For 2021’s Advent season, we’ll be sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. We’re beginning today with Thomas McKenzie’s introduction to his Advent devotional, The Harpooner; Every Moment Holy’s “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season,” read by Kristyn Getty; and an ink painting by Kyra Hinton called “Remedy,” accompanied by a few words from Kyra about the piece, how it was made, and what it means to her. Enjoy. Kristyn Getty Reads “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season” from Doug McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy Download a PDF of “A Liturgy to Mark the Start of the Christmas Season” at EveryMomentHoly.com. “Remedy” by Kyra Hinton “This piece is a ‘double exposure’ where various layers of my ink paintings shine through each other to create something new. ‘Remedy’ captures the feeling of a rising sun through morning’s misty blanket, of a sunlit wisp lilting up from a warm mug, of the slightest turning heart in anticipation of a hope to come. Maybe not clear, but clearing. Maybe not yet, but soon. Maybe not here, but coming.” —Kyra Hinton Visit Kyra Hinton’s website. Introduction to The Harpooner by Thomas McKenzie In his recent memoir, Eugene Peterson compares the life of a pastor to the role of a harpooner on a nineteenth-century whaling ship. A harpooner was the member of the crew whose task was to throw his harpoon at the whale when the ship was close enough. While the rest of the crew struggled against the wind and waves, the harpooner waited, conserving his strength for the perfect moment. Eugene Peterson says it this way: In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, there is a turbulent scene in which a whaleboat scuds across a frothing ocean in pursuit of the great white whale, Moby Dick. The sailors are laboring fiercely, every muscle taut, all attention and energy concentrated on the task. The cosmic conflict between good and evil is joined; chaotic sea and demonic sea monster versus the morally outraged man, Captain Ahab. In this boat, however, there is one man who does nothing. He doesn’t hold an oar; he doesn’t perspire; he doesn’t shout. He is languid in the crash and the cursing. This man is the harpooner, quiet and poised, waiting. And this this sentence:”To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world Musgraves start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.” … History is a novel of spiritual conflict. The church is a whaleboat. In such a world, noise is inevitable, and immense energy is expended. But if there is no harpooner in the boat, there will be no proper finish to the chase. Or if the harpooner is exhausted, having abandoned his assignment and become an oarsman, he will not be ready and accurate when it is time to throw his javelin… Somehow it always seems more compelling to assume the work of the oarsman, laboring mightily in a moral cause, throwing our energy into a fray we know has immortal consequence. And it always seems more dramatic to take on the outrage of a Captain Ahab, obsessed with a vision of vengeance and retaliation, brooding over the ancient injury done by the Enemy. There is, though, other important work to do. Someone must throw the dart. Some must be harpooners. —Eugene Peterson, The Pastor, pages 281-282 I have on small disagreement with Eugene Peterson. While he sees this as a way of describing the life of a pastor, I see it as a metaphor for the best kind of Christian life. Life is not about doing great things for God. Most of life is simply about being present, waiting upon the Lord, and responding when we're called. Thomas McKenzie We are called to live a life of waiting. Of course, there will be moments of strife, and we should be ready for them. But we must resist the voices that say we must be always fighting, always struggling. These voices tempt us to use all our strength in some righteous cause, throwing ourselves against the merciless storm of evil in the world. They lead us to believe that we will conquer our enemies, but the truth is that we will only destroy ourselves. Instead, we must learn the truth that God is the mighty warrior, he is the Victorious One. He is strong enough to conquer the darkness, I am not. Life is not about doing great things for God. Most of life is simply about being present, waiting upon the Lord, and responding when we’re called. This is what it means to be a harpooner. Jesus was once asked, “What must we do to do the works God requires? (John 6:28, NIV).” That is the question that most religious people ask. We want to know what we’re supposed to do in order to please God, we want to be acceptable to him. Many of us want a definite list of moral principles that we must obey. Others want to know exactly what doctrines they need to believe. Still others want to be sent into battle against the world and the devil. We want to “take a hill for Jesus,” as I once heard an excited pastor declare. But the Lord has something different in mind. “Jesus answered them, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent’ (John 6:29, NIV).” The work of God is to trust Jesus. Doing good deeds, believing the right things, and struggling against the temptations of this world are all important. But the one thing God is most interested in is that we simply rest in the love of his Son. Resting is not laziness. We aren’t called to lie stagnant, like a couch potato vegging out in front of daytime T.V. Quite the opposite. We’re called to rest like a harpooner, strong and prepared to act. Jesus put it this way in Mark’s Gospel: Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come. It’s like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with their assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!” —Mark 13:33-37 (NIV) Waiting on the Lord, being on guard until the time to act—this is the theme of Advent. But what does that look like? How do you “watch” in the real world? The purpose of this devotional guide is to help train your soul, to aid the Spirit’s work of forming you into a harpooner. View Thomas McKenzie’s Advent devotional The Harpooner in the Rabbit Room Store.

For this year’s Giving Tuesday, we’re celebrating the amazing people that make up our Rabbit Room membership. In this post, you’ll learn the stories of a few of those members—Jud Neer, Joe Thomas, Kori Morgan, Rachel Donahue, Melanie Waldman, and several more. Plus, if you’re interested in joining the membership and would like to make as big an impact as possible, we have a special opportunity for you today only. Read on to learn more. Special Giving Tuesday Opportunity Thanks to a generous donor, when you sign up to become a Rabbit Room member today, your entire first year of membership donations will be doubled in advance. That means that your initial monthly $25 donation will have a $325 impact, or a $600 impact for a yearly donation. This will be for up to 132 new members, for a total potential of $40k matched! If you’d like to learn more about what membership means to the Rabbit Room, you can read about it here. If you’d like to join us in stewarding this work and community, on a day when your gift will have a huge impact, sign up to become a member today at RabbitRoom.com/member. We’re beyond grateful for these people who resonate with the Rabbit Room’s mission and have taken up the walk with us. Thank you for being with us in membership! Video: Meet our Members Kori “I’m Kori Frazier Morgan and I first learned about the Rabbit Room from being a part of The Habit with Jonathan Rogers. During his classes throughout 2020, I saw firsthand the fellowship and encouragement that mark Rabbit Room members. After having an amazing experience at Hutchmoot, I quickly decided to join. I think membership is about learning how our art intersects with our faith and understanding that relationship better. Everyone seeks not only the good of each other’s creativity, but the good of them as people. Because I found the Rabbit Room during the pandemic, this community has been instrumental in helping me see what it means to be a writer at this unusual point in time Also, my favorite author is Flannery O’Connor. The photo above was taken last summer, when I had the chance to visit her home in Milledgeville, Georgia, and of course, meet the peacocks.” Joe “Hi! I am Joe and I am originally from India and now reside in the beautiful city of Allen, TX. As someone from a country with such limited Christian resources, I truly enjoy this immersive experience that the Rabbit Room has created through art, books, music, concerts, Hutchmoot, and so on that is grounded in Christian perspective. I am still trying to find my own art, but I really wish there was a Rabbit Room-like community in every country on earth so Godly men and women could nurture their arts and crafts and grow in maturity for Christ’s calling in our earthly journey.” Melanie “I’ve heard Pete and Andrew repeatedly mention the idea that beauty ‘pushes back the darkness.’ I didn’t really understand it at first, and I even fought with myself about it because I thought there were so many other ways I could serve or give. But I think I am finally getting it. As believers, we can and should bring light to the far reaches of the world—and as artists, we are called to push back the darkness through our art.” Hannah “Hi! I am Hannah, and I am a part of the Rabbit Room Membership. I am a born-and-raised Georgian living about an hour south of Atlanta. A proud nerd, I spent the early part of the pandemic learning to do cool tricks with my lightsaber. This picture of me, wild with joy at meeting BB8, encapsulates my nerdiness perfectly. I was introduced to the Rabbit Room by a friend during one of the most difficult seasons of my life. She played Andrew Peterson’s ‘The Rain Keeps Falling,’ and I knew I had to learn more. The Rabbit Room’s books, music, podcasts, blogs, and Hutchmoot session recordings saw me through that difficult season of my life. I became a Rabbit Room Member because I wanted to give back to the community whose content had done so much for me. The Rabbit Room community is a haven for so many people, and being a member means that I get to be a part of the welcome that was offered to me so many years ago.” Rachel “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.’ 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.” Sign up to become a member today at RabbitRoom.com/member, and your $25 donation will have a $325 impact!

