nothing. I’m running especially late today, so I throw on a hat in lieu of a shower and I’m off to my errands. My chariot this morning is a Toyota Corolla Lyft. Jack is my driver. Super friendly. I learn in the first couple minutes that he’s a singer/songwriter and he’s just doing this while he’s getting his career going. My mind wanders a little as he chats, and I take stock of my surroundings. I would say that Jack is a hipster just beyond hipster age. I’m going to put him around 37. I can tell his age from his voice and the bands he’s already referenced. The hipster part I can smell in his unwashed hair, and the scent of Nag Champa radiating from his pores. The Sirius Coffeehouse station is coming out of the car speakers, and Ray LaMontagne is singing “Trouble.” I absently wonder what Ray LaMontagne would sound like doing a hip-hop song. Then it happens. Jack breaks into my peaceful thoughts with the seven words that would change my next half hour: “Do you wanna hear my demo?” “Sure,” I say enthusiastically, and the first song immediately begins to play. “This one’s called ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’” “Oh,” I say. “What inspired it?” “Really just life I guess,” Jack says. “It’s been a hard few years.” Jack’s voice isn’t bad. The song is gentle, acoustic guitar with raspy vocals and dark lyrics. Jack frequently rasps the chorus, “I’m broken I’m alone in my dark night of the soul.” After 3.5 minutes, the drum kit comes in, and the bass. Subtle at first. But finally the electric guitar wails its way in and it’s an all-out jam band party. “Me and my friends added this part last week,” he says. “I dig it, so I kept it in. It kinda gives you time to think about the lyrics.” “Yeah, cool,” is all I can think to say. We then listen to “Hearts Like Glass,” “The Edge of Light,” and “Distance.” All tender acoustic ballads which morph into jam band tunes three minutes in. “You have a very nice voice,” I say. “Cool, thanks, man. I have one more song but it’s not recorded yet, so I can just sing it for you.” “Alright,” I say. I reach for my phone. My screen’s turned off so people think I’m typing nothing. I text a friend to say this is happening right now. After the acapella rendition of “This Room is Too Small,” I gently but firmly move us away from music into conversation. I ask Jack about his writing process, and his life here in Nashville, just trying to get a picture. Turns out he was in a rock band that got signed when he was 18. He left his family to move here; everything fell apart. But he can’t shake the music bug. I get it. When the ride is over, I have a pretty good image of this guy. He’s a thinker. A free spirit who loves his art and is searching for his place in the world. I get that too. Jack drops me off at my first stop of the day: Parisian Nails. The man at the front greets me as he always does: “What you want today?” I’m so curious what this guy looks like. And how he got the job of greeter at the nail place. My mental picture is of someone relatively short – I can tell he’s about my height – and Vietnamese – I can hear that in his accent. But I wonder how he dresses. And what his hair’s like. “Just a manicure,” I say. “You want Steve to do for you?” “Yes, sir. That’d be great.” Steve is fascinating. I’ve probably known him six years. He used to be a chef, but he says it was too stressful, and now he does the best nails and eyebrows in the city of Nashville. I asked Steve once if he likes doing nails. “It’s just a job,” he said. “I don’t have to like it. I’m just glad to have one.” Hashtag: perspective. So Nail Greeter Guy grabs my shoulder and practically carries me down the aisles of chairs to Steve’s manicure table. The misconception is that when you see nothing with your eyes, you see nothing at all. But that's definitely not true. I don't think there's anything supernatural about how I see, but I definitely see. Ginny Owens Steve and I have something in common: we run out of words. Our conversation quota is about four sentences at a time and then long silences and four more sentences. But these bits of conversation have helped me to see much of him over the years. He’s been in the US for about a decade. He has a daughter. He’s long been divorced from her mother, who broke his heart. I know that he goes fishing at Percy Priest before work, and he cleans the fish and eats them. I know he likes YouTube and music. We’ve even talked about religion, which he’s not a fan of. But every time I’m here, I get a little clearer image of him. “Hey Ginny, how are you?” he says. “Great. How are you?” I say. “Good.” “How was your trip home to Vietnam?” I ask. “Good.” And then we enter long silence number one, as I consider what Steve might want to talk about next. “So what did you do while you were at home?” “I visited my grandmother.” “Ah.” “And my wife.” “Your wife?” I ask, surprised. I knew Steve had been looking for wife, but this was new information. “When did you get married?” “Last year.” “Oh. So she lives in Vietnam.” “Yes.” “So is she going to move here?” “Yes.” “Wow. That’s cool.” Silence number two ensues, at which point I begin noticing the people around the room. There’s an older couple beside me getting pedicures. I hear Green Hills affluence in their accents. The guy’s either retired or a CEO. He’s talking about playing golf this afternoon, and his wife is trying to decide on proper attire for their dinner party at Sunset Grill later in the evening. The lady right next to me is gossiping on her cell phone about people at her work. I know this because she’s not using her inside voice. “I cannot believe the way he conducts meetings,” I hear her say. “It’s just so ra-diculuous.” She’s also getting bright red gel nail color, which I know because she keeps interrupting her phone diatribe to ask her manicurist, “Do you think this is too bright?” “Are you sure it’s not too bright?” To which the manicurist consistently replies, “It look nice.” Per usual, Steve and the manicurist next to him chat a good bit in Vietnamese. I know some of it is about me, because every once in a while Steve will ask a question like, “She want to know, do you live by yourself?” Yes. “She want to know, how you eat?” Well, I cook. “How you do that?” I don’t exactly know how to explain because I know his English vocabulary isn’t terribly extensive. So I just smile and say, “It’s easy. I’ve been doing it a long time.” After a few more brief but meaningful dialogues with Steve, I’m done and getting up to leave. As I head for the door, I overhear retired sophisticated lady say, “Oh would you look at her. Bless her heart. I don’t know how she does anything being the way she is.” For a moment, I picture this woman with a pointy nose, beady eyes, frumpy hair and a permanent scowl. And a broomstick instead of a Lexus in the parking lot. She is one of the reasons I need long prayer times. Because I’ve had one today, I somehow choose compassion, realizing that in this moment, she is the one who can’t see. I exit Parisian and climb into my second Lyft of the day, this time with Alex. I don’t notice in the app which kind of car he has, but when I get in, I know it’s nice. Leather seats. Sports car size. Smells great. He smells great actually. And we have a great time chatting about how Nashville weather changes every second and how one billion people move here every day. He tells me about the startup he works for. He seems super cute too. Hmm. I type his company name down on my seemingly blank phone screen, so I can find him on Instagram and ask a friend if I’m right. Alex has great energy, which gives me energy. It occurs to me that seeing the world with this kind of hope helps the people you’re around see that way too. I thank Alex for the ride as I head into my next stop. And while I’m at it, I thank God for all the things I get to see every day. Like the textures and colors of the voices that speak words and sing songs. And the hearts that show me we all need hope – and each other – to make it through. So if you run into me somewhere, don’t feel sad for me. As you can tell, even though my eyes see nothing, I see more than enough.

