[Editor’s note: We are pleased to present the winner of the 9th-12th grade section of the Creaturepedia writing contest: Out of the Deeps of the Dragon King by Rose Swillum. Congratulations, Rose!] The dragonet sat twiddling his thumbs, waiting for his refill. When the innkeeper returned with a mug of ale, the pirate gulped half of it down and began his second tale. *** Not one of us said a word as we rowed away from where the Guilded Whilly went down with the great wyrm impaled on its heart-pike. We could feel the silence weighing down on us, and the setting sun cast a deep red glow on the water around us as if the water itself had turned red with the blood of the wyrm. Not many of us slept that night—we couldn’t, knowin’ the great crime we’d committed, knowin’ the danger of being out in the open sea. But nothin’ happened that night or the next day. *** “At this rate of rowin’, we’ll be back in Skree in a month,” growled Captain Whilly. “We’ve only got a bit of dried flabbit and some chortlenuts, and that’s not near enough to feed all of us hungry dragon hunters for a day, let alone weeks.” “We might try rowin’ ’round to find a school of glipper fish,” I suggested. “I’ve done a bit of fishin’ in my day.” They agreed, and I grabbed one of the harpoons from the bottom of our boat. We didn’t have to wait long before one of the sailors shouted that he’d spotted some fish and we quietly rowed among them. I raised my spear, aimed at a large glipper, and ran it through. These glippers were much larger than any we had ever seen, and much stronger, too. I let out a yell as I was slammed against the edge of the boat by the unexpected pull of the fish I had speared. “Don’t just sit there, HELP ME!” I yelled as I was almost yanked out of the boat by the fish. Captain Whilly grabbed me feet just in time and pulled me back into the boat, still grasping the spear with all me strength. The fish continued to wriggle weakly on the tip of it. We all stared at the creature. This was no glipper fish. This was a creature like none we’d ever seen. It was at least four feet long with razor-sharp fins and tail. Its scales were green and gold and so bright they hurt yer eyes. Its teeth were bright orange and looked like thousands of razor sharp needles. The strangest thing about it was its eyes. Huge they were, and a blazin’ blue color, just starin’ straight at ya. Illustration: “Daggerfish” by Aedan Peterson “What in the name of Brimney Stupe!” Podo gasped, wakin’ from his sleep. He stared at the fish in horror. “That’s a warklerboop sharkfish! What are ya doin’ killin’ one? If they find out you’ve killed one of their own, they’ll get their revenge by dicin’ ya to death with their needle teeth!” We quickly looked over the edge of our boats. Slowly surrounding us were the rest of the warklerboop sharkfish, hundreds of eyes, all the colors of the rainbow, starin’ at us. “Quick,” Podo said, “Throw it back in the water before it dies and start rowin’ like mad!” I hurriedly pulled the spear out of the warklerboop, and dropped it into the water and we all be-gan to row like our lives depended on it, which they did. All of a sudden we heard the sound of thousands of wings, and we looked up in the sky and saw a great cloud of birds flyin’ straight toward us. “Squibbles and quill diggles,” Podo cried, “Snickbuzzards! Row for yer lives, lads! They were after the sharkfish and now they be after us!” In a flash of colors and the blinks of hundreds of eyes, the warklerboops disappeared beneath the waves, but we now had a bigger enemy to fight. “Get yer swords and yer axes, and whatever you can lay yer hands on,” Willie yelled, “and keep rowin’!” The snickbuzzards came down on us and began to peck and claw. We fought with all our might, but with every downed bird, three took its place. I was battling with a fierce one when suddenly I felt a stabbing pain in me eye and all was black though I was wide awake. I felt blood all over me face and I realized I’d had me other eye poked out. Now that made me boilin’ mad and I fought with renewed vigor, swingin’ me ax in the air, hopin’ I might happen to hit one. Then someone grabbed me arm. “Stop, they’re flyin’ away!” It was Willie’s voice. “They’ve had enough of their flock killed and they’re retreatin’.” “Land ho!” Gnut yelled, “we’re nearly to the fishin’ village in Shard Harbor. Whoopee!” We yelled and laughed and cried and thumped each other on the back. A sailor bandaged up me eye sockets and we feasted on raw snickbuzzard— a squishy and fatty fare, but we were too hungry to care. The wind picked up, and a day and a half later we docked in Shard Harbor. Never had we been so glad to be home. We went our separate ways, changed in more ways than just the loss of an eye or a leg. We’d destroyed a beautiful thing, that dragon, a creature that wasn’t ours to kill. Not one of us will ever for-get it. Our crime will haunt us to our deaths. Only now do we truly understand the majesty of the drag-ons and the mystery they hold. To kill a dragon is to kill legend and magic itself. *** His second tale finished, the pirate leaned back in his chair. The man across the table looked back at him with wonder. “That was a tale worth telling,” he said, “you got any more good ones?” The dragoneer smiled, “I might, but I’d need another mug of ale.” He clunked his empty one on the table and called for the innkeeper. *** [Editor’s note: This was the winning entry for the 9th-12th grade section of the Creaturepedia writing contest. Congratulations, Rose Swillum! The runner-up was Illa Briar (parent: Lyndsay Greer) with The Marvelous Invention of Haric the Pungent. Well done, Illa! To view the names of all the winners of the writing contest, click here.] Pembrick’s Creaturepedia is now available in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers interviews Dave Barnes, singer-songwriter, standup comedian, and cohost of the Dadville Podcast. This episode, the 2021 finale of the Sad Stories Told for Laughs series, was originally released in video form as part of the Rabbit Room’s online conference, Hutchmoot: Homebound. In this episode, Dave talks about awkward radio promotions, disastrous shows, and doing standup comedy for patrons who thought they had come to hear music. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 42 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 info@rabbitroom.com! 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.

I’m not exactly sure where this journey began. It certainly didn’t start with us as a couple. It didn’t start with little Joe Sutphin drawing pictures on church bulletins with his dad. It didn’t start with little Gina Black singing into her hairbrush wanting to be Amy Grant. It didn’t even start with our parents, or Helen Taylor, or even John Bunyan himself. Parts of this puzzle probably began all the way back before God made humanity. It’s likely rooted somewhere in that space of existence and knowledge that reaches beyond what our finite mind can fathom and understand. I have come to accept that much of this experience we call life falls into that space. If you are unfamiliar with John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, it is the allegorical story of the Christian. We can theorize that Adam and Eve were the first people to start this journey even though they existed before Christ came to earth. This is because “The Fall” was the catalyst to open the door for all the other allegorical characters to exist and become part of the story. By the time Bunyan penned this famous work, it was the sixteenth century. Life as a Christian, post-Christ, was now a reality for many. But as humans do, no matter what century they exist in, they struggled. And in response to that struggle, Bunyan craftily weaved a journey filled with friends and foes that represented the challenges we face as we try to stay true to following the straight and narrow path. My first experience with Pilgrim’s Progress was as a child. I remember my mother reading it to us. I recall feeling that it was a bit overwhelming in its portrayal of what I was supposed to be striving towards. It also contained a lot of elements that were a little scary to me as a child. I honestly can’t say what my real take-away from the experience was, once we had come to the end. I don’t remember ever knowing there was a Little Pilgrim’s Progress version of the story that would have made it easier to grasp. I do remember that in middle school I tried to revisit it again through what I believe was an abbreviated version. But it just felt disinteresting. After that I mostly forgot about it. Throughout the years, if it was ever mentioned, I felt nothing more than a vague recollection of the story. But I certainly didn’t feel a connection to it. And then, several years into our crazy adventure of self-employment as artists, Joe was contacted by someone from Moody Publishing. I remember his first telling of the exchange to me—he wasn’t very enthusiastic about what he thought was being proposed. Drawing people (and lots of them) isn’t Joe’s favorite thing, even though he’s good at it, but we needed a paid project, any project! No doubt it would be a long slog to reach the end. But as conversations continued, several things came to light. Erik, the contact person from Moody, had actually found Joe through The Rabbit Room. And in further conversation about what drew Erik to Joe’s work, it became clear that he loved the wild woodland creatures and nature scenes that Joe loves to draw. And so, the idea to revamp Little Pilgrim’s Progress into just such a story was born. It was to be based on creatures and the natural world they live in. Within a moment, what seemed like a possibly necessary but dreaded job instead became exciting! Moody rightfully wanted to stay true to the narrative of Helen Taylor’s work and honor what she had done before, but they allowed the changes necessary to enable Joe’s envisioning of the entire world from the perspective of animals. Our part began shrinking from view, a tiny drop in this grand expanse of time and space, and instead of our accomplishments, I began to see the harvest to come spreading out before my mind’s eye. Gina Sutphin There’s something about animals that draws us in. Maybe it’s their innocence that endears them to us. Anyone who has ever had a beloved pet knows how that endearment can make us feel close to animals in ways that can sometimes prove difficult with humans. There’s even the likelihood that we extend a little more grace to an animal that is behaving badly than we do to a person. We have this understanding that they are, after all, just animals. It causes us to hold less against them and to be less judgmental. Potentially this is because we start with a more realistic and lower expectation than the lofty ones we place on our human counterparts. So, one unique thing that happens when we anthropomorphize a story is that it breaks down some of our barriers and disarms us of our defenses. This allows us to engage with the story from a relaxed posture, making it easier to reflect and connect with the struggles that these animals are dealing with—which are, of course, human struggles. Through the course of this project, Joe kept me connected to the creative process. He would share the ideas he was working on and show me each illustration as he finished. Many of them moved me to tears. Sometimes I would recommend a little tweak or give a suggestion that caused him to be more pleased with his final illustration. But for the most part, this world was flowing directly out of Joe’s mind. It was a story we were sharing in as it grew, and for a long time it was part of our daily lives. We were both a little sad when at last the creative process began coming to a close. Just before the final deadline, I took it upon myself to proofread the entire story. I read all 300+ pages in 2 days flat. I made minor text suggestions and flagged a few typos or omissions. But that was the work side of the task. From a personal standpoint, I was astounded! It was fascinating to watch these many months of labor come together as a whole. I could not believe how this vague beast of a tale from my childhood had been changed into something so relatable, so understandable and transformational. And in those moments of reading, all the hard work, late nights, and sacrifices faded. We became little in the process, so that He became much. Our part began shrinking from view, a tiny drop in this grand expanse of time and space, and instead of our accomplishments, I began to see the harvest to come spreading out before my mind’s eye. Sure, book releases are cool! It’s fun to see the fruit of all our long hours finally enter the world as a living being. And Joe truly has dedicated himself to his craft and become excellent at it. So yes, of course we always hope a book reaches a wide audience and is well enjoyed. But this one is different. We long for children and adults everywhere to have this story, this truth, this compass on their own individual journey. We pray it reaches far and distant corners of the world. And we pray for the eternal harvest to grow beyond anything we can think to ask or imagine! For those of you here in this community that we call brothers, sisters, and friends, we are extra excited to share this version of Little Pilgrim with you, because he is one of us—no, not in the same way that Joe and I are members of the Rabbit Room—but rather he, this Little Pilgrim is one of us, in that he is each of us. He is relatable. He is reachable. We can empathize with his plight. We can feel his emotions and be challenged by his journey as it resonates with our own. And companions like Hopeful, Help, Faithful and Great Heart are among us even now. Yes, we are he, and he is each of us. After all, this time, he is a Rabbit! Click here to view this newly illustrated edition of The Little Pilgrim’s Progress in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

To become a Rabbit Room member is to invest in the creation and cultivation of story, music, and art in order to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world. As a member, you’ll be the first to hear about exciting new projects, your opinion will be requested, and you’ll be let in on secrets. Not to be overlooked, however, is the healthy dose of fun and games that our members are privileged to enjoy—like Hutchmoot: Homebound’s Befuddlementorium. What in the world is a Befuddlementorium, you ask? Allow us to explain. This year’s virtual conference, Hutchmoot: Homebound, operated out of a metaphorical house of many rooms. The exclusive website which acted as the portal into the conference consisted of dozens of webpages—each one packed full with sessions, concerts, recipes, participatory games, and fun extras—all named after a room, like “The Study” or “The Great Room.” But there was one room that was only accessible to Rabbit Room members, and what went on in this room was a mystery to all other attendees. That enigmatic room was none other than the Befuddlementorium. And now that the conference is over, we are pleased to share with you the goings-on of the Befuddlementorium. Inside, members were greeted with Words of Befuddlement, an outrageous game of Dictionary in which the words in question are entirely made up. In the weeks leading up to the conference, we solicited definitions from members and compiled our favorites into a poll, which culminated in a vote for the best definition. Among the choices, we sprinkled in our own attempt at a definition, which was repeatedly superseded by the creativity of our members. Purely for fun, we share with you here the results. Each word has been assigned a primary and a secondary definition—the primary being the definition which received the most votes and the secondary being the Rabbit Room staff’s own definition. SCHOOMBA [SKOOM-BUH]: NOUN Primary Definition (Most Votes): large, ship-shaped brass instrument which makes a deep, multi-note fog-horn sound when blown into. An artifact of the sail age, used to communicate from ship to ship at sea, and from land to ship when the shoreline was obscured by thick weather. Secondary Definition (Ours):  the room inside a robotic learning facility in which vacuums are taught to suck. FLOGÉ [FLOW-ZHAY]: NOUN Primary Definition (Most Votes): Shigé Clark’s sister, whom We Do Not Talk About. Secondary Definition (Ours): a small, brisk river that wishes it were French. SYNTHEOCRAT [SIN-THEE-O-CRAT]: NOUN Primary Definition (Most Votes): an audience member who consistently claps on the off beat but is blissfully unaware. Secondary Definition (Ours): denotes those who perform the electronic anthems of a society governed by false gods. FUSSLE [FUSS-EL]: VERB Primary Definition (Most Votes): to return to a task that has already been deemed finished, only to nitpick and futz with it for a little longer to ensure it is, indeed, complete. Secondary Definition (Ours): to wrestle the source of one’s perturbation. MALC [MALC]: NOUN Primary Definition (Most Votes): milk, but with more poetry. Secondary Definition (Ours): chafing powder used by some English poets. STONGE [STAHNJ]: VERB Primary Definition (Most Votes): to stare blankly after being asked a question. Secondary Definition (Ours): to attempt a great leap whilst carrying a great weight. We are immensely proud of our members for their display of wild creativity, and we look forward to enjoying more silliness on future occasions! If you’re not yet a member and want to link arms with the Rabbit Room—in work both serious and sometimes-silly—then you can become a member at this link.