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Jill Phillips, singer-songwriter and star of the Gullahorn Happy Hour along with her husband, Andy Gullahorn. Jill is also a Marriage and Family Therapist. Jill will soon be releasing a new album called Deeper Into Love, a collection of songs that take a journey through grief, healing, and redemption. In this episode, Jill and Jonathan talk about the gap between the truth and how it feels, integration and disintegration, and going boldly into the house of grief. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 48 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, 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.

The season of Christmas is, for so many of us, a crazy-busy, head-spinning, noise-making, exhausting affair. We’re supposed to feel peace on earth but our days and nights are anything but peaceful. Every heart is expected “to prepare Him room” but, like the Bethlehem Inn of Luke 2:7, there’s no room in our hearts for Jesus to make a leisurely visit, crowded as they are with worries over things that we can rarely control. We sing about silent nights, but we find ourselves tumbling from one commitment to another and our head space is anything but the language of the beloved carol, “Silent Night,” where all said to be “calm.” We confess belief in angels and virgin births and strange magi from the east, but our sermons invariably find ways to domesticate the fantastical aspects of the nativity stories and to rob us of an encounter with the truly terrifying nature of the Incarnation. We tell the children in our communities that baby Jesus “no crying he makes,” but these same children face anxieties that they struggle to articulate and fear to make public. We’re told to “repeat the sounding joy” three times, but what we really feel is deeply frustrated by all sorts of strained family dynamics that never seem to improve. And we extol the simplicity of the manger but find ourselves drowning in a torrent of messages that tell us to do more and to be more, because our happiness presumably lies in the exact opposite of what Mary and Joseph possessed at the hour of Christ’s birth. So what do we do? One thing we can do is resist the story that the “market” keeps telling us and instead read, as if for the first time, the story that Matthew and Luke tell—discovering in this re-reading something far more life-giving than we ever imagined possible. This is something that I have written about before, in The Washington Post and in Christianity Today. And it’s something that Phaedra and I have tried to wrestle with in our own family practices and in this new set of illustrated prayer cards that we’ve created, “The Light Has Come.” Our hope, it should be said, is not simply to offer practical help to celebrate the so-called reason for the season. Our hope, more critically, is to help re-imagine the season of Advent, wherein our own experiences of painful longing are not inimical to true happiness, nor a sign that we have failed in some way and are thereby being punished by God, but are rather central to God’s work of making us more like Jesus. Our hope is to help re-imagine the season of Advent, wherein our own experiences of painful longing are not inimical to true happiness, nor a sign that we have failed in some way and are thereby being punished by God, but are rather central to God's work of making us more like Jesus. W. David O. Taylor Our hope is to help re-feel our way through the often-dissonant practices of Christmas in our country, which invariably lead to a confusion of feelings about what we ought to be doing with ourselves in light of the burden of demands that we both place upon ourselves and that are placed upon us by others, “to do Christmas right.” Our hope is to help re-sense the Feast of the Epiphany as our own story too—as the story of God becoming manifest within the often-oppressive mundane circumstances of our lives, within our own challenging contexts of Christian mission, and within our own stories of displacement. Our desire, in short, is to make this tripartite season feel more truly meaningful through the media of word and image. For it is not just words in our heads that shape our sense of the good life, it is images as well—often very broken ones, too. What Stanley Hauerwas once wrote of the gospel, we believe applies also to the good work of art: “That God is lord of history means we must be able joyfully to imagine that things need not and will not go on just as they are but as God will have them.” “Fantastical” by Phaedra Taylor For us, with this collection of illustrated prayers, it means seeing with Spirit-baptized imaginations the true nature of faith and hope, joy and peace, shepherds and angels, but also our own experiences of feasting and sorrow, fear and doubt, along with the political implications of Mary’s Magnificat and the public ramifications for Christian faith in the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt. What does it mean to possess a distinctly “Christian mind” (to borrow the language of the Anglican literary critic Harry Blamires) about Christmas? How do we make space for both praise and lament on New Year’s Eve? How might the gospel teach us to begin a new thing well? How might the saints of old, who lived in such strange and distant times, help us to live well in our contemporary society? These are the kinds of questions that fired our own imaginations as we set about to make images and to write prayers that might help us to embody the gospel in our own times and places. Our hope, in the end, is that this set of prayer cards might invite people to stop, to look, and to listen to the nativity narratives in order to discover afresh a story that heals this very broken and beloved world of ours as well as to experience anew the good story of Christ’s coming in this often-harried season of the year. View “The Light Has Come” in the Rabbit Room Store.

What can our corner of the created world reveal about our creaturely and creative selves and our Designer? What can trees teach us about theology? We invite you to join us on Friday, December 10th for The Trinity Forum’s Online Conversation with Andrew Peterson on what it looks like to encounter God through the glory of creation and how deeper attentiveness to the beauty around us can awaken us to wisdom and wonder. In his lyrical and insightful new book, The God of the Garden, Andrew Peterson reflects on the formational significance of place and symbolism of nature in the spiritual life. He notes: Trees need to be still in order to grow. We need to be still in order to see that God’s work in us and around us is often slow and quiet, patient and steady. It was in this stillness that I sat in the Chapter House, watching through its windows as creation cycled through its changes, to delve into the soil of the past, to brain into the air of the present, and to strain toward the skies of the coming kingdom. —Andrew Peterson, The God of the Garden Those who register for this Online Conversation will be invited to participate in post-event discussion groups to continue the conversation! The discussion groups will be moderated by Trinity Forum representatives and aim to allow participants to more deeply engage with the ideas in the Online Conversation with other viewers. Once registered, look in your confirmation email for the link to sign-up for a discussion group. We trust this will provide a safe space for you to connect with other thoughtful folks who want to continue the conversation! Click here to register for this Online Conversation, and click here to register for the post-event discussion.