[Editor’s note: We’ve decided to take the last few days of 2018 to repost some of our favorite pieces of writing that showed up on the blog this year. The second piece we’re sharing is “Awkward Saint Crazy” by Adam Whipple, in which he earnestly and skillfully asks how the Church can best engage with mental illness.] Had my wife and I been born a hundred years ago, our lot might have been quite different. Our family has a history of bipolar disorder, you see. Mental illness was looked upon with even greater stigma in days of yore than today. Today, there are many studies on CBD vape juice pens and its beneficial effects on the body to help people with physical and mental stress. The canon of schoolchild literature hailing from 1850 through the 1970s is littered with characters subject to one stripe of insanity or another. Mr. Rochester’s first wife in Jane Eyre, Conrad’s demigod Kurtz, Boo Radley, Robert Cormier’s Adam Farmer in I Am the Cheese, Mr. Hyde, and the tragic cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest all come to mind. To be fair, this initially only suggests that insanity makes for a useful plot device (which it does), but the way in which all these authors presented their characters is telling. Though some of the authors stared the darkness of mental illness in the eye, the best that can often be said of the characters is that they are anti-heroes. Even Arthur “Boo” Radley, in To Kill a Mockingbird, is presented as a hidden mark of family shame—an accurate depiction of a common situation, if truth be told. Our understanding of mental vagaries during those past eras was marked by fear and loathing. We’ve changed our terminology since then, preferring euphemistic jargon to the tactile but oversimplified monikers of older times. We no longer have lunatics, for example—those whose minds are affected by the phases of the moon. These days, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—that worthy tome by which we assess the mind’s irregularities and defects—is weighted with terminology enough to cause blunt force trauma. Take this paragraph on Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder: "The essential feature is a Personality Disorder (p. 305) in which there is resistance to demands for adequate performance in both occupational and social functioning; the resistance is expressed indirectly rather than directly. The consequence is pervasive and persistent social or occupational ineffectiveness, even when more self-assertive and effective behavior is possible. The name of this disorder is based on the assumption that such individuals are passively expressing covert aggression." You could be forgiven for pausing amid such dry prose for a small nap, and possibly to douse the paragraph with water. It’s a far cry from lunacy, though in our persistent fearmongering about what is pejorative and what is not, we seem to forget that such words as demented and mad used to be clinical in usage. In one way, I’m thrilled that our explorations of the mind have birthed such extensive literature. It’s a testament, at least, to how complex and unfathomable the human mind is. For such a work of art, we can give glory to God. At the Whipple house, though, our best weapon against fear and misunderstanding is simply talking about it. We don’t speak in the languorous gobbledygook of the DSM, helpful though it may be; we use simple words. Sometimes, my wife, who struggles with being bipolar, is even keen to tell me that she’s “crazy.” At times, we use that word in jest and wonder if we’re kidding. Some members of my family have questioned if I’m on the autism spectrum; I often think that perhaps they’re right. The other day, I was trying to have a conversation with my wife, and I simply couldn’t do it—because I heard everything. Her computer keys, the box fan, the kids talking in the back room, the swoosh of the dishwasher, the dog’s nails clacking on the floor—it was all too much. Our house isn’t particularly loud, but I actually put my hands over my eyes because there was too much information. “I’m going to just need you to look right at me here in a second,” I said. “Otherwise I can’t talk.” If this is all somewhat offensive to you, or if it makes you uncomfortable to read it, you should see what it does to polite conversation in person. In dealing with our mental roadblocks, my wife and I are now pretty comfortable mentioning things both to total strangers and to acquaintances who would rather not know. You’d be amazed at the way some folks clam up at the subject of mental illness. People shift in their shoes and look elsewhere. Quick talkers suddenly stutter. Nearby Chatty Cathy dolls burst into flame. No matter how it has made others feel, though, talking about it freely seemed to help us. We’ve never really been good at political correctness with our problems anyway, though we’ve certainly grown in our freedom to deal with them and to be human, especially within the church. Of course, it wasn’t always that way. For a number of years, we attended church with several people who had a difficult time with our struggles. To clarify, this congregation was full of loving, wonderful individuals, many of whom I still see and others whom I miss terribly. I also understand the obvious caveat that every church has its problems. While we adored this church, of which we were deeply a part, one of the unspoken rules that seemed to pervade their doctrine was that mental disorders ought to be matters of prayer only, rather than matters of prayer and medical treatment. In our family’s dealings with bipolar disorder, we grew walls around ourselves in odd places. While in certain arenas of our lives—sin, finance, servanthood—we attempted to maintain transparency, we were also quick to protect ourselves when we sensed a billowing tiff about psychological things. If we are to face our demons, we do well to look at them in the light of day. In the Church, of all places, we should be unafraid of sharing our weaknesses and failures, for it is there that God's workmanship is so obvious. Adam Whipple It was strange; there were those in that small body of believers who faced mental illness on a daily basis in school system jobs or social services. They had a wealth of experience dealing with psychoactive medicines, at least by extension. Yet, like the janitor whose own house is a wreck, or like the banker whose credit is in shambles, they seemed to have a blind spot. It was insinuated to us—and occasionally we were told outright—that we should get over it. On its face, this isn’t strictly a bad idea. No medication or corrective action is perfect in mental health. A certain amount of getting over it is part and parcel, but to me, this advice felt like a fear-based response, a question hanging in the air about God’s ability to heal people. I was angry at times, but who was I to judge? I had spent years of my own blowing off psychology, and anyway, the Church is a family. If we open ourselves to know and be known, we’re going to get hurt. In a broken world, love will always know pain. I don’t say this to denounce anyone. Through being a part of that church and others, and moreover, by the work of the Spirit, we’ve grown to be able to share our experiences, even when people disagree. This, I think, is essential to the work of the Church, especially as the internet and other media enable us to surround ourselves with a veritable Greek chorus of yes-men, always affirming our quirks or opinions. In the echo chamber of social discourse—which is rarely discourse these days—we don’t truly get to hear that most essential voice: the naysayer. As much as I chafed at being gainsaid by brothers or sisters (in a variety of subjects), I’ve been glad to meet real people who will tell me that I’m wrong, because I am. Every day. In thought, word, and deed. Mea maxima culpa. When we’re up front about our difficulties, about our failures and hangups, it is Christ who gets the glory. There are so many buried struggles, so many skeletons hung to dry in family closets. Some of them are immoralities of our own making; some are just problems we inherited, ripples of the Fall charged with the potential energy of redemption. I know that I personally cannot pretend I was born tabula rasa, fresh as a new box of Arm & Hammer. I came with history, and I made more along the way. I’ve talked about my own struggles with sin to fellow church members and sometimes received the same clammed-up horror as when we discuss bipolar disorder. Other times, thankfully, there is grace and an understanding of God’s finished and continuing work. In some ways, we can honestly be glad this isn’t some century past, a century where Joseph Merrick gets chased through the streets and Bertha Mason gets locked in the attic. Nevertheless, we all still try to keep darknesses and difficulties out of sight. Yet if we are to face our demons, we do well to look at them in the light of day. In the Church, of all places, we should be unafraid of sharing our weaknesses and failures, for it is there that God’s workmanship is most obvious. In any case, you can always have that delightful moment of social discomfort to brighten your day.