A language scholar told me this summer that, in the Hebrew culture, the imagined direction of man in time was reversed. While we in the modern western world see ourselves as moving forward in time, facing the future with the past behind us, the ancient Hebrew mind saw the opposite. For Israel, the known past that they could see and remember (namely, the faithfulness of Yahweh) was in front of them, and they were daily walking backwards into the unknown future. I don’t know Hebrew yet, but the professor explained that this paradigm impacts Old Testament metaphors, idioms, images, and verbs—along with its perspective for everyday life. I’ve thought about that image a lot as I’ve launched the Kickstarter campaign for All the Wrecked Light. I’m not facing towards the future of this project—it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t exist yet, and I just can’t see what it looks like. What I can face, though, is the past two years of thought and research and writing and performance. I can see the faces of all the individuals who gave of themselves into this work, the photos from the first performance last Holy Week, the video clips from Hutchmoot when we had the privilege to present the songs and poems a second time. I can see the Body of Christ rallied around this from the beginning, their notes and prayers and encouragement, the ebenezers of collaboration and companionship at every turn, the kindness of God to this work of so many hands. So as I back into whatever future All the Wrecked Light might have, I’m working hard to keep direction the Hebrew way. I want to steward this project well, and if that means a studio album, then I need your help to make it happen. We have five days left in the campaign, and those five days are crucial. I’m asking you to join me in them, looking backwards as we move forwards. In an effort to face the past and how this project began, I’d like to share with you today a video from my pastor Russ Ramsey, who served as my theology advisor for the project and helped me navigate the depths of Psalm 90—one he loves well. His perspective on the Psalm has been a true gift to me. I also had the chance to interview Jaron Kamin of Cardiff State about their experience composing music for the project and collaborating with me. I hope these pieces are encouraging to you. [Editor’s note: Today (Monday) only, donors are matching up to $2,150 in pledges to Hannah’s campaign. So if you’d like to give, now is the best time to make an impact! Click here to view Hannah’s Kickstarter page.] Russ Ramsey on Psalm 90 Interview with Jaron Kamin Hannah Hubin: How is this project different than other projects you’ve been a part of? Jaron Kamin: Well, usually we just work with each other to come up with material. A lot of the time with our process, Katherine will bring some lyrics and we will work out the music for it, so coming to a text and needing to bring the music to it is something that I’m comfortable with, however, I’ve never been a part of a project where the work intertwines with so many other artists. Plus, I’ve always wanted to be a part of a concept record and now I get to do that! What was the creative process like for you? Your prompts for the general feel of the songs were very helpful. I took that and just spent some time with the whole project’s lyrics and a good bit of time reading through the specific texts you gave us, and just kind of let the music come up. I tend to write from the gut. If it feels right while working with the lyrics, I try to roll with it. The main sort of “cerebral” element for me was bringing the melodic theme from the verse of the first song into the turnaround of the last song, just to tie them together a bit more. Since the settings of the songs are before time and at the consummation of all time, it felt important to carry a musical thread through. What did it mean to engage the themes of Psalm 90 musically? There’s a lot happening in the Psalm, and our focus was on some of the more cosmic or ethereal elements. I enjoyed that, but when I finally got to hear the other artists’ work, it brought so much more to the table. I think they captured the grit and honesty of the Psalm so well that it made it such a rich experience. What is your hope or vision for this project? I hope that when people hear this they will get to experience the relief of naming the hardship of this life—that it’s real and that it’s seen. It’s seen by God, and he hears us, and in the end, things will be made right to an extent and in a way that we can scarcely imagine. I think listening to these songs and hearing these words is a journey from confusion and even despair into hope and joy. I hope people are able to experience that. Hannah’s Kickstarter has 5 days to go! Click here to help make this project happen.

We’re so excited to celebrate the release of a brand new book by Andrew Peterson: The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom. It’s a lovely exploration of the intimate connection between humans and humus that began all the way back in the Garden of Eden—and yet it is firmly rooted in the present, drawing out implications for how we tend to our lives today. There’s a strong biblical connection between people and trees. They both come from dirt. They’re both told to bear fruit. In fact, arboreal language is so often applied to humans that it’s easy to miss, whether we’re talking about family trees, passing along our seed, cutting someone off like a branch, being rooted to a place, or bearing the fruit of the Spirit. It’s hard to deny that trees mean something, theologically speaking. This book is in many ways a memoir, but it’s also an attempt to wake up the reader to the glory of God shining through his creation. One of his first commands to Adam and Eve was to “work and keep” the garden (Genesis 2:15). Award-winning author and songwriter Andrew Peterson, being as honest as possible, seeks to give glory to God by spreading out his roots and raising his branches, trusting that by reading his story, you’ll encounter yours. Hopefully, you’ll see that the God of the Garden is and has always been present, working and keeping what he loves. Sometimes he plants, sometimes he prunes, but in his goodness he intends to reap a harvest of righteousness. Click here to purchase The God of the Garden in the Rabbit Room Bookstore.

In case you haven’t heard, Andrew Osenga has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his new album, Headwaters—a collection of songs written to be sung by families, friends, and churches that deals with themes of time, personal legacy, collective repentance, and more. I had the pleasure of asking Andrew some questions about his creative process, his hopes for this album, and where the idea for it originated. Enjoy, and be sure to back his Kickstarter! Drew Miller: So where did the name “Headwaters” come from? Andrew Osenga: The story of Headwaters begins in my last record, The Painted Desert. That album was made after a long season of loss and spiritual dryness, and the writing of it was a cathartic process that helped lead to some healing. Life changes, as it always does, and circumstances are different now. While I still carry many of those emotions and feelings with me, they’re not as heavy as they were at the time, for which I’m thankful. But I know that I would not be HERE had I not walked through THERE. Many rivers begin their journey in dry lands, even deserts, with just a trickle. The land surrounding their pathway grows ever more lush as it’s fed and nourished by the growing water, to finally spill into the ocean’s depths. That’s been the story of my past few years, and the story of my life, to be honest. In whatever season, my journey is headed towards the ocean of grace and love found only in Jesus. The richest stories I know never start in the flourishing. That’s the destination (and the journey!). No, the richest stories begin as headwaters in the desert. You’ve said that this project flows from a similar place as your song “Beautiful Places” from The Painted Desert, exploring the idea of legacy. Could you share more about that? What set you on that particular creative path? As I thought about legacy, and the story I’m leaving for my daughters, while I was proud of that last project, I didn’t want my final word as an artist to be a lament. I wanted to tell them about the God who knows them and loves them. The God who is absolutely present in the lamenting (which we must do as humans!), but who also leads us into seasons of joy and contentment. Often at the same time!! I wanted these to be songs that weren’t about me, but that were about God, and about us as His people. What was your songwriting process like for this album? You mentioned that you made it with the church in mind—how do you envision these songs in the context of church, and how did that influence your writing? It has been so fun, Drew. I’ve done a couple things on this project I’ve never done before, at least on any of my solo albums. The first thing was that I did some co-writing. I’ve done that before for other people’s projects hundreds of times, but never for my own. Now, however, part of my day job involves looking after the songwriting of some truly brilliant people—folks like Leslie Jordan, Dwan Hill, Sandra McCracken, Taylor Leonhardt, and Sarah Kroger—and as I shared this idea with them it led to getting to sit down and work on songs together. That was a real treat, and at this point about half of the songs on the project were written with friends. The second new thing has been writing straight from Scripture. Part of that has just been the natural outpouring of becoming a lot more consistent in my Scripture reading, and songs just start flowing. The most important part, though, has been to ask myself while writing: “Would my daughters want to sing this?” That question has helped me to look at phrasing and word choice in a different light. And then I get to share the song with them when it’s done and see if it resonates. I’ve definitely made some changes as they start to sing along and unconsciously change a rhythm or melody a bit. Their gut instincts have been a cool North Star. Are there any recurring themes throughout the album that you’d like to bring to our attention? What threads did you encounter that surprised you in the crafting of these songs? The biggest recurring theme has been about TIME. It’s probably a combination of writing from the idea of legacy and what will outlast me, mixed with sitting weekly under the liturgies of our Church, but actively remembering God’s faithfulness in the past gives us, as the hymnist says, “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.” The other major theme, which might be a little more surprising and potentially offensive to some folks (though it’s quite Biblical), is the idea of corporate repentance. The richest stories begin as headwaters in the desert. Andrew Osenga It’s impossible to spend much time in the Psalms or the Prophets and not hear God continuing to ask His people, His nation, His sons and daughters, to repent. And almost as often we read the follow-ups: “and the people repented,” “and the nation repented.” Corporate repentance is a real and tangible thing, and one that our American culture has decidedly little interest in. I was speaking a few months ago with an Asian-American New Testament scholar, a generally conservative guy, and he shared with me his deep conviction that the unrest and division in America is a direct result of our refusal as a nation to repent of our past (and current) treatment of Indigenous People and Black People. You may or may not agree with that, but it resonated with me and I’ve not been able to shake it. And there is deep Scriptural backing for this idea. Repentance is not easy. It costs us. Sometimes a LOT. But it is the only path to healing and redemption and unity. As much as it may cost, I long for this repentance and redemption; for our nation, for our churches, for our evangelical ministries and mega-pastors crumbling weekly under scandal, for our homes and families, and for our own hearts. Stephen Backhouse, another scholar I’ve been learning from a lot this past year, teaches that the word “Hosanna” doesn’t just mean “savior,” but is more accurately a cry for help TO a savior: “Save us! Free us! We need You!” Our united cries of praise and adoration are often also deep heart-longings for restoration and freedom. What’s your hope for all who listen to Headwaters? How would you describe the kind of impact that you’d like to see? Honestly, my biggest hope is that my daughters come back to these songs twenty years from now and it gives them hope, comfort, and a deeper drawing into intimacy with the Spirit. Second to that, I would love for churches to use some of these songs. God doesn’t need more songs, especially not from white, male Americans, but He did ask us to “sing a new song unto the Lord,” so here I am. If these are useful to somebody, what a cool thing that would be. Click here to support Andrew Osenga’s new album, Headwaters, on Kickstarter. P.S. A question from Andrew for anyone reading this: What kinds of songs do you feel the Church needs more of?

Did you miss out on registering for Hutchmoot: Homebound this year? Well, now is your chance to get in on the fun! Today through Sunday, we are re-opening registration. Just register at HutchmootHomebound.com today and you’ll have through the end of the day Sunday the 31st to enjoy the archived conference. P.S. Want to invite some friends or family to join you? Click here to download the graphic above and share it with them.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with writer, poet, and lyricst Hannah Hubin. Hannah is the originator of All the Wrecked Light, a stage show that explores Psalm 90 through song and spoken poetry. In this episode, Hannah and Jonathan discuss collaboration as a way of reaching beyond one’s own limits and what it means to pray, “Establish the work of our hands.” Hannah is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to produce a studio album of All the Wrecked Light. Click here to learn more. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 43 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 info@rabbitroom.com! 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.

