Jennifer and I are taking something of a sabbatical this month and walking the Camino de Santiago, a 500+ mile pilgrimage from France, across northern Spain, to Santiago de Compostela, the traditional resting place of St. James. I’m writing a bit about the experience along the way. We made it across the Pyrenees and did it all in a cloud. Here and there, we got hints of the heights we’d attained but for the most part, it was an eerie wonderland of mist and trees and the ringing bells of wandering horses. After getting lost in the fog and wandering an unneeded four kilometers to find our way, we descended into the tiny town of Roncesvalles and spent the night in the ancient pilgrim’s hostel there with hundreds of other weary travelers. Before bed, we attended mass at the adjoining church. The service was in Spanish and we stumbled our way through the liturgy, not always sure when to stand or sit, but catching refreshing hints of familiarity when hearing and recognizing the creed or names like “Pedro” (Peter) or “Pablo” (Paul). Tired and footworn, my mind wandered and it wasn’t long before I found myself getting unexpectedly emotional. I was sitting in a chapel older than my country by centuries and the words of the Gospel were spilling over me in a tongue not my own. I marveled that for all these quiet hundreds of years in a Spanish wood shrouded in mist and trodden by legions of peregrinos from every imaginable walk of life and nation and tongue, the Gospel is preached each night over whomever will come—and the pews were filled with those who came. Whether we who gather understand the liturgy or not is ultimately irrelevant. After all, even in my own tongue, the Eucharist is a mystery. The added distance of a language puts it no further from my comprehension than it is on a Sunday in my home church. I do here as I do at home: I assent to the holy mystery and it envelops me, even in my ignorance. Praise God. At the end of the mass, the priest came down from the dais and asked everyone who was a pilgrim to gather around him. He called us all out by our nations: Spain, England, Germany, France, the United States, Canada, Hungary, Korea, China, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Ukraine, Mexico, Brazil, and so many more. There was kindness and laughter in him as he struggled to encompass us all. Dozens had converged from all over the globe, some in search of adventure, some looking for enlightenment, some come for quiet, or companionship, or health, or grief, or a hundred other reasons. Yet here we converge in our ignorance, and in mystery, the priest blesses us with a smile. People have sometimes asked me what I hoped to get out of walking the Camino. That word, by the way, means “The Way,” the way of St. James, and the layers of meaning the descriptor carries in it are still expanding before me as I walk its paths. But I’ve tended to be evasive when the question comes. “I’m just here to walk,” I say. I’m open to something more, but I don’t want to expect anything more than some quiet and some scenery. What is the work of the church if not to offer the world back to God, even in its brokenness, its unreadiness, its rags, its smells, its blistered feet, and limping legs? We offer it back to God. The rest, perhaps, is not our business. Pete Peterson Receiving the priest’s blessing that second night, though, would be my first clue that the Way is so much more than a walk. And the form of that clue was a vision of the church that opened up before me and suggested that her quiet work in the world goes on in loveliness and humility even when I’m tempted to fear it’s drowned out by furor, scandal, and misuse. Is this smiling priest not an icon of Christ? The world comes before him in ignorance, some believe, many may not, yet communion is offered (yes, even in this Catholic mass—for who can parse us), and all are blessed—we have only to come and stretch out our hands. What is the work of the church if not to offer the world back to God, even in its brokenness, its unreadiness, its rags, its smells, its blistered feet, and limping legs? We offer it back to God. The rest, perhaps, is not our business. We slept soundly. We woke early. And on the road ahead, the clouds began to clear. A blessed green country spread out before us like a gift. This is the Way. I was only just beginning to understand. Click here to read Pete’s first journal entry from the Camino and here to read his second journal entry.

Taste and See is now streaming! And to assist you in savoring the pilot film, the Rabbit Room has partnered with the Taste and See team to create a unique screening event guide. True to the spirit of the film, the event guide is designed to take you beyond the screen and into the company of friends and family around a table. Included in the guide are discussion questions and a simple, accessible recipe for homemade ricotta crostini—a cheese which figures prominently in the pilot film. This first Taste and See film takes place at a Jewish farming community where, among other things, the participants learn to make ricotta cheese together from their goats’ milk. The milk is traditionally one of the first fruits of the spring, and turning the milk into cheese is a part of stewarding the gift God provided through the herd. Many of us enjoy cheese, but how many of us have made cheese? Ricotta is a great introductory cheese that is very easy and delicious. The only essential ingredients are milk (cow’s milk is okay!) and acid (lemon juice and/or vinegar), plus salt. The process of making ricotta has the potential to be a delightful experience of discovery. We encourage you to gather as a group and make ricotta together as a part of sharing a meal together before or after watching the Taste and See film. Each household needs one virtual screening ticket. If you’re gathering a larger group, please be sure each household purchases a ticket in support of the filmmakers! P.S. In addition to your screening event guide with discussion questions and a ricotta recipe, each screening will be followed by a panel discussion with director Andrew Brumme, author Norman Wirzba, and Rabbit Room founder and president Andrew Peterson, moderated by Lindsey Patton. Purchase your tickets to a virtual screening of Taste and See at TasteandSee.RabbitRoom.com.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with theologian, teacher, speaker, and musician Jeremy Begbie. Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School. He teaches systematic theology and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. He is a senior member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. Along with David O. Taylor and Daniel Train, Professor Begbie co-edited the recently-released collection of essays, The Art of New Creation, in which artists, theologians, and scholars explore the ways in which the biblical promise of new creation informs the work of artists of all kinds. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 23 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

New to the Rabbit Room Podcast Network is Call It Good: Conversations on Creative Confidence. Hosted by Matt Conner (host of The Resistance), Call It Good is a limited series of conversations with authors, artists, and pastors about the invitation before us to join with the Spirit in the act of re-creating the world. We’re excited to share with you the remaining four in-depth interviews on creativity, the Creation story, and what it means to bless the work of your hands. Read on for a word from Matt about each of these guests and what they bring to the conversation. Click here to listen to Episodes 5-8 on Omny, here to listen on Apple Podcasts, and here to listen on Spotify. Transcripts are now available for Call It Good. Click here to access them. Propaganda Beyond his substantive and compelling work in the arts, Propaganda also just released a new book Terraform, a series of thoughtful essays about this subject of building a better world. On this episode of Call it Good, Propaganda sat down to tell me about the wrestling he’s done over time when it comes to reflecting on his own art. The battle, he says, has been about identity and making sure that the work doesn’t reflect his worth. It’s a joy and freedom to participate in this act of building a better world, and that ability to call it good can be corrupted if we allow it. Carolyn Arends If you’ve followed along with Carolyn’s career over the 25 years since, you’ll likely agree with me that you’ve learned to trust her work and her voice. She’s released more than a dozen albums in the last quarter decade, along with three acclaimed books. In addition to her work as a creative practitioner, she has also taken up the mantle of Director of Education for Renovaré, a position that allows her to encourage and strengthen the spiritual formation of others. If you’ve been along on this journey with us on the Call It Good podcast, you’ll know we’re seeking to best understand what it means to create in the image of a Creator. How does Genesis 1 actually apply to us? And what does it mean to rest and reflect after we’ve actually made something? Because of Carolyn’s ability to speak to these topics with experience and grace from multiple angles, I knew that she’d be an ideal guest for the podcast. On this episode of Call It Good, she provides us with a wealth of wisdom from her experience as a multi-discipline practitioner and her perspective as an educator. Andrew Peterson For author and singer-songwriter (and so many other things) Andrew Peterson, the last year or more certainly presented some challenges as it did for everyone. But it was also an unexpected respite after a quarter-century of creative work, leaning into his considerable musical and literary gifts to release album after album and book after book. As Andrew explains in this episode, the pandemic provided him his first year at home in his entire adult life. It gave him a chance to reflect upon his own creative work, the mission of The Rabbit Room, and what Sabbath even means for him and his family. As something typically overlooked, ignored, or even treated as a hurdle, Sabbath is actually a beautiful rest intended for our benefit as creators made in the image of the Creator. We hope this honest and heartening conversation with Andrew encourages you in your own journey ahead to figure out what Sabbath means and how you can enter into it. Pete Peterson At this stage in our exploration of Genesis 1 in our Call It Good series, it felt important to sit down with Pete Peterson, someone who sits at an important nexus in relation to calling it good. As the Creative Director of The Rabbit Room, Pete is tasked with shaping a creative community whose mission is to “cultivate and curate stories, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world.” As an author and playwright, Pete knows and feels firsthand the tension that comes with serving the work and seeing it all the way through to its release. Are we allowed to reflect on what we’ve made and call it good, too? If so, then why does the sharing of what we’ve created feel so awkward? And how can community play a role in making all of this a healthier process? We spoke to Pete about his own creative pursuits, as well as the mission of The Rabbit Room, to gain a better foothold on this part of serving the work and what it means to see it through to its end. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate. #semifeature

“Why do we eat—together?” This is the central question of Andrew Brumme’s exquisite new docuseries, Taste and See, a cinematic journey into the essential sacredness of food. As the pilot so winsomely insists, there is much more to eating than meets the eye: from cultivation to preparation, to serving and sharing, food is a vehicle for holy mystery and transformative grace. If this sounds like a recipe for lofty theological discourse, it’s not. Taste and See is, first and foremost, a story—a series of stories, in fact, living parables enfolding a central truth. Its profundity rests not in assertions and ideologies, but in the astonishing audacity of its hope: namely, that God really is good, and that he really does want us to engage with his goodness in daily, practical ways. In our gardens, in our kitchens, at our markets, around our tables. This hope is nothing new, of course: for centuries God’s people have fully expected to meet him amid the matter of life. Medievals were famous for reading the world like God’s “second book,” immortalizing the intersection of the sacred and the mundane in literature, music, and art. Our spiritual ancestors observed laws and feast days pertaining to farming and food, not because God was arbitrary, but because he was holy. If the Fall of Man rent the fabric of existence into the false divides of “spiritual” and “temporal,” the Incarnation of Christ stitched it back up again, endowing even the lowliest stuff of life with the potential to tell us something about who God is and what his love looks like. Somewhere along the way, however, we’ve lost touch with the essential earthiness of our faith. We have locked God up in churches and seminaries and ivory-towered constructs—or, at least, we have tried to. Taste and See is proof positive that God won’t be locked up, and that the world around us is fairly bristling, gleaming—one might almost say charged—with his glory. Through lush, often tender cinematography and vulnerable personal narrative, Taste and See invites viewers into the worlds of ordinary men and women, from all walks of life and vocation, who embody this extraordinary hope. In the case of the pilot, it’s the story of Shomriel, whose exploration of her Jewish roots after the death of her mother leads her to the Adamah farming community deep in the wooded hills of Connecticut. There, within rhythms of prayer, work, community, and rest, she discovers the sacredness of the shared meal and the labor that went into preparing it—work not only of the fellows and staff, but of the earth itself. More than mere sustenance, food becomes a meaningful engagement with the realities of life and death. In an era of disembodied religious practice and cultural isolation, Taste and See offers a delicious alternative: a faith that’s incarnational enough to pull up a chair to the goodness of God. Lanier Ivester It is this very candor about death which gives this film its power—I would even say its authority. Without shying away from the some of the messier facts of life, Taste and See treats such facts with reverence. It is true: in order for us to eat, something had to die. Animal or vegetable, the cost of our life is life. But death is never the end. Life is always what God has in mind, for us and for his earth. As the Adamah community demonstrates, this is a blessing, but it is also a responsibility—from compost to goat husbandry, to cheesemaking and the breaking of bread, every facet of the process is treated with a gentle awe, gleaming through each scene like a golden thread. Indeed, for a film so unapologetic about death, Taste and See is overwhelmingly characterized by delight. And not just in food, and the manifold tastes, flavors, textures and combinations God has provided, but in the people that delight is shared with. “It’s easier not to care about people,” Shomriel says near the end of the film. The risk, the very real prospect of loss, the uncertainties undergirding every meal we take together, threaten to keep us apart. Nevertheless, a very real joy prevails when we sit down at the tables of this life, opening ourselves, not only to community, but to a sense of our own belovedness. This, I think, approaches the question of why we eat together. As one of the directors of Adamah explains, the Temple used to be our point of communion with God. But the Temple has found a new altar in the Table—a table of which there are uncountable iterations the world over. Lesser iterations, to be sure, but no less equipped to connect us with something far greater than ourselves. It can be tempting to over-spiritualize such weighty themes, to explain away the mystery to the point of utter unrecognizability. But this is a temptation which this film has evaded entirely. Without imposing meaning or engineering moments to suit an agenda, you get the sense that Brumme has simply shown up to something remarkably active and present in our world, available to all who have ears to hear and eyes to see—and, yes tastebuds to taste. In an era of disembodied religious practice and cultural isolation, Taste and See offers a delicious alternative: a faith that’s incarnational enough to pull up a chair to the goodness of God. We’re all welcome at that table. Click here to get your tickets to a virtual screening of Taste and See. Want to learn more about the film? Click here for an in-depth interview with director Andrew Brumme.