I wrote this post the morning before Christmas Eve. At 10pm that night, my husband had a stroke. Changes in circumstance can’t change what is True. We were, are, and continue to be grateful. A vivid imagination can be a heavy burden to bear. My daughter has a mind that doesn’t stop. Her creativity is a joy—and a mess—to behold. This Christmas season, she concocted a new tradition: Crafting ‘til Christmas. She researched and planned a list of daily crafts for us to make together. Despite my inner “I don’t have time for this” pining, I chose to partake. Our dates, marked by hot glue and tissue paper (and the occasional emergency run to Michael’s craft store for reinforcements), have filled my soul. To say that I’m in awe of her creativity is an understatement. Her vision for transforming raw materials into something beautiful inspires me. But there’s a downside to having a robust imagination. Particularly when the world around us is flooded with news of mass shootings and threat indexes and refugee children freezing to death. My daughter has entered the twilight of adulthood. She’s just waking up from her little girl slumber, where all is well, to discover the harsh realities of the grown-up world. It’s a shocking awakening. When talking about the hardest things with our kids, we balance our conversations on the head of a pin. Tip too far to one side, and we’re unfairly (and unwisely) sheltering them. Tip too far to the other side, and we’re prematurely introducing them to the depths of human depravity. The same rich soil that produces beauty and craftiness and endless ideas is also the ideal environment for growing unspeakable images and haunting nightmares. A vibrant imagination can be a heavy burden to bear. Julie Silander Parenting from a posture of wisdom is an ongoing struggle: we want to balance truth with discretion. My daughter needs to know much. She doesn’t need the gory details. But sometimes, the gory details have a way of finding the cracks in our carefully constructed parental presentations and seeping into her great big beautiful imagination. Snapshots from a television screen or bits of overheard adult conversation become seeds, quickly planted, in her fertile mind. The same rich soil that produces beauty and craftiness and endless ideas is also the ideal environment for growing unspeakable images and haunting nightmares. A vibrant imagination can be a heavy burden to bear. I’ve struggled with how to handle my daughter’s fears. Perhaps that’s because I’ve struggled with how to handle my own. God is good. But life can be unspeakably hard. Both statements are true. The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows. — N. D. Wilson At some point, we all wake up to discover the world is rated R: through images of mass shootings and stranded refugees, unexpected diagnoses and failing bodies, and relationships crippled (or broken or shattered) through betrayal or neglect. Our minds provide fertile soil for grown-up nightmares. We learn to deny the pain, or too often, we begin to believe the lie that it will never end. Yet there is Christmas. Light comes into the darkness. Hope is born. Promises are fulfilled. When we experience the bleak circumstances in the world, in our homes, and even in the darkness of our own hearts, we are tempted to believe that those snapshots define reality. As if starting to read in the middle of a book, we don’t have a larger context for the events that are taking place. Our vision and our understanding are limited. Christmas tells the fuller (truer) story. It reminds us that we have an anchor as ancient as “In the beginning.” It guarantees hope for the future when He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. It promises us that He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. So this Christmas, and every day to come, let’s remind each other of what’s True. Since the children in the garden, the world has suffered brokenness, violence, despair and loss. But darkness will not win. The battle is over. The war was waged and won by the baby in a manger. The stories are true. Fear not. “… And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’” —Luke 2:9-11

We’ve got a fun New Year’s Eve surprise for you: a new video of Chris Slaten performing his song “The Gardener,” live in the studio. “This past summer we videoed this performance of ‘The Gardener’ at As Elyzum studios, the creative home of my producer, Stephen Nichols, where we tracked the original recording for the album No Story is Over. It marked the first time that I had the chance to play the song with both the cellist, Mark Rico, and the violinist, Elise Ziegenbein, in person because Elise originally recorded her violin parts remotely from a closet in her home in Palo Alto, California. I also talked one of my good friends, Nathan Shirai, into coming over at the last minute to keep time on the back of an old guitar. After spending the year playing solo house and church shows for so many of you it was a real treat to work with a band.” —Chris Slaten

New Year’s Week offers us a wonderful opportunity to look back at the closing year and examine the successes and the hardships, the joys and the sorrows, the new experiences and the old traditions which came to an end over those 365 days. In keeping with this time of remembrance, we took the opportunity to compile a recap of the music some of our best friends released into the world this year. These songs inspired, encouraged, lamented, lifted a joyful noise, and invited us to do the same in 2018—and for that, we are truly thankful. May these songs continue to speak into 2019 and beyond, reminding us of the truths we live by and the love we experience in Christ. Click here to view this playlist on Spotify. Photo by Chris Barrett

My husband and I were playing catch-up with the rest of the world, sitting down to watch Guardians of the Galaxy a few years after everyone else had. Not my usual genre, but isn’t that one of the glories of marriage and friendship? Bringing us outside of our walls and helping us to see new horizons? In this particular moment in time, “new horizons” meant a movie about a motley band of misadventurers accidentally bent on saving the world. While this isn’t an endorsement of every aspect of the film, it was good fun for the most part. And then…it happened. That tree—that big, lovable galoot named Groot—did something that changed everything for me. For those who don’t know the estimable Groot—he is a tree who ambles and oafs around the universe, and all he ever says is “I am Groot.” In answer to every question, every tension-filled scene wherein the galaxy threatens to implode in various ways: “I am Groot.” Whether it makes sense in context or not, that is his story and song, and his raccoon buddy has the ability to translate that phrase a thousand different ways to actually make sense in context. One begins to think, as one watches Groot, “Hey! I like this guy. Maybe lacking in some of the gravitas of his Ent and Dryad predecessors, but there’s something pretty great about him. Maybe the most likable superhero I know. But is he a superhero, really?” No cape, no spider bite to make him shoot ultra-strong webs from within, no ability to turn back time or laser things down or scale buildings or any of the normal fare one might find at the local superhero ability emporium. So what is his strength? Then comes his moment. And then came my tears. The motley band of misadventurers is huddled in a spiraling spacecraft with everything literally going to pieces about them as they plummet toward sure destruction. A few of the comrades are down with wounds, and those remaining on their feet are gathering up their fallen friends and stumbling around the doomed craft with complete hopelessness written on their faces. It is the black moment, the pinnacle wherein all seems lost. This is why you feel full to bursting and exhaustedly poured out in the most exhilarating way, all at the same time. Amanda Dykes Groot, too, with his big, lovable eyes and limited vocabulary is walking through the spiraling wreckage, but his sorrow is one of steady determination. As his friends gather together, he draws near and the magic