The Molehill Podcast is back for Halloween with a special, Lovecraft-inspired ghost story from Pete Peterson: “The Stephens Hill Horror.” Be afraid; be very afraid. P.S. There are rabbits. Scary rabbits. “The Stephens Hill Horror” originally appeared on the Rabbit Room blog all the way back in 2008—click here to read that blog post. Here’s what Pete had to say about the inspiration from this story, specifically the voice of H. P. Lovecraft: When I tried my hand at writing a ‘ghost story’ about my own neighborhood and its location on Stephens Hill I succumbed to my desire to write in the style of Lovecraft.  Anyone who’s a fan will recognize the structure, word choices, and even a certain (slightly altered) name.  As much as I like the way the story turned out, it’s so clearly Lovecraftian that I can’t really claim it as my own and prefer to think of it as an homage to a master of the genre. Click here to listen to “The Stephens Hill Horror.” And click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts and here to subscribe on Spotify. Transcripts are available for The Molehill Podcast. Click here to view them. Original Molehill Podcast theme music by Zach & Maggie Other music featured in this episode: “In Union No. 2 (Part I)” by Thad Kopec “Eggshell,” “Erosion,” “Long Distance,” and “The Ghost” by Luke Atencio “Portrait” by Young Collective “Suspicion” by Cathedral “The Object” by Makeup and Vanity Set

I am a member of Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican parish in Nashville, TN. When our church observes All Saints Day (liturgically the Sunday nearest November 1), we take turns sharing stories about departed loved ones who strengthened our faith through their witness to Christ’s love. In a normal year, these times of sharing evoke both tears and laughter as we exchange remembrances and anticipate our own reunions with all those we have loved and lost. I look forward to it every year as a time to remember that death has been defeated and the Body of Christ exists beyond space and time. However, I never saw this particular All Saints Day coming. This year, my church and I approach All Saints Day with heavy hearts as we remember our beloved pastor, the late Reverend Thomas McKenzie, who, along with his oldest child Charlie, was killed in a car crash in August of 2021. As much as I wish I never had reason to write this article, All Saints Day seems like the best time to synthesize the myriad thoughts and memories of Fr. Thomas’s ministry and share them in the hope that his legacy will continue to draw people to the Gospel. The following ideas, therefore, highlight the many ways in which Fr. Thomas’s leadership fostered flourishing and suggest how we may learn from his example in ministry. Because this is about Fr. Thomas, I must start with a story, for no discussion of Fr. Thomas’s legacy could ever be true to that legacy without lots and lots of stories. The second time my husband and I attended Church of the Redeemer, Thomas invited us to lunch. The first thing that surprised us was that he meant it. The second thing that surprised us was, while at lunch, he told us that one of the great things about a liturgical church is that he could die and be replaced, because, at least in theory, priests have interchangeable heads. Emphasis on “in theory.” Six and a half years, dozens of friendships, and thousands of memories later, our church has been thrust into the nightmare of seeing that theory become reality. In the blink of an eye, we’ve lost a leader we admired, respected, and trusted. Thomas spent the last fifteen years nurturing a church body in ways other leaders rarely do, and while no one denies his brokenness, or credits him for the entire strength of our fellowship, his tenure saw our church flourish, and do so largely under his influence. Thomas helped sculpt our unique church culture through his eccentric humor, his fearlessness in truth-telling, his attentiveness to research, and most of all, his stories. Since his death, I’ve seen and heard dozens of accounts of his impact, almost all of them from people grateful to Thomas for helping deepen their understanding of the Gospel and expand their imaginations of what was possible with God. Countless people benefited from his comprehensive and compassionate approaches to complex topics and were healed through his deep focus during pastoral care. I don’t doubt that our church will continue to thrive, but while Thomas might have believed his head was interchangeable, I think most of us at Church of the Redeemer would agree: that particular head was unique. Back to that lunch. At the time, his comment about being replaceable struck us as bold, shocking, and marvelously refreshing. By the time we moved to Nashville, I had seen my share of Christian leaders obsess over their own gifts and struggles, people who loved the Lord but seemed trapped by temptations to micromanage and retain control. I regularly heard stories of celebrity pastors who attracted followers through their charisma and inevitably experienced a fall. Moving to the South for the first time severely emphasized this pattern. There is a church in our city where the senior pastor’s name is literally carved in stone, as if daring his demons to pick up the pace of destruction. In this context, therefore, meeting a leader who not only embraced his own mortality but also jested about his relative insignificance felt like a cool breeze on a sticky Nashville summer day. Indeed, that comment was central in convincing my husband and me to make Church of the Redeemer our home. (Again, it was supposed to be hypothetical.) Over the years, Thomas continued to teach and to lead in ways that regularly surprised and refreshed us. In both theology and leadership style, he modeled a thoughtful, and often unusual ministry, one characterized by authenticity, trust, compassion, and never taking oneself too seriously. In the days and weeks after Thomas and Charlie’s accident, I felt a mixture of different griefs: grief for the McKenzie family, grief for my own family and the lost future that might have been, grief for our church’s terrible pain and inevitable changes, and grief for all the people who otherwise might have benefited from Thomas’s wisdom should he have lived to work another twenty-plus years in ministry. But mixed with all this grief I also felt a call to action. I don’t know what exactly God wants me to do with this call, but I do know how incredibly blessed I am for the six years I learned from Thomas and witnessed his unique style of leadership. I want to document and synthesize those lessons so that I can, with God’s help, follow Thomas’ example, and maybe make it easier for others to do so as well. Therefore, what follows are some of my observations of the ways in which Father Thomas excelled in encouraging the flourishing of our church. First, a few caveats: these reflections are not comprehensive; I would never reduce Thomas’s legacy to a few bullet points. But I have to start somewhere. Second, because I was neither a close friend nor a coworker of Thomas’s, my observations are limited to that of a parishioner. I was never privy to his deepest interests, his biggest mistakes, his working style, or any opinions he didn’t share publicly. Given this, readers might see gaping holes or misinterpretations in my reflections. But like I said, I have to start somewhere. Consider this, then, a limited and early mediation on the legacy of Father Thomas McKenzie. Lesson No. 1: Be a Morpheus. Back again to that lunch. Thomas also surprised and pleased us with another comment over those club sandwiches. We told him how we had recently moved from Chicago where we had left a robust bible study group and we were eager to join a similar group in Nashville. Thomas told us first that Redeemer often starts groups in September, and as it was January, we might have to wait for a space to open up. Redeemer had not been the first church to tell us that their groups were closed to newcomers. But, unlike the others, when I told him that I would be willing to start a group, he immediately said, “Absolutely. Do it. In fact, you are among several young folks who have come to me asking for more connection opportunities, so why don’t we get you all together for a lunch and see where it goes?” On the one hand, his response may seem like a logical progression, but not all leaders would have jumped to action like this. For one thing, at that time, Thomas didn’t know us at all. We could have been nutjobs, heretics, or worse. We had been to Redeemer only a handful of times and weren’t even close to considering ourselves Anglican. For another thing, hosting an event would risk wasting a lot of time on an idea that might not yield fruit—a normal concern in a world of limited resources. But he seemed to have no interest in vetting us, in setting the curriculum for a group, or in overseeing its launch or its growth, and he didn’t hesitate on experimenting with a gathering. All he knew was that something was stirring, and he was going to facilitate whatever it was to see if God was in it. And he was true to his word. A couple weeks later he arranged a lunch for young adults looking for fellowship. He told us he expected a handful of people to come. More than fifty showed up, and from that number we gathered about fifteen to start our Bible study, and that group has been meeting ever since. In the six years of its existence, Thomas never asked to attend, never asked what we’re studying, and never imposed anything on the group. Some people might see this as ambivalence—or even negligence—on Thomas’s part, but as the group’s leader I deeply appreciated Thomas’s confidence not just in me, but much more importantly in the power of the Holy Spirit to lead our group where it needed to go. Thomas only ever expressed joy at the group’s continued existence and helped us whenever we reached out. Whenever I asked Thomas to point new people toward our group, he would seek out folks needing connection. When our group struggled to meet consistently because there were too many toddlers to wrangle, Thomas agreed to have the church pay for childcare. When we needed a new place to meet, he offered his own office. In a sermon given by Father Kenny Benge, our church prior and now interim rector, Kenny shared that he and Thomas believed that their job was always to look for where the Holy Spirit was working. Kenny said that for Thomas, that meant putting his energies wherever he saw movement through the body of believers. He also said that Thomas would shut ministries down once it was evident that the Spirit was no longer working through them. Both he and Thomas were committed to being leaders who followed this movement, instead of constantly generating activity and busyness. Though it seems self-evident, I must say: more Christian leaders ought to lead this way. Put another way, Thomas was a Morpheus. I got this idea from my friend, Grant, when he and I were talking about an article our friend Caroline wrote a few days after Thomas died. In the article, Caroline described how our church had lost our Dumbledore and our Gandalf, the wise and confident teachers and mentors from the Harry Potter series and The Lord of the Rings. Like the characters in both of those stories, we were now left on a continuing quest without our guide. Grant liked these parallels, but wished that Caroline had included Morpheus from The Matrix series. To explain, Grant recollected visiting Thomas’s office and noticing a picture of Morpheus on Thomas’s desk. He asked about it and Thomas said, “I use that to remind myself that my job is to open doors for the Holy Spirit to work through other people. I am not Neo. I am not the hero of this story. I just open the doors.” Lesson No. 2: Don’t be vanilla. Unless you are vanilla. Then vanilla it up. As I noted before, I can’t claim to have known Thomas well on a personal level. But in the six years of hearing him preach, interacting with him during events, and the times I asked him for pastoral care, he never betrayed any hint of two-facedness. On the contrary, in the days following his death, many people referenced his occasional abrasiveness, his eccentric sense of humor, his sarcasm, and many qualities other pastors may have tried to tone down, if not hide completely. But Thomas had bigger fish to fry than trying to appease everyone. In fact, he seemed to appease more people by not defaulting to a bland noodle. A friend, Eric, recalled on Facebook how he too went to lunch with Thomas as he considered making Redeemer his home. Eric asked all his questions and suffered an awkward pause, which he broke by cussing. Thomas—clerical collar and all—cussed right back, and a friendship was born. He could have tried to be more neutral, more diplomatic, more—well, vanilla. This may have put some people more at ease. But he didn’t. He was a whole human, uninhibited by expectations of decorum or coolness. He sang Bon Jovi karaoke at the top of his lungs. He recounted adolescent stories about setting a car on fire and finding a dead body in a river. He relished burning Christmas trees in the Epiphany bonfire. He frequently referenced the violent and explicit television he regularly consumed. He hosted a Dungeons and Dragons gathering in his office. He wouldn’t shy away from talking about current events from the pulpit, knowing full well he would insult multiple people simultaneously. He would greet people with, “Oh, it’s you,” or “What are you doing here?” and if you didn’t realize he was being sarcastic, he wouldn’t help you get there. Even if he greeted you normally, he was terrible at small talk (I should know—I’m the worst). I think he knew that compromising his authenticity would have done more damage than good. I think he knew that he couldn’t argue from the pulpit that Jesus loves us as we are if he didn’t demonstrate vulnerability and honesty himself. He knew that churches are, paradoxically, where people often feel the need to hide their humanity the most. I know there are probably many things he didn’t share with us, and probably for many different reasons. But what he did share was genuine, and he won not only our affection, but also our trust. And with this trust he did wonderful things. He argued uncomfortable truths without losing credibility. He prayed from the heart during pastoral counseling without sounding artificial. He made kids feel as welcome and respected as the adults, because he never took himself too seriously. He helped people feel their feelings and not be ashamed. In the midst of paralyzing grief, and on this All Saints Day, I sense the Holy Spirit calling all of us who were blessed by Thomas’s life to make use of our blessings, to ponder the grief alongside the wisdom he leaves behind, and to commit the work of our hands to the God who promises resurrection and the hope that we will see Thomas, Charlie, and all our beloved lost again. Emily Capo Sauerman This brings me to a huge point: through his openness and vulnerability, Thomas modeled a theology of emotion. He expressed emotions regularly and publicly, and encouraged us all to do the same, even when those emotions involved anger and sadness with God. One of the first times I visited Thomas for pastoral counseling, I mentioned losing my mother to cancer, and I immediately burst into tears. I think I apologized for crying, which, incidentally, is a knee-jerk reaction many of us do too often, even if the person in front of us is a pastor. But Thomas seized the moment: “Why are you sorry? That’s really, really sad. Be sad.” It was such a simple thing. I didn’t need permission to feel sad; except that I did, and a lot of us do. In fact, in the week after Thomas died, dozens of people shared stories similar to mine, of Thomas modeling and encouraging emotion, legitimizing it in our minds and our hearts, and overcoming a variety of cultural, familial, and theological barriers to the flow of emotion. Thomas encouraged us to see how often God acknowledges and invites emotion in Scripture, how deeply Jesus felt the joys and sorrows of his earthly life. God can speak to us through feelings as much as through our thoughts, and they are an important part of the mystery. I think it’s safe to say that if Thomas had a battle cry, it would be: FEEL YOUR FEELINGS! So many of Thomas’s sermons focused on the invitation to emote, and none more poignant than the sermons addressing Leah Stufflebaum’s death. Leah was a friend of mine who found out she was pregnant, and then discovered she had cancer. As the parish administrator with her own spirited personality, she was both a friend and foil to Thomas. Leah fought her way through her pregnancy and gave birth to a healthy second son, but ultimately lost her battle a few months later, in October of 2019. Thomas made no secret of his fury with God. He hated everything to do with this loss. He hated not having the answers. He modeled lamentation and drew our attention to the huge portions of the Bible that invite and encourage us to lament, whether or not our theology is completely orthodox in those moments of pain. He also always, always drew our attention to the Table where, through Christ’s mysterious power, we share the Body and Blood with all believers across space and time, including with those saints who died before us. He reminded us that our sorrow is not for nothing, that it has an end, and that when we eat and drink, we kneel at the same mystical table with all Christ’s followers: with my mom, with Leah, and, now, with Thomas and Charlie. Lesson No. 3: Be rad and ready. While reminiscing about Thomas, our friend Brian told us about how he had called Thomas three weeks before he died. He reached out on Thomas’s personal cell number, and Thomas picked up in spite of clearly not being in the office. He was in fact on a long walk to train for the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage that he had planned to take for his sabbatical. He took the call even though he was out of breath, and spoke with Brian as if there was no intrusion into his final preparations before what would have been a ten week trip. Even before the accident, Brian was grateful, and marveled at Thomas’ generosity. There is a Christian buzz term that’s been around for a while now: radical generosity. I have no qualms with the term or the concept, but too often we think about generosity as having primarily to do with money. There are so many other ways to be generous. As someone who struggles with limited energy, for instance, I catch myself obsessing about how to best spend my hours, in the same way I often obsess about how to spend my money. Some people can be generous with their energy, always ready to assist people in need with ideas and hands and connections. One can be generous with time, and be available to friends and neighbors to listen thoroughly and to serve. One can be generous with their attention, and make people feel like they are always the highest priority. There is a generosity of hospitality, to provide an atmosphere of uninhibited welcome. And there are many more. When I think about Thomas, I want to gather several of these generosities together under umbrella term because his leadership style exemplified so many of them. Thomas modeled something more like radical readiness: he made himself available to meet whatever tasks God placed in front of him, and he approached them with focus, energy, dignity, and thoughtfulness. He excelled in preparing himself for action by setting healthy boundaries, and then he met the tasks in front of him with a thoughtful philosophy of service. These together formed the blessing of his radical readiness, which enabled him to be radically generous in a multitude of ways. First, the boundaries. We all know Thomas was prolific, but to my limited knowledge, Thomas was not a workaholic. Maybe people who knew him better would disagree. But he seemed to know when he needed to rest, and he thoroughly advocated for Sabbath rest in various forms. Before Covid, Thomas always went to see a movie in a movie theater on his day off. It was one of his favorite things to do, and it was a non-negotiable form of rest for him. Thomas was an oblate at a monastery in the New Mexico desert, and he went there once or twice a year to completely disconnect. For many years he and his wife Laura would vacation in Martha’s Vineyard where he would be revived by the ocean and would collect shells to use for the upcoming year’s baptisms. Around the time my husband and I began going to Redeemer, Thomas had been going through a terribly dark time, and he took a leave of absence knowing he could not minister well until he reestablished a baseline of health. In that moment, Thomas knew that he needed to stop, so he did. In addition to rest, Thomas knew that his work would suffer if he failed to guard his closest relationships. Several of Thomas’s friends noted this in their eulogies, both at the funeral and printed elsewhere. Thomas met every Wednesday morning with a group of friends at what they called “Dude Breakfast,” where they would gather to enjoy one another but also to share what was really going on in their lives, their minds, and hearts. Having never been a pastor, I can only imagine how emotionally weighty the role must be, and Thomas found critical support in his commitment among the closest of friends. These friends also emphasized Thomas’ devotion to Laura and their daughters. Several of the friends commented on how eager Thomas was to serve his wife, often in the smallest ways: to get her a diet Coke, to kiss her during communion, to hold her hand during meals. Thomas’ friends also made clear that he constantly strived never to prioritize work over quality time with his girls. So, going back to Brian’s story, I do wonder why Thomas picked up the phone. He didn’t have to. He could have let it go to voicemail and called back at a more convenient time. His commitment to boundaries would suggest that he should not have answered. But my guess is that it was precisely his commitment to boundaries that allowed him to answer and to focus on Brian’s question. Thomas was about to go on a sabbatical. He knew he needed closure on many things before his absence. He also knew Brian needed closure on his own question, and in that moment Thomas could provide it. He also loved Brian, and he answered out of this love. In other words, Thomas was ready to serve generously. If he wasn’t ready, he would have stepped back until he was. This isn’t to suggest he did this perfectly every time, but I have never seen another leader appear so focused in a conversation, produce such concise and well-researched sermons and lectures, and model such decisiveness all in the same role, and I think these boundaries are why. At least in my experience as a parishioner, Thomas never seemed harried or tempted to multitask. He never seemed to wish to be somewhere else or talking to someone else. He didn’t check his phone during important conversations. He was ready to address the needs in front of him with a generous spirit. He was ready to take cues from the Holy Spirit, and if that’s not the true goal of ministry I don’t know what is. This brings me to the philosophy of service. Thomas always emphasized our human limitations, and so to be ready often meant being simultaneously realistic and prayerful. One of the ways in which he illustrated this was mentioned by Father Kenny in sermon a few weeks after Thomas and Charlie’s accident. Kenny said that he and Thomas embraced the limitations of the church building. They both believed that if the church outgrew the space, it was neither an indication to add another service or to add on to the building, but rather to plant another church. Kenny said that Thomas believed that there was no point in having a congregation so big that it would outgrow the staff’s ability to meet the needs of the congregants in personal ministry. This is a bold belief in an era of megachurches. But as I reflect on the last many years, Thomas and the staff were able to be generous, focused, and present because they made sure of that ability, and made sure they were ready to follow the Spirit in regard to growth. Whenever I meditate on this idea of readiness, I think about the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip is dropped by the Spirit on the side of a road. If that happened to me, I think I’d have some questions, for starters. But then a man shows up with questions, and Philip engages in conversation, ready, willing, and powered by the Spirit to listen and lead him toward salvation. As we consider Philip, and Thomas, and anyone else who models this readiness well, we can reflect on how little of what keeps us busy really matters. What matters is making space in our lives and being available to the Spirit to be used by him in ministry. Lesson No. 4: The leg-work of truth-telling. In the aftermath of the accident, I heard many people comment on Thomas’ boldness in truth-telling. Now, while we often hear phrases like “speaking truth to power,” or “telling it like it is,” these weren’t the phrases used to describe Thomas day-to-day. Too often, these phrases conjure images of firebrand personalities, people who seek to provoke for provocation’s sake. This was not Thomas. He was not a firebrand spreading vitriol. But he did speak truth, and boldly. He did make many of us uncomfortable with the truths he affirmed, but he also had a gift for framing those truths well enough that we could absorb them. As we seek to learn from Thomas’s skill in truth-telling, we first have to acknowledge that not everyone will have his natural gifts. We also need to realize we don’t have to completely mimic Thomas’s theology to communicate God’s truth. There are simply some aspects of Thomas’ boldness that were unique to Thomas. That said, I don’t think Thomas assumed people would respect his authority without some serious work on his part. There are two things about Thomas’s approach to hard truths that I think we can imitate: first, that if Thomas was going to make a claim, he would always explain the context, and second that Thomas would always filter claims through the lens of our Gospel Identity. Let’s first examine the power of good explanation. Several years ago, the ACNA updated the Book of Common Prayer to include some new research in translation and to update some language for modern audiences. Thomas sent an email explaining the major changes, which included some new wording within the Nicene Creed. He explained why the ACNA felt the changes were necessary and why he felt it necessary to adopt the new book for our church. He also articulated some of the changes he personally disagreed with, but that compromise, he said, is necessary for a functioning church polity. As I set about reading that email, I noticed my finger kept scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling. It was, let’s say, comprehensive. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t imagine many of its recipients caring too much about the translation minutiae or issues of church polity. Anyone like me would just go with the flow because most of us had neither the bandwidth to engage nor the power to alter ACNA decisions. Whether out of convenience or loyalty or both, we simply trusted Thomas and the leadership to make those decisions. But Thomas must have felt that this level of explanation was necessary. Either he was exceptionally nerdy (which he was) or there was something else that he needed to accomplish. Surely, any pastor would be anxious about possible schism; churches have been shredded over seeming minutiae before. But hindsight shows a noticeable pattern in Thomas’s leadership style indicating that he never assumed that his authority rested solely in his role. “Because I said so” was never a sufficient reason. He was going to work to earn our trust and keep it, and to honor his listeners with comprehensive explanations of decisions and stances, always with an open door for questions. I began seeing this pattern emerge more and more over the last few years, a time during which I’d never envy any pastor. We can all agree the last few years have seen a palpable increase in discord, politicization of everything, graceless platitudes, and, of course, a global pandemic. In addition to the suffering happening within our church body, Thomas had to get up to address murders, systemic racism, abortion legislation, immigration, a tornado that tore parts of Nashville to shreds, a bomb that went off on Christmas day, the January 6th insurrection, and the many twists and turns of life during a pandemic, among many, many other horrendously complex subjects that make everyone uncomfortable, regardless of ideology. Through it all, Thomas always brought these issues back to the Gospel, and assisted us in seeing each issue through that lens. He always blessed us with an explanation of his theological conclusions, even when the explanation included unknowable mysteries. Thomas never seemed to shy away from saying “I don’t know,” but rather embraced the times he could admit it, because even in that, if not especially in that, he could all the more point to a God that is bigger than our brokenness and bigger than our brains. One of the best examples of this contextual explanation came throughout the pandemic in Thomas’s weekly Thursday updates. I remember reflecting with friends how we were all a little sad when Thomas sent his last Thursday update. It had been too easy, especially in the early months of lockdown, to feel disconnected from the Body of Christ. Thomas’s emails created a moment for each of us to remember that we were still united in fellowship, even if we weren’t together in person. This is not to say that the emails were cheery. He did not shy away from expressing his disappointments, especially about that first Easter of Covid, as he and the staff were forced to celebrate the Resurrection through Facebook Live. But the emails were a reminder that he, the staff, and the vestry were all still working towards solutions that would safely reunite us all again. Along with the emotional touchpoint the emails provided, Thomas also used it to explain the decisions he and the vestry were making to try to keep everyone safe. I always came away impressed by the thoughtfulness behind the decisions and the transparency about their difficulty. Had he not explained that context, it would have magnified the sense of loneliness and turmoil. I might even say that, in some ways, Thomas did his job too well. With all the chaos flung at us over the last couple years, Thomas’s gift afforded us the luxury to become complacent in our reflections and questions. We took Thomas for granted, in short, knowing he would explain the hard stuff. Then the accident happened, and we all felt that the best person to give context to Thomas’s death was of course Thomas himself, which makes the loss all the more wretched. The second way in which Thomas shed light on complex subjects was through focusing on our identity as believers. This theological stance allowed Thomas to address hard subjects and current events without “taking sides” in the culture wars. When understood as Thomas understood it, this stance allowed many of us to shed much of the tribalism that so defines contemporary America and to see complex subjects through the lens of the Gospel. And this stance continues to be critical, not just for Church of the Redeemer, but for any Christian trying to navigate a hostile world. By loosening our tethers to the many identities and loyalties we have in the world, we can better filter out what is true, what is noble, and what is beautiful from the cacophony of stimuli. The best way I can think of to communicate this theological stance is to borrow from Sacred Fire by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser. In this passage, Fr. Ronald illuminates the significance of Jesus removing his outer garment before washing the disciples’ feet. This act emphasizes the movement toward humility and the embrace of deep identity to be able to complete the service he is about to perform. “In order to let go of the pride that blocks any human from stooping down to wash the feet of someone different from himself, Jesus had to strip off a lot of outer things (pride, moral judgments, superiority, ideology, and personal dignity) so as to wear only his inner garment. What was his inner garment? As John mystically describes it, his inner garment was precisely his knowledge that he had come from God, was going back to God, and that therefore all things were possible for him, including washing the feet of someone whom he already knew had betrayed him. That is also our own inner garment, the reality that lies deepest beneath our race, gender, religion, language, politics, ideology, and personal history (with all its wounds and false pride). What is most real is that deep down, beneath these other, outer, things, we are imprinted with the dark memory, the brand of love and truth, the inchoate knowledge that, like Jesus, we too have come from God, are returning to God, and therefore are capable of doing anything, including loving and washing the feet of someone very different from ourselves. Our inner garment is the image and likeness of God inside us, and when we are in touch with this, we can find the strength to wash one another’s feet across any divide: liberal-conservative, prolife-prochoice, Catholic-Protestant, Jew-Muslim, Muslim-Christian, black-white, man-woman, and begin to feel sympathy for one another beyond our wounds and difference.” I believe that Thomas wanted to help each of us to excavate our inner garments, however buried and fossilized, because it was only when we identify our inner garments are we able to accept hard, uncomfortable truths and grow closer to Christ, stronger in Christ, and more compassionate like Christ. Thomas’s sermons helped us remove metaphorical outer garments so we wouldn’t confront hard things with only our shell, but with our core. Likewise, we can speak—and receive—bold truths only if we communicate with one another from core self to core self. Adding some choice stories is always a good idea, too. Lesson No. 5: Remember the ministry of high-fives. When we told our four-year-old about Thomas and Charlie’s accident, her immediate response was, “But I liked giving him high-fives!” While she, like the rest of us, struggle to understand this loss, I want to draw attention to a lesson in this reaction that often gets overlooked: children’s ministry does not stop at the Sunday School door. The whole church must agree that children are disciples too, and their presence must be welcomed, and their personhood treasured. Thomas and the community of Redeemer have done such a wonderful job of making children feel seen and heard. My favorite example of this is from the first Story Night we ever attended. Story Night is a grand Redeemer tradition that takes place on a cozy December evening when people gather in the Abbey house and share true stories about themselves. The topics range from love stories to travel stories to faith stories, or in the case of a then five-year-old Carolina Howard, a sleepwalking story. She jumped up to the mic that night, and Thomas, along with the rest of us, was delighted as she told us about how one night while sleepwalking, she stepped on a slug and screamed until she woke up. The fact that Carolina was so young in a room of adults seemed to pose no problem to her. I love this because it should never be a problem for any child. She knew she belonged. In the same vein, a few years ago Thomas started the tradition of Pancake Supper karaoke, and kid after kid took the mic and belted to the crowd with abandon. They too knew they belonged. Thomas made a point of welcoming children into the life of the church, high-fiving the little kids and building inside jokes with some of the older ones. Our daughter was growing increasingly excited about the high-fives just before the accident, and she would seek Thomas out to make sure they happened. In fact, the day before he died, she did just that—racing to find him immediately after the service, that moment of belonging being so worthwhile to her that it took priority over everything else, even the playground swings. Thomas, along with so many people at Redeemer, have encouraged that atmosphere of belonging, and it may serve his memory more than any other to make sure that atmosphere continues to shape the legacy of our church forever. Conclusion Had things been different, Thomas would have returned to us from his sabbatical on All Saints Sunday. This tradition was precious to him and he made a point of scheduling his sabbatical accordingly. Instead, we find ourselves mourning what might have been, and looking for meaning in the memories. There are many more lessons left to contemplate in the legacy of Fr. Thomas McKenzie. Like I said, this is a start. In the midst of paralyzing grief, and on this All Saints Day, I sense the Holy Spirit calling all of us who were blessed by Thomas’s life to make use of our blessings, to ponder the grief alongside the wisdom he leaves behind, and to commit the work of our hands to the God who promises resurrection and the hope that we will see Thomas, Charlie, and all our beloved lost again.