[Editor’s note: Our friends at Square Halo books have a brand new collection of essays called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky. Together, these essays form one cohesive guide for choosing books for children. Today, we’re grateful to share with you an essay from the book written by Shanika Churchville, in which she discusses the ways that the book of Deuteronomy offers a guide to families on how to discuss race with children.] In Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:18–21, as well as throughout the Pentateuch, God encourages the use of concrete images and tangible symbols.1 Symbols on hands, between eyes, and on doorposts would mark these ragtag nomads as the people of God and create a basis for lessons and conversations between parents and children, ones full of stories of God’s goodness and faithfulness.2 I suggest that Deuteronomy provides modern day readers not only with examples of how to talk with our children about God’s protection and provision but also with a model for conversations about race. The Black Church has historically claimed as its own the story of the 400-year enslavement of God’s people and his liberation of them in Exodus.3 Following in its steps, we can use Deuteronomy to frame conversations with children about race. While I write this, America is grappling with issues of race. Many are awakening to the experiences and realities faced by people of color related to racial injustice and centuries-old oppression. Some white friends and acquaintances have confided to my husband and me that they have never talked or thought about race and feel ignorant of the perspectives, experiences, and history of Black people. I’d like to suggest that God has given Christians of all races, but particularly white Christians, a pivotal opportunity to think and talk about race. If we want our children to grow into adults who can lovingly and respectfully engage across racial or cultural lines, we must begin by having conversations about race with them at home. With Deuteronomy as our guide, I’d like to offer myself to you as a fellow learner on this journey. I am a Sri Lankan American and have had the privilege of living in both Sri Lanka and the United States. While I’ve had to navigate life as a person of color in largely white spaces in the United States, I’ve also lived as a member of a privileged family of a majority culture in Sri Lanka. Two decades ago, I married my husband, who is Black. Over our years together, I have learned much about the history of this country and the beauty and suffering of Black people. I have had to learn the painful realities of historic and systemic racism. I have had to grapple with my own prejudice and ignorance and acknowledge the unearned benefits accorded me by my privileged background. God has blessed us with two sons. In raising them, I have had to become more intentional about learning and teaching them their history and the realities of living in a society that might misunderstand them at best and seek to destroy them at worst. It has been both exhilarating and incredibly painful, and it has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. I recognize that I have kept my focus very narrow here. I’ve chosen to share how I celebrate Black history and experience with my sons. I haven’t shared about how I communicate Sri Lankan culture to my sons or how a parent could teach their children about the varied ethnic and cultural experiences of white, Asian, Latino, Native, or multi-racial peoples. However, I believe the following principles hold true when making any intentional choice to enrich children’s reading experiences and expand their cultural competence and sensitivity. Be Concrete You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. —Deuteronomy 6:8 God reinforces the power of the concrete in his exhortation to parents. The beauty of children’s books is their power to deliver the loftiest truths and the deepest sorrows with simple stories and vivid imagery. I love sharing Faith Ringgold’s books with my boys. Her gorgeous, vibrant artwork provides a stunning and fanciful backdrop to her depiction of the Underground Railroad in Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky. Picture books provide a solid, touchable way to engage in conversations about race with your children. Research shows that children as young as six months begin to nonverbally categorize race and that toddlers begin to make inferences connected to racial categories.4 It is never too early to begin talking about race in open, affirming, and age-appropriate ways. Books, particularly picture books, provide a marvelous way to do that. 5 Be Humble Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. —Deuteronomy 9:6-8 God reminds his people that their possession of good land had nothing to do with their faithfulness or goodness. He calls them to humility and to recognize himself as the source of their blessings. As Americans, we have also been given “this good land” and the accompanying freedoms many of our global neighbors do not enjoy. While we may enjoy certain rights and privileges, God calls us to remember that he is the source of those blessings, not our own goodness. It is humbling to face the guilt of oppression and injustice built over centuries. Books provide an age-appropriate way to exercise this humility, along with our children. Shanika Churchville In Deuteronomy 9, God also calls his people to remember their sins of stubbornness and rebellion. Our country’s history, while full of evidence of God’s goodness, has also been marked by a stubborn refusal to face and change deeply held beliefs about race. To engage with children about this stubbornness in our racial divide is to exercise humility. It is humbling to face the guilt of oppression and injustice built over centuries. Books provide an age-appropriate way to exercise this humility, along with our children. Read books such as Jeannette Winter’s Follow the Drinking Gourd and Deborah Hopkinson’s Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt and open your children’s eyes to the specifics of slavery and the Underground Railroad. Read Jacqueline Woodson’s The Other Side and Margaret Mason’s These Hands and facilitate discussions about the indignities of segregation. God does not protect his people from memories of disobedience and waywardness but recounts a story of both blessings and rebellion. Neither should we, in an effort to protect our children, whitewash memories of our disobedience to God’s commandments—disobedience that has included the subjugation and oppression of Black people.6 Be Amazed For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did. —Deuteronomy 11:7 Any hearer of Moses’ words would be amazed, contemplating God’s “mighty deed and his outstretched arm” (Deut. 11: 2). Towards the end of Deuteronomy, we hear Moses praising God for his faithfulness (Deut. 32:1–4). Indeed, the book of Deuteronomy is a hymn to the amazing deeds of the Lord. When I look at my sons, I see in them the sheer determination and triumph of their ancestors who overcame historic hardships. I think of the following from Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”: Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.7 —”Still I Rise,” Maya Angelou Don’t settle for the abridged and anesthetized version of Black history served up in elementary schools every February. Open your family to the glory and beauty of Black history. In our house we celebrate Martin and Malcolm, Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali, as well as our Black students, colleagues, family members, and friends. Fight against the prevailing narratives, both the paternalistic ones that caricature all Black people as helpless and hopeless and the destructive ones that depict all Black people as dangerous and criminal. Share books with your children like Derrick Barnes’s I Am Every Good Thing and be amazed! Curated and edited by Leslie and Carey Bustard with Théa Rosenburg, Wild Things and Castles in the Sky explores topics like classic literature, imagination, art history, race, poetry, young adult novels, faith, and more. The aim and hope is that these essays would encourage parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends to share the power of a good story with a child they love. Click here to learn more about the book. To learn more about the book from its editor, listen to Leslie Bustard’s conversation with Jonathan Rogers on The Habit Podcast.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with author and pastor Scott Sauls. Scott Sauls is the author of six books, most recently Beautiful People Don’t Just Happen: How God Redeems Regret, Hurt, and Fear in the Making of Better People. In this episode, Scott speaks with his old friend Jonathan Rogers about the beauty that can grow out of past hurts. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 24 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Development, Sarah Katherine Woodhull if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

For the first half of my life, there was the sacred and there was the secular, and never the twain shall meet. I may not have heard this directly from the pulpit, but I definitely saw it lived out in the evangelical world of the eighties and nineties. We believed God was in church on Sunday, but we spent the rest of our days in the world, a world quite separate from anything holy. Yes, we prayed before meals. Yes, my preacher Dad led family devotions on Friday nights. Yes, we had Bible verses hanging on our walls, but the world outside those walls was dangerous—so we had lots of rules to keep it from getting in. Like listening only to Christian music, and reading mainly Christian books, and watching mostly Christian movies. No one was selling Christian clothes just yet, but we knew the rules of Christian dress and modesty. We were a people set apart after all, forced to be “in the world,” yet striving not to be “of” it. The idea of experiencing God in things that were not labeled Christian was foreign to me. Seeing God in the physical world around me, in the daily grit of life, was something I never considered until I went away to college. Before that I thought of God as spirit and everything else as flesh. Yes, God made the earth and yes, I lived on it; but that’s where the connection ended. I never saw the natural world as his present or presence to me. Everything I learned about spiritual life prior to leaving home was just that: spiritual. I viewed my sins as thoughts and words, or the occasional squabble with my siblings; and the solution to that sin was more words. Words about heaven. Words prayed to God. Words of forgiveness written in holy Christian Bibles. Words and thoughts were my only connection to the spiritual realm. It might be hard to understand if you didn’t grow up in this same atmosphere, but we evangelicals feared icons. Icons led to idolatry—the worship of things which were not God. God was something you couldn’t see; ergo, all the things you could see were not godly. Therefore, we would not worship anything we could see. Fine, good. What was wrong with this logic? Well, just one thing: Jesus. You see, the churches I attended during my childhood loved Jesus. We preached Jesus. We prayed and sang to him. We baptized folks in his name, and we were born again because of his death. We knew all about his perfect, sacrificial life, and we loved to tell the world about his wonderful love. But we wouldn’t hang a picture of him up in the sanctuary. We couldn’t place a statue of his likeness in the foyer. We would not allow images of a cross which bore his body. For he was not flesh anymore—Amen! He was risen—Hallelujah!! Alive, I say, and living in heaven with God the Father—Praise the Lord!!! You know, heaven—that far off place no one’s ever seen? That’s where Jesus was. Yes, his Spirit was present with us, but he was not part of the small crackers or grape juice we passed around once a quarter. We did not believe in transubstantiation. We would not stand for such heresy! Communion was merely a symbol, a flag you uttered a pledge to now and again; not a blanket to wrap yourself in every Sunday. Because our real work was saving souls, scrubbing the sins off those souls, and getting those spiritual souls up to heaven. There was no need to worry about redeeming material things or renewing the world around us. Souls lasted forever, but not this world. Therefore, the only hope we had was for resurrection. Deny your flesh, concentrate on the transformation of your soul, and hold on—heaven comes to those who wait. Heaven came to me when I left home for college. Like most freshmen, I felt like the whole world was in front of me, and the best part was being in charge of my own life. Finally. Now I could decide whether to move or stay put, because I didn’t have to follow Mom and Dad around anymore. They no longer had a say in what I wore, where I went, or how I spent my time. The freedom was overwhelming and wonderful, but I still felt like something was missing. In September of my sophomore year, a mutual friend introduced me to a skinny freshman suffering his first college heartbreak. The lead singer of a Christian Ska band, Kevin was not the kind of guy I’d ever imagined dating, but we hit it off due to our mutual love of literature and poetry. Kevin wore baggy pants, oversized flannel shirts, and was a bit too scruffy for boyfriend material in my opinion, but I was still drawn to him. He struggled to keep his extra large clothes from swallowing his small frame, and wore thick glasses that were nearly as big as his face, but he also had a scraggly beard and long wispy hair that made him look somewhat like Jesus in that Da Vinci painting. Add to that his great laugh, wonderful sense of humor, and love of nature walks, and he turned out to be a pretty great friend. There’s a difference between denying your flesh and pretending it doesn’t exist. We humans are more than mere souls dressed in three-dimensional costumes, and these bodies are an intentional element of our earthly experience. Janna Barber I reckon there were plenty of men with long hair back in 1995, but I’d never spent time with one before Kevin. All the boys I knew growing up had short, close cuts, because anything else (other than a mullet) was considered girly. Kevin, on the other hand, had battled leukemia in high school, and the chemo made his hair fall out, so when it grew back he couldn’t bring himself to cut it anymore. Kevin became like a younger, wiser brother to me. He seemed to know and love Jesus in a way I hadn’t seen before and there was great depth in him that anyone could see, but he never suspected himself. Struggling with cancer at an early age gave Kevin life experience the rest of us lacked. He told the greatest stories and made me laugh in a way few other guys could. Twenty years later we still email each other, to discuss our latest writing or new favorite works of art. Another gift I got at college was an introduction to Praise and Worship, a student-led service that met in an old chapel on Thursday nights. Two upperclassmen played guitars and sang choruses from Vineyard Church, Maranatha! and Hillsong (along with a few originals of their own) while the rest of us knelt on the floor, or stood and raised our hands, or even clapped along—gasp! The worship I’d known previous to that time was limited to three hymns and the occasional solo while members sat stiffly in wooden pews. But this new environment paid no mind to schedules or propriety, and reminded me of gathering around campfires late at night during church camp—and the intense devotion I’d felt to Christ as a kid. Between my friendship with Kevin and all the new things I was being exposed to, I began to see less of a division between sacredness and the “secular world” I’d been sheltered from for eighteen years. To echo Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of John 1:14, it was sort of like the spiritual words I’d grown up with were becoming flesh and blood, and moving into my neighborhood. Four years later I was a new mom struggling with postpartum depression, so I reached out to another college friend and asked for advice. Neither of us had the vocabulary back then to identify what was going on, as PPD was something I learned about in 2003, but Jerusalem could tell I wasn’t myself anymore. So she suggested I meet with a lady she’d been seeing herself for a couple of months. Gail wasn’t the kind of therapist who just taught about Jesus; instead, she loved me like Jesus. And it was her flesh and blood, her steady gaze and calm voice, her listening ears and peaceful presence that saved me from hurting myself and my child, and helped me find hope and faith again. The kind of faith that turned me into a poet and led to me telling stories like this one. There’s a difference between denying your flesh and pretending it doesn’t exist. We humans are more than mere souls dressed in three-dimensional costumes, and these bodies are an intentional element of our earthly experience. So much so that God himself saw it fit to inhabit one for thirty-three years. The Old Testament warns its readers over and over again: “Do not worship idols carved from stone, or wood, or gold.” If you do, it says, you’ll become just like them, having “eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, and mouths that cannot speak.” Centuries later, my idols look a bit different than those of the Israelites, but I don’t think they’re icons, nor the world I was warned against as a child. Instead, they’re much less tangible notions. For example, I’ve worshiped my own sense of health and beauty, as well as wealth, stability, and being part of a “normal” family. But the biggest temptation for me is to worship a God who never allows trouble, heartache, or grief into the lives of his children. And strangely enough, it’s the tangible elements of creation that lead me back to the truth of who God really is. Like how the first time I kissed each of my babies, I understood more what it means to bear his image. Or how when I listen to a babbling creek in a quiet wood, or smell fresh hyacinth, or taste the salty tears of grief and sorrow, I can sense the presence of the Holy Spirit in my deep breaths. And every time I see a handsome groom waiting for his beloved bride, I know I’m really getting a glimpse into the heart of Jesus toward all humanity. This post was adapted from chapter five of Hidden In Shadow: Tales of Grief, Lamentation, and Faith, now available as an audiobook. To get your copy, click here.