begins. Tendrils of bark, reaches of roots, sprays of leaves—they begin to grow from him, entwining themselves together in a twisting and weaving until the whole crew is cloistered within a dome of his living fortress. He has walled away the destruction, the chaos, the noise. Within the dome are bits of light floating about in the dark, illuminating desperate faces of the friends as they begin to ease from fear into hope. It is a fortress, but not one of mere survival. It is a fortress of breathtaking magic in the midst of destruction. Of abundant life and beauty and wonder, right there in the dark. The raccoon sidekick pleads with Groot not to do this thing—that in hemming them away like this, he will surely die upon impact. But Groot continues with a settled peace and surety about him, as if he knows that he was made for this moment in time. And he utters three words: “We are Groot.” I won’t elaborate further or tell you what happens next, but I will confess here how that scene slayed me. In the very best of ways—it picked my heart right up and spoke right into it, saying, “This. This is why God put letters and words dancing around in your head. This is why books thrill your soul. This is why, when your words are coming from somewhere outside you, when it’s about something greater than you, when you pretty much just disappear from the whole thing and get to simply be a part of it—this is why you feel full to bursting and exhaustedly poured out in the most exhilarating way, all at the same time.” Isn’t it so? Isn’t this why God fashioned us this way? That we might, in a world that is very dark, and sometimes feels as if it is spiraling toward destruction, let the Life inside of us pour out and twist and weave into something good through words, song, and art; a refuge full of most sincere wonder that reminds the wounded and hurting of the light, gives them a safe space in their brokenness, and points them toward Hope? This writer begs your forgiveness for spiritualizing a computer-animated tree and raccoon, but even laying the movie aside, what a humbling thing. To let the natural outgrowth of what God has equipped us with be woven in His hands. To hope and pray that within those nail-scarred hands, our humble offerings might be a part of the giving of light, and of life. Artwork by Tony Hodgkinson

We recently became aware of two wonderful interviews with our friends Doug McKelvey and Ned Bustard, both conducted by Tim Madden at his blog, Maddening Theology. In the interest of sharing good things, we are reposting them on the Rabbit Room blog. Click through for an interview with Ned Bustard about the art in Every Moment Holy. TIM: Ned, for those who don’t know you, can you tell us a little about yourself? NED: My daughter once asked me what I did, so that she could explain me to a friend. But I couldn’t give her a straight answer. I’m a graphic designer. I’m an illustrator. I’m a printmaker. TIM: The book itself is a compilation of liturgies. Some of my readers may think that liturgy doesn’t belong in their denominations. Can you define liturgy for us and give us an explanation of what liturgy is? NED: I always laugh when people say they don’t like liturgy. Every church has a liturgy. Every person has their own liturgies. It is what you do when you do it. James K. A. Smith has a great book called You Are What You Love, which I recommend to everyone. In an interview he said, “The core of the person is what he or she loves, and that is bound up with what they worship…The rituals and practices that form our loves spill out well beyond the sanctuary.” Basically liturgy is the order of in which we do things. It isn’t just written prayers in highly formal services (though that is often what people associate with the word “liturgy”). For example, when my family goes to the movies we have a liturgy. We go to the concessions stand – my wife gets pretzel bites and I get Snow Caps. We give the attendant our tickets and go into the theater, find our seat, and push the button back to adjust our recliner. We do it the same thing almost every time. It is our liturgy. In the same way at my wife’s church when she was growing up their liturgy included the same number of songs each service, the Lord’s Prayer, an offering, a pastoral prayer, a sermon, etc. A book like Every Moment Holy is simply a tool to help us be more thoughtful and intentional about our worship. TIM: I think that one of the huge advantages of having written liturgy is that we often have deep feelings of joy, regret, guilt, celebration, appreciation, and we don’t know how to express those ideas. Having a written liturgy at hand aids those of us who don’t know how to express ourselves to God or each other in a proper way. I found myself reading some of them thinking, “This is how I feel. I just didn’t know how to say it.” NED: I agree completely. There have been many times in my life when I was at the end of my rope physically, emotionally, or spiritually and I was able to pull out my grandfather’s old Book of Common Prayer and pray with words that spoke in ways that I couldn’t pray. And, of course, whenever we read or recite a Psalm we are using King David’s liturgical musings to glorify and petition God. TIM: I also greatly appreciate how the liturgies are Gospel-centered. I’m a hawk when it comes to theology in our church library, and everything I’ve read so far is cross-centered and scriptural. Someone who would use this book regularly in their life would develop their theology just by the recitation of great theology. We know that the Psalms or Lamentations are full of great liturgical readings. Douglas Kaine McKelvey, the author of these liturgies, has provided us with more specific liturgies for everyday use in our modern era. That being said, I believe this will become an heirloom book for many families. NED: That was the intent The Rabbit Room Press had when making it the way they did. You don’t make a leather-bound book with gilded pages if you think it will be a trendy, disposable project. TIM: Every Moment Holy provides us with the words to say for things that we just seem to breeze through life and disconnect from God. In reality, if everything in life we do should be done to God’s glory, down to what we eat and drink (I Corinthians 10:31), then we should have conversations with God or about God concerning everyday things, which is the focal part of the book thinking about every moment of our lives being a holy moment. I’m continually amazed me at how many things we just skim past in life and disconnect from God. NED: So true! This book is intentionally trying to get the reader to understand that every moment is holy. When I was younger I really bought into the sacred/secular divide that plagues much of the Church. But eventually I came to understand that all of my life is worship…all of my work is made to the glory of God (I even made a book about that—It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God). Working on this project was a healthy reminder to me to work harder to see the sacred in the mundane. From changing diapers and washing floors to trimming a Christmas tree and feasting with friends, every moment is holy, every act is one of worship. TIM: I enjoyed some of the apparent quirky liturgies in the book. The idea of focusing on God before welcoming a new pet home, or going to a yard sale, or keeping bees is great. It reminds us that even the unusual things we do in our individual lives are important to God. When we think of liturgy, many think only of corporate worship at church. What benefit is there to having a book of private liturgy? NED: Every Moment Holy was designed for both individual and corporate use. As such, I believe that it is a great tool for times of solitary worship of God. I often find that even though I love to wordsmith, I often do not have the words in me to speak to God. Or if I do, they tend towards “vain repetition.” One of the things I’m militant about when planning worship at my church is finding songs with good lyrics. The words we choose to describe our faith and to frame our praise shapes our theology and practice. If I limit myself to “Lord, I just want to thank you for this