Five or six years ago, I joined Jonny Jimison’s Patreon page. If I remember correctly, he’d committed to redrawing his Dragon Lord Saga in color (having published books one and two in black and white), and the patreon was a way of inviting his readers into the process. I was already a fan of Jonny’s comic strips and had backed the Kickstarter campaigns for his books, but it wasn’t until I became a Patreon supporter that I really understood how dedicated Jonny is to his work, and it’s that dedication of Jonny’s that’s really impressed me over the years. A lot of folks who start Patreon pages come out the gate with a flurry of material for their backers, then eventually the excitement wanes and updates become few and far between. But not so with Jonny. Patiently and diligently his work continues to this day, a steady stream of new pages and comics every week. And that diligence has paid off in the honing of the quality and detail of his craftsmanship. In the years since, it’s been a joy to go from watching Jonny work to working directly with him on a number of projects. He designed this year’s Hutchmoot poster. He designed our HutchDecks trading cards. He’s developed the Rabbit Trails comic strip. And he’s become an integral part of the wider artistic community surrounding the Rabbit Room. It’s that patient, careful work ethic (along with our love of his humor and stories) that convinced us to bring the Dragon Lord Saga under the banner of Rabbit Room Press, and I’m so glad we did. After years of painstaking labor redrawing and coloring Martin & Marco we were thrilled with the final product and so were readers. Folks have been clamoring for the next book for two years, and now we’re proud to announce that the full-color work on The River Fox is complete. It’ll be in readers’ hands this Christmas (unpredictable shipping woes notwithstanding). I often describe the Dragon Lord Saga as Calvin & Hobbes meets The Princess Bride. It’s a story about two brothers and the zany adventure they get swept into. The books are filled with humor and memorable characters and an overriding sense of fun. Book one, Martin & Marco is available in the Rabbit Room Store. Book two, The River Fox, is now available for pre-orders with a release set for November 19th (fingers crossed—everything in the production chain is unpredictable right now). We can’t wait for readers to feast their eyes on the fruit of Jonny’s work. It’s been a long wait, but The River Fox is, at last, coming your way in full color. Click here to order. (And perhaps the best part of all of this is that, thanks to Jonny’s diligence, work on book three, Dragons & Desperados, is now well underway.)