For 2021’s Advent season, we’re sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. Today’s collection includes a performance of “Hold Still” by Taylor Leonhardt; an Advent reflection by Jen Rose Yokel called “Far As the Curse is Found,” originally published to the blog in 2018; and a painting by Tim Joyner inspired by John 12:24 and Hosea 2:15 called “A Door of Hope.” Enjoy. “Far As the Curse is Found” by Jen Rose Yokel When I was a child, it was so much easier to answer if a grown-up asked, “What do you want for Christmas?” I’m old enough to remember when there was no event like getting the Sears Wish Book in the mail and spending hours poring through the pages, my sister and I circling our desires in the thin, glossy pages, staged photo shoots of broadly smiling children and the coveted toys of the moment. Growing up complicates things. If you believe the ad industry, a grown-up Christmas list is more likely to show off diamond rings, the latest smartphone, a Lexus with a giant red bow. But what if the things we want are mostly signposts aimed at our desires? Do we want the ring, or the rock-solid assurance that someone loves us? Do we want the phone, or something to signal how productive, competent, and needed we are? Do we want the car, or the status symbol, the independence to go anywhere? Do we want the things, or do we want to fill up some lack, to find something wrong in our lives and make it right? It feels a little cliche to say that the things we want most can’t be wrapped up and left under the tree, and yet the older I get, the more true it feels. Imagine me, asking you, “Seriously…what do you want for Christmas?” For a loved one with depression to feel joy again? For the cancer diagnosis to be reversed? A guarantee that you’ll make the rent this month, or scrape together enough money and time off to go home, or just to look at the news one day without feeling hopeless, to end one old year with the satisfaction that it was, indeed, for the whole world, a good year? No more let sins and sorrows grow Nor thorns infest the ground Take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter's bitter sting to spring's gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing. Jen Rose Yokel Here we are, in the thick of Advent. We’ll spend the next three weeks gathering our hope, lighting a new candle each Sunday, singing in the face of the longest nights of the year. We celebrate this season of remembering every year, because even though the Christ child came—yes, he came, in a fragile body like ours to show us what God is like, and that is no small miracle—even for all the things Jesus has made right, we are still well aware that we’re living in the wait. Every year, I find myself resonating more and more with the sometimes forgotten third verse of “Joy to the World.” I suppose thoughts of sorrow, thorns, and curses don’t exactly drum up holiday cheer, but something in me resonates when I hear those words. They capture the soul of Advent, the waiting, the intense anticipation for reversal. They hint at a story too good to be true. Jesus has come to make many things right. I believe he did. I believe he still is and that we’re invited to be part of it. But in another Advent season, the wait can be so hard sometimes. He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found Far as the curse is found. Maybe farther. Hope, renewal, joy, flooding across the nearly-dead earth to drown the weeds. Sometimes, I can almost feel it. The first great curse is that we toil, surviving by sweat and tears and waging battle against thorns and drought and disease. Of course the beauty is there, but our joys and sustenance are tempered by futility, the sense that we can never do enough, or be enough, or win. But take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter’s bitter sting to spring’s gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing. Joy to the weary, broken, beautiful world. “Hold Still” by Taylor Leonhardt You’re on the move again Saying you’re through again Don’t know what to do again You’re on your own Walking the streets tonight Under a neon light Just want some peace and quiet I know Hold still, don’t run You’ll never find the love you want If you take off when it gets real You wanna be held; you gotta hold still You’ve heard it all before The tired metaphors Don’t move you anymore You’re out of tears If you get cold enough Maybe come close enough To let somebody love you Maybe me Everybody has to land sometime You’re born to fly, I know I’ve been watching from the ground Sending smoke signals In case you need a little sign it’s safe To come down No shame in coming back From all that greener grass Turns out you never lacked a thing Click here to listen to this song on Spotify and here to listen on Apple Music. And click here to listen to an interview with Taylor Leonhardt and producer Lucas Morton about this song on The Second Muse. “A Door of Hope” by Tim Joyner 6’ x 3’ Foraged pigment and brass leaf on maple-mounted washi “This painting was created as an iteration of a progressive altarpiece designed for Trinity Church in Bolton, MA. Based on John 12:24 (“unless a grain of wheat is planted in the ground and dies, it remains a solitary seed. But when it is planted, it produces in death a great harvest”), the altarpiece examined different aspects of the paradoxical nature of the Gospel through the framework of the Church year. Advent is the season of two-edged hope, when we experience both the excitement of anticipation and the pang of longing. For those of us not raised in a liturgical tradition, the pairing of this season of hope with practices centered around fasting and repentance can feel uncomfortable at times. This paradox is, of course, intentional and representative of the deep truths of the Gospel. In remembering our spiritual darkness, we are made all the more aware of our need of Christ’s Light. We see Jesus’s counter-cultural, counter-intuitive truth asserting itself again: life comes only through death. The title for the Advent iteration of the piece is taken from Hosea 2:15, wherein God promises to Israel through the prophet that he will “make the Valley of Trouble a Door of Hope.” This prophecy refers directly to Joshua 7. At the gates of the Promised Land, after the defeat of Jericho, the Israelites are commanded to not take any plunder. Because of one man’s disobedience of this command, God’s blessing leaves the nation and they are defeated in their very next battle. There, in the Valley of Achor (trouble), in the place of defeat, this sin and disobedience is rooted out and God’s favor returns to the Israelites. Joshua renews the Covenant and a door into the Promised Land is opened. Jesus himself, of course, is the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy. In John 10 he says “I am the Door. If anyone enters by me he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” In this declaration, Christ identifies himself with Hosea’s door—the door through which we can enter the promised land of salvation. But more broadly, we see here the fundamental transformation of the Valley of Trouble into the Door of Hope. All the way back in Genesis, when Adam and Eve first ate the fruit at the urging of the Serpent, God pronounces their doom. To Eve he tells of pain in childbirth and restlessness unfulfilled. To Adam he tells of endless toil and a cursed earth, bearing thorns instead of fruit. The path of the story of mankind swiftly descends into the Valley of Trouble and seems to stay within in its dark walls far longer we’d like. But in Christ we see the Curse taken up and transmuted into Hope. It was through the painful, bloody process of childbirth that the hope of all mankind was delivered to this world. And eventually this child would be buried into the barren earth, only to produce in death a great harvest. The curse itself becomes the cure, and we see the Valley of Trouble transformed at last into the Door of Hope.” —Tim Joyner

[Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, Lancia E. Smith at The Cultivating Project shared an in-depth interview with author Ben Palpant about his new book, Letters from the Mountain. We enjoyed it so much that we’re sharing it in its entirety here, with Cultivating’s permission. We hope that Lancia & Ben’s conversation inspires you in your own creative work, and if you find yourself wanting to hear more from Ben, you can find Letters from the Mountain in the Rabbit Room Store.] Ben Palpant is the author of a beautiful new book written for writers and for all those who labour to create art. While written to his own daughter, Letters from the Mountain could just as easily have been written to any one of us. The language throughout this book is kindhearted and careful, but it is also brave. It openly names the dangers and challenges we face as we labour to be faithful in our calling. Ben’s previous works bear this same signature of finely crafted words that inspire, reveal, encourage, and commune. Letters from the Mountain will be referred to countless times by those looking for guidance and a kindly light cast on the sometimes dark and hard paths we follow. This interview gives you a glimpse of the man behind the book. We are honoured to share it with you. Happy reading and many blessings to you! Lancia E. Smith: Ben, over the past few years you’ve written several volumes of work in the genres of poetry and memoir, including one that I have particularly loved—A Small Cup of Light. You also authored and created a writer’s journal (in two versions) that can be used alongside your newest release, Letters from the Mountain, a memoir of writing craft and the pursuit of living well. Was there a genesis incident that sparked the idea for Letters, or did it begin to emerge more as ideas persistently bubbling up? Ben Palpant: Everything else I’ve written has had a genesis moment, some idea that knocked on my heart louder than the rest. This one was unique in that I didn’t write it originally as a book, but as letters to my daughter. It was just a matter of practicality, really. She went off to college and we still had stuff to talk about. She’d email me her questions about creativity and faith or she’d call me on the phone and off I’d go with a long-winded response. After quite a while, I started wondering if these exchanges would be helpful to my former students or others who wrestle with the same questions I do, so I started compiling them into topics more formally. To be honest, this book started out as an uncompiled collection of random thoughts in the style of Pascal’s Pensées. Since I’m not nearly as profound as Pascal, it was just a frustrating experience for early manuscript readers. Good editors set me straight. Thinking back on this, I can say that this book is actually the continuation of a life-long conversation that started when my daughter was tiny. As