[Editor’s note: On Juneteenth in 2020, Ruth Naomi Floyd (known by many in the Rabbit Room readership for her amazing Hutchmoot sessions) shared a lovingly curated combination of her own words, two letters from former prisoners of the American slavery system, and her performance of the song “Oh, Freedom.” This story of a freedom “prayed for, hoped for, cried for, moaned for, even fought for” carries an abiding resonance that we want to extend to our readership this year as well. We encourage you to take in these words and melodies slowly and attentively.] “And are we yet alive to see each other’s face.” —an African prisoner of the forced labor system of American Slavery History would say that the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863 ended American chattel slavery, thereby changing the legal status of the African prisoners of that forced labor system for good. Yet what is actually true is that emancipation on that day only freed the African slaves in the Confederate states. Slavery remained alive and well in Texas, due to the lack of the presence of Union troops whose responsibility it was to enforce the proclamation. Because Texas held onto slavery, many slaveholders relocated there along with their slaves and the slave population in Texas increased by tens of thousands. While millions across the Confederacy rejoiced in their new-found freedom—a freedom prayed for, hoped for, cried for, moaned for, even fought for—still so many in Texas were not included in that freedom song for a very long time. However on June 19th, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the people of Texas were informed that they too, were indeed free. Lively celebrations of dancing and singing followed the pronouncement. Finally, every freed prisoner of the American slavery system could rejoice and let freedom ring! This is what Juneteenth commemorates: the day when those enslaved in Texas received word of their freedom. In the midst of the celebrations, however, remained a bittersweet reality, that this so-called freedom would still be laden with oppression and dehumanization. For those descended of the American slave system, life continued to be permeated by inequality and injustice—a reality that remains ever present today as those who were historically emancipated still have not been fully delivered. An African prisoner of the forced labor system of American Slavery Jennie Hill 96 years old Born 1837 Enslaved in Kansas & Missouri Interviewed in 1933 “Those masters were cruel. They carried rawhide whips and if the women dragged a little in their long march they were lashed with the whips until the blood streamed from their poor cut backs. Some people think that the slaves had no feeling—that they bore their children as animals bear their young and that there was no heartbreak when the children were torn from their parents or the mother taken from her brood to toil for a master in another state. But that isn’t so. The slaves loved their families even as the Negroes love their own today and the happiest time of their lives was when they could sit at their cabin doors when the day’s work was done and sing the old slave songs, ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot,’ ‘Massa in the Cold, Cold Ground,’ and ‘Nobody Knows What Trouble I’ve Seen.’ Children learned these songs and sang them only as a Negro child could. That was the slave’s only happiness, a happiness that for many of them did not last. When Lincoln freed the slaves, I knew of dozens of children who started out to search through the southland for their parents who had been sold down the river. Parents left in the north country searched frantically for their children. But I only know of one case where the family was ever united. Some perhaps were killed in the battles, but in the majority of the cases the children of slaves lost their identity when they were taken from the place of their birth into a new county.” An African prisoner of the forced labor system of American Slavery N.C. (Name not available) 100 years old Born in 1810 Enslaved in Alabama & Texas Interviewed in 1910 “When you were a hundred years old, you see the stars fall, and the other night when I went out I saw all the stars drop from the sky. I was at a wonder when I saw it. Oh the stars in the elements are falling, And the moon drips away in the blood. We looked out on the red fields where men guided the mules in the plowing. It must be a hundred years ago. I have seen and heard a sorrow and trouble, but it is over for me. I thank the Lord that I am free, that us all, children, and women, and men are free.” To explore more of Ruth Naomi Floyd’s work, check out her Hutchmoot session “A Theology of the Blues & Belonging” and her interview with Jonathan Rogers on The Habit Podcast. Click here to follow Ruth Naomi Floyd on Facebook, here to follow her on Instagram, and here to check out her website. The excerpts above are from Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies by John W. Blassingame, LSU Press, 1977. Artwork credit: “American Uprising” by Kadir Nelson for the Rolling Stone

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with author (Shiloh series, The Door on Half-Bald Hill), speaker, and writing coach Helena Sorensen. In this episode, recorded live at the first Habit Writers’ Retreat at Nashville’s North Wind Manor, Helena speaks with Jonathan Rogers about the particular challenges faced by women (especially mothers) who are struggling to find the permission they need to write. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 25 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

As a child, I was terrified of being asked to pray aloud. It always seemed like other people—usually adults—knew all the right words and how to string them together. And even if I thought my everyday words were good enough, there was the problem of focusing so hard on finding those words that I was no longer praying with my heart, only my mouth. If you assume this is something I just grew out of, you’d only be partially right. Of course, it wasn’t (and isn’t) true that my prayers were less. After all, Jesus set apart special time for children whose requests and questions weren’t so different from mine. Many adults benefit from written prayers to guide their conversations with God like The Book of Common Prayer or Every Moment Holy. The new book Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katy Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oakes (you may know Katy and Flo from Rain for Roots), and Tish Harrison Warren aims to do the same for children. At first glance, this book of thirty short prayers is deceptively simple. But as a picture book writer, I can tell you it’s actually much easier to write lots of words than winnow down to just the few perfect words. These prayers are short not because they were written quickly, but because they were labored over. And though these prayers are made up of everyday language, they model many types of prayer: praise, thanksgiving, petition, repentance, requests for God’s closeness, and even statements of theology (e.g. reminders of God’s goodness or that he rested after creation). It’s easy for children, or any of us, to fall into one kind of prayer. Often we’re asking God for things, which he loves for his children to do. But sometimes that’s the only thing we’re doing. I love that in these prayers, when something is asked of God, the prayer always closes with a reminder or praise of who God is. One example is the prayer “For when I have lost something,” which closes with the reminder that God “always, always, always comes after me to find me.” This helps reframe the child’s frustration with a reminder of the gospel. Each prayer is short, just the right length for a child’s wandering attention span. But their brevity also models that longer prayers aren’t more holy or worthy than short ones. The prayers are short enough that a child will naturally memorize the ones they use frequently without even trying, giving their heart a language to use when they turn to God on their own. You might be surprised to find prayers for taking a bath or brushing your teeth included in this book. But Paul exhorts us to pray without ceasing. These prayers for everyday moments model what life can look like, giving kids the freedom to talk to God about everything, not just the big things. As the authors exhort their young readers in the forward, “There is nothing that you’re not allowed to say to God. God always listens. God always loves you. You can tell God anything.” Some of my favorite everyday prayers include “For reading a book,” “For making something,” and “For trying something new.” This sweet book is full of simple, calming illustrations with plenty of white space. It’s small enough for little hands to hold or for a parent to tuck into a purse or backpack. Whether or not your child struggles to pray aloud, these prayers can be a helpful guide, prompting them to draw closer to their creator and reminding them, and you, of his love. Click here to pick up your copy of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with songwriter and author of The Last Sweet Mile, Allen Levi. Allen lost his brother and best friend Gary ten years ago this summer. He memorializes his brother’s life—and especially the year he was his brother’s full-time caretaker—in The Last Sweet Mile, recently re-released by Rabbit Room Press. In this episode, Allen and Jonathan Rogers discuss the impossible challenge of putting words to the things that matter most, and the reasons for trying anyway. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 26 of The Habit Podcast. Transcripts are now available for The Habit Podcast. Click here to access them. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