by the Rabbit Room This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers speaks with two guests: poet Luci Shaw and illustrator Ned Bustard. Luci Shaw is one of the great living Christian poets. She has been a pioneer and role model for generations of writers. Her poem “The O in Hope” is now a picture book , illustrated by Ned Bustard. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 44 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 info@rabbitroom.com ! Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by the Rabbit Room In this special episode of The Second Muse, former guest Ella Mine returns with collaborators Jac Thompson and S. Grant Parker for a live performance at North Wind Manor and a discussion about how art arises from pain to become a safe place during times of suffering. This episode originally aired during Hutchmoot: Homebound 2021. Click here to listen to Season 2, Episode 13 of The Second Muse. Sponsorship on the Podcast Network Are you interested in teaming up with us to support the work you love? Send an email to info@rabbitroom.com ! Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by the Rabbit Room When it comes to bestselling books and authors, it is sometimes easy to feel that you have missed the wave. A literary phenomenon occurs and critical acclaim soars to unknown heights, but for a variety of reasons you are left behind. For more than twenty years this has been the case for me with regard to Harry Potter . When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone was first published in 1997 I was working as a bookseller in Belfast, Northern Ireland. These novels by a hitherto unknown author arrived on our shelves with no small amount of kerfuffle, chiefly owing to the fact that there was simultaneously a children’s and an adult binding, each containing exactly the same text block. This had been unknown up to this point, at least to our circle of bookselling colleagues. Critical and popular acclaim quickly followed for J. K. Rowling, and the movies and the mania were not far behind. Even with all of this rolling hype, I struggled to get on board the Hogwarts Express. The first novel felt a little too young for me and by the time I got around to reading Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets the film adaptations were beginning their steady stream. I made the mistake of mixing media too early, spoiling the plot lines of novels in the series that I hadn’t read. Time passed, Potter faded, and I concluded that these books were not for me. Fast forward twenty-four years, and my wife and I are living with two daughters who are voracious readers. Their appetite for being allowed to read the Potter novels reached crisis point, and this year our youngest set herself on a journey to complete the whole series, following hot on the heels of our eldest. I initially re-approached the novels from the perspective of Dad-Duty, checking in advance if the narratives were age-appropriate for our younger daughter. That decision has led me to read the entire series this year, beginning in summer and concluding in autumn. My youngest daughter overtook me when I was lumbering through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , and my pretext of pseudo-censor was lost irretrievably—I was now reading them for their sheer joy and magic. Arriving late to the Potter party undoubtedly has its disadvantages, but there has been much to commend it. The following three things have pressed on my heart and conscience as I have journeyed through these remarkable texts—lessons that are related to the world of wizards, witches, and wands, but that are applicable across all kinds of texts. Some texts must wait until the right time The world of reading is not immune from the widespread FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that characterises our culture. To not plug into the zeitgeist, to not be reading the latest or most recently rediscovered texts can make one feel that they have tipped off the literary highway, away from the bright lights and fast pace. The truth is that some texts are not right for us when they are for others. The factors around the Potter novels were unique to me and the moment in which the books emerged, making them impenetrable and unappealing, rendering me powerless to progress through them with any appetite or real interest over twenty years ago. To acknowledge this allows us to be kinder to ourselves. Not relating to what others find relatable is perfectly acceptable. Social media has persuaded us that the adulation of good things should always be a community experience. If Paul Simon could say in the 1980s that ‘every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,’ our boast (or lament) is that we produce and dispose of heroes at a much quicker pace than that. To remain unplugged should not be a source of guilt, but an acknowledgment that we are not all the same and that we are not universally ready for things at the same time. It should also encourage us to be kinder to the creative work of others. Critical assessments are often burdened with all kinds of subjectivity, some of which is a guilty displacing of our own disappointment that a work has not pressed our buttons. The results can be ugly if we are not careful around our own responses, blaming an author or work for not reaching us as we expected them to (‘we played the flute for you and you did not dance’). If we must demure from what others are currently enjoying, we can do so without dismissing the wider interest, or the worth of the work in question. J. K. Rowling made no alterations to her novels in the twenty-four years that I managed to avoid them, but my place in life has changed to an incredible degree in that time. I was ready for Harry Potter this year, and not ready in other years. That is no reflection on the works in question. Evangelical hot-takes are seldom just or accurate As an adult reader one of my strongest feelings while working through the Harry Potter series was revulsion at the evangelical subculture’s interaction with the books upon their first publication. Coming from a very conservative background, the voices among my own tribe who were denouncing the books for their promotion of witchcraft were loud and clear. To the outside world such declamations had all of the transparency of Parseltongue, but for many of us within the evangelical world, picking up Potter felt like indulging a dangerous temptation. Reading now, with all of the personal and social changes that have passed under the bridge, it seems incredible to me that such claims were ever made by any reputable source. Many of the judgements made on the books related to their earliest volumes, but the strength of reaction among Christians had the force of a moral panic. Since Potter-gate, the proclivities and eccentricities of evangelical subculture have been played out on the world stage, reaching political and social discourse with unabashed ferocity. The Potter books gave us fair warning of how expectations of fair-mindedness from evangelicals are often just vain hopes. J. K. Rowling’s prose is among the most redemptive I have ever read (more below), meaning that not only was the hype around children being drawn into the occult overblown but it was contrary to the entire meaning of the books themselves. If adverse personal responses to texts can be damaging, public declamations of literature and other media without proper engagement with content or intent are a horrible breach of the 9th commandment. When we propagandise and protest with no foundation of truth, we are bearing false witness, slandering and libelling the work and intentions of others. The Potter novels provide some of the most touching treatments of grieving and death that I have ever encountered, but these are realised in a world bent on redemption, an environment where love, friendship, and fidelity are transformative realities. Andrew Roycroft Creative work is prone to this defamation precisely because of its creativity. J. K. Rowling’s work forged its own shape in the literary world in more ways than occupying two spaces in bookshops. Her story arc was long thought through, and the component parts of each novel fed into it with breathtaking skill. The themes which she managed to touch on, the depths she managed to plumb, the heights she managed to scale, meant that certain conventions and conceptions had to be overturned in the effort. This is what genuine creativity does: it unseats certainty to build it a better throne, it throws our co-ordinates in order to recalibrate us to true North again, and that is painful work, prone to misunderstanding. A blunt edged, literalistic view of life and literature (as was true of my upbringing and background) fears the flux and controlled freefall of what imagination does when it refocuses belief and understanding. It is hard to feel that anything has changed in the evangelical subculture on this score, but it should at least authorise thoughtful people to dissent with confidence from the denunciations and shibboleths that hysteria often insists on screaming in our faces. Redemption is a big story My overwhelming response to the Harry Potter series is one of immense gratitude. Without indulging in ruining the plot for prospective readers, the redemptive curve of the stories is astonishingly well conceived and executed. J. K. Rowling’s skill is the creation of an entire world which awaits redemption and makes the reader long for the same. Evil is neither glorified, exaggerated, nor minimised—it is with us in the world and can cause even trusted people to buckle at points of weakness. The unmitigated horror of certain scenes in the novels will remain with me for a long time. Wickedness sees the world through the prism of self and ambition, and there is something of that spirit in all of us. The logical conclusions of evil are entertained in the Potter series in unnerving and unsettling ways, reminiscent of how the Scriptures often draw us up short in our understanding of just how destructive sin is. This is a bitter grace, and darker providence from Rowling’s pen, which we should be grateful for. Redemption is the real story, though. The Potter novels provide some of the most touching treatments of grieving and death that I have ever encountered, but these are realised in a world bent on redemption, an environment where love, friendship, and fidelity are transformative realities. Sections of the Potter novels reduced me to tears of joy, and Rowling’s ownership of her Christian themes grounds the action of these wonderful books in self-giving love and a King’s cross. I am grateful to have read these books after twenty-four more years of acknowledging that the world is broken, that I am broken, and that redemption of heart and cosmos are our most pressing need. Conclusion I arrived late at the Potter party, but there was a place for me at the table—and I am grateful for that. Reading from The Philosopher’s Stone to The Deathly Hallows has ploughed up the ground of my adult reader’s heart. These novels have given me perspective on my own reaction to the creativity of others, renewed scepticism about Christian subculture’s critical senses, and room for redemptive talk with my daughters rooted in a story they love which points to the Story of God’s love.

by the Rabbit Room This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Elizabeth Harwell, author of The Good Shepherd’s Pasture and The Good King’s Feast . The Good King’s Feast: An Invitation to the Lord’s Supper is a picture book that helps children understand Communion. In this episode, Elizabeth and Jonathan Rogers discuss writing for children and what it means to invite them into a story that they are already a part of. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 45 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? Email in! Rabbit Room Membership Special thanks to our Rabbit Room members for making these podcasts possible! If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit RabbitRoom.com/Donate.

by the Rabbit Room Back by popular demand, it’s the  Rabbit Room Christmas Gift Exchange ! But wait, what is it? It’s a “Secret Santa” program. Everyone who wants to participate signs up, then we pull names out of the virtual hat, and everyone gives a gift (or gifts) to the person whose name they receive. You can remain anonymous if you wish, or you’re welcome to be as open as you like. How much should I spend on a gift? We’ve set a suggested gift value of $30. We’d love it if you bought your gifts in the Rabbit Room Store (this is a great time to share your Rabbit Room wishlist—click here and log in ), but you don’t have to, and we encourage folks to give creative gifts, something handmade maybe, something you made maybe. Be creative! But please ensure that the gift you give is something you’d value at about $30. You’re welcome to lavish your recipient with more if you like. (And please feel free to disregard the wishlist and shopping options built into Elfster—see below.) Where do I sign up? This link (also at the bottom of this post )  will take you to the Elfster website where you can sign up for the exchange. The site is a little clunky (and we hate the ads) but the exchange has gotten so big in the last couple of years that we need to use a system like this to administrate it effectively. What if I don’t get a gift? We urge everyone to be sure they mail or deliver their gifts well in advance of Christmas Day so that no one feels left out. However, should your Santa drop the ball, please let us know on or after January 1st. We’ll do our best to remind them and resolve the situation, and if necessary, we’ll make sure that person cannot participate again next year. Can I be a backup Santa? Yes! You can! If you’d like to make yourself available in the event that someone doesn’t receive a gift, please let us know via email at team@rabbitroom.com . We hope you won’t be needed, but we’d love to have your help if the situation arises (put “Backup Santa” in the subject line of your email). When will I find out who I’m giving a gift to? Sign-up starts right now.  The sign-up  deadline is Monday, November 22nd , and names will be drawn on Tuesday, November 23rd.  NO LATE ENTRIES will be permitted . If you miss the sign-up window, you’ll need to wait until next year—this isn’t because we’re mean, it’s because it’s a closed system that cannot be amended once names are drawn. Everyone who enters will receive an email with their target’s name and address on Wednesday, November 24th, and you’ll need to mail your gifts by Friday, December 10th. I have questions not covered by this blog post. Who do I ask? Email your questions to team@rabbitroom.com and we’ll do our best to answer! And please use the comments section to introduce yourself. You might also want to let folks know what your interests are and what books and music you like in order to give your Santa some hints to work with. Click here to join. P. S. There’s also an online gift exchange for our friends who live in Europe, organized by the wonderful Michael Tinker!  Click here to join the Europe gift exchange , and if you have any questions, reach out to Michael at  michael.j.tinker@gmail.com .

by the Rabbit Room [ Editor’s Note: We asked the Rabbit Room Members to send in featured highlights about themselves and what membership means to them, and we liked this one by Rachel Speer Donahue so much that we wanted to share it with you here on the blog.] Lately I’ve been introducing my teen son to the delights and peculiarities of Dr. Who, so when the call went out for testimonials of what Rabbit Room membership means to us, the first words that sprang to mind were, “It’s bigger on the inside.” However, I had to quickly abandon that train of thought. It’s not at all an accurate representation of the Rabbit Room community. But then I had to ask myself— why? The answer lies in a concept that Mick and I encountered in cross-cultural training years ago—the idea of bounded sets vs. centered sets.* A bounded set is a group that is defined by common traits. Things (or people) that share those common traits are inside the circle, while things (or people) that do not share those traits are outside the circle. The group is defined by the boundary of the circle. A centered set, however, is a group that is centered on a common focal point, and the group is defined by movement toward that center from a variety of other position points on the map. To say “it’s bigger on the inside” would imply that there is both an inside and an outside and that there is some boundary that can be crossed to go from being an “outsider” to an “insider.” It’s bounded-set thinking. But the Rabbit Room community doesn’t function that way. The Rabbit Room is a centered set, and the focus is namely this: “The Rabbit Room cultivates and curates stories, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world.” Membership is not stepping over a boundary from “outside” to “inside”—membership is, rather, a linking of arms and falling in step with people who are moving the same direction. Rachel Donahue Because the center of the Rabbit Room is Jesus, creativity, and community, there is no inside or outside to membership. There are simply people who have been here a while, people who have been here even longer, and lonely travelers who have just stumbled upon a jovial caravan that’s headed their direction. Membership is not stepping over a boundary from “outside” to “inside”—membership is, rather, a linking of arms and falling in step with people who are moving the same direction. If you’re new to the Rabbit Room, just hang around a while. Listen, read, and get a taste of the goodness that is to be found here. The words and music and art and community will shape you in wonderful ways. But don’t think for a second that being new excuses you from getting involved. Be ready for someone to hand you a broom—or a ladle—or a pen—because the work that’s going on here is yours, too. If you’re going our way, link arms and fall in step with us. Someone just might break out into song. *For more information about bounded sets vs. centered sets, particularly with regard to the Church, read part 1 and part 2 of this article. You can learn more or sign up to become a member at RabbitRoom.com/member .