I recount in the book, I caught her scrawling on a shiny blue rental car when she was three years old. When I snatched her up and gave her a fatherly exhortation, she was genuinely surprised. Her beautiful big eyes brimmed with tears and she said, “But Daddy, I was just painting a pretty picture.” I knew then and there that she was going to need some help channeling her creativity. It was certainly one of those moments (and I had many of them) when I realized that telling her to stop wasn’t a satisfactory answer to creativity’s impulse—an impulse God gave to her. What’s more, she’s always been very observant, and she’s always asked questions of me that required some thought. Since I was growing into the writer’s life right in front of her, she watched me and asked me questions. And now, twenty plus years later, those conversations have been published so she can access them anytime and, Lord willing, give them to her kids someday when I’m not around to talk about these things in person. That’s the hope anyway. LES: Letters from the Mountain is an especially beautiful edition with lovely paper, cover design (with French flaps) a delightful design layout, and fabulous font use. It is so compelling aesthetically that it makes this paperback edition more desirable than many hardcopy books ever are. As I understand it, you designed the book as well as wrote it. You also designed both versions of your journals for writers and the book Honey from the Lion’s Mouth. It is not common practice for an author to design their books as well as write them. Would you tell us about designing your books and what has drawn you to that? How does that activity influence the way you see the final product of your writing work? BP: Rabbit Room Press has always impressed me by their intentional pursuit of beauty, from content to design, so I was honored when they asked me to design the inside and outside of the book. What a rare opportunity for an author. I think many authors care about what their book looks like and feels like (as they should), but not many get to do anything about it. I started studying font design and cover design many years ago in an effort to learn how to maximize a book’s impact for a reader. It’s amazing how the little, overlooked decisions (like the amount of page margin or space between letters) change the way a reader enters the reading experience. Why did I start studying design? Probably because I wanted to submerge myself into the holistic writing life, not just put words on a page. For me, the process of writing looks like this: I start with an idea. Then I put words on a page, one at a time, to try and recreate that idea as faithfully and vividly as I can in another person’s mind. After I’ve got a good idea what the book is going to sound like and feel like to a reader, I start thinking about the cover. When I’m stalled in my writing or frustrated or tired, I start working on the cover design. It’s a refreshing break from thinking in terms of words all of the time. I probably churned through fifty different cover ideas during the process of writing this book. None of them made the final cut, but the process helped me get a sense for what I wanted to say in the book and how I wanted to say it. When it comes to my creative process, content feeds design and design feeds content creation. I can tell you that getting involved with the design of the book has given me an even greater love for the final product. Every author feels a kind of parental joy and excitement and nervousness when their book gets released into the world, but I think those feelings are augmented by my involvement in every aspect of the book, not just the content. LES: How did you become acquainted with the Rabbit Room Press and what led to choosing them to publish this new work? BP: The road to Rabbit Room Press was circuitous. I’m not sure I trust my memory at this point, but I didn’t actually send my manuscript to them directly. I sent it to a fellow writer for feedback. That author had connections to Rabbit Room Press and suggested it might be a good fit. I didn’t know much about them at the time. All I had heard about (and valued from a distance) was the Rabbit Room community and Hutchmoot (their annual conference). So that author passed it along personally to them and that’s how it started. Once they’d read the manuscript, they reached out to me. Rabbit Room doesn’t publish many books in a year and that’s one of many reasons I like them. They’re not interested in cranking out books, but instead really care about the author/publisher relationship and they want to stay invested in the authors they publish. That requires a depth of trust on their part that I really admire. It also means there needs to be a fair amount of ideological and personal alignment and, in the long run, a kind of friendship that goes beyond the printed page. I like everything about that, and I consider myself lucky to have partnered with them in making something that we hope will be a treasured gift. LES: You have invested much of your life writing with the concern to teach, not preach. Why does it matter to you to teach people to write well? BP: I have taught for over twenty years. The longer I’ve taught, the more I feel like I have to learn. One of the lessons that I learned early in my career by watching great teachers is that they don’t talk at us, they talk to us. Poor teachers have something to say, great teachers have something to give. They may give it in various ways with various degrees of intensity and vigor, but in the end, the spirit behind the teaching is always a matter of gift. I’ve tried to imitate them in my teaching and in my writing. This book is more didactic than anything else I’ve written (outside of Honey From the Lion’s Mouth), but I tried to utilize everything I’ve done before (memoir, poetry) to make it feel more conversational than a typical teaching book. It also helped that I was talking to my daughter. I suppose there have been many times that I’ve talked at her, but I’ve found it hard to talk at people with whom you have a relationship. Most people talk at each other because there’s no shared relationship. They may feel like they have a certain amount of authority, but that’s not enough to compel someone to listen. People are compelled by relationship and relationship can be developed by the way we speak to one another. This might be a digression, but it seems worth mentioning. One of the hopes I have for this book is that it would help writers jettison a platform-building mentality in favor of a gift mentality. It’s not about what you can get from your audience or from a publisher, but what you can give. That heart change will affect not only what you say, but how you say it. The tone of your writing will change because you’re not trying to shoulder your way into the public discourse. You’ll stop trying to talk over everyone else and start writing/speaking/creating differently. It’s no less authoritative. In fact, it’s a kind of strength that’s secured by something deeper than public recognition or praise. It’s the kind of authority I imagine Christ had when he walked the earth. Matthew 7:29 says, “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” I’m sure there’s much to unpack in that verse, but I think one of the differences between Christ and the scribes is that he spoke to people and they spoke at people. The difference is palpable, and the effects are lasting. But I still haven’t truly answered your question. Why does it matter to me to teach people to write well? I suppose it’s because once a teacher, always a teacher. But it’s also because my daughter needed these intimate conversations to help her along the way. Maybe others do too. We’re all somewhere on the mountain. I have more experience than some who are following me and I have much less than others. I see this book as a way to create cairns, little stacks of rocks that serve as markers to point travelers in the right direction. Everything I put in these letters was gleaned by following others who are further up the mountain than I am. Nothing in this book is original to me. LES: One of the deep refrains in Letters from the Mountain is the essential call to not simply write well but to live well. How does writing well feed a life well-lived? How does a well-lived life inform and feed writing well? Are there measures we can use to assess what makes for a well-lived life? BP: Just this evening, during dinner, my daughter and I were talking about this very topic. We shape words, but forget that the words shape us in the process. There’s a circular nourishment that happens in a writer’s life. The manor in which one lives daily life dictates the kind of words—even the tone and trajectory of those words—that one writes on the page. At the same time, the way a person writes and the content of those words shapes the way he thinks and feels. Jesus said that what comes out of us is simply the heart’s overflow (Mt. 12:34). That goes for writers and artists in particular. How we view life, how we wake up and engage life, and how we respond to daily frustrations or obstacles dictates the kind of art we produce. Likewise, what an artist creates will shape his outlook on life. There’s a clear correspondence. Sin, for example, doesn’t just impact us spiritually or relationally, it also impacts our creativity. The health of one’s body and one’s friendships and one’s marriage all have their impact on creativity. Or that relational collapse leads to poor creativity. Rather, that you should expect a correspondence between your life and your creativity. If you want to create lasting and generative work, you should try to live accordingly. LES: This statement in your chapter titled “The Writing Life” captures something essential to the call of what we do in Cultivating and The Cultivating Project. “Christians waste a lot of energy trying to impact culture rather than investing in people who create culture. Such labor requires that generative writers be patient in their perspective, intentional in their work, and charged with a transcendent vision.” There is a counter-intuitive work asked for in investing in individuals rather than trying to impact an entire culture. It is costly work to labour deeply over a few people rather than superficially over many. How do you, Ben, anchor yourself to do this costly work of investing in a few when the world at large so persistently says success is measured by numbers and head count rather than marks of transformation? BP: Okay, I’m no Latin scholar so don’t take my word for it, but I believe that the Latin word cultūra ( from which we get the word, culture), comes from cultus, which, according to the inter web, is the perfect passive participle of colō (“I till, cultivate”). That’s just a sesquipedalian (I just discovered this word and loved it so much that I had to drop it into