[Editor's Note: In the spirit of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet , Ben Palpant has written letters to his daughter to help her along the path of creativity and faith. He uses his hard-earned experience to help her learn to write and to live well and, by doing so, helps us do the same. He patiently and gracefully paints a vision of what it means to enter into one’s creative work as an act of generative obedience—an act that blesses the writer, the work itself, and the world that receives it. In this selection from Letters From The Mountain , Palpant reminds his daughter (and us) that God gave us solitude to feed our souls so that we could nourish the community for which we were made.] “The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to silence and gaze into the dark.” —J. A. Baker, The Peregrine Out of five hundred plus in my graduating class, I was voted most likely to become a monk. No, I didn’t find it funny at the time, but after nearly twenty-five years of marriage and five children, I can laugh about it now. Mine isn’t exactly the monastic life, but I know why they voted that way. I’ve always been at ease with solitude. I was the kid who would rather be left alone most of the time, free to think his own thoughts and do his own thing, a textbook introvert. Even today I feel most at home in solitude, and most like a foreigner in crowds. Maybe that’s why this quotation from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together keeps nagging at me. You read it to me yesterday because you share my aversion to crowds. I’m glad you gave it to me. His words have prompted me to meditate on the paradox of community, the necessity of being alone and together. “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God . . . But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together Called to Serve Community God calls you to serve community. Your community is more than your family and friends. It includes coworkers and strangers, too. Generative Christians engender loyalty and trust and affection from those people. We build relationships, not simply platforms. The former tend to stay people-centered, while the latter are focused on income and influence. Neither hardship nor prosperity should derail the proper prioritization of people over prestige. Christ prioritized people over power in this way and you’re an extension of his love. Generativity Thrives in Community I’ve been surprised in life to find that my writing generates in those around me new creative expressions that, in turn, inspire me to further work. This picture coincides with the garden metaphor. When I cultivate the garden around me—weeding, watering, planting, and fertilizing—those plants blossom and send forth their own shoots, their own seeds on the wind. You will find this principle true in your own life. Join a community that shares your love for God, for people, and for life. Share poetry together. Send each other quotations from the books you’re reading. Encourage them in their endeavors. That community is an important part of sustaining you on life’s journey. Eat together, play together, work together, and forgive each other. All communities are prone to flattery, passivity, gossip, alliances, or jealousy. That is no reason to avoid groups. Patiently work through those things together, candidly honoring each other and helping each other to greater faithfulness. If you learn to depend upon others, your community will guard you from lusts of the mind, from pride, and from an inordinate self-reliance. Fear these things as much as you fear the lusts of the flesh. They are equally dangerous to the soul. The Power of Community For good or ill, people living in community share with each other, compounding their resulting growth. This isn’t always a good thing. The flu, for example, spreads rapidly, building momentum within a community as its victims increase in number. Gossip has a similar contagious quality—be it in a family or a class at school, and technology and social networks only accelerate the speed and extend the reach. That’s the bad news. The good news is that many positive things are contagious, too, such as laughter or a strong work ethic. Gladness and hope are also contagious. Generativity is contagious. Friends who labor together for the same cause impact culture more effectively than one person who works in isolation. We desperately need community. Isolation amplifies our vulnerability and multiplies our insufficiencies. The human heart’s downward drag will inevitably shift our vision from Christ to self, from faith to fear, from dependence to self-reliance. We need other people to remind us of God’s faithfulness and conquering work. We need them to keep us from trusting in our own strength. And we need others to lift our eyes to Jesus as we help them lift theirs. We have a responsibility to cultivate an upward orientation in the community God has given to us. Consequently, one of the most important decisions we have to make is whom to befriend. Proverbs 13:20 says, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” So find people whose faith seems stronger than yours, whose eyes are more fixed on the Lord than yours, and who verbalize thanks more often than you. Watch them. Imitate them. Walk with them. Eat meals with them. Pray for them. Thank them. Be vulnerable with them without dragging them down into your own self-pity. Fight the urge to become a vortex of selfishness. Finally, the great power of community rests on its ability to engender thankfulness. Where people serve each other, pray for each other, weep with each other, and laugh with each other, thankfulness abounds. Thanksgiving, like praise, gives the heart an outward orientation. Maybe God calls us to community in part because being alone for too long turns our attention onto ourselves. The more we verbalize thankfulness, the more we forget about ourselves. We start noticing others and what they are doing. We start finding reasons to be thankful. Ultimately, we start seeing abundance instead of scarcity. Start asking yourself, “How can I thank the person right in front me?” A teacher, mother, sister, stranger? Learn to ask, “What is God giving me right now?” Ultimately, your work is largely meaningless apart from community. You need readers, right? You need editors, right? You need to bounce your ideas off of others, right? Your writing is formed by others and for others. This realization should not surprise us since God is three persons in one, a community. He made us in his image and designed us for relationship. For this reason, the two greatest commandments offered by Christ to summarize the law given to Moses were to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength,” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Love, as found in God and described in his word, requires community. Writing Is Lonely Work Yes, we’re called into life together, but I couldn’t be a writer without time alone. Writing usually happens in solitude. Most of the time, I have to generate ideas alone, too. I certainly have to agonize alone. More often than not, I must motivate myself to work and keep myself determined as well. Other people stay involved, encouraging where they can, but actually running the engine, maintaining the engine, and driving the engine somewhere are my job and mine alone. I think you will find this true in your own life. The real substantive work must happen in your own heart and mind. You still have to wake up on your own and start writing. Once you are out of school, no one will make you do it. I doubt this news discourages you because you’re already wired to carry the writer’s lonely burden. But you may find that the hardest thing to do is find time alone. Something always intrudes. Solitude vs. Isolation I do not refer to family or friends who have every right to intrude, I refer to the myriad technologies that beckon to us: smartphones, social networks, immediate news alerts, YouTube. Despite our best efforts, we simply do not have the godlike ability to absorb and attend to so much information. As a result, I think our spiritual depths have shallowed, our inner landscapes have shrunk. Information’s incessant assault has made solitude—mental quietude—nearly impossible. Ironically, with this decrease of solitude has come an increase of isolation. The differences are subtle but important. Both words describe time alone. Solitude is sought by those who want mental space to think and fill the heart’s tank before returning to community. Isolation, however, is sought by those who want to be alone and who will put up any wall to stay there. Solitude does not push others away like isolation does. Or look at this way: love desires solitude, selfishness desires isolation. Christ desired solitude, an angry teenager wants isolation. Isolation amplifies the ego’s siren song; solitude exposes the heart’s unbridled babble. Solitude also affords the opportunity to feel mystery and immensity while encouraging an awareness of the inner life that relentless busyness and fear tend to arrest. In solitude, silence asserts itself. For these and many other reasons, isolation is qualitatively different from solitude. God blesses a measured amount of the latter; the former is a sign of the curse: “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment” (Prov. 18:1). God did not make you to be alone in a permanent sense. Such aloneness goes against his Trinitarian nature. Those who stay isolated for too long end up lonely. But that’s the world in which we live. Despite our increased connectivity, our homes have become isolation cells where we eat alone, watch TV alone, and sleep alone. Even within families, we push each other away. In private or public, we plug in to escape. I write these paragraphs while sitting in a shopping mall’s lounge. I’m taking advantage of the moment while I wait for friends. Five candy and soda dispensers line the wall to my left. From two enormous televisions on the wall, sports commentators analyze an athlete’s ten-second failure. They are animated, but I cannot hear them over the clambering children, the exasperated adults, and the pop music pumping over the speakers. I’ve plugged in my earbuds to drown out the banging noises with noises of my own choosing. The irony of my situation is not lost on me. So I’m faced with this reality and my own failure to handle it well. Can I concentrate only by plugging in my earbuds? Is solitude only possible with virtual detachment from reality? And when I detach in this way, do I usher in a loneliness I did not expect? Learning to Value Solitude Our Lord Jesus used solitude as a means of preparing for community and for work. If Christ needed to be alone in a boat or alone amongst the hills when he wanted to fellowship with his father, who are we to think that our souls will thrive on a diet of distraction and perpetual productivity? We need to get away, but we rarely do, so the pre-Socratic philosopher, Meno, asks a question still pertinent today: “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” If solitude and mental quietude are utterly foreign to us, how are we supposed to experience them? How are we supposed to recognize them when we see them? I pause and stare out the window. I have no answer. Or maybe this moment is an answer. I have so much to learn. I’m trying to live out the paradox of community, taking time to be alone and living faithfully in community. I try to find small moments of solitude, no matter my station or duties in life. I try not to lie to myself about how little time I actually need to get away. I need less time for solitude than I generally think, but more than the world will offer. I’ve found that more frequent though shorter times of solitude are better than infrequent but long ones. A short walk is often enough. Dorothy Sayers remarked that while our lives are flooded with words, we do not know what the words mean, nor how to fight them or fling them back. She says we’re prey to propaganda, but believe ourselves masters of our desires and convictions. If she is right, then humanity is currently in a pitiful position. I think part of the reason for our societal gullibility is the lack of solitude. We have no quiet spaces in which the mind can think carefully, the heart can long for transcendent things, and the soul can stretch toward God. Contemplation is an endangered practice. BenPalpant is a memoirist, poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. He is the author of several books, including A Small Cup of Light, Sojourner Songs, and The Stranger. He writes under the inspiration of five star-lit children and two dogs. He and his wife live in the Pacific Northwest.

In this episode of the Artists & Podcast, co-hosts Kyra Hinton and Jamin Still channel archeological metaphors to discuss the relationship between artistic voice and an artist’s style. Click here to listen to The Artists & Podcast on Omny, here to listen on Apple Podcasts, and here to listen on Spotify. Transcripts are now available for The Artists & Podcast. Click here to access them. Show Notes Sunga Park, the artist referenced by Kyra Park’s painting that inspired Kyra Close up of sky texture referenced by Jamin An archaeological dig An example of an evidence board (Jamin called it a “murder board”) Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to our Head of Communications & Development, Shigé Clark, at shige@rabbitroom.com if you are interested in becoming a sponsor of our Podcast Network. Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

Last year in Nashville, I bought some pumpkin and caramel-scented candles. For the next few weeks, our home was filled with a smell that, in my mind, will forever be associated with Hutchmoot. While I burned my candles mercilessly, my daughter saved a small one and kept it in her room. A few weeks ago she burned it for a couple of hours, blew it out, and then accidentally knocked it over, leaving a pool of thick amber wax to spread across her desk. As the oils seeped into the tiny cracks in the wood, the fragrance filled the entire room, pouring out into the corridor and down the staircase. For days, every time I walked past her room, regardless of my mood, task, or the time of day, the waves of caramel pumpkin swirl involuntarily drew my thoughts to Hutchmoot. There is a link between memory and smell that is impossible to override. The faintest perfume of a certain flower can transport you instantly back to your childhood. The sharp, sterile blend of disinfectant and warm air drags you against your will to a hospital room you would rather forget, awakening pangs of anxiety or sadness you have tried so hard to bury. Even in the hardest hearts and the darkest moments the right scent is powerful enough to awaken longing. Heidi Johnston Some days there is nothing more comforting than opening my parents’ front door and finding myself cocooned in the smell that is particular to their house. Maybe it’s the blend of washing detergent, my Dad’s aftershave, the constant baking, and the subtle lingering presence of furniture polish. Whatever it is, it smells like home. This deep, involuntary link between smell and memory is something we cannot switch off. Overriding choice, it bypasses our defenses and compels us to remember. I wonder if this is why God’s design for worship in the Old Testament was always such a sensory experience? Nauseating, metallic blood pooled around the altar. Acrid smoke rose from the sacrifices. Thick, heady incense burned continually in the tabernacle. Each of these strong, distinct smells created associations in the mind of the Israelites, blending to form an inescapable call to worship. Whether they liked it or not. In the Gospels, we read about another time when worship and fragrance went hand in hand. Just a few days before his crucifixion, moved by overwhelming gratitude and love, Mary broke a priceless jar of perfume and poured it over Jesus. John 12:3 tells us that the smell of the perfume was so strong that it “filled the house,” which means as Jesus left the house the perfume went with him. Once the concentrated oil soaked into his skin and hair and clothes, the smell would have lasted for days. I don’t know whether Jesus would have changed or washed His clothes in the short period between this intimate anointing and the time of his arrest and crucifixion. Either way, I don’t think it’s a wild speculation to suggest that the smell of the oil continued to cling to him as he entered Jerusalem on the donkey. Like kings before him, his triumphal entry was perfumed by the smell of spikenard, immediately conjuring up pictures of kingship and majesty in the minds of onlookers, creating a sensory echo of their shouted proclamation, “Hail Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Perhaps even in the garden, mingled with the olives and the warm night air, the scent of the oil was present. As the soldiers moved in to take hold of Jesus, did the familiar smell cause their minds to wander for just a moment to something greater than their own short-lived authority? Is it possible that even as they stripped and beat him, his torn and bleeding flesh still carried the faintest scent of royalty? Even in our hardest hearts or darkest moments, the right scent is powerful enough to awaken longing. I have been wondering lately whether there is a way to harness this deeply instinctive connection, allowing us to tie our inner selves to memories of God’s word, to his faithfulness, and to worship in a way that is gentle yet intentional. I’m not sure how it would look practically, but I can’t help wondering what would happen if our times of intimacy with God, whether alone, together with our families or even in our churches were in some way linked to fragrances that, in darker times, would draw us back to the memory of intimacy with God. Would stubborn children, drifting far from the things they learned at home, deaf to the pleas of heartbroken parents, find themselves broken by a familiar smell and the wave of longing that came in its wake? Would we, in our days of self-satisfied arrogance, be reminded of the God who once filled our hearts to overflowing? Maybe I could choose to have the same flowers regularly in the place I tend to go to meet with God? Could it mean choosing to burn a particular scent of candle in the background at times when your family sits around God’s word together, so that the chosen fragrance becomes a marker farther down the road? Some of you may already have your own well-established rhythms in this area. I know that in some traditions fragrance and scent play a larger part than they do in my own and I’d love to know how that works. Does it impact you? Is it something you are consciously aware of? Are there particular fragrances that stir up memories for you? Has a certain fragrance ever triggered a memory that has stirred you to worship? I’m captivated by the possibility of setting in place these invisible markers for my future self. Of reaching forward to gently touch my children’s hearts with a familiar hope. I don’t know if these links between scent and memory can be intentionally formed but if God has planted this deeply rooted connection within us then perhaps it’s worth considering?