day” and “Jesus loves me this I know,” I may not be worried about heresy in my life but I am worried about stunting my growth—living a more bland life than God has made possible to me. NED: The sovereignty of God, pure and simple. From a human perspective it shouldn’t have happened. I had no exposure to The Rabbit Room Press and I only knew about Doug’s writing through album lyrics written over two decades ago. What happened was that my daughter was at a faculty retreat for her new job teaching at the Geneva School of Manhattan and they had brought in Andrew Peterson as the guest speaker. Following one of his talks she thanked him for his insights during the lecture and said that he and her parents were saying all the same things about Story and Beauty, and  then suggested that we’d all be great friends. Out of the blue, several months later, Andrew was in my city giving a concert. With time on his hands he reached out to me. We met at my favorite used bookstore, DogStar Books, then spent the afternoon talking books, music, poetry, and more. He told me about the liturgy book and I shamelessly suggested myself for the project. He liked my book “Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups,” so he said he’d encourage his brother to hire me for the job. But when he got home he learned the job was already spoken for. Fast forward a few months: I get a call from The Rabbit Room saying the other guy was no longer available and I was asked if I would still like to take on the project? TIM: What is your favorite liturgy from the book? NED: That is a painful question! How to choose? I got choked up when I read the “Husband and Wife at the End of the Day” one. I’m proud of the coffee one (because I lobbied hard with Doug to get him to write that one), and I also love the fact that there are not one but two prayers for changing diapers! TIM: Funny enough, the liturgy on changing diapers was the first one my wife picked to read out of the entire book. Having a seven month old, and probably feeling like it is such a mundane task, it was what she needed. I asked her what she thought of it. She smiled and stated, “It was very good.” It was as if she were reminded once again of how this tedious task could bring glory to God and it’s (or His) purpose in life. NED: Recently Doug did an informal poll on Facebook and the Diapers prayer was second only to the Coffee prayer in readers’ favorites. TIM: Can you explain the artwork in the book and why you chose that form? NED: The art in Every Moment Holy is relief printmaking. The pieces were made using linoleum so they are called linocuts (in the same way that if they were made using wood they’d be called woodcuts). The Rabbit Room folks chose printmaking because of its rich history in illustrated Bibles of the past. They also liked my work for this project because I tend to cram my art with tons of symbolism from the history of Christian Art. For example, in “A Litany for a Husband and Wife at the End of the Day” symbolically points to some of the beautiful aspects of the Marriage Bed—the work contains square halos (yes, square—read about them here), the Ark of the Covenant (Tim Keller has written,”Sex is a covenant renewal ceremony for marriage, the physical reenactment of the inseparable oneness in all other areas—economic, legal, personal, psychological—created by the marriage covenant.”), an apple (Song of Solomon 2:3) and seven lilies (Song of Solomon 2:16). TIM: Can you take us through the process of how one piece of art is made? NED: A quick summary is that you draw the image on the linoleum and then cut out the image. You then cover the block with ink, then press paper onto the linoleum to transfer the image. TIM: How much time do you typically need to come up with a creative idea for each piece? How long does it take to make each piece? NED: Too long! The initial sketches took anywhere from 30 minutes to over 3 hours—depending on if I was able to come up with a preliminary sketch The Rabbit Room folks liked. After the concept was approved, then it is less than an hour to transfer the image to the block, followed by one to three hours cutting away the unwanted parts of the illustration. Pulling the print might take ten minutes to several hours, depending on my deftness with ink and paper. After the art dried then the illustrations were scanned into the computer and cleaned up in photoshop. How long did that take per image? I don’t want to do the math. TIM: Wow! After enjoying the images already, I’ll have to go back and appreciate them again knowing the time it took to make them. Some may wonder why have artwork in liturgy at all? Isn’t liturgy just text? Isn’t artwork a distraction to the meditation? What can people gain by having artwork along with the liturgy? NED: For most people it is impossible to not construct some mental image while praying. So if you are going to have a mental picture, where are you going to get it? My hope is that the illustrations in this book help to beautify the text. Much of the imagery in the art is rooted in and drawn from the text of the prayers in hopes that they will  help the reader to see even more in the liturgies as they use them. For example, in “A Liturgy for Those who Have Done Harm,” Doug writes, “I have hidden myself in shadows, seeking to avoid your face, even as did my father Adam and my mother Eve in their first guilt.” So I did an illustration of Adam and Eve, but in the picture there are also four pieces of fruit on the tree and a lily in the lower corner. Why? Well, later in the liturgy it says, “Restorer of all things, redeem the damage I have done. Restore, remake, rekindle, rebuild . . .” The fruit is there to link to those four R’s of hope and the lily, as a traditional symbol in Christian art of Mary, points to the ultimate hope of the coming of Christ—as the liturgy ends, “. . . your pardon alone is sufficient to my peace; and your death to my resurrection. Embrace me again to life and to right standing with you, O God . . .” TIM: What kind of release has the book had so far and what has the reception been? NED: Initially the book was made available to supporters of The Rabbit Room. They all have been effusive in their praise. It is fun to follow the hashtag #EveryMomentHoly on Facebook and Instagram to see where folks are using it and what prayers resonate the most. I think the short answer to your question is that the first printing completely sold out. I would call that kind of reception rather positive! TIM: Thanks for your time, Ned. I enjoyed getting to know you more through this interview, appreciate your time to direct me as a pastor when it comes to understanding the theology of art, and highly enjoyed the gallery with my wife. TIM: Can you list the books that you’ve been a part of?  I will put Amazon links to them at the end of this blog post. NED: All my books can be found on Amazon, but I like to direct people to www.HeartsAndMindsBooks.com to help support one of my favorite independent booksellers. As I said at the beginning, as it is hard to explain what I do, it is also hard to make a list of my books—they’re rather random. In addition to developing all of the Square Halo Books (http://www.squarehalobooks.com), I’ve had the pleasure to develop various readers’ guides, phonics readers, a geography storybook series, and more. A few of my favorite books I’d like people to know about are: The Reformation ABCs: The People, Places, and Things of the Reformation—from A to Z, Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups, A Book for Hearts and Minds: What You Should Read and Why, History of Art: Creation to Contemporary(flashcards and textbook), It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God, Bigger on the Inside: Christianity and Doctor Who, The Chronicles of Narnia Comprehension Guide, and Squalls Before War: His Majesty’s Schooner Sultana.And early next year I hope to release It Was Good: Performing Arts to the Glory of God. Thanks, Tim for letting me ramble, and thanks for getting the word out about Rabbit Room’s wonderful book Every Moment Holy! Click here to read more of Tim Madden’s work at his blog. Visit the official Every Moment Holy website here.