this interview. Isn’t it gnarly?) way of saying that I think the garden is a helpful metaphor by which to live when it comes to culture care. Good gardeners tend to the ground right in front of them, and they beautify it by their patient labor. So when it comes to cultural cultivation, I till the metaphorical ground in front of me. Or at least I try. That mentality keeps me from thinking about the entire garden called the world and it prevents me from thinking that gardening is about my publicity. My job isn’t to parade myself or my work, it’s to cultivate the world (especially the people) around me in hopes that God would use me to beautify whatever and whomever I impact. That seems to me to be an ambitious enough project without complicating it with a drive for success or fame. LES: In your writing career, you pay concerted attention to the issues of remembering and how we frame the narratives of our pasts. This is reflected not only in A Small Cup of Light, but in Honey from the Lion’s Mouth, and your volumes of poetry. One of the remarks that lingers with me in Andrew Peterson’s new book, The God of the Garden, was made by his counselor who said, “I’ve never met anyone who could correctly interpret their own childhood.” Why is accurate remembering so significant to you and why do you share that publicly? BP: I think there’s a difference between remembering our past and interpreting it. Throughout scripture God calls his people to remember. The act of remembering is a matter of faith. When Moses was preparing the people to live in the promised land, he often used the phrase, “Do not forget.” In Deuteronomy 4:9, he says, “be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” Someone once told me that best practices for faithful living require driving forward while watching the rearview mirror. God’s faithfulness in the past enables us to trust him for the unknowns ahead of us. His reliability is reinforced when we remember and there’s no other way, certainly no short cut, to building faith. One of the hopes I have for this book is that it would help writers jettison a platform-building mentality in favor of a gift mentality. It’s not about what you can get from your audience or from a publisher, but what you can give. That heart change will affect not only what you say, but how you say it. The tone of your writing will change because you’re not trying to shoulder your way into the public discourse. Ben Palpant And for clarity’s sake, let me just say that God calls us to remember the hardships and not just the miracle moments in life. I wrote A Small Cup of Light largely for myself, to help me remember the story of my health collapse and the lessons I learned along the way. As the years progressed, those things were fading from my heart. Those were some of the most difficult times of my life, a kind of crucible that I don’t want to relive, but that I should still remember. At the most basic level, the old maxim is true: those who forget history are bound to repeat it. That being said, I’m well aware that memory is a complex issue. Andrew Peterson’s book is a wonderful example of how to remember well; meaning, how to remember the past without thinking that your perspective is infallible. If your readers haven’t read The God of the Garden, I highly recommend it. Somehow, God knows how to redeem our fallible memories and our broken pasts in a way that is beautiful. Maybe not yet, but certainly someday. In the meantime, we try to remember the past as faithfully and as accurately as possible without revising it, twisting it, abolishing it, or ignoring it. Memory always has a filter. We see through that filter and we should take care that the filter is clear. The only trustworthy filter is God’s word. Faithful and accurate remembering, then, depends upon seeing the way God sees. I think that’s one reason why God gave us the Bible—so we could learn to see. The interpretation of what we’ve seen will be skewed in proportion to our distance from God and our ignorance of his word. And we won’t see the whole picture until the other side. Indeed, we see through a smudged window right now, but someday, we will see clearly. “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I’m no scholar and I don’t pretend to have this whole memory thing figured out, but that’s my stab at it so far. All I know is that God tells me to remember and to tell the stories of his faithfulness. That’s why we have a Joshua Basket in the middle of our table. When the Israelites crossed the Jordan river, God told the priests to gather 12 big rocks from the river and build an altar so that when their children saw the stack of rocks and asked, “Dad, what are these rocks for?” they could tell their kids the story of what God had done. Our Joshua Basket has some, not all, of the key events in our life. Each rock has a date and a short description. The birth of a child. The death of a loved one. The accidents and the miracles. These rocks helps us commemorate the sad and the joyous markers in our story. Notice that I didn’t call them “bad” and “good.” That’s an interpretation only God can assign, I think. Some events that I would have called bad have been important moments in what turned out to be really good. Interpreting what God was actually doing in and through the event is difficult to do accurately. But we can certainly remember what we saw and try to see with biblical eyes, not simply our own. LES: Ben, you hold something unusual in common with two of my favorite writers, S. D. Smith, and Malcolm Guite. You each had childhoods spent in Africa. S. D. Smith spent formative years in South Africa as a boy, and Malcolm Guite was born in Nigeria and lived there till he was 10. How did your years in Kenya shape the way you see the world and does that inform the way you write now? BP: Wow, that’s a question much too big to tackle adequately in a few short paragraphs. I’m sure they would agree with me that those formative years are so deeply important that it’s difficult to explain. I tend to get tongue-tied when someone says, “So you grew up in Africa, what was that like?” Your question is better than that, but I still feel tongue-tied. The three of us are what sociologists call Third Culture Kids. We tend to make ourselves at home rather quickly wherever we are, but we never feel settled inside unless our circumstances rhyme in some way with our childhood. I didn’t have any idea at the time that wandering clay footpaths through quiet countryside would shape me in significant ways. At the time, I just thought I was living a boring life in a forgotten part of the world. It wasn’t very romantic. Nevertheless, I think my childhood shaped me in three distinct ways: it wired me to live at a certain speed, to see people a certain way, and to value certain things more than others. Here’s the short explanation to each of those. Speed of life: My childhood was a slow experience. There wasn’t much rush because there wasn’t much to do and there wasn’t anywhere to go that you couldn’t reach on your own two feet. We had our fun, don’t get me wrong, and we ran as much or more as any kid does these days. But we weren’t driving at 60mph from one one event to another, shoving food down as fuel before rushing off to another activity. Cooking our meals took time. We had no microwave. We had a little Ford Escort, so our transportation was limited. We lived on a shared generator, so late night activities were also limited. Those shaped me. I think they have shaped the rhythms and the depth of my writing. Now don’t get me wrong. I like my microwave and my Toyota Highlander and my electricity. I’m writing this right now on a computer that’s a technological miracle I would never have dreamed of back when I was a kid and I’m not that old, no matter what my kids say. I’m also writing this late at night beneath a lamp that can run until dawn if I so wish. But I don’t wish. I’ll go to bed shortly. Nevertheless, these things have a shaping affect on my children that they do not understand because it’s “normal” to them. People: The small community in which I grew up valued people, especially (so it seemed to me at the time) the elderly. One of the biggest culture shocks for me upon returning to the United States was the way we treat old people, even parents. But people in general mattered very much. Front doors were always open so that anyone could enter at any time and one never knows when one will entertain an angel (Hebrews 13:2). They gave themselves a fighting chance to entertain at least one angel in life by entertaining whoever passed through. Around my neck of the woods, we tend to only entertain ourselves. Is that too strong? Probably. At any rate, having people over is a rare occasion (and I’m as guilty as anyone). So the way we speak to or at each other is formed largely by our social media and not formed by intimate conversation over food. I think that difference has impacted the tone of my writing. Valuing certain things: An affluent culture like ours will inevitably invariably overvalue certain things that are cheap and undervalue other things that are priceless. It will also increase our appetites. No longer is a Tonka truck satisfactory on a kid’s birthday. Now, the floodgates of the local toy emporium must be opened wide for a child’s appetite to be assuaged. I have found that my appetite has grown to excess just as my children’s have. Still, there’s a part of me that values simplicity and quiet and stillness (nourished in me by my childhood in Africa) and those probably make their way into my writing in ways that are hard to identify. LES: In the way that you live, teach, and write, you model something essential to living a whole life and writing with significance—the importance of the company we keep. How do you personally cultivate the relationships that nourish your life and give it meaning? Do you ever need to discern where to draw lines in relationships that are not life-giving? BP: I’d like to deflect this question—a really difficult and profound one like these others you have given—with some cupcake questions that I’ve been waiting for without any sign of reprieve. Questions like these: BP: What’s your favorite color? Blue, thanks for asking. I know, not very original. BP: Do you believe in vegetables? No. BP: What’s your favorite hobby? Fly-fishing. I can’t wait to fly-fish in eternity. I’ll be able to actually catch something. BP: How many dogs do you have? 2 Okay, I think I can get back to your deep questions now. I’ve given about half of my life to a small classical Christian school and nearly twenty years to one small church which has allowed me the rare opportunity of planting deep relational roots. I made the decision many years ago to try and stay put for as long as I can for the sake of myself and my family. I’ve experienced my fair share of relational hardships (whether the