For the first time, the Rabbit Room has created a Christmas package, a perfect gift for friends who are unfamiliar or less familiar with the Rabbit Room! Every package includes an assortment of items—books, recipes, art, an ornament, tea, and much more—carefully curated around the themes of Advent and Christmas. In this gift package, you’ll find: Letters From the Mountain by Ben Palpant Henry and the Chalk Dragon by Jennifer Trafton 2-bag package of Rabbit Room tea (Courtesy of British Bee Tea Company) 5X7 Print of “A Liturgy for the Christmas Season” Rabbit Room Ornament Postcards featuring art by John Hendrix, Kyra Hinton, and Jamin Still “Rachel’s Weird Butters” recipe cards Rabbit Room bookmarks Rabbit Room stickers Information about the Rabbit Room Christmas Gift Packages are available for a limited time only (while supplies last) and will begin shipping November 29th. Click here to view them on the Rabbit Room Store.

[Editor’s note: In addition to being Head of Operations at the Rabbit Room, Chris Thiessen is an eloquent and insightful music critic. On his bi-weekly newsletter, Quarter Notes, he recently completed the epic feat of ranking every single Taylor Swift song. Amazed by his fearlessness, we share here his words about Swift’s songwriting, the way that music marks our lives, and St. Augustine’s “hermeneutic of love.” Enjoy, and find the complete list at Quarter Notes.] No artist has so soundtracked my journey from adolescence to early adulthood like Taylor Swift. I wouldn’t go so far as to consider her my favorite musical artist (I’m certainly not a raving Swiftie). Honestly, I don’t even believe in “favorite artists” as a concept. There have been many—Switchfoot, Kendrick Lamar, Brandi Carlile, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds—who have profoundly informed my life thus far. But Taylor’s music just keeps marking my life—like the bold, vertical ticks of a timeline—dividing eras, helping make sense of the world in unsuspecting ways, and offering a marvelous time of it. As I ponder why Swift’s music has resonated within me so, all the critiques of her career come to mind. Surely there are more adventurous musicians, more substantive lyricists, less flashy entertainers. Indeed, Swift has adhered to formulas, simple arrangements, and well-worn ideas throughout her career. But despite any truth in these critiques, I can’t shake her music off. And it’s occurred to me that the reason why is this: the most important ingredient to Swift’s career—the glue that binds her trajectory from country small-town pop to synthy big-city pop to indie-inspired folklore—is love. Yes, love. Yes, it’s cheesy. Get over it. Let me talk about love (and a little theology) before getting to the ranking (which is really why you’re here, right?). Swift has explored every corner of what it means to be human and to embrace, desire, and even despise love. Chris Thiessen An idea that has stuck with me over the last year is something my friend Dr. Steve Guthrie encourages: living out of a hermeneutic of love in our lives. In other words, love should be the lens through which we are meant to see the world. It’s an idea that brings to mind St. Augustine as he talks about interpreting the Scriptures in his work On Christian Doctrine: “Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” Love—in interpreting the Bible, music, or the everyday experiences of our lives—might just be all we need, as the Beatles suggest. Perhaps it’s the whole point. “I wanna be defined by the things that I love. Not the things I hate. Not the things that I’m afraid of,” Swift tells us at the end of “Daylight,” the closing song on her album Lover. Years earlier, on 1989 bonus track “You Are In Love,” she paints a scene of someone finding love for the first time: “And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars / And why I’ve spent my whole life tryin’ to put it into words.” Here, Swift pulls back the curtain and reveals the modus operandi of her entire career: putting words to a world where love is the purpose. Across her 15 year career, Swift has explored every corner of what it means to be human and to embrace, desire, and even despise love. In her early albums, she writes at length about fairytale love, the stuff of daydreams and Disney films. But Swift never blindly embraces the fantasy world. For every “Love Story” with its tragedy-turned-happy-ending, there’s a heartbreak where it’s too late for her Hollywood prince on his white horse to come around. In Swiftian folklore, there are sure to be enchanted evenings, but there are also slammin’ screen doors, pictures to burn, and teardrops on guitars. This broken world never promises a happy ever after, and Swift leans into the pain of that reality often. She understands that grief is necessarily linked to love. It’s love that informs the deep mourning for a lost child on “Ronan,” or the desperate hope of “Soon You’ll Get Better.” It’s love too that fuels Swift’s anthemic (though sometimes heavy-handed or misguided) resistance to social pressures and inequalities on “You Need To Calm Down” or “Shake It Off.” And it’s love that, ultimately, causes sparks to fly and light up the darkest night. When it seems the pain will last forevermore, it’s love that comes “alive, back from the dead.” As I think of how Taylor Swift’s career has soundtracked my journey, I’m thankful for the way she mines the depths of love imperfectly. She “gets it wrong” perhaps just as much as she “gets it right.” But who of us could say any differently? Love is messy. I know all too well that I get it wrong on a daily basis. I too have lots of regrets, but at least I’m trying. At least there is something to reach for, to hold on to when the sun goes down. Because no matter how many times I get it wrong, I know that love will get the final word. So to celebrate the release of Red (Taylor’s Version), I’m taking a look back at Taylor’s 179 songs to date* and ranking them as best as I can. What I love about lists like this is that everyone’s lists look so different. Much of that is linked not just with our ideas of what “good” or “bad” music is, but what this music has meant to our own experiences of life, love, and grief. Everyone’s journey is different. And so my list here is humbly submitted. Don’t at me if your favorite song is 104th on my list. Or do…I like to fight about stupid things. Alright, without further ado…are you ready for it? *Further ado: though some lists like Rolling Stone’s include them, I did not rank cover songs. Also, this list will be updated with the new Red (Taylor’s Version) songs soon, and I’ll write blurbs for every song on this list! Click here to view Chris’s full ranking of every Taylor Swift song and here to listen to the list on Spotify.

[Editor’s note: In celebration of the print release of Pete Peterson’s “The Oracle of Philadelphia,” we share with you a piece from Pete originally published on the Rabbit Room blog in 2014 which narrates the frustration and reward of the writing process. Enjoy!] Yesterday, I saw someone on Facebook mention that they’d sent the final draft of their manuscript off to the publisher after having rewritten and revised it so much that they had come to hate it and could stand to look at it no longer. I know that feeling. When I sit down to write, one of two things happens. The first possibility is that I have a great idea, know exactly what I want to write and how I want to write it, and I bang it out in a whirl of clacking laptop keys. When I’m finished I triumphantly hammer down the save button and go away feeling satisfied with myself. The second possibility is that I sit and stare at the screen for a while, eventually writing an awful sentence, then deleting it, then writing another but maybe deleting only half of it because the first part wasn’t quite as bad as the last, then staring at and loathing even that until I delete and rewrite it twelve more times. This continues for an hour or two until I’ve got a few hundred words cobbled together that I can no longer stand to look at. I close the laptop and walk away feeling a little sick and a lot like a complete hack. To be fair, there’s a third possibility—a hybrid of the other two. I’ll have a great idea, and I’ll know exactly what I want to do with it, but when I sit down to write, nothing comes together. The interesting thing, though, is what happens the next day. When I come back to pick up where I left off, I read over the last thing I wrote and, in general, I find that whatever was written in the first case is usually a royal mess that’s nowhere near as clever or as interesting as I thought it was while I was writing it. On the other hand, the writing done in the second case is usually pretty good—which seems completely backwards. Right? In my experience, the writing I do under what I’d call “inspiration” is usually far inferior to the writing I do when I have to rely on little more than hard work. When the words are coming easy, they tend to end up sloppy. When I have to squeeze every word out amid weeping and gnashing of teeth, relying on a developed set of skills rather than on the sugary high of inspiration, the work tends to be lean and focused—in other words, it tends to be pretty good. That’s a hard truth for me, but I’m learning to rest on it. Illustration by Stephen Hesselman I wrote a short story last month called “The Oracle of Philadelphia,” and it’s a good example. I started out with two ideas that I really liked—a fun twist on the historical Oracle of Delphi, and the idea of two men adrift on a melting ice floe. I had no clear idea of what either of those things had to do with the other, but it felt right. I started off strong and banged out several scenes of Thurston and Obadiah adrift on the ice, but then I hit wall. Inspiration ran out and, like my characters, I was stranded on a melting life raft with nowhere to go. I had nothing left to lean on but discipline. I had committed myself to finishing the story, and I had my wife to be accountable to, if no one else. So I kept going back to those scenes, adding a sentence here, deleting one there, scrapping this, adding that, and slowly, painfully, a functional story began to emerge.* When I finished, I told Jennifer, “Well, I got to the end. But I hate it.” The story was awful. I was sure of it. But though I hated it, I felt like the core of the story hung together, if only just, and so I started rewriting and revising, taking the thing I had come to loathe and breaking it down a sentence at a time, trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Though I’d fallen completely out of love with the story, I was committed to reworking it to the point that I could publish it without being embarrassed by it. I kept at it mechanically until, in the end, I was sick of it and could stand to look at it no more. So I gave it to trusted friends to help me see where my blind spots were. More revisions followed until, again, I had to abandon it. It was as good as I could make it—even if I felt it wasn’t good enough. But a few days later, a fresh read of the story changed my mind. I found that now, after all, I loved the story again. Why? Because I had put work into it, work enough that my puppy love for the story had faded until I could see it objectively and scour away its imperfections (though I’m sure it has plenty more that could stand a good scrubbing). That first swell of love we have for a potential work isn’t inspiration, it’s infatuation. And just like in human relationships, once the infatuation fades, the real work of love begins. Pete Peterson I think if anyone is serious about writing (or art in general) it’s important to get beyond what we usually like to call “inspiration.” In fact, that’s the wrong word. That first swell of love we have for a potential work isn’t inspiration, it’s infatuation. And just like in human relationships, once the infatuation fades, the real work of love begins. And it’s in the context of that real work—that work in which you may seem at times to fall out of love with the object of your labor—it’s in that work that real inspiration takes place. It’s in that work that the Holy Spirit often does work of his own. And it’s out of that hard labor that a work of art is finally hewn. So if you’ve created something and labored over it until you can no longer stand to look at it, keep the faith, your work is not in vain. “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” —Thomas Edison “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” —attributed to a number of people who apparently abandoned the original quote “I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” —dubiously attributed to William Faulkner *For the record, not a single jot of those original scenes remains in the final story. Click here to view “The Oracle of Philadelphia” in the Rabbit Room Store.