When the Rabbit Room board met in January of 2017, one of our primary goals was to decide the future of North Wind Manor. Since that initial meeting, nearly two years have passed and we’ve diligently undergone untold hours of prayer, discussion, anxiety, research, and consultation. We took a deep breath and went public with our hopes for the project in early October, announcing the plan to renovate the manor and build a permanent home for the Rabbit Room. Prepared for a years-long fundraising campaign, we stepped out in faith, confident that the Lord had led us to the right decision. But anyone who’s taken a leap of faith has experienced the uncertainty and hand-wringing that goes along with it. We’re no different. I know some of you are tired of seeing us talk about the project. I know some are weary of emails about fundraising. I know some might be concerned that the Rabbit Room seems to be asking for money a lot lately. Believe me when I say that we understand those concerns and share them. We’ve been wrestling with this project for two years now, even though it’s only been public for three months. But as I sit here typing this post on the first day of 2019, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude as I consider what God has done through the Rabbit Room since that first announcement about the North Wind Manor project in October. As of this writing, the Rabbit Room community has raised over $130,000 for the manor, mostly in small donations of $25-50 each. Thanks to our incredibly generous matching grant, that puts total funding for the project at over $260,000, well past halfway to our goal. But that’s not all. Thanks to other donations that we know are in process, we have maxed out our matching grant and in the next few weeks will see the grand total pushed to nearly $350,000! Amazing! On top of that, we have officially acquired J. R. R. Tolkien’s fireplace, which will become a permanent fixture in the North Wind Manor library once the project is complete. We hope to make some other exciting announcements in the coming weeks, but I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone that’s been involved. We couldn’t make this happen without you, all of you, and we can’t wait to welcome you to North Wind Manor one day soon. So if we’ve come on strong lately, know that the fundraising work is nearing its end. We still have some funds to raise, but you’ll soon be able to look forward to actual updates on the building of the new facility. We’re looking forward to getting to work. We’ve got new Rabbit Room Press titles in the pipeline, a 10th Hutchmoot to convene (and maybe even a second one this year!), Local Shows to plan, podcasts to produce, and soon, an entire building to renovate. Thank you for all your support. 2019 is going to be an amazing year.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my mom and I watched The Man Who Invented Christmas. It’s the mostly made-up origin story of how Charles Dickens (played by the delightful Dan Stevens) came to write A Christmas Carol. It was especially fun to see how his characters physically showed up when he learned their names. “Scrooge,” he finally says, after fumbling around with “Scratch” and “Scrounger,” and then suddenly an old, ornery man appears in his room who continues to follow him around for the rest of the movie, yelling at him. In the film, Dickens gets the idea for the story by listening to a pompous, high-class citizen talk trash about the poor of London and how they should all be killed or sent to the workhouse. Dickens is not only offended, but indignant. He sets off to write a story about the worst kind of man he knows. However, by the end of the story, he realizes that it’s at least partially about himself. There is a part of him that is mirrored in Scrooge: when he scoffs at his wife for asking him for a new candle, when he sends his parents away to live somewhere else. Deep inside of him, there’s a piece of old Scrooge. The act of writing the story sends him down a dark path to visit events of his past and to answer the question, “Can a person change?” I loved seeing Dickens discover himself through writing. I’m sure many writers have experienced moments when their own work causes them to face their worst fears. If the pen is a sword, what do you do when it turns against you? This is one of my favorite things about writing: the things you discover about yourself in the process. There is much more to us than we realize. When we dip into that abyss of self and let our rational mind go, who knows what we will find? There are places in our cells, our nerve endings, that understand in ways our consciousness never will. We don’t know exactly what our liver does or how to tell it to clean our bodies, but our cells somehow communicate with each other behind our backs. What if they have stories and thoughts and ideas that come out when we open ourselves and begin a project? And what if we find something dark down in there? Something like a Scrooge? In a section titled “The Risks of Honest Writing” in the book The Art & Craft of the Short Story, Rick DeMarinis writes: “One of the risks of fiction writing is the discoveries you might make….How can you maintain your moral invulnerability when the thing you’re writing is pointing the finger at you?…The choice is simple: Go with it, accept the implications of that line, or don’t write it—write instead something that agrees with your initial high-minded intention. This takes you off the hook; it certifies your virtue. But it’s a lie. It violates the direction your intuition told you the poem wanted to take. The line that was inevitable has been replaced by a line that is merely acceptable—but it’s a damn lie.” I think as Christians, we often get scared of delving into the dark abyss where stories and art come from. But the irony is, that’s where God is, too. He’s down there in us. I have encountered the assumption in the Christian church that self-expression is the enemy of divine inspiration, but I think that if we ourselves are the image of God, than we are God-expression. Anything we make that expresses our true selves, then, is also expressing and exposing God inside us. So is it God-expression or self-expression? I say, what’s the difference? They are tied together in us, in the cross, in our very bones and cells and spirits and flesh. We cannot separate them, just as we cannot separate ourselves from Christ. We work with God, not for him. He invited us in. We were slaves, but now we are friends. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but he chose us and we can’t escape him. If the pen is a sword, what do you do when it turns against you? Hetty White Many artists talk about “getting out of the way” to let creativity flow from another place beyond us. I agree. I think we have to let everything go, all our intentions and motivations, and all our thoughts of saving the world—at least in the first draft of a work. But I don’t think we are getting rid of ourselves when we do this. I think we are actually finding our true selves. Jesus proclaims that “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” If we are hidden in Christ with God, then the only way to find ourselves is to let our idea of who we are go. Self-expression could be the ultimate act of worship: submitting to who God says we are instead of who we think we are. I have a theory that this is the reason why many artists who are not believers unwittingly teach us the Gospel again and again in their stories. I believe they are good (and sometimes even better) at getting out of the way and listening to their intuition while searching for the truth, and along the way, they stumble on the story of Christ. In the film, Dickens realizes the parts of himself that resemble Scrooge, but he also finds that he can change. It’s not too late. In short, the gospel showed up through his truthful storytelling. Not only did he write a good story that changed the world and Christmas as we know it; he changed himself. Of course, the story portrayed by the film is mostly made up, and who knows if the real Dickens did any self-discovery while writing A Christmas Carol? Being the honest writer that he was, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did end up reflecting some on his own life. And now the reader, in turn, is also asked to see themselves in Scrooge. We are given the gift of a mirror that the author has crafted from his own blood, sweat, and tears. May we also have the grace to remember that Scrooge is not who we really are, but only a mask we put on, a protective wall against heartache and loss. And may we have the grace to realize that even for Scrooge, even for us, it’s never too late to change. Artwork by Ronald Searle

Not one, or two, but three new episodes of The Membership podcast are now available! In these episodes, our hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem discuss the only two Port William short stories set in the 19th century as well as essays from Wendell Berry’s 1969 collection, The Long-Legged House. The goal of The Membership is to curate great conversations that contribute to the health of the land and the health of our communities. Throughout this new podcast, hosts Jason Hardy, John Pattison, and Tim Wasem plan to discuss Berry’s life and writings. They will also interview other folks—farmers and makers, writers and artists, and community practitioners of all kinds—who are responding to Wendell Berry’s writings in their own places. Check out the new episodes by clicking here. And you can learn more about The Membership at its official website by clicking here. Click here for more information about The Rabbit Room Podcast Network and to check out other great podcasts.