The maelstrom of the last few years has proven difficult for singer-songwriter Eric Peters, but the resulting growth has given way to a new set of songs that chronicle those experiences in a meaningful way. Longtime fans know this creative process well as it’s yielded resonant albums like Chrome, Birds of Relocation, and Far Side of the Sea. Via a new Kickstarter campaign, Eric has an EP on the way with his first new studio album in several years. Check out our interview with Eric to hear more about the tragedy of losing a home, the power of community to transform, and what it means to draw creatively from a deeper well. On your new Kickstarter, you mentioned the trials of the last few years and how these songs chronicle the ways they’ve made you a better man. Can you take us further into that story? Eric Peters: The day after the tornado, an army of people — some I knew but many of whom were total strangers — showed up to empty our house of all things salvageable for storage. It seemed like all of Nashville showed up to volunteer in our little hard-hit section of the neighborhood that week. Hundreds, probably thousands, helped clean, cleared debris, chainsawed tree limbs, delivered Moon Pies and drinks, offered condolences and hugs, cried with us, and let us cry on them. They were available in whatever way was needed. I remember being in my backyard Asylum—an office/art space I built—to gather my beloved library of books that had fallen from the shelves and were lying in piles on the floor. A stranger was out there already doing what I set out to do. I joined him, and he asked if this was my house, introduced himself, and said he was sorry this happened. His name was Nicholas, and I’ve only seen him once since that day. I dubbed him Saint Nicholas to his mustached face, and have considered him that ever since. He didn’t know me and he had no agenda. He just wanted to help by being present and available. The entire experience has made me realize that there is absolutely no gospel if we insist on being bad neighbors Eric Peters I don’t remember a lot about the night of the storm or the next day or even that week, but I will never forget the kindness of all the people who came to help those in distress and need, those who were dealing with loss. Being inside the tornado itself as it passed over was certainly an experience I won’t forget, but it was the people who made the deeper, more lasting impression on me. People are not deep down bad, as I’ve been taught for so many years. We are beautiful souls, broken at times, hurting, but capable of such glory. We are damn delights. I know, because I’ve seen it firsthand. What’s the application of that for you? Eric: The entire experience has made me realize that there is absolutely no gospel if we insist on being bad neighbors. By “neighbor,” I don’t mean the sanitized, generalization of the word. I don’t mean the people you feel safe around and with whom you go to church or have Bible study. I mean the very people who literally live next door to you or down the block. I can guarantee they are wildly different than you are with shockingly different beliefs—if any—different attitudes, different lifestyles, and different leanings. If you don’t know your neighbors, if you’ve never taken the risk of introducing yourself to them, or brought them a meal or cookies, then your gospel is empty and void of anything worth paying attention to. It sounds harsh, I know, but I’m so tired of our Christian culture’s ability to wax eloquently about all the things Christ promoted, yet we act like asses when no one is looking or the barista gets our coffee order wrong. Little moments matter. These past few years have made me want to be a kinder man, a better husband, a present dad, an affable neighbor, a mower of lawns, a writer of songs, and a painter of abstract things. Politicians aren’t going to save us from ourselves. Our government, no matter the party in power, will not save us from ourselves. No dollar amount will save us from ourselves. Stop thinking someone needs you to save them. What they need—what I need—is for you to be compassionate and to act like the delight that you are, the one the world deserves to see. How long after the tornado and resulting damage did it take you to pick up songwriting again? Eric: I didn’t write very much after Far Side of the Sea, mostly because I felt it was a worthless, pointless endeavor. But I did start writing again after the storm. “The Bread” was the first song I’d finished in over four years. I started pecking away at some song starts I’d begun months, even years, earlier, and found myself incorporating all of the stuff I’d been experiencing into these new songs. I wanted to make a pop/rock album that lacked pop/rock lyrics—sort of a musical marriage between happy-go-lucky and soberness. Photo Credits: Allison Gower You’ve certainly written a lot in the past about brokenness. Does this feel like a new well from which to draw when you’re saying, “Wait, we’re actually beautiful souls!”? Eric: Yes. I’ve been drinking from a well too shallow. There’s plenty of brokenness to still go around. I am judgmental, critical, cynical, negative, disappointed, self-absorbed, pious, arrogant, addicted to shadow brides, complacent, and self-serving. I may be all of these things, but I’m not just those things. I’m not rotten to the core, not incapable of making good choices, not sad enough, or too far gone to accept what is and find gratitude. I’m “Yes, and…” We’re all “Yes, and… Assuming that the creation story, as so many of us have been taught, is authoritative and the only true story, I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile that God would father a story of a world inherently bleak and hopelessly lost, would set a lost child down in that world, and tell them, “Good luck!” That doesn’t sound merciful at all. It sounds demented, cruel, and manipulative. No loving father sees their child as ugly. No loving parent gives up on their child without a fight. A loving parent sees only the inherent beauty of the living creature they’ve made. I’ve struggled these last few years to reconcile what I was taught in the past versus what I now know as a dad—as someone who has both lost and received significant things Have the songs come as a result of these discoveries or are the songs actually helping you discover these ideas? Eric: I started writing a few of these songs years ago, but for whatever reason, I would hit a wall or be blocked. I’d shelve one, come back to it, peck away at a lyric, chorus, or melody, get stuck in a new rut, and reshelve it all over again. This went on ad nauseum. I apparently needed that time to go through what I went through during those years, to gain a clearer perspective of myself, humanity, and the heart, and figure out what I really wanted to say and how best to say it. I’ve gained confidence in my “voice,” and, as author-theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “[I’m] speaking what I feel, not what I ought to say.” I think I’ve always done that as a songwriter, but these songs seem to reflect a deeper experience and understanding of what makes me me, and you you. Does this provide a level of importance in sharing these songs that maybe hasn’t been as true in the past? Eric: No, I don’t necessarily think these songs are any more or less important. Art is the act of getting to the heart of the matter. I’ve always attempted to do that in my own way over the years. I’ve never tried to spoon-feed people, and I have always, always tried my best to say what I have to say, how I need to say it, so it sounds like Eric Peters, not like I’m trying to be somebody else. Basically, I think I’ve become more comfortable as Eric Peters the person and artist, and that I’ve given myself the freedom to have opinions and believe things that differ drastically from things I believed at 20, 25, 30, or even 40 years old. Make sure to check out the Kickstarter for Eric’s new campaign here. #EricPeters

I was driving my son to school when we almost ran over a beaver in the middle of what should have been a beaver-less place. It was a field filled with cows and one lone dump truck rusting into the ground. After narrowly dodging becoming beaver murderers, my son and I got to thinking about beaver-ish things. He had a lot of questions. “Why was the beaver crossing the road?” he asked (in a literal sense, not as an alternative to a chicken-based joke). “Did it live in that field?” I had no idea. What I did know was that beavers normally don’t live in fields with cows. I said as much, and then asked, “What if that beaver wasn’t actually a beaver but a shape-shifting dragon that thought being a beaver would trick us into believing it belonged there so it could eat one of the cows?” He talked about this for the next 15 minutes. He talked about it as we got out of the car, walked through the door, and tossed his backpack on the floor. At some point, we decided that the beaver was, in fact, a dragon, but it wasn’t going after a cow; it really wanted to drive the old dump truck sitting in the middle of the field. I’ve thought about this conversation a lot since we had it. In fact, I’ve thought a lot about the random beaver/dragon-style conversations I’ve had with my kids. It’s always been a goal of mine to foster their imaginations, curiosities, and general wonder of the world, but, for reasons I have never been able to pin down, these what if conversations always feel as though they are doing more than just letting us be ridiculous together. I’ve gotten a lot of advice about what ifs in my adult life, mostly to stay away from them and their distant cousin “if only” for the sake of my own joy. “What if I’d done X differently? What if I did X instead of Y?” To reframe the imagination as sacred connects me to the Creator in every creative moment. Dave Connis What ifs can sometimes turn into dangerous explorations of unfulfilled longings, deep sorrows, or regrets. These sorts of what ifs? can take us over. Swallow us whole. When they do, we get lost in the crypts and dungeons of Whatifland. Down there, in the dark, we forget about the world outside. We forget about Whatisland. Mystery and curiosity turn us into prisoners of everything unrealized if we are not careful. When that happens, imagination becomes something that we use against ourselves, and to protect our hearts, we put it in a cage. Alternatively, if we spend too much time in the cities of Whatisland then mystery becomes inefficient, curiosity turns transactional, and imagination is reduced to simply being a means to an end. I know my imagination isn’t an animal that has to be caged, but it also isn’t merely a means to an end. If I believe that I’m redeemed, I also must believe that my own imagination finds its source in the Creator—that it’s not just redeemed but can also help bring about redemption itself. The Creator’s imagination is clear in every God-breathed work, in the breath given to humanity in the beginning. We have been made in the image of a Creator. To create, you must imagine. To create the zebra, God imagined its stripes. To create the colors of a sunrise, God first imagined the canvas of the sky. He imagined the laughter of a child and the love humans can share. He also imagined beavers that might appear in beaver-less places. I’m a writer of children’s literature—most recently, The Stories of God (and Kiki). The bulk of my career has been built on exploring and writing about ridiculous what ifs. But the shape-shifting dragon conversation made me realize how often I force my own imagination to live in the dark, isolated places of Whatifland and Whatisland. It made me realize that, if imagination isn’t a part of my theology, I can lose it, or its purpose, entirely. I’m asked a lot by parents how to help inspire and foster their kids’ imagination and creativity. I’ve given advice like, “Slow down, truly look at the world and engage it with the wonder your child has for it.” While that’s true, I think the holy work of shape-shifting dragons has expanded my answer. To take the imaginations of my kids seriously, I have to slow down, yes, but I also need to take my own imagination seriously, or maybe less seriously if I want to dive down the rabbit hole of beavers turning into dragons, and reform it as a holy practice, a muscle that needs to be exercised. I need to challenge the notion that mundane actions—things like coming up with stories of beaver/dragons—are inconsequential. To reframe the imagination as sacred connects me to the Creator in every creative moment—not just when I pray, read the Bible, and perform other “official” spiritual practices. And as with all things redeemed, we have to practice using it outside of the darkness of our broken extremes. I need to work on my own theology of imagination and let the Spirit breathe redemption into my imagination. I need to remember to step out of the crypts and dungeons and into the wilds where magical beasts roar and intrepid explorers dare. Where mercy reigns. Where griffins fly. Where all are forgiven. Where dragons shape-shift. Where imagination is redeemed. And all of it points me to Jesus.