[Editor’s note: Last week, the Rabbit Room staff happened upon this excellent interview with one of our favorite people, George MacDonald scholar Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson. It originally appeared on Radix Magazine, which you should definitely peruse if you haven’t already. Read to the end of the interview to find a link to some more of Kirstin’s writing, as well. You’ll be glad you did.] Radix Magazine: Having read some of your work and listened to your lectures, one of the things I really appreciate is that while you are a scholarly expert on George MacDonald, you also take a great deal of joy from it too. I think, with your enthusiasm, you have drawn a lot more people into the MacDonald and Victorian and even Inkling world. I also love the fact that you live on a farm! And I hear you even [currently] have a donkey, along with other farm animals. I would dare say that this makes you even more authentically “MacDonaldian.” Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson: Well, thank you! You know, one of the first things that attracted me to MacDonald as a person was that he was a farm kid just like me. A farm kid who loved stories, people, place, and connecting people and stories and places. And I love his desire to live holistically, weaving all his world together, introducing different parts to each other. MacDonald didn’t just know the people in his vocation, or those with whom he attended church, etc; he actively sought to know those he was placed amongst—his physical community, of all stripes and sizes. He was very given to hospitality—creating spaces in which people could talk as human beings, could get beyond talking about only politics or theology. That inspires me as something to strive for; when I achieve it, I am enriched. Radix: Oh, that talk of hospitality is so, so meaningful. KJJ: It really is, isn’t it? And it’s important to note that indwelling this type of hospitality was central to a number of people in MacDonald’s wider circle: mentors like A. J. Scott, F. D. Maurice, and Thomas Erskine. Their hospitable practice, of which MacDonald was an active part, left deep impressions on luminaries such as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, who appreciated how it fostered convivial conversation and the further development of ideas. As an aside, A. J. Scott, MacDonald’s primary mentor, helped develop what we now know as the discipline of English literature, along with another mentor of his, F. D. Maurice. Kind of a big deal, right? They believed that true literary criticism should be the attempt to hear rightly, to hear accurately, to engage hospitably. Most current practice has lost that mooring. And we’ve forgotten the history, that the English literature department was created for, essentially, theological reasons. These men drew MacDonald into this outworking of their Trinitarian theology, one that demanded that we are relationally oriented—that faith and love are embodied in relationship and that “faith-full criticism” is indeed hospitable. And so this very much shapes MacDonald’s writing as well. Radix: What a tremendously powerful thought. Thank you. I think that the word hospitality is—gloriously—increasing in popularity. So when did you start reading MacDonald? KJJ: I was five or six. I actually remember listening to my pastor read Isaiah 6 around that time, and thinking, that’s from The Princess and Curdie! Eventually I realized, it was the reverse. My first memories of being read to were from Narnia, and soon I was reading both that and MacDonald on my own. As a teen, I read MacDonald’s longer novels. Years later, after a summer class on John Bunyan at Regent College with Maxine Hancock, I rediscovered MacDonald. As I read, I began to realize Bunyan’s influence on him, but I was simultaneously stunned by how much MacDonald had, in turn, influenced Narnia. I was also reminded of how beautifully MacDonald interweaves imagination with faith, and saw how that had shaped my own faith and personal growth. But I also began to see the depths to which MacDonald was interacting and engaging with western literature, and it was challenging me spiritually and intellectually in ways I’d not experienced before—in the “storied” and intertextual aspects of Christianity and its rich literary tradition. MacDonald made English literature exciting in a new way for me. And consequently, Scripture too. Radix: Was there anything that you noticed about how MacDonald dealt with the feminine? Maybe not at age six, but later? KJJ: Yeah. I’ll give you a story for background first. When I was taking a course with Loren Wilkinson at Regent College—one of my favorites, called “The Christian Imagination”—it struck me that every single artist and author we discussed in class had, as adults, difficulty investing healthily in family life. That bothered me. So I asked if anyone could think of exceptions. But the class was awkwardly silent. When Loren and I bumped into each other the next day, I mentioned that MacDonald’s kids called him the most holy person they knew. Loren named a couple examples he’d thought of since. But the troubling awareness remained that we knew of too few Christian icons that could sincerely claim great family relationships. MacDonald’s situation—even if still imperfect, for he was human—compelled me to look more closely into his life. (Eugene Peterson was my thesis advisor, and whilst working with him on the educational nature of Story, I developed some of the ideas that I would later build upon when writing my doctorate on MacDonald.) But back to the family thing. MacDonald could have spent a lot more of his time writing and editing his work, but instead he put that time into family and friends and community—including collaborating with his wife and kids in teaching and ministry—as well as playing together. And yet, nonetheless, his work is still changing lives today. And I think some of the wisdom that occurs, that comes through in his writing, is there because of this choice to put more time into relationship than vocational success. I believe this type of relational prioritizing informed his engagement with, and ability to learn from, women. MacDonald spent time with some particularly strong women throughout his life. His wife, Louisa Powell, was one of six girls in an artistic and philanthropic family, and letters show how much he enjoyed visiting the whole lively household. He then had five girls of his own (and six boys). His birth mother had studied multiple languages in school, and came from a literature-oriented family. And after she died, his stepmother was similarly educated. Then MacDonald had his Federal Calvinist grandmother that we all hear about—especially the part about her burning the fiddle. Though that was not George’s fiddle, but his grandfather’s. Biographers and others have confused MacDonald’s life story with aspects of the novel, Robert Falconer, which, like many of his novels, borrows upon family stories in its shaping.[i] MacDonald’s mentor, A. J. Scott—who modeled a strong partnership with his wife Ann—taught at the first higher education college for women in the UK! MacDonald himself later taught there: Bedford College, London. F. D. Maurice, another friend, had already founded the first institute at which girls could gain academic qualifications in Britain, an Anglican college called Queen’s. They were all involved in fighting for tertiary, or post-secondary, education for women. Even before Bedford, MacDonald taught classes independently to women in both literature and science. He was also a friend of numerous suffragettes, such as Elizabeth Jesser Reid, Josephine Butler, Octavia Hill, Emilia Russell Gurney, and Georgina Cowper-Temple. He was spiritual confidant to some of them, and supportive of them all. And then, if we think about how women are portrayed in his fiction, we can see that women are shown to repeatedly rescue men. Men are taught by women, challenged by women, and also challenged to think about women in different ways. For MacDonald, women are not just prizes in a chivalric story, but are mentors, teachers, and fellow travelers in the journey—finding their own way philosophically and theologically, being their own persons. I want to read a quote from his novel The Seaboard Parish. Remember, this was written in 1862: And here I may remark in regard to one of the vexed questions of the day—the rights of women—that what women demand it is not for men to withhold. It is not their business to lay the law for women. That women must lay down for themselves. I confess that, although I must herein seem to many of my readers old-fashioned and conservative, I should not like to see any woman I cared much for either in parliament or in an anatomical class-room; but on the other hand I feel that women must be left free to settle that matter. If it is not good, good women will find it out and recoil from it. If it is good then God give them good speed. One thing they have a right to—a far wider and more valuable education than they have been in the way of receiving. When the mothers are well taught the generations will grow in knowledge at a fourfold rate.[ii] —George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish Radix: Oh, wow. And in 1862. KJJ: Isn’t that crazy? His novels are full of this. For MacDonald, story is a medium for change; the gospel itself is the story of Christ. Story is relationship. Story allows this amazing thing to happen: we get to know someone and see them change, and then we can change too. MacDonald very much wants to do this with his novels. That’s why he addresses issues like the rights of women, and the place of women, and the importance of female education. Moreover, women in his novels are frequently better in some areas of education than their male counterparts—especially mathematics. Radix: [Laughter] He was quite ahead of his time, then! KJJ: So much, yes, he was. He uses story to speak to a variety of contemporary issues: of social housing and animal rights; of interracial marriage (then illegal in the U.S.); of land ownership, eugenics, vivisection, and ecological wrongs; physical and emotional abuse; to the shameful way culture treated persons pregnant out of wedlock; to how those with neurological and physiological differences were treated and (de)valued. He even speaks to depression and suicide. And he addresses these within the framework of his stories. Radix: That statement you made just a minute ago is so powerful: “MacDonald sees story as a medium for change.” So good. It also bugs me that more people aren’t aware that MacDonald was ahead of his time in so many areas. We should know! KJJ: It sheds light. And I also think, again, that part of the reason that MacDonald was able to be so in touch with the social justice issues of his day is because he and Scott and the others he was close with didn’t put up walls between themselves and the communities in which they lived; they engaged very intentionally with people who had different theological perspectives—or none. This goes back to hospitality. They intentionally sought relationship with those around them even, perhaps especially, if they didn’t agree with them. And because of that they were so much more aware of the issues of the day; of how and where people were hurting and of the earth groaning. They knew how to speak into those issues because they didn’t restrict the communities in which they dwelt. Radix: I am thinking about your statement of “no walls on their relationships,” which of course is a matter of hospitality and imagination. This goes into the next question. In one of your recent papers, you mentioned the connection between a healthy imagination and a healthy theology. Can you touch on the link between imagination and the feminine for MacDonald? KJJ: Well, it’s important to remember that MacDonald didn’t have high walls that kept other perspectives out. He was widely read: from Church history, to the Church Mothers and Fathers, all the way through to Chaucer, Dante, Spencer, and Shakespeare. This means that his imagination was constantly being pushed in different ways. He was also deeply interested in Scripture, and the Greek, Hebrew, and even the Latin it was later written in. Because of this, he was aware that the Greek and Hebrew words for spirit are feminine. Every time you read about the Spirit of God, it’s feminine. Let alone that male and female are both created “in God’s image.” So you can’t avoid this aspect of femininity in God, along with the masculine. And then there are all his strong fictional female characters, such as the wise woman from The Wise Woman, or The Lost Princess; Great-great-grandmother from the Princess and Curdie series; Grandmother in The Golden Key or North Wind from Back of the North Wind. Now, how MacDonald was dealing with the feminine in the divine isn’t glib. He is not simplistic. So, I think that while these female characters have aspects of the divine, they aren’t meant to represent the fullness of God. Take Great-great-grandmother: she says herself that she is only 2,000 years old. Because we know that MacDonald is very intentional, Great-great-grandmother cannot, therefore, be a feminine version of God. Similarly, in The Golden Key and North Wind: these women themselves say that they have limited knowledge. I want to throw my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism. George MacDonald I think MacDonald creates these characters as ambassadors of the divine, or maybe reflected aspects of the divine, rather than as God. Others may differ, but I think that maybe Great-great-grandmother is, in a sense, “a Wise Imagination,” which MacDonald calls “the presence of the spirit of God.” Maybe the Wise Woman in The Lost Princess is an exploration of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs. MacDonald scholar Kerry Dearborn helped me see how the green-haired Grandmother in The Golden Key evokes Mother Nature. I think this kind of thinking makes more sense and is more richly nuanced than merely saying, “she is a female representation of God.” MacDonald doesn’t think God can be cataloged. God is too big for that. At the same time, he encourages us to delve deeper into the various aspects of God’s nature. And, always, drives us back to explorations of that in Scripture. Radix: Oh, I love that idea of these characters being hints; that they hint at aspects of God. KJJ: One of MacDonald’s goals was to increase—to cause an explosion of possibilities—of our understanding of God. He wants us to explore the various attributes of God, both masculine and feminine. Giving us a different perspective of the feminine does not mean he is negating the masculine, but that he wants to redress the balance. MacDonald was very keen on redeeming the fatherhood aspect of God, from a culturally prevalent perspective of cruel judge to that of loving father. We can see a lot of that in his stories. But McDonald is also not saying God is only this masculine father. Yes, God is a loving father as opposed to an abusive or hurtful or damaged father, but God also transcends gender. Radix: I wonder what you think he would tell us, especially now, if he were here. KJJ: Well, I’m reminded of MacDonald’s compilation, England’s Antiphon (1868), an anthology of devotional poetry. In it he pulls together a variety of writers from different theological perspectives. Such ecumenical intentionality was not common practice in that social climate. Here is what he says about why he does it: “I want to throw my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism.” Radix: Oh, wow. KJJ: In fact, MacDonald’s son, Ronald, wrote something that I wish could be at the beginning of everything that is written about George MacDonald: Bred in a land of religious division, his [my father’s] whole fight was against schism … He made no war upon the Church as he knew it—whether Independent, Presbyterian, or Anglican. His war was upon the faithlessness of the officially faithful, and, incidentally, only upon one or two Calvinistic and Augustinian dogmas exaggerated out of all proportion to their service.[iii] —Ronald MacDonald Now, I believe this is especially important. So, if George MacDonald were here with us today? I think he would stand against the great Sabbath-breaker, Schism. Radix: Powerfully said. In a similar vein, if he were here, what do you think MacDonald might disagree with what is said of him? KJJ: There are three areas. And I should say that more recent scholarship is helping to shift some of these older perspectives. The first one is that people have this entrenched idea that McDonald was an impoverished pastor who wrote novels only because he needed to feed his family. Emphatically not true. The real story is that MacDonald was a minister in a Congregational church for twenty-some months in his twenties, but that he taught English literature for over forty years. Now it is true that he did preach in churches throughout his entire life, sometimes every Sunday. A church in New York offered him a ridiculous salary to become their minister.[iv] But he always refused payment for preaching. However, his vocation and occupation was teaching literature. In addition to teaching in educational institutions, he was a paid lecturer. That was how he earned money for his family. He lectured all over the place: England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Canada, the USA. These lectures were on English literature and Dante. In his writing, too—even his fiction—he was constantly teaching literature. Illustration of George MacDonald by Frederick Waddy (1848-1901) Now, part of why I think knowing this is important—really important—is this: if we think of MacDonald as “only” a pastor who wrote literature on the side, we are doing a great disservice to the profession of literature. MacDonald was a steward of Story. He was calling us into “storyness.” We are devaluing the teaching of literature and the value of story when we get this part of MacDonald’s life wrong. His ministry—his holy calling—was teaching through story, pulling people back to an imaginative engagement with the world, with each other, with their communities, and, thus, with God. Radix: Oh, that is so good. That he was a steward of Story, and that he was calling us into storyness. KJJ: The second error goes something like this: MacDonald was a genius who sprang out of a vacuum. Now this is tied up with a related misconception, that he grew up in a repressive Calvinist household. Because, just think about it: “repressive Calvinist” automatically implies no art, no literature, and no acknowledgment of imagination. Right? But this does a great disservice to MacDonald’s family and community. The fact is that he grew up in a family environment that was highly literate and that greatly valued both education and imagination. In his family you have Shakespeare scholars, Gaelic scholars, women and men who were readers, poets, artists, and fairy-tale collectors. MacDonald grew up reading Coleridge and Milton while lying on the back of his horse. It was also a family highly invested in the social and spiritual health of the community. His paternal grandmother—with whom he did not live—may have embodied many of the particular Calvinistic expressions that his writings later challenged and even railed against, but letters with his father show how very different was his own childhood household; one that invited and prepared the type of exploration and discussion upon which MacDonald later built. To say that he sprang from a vacuum is misleading. The third error is that his realistic novels are unreadable in the “original.” Now, I greatly appreciate Dan Hamilton, a friend of mine, Michael Phillips, and Elizabeth Yates for making MacDonald’s Scottish novels more accessible to American audiences. And it’s true that his Doric dialect in those can be a challenge—though many find that if you read it out loud it is easier to understand. However, David Jack and Jess Lederman have recently granted readership a huge boon in their ongoing publication of the twelve Scottish novels in parallel text, so not a word of the original is lost yet an English option is right there alongside.[v] MacDonald’s other novels are in normal English. Radix: I know that over the years you have been involved in numerous projects. What are you particularly excited about now? KJJ: Certainly. Perhaps the most exciting project is a graphic novel of MacDonald’s The Golden Key, being produced by The Rabbit Room Press. I was a little hesitant at first, but when I saw what the artist Stephen Hesselman had done, I was hooked. Not discounting the truly beautiful illustrated version by Ruth Sanderson, I think this—in its particular format—may be the most important publication of The Golden Key since it was first published. Also, in general, for people who are interested in MacDonald and the Inklings, The Rabbit Room is just a great website to go explore. I have also been invited by Jess Lederman to contribute to his new editions of Lilith and Phantastes, and have a MacDonald-focused chapter in James Houston’s book on child theology. I am very happy to be involved with the C. S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits Society from Romania. They do important work with Lewis and the Inklings, but also “kindreds” such as MacDonald, Chesterton, L’Engle. Speakers include George MacDonald Society president Malcolm Guite, Trevor Hart, Philip Ryken, and Brenton Dickieson.[vi] Also, because 2024 is the 200th anniversary of MacDonald’s birth, The George MacDonald Society is preparing celebrations.[vii] A recent discussion on MacDonald and the Poetry of Science with eminent physicist Tom McLeish and science historian Franziska Kohlt is available on the Society’s site, and upcoming events include an online Christmas gathering and a day-long conference on teaching MacDonald. Radix: Sounds like you have lots of fun and meaningful things on your plate. Do you have any last thoughts for us? KJJ: Yes. And it goes back to Sabbath-breaking through Schism. For many people coming out of brokenness and wounding by church and family experiences, MacDonald is a healing tonic. But it’s important to know that MacDonald doesn’t want us to be anti-church, nor, especially, antagonistic towards those who understand God, faith, and church differently from ourselves: he would want us to have and practice grace. In the novel with the fiddle-burning, he actually chastises the character who takes “a mental position of enmity” towards the austere grandmother, for not perceiving the good also present in that woman. Yes, name—with particularity, not with unhelpful generalizations of “isms”—that which you see as damaging, but also laud that which is good. Fight rather than feed schism. Be actively involved in helping to build hospitable community. Community flourishing with transformative love: that’s what he’d want for us. Click here to read this interview on Radix Magazine. And click here to explore Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson’s writings on the Rabbit Room blog. [i] The fiddle-burning incident in the MacDonald family actually occurred when MacDonald’s father was a teen or young adult: according to an uncle, the boys in the family had found and begun to play with their deceased father’s instrument, and fearful that such music would lead her sons astray, their mother burned it. [ii] George MacDonald, The Seaboard Parish (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1868), 91-92. [iii] Ronald MacDonald, From A Northern Window: A Personal Reminiscence of George MacDonald by His Son (Guelph: Sunrise Books, 1989), 53-54. [iv] MacDonald became an Anglican in the 1860’s. [v] http://www.worksofmacdonald.com/products/robert-falconer[vi]http://simpozioncslewis.blogspot.com/ [vii] http://gms.george-macdonald.com/george-macdonald-biographical-introduction/