cause or not), but the process of sinning against each other and deliberately pursuing repentance and forgiveness is the glue of healthy life in community. That’s certainly true of marriage, right? Even in these close communities, I gravitate toward some people more than others. I suppose that’s natural. But I try to cultivate relationships with people who make me better as a human being and most of the people around me do that. Regarding your last question about discerning where to draw lines in relationships, I always found it difficult to notice when some people impacted my life negatively. Other, more godly people had to come alongside and point it out to me. As I got older, I started to notice the traits that godly people held in common and then I tried to hang out with them so I didn’t get swept into the other relationships, even though they might be more attractive. What were some of those traits? They pray more than me. They love reading the Bible more than me. They’re more thankful than me. They serve without complaint, unlike me. They do their duty, unlike me. They’re also more generally down to earth than me. LES: On Jonathan Rogers’ podcast for The Habit you mention the desolation of longing that music can evoke in us. I have certainly experienced that with music, but also in passages of literature, in photography and films, and in the garden. It is an unexpected stirring of a memory of the Home for which I am made but am yet in exile from. I know many who have pursued that longing in destructive ways, but is there a faithful way for us to cultivate that “longing for the other side” and have it serve as a kind of compass pointing the way Home? Is there also a way to strike a counterbalance to that longing by being able to accept with contentment what is good right in our present midst? BP: It doesn’t take much for me to feel that way! The way the clouds hung low and rolled in over the hills today made me stop in my tracks. Lines of poetry. The unadulterated happiness and love in my kids greeting me. But yes, I feel torn by the longing and it usually keeps me from doing my duty. The answer to this question probably goes back to the previous answer I gave to your last question. Godly people help me lots. They have the same longings, but they keep working faithfully without complaint. Duty isn’t a four letter word to them. They are my counterbalance. I think it also helps to find activities that are fulfilling and help you feel like you did something beautiful, that something you’re doing became a kind of bridge between the now and the not yet. Writing does that for me. Gardening. Drawing or painting. Reading Steinbeck or Li-Young Lee or William Saroyan. But you still have to do the dishes. If you let transcendence have its sway, you’ll end up being unfaithful in what God has put right in front of you. That being said, I don’t think it’s a bad policy to get your work done so you have margin to enjoy the transcendent. LES: One of the most prevalent elements to your writing, and something evident on every page of Letters from the Mountain, is the presence of love. You use a voice that is personal, familiar, and feels as if you are leaning forward to get a little closer while you write. You demonstrate something that Jonathan Rogers talks about in his two part blog titled “Love Thy Reader.” Transformative writing is rooted in love. This same idea is the premise of the splendid book, Charitable Writing, by Richard Gibson and James Beitler III. When we write from the position of loving the reader, how we phrase things and how we organize them shifts. We are less concerned with being impressive than with our message serving our reader and being clear. But writing as a craft is done largely in solitude. When we are writing we are not generally in the company of others. How do you cultivate a practice of loving your reader when the work is done somewhat in a vacuum, and when you can’t see the faces of the people to whom you are writing? BP: Well, you’re very kind to say that. That tone is thanks, in part, to my editors who know what I desire and can help me achieve that tone. I love that picture of leaning forward to get a little closer while I write. That captures the honesty and intimacy and vulnerability that I’m trying to achieve in my writing. I’ve learned to do that over time by purposefully selecting two or three people for whom I’m writing the book. They don’t know it (except in this case, obviously), but having them right before me while I write a poem or a story helps me tailor my words for them. C.S. Lewis achieved a rare kind of simplicity and beauty and intimacy by writing for his nephews and nieces. Lewis Carol did the same. I think it’s a great practice and it keeps us from trying to reach a certain demographic. Writing for an age group has always been a trap for me. I start writing for the wrong reasons and then the quality of work falls off dramatically. Choose a couple of people. Write for them and you’ll find that your work is not only better, but it will minister to more hearts than just the two or three people to whom you wrote. LES: Letters from the Mountain reads like a long benediction for the writing life and the craft of living well. In fact, you close each chapter with a benediction. Why did you choose to close the chapters that way? Would you close us out here as fellow craftsmen and writers with a benediction for us as we go forward to tend to our living? BP: A benediction is simply a gifting of a blessing. I used to give a benediction to my daughter when I put her to bed. Sometimes I still do it when she’s home for a visit. It seemed fitting that I would continue that relational habit in my written letters to her and I can’t think of a better, richer, more helpful benediction than that same one for you all, my fellow craftsmen and writers. It comes from Numbers 6:24-26 and stands tall among the many benedictions throughout scripture. I’d like to break it up in a different way in hopes that it might impact us in a new and refreshing way. This is my gift to you: The LORD bless you and keep you; The LORD make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The LORD lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” This interview originally appeared on The Cultivating Project. Check out their website, if you haven’t already! Click here to view Letters from the Mountain by Ben Palpant in the Rabbit Room Store.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Daniel Grothe, pastor, rancher, and author of The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age. In this episode, Daniel and Jonathan discuss embracing obligation, the value of thinking small, and the possibility that God is a materialist. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 49 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, 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.

Jonny Jimison is back with a special, River Fox-themed edition of his beloved comic, Rabbit Trails. Click here to pick up a copy of his latest, full-color graphic novel, The River Fox. And click here to visit Jonny Jimison’s website.

At the end of Jonathan Roger’s podcast, The Habit, he always asks his guests, “What writers make you want to write?” I love listening to people’s answers—to find out who has encouraged them or given them a vision for writing. I always smile when people say either C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien… because, me, too! The question could also be asked as “What artists make you want to create art?” or “What singers make you want to sing your own songs?” I believe that at the root of these queries is the question, “Who moves you to find more in yourself to be creative, using your own gifts and voice and vision for others? Who helps you live out being made in the image of a creative God?” And perhaps even deeper, “Who do you encourage to help live out their creativity in the image of God?” My husband Ned and I have talked often about this idea, many times leading us to discuss who encourages us to live creative, generative lives in our community. The Merriam-Webster definition of generative is having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, or reproducing. What a utilitarian definition of such a poetic idea! Painter Makoto Fujimura puts it a bit differently when he writes, “When we are generative, we draw on creativity to bring into being something fresh and life-giving.” For Ned and me, the idea of being generative solidified in our minds when we were with Fujimura at The Philadelphia Museum of Art looking at the show Cezanne and Beyond, a major Paul Cézanne exhibit. Mako has a wealth of understanding about the language of art, and he helps others see contemporary artwork more clearly. He mentioned that Cézanne was a “generative” artist. And as we continued to walk around the museum, we talked about Cézanne as someone who opened up beauty to us, inspiring us to create or appreciate the world. In contrast, Pablo Picasso (although brilliant) tends to shut the door to almost any conversation. Mako explained that Picasso takes a visual idea to its utter end while Cézanne would give you ideas and suggestions of paths you could follow after he was gone. Since that conversation I have kept my eyes open for writers and art-makers that free my heart and mind to keep creating and to find more of myself in the creative process, in hopes of encouraging others. For example, writers like Madeline L’Engle, Luci Shaw, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Seamus Heaney offer something to me that keep me paying attention to the world and my reactions to it. In his essay “On Becoming Generative: An Introduction to Culture Care” Mako posits that being generative includes genesis moments, generosity, and generational thinking. Genesis moments are an artist’s own moments of beginning, through inspiration, work, and even failure. An artist’s genesis moments can then offer genesis moments to others, sparking a movement in creativity they had not experienced. Generosity comes from an open heart and open hands to others. It’s offering something out of an overflow; it is not holding back out of fear or scarcity. And generational thinking is about dialoguing with past artists to create something with which future generations can dialogue and from which they can create. Mako writes: Generative thinking is fueled by generosity because it so often must work against a mindset that has survival and utility in the foreground. In a culture like that, generosity has an unexpectedness that can set the context for the renewal of our hearts. An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction—because it is a gift. —Makoto Fujimura I have seen this idea worked out in the Rabbit Room community. Andrew Peterson wrote, “One of the central tenets of the Rabbit Room is that art nourishes community, and