When I was eleven, I enrolled in a five-week kids program at the University of Louisville. One class featured a new role-playing game that was sweeping America: Dungeons and Dragons. I was both fascinated and overwhelmed by the scope of gameplay, but just as I was finally getting my bearings, word spread that D&D was demonic and led to violence. So, my light blue plastic dice disappeared for the rest of my childhood, and I returned to Parcheesi. I’m not one to splash haphazardly in supernatural puddles. I don’t like horror movies or spooky books, and I think unseen forces are more active than we sometimes realize. However, depending on how it is approached, D&D can highlight the struggles and victories of goodness instead of spreading enchantment with darkness. Like many other creative activities, gameplay can benefit or harm the soul. In the early 1980’s we were given simple guidelines about what was good and what was evil. Sometimes I miss that simplicity–feeling certain that I shared a team with humanity’s noble heroes and that we knew exactly who all the bad guys were. But reflecting now on that season of my life, I have to admit that the grave sins of certain political parties and denominations were often excused as rare outliers while stories of a few misguided role-playing teenagers flamed through evangelicalism like wildfire. In those days, we defended and censured others largely on the basis of team loyalty. The world was divided clearly into “we” and “they,” and our leaders constantly let us know how to draw those lines. I realized that avoiding evil involved more than obeying a handy-dandy team list of do-nots. Rebecca Reynolds But as the next decade or two unfolded, I watched families who lambasted Narnia because it contained a witch help facilitate injustice in religious communities. I watched stately religious leaders make excuses for men who used women and children badly. I saw people who advocated for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control rally behind politicians who defied every single one of those traits—cheering for their venomous lies and lauding them as God’s help in times of need. I saw the demonic churning in real time, and those forces were not limited to the places I had been warned about. They were far more deceptive, far more invasive, and far more embedded in everyday life than I had been taught. I realized that avoiding evil involved more than obeying a handy-dandy team list of “do-nots.” For most of my adult life, I was too busy to revisit D&D; however, a few years ago, one of my older kids began talking about Critical Role, and my youngest started to play with a group online. My son’s character profile on D&D Beyond fascinated me—this new cyber tool made all the complexities we used to manage with paper and books so much easier! The beauty of the game hit me anew. A few folks from the Rabbit Room put together a campaign, and I joined up. Any lingering fears about gameplay taking a dark turn vanished in one session. You know how the Rabbit folk are—our general vibe is jovial magic. We sally forth in the spirit of Tolkien, Lewis, Lloyd Alexander. Good is good. Evil is evil. A measure of mischief is fun. Context matters, of course. Sex, photography, writing, dance, and mechanical design can be used in evil or good ways. So might this game. Discretion suits the making of sausage-and-egg casseroles as well as communal storymaking. I wouldn’t want to attempt creation of any sort with people enamored with darkness. But with the right people sitting at the right table, wonderful things can happen. My favorite character is Ophibwyn, an Owlin. She’s a bard with the power to inflict maniacal laughter upon her enemies. She can also terrify the wicked and encourage the noble—what more could a writer ever want in life? After about an hour of play, the constant clench of adulthood releases. I’m lost in belly laughs, the thrill of imagined danger, and the rush of cooperative creation. My teammates shock and delight me with their choices. We are reckless, astute, selfless, greedy, each flexing unique strengths and struggling with unique weaknesses. I’m having to relearn a great deal about gameplay, but my friends are patient, and they guide me along. They’ve helped me catch a solid vision for what a campaign can become, and I don’t want to turn back. I’m a bit in awe of the vulnerability a DM’s role requires. Rebecca Reynolds All of this joyful escape is hosted by the generosity of a Dungeon Master. Our beloved Rabbit Room has explored many different art forms, but in this post, I want to suggest that the creative labors of a talented DM deserve to sit among them. The DM orchestrates the campaign from its onset, establishing the general framework for each evening’s play. He (or she) develops a setting, envisions challenges, designs quests—and then as each session passes, he collects information about choices the players make, funneling the past and the present into the next branch of the team’s future adventure. As he guides, he responds minute-by-minute with a light-handed assistance. He remains responsive to the narrative physics of the entire machine, working to build a world, then opening his hands with his creation and letting it go, entrusting his story to others. As the evening progresses, the DM’s preconceived ideas of where a campaign might go must flex and shift as communal innovation occurs. For instance, we have a wild-eyed Harengon (a sort of rabbit creature) in our group. He’s absolutely nuts, good but chaotic. As long as that wild hare is around, anything might happen. Yet the DM remains unfazed, chuckling as we try to corral this crazy creature so he doesn’t get us all killed. In many ways, the DM is just as vulnerable as the players. In fact, I’m a bit in awe of the vulnerability a DM’s role requires. When it comes to artistic creation, I’m sort of a control freak. I don’t like working in groups. I want to pull all the levers and push all the buttons in private and on my schedule. Sure, I loved working with Kyra and Bailey on the Hutchmoot Pass the Piece art, but our collaboration didn’t happen instantaneously. We each had boundaries, separate roles completed in separate places. Yet, in the co-creation of a D&D campaign, a DM is always present, watching his original story spin into new dimensions without becoming a dictator over it. He has to stay supple, fluid, flexible, alert to help move the growing story forward. There’s a trust exchange at play. After establishing the loose rules of his universe, he allows players to develop or destroy themselves as well as the realm he has offered them. While there are some famous, public campaigns and well-known Dungeon Masters, I especially love the work DM’s do in small groups of friends. So much of artistic culture focuses on building a personal platform, getting signed with a publisher or a label, and attracting fans. But the grand creative work done by most DM’s is offered to only six or seven people. It will never bring fame or fortune, just escape, joy, adventure, and camaraderie. Playing D&D, I’m reminded of tales of the old days when groups of friends and family would gather around a fire to tell stories. Who knows how many thousands of brilliant grandmotherly raconteurs capable of captivating millions delighted six grandchildren instead? No platform. No publication. Their gifts spread out, tended human souls, and then faded, remaining only now in phrases, “They say your great-grandmother was a brilliant storyteller.” What the old grandfolk created is gone. But the closeness of the room, the sensation of journey, the delicious intimacy of the sound of a human voice offering another world strengthened and inspired. The care of a Dungeon Master falls into a similar category of generosity. He listens. He watches. He gives. He lifts a few hearts for a few hours, and all return home invigorated. He says, “Here you are. Here I am. The night is dark. The days are long. Let’s make something remarkable.”

I discovered the following note in my email inbox yesterday at 3:08 a.m. (Don’t ask me why I was up that late — the internet is a vortex.) The email subject line was: READ THIS TO AVOID BEING EATEN BY SHARKS. It was from one, Father Samuel Persla. It said: Dear Sir, This is not a scam. My name is Fr. Samuel Persla. I am an online scammer turned Franciscan priest who was sucked into the internet against my will. I write to you because your life is in danger. I must acknowledge that you are receiving this email involuntarily. But unlike most scammers — and spammers — I am not after your money, although I do want your trust. If you grant me this, there is a possibility that it will save your life. It is true that I once was an ordinary scammer. I tricked countless old ladies into giving me their bank account information, I confess — but those days are long past. I am reformed and repentant. When I converted, I made two resolutions: (1) that it should be my ambition to declare the Gospel of God to all my fellow scammers, and (2) that I should warn those online about the dangers lurking behind their electronic devices. I studied English grammar, got ordained by the Catholic Church, and immediately set out on my mission to evangelize online scammers. “How did you do this?” you ask. I scammed the scammers. I filled their inboxes with Scripture. I invited them to join the church. I even took it one step further: I showed up at their front doors with cookies. Now, as you might imagine, a few of my fellow scammers accepted the gospel gladly and were baptized at once. But there were others who became angry with me, for they were profiting off this immoral way of life. Foremost of these was one who calls himself Demetrius (watch out for him, he’s very sly). This former coworker conspired against me. Alas! But it was my own sin that turned out to be my downfall! Demetrius sent me an email that said: “Thought you enjoy read this article I found: THIS archaeological discovery PROOVES that Jesus Rose from the Dead.” I couldn’t resist! As soon as I clicked on the link, I was sucked into the internet! I didn’t just fall down a long and dangerous rabbit-hole of links and webpages like what you are probably accustomed to, but swallowed up — mind, body, soul, spirit, ALL OF ME! When I regained consciousness, I realized that I was trapped inside my computer. You can imagine the devastation this discovery caused me. I, who sought to warn the masses about the inherent dangers of the internet, was himself trapped inside of it! The only way I would ever be able to reach those I wanted to deliver from this evil was through the very same medium that brought me such grief! Oh, paradoxes of paradox! I thought I was ruined. But God is so gracious. At my lowest point he comforted me by reminding me about the nature of the cross. For there, as it is written, “God made him who had no sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.” I, like Jonah, was trapped inside the belly of this beast — but not in vain! God desired it so that I would preach repentance here and bring salvation to many. It’s a fascinating phenomenon that both God and scammers are after the same thing: your attention. In fact, it’s not just the scammers; these days the whole world is fighting for it. It seems that people are beginning to reckon with the fact that attention is a powerful force — more powerful, even, than the internet. For where our attention goes, our spending habits, relationships, even our very souls follow — just look where it brought me! God sent me here to warn people about the grave dangers of getting sucked into this whirlpool. Of course, there’s nothing inherently evil about it. But when it serves as a distraction and prevents us from tending to things that are most important it puts us in grave danger. Be free because I am not free. All this to say, you need to get off your phone. The neighbors above you thought it would be a good idea to make their bathroom into an aquarium. They put a giant shark in it and now the floor is about to break. I know, because they are live-streaming the whole thing. Fr. Samuel He was right. As soon as I read the end of his email, I took off my headphones and heard the wall crack. I dove into the other room just as a massive torrent of water broke through my ceiling. Don’t ask me where they got the shark.

This past weekend my friend Heidi Johnston and I led a session at the Rabbit Room’s Hutchmoot UK in Oxford, England. Our topic was delight and the writer. The things you delight in are a clue to what you ought to be writing, we suggested, a clue to what you have to offer in your creative work. The world needs your delight more than it needs you skill or talent or cleverness—even more than it needs your “message.” But in the discussion time at the end of the session, a man named James asked what’s a writer to do if he is in a season of life when he feels he has no access to delight, only grief. I thought that was an excellent question. Also, I felt ill-prepared to give an answer. As it turned out, James and I sat other across from one another at supper that evening. Doug McKelvey was at our table too, so we posed James’s question to him: When a writer is in a season of grief, with no access to delight, how does he keep writing? I wish I could give you a verbatim account of Doug’s answer, which was beautiful. I can’t, but here are a few highlights: In a season of desolation, Doug said, it’s important to remember that you are given the present hour, the present minute to steward. You may be able to do only a very little. But maybe you can do that little, a minute at a time, an hour at a time? It may feel like you are trudging through waist-deep snow. But maybe you can keep trudging, just a short step at a time? When the winter ends and the thaw comes, hopefully you can look back at the little path you forged in the hardest season. But even if you can’t forge ahead, that time isn’t wasted. Even grief bears good fruit. And the winter always ends. [You can read more from Jonathan Rogers every Tuesday by subscribing to The Habit Weekly at TheHabit.co.]