In this short series of posts, I am hoping to encourage the reading of poetry for all it’s worth—to foster confidence in those who love to read poems, but perhaps feel a little intimidated by tackling the work of some modern poets. My case study is Seamus Heaney, the most significant poet to emerge from Ireland since W. B. Yeats. Seamus Heaney’s work spanned some crucial moments in Irish and world history, migrating from the rural simplicity of his boyhood farm to the dazzle of modern cities, documenting the personal and domestic, as well as the conflicts which sundered his society and the communities of the world. Some basic tools for approaching his work were provided in the introduction to this series, providing a ‘way in’ to his poetic output. In this post I will isolate one his earliest poems, ‘Digging’, and will seek to model how it can be understood and enjoyed by those who are new to his work. To access a copy of the poem (including a wonderful audio recording of Seamus Heaney’s reading of it) please click here. Of spades and fountain pens ‘Digging’ is the first poem from Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist. Many of his poems have gathered proverbial momentum, but this piece is often viewed as his poetic signature, capturing many of his long term preoccupations about his place in the world. Two images are crucial to understand what he is considering in the poem, providing a kind of punchline for its descriptive section. On the one hand, there is the spade, wielded with skill by his father and grandfather, and on the other there is the pen. These two work instruments will form a kind of tension throughout the whole piece, providing points of comparison and departure, and allowing Seamus Heaney to meditate on where he fits with regard to his heritage. Ironically, for a writer, the spade receives the majority of attention in the poem—with the weight of imagery leaning on its handle. At this point we can remember the vital importance of emphasising the ‘ordinary’ in Heaney’s work. The spade was an everyday tool in any rural community in Ireland during the poet’s childhood and adolescence, an image of work and connection with the land. In Ireland spades provided points of comparison and definition, often being employed verbally to make a point: to ‘call a spade a spade’ is to speak honestly, to ‘have a face like a Lurgan spade’ is to have a grumpy or doleful expression. The spade is, then, a common implement relied upon for turning the earth and providing produce. Heaney’s family history with this tool is enriched and prominent, drawing from him some beautiful descriptions of digging on his family farm. The poet is not concerned to make the spade into a flat metaphor, but invests it with texture and detail. Awakened by its ‘clean rasping sound’, he is transported ‘twenty years away’ to when his father was in his prime, working at the ‘potato drills’. As readers we should be in no rush to get to the ‘meaning’ of the poem at this stage. Savouring the way in which the poet meditates on this everyday occurrence from his childhood is deeply enriching. The details are beautiful; potatoes emerge from the earth with ‘cool hardness’; the mechanics of working the earth are regimented and rhythmical, embodying great technical skill—’the coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered firmly’. Such assumed deftness brings the reader to the first vital point of tension in the poem: By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. —Seamus Heaney, ‘Digging’ Heaney’s language here is conversational and deeply vernacular, the ‘By God’ serving as a common way to intensify what follows, but it also bears some latent anxiety. There is a heritage in his family of being skilful in using a spade, a long line of men whose labours are renowned and respected, a work ethic and manual skill which serve as a kind of currency in the community. His grandfather’s reputation on the peat bogs was unparalleled, the ‘turf’ cutting being a major part of the mid-Ulster landscape in which Seamus Heaney’s family lived. His own place in that lineage seems somewhat up for grabs. As with many of Heaney’s poems about his father and grandfather, he finds himself as a moderate outsider to the action, fulfilling a role which is auxiliary. This is reflected in another poem from Death of a Naturalist in which he states that ‘I was a nuisance, tripping, falling/Yapping always.’ Even here his carrying of the milk is graphically precarious, the bottle ‘corked sloppily with paper’, his grandfather’s focus being on the job at hand rather than the grandson who brought him a drink. The connection with the land is profound, ‘going down and down/For the good turf. Digging’. All of these memories are tainted by a sense of dislocation. The memory of tilled soil, with its ‘squelch and slap/Of soggy peat’ is rooted in the poet’s mind, part of the fabric and landscape of who he is, and who his family was. With pathos he laments, ‘But I’ve no spade to follow men like them’. Ultimately, although his imagined world is enriched, Heaney has no purchase on this ground, no right or privilege among these strong and revered workers. This is not merely an image of modernisation, but a reluctant repudiation of the agriculture which has bound the poet’s family to the land for years. Knowing that Heaney was the first of his family to attend university brings his meaning here into sharp relief. 'Digging' makes a one time apologia for what the artist does, then leaves him or her to get on with the important business of plunging into the earth to draw good things for those who depend upon them. Andrew Roycroft This anxiety finds its resolution in the second main image of the poem—the pen. This is the object that heads and closes the entire piece, a plain rhyme scheme emphasising the fit and feeling of being able to write. Just as the spade had been ‘levered firmly’ by his father, for Heaney the pen ‘rests’ in his hand, ‘snug as a gun’. Here the man and the medium are as much in harmony as a farmer with a spade, and there is an aptitude and rectitude in Heaney holding his writing instrument in this way. Temperamentally and functionally the pen is his chosen tool, and the poem’s final line delivers this with incredible candour and power: ‘Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it’. Where his farming forbears worked the earth with skill and vigour he will now use the pen to penetrate beyond the soil from which he has come, and will embody the same prowess his father and grandfather enjoyed, with a simple shift in instrument and emphasis. Heaney is both in discord and accord with his background, gently leaving the physical world of farm and labour, but carrying into the intellectual world the graft and grit that made tilling possible. It is an extraordinarily powerful image, and an important window into the poet and the poem. An artist with a place in the world In the previous post in this series, I emphasised that grasping the immediate physical world Heaney presents is the best way to reach the ‘universals’ that inform his work. ‘Digging’ exemplifies this powerfully. While ostensibly about his specific background, his anxieties, and their resolution, Heaney lays bare some soil which is part of almost every creative person’s struggle—knowing one’s place in the world. There are some who enjoy (or endure) being part of a creative heritage, where the language of art is well understood. Perhaps more commonly, those who follow the compulsion to create do so at an angle from the background which formed them. An artist might emerge from a working class background in which visual art is not valued or noticed. A poet might find it easier to read her poems to the public than to her parents, sensing an unspoken resistance, or a deeply internalised anxiety about how what they are doing can integrate with where they have come from. Heaney’s poem does not merely resolve that anxiety, but grants a dignity to creative work which places it in the arena of provision, labour, and tillage. ‘Digging’ is a manifesto for the whole body of work which the poet would later bring into the world, a rationale for how such work ‘fits’ within who he is, and where he has come from. Seen in this light, ‘Digging’ becomes ours as well. Particularly in the evangelical world, creative activity is often misunderstood, hideously commercialised, and commodified into having to ‘function’ according to the parameters of ‘ministry’ or ‘evangelism’. The Christian artist (whatever their medium) often feels like an outsider, and can easily carry deep misgivings and anxiety about where they fit on the ‘family farm’ of church and mission. Seamus Heaney’s digging pen liberates us to see our work as valid, vital, and a dignified part of human endeavour. ‘Digging’ makes a one time apologia for what the artist does, then leaves him or her to get on with the important business of plunging into the earth to draw good things for those who depend upon them. As we will see in the next post, Heaney does not share the theological or spiritual underpinnings of a ‘Christian artist’, but it takes very little thought to connect what he shares in this poem with our dignity as God’s image bearers, and the mandate to till the earth, given at creation. Those who engage in any kind of creative work (although rejecting the commercial overtones of an ‘industry’) can thus readily see that industriousness, dedication, the honing of skill, and an intimacy with the materials of the world is an endeavour well worth pursuing—as important as breaking sweat while digging crops. In the next post we will examine Seamus Heaney’s handling of the spiritual world, thinking through how a Christian reader can be challenged by his position, but also enriched in their faith. Click here to read Part 1 of this series.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with children’s author Carolyn Leiloglou. Carolyn Leiloglou’s picture book Library’s Most Wanted was a 2021 WILLA Award Finalist. She was also a 2018 finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize. Her poems and stories have appeared in children’s magazines around the world, including Highlights, Ladybug, Cricket, and Clubhouse Jr. In this episode, Carolyn and Jonathan discuss rule-following, characters who take themselves too seriously, and other things. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 47 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 at sarahkatherine@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.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Rabbit Room! To celebrate, we’re re-sharing a wonderful and applicable session from this year’s Hutchmoot: Homebound called “The Indispensable Feast,” co-led by Lanier Ivester and Steve Guthrie. We’ve also made a few fitting liturgies available for free download on the Every Moment Holy website. The Hutchmoot Podcast features some of our favorite sessions recorded at our annual conference which celebrates art, music, story, and faith in all their many intersections. Today, it is our pleasure to share a session led by Lanier Ivester and Steve Guthrie called “The Indispensable Feast” from 2021’s Hutchmoot: Homebound, in both video and audio form. Feasting is one of the foundations of human culture, both sociologically and theologically. Steve and Lanier lay groundwork both for understanding why we feast as well as providing practical advice for the occasion. Click here to listen to this episode of The Hutchmoot Podcast. Liturgies for Thanksgiving: Free Downloads Whether you find yourself surrounded by loved ones, all by yourself, or somewhere in between, we hope you are able to find peace and hope this Thanksgiving. We’ve made several liturgies from Every Moment Holy available for free PDF download on the Every Moment Holy website to assist you in prayer. Click the title of the liturgy you’d like to download below, or visit EveryMomentHoly.com/liturgies to view all available liturgy downloads. A Liturgy for the Preparation of a Meal A Liturgy for Feasting with Friends A Liturgy Before a Meal Eaten Alone A Liturgy for Leaving on Holiday Liturgies for Thanksgiving: Every Moment Holy App These liturgies are also accessible via the iOS app, which is especially useful if you plan to use them in group settings. And coming up on Cyber Monday (the 29th), all liturgy bundles—including the entirety of Volumes I and II of Every Moment Holy—will be available for download at half price. We encourage you to take advantage of this on Monday if you’re interested in adding to your on-the-go liturgy collection. 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 at sarahkatherine@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.