We recently became aware of two wonderful interviews with our friends Doug McKelvey and Ned Bustard, both conducted by Tim Madden at his blog, Maddening Theology. In the interest of sharing good things, we are reposting them on the Rabbit Room blog. Click through for an interview with Doug McKelvey about the writing of Every Moment Holy. TIM: Tell us a little about yourself. DOUGLAS: I grew up in East Texas, but have spent most of my adult life in the Nashville area. I’ve been married almost 26 years and have three adult daughters and two sons-in-law. I spent 15 years as a song lyricist, then transitioned to video work as a writer, director, and editor. I published a few books early in my career, but over the last few years have returned to book writing as my primary vocational focus. My indulgences are well-crafted shots of espresso and well-crafted fantasy literature. Also, I love to travel but haven’t done nearly enough of it. TIM: When did you start appreciating liturgical writings, and what was your background with them? DOUGLAS: I grew up in traditions that had no clearly defined liturgical practices and that, to some degree, might even have fostered a suspicion of such things as being rote and devoid of the Spirit of God. Consequently, it was much later in life that I began to recognize there might be artful ways in which my own gifts as a budding writer might be offered to the church. I was in college when I first encountered TIM: When did you first start writing liturgies? DOUGLAS: I first experimented with liturgical “forms” as a structure for poetry probably 15 years ago, in the context of a work of fiction I was writing. They weren’t technically liturgies, or necessarily even prayers, but they borrowed from the “leader” and “people” interactive format, as a symbolic way of communicating a level of meaning both ancient and spiritual in those poems. The first actual prayer I wrote as liturgy was “A Liturgy for Fiction Writers” which I penned some three years ago because I personally needed that centering reminder of who I am in relation to my Creator, my craft, and the community I hope to serve each time I sit down to write. TIM: When and how did you decide to turn these liturgies into a book? DOUGLAS: I was invited to co-lead a session on writing at the Hutchmoot Conference two years ago, along with Heidi Johnston and Andrew Peterson. I sent the “Liturgy for Fiction Writers” to Andrew, suggesting that it might make a fitting close to the session. His response was “I love this, but I wish there was a liturgy for beekeeping and all sorts of other things too.” The lightbulb clicked on. I wrote another two or three liturgies, imagined what such a book might be, and put together a publisher pitch, which I presented to Rabbit Room Press a few days later. Their immediate response was “Yes, we will publish this. But it might take a while to find the funding.” TIM: So this is how you chose the Rabbit Room Press? DOUGLAS: Yes, it was never much of a question. The older I get, the more I’m intentionally focused on creating things that might continue to serve people, even after I’m gone. I like to think in terms of a “hundred-year vision,” of building things that might or might not have mass appeal, but that might still be deeply meaningful to those present and future pilgrims who will one day encounter them. Rabbit Room Press is the only publisher I trust to shepherd a project like Every Moment Holy in such a way as to lay the groundwork for long-term service rather than short-term sales. The Rabbit Room was founded on the idea that “Art nourishes community, and community nourishes art.” The larger Rabbit Room community has played a tremendously meaningful part in my own journey over the last several years, and this book is born out of the encouragement of that community, and is in a way a gift that I can offer back to that community. To have chased a deal with a bigger publisher would have felt purely mercenary, I think, and would probably have resulted in a very different (and probably lesser) book that might have been abandoned after the few-year surge and ebb of initial marketing and sales. TIM: Is there any influence from Scripture from the pattern of the liturgies such as found in Psalms or Lamentations? DOUGLAS: Definitely! I find in the Psalms and some of the prophetic books of Scripture a lot more license to be honest about our disappointments, failures, sorrows, and turbulent emotions than we’re sometimes comfortable giving voice to. As a song lyricist 20 years ago, I was consciously absorbing some of those patterns of lament from Scripture and trying to give new expression to them. I think what I was reaching for back then as a writer has a more satisfying fulfillment in some of the prayers in Every Moment Holy. TIM: Interesting that you would add the prophetic books to that. I’ve never thought of that genre as having liturgy in them, but now that you say it, it makes complete sense. TIM: What are three of your favorite liturgies that you personally enjoy from the book? I like to think in terms of a 'hundred-year vision,' of building things that might or might not have mass appeal, but that might still be deeply meaningful to those present and future pilgrims who will one day encounter them. Doug McKelvey DOUGLAS: My favorite piece from the book is probably “A Liturgy for Those Who Work in Wood & Stone & Metal & Clay,” which is a bit ironic, as I don’t personally work in any of those mediums—but I love the idea in storytelling of using elements that are very narrow and specific as doorways into those things that are more universal or transcendent, and I think that principle holds true here. The act of physically fashioning elements becomes a metaphor for all of our labors undertaken in the hope of Kingdom of Heaven, and I find myself more moved by that turn in the liturgy than I would be, I think, if it were written as a general prayer about our hope of a coming redemption. At the same time, it’s also meant to be a liturgy for literal use by those who do work in wood or stone or metal or clay. “A Liturgy for Those Who Have Not Done Great Things for God” is important to me personally, because I’ve been in a lot of churches or youth groups or Christian colleges over the years where tremendous burdens are placed on the backs of folks by well-meaning people who nevertheless create an artificial and unattainable and unbiblical standard of what a life of serving Christ should look like. A 16-year-old kid might not be in a position to “shake the world” or even to “take their high school for Christ,” and to continually have that thrown at them as the standard for discipleship is to set them up for failure and disillusionment down the road. But if they desire to follow Jesus, then they are in position to begin the lifelong work of learning what it means to daily love and serve those around them, to be more patient with their siblings, to be kind, to steward faithfully their time and talents, to progressively learn to submit their passions and desires to the revelations of God in Scripture. I believe those who are greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are mostly those who learn to take up their cross daily, quietly and humbly and sacrificially serving those whose lives intersect their own. I hope this prayer might offer some conciliation, freedom, and affirmation to others who have experienced similarly misguided pressures in their own lives. TIM: I’m in total agreement with your statement on setting up a standard of service for young people which does not exist.. Some of my friends and I have been talking about that for years. TIM: What are some of the liturgies people really enjoy that surprised you? DOUGLAS: People like the diaper changing liturgies. Which is funny, but fitting. It’s real life. It’s the sort of daily moment that on its surface can just feel like part of the endless drudge of caring for others in a mostly thankless capacity. But if the gospel is true, and the greatest in the kingdom of God are those who most humbly (and anonymously) serve, then the act of changing a baby’s diaper, seen rightly, is a holy act with eternal ramifications. “A Liturgy Before Taking the Stage” is another one that seems to be taking on a life of its own. A number of artists and bands have told me they’re using it now before every show. I tried to write that one is such a way that it wouldn’t just be pertinent to musicians, but to pastors, teachers, or anyone who’s about to stand in front of others and share their ideas or their gifts. Being in Nashville though, it’s mostly performers I’m getting feedback from. With the flooding in Houston and the massive wildfires in California, a number of people and even churches immediately started using “A Liturgy for Those Who Have Suffered Loss from Fire, Flood or Storm.” I wrote that one at the request of friends who lost their house to fire, but I didn’t anticipate it being used in community to the degree that it already has. TIM: My readers may think that this was planned, but they should note that I interviewed you and Ned separately. The fact that out of some 100 liturgies, both of you mentioned the diaper changing liturgy cracks me up. I told Ned that this was actually the first liturgy my wife went to when we received the book. I think, in essence, it almost captures what the book is. It is taking things that we never think of as God things, and recognizing that everything is important to God and connected to Him. In reality it is the most mundane task, but I agree, if we look at it through the lens of Scripture, it is Gospel work. How much more could you love someone than to wipe feces from their body, and doing it in a loving way? DOUGLAS: Exactly. TIM: When you decided to take on the project of writing “Every Moment Holy,” how did long did the project take? DOUGLAS: I penned six or eight of the liturgies before Rabbit Room Press was able to secure funds to green light the project. But from that point it was a grueling, nine-month writing process to meet the deadline. For my wife and me, it was a crazy season of life anyway, as two of our daughters got married last summer, and the third graduated high school and started college. Plus we had to be at conferences a full month of that time. I’m still not sure how the book got written. TIM: Do you see any future projects in writing a second book with more daily moments? DOUGLAS: Almost from the beginning we’ve envisioned this as a long-term, ongoing project. There were a number of liturgies on the brainstormed master-list that seemed key, but that there simply wasn’t space for in the current book. So yes, definitely, the plan is to offer more of these liturgies in the future. We’ll probably make some of the new ones available for download on the everymomentholy.com site, long before a second book is ever published. TIM: Douglas, I appreciate your time, and even more than that, you sharing your gift of writing with us, so that we can remember that every moment in life is holy to God. Below I am going to put a link to several of your books in case anyone would like to read more of your works. Thanks again. Read Tim’s interview with Ned Bustard about the art in Every Moment Holy here. Click here to read more of Tim Madden’s work at his blog. Visit the official Every Moment Holy website here.