We spent the first evening after our return from Hutchmoot UK trying to revive our garden. In the busyness of life, with daughters going in one direction and Glenn and I going another, we forgot to arrange for someone to take care of our plants. The hot, dry weather had done its work and the results were obvious the second we looked out the kitchen window. The apple tree was brown, the flowers on the hydrangeas had lost their colour, the leaves on the cherry blossom were limp, the hanging basket was a tangled mass of ivy, and the sunflower we had nurtured as part of a youth group competition was slumped over in abject despair. We spent a few hours feeding, soaking and watering and went to bed frustrated and without a great deal of optimism. By the following afternoon the faded brown and yellow was already giving way to vibrant pinks and greens and our prize sunflower was quietly regaining its confidence. There was work still to do but I was glad of the reminder that life and beauty don’t give up as easily as I feared. As a writer, the last couple of years have been less than productive and I headed to Oxford this year with limited enthusiasm and a considerable dose of insecurity. We opened with Anne Porter’s poem “Music”, unapologetically stolen from Andrew Peterson’s welcome in Nashville several years ago. It talks about the power of music to open within us a homesickness for a half-forgotten country, drawing us ultimately to the one who “will always wait for us” and “wanders where we wander”. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that, for me, the rest of Hutchmoot was a progressive soaking in that sweet homesickness, gradually reviving things that had quietly wilted and begun to lose their colour. Hutchmoot was a progressive soaking in that sweet homesickness, gradually reviving things that had quietly wilted and begun to lose their colour. Heidi Johnston To be honest, it probably should have been a disaster. The last time we gathered in person was the summer before the pandemic and since then all our planning has been on zoom. The tension between preserving the beauty of Hutchmoot in Nashville and yet allowing this UK gathering to have its own accent can feel like walking a tightrope. Illness and travel problems meant we lost several volunteers at short notice. Then there was the moment on day one when unavoidable circumstances stripped us of our chef, only hours before the first meal. And yet. Almost as soon as I walked into St. Andrew’s Church the familiar sense of hopeful anticipation settled around me like a favourite blanket I had mislaid for a while. Logistically I couldn’t be at as many sessions as I had hoped but it didn’t matter, in fact it served as a reminder that Hutchmoot is often about the people. Despite all that came their way, Mark Meynell’s incessant optimism and Jo Tinker’s unflappable, calm determination were something to behold. The way the team from Nashville integrated immediately with everyone from the UK felt like an incarnation of the heart of the Rabbit Room. As I stood outside the church and watched people arrive, many of whom had heroically come on their own, I heard so many stories that resonated with my own. On the first night I spent half an hour with a new friend getting progressively more excited about the beauty of the book of Deuteronomy. At Hutchmoot you never know where the conversation is going to take you next. In the wake of the last couple of years it felt so good to repeatedly have those “what, you too?” moments. Sometimes the Rabbit Room shakes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to happily embrace something I may not naturally have been drawn to. That was true on Friday night. My background and personality type mean that, despite his obvious talent, Joshua Luke Smith’s music is not a genre I expected to gravitate towards. However, his authenticity and faith filled passion won me over. If there was anyone who wasn’t moved, I didn’t meet them. In a contrast that felt right at home at Hutchmoot, his gritty, honest storytelling was followed by British tenor, Joshua Ellicott, singing “When I survey the Wondrous Cross” in tones so rich and deep that they seemed to fill every crevice in the ornate roof and then seep back into the room like warm oil, soothing the very wounds Joshua Luke Smith had been gently prodding. This year, more than I ever remember, there has been an undercurrent of grief and loss running through the lives of so many people I love. It’s not surprising that these themes also kept emerging at Hutchmoot. From the honesty of Michael Tinker and others at In the Round, to the showcase on Friday morning, to Andrew Roycroft’s wonderful session on poetry, there was no attempt to pretend that our hope is not punctuated with struggle and loss. I appreciated that. Beauty is not really beauty if it is not also true. He gives us space and creativity to turn our own struggles into portals of light and hope for others. Heidi Johnston The God who “wanders where we wander” knows the reality of pain and, in his boundless grace, he gives us space and creativity to turn our own struggles into portals of light and hope for others. I witnessed that so many times over the course of the weekend. Through all of it – the music, the fellowship, the art, the food, the laughter, and the friendship – there was “shining at the heart of it” a palpable sense of the presence of the God who is both the giver of all these good gifts and the one who sustains us when we find ourselves walking in the shadows. It would be easy to expect a weekend at Hutchmoot to make you unsettled as you head back home. For me, that has never been the case. It is no secret that the people who are drawn to the work of the Rabbit Room are often those whose faith is both expressed and enriched by their interest in creativity and the arts, and that this can sometimes create a certain feeling of disconnectedness in our church communities. I have been part of my home church for over two decades. These are people who have walked with us as we raised our girls, sat with us in grief and laughed with us at our kitchen table. I love them deeply and yet, like so many I have spoken to at Hutchmoot, there is a part of me that I can’t express in my own church as fully as I would like. The beauty of the Rabbit Room is that it provides a place where that deep longing is shared and fed, freeing me to embrace my home community without resentment, even finding new ways to creatively enhance the life of a church that doesn’t always realise how much it needs the arts. In Andrew Peterson’s keynote on Saturday night, he said something that struck me deeply; “The waves of the new creation sometimes lap up on the shores of this one. When that happens, tell about it.” I commented later that Hutchmoot UK felt like a tsunami. In the wake of all this goodness, the challenge now is to use the unique voice God has given me, in the community where he has placed me, trusting that it will water the dry ground and awaken in someone else a longing for our true “half-forgotten country.”

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a conference room with a group of my coworkers, and for some reason, my stomach was killing me. Sharp pain was shooting up and down my abdomen and all I could do was sit still and try to hide the pain with a smile. As I looked around at my co-workers, I noticed that no one could tell—either they were all too wrapped up in their own thoughts and actions to notice, or else I am a much better actress than I thought I was. The situation was a strange and small thing, but I felt so alone, and in the middle of the meeting, my thoughts floated back to a movie I loved in high school—Star Trek: Into Darkness. My mom is a Trekkie, which means I grew up on Next Generation episodes, and while I enjoyed them, none of the Star Trek storylines ever made much of an impression on me—that is until I started watching the new movies. I remember sitting stunned on the couch, staring at the TV, garlic bread halfway to my mouth, as I watched a scene from Into Darkness. In it, Spock, one of the main characters, puts his hand on the side of his friend’s neck and is able to feel exactly what his friend is feeling—his pain, his fear, his grief—as though it was his own. That scene has followed me ever since. Every time I am in pain, either physical or psychological, I ache for someone to feel what I feel, for my pain to be known and understood exactly as I’m experiencing it—just as Spock experienced his friend’s suffering. A few weeks ago, I went to see Rabbit Room Theatre’s production of The Hiding Place. There are so many true and beautiful elements in the play, but there are two moments in particular that struck me. The first is a moment of total despair where Corrie ten Boom, the main character of the story, is in the infirmary of a Nazi death camp with her ailing sister, Betsie. Corrie stands and stares out the window into the hell they are living through and asks: “Where is God in all of this?” Over the past few years, I have heard a similar question in the voices of some of my friends. As many of the people in my life struggle and grieve, one after another they have asked: “Where is God in all of this?” When a friend sits down across from me, looks me in the eye, and asks why God is hurting them, why God is silent, or how God could exist when their lives are falling apart, all of my carefully-crafted answers fall away. As I sat watching The Hiding Place, I wanted an answer. I wanted Betsie to tell Corrie, once and for all, where God was, what he was doing, and why. Corrie’s sister answers her question by insisting, “He is here, Corrie. He is.” I sat back in my chair, a little disappointed. True and right as this assertion was, it wasn’t enough for me. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I couldn’t think of anything Betsie could have said in response that would make me feel less alone in my world, or that would convey to my suffering friends that they were loved and understood, despite all evidence to the contrary. The deepest truth I carried with me from The Hiding Place is that the one who turns the planets feels everything that I feel, and never once turns away. Carly Marlys As the play went on, I thought back to a few scenes before and realized that the answer I was looking for had already been revealed. Earlier in the second act, Betsie ten Boom had offered communion to the women in her prison barracks, using smuggled bread from a Red Cross package. The words she spoke over her fellow prisoners played again in my mind: “This is his body, broken for us. Even now he is here. He suffers in each of us. He bleeds as we bleed. He dies as we die and yet he is neither spent nor consumed.” That line spoke the truth that I wanted to hear when Corrie asked about the absence of God in her burning world. It is what I always want to hear when I feel alone in my pain and what I want others to hear when they feel alone in theirs. As I sat there, I recalled a story I heard from a pastor in my childhood church. He told the congregation about finding out that his daughter had been born with irreversible developmental damage. She would never live a normal life. She might never even learn to fully communicate. He told us how he sat in the hospital waiting room and wept all of his heartbreak into his hands. During that time, the only thing that actually got through to him was when one of his friends told him this: Jesus feels your pain, and he is crying with you. Pain and grief are isolating. I can sit in a room full of people who love me and still feel alone because no one can feel what I’m feeling. I could tell them, but it’s not enough. What I long for is that scene from Star Trek: someone to sit with me, hold me, and feel every modicum of physical pain, every anxiety, every moment of spiritual emptiness that I feel. This is what I want for my friends who call me to try and convey their feeling of abandonment, their pain that is too heavy for them to carry and too deep for me to know. I want them to know that someone is with them. I want them to understand that their God has the kind of radical compassion that doesn’t just understand their pain but feels it and bears it with them. That Star Trek scene is real. Betsie ten Boom is right. We do not have a Savior who is unable or unwilling to experience our suffering. The deepest truth I carried with me from The Hiding Place is that the one who turns the planets feels everything that I feel, and never once turns away. That is our comfort and the answer to the questions that have no easy answers yet. The great compassion of our God reminds us that we are not alone. In the days since seeing The Hiding Place, a line from a John Mark McMillan song has been turning over in my head: “I’ve got no answers for heartbreaks or cancers but the savior who suffers them with me.” He bleeds as we bleed. He dies as we die. We are not ever alone in our pain. Praise be to God.

The year was 2012, and I was at my third Hutchmoot, my first as photographer. In the three years the event had existed, a tradition had emerged called the “Lagniappe” — a mysterious, secret event that followed the keynote but was on the quirkier side (think Shakespearean Star Wars). That year at the Church of the Redeemer, the schedule gave a little clue: 8:30 pm – Reveille. The sanctuary had cleared quickly after Phil Vischer’s engaging keynote because everyone wanted to get him to sign their Veggie Tales VHS tapes. I took photos of the crowded vestibule, but my curiosity drew me back in through the double doors, where I beheld Redeemer’s handsome terracotta-colored chancel becoming festooned with the whitewashed plywood walls of a homemade spaceship named the HTV Reveille. I felt I was intruding on privileged preparations, and quickly stepped back out into the lobby’s chaos of animated tomatoes and cucumbers. Soon, with spaceship-building mission accomplished, the sanctuary doors were flung open, the curious Mooters took their pews, and Andrew Osenga emerged in the three-walled spaceship wearing a complete astronaut flight suit and an electric guitar. In that same spaceship (temporarily constructed behind the Baja Burrito in Nashville) Osenga had just recorded a concept album called Leonard the Lonely Astronaut. If you’re not familiar with the, um, concept, the concept album became popular in rock and prog music in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The songs are all tied together by a backstory that affects lyrics, characters, melodies, and even the artwork. The albums were often gimmicky but usually fun. The idea has become a bit lost in the modern era that favors singles over albums. In Leonard, we are completely immersed in the world of Leonard Belle, volunteer space explorer. There’s a detailed backstory, but you don’t really need it. I did not know the story when Astronaut Andrew fretted the guitar and sang, “Today would be the perfect day to tell you goodbye, but I’ve already said it.” It all clicked into place in one line. This was not going to be an album about lasers and space pirates (that’s a B-side, actually). It was going to be an album about being lonely. That same opening song, “Brushstroke,” closes with one of the finest lyrics I’ve ever heard: I keep thinking of that painting of the sisters at the piano That brought a tear to your eye Babe, today I was a brushstroke on a canvas Of a perfect blue sky In a single verse, Osenga gets us inside Leonard’s head and his heart. A specific memory reminds us of just how much time a solo astronaut on a long mission must have with his own thoughts. An extended metaphor shows us just how small one might feel in the expanse of space. No exposition is needed. And over the course of 14 songs, we know Leonard well, and we know ourselves even better. The songs are chronological, charting Leonard’s grief, nostalgia, lament, and healing over a span that could be a day or years in Einstein’s relativity. It doesn’t matter. What does is the way this extraordinary album rests on a universal lamentation, mines it for truth, and resonates with the hurting. “Oh, how I loved you. But I never told you. Always thought there was time.” For an interstellar album, Leonard is deeply grounded in the human experience. For an interstellar album, Leonard is deeply grounded in the human experience. Mark Geil Osenga is a versatile songwriter and musician, to the point that he created a series of four EPs spanning four unique musical genres. That versatility is so valuable in this album. Leonard’s angry tantrums lash out with power chords. His gazes through a porthole become ethereal instrumentals. And his smile at a memory is captured in what I believe is Osenga’s finest love song, “Ever and Always.” It’s a ballad about a girl who got a boy to finally lift up his head and look at the stars. It’s just that now he’s among them, and he’s alone. Back in the sanctuary, I was so captivated that I forgot I was supposed to be taking pictures. I got a few, and afterward managed to capture the moment when Andrew got to meet Kim Fisher, who created his space suit. Later that night, I found myself loading audio equipment and spaceship parts into my car and winding through the Tennessee darkness to unload them quietly in a stranger’s detached garage, which was so full of eclectic ephemera it was not unlike another planet. It was a fitting end to an otherworldly evening. I’m part of a couple of dozen Facebook Groups at present—mostly neighborhood and church stuff, the Chinwag, Bracket of Champions, that sort of thing. Only one of them is entirely dedicated to a single album: Leonard the Lonely Astronaut. In the decade since its release, legions of fans have fumbled through explaining it, either trying to describe the whole spaceship thing or telling Leonard’s story as if they know him. Because they do. The lonely astronaut has become a trusted companion for fellow travelers navigating the space of loss and isolation and finding their way to re-entry. The spaceship might be gone (or maybe it’s still in that garage?) but the album remains, a North Star for so many dark nights.

When I started training to become a spiritual director, I was relieved to learn very quickly that our job isn’t about giving directions, fixing problems, or doling out wisdom like some sort of Jesus Yoda. Do you know what spiritual directors do? We ask questions. Lots of them. We listen, we reflect, we follow the connective threads, and we trust that the Holy Spirit is already doing a deep and secret work in a person’s soul. All we need is to bear witness and offer support. Reading Lore Ferguson Wilbert’s new book, A Curious Faith, reminds me of spending a few hours with a good spiritual director. It’s a thoughtful book from a compassionate writer, and in a cultural moment marked by black-and-white polarization in so many areas of life, it’s exactly the kind of book we need. “Try to love the questions themselves.” — Rainer Maria Rilke If the words of another author could sum up A Curious Faith, it would be this one from Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet: “Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” In fact, Wilbert uses it to open the book, sharing how these words altered her whole perspective on life. “The Bible is a permission slip for those with questions,” she writes, and in thirty-two brief chapters, she explores the many questions woven throughout Scripture. Questions like God asking Adam and Eve, “Who told you that?” Or Habbakkuk lamenting, “Why do you make me look at injustice?” Or the many questions from Jesus himself: “Do you want to be well?” or “Who do you say I am?” or “Do you love me?” If you read A Curious Faith from cover to cover, you’ll see a chosen Biblical trajectory to Wilbert’s questions addressing subjects from the Garden of Eden to the resurrected Christ. At the same time, each short chapter can be read as a meditation on its own. You can easily savor each question, prayerfully turning it over, examining it against your own life, and exploring it through reflection and journaling. And while she occasionally draws stories from her own life, Wilbert’s writerly gift is how she keeps her attention on the reader and always kindly directs them back to Jesus. Wilbert’s writerly gift is how she keeps her attention on the reader and always kindly directs them back to Jesus. Jen Rose Yokel Maybe you aren’t in a shaky place. Maybe you feel a little bit of resistance to a book full of questions, wondering if this is another “deconstructionist” who is sure to send readers on a slippery slope toward relativism. If that’s in the back of your mind, rest assured that every word is deeply rooted in faithfulness and hard-fought wisdom. Throughout the book, Wilbert reflects on an upbringing that was more about “behavior modification” than spiritual formation, and she recalls a twisting path of doubting, moving, longing, and changing over the years. And looking back, she sees how the questions didn’t drive her from God. On the contrary, “Living the questions led me not to an unstable expanse, as I’d been afraid it would. Instead, it led me to more surety and stability than I’d ever had before.” “Before your face questions die away.” — C. S. Lewis This is another area where this book feels like the work of spiritual direction. Wilbert doesn’t set out to answer all of these questions. She doesn’t offer a lot of self-revealing stories with neat morals, and freely admits when she’s in the middle of uncertainty. One thing Wilbert knows for sure, however, is the source of answers — and over and over, she points her readers right back to the God who holds them. One of Wilbert’s greatest strengths as a writer is that she trusts the reader enough to give them room to listen to the Holy Spirit’s work. She guides readers toward discerning the voice of God. She points back to God’s character, over and over, and highlights not just what Jesus does, but how he does it. She allows the stories in Scripture to enter into conversation with her own life and makes room for us to imagine the inner lives of people like Moses and Peter and Mary Magdalene when she looks at how God answers (or doesn’t answer) their questions. Toward the end of the book, in a beautiful chapter called “The Unasked Questions,” Wilbert acknowledges that a curious faith is a risky one. “Christians want to be resurrection people, but we can’t have resurrection without death first. And for some of us, this book of questions will lead us to a kind of death first. A kind of waiting period during which no one else is sure we’ll come through, including ourselves… [but] Shadows exist because something real exists to cast them. Darkness exists because light exists. And questions exist because answers do too.” Or to borrow a line from Lewis’ Til We Have Faces: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away.” Whether you are in a place of rock-solid certainty or feel the foundations of your faith crumbling beneath you, this book can be a gentle guide toward a deeper, more beautiful curiosity. Perhaps it can even be one more step toward living your way into the answers you seek.

During this past summer season I had the joy of taking an aimless stroll through St Albans, in Hertfordshire, England. History was everywhere on display. From the remaining Roman walls of Verulamium to the riches of a tightly woven Christian past, it is a town that provides a fair field full of folklore, a storehouse of what has gone before. One particular feature caught my eye, however—a plaque mounted on the gateway of a monastery wall marking the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The surprise of this find chiefly lay in my past life as a medievalist, and the intensive postgraduate work I had undertaken on the theme of how the revolt played out in the literature of its day. Quite unawares, I found myself standing where Wat Tyler and his fellow insurgents had stood centuries before, demanding their rights in a feudal system. That simple chance encounter launched a pilgrimage for me back into the catalogue of texts that dominated my earlier life, and that continue to shape the ways in which I think and see the world. Dominant among the poems and fragments that I have re-explored is Piers Plowman, a remarkable vision poem written by William Langland in the midst of the tumult and disruption of the later medieval period. Piers Plowman was written in a pocket of air in English history between the Plague and the Peasants’ Revolt, between the devastation visited by a deadly pandemic, and the political unrest bubbling beneath the surface of society. Langland, with alliterative flair, poetic prowess, and a light touch interrogation of the Medieval estates, produced a towering piece of literature—deeply imaginative, socially disruptive, inherently honest. Not only is the poem a pleasure to read (in original Middle English or in modern translation), but it continues to carry resonances for our period in Western history, as well as possibilities about how to understand and articulate the cultural and moral impasse that Christianity currently faces. Piers Plowman is a poem of protest, of occasional despair, but also a thoroughgoing affirmation of the primacy of love as a true law for living. Speaking poetry to the power-hungry A key to understanding William Langland’s work is to be constantly conscious of just how subversive his poetic endeavours were in the later Medieval period. Even the medium of English carried connotations of popular appeal and popular piety, a language charged with the emergence of a confident vernacular which gave voice to such social revolutionaries as Wycliffe and the Lollards. Langland adopts and adapts the language as a means of critiquing the overarching structures assumed in medieval society, insisting on saying hard things in creative ways for maximum impact. Langland’s position is not on the side of the powerful or the politically ascendent, but with the poor, the marginalised, and the disenfranchised. Scandalously the richest preaching in the poem comes not from prelates but a plowman, a man of the soil, unsullied by the simony and avarice so typical of those who wanted to hold sway in society. Langland lays bare the hypocrisy and duplicity of a religious elite who have so wedded themselves to wealth and political position that the fundamental love principle of the gospel has been lost. Scandalously the richest preaching in the poem comes not from prelates but a plowman, a man of the soil. Andrew Roycroft Piers Plowman documents the devastation that follows Christianity making itself a parasite of the political estate and insists that charity be the chief expression of the faith in wider society—caring for the poor, ministering at the margins, and challenging a clerical system that could assume its position without embodying its own values. The fact that poetry is the channel through which this challenge comes is fascinating. Langland was clearly an educated man, possibly a priest himself, but the hazy, disorientating, and at times almost postmodern poetic he adopts delivers his challenge in a disarming way. He tells the truth but tells it slant (to borrow from Emily Dickinson via Eugene Peterson), eloquently and imaginatively undermining the Christian status quo while tenderly pleading for love to be the governing principle of religious belief and practice. The possibilities that this opens up for poetry in our contexts are multiple and will be governed by our specific cultural circumstances. Whatever our current challenges, Piers Plowman stands as a model of a message mediated with genuine imagination and breathtaking moral courage. Speaking complexity to a superficial culture Piers Plowman is largely allegorical in format, probing medieval virtues, vices, and values in a way that will be familiar to those who have been brought up on a diet of John Bunyan. What Bunyan lacks, Langland abounds in: namely comedy and complexity. Piers Plowman is laugh-out-loud funny in places, with characterisation not confined to the allegorical labels individuals bear (Greed, Conscience, etc.). Dialogue is charged with misunderstanding, farce, and drama, drawing the reader into a world rich in humour and dimension. Gluttony decides to repent, but gets waylaid in the pub on the way to the church; later slumbering and giving way to a flatulence whose aroma disgusts the array of other characters. Behind the laughs, Langland articulates the big questions a medieval Christian wanted to ask. He critiques the structure of the church, he queries whether people can be saved outside of the sacraments. He wrestles with theological conundrums about why God would create a world that would experience the Fall, how unreached people can be condemned, and how he himself can know spiritual peace of mind and heart. What is striking here is the poet's willingness to visit these borderlands of belief (and doubt), and return without the souvenirs of easy answers. Andrew Roycroft What is striking here is the poet’s willingness to visit these borderlands of belief (and doubt), and return without the souvenirs of easy answers. Over and over again the questions raised by characters are left in the air, another episode opening without the previous one being resolved. This is part of Langland’s great skill, an ability to reflect without immediately pronouncing, a willingness to say the unsayable but to leave the unanswerable unanswered. Such strengths are arguably always the stuff of poetry. A walk in St Albans and a revisitation of my medieval past have reawakened in me the old joy of what vintage texts can say and do. Time and again while reading Piers Plowman I felt deep conviction about how easy it is to let true charity be a low priority, about the importance of poetry in times of public peril, about the danger of privileging over-simplification, and how the enduring message of Christian love outlasts plague, revolt, and the ravages of time. Langland has encouraged me to read again with joy and repentance and has challenged me to pursue the task of writing in that vein also. Some suggestions for reading Piers Plowman As a former medievalist I will always urge people to at least dabble with original Middle English, but realistically reading the poem in translation will be a more accessible experience. A.V.C. Schmidt has produced a wonderful new prose translation of the B-text, unforced but still carrying resonances of how alliterative poetry worked. Readers may also find this episode of the perennially wonderful BBC podcast In Our Time to be a good introductory guide to the riches of Piers Plowman.