Have you ever wondered about the artwork that decorates the covers of so many of Wendell Berry’s books? I have, and so years ago I went digging to find out what I could about the pieces, and the man behind them. In doing so, I was introduced to one of those fascinating characters that hides behind the curtains of history. Harlan Hubbard was born in 1900 in Bellevue, Kentucky. Although he would leave Kentucky several times in his life, first to live in New York and then to travel in a “shantyboat” down the Ohio River, Hubbard was as bound to farms and rivers of Northern Kentucky as a hobbit is bound to the Shire. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and later at the Cincinnati Art Academy. At the age of nineteen, however, he moved back to Kentucky with his mother, and he lived with her until he was married in 1943. Wendell Berry, in his book Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work, writes that Hubbard was an “odd young man” who, from very early on, viewed the world differently than most people. He was pretty much a failure in the world’s eyes. His art was not recognized, he earned his living as a day laborer, and he spent his spare time roaming the hills and riverways of Kentucky with his bicycle and painting tools. In 1943 he married Anna Eikenhout. The two decided to embark on a journey down the Ohio River in a boat they made with their own hands. For the next few years they lived a nomadic life, exploring the river and learning that a life without all the trappings that we find so necessary is still possible. Hubbard explained, “To achieve more perfect harmony with the river and at the same time to live close to the earth and free from entanglement with this modern urban world, I became a shantyboater.” He saw the modern world as full of these entanglements that keep us from enjoying the beauty and simplicity of a life lived with our own two hands. After selling the steamboat in bayou country of Louisiana, the Hubbards found their way back to Northern Kentucky to begin in earnest to live close to the earth. Harlan’s book, Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society is absolutely fascinating. Imagine Walden’s Pond for a lifetime. Hubbard was not a preacher or an outspoken evangelist for his lifestyle, and that was intentional. He was committed to being himself, completely, never pretending to be someone different to “get along” in society. To illustrate this point, Hubbard made clear that his intentions were not to proselytize: I had no theories to prove. I merely wanted to try living by my own hands, independent as far as possible from a system of division of labor in which the participant loses most of the pleasure of making and growing things for himself. I wanted to bring in my own fuel and smell its sweet smell as it burned on the hearth I had made. He chose to paint what he knew, what he loved, and what he felt was important to his own personal understanding of life and the way it is lived. His dogged commitment to pursue his own inclinations in both art and life drew others to come and see, to consider, and possibly to change themselves. My favorite piece of Hubbard’s is called Window on the River, 1986. This piece was painted just two years before his death. I’ve always loved it, ever since I saw it on the cover of a collection of three of Wendell Berry’s novels. The window in between the painter and his river is, perhaps, a recognition of the limits placed upon the medium of art. Kevin Morse There is a window in the center, and one can see the Ohio River through the trees just outside. Presumably, this is the view the Hubbards would have had from their own window in their little cabin on the slopes of Payne Hollow. On the window sill sit the artist’s tools: his easel, his paints, a candle. It is a reflective painting filled with dark browns, reds, and blues. We see the main subject of the painter’s entire life framed in view outside the window: the river. We also see the tools of his life set to paint his subject. The window in between the painter and his river is, perhaps, a recognition of the limits placed upon the medium of art. We have a limited view of what we would celebrate with our art, limited by our finite minds, our particular traditions, and our skill and ability to create. Put together, the piece communicates that there is a beauty to be found in the work itself, in the tools of that work, and in the completion of it. It’s a celebration of when life is whole and united; work and rest, the tools and the project, each in its proper place and enjoyed for itself. In his book on life in Payne Hollow, there is this same recognition of the beautiful and useful in everyday life and chores. Hubbard devotes an entire chapter to a description of chopping firewood which, that being their only means of heating and cooking, took up a great portion of his time. There is a loving tone in his words as he writes about his tools for this job: The wilderness spell is deepened by the coarse rasping of the saw, the CHOK CHOK of the axe. These are noble tools and they belong to the woods. What tool is more simple and efficient than the axe, a perfect example of functional beauty? If you read his journals, it’s fair to say that Harlan Hubbard struggled all of his life to be a “whole man,” without allowing his work and his play, his art and his life to become fragmented. He fought to connect the useful and the beautiful together. In his journal from February of 1938 he wonders why it is that doctors and priests do not collaborate more often in healing the sick. He writes, “There is need of a physician who will minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man.” Many pastors and counselors are saying the same thing today, and rightly so. I’ve been drawn to Hubbard’s work for years now. As a Christian I found his struggle for wholeness in his life and in his paintings to be very profound. We are, after all, saved in Christ body and soul—a whole being. We are called to live having “put on the new self” (Col. 3:10) and all that entails. In our lives as Christians, we are called to “do all things to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31) and whatever we do, “in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). I would humbly submit that, because we have the joy of knowing our creator, we have a much deeper and more profound reason not only to tie the useful and beautiful together in our own lives, but to find joy in both art and living. We may disagree with some of Hubbard’s application—you don’t have to build your own cabin and do everything with your own hands—but there are countless ways that our culture fragments our being, and we ought to fight to be one whole person, in our work, art, and play.