community nourishes art. If you want to write good books, good songs, good poems, you need some talent, yes. You also need to work hard, practice a lot, cultivate self-discipline, and study the greats. But you also need good friends. You need fellowship. You need community.” There are myriad of examples of how generative the Rabbit Room’s vision has been and how it has influenced many, many people. Genesis moments have happened in community and collaboration through activities like Pass the Piece and also through mentor relationships. Artist Stephen Crotts shares about his experience with this: “Through the Rabbit Room, I’ve had the opportunity to form relationships with artists I admire. They have become mentors to me, but have also allowed me to encourage them in their vocations. Now, I even get to exchange critiques with some of my heroes.” Relationships like this have become seeds for more creative genesis moments. Rabbit Room folks have been generous in their sharing of words, music, and art making. Eddy Efaw bears witness to how this abundance of ideas has been generative for him: “For me, the deep impact of the Rabbit Room began with the first Hutchmoot I attended in 2011 when I was introduced to the idea of thinking about my artistic life and my spiritual life as being integrated and not compartmentalized. This seed has steadily grown over the years, and now my art would feel extremely empty to me if it wasn’t informed by kingdom thinking in some way.” Our hope is that this conference will plant seeds of generativity in the imaginations of those who attend. Leslie Bustard Within this group there is much love for writers from the past—George McDonald, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien—as well as contemporary writers, musicians, and art makers. The fruit of this love has helped root the Rabbit Room community in the present, with eyes towards the hope of future flourishing for others. Singer and songwriter Hope Kemp explains it well, “These [writers] are the stalwarts they are, not just because of their writing, but because of their thinking. Their writing flows out of their ideas—and though we love the stories, it is their imagination that inspires and ignites our own. There is no other way to be creative for future generations than to do the good work of holding up the treasures made in former times.” The work of the Rabbit Room is overflowing, and the people involved have been living examples to me of what Mako has said: “We can be comfortable, even confident, in affirming a cultural contribution as generative if, over time, it recognizes, produces, or catalyzes more beauty, goodness, and flourishing.” Like many writers, musicians, and poets in the Rabbit Room, the Inklings—that group of writers connected to Lewis and Tolkien who met to share and discuss each other’s works—have been an inspiration for Ned and me in generativity. From naming our homeschool St. Clive’s Academy, Ned’s graphic design business World’s End Images, and a backyard play tower Minas Gûl, to artwork and storytelling rooted in the tradition of Lewis and Tolkien, our little home in the world (“BookEnd”) is warmed by the reflected light of the Inklings. Several years ago, after having read Diana Glyer’s Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings and having enjoyed my first Hutchmoot conference in Nashville, I started imagining what a Square Halo Books conference modeled after the spirit of Hutchmoot might look like, focusing on the creativity, collaboration, and community of the Inklings. The vision of Square Halo Books, for almost twenty-five years, has been to publish “extraordinary books for ordinary saints,” and to give writers who may not have the prerequisite platforms a place to offer their words and work. We have sought to be generative in how we care for this company, for those who write for us, and for those who read our books. Hosting a conference is a natural outworking of what we deeply care about. On February 11th and 12th, 2022, Square Halo Books is hosting our third conference in Lancaster, PA. It is called The Inklings: Creativity, Collaboration, and Community. We are offering thoughtful talks about the writers and ideas of the Inklings, as well as offering activities that will involve our attendees in creativity and collaboration in community. One Ring to Rule Them by Hannah C. Weston— beautiful artwork for the Arts Invitational, held in the Square Halo Gallery, as part of the Inklings Conference. You are invited to add your creativity to this event, too. Our main speaker is Donald T. Williams, Square Halo author of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis. Other speakers include authors Douglas McKelvey, Andrew Peterson, Christie Purifoy, Shawn Smucker, poet Christine Perrin, and illustrator John Hendrix. Friday night attendees will enjoy a talk with Matthew Dickerson, a pub night with locally-made beverages and snacks, and book release party for a new Square Halo book Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children (curated and edited by Théa Rosenburg, Carey Bustard, and me). Saturday will be full with good talks and breakout sessions, as well as a staged reading of Leaf by Niggle by two local actors, a pop-up printing workshop with Ned, a gallery full of artwork inspired by the Inklings, and tea with readings from the Inklings. And of course there has to be food—breakfast and lunch will be offered, as well as coffee and snacks. The final goodness crowning this event will be a concert given by Andrew Peterson in the Great Hall. Our own work of putting this event together has included collaboration with other local organizations, such as The Trust Performing Arts Center, Square Halo Gallery, The Row House, Reverie Actors Company, St. Boniface Craft Beer, Hammond Pretzels, and Wanderlust Coffee. Jack and Tollers by Stephen Crotts—deep conversation, drinks, and books. Come join us as we follow in the good footsteps of Lewis and Tolkien. The generative work of the Rabbit Room has been the impetus of relationships that span across the country, and some Hutchmoot friends will be helping us with this event—which makes putting this together a greater joy. Also, the Rabbit Room, as well as the Trinity Forum, The Cultivating Project, Black Barn Collective, Anselm Society and Classical Academic Press are our sponsors. It’s good to work with kindred spirits. Our hope is that this conference will plant seeds of generativity in the imaginations of those who attend; that this weekend together will be a time to encounter generosity of spirit, experience genesis moments, and enjoy the fruit of generational thinking. And, having feasted on this richness, we hope to see people take all of these ideas and experiences back across the country to the people God has given them and in the places he has planted them. When you register, you can choose which Square Halo Book you would like to receive in your welcome bag—either C. S. Lewis and the Arts or J. R. R. Tolkien and the Arts. Consider joining us this February 11th and 12th, 2022 in Lancaster, PA for The Inklings: Creativity, Collaboration, and Community conference. Click here to register for the conference. Click here to learn more about Square Halo Books and here to find Square Halo Books on Facebook. Click here to learn more about the Inkling Arts Invitational. Learn more about the sponsors for this conference at the links below: The Cultivating Project The Black Barn Collective The Trinity Forum The Anselm Society Classical Academic Press

For 2021’s Advent season, we’re sharing curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. This week’s Advent collection includes a poem & short essay by Malcolm Guite called “O Sapientia” from his Advent book Waiting on the Word; an ink painting by Kyra Hinton called “Resonance”; and a nativity song from the perspective of Joseph called “Son of David” by Graham Jones, taken from his new Advent album Good News, Great Joy. “O Sapientia” by Malcolm Guite O Sapientia O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae. O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other mightily, and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence. “O Sapientia” by Malcolm Guite I cannot think unless I have been thought, Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken. I cannot teach except as I am taught, Or break the bread except as I am broken. O Mind behind the mind through which I seek, O Light within the light by which I see, O Word beneath the words with which I speak, O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me, O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me, O Memory of time, reminding me, My Ground of Being, always grounding me, My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me, Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring, Come to me now, disguised as everything. This is the first sonnet in a sequence of seven I have written in response to the seven Advent prayers known as the ‘O Antiphons.’ In its first centuries the Church developed a custom of praying seven great prayers, calling afresh on Christ to come, addressing him by the mysterious titles found in the Old Testament, particularly in Isaiah: ‘O Wisdom!’ ‘O Root!’ ‘O Key!’ ‘O Light!’ ‘O Emmanuel!’ These prayers were said ‘antiphonally,’ as the name suggests, either side of the Magnificat at Vespers from 17 to 23 December (although in some places they begin a day earlier, on 16 December). Each antiphon begins with the invocation ‘O’ and then calls on Christ, although never by name. The mysterious titles and emblems given him from the pages of the Old Testament touch on our deepest needs and intuitions; then each antiphon prays the great Advent verb, Veni, ‘Come!’ The whole purpose of Advent is to be for a moment fully and consciously Before Christ. In that place of darkness and waiting, we look for his coming and do not presume too much that we already know or have it. Malcolm Guite There is, I think, both wisdom and humility in this strange abstention from the name of Christ in a Christian prayer. Of course, these prayers were composed AD, perhaps around the seventh century, but in another sense, Advent itself is always BC! The whole purpose of Advent is to be for a moment fully and consciously Before Christ. In that place of darkness and waiting, we look for his coming and do not presume too much that we already know or have it. Whoever compiled these prayers was able, imaginatively, to write ‘BC,’ perhaps saying to themselves: ‘If I hadn’t heard of Christ, and didn’t know the name of Jesus, I would still long for a saviour. I would still need someone to come. Who would I need? I would need a gift of Wisdom, I would need a Light, a King, a Root, a Key, a Flame.’ And poring over the pages of the Old Testament, they would find all these things promised in the coming of Christ. By calling on Christ using each of these seven several gifts and prophecies we learn afresh the meaning of a perhaps too familiar name. It might be a good Advent exercise, and paradoxically an aid to sharing the faith, if for a season we didn’t rush in our conversation to refer to the known name, the predigested knowledge, the formulae of our faith, but waited alongside our non-Christian neighbours, who are, of course, living ‘BC.’ We should perhaps count ourselves among the people who walk in darkness but look for a marvellous light. In making these seven sonnets in response to the antiphons, I have tried to do that, looking at both my own deepest needs and our common needs, to inhabit some of the darkness that waits for a light. The first antiphon is ‘O Sapientia,’ ‘O Wisdom.’ It draws on two passages from the Apocrypha praising wisdom. And it is clear from these passages that the wisdom described in this antiphon is not the private capacity of an individually wise person or the accumulated prudence of a human ‘wisdom tradition;’ it is a primal, almost pre-existent, quality of order and beauty out of which all things spring. Though they speak of wisdom in the feminine, a divine being delighting before God and with him ordering the cosmos, it is clear that for the writer of this antiphon, Sapientia is part of what John means by the Logos, ‘the Word [who] was with God’ (John 1:1), the coming Christ. In Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 (AV), we read: ‘Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things.’ And then in Ecclesiasticus, the beautiful extended passage: Wisdom shall praise herself, and shall glory in the midst of her people. In the congregation of the most High shall she open her mouth, and triumph before his power. I came out of the mouth of the most High, and covered the earth as a cloud. I dwelt in high places, and my throne is in a cloudy pillar. I alone compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep. In the waves of the sea and in all the earth, and in every people and nation, I got a possession. With all these I sought rest: and in whose inheritance shall I abide? So the Creator of all things gave me a commandment, and he that made me caused my tabernacle to rest, and said, Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thine inheritance in Israel. He created me from the beginning before the world, and I shall never fail. —Ecclesiasticus 24:1-9, AV It is this Wisdom we address, and for whose advent we pray when we look for the coming of Christ. Wisdom is both hidden and gloriously apparent. Malcolm Guite In my sonnet I wanted to convey this sense of the underlying and underpinning order of things, the ‘Mind behind the mind through which I seek … Light within the light by which I see.’ Writing the poem led me in the end to a strange paradox. The psalmist is taunted by the question, ‘Where is now your God?’ And it’s a question that some more militant ‘scientific’ atheists of our own day still use to taunt Christians. And in one sense we cannot directly point to God because Sapientia, this underlying coherence and beauty, is not to be found anywhere as an item in the cosmos; it is not a single being, but the ground of being itself—not a single beauty but the source of all beauty. And yet, for the very same reason, there is a real sense in which we can point to everything, ‘from one end to the other’ of the cosmos, and say, ‘There, can’t you see?’ For wisdom is both hidden and gloriously apparent. Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring, Come to me now, disguised as everything. Click here to view Waiting on the Word in the Rabbit Room Store. “Resonance” by Kyra Hinton “This piece is another ‘double exposure’ where layers of my ink paintings mix with each other to create something new. ‘Resonance’ captures the feeling of the warm light from an open door cast across a stone street, of campfire sparks rising to mingle with cold stars, of solo wafting notes finding consonance with unfamiliar melodies. Longing meets connection. Just a bit further up. Just a little further in.” —Kyra Hinton Click here to visit Kyra’s website. “Son of David” by Graham Jones O God, what do I do with this horrible news? What do I do with a girl who is due To give birth months before we are to wed? Why me? For so long I waited for someone who is right Who tries to live blameless in your sight But now it seems that hopeful dream has died Still I don’t want to bring her further shame I need to end this and send her away But I don’t know if it’s the right thing Is everything that’s happening really happening for a reason? Where are you in this brokenness? Will you help this son of David? This son of David “Joseph, son of David, Do not fear to wed young Mary For that which is conceived in her Is from the Holy Spirit” O what a mystery you have revealed Apparent failure turned to God’s own will The ancient prophets’ words are now fulfilled For everything that’s happening is happening for a reason “Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear Emmanuel” For everything that’s happening is happening for a reason You’re working in our brokenness to send your promised Savior The Son of David, Son of David Click here to listen to Good News, Great Joy on Spotify and here to listen on Apple Music. Click here to visit Graham Jones’s website, here to follow him on Facebook, and here to follow him on Instagram.

We first shared this liturgy in March 2020, in the wake of a devastating tornado in Nashville. Nearly one year later, we shared it for our friends in Texas after their widespread blackout. And now, we share it for all who are reeling from their own devastation after this weekend’s tornadoes, especially in southern Kentucky. We’re saddened that this liturgy continues to prove so relevant, but once again, we hope and pray that it may lend words to a situation that defies description. Leader: O Christ in Whom Our Lives are Hidden, People: fix now our hope in that which alone might sustain it. O Christ in Whom Our Treasures are Secure, fix now our hope in you. In light of all that was so suddenly lost, O Lord, in light of all we had gathered but could not keep, comfort us. Our nerves are frayed, O God. Our sense of place and permanence is shaken, so be to us a foundation. We were shaped by this place, and by the living of our lives in it, by conversations and labors and studies, by meals prepared and shared, by love incarnated in a thousand small actions that became as permanent a part of this structure as any nail or wire or plank of wood. Our home was to us like a handprint of heaven. It was our haven, and now we are displaced, and faced with the task of great labors—not to move forward in this life, but merely to rebuild and restore what has been lost. Have mercy, Lord Christ. What we have lost here, are the artifacts of our journey in this world, the very things that reminded us of your grace expressed in love and friendship, and in shared experience. Let our rebuilding be a declaration that a day will come when all good things are permanent, when disaster and decay will have no place, when dwellings will stand forever, and when no more lives will be disrupted by death, tragedy, reversal, or loss. So by that eternal vision, shape our vision for what this temporary home might become in its repair, O Lord, that in that process of planning and rebuilding we might also streamline our lives for stewardship, for service, and for hospitality in the years ahead. But those are all tasks for tomorrow. We do not even know yet today the full measure of what we have lost. Today is for mourning. So let us grieve together as those who know the world is broken, but who yet hold hope of its restoration. A moment of silence is observed. Then any who wish to speak aloud their specific expressions of grief may do so. The leader then continues with these words read by all: Comfort us, O Lord, in the wake of what has overtaken us. Shield us, O Lord, from the hurts we cannot bear. Shelter us, O Lord, in the fortress of your love. Shepherd us, O Lord, as we wake each new morning, faced with the burdens of a hard pilgrimage we would not have chosen. But as this is now our path, let us walk it in faith, and let us walk it bravely, knowing that you go always before us. Amen. —from Every Moment Holy by Doug McKelvey Please join us in praying for all those in Kentucky who suffered loss of any kind. You can download a PDF of this liturgy here.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Shawn Smucker, who has published five novels in the last five years—most recently, The Weight of Memory. Shawn has also co-written some thirty books. He and his wife Maile Silva coach, teach, and encourage other writers in a creative community they call The Stories Between Us. They host a podcast of the same name. In this episode, Shawn and Jonathan discuss revision, point of view, and when it’s okay for writers to stop pushing and take a break. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 50 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, 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.

Dear Dare I Asketh Thee, Doug? I have been way waaaay waaaaaaaaay into your column for more than a year now, poring over it for a strictly regimented 16 hours per day in order to puzzle out the clandestine clues and hidden codes you have so expertly embedded in your obscure phrasings. I regularly post such findings on a social media account that now has 17 million inexplicably credulous followers ready to act upon your veiled suggestions. I am writing today to ask for confirmation of—and further clarification regarding—some of my prevailing theories about your (now our) covert agendas. Reading between the lines, I have deduced that you have gained access to data that proves gravity is optional and on July 17 will demonstrate this by aggressively reversing all gravity worldwide, and thereby jettisoning forever from the earth all of the “untethered flotsam” who refuse to unbelieve in gravity, and who will therefore remain “unbuckled” on that great day of reckoning. Secondly, it is my understanding that you wish your followers to wear vole-trimmed, purple capes (representing something I’m not yet certain of, but that I nonetheless recognize as of utmost significance to our cause), and thirdly that you wish us to militantly push an agenda denouncing “Space Ice!” Finally, I am pleased to report that I have cleverly detected multiple words of exactly three syllables in your columns—words such as premium, government, and knee-shine (if you count the hyphen as a silent second syllable, which I’m pretty sure is what you wanted). I assume these 3-syllable words are intended to direct our attention to the number three, and thereby to the 1975 Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway movie “Three Days of the Condor,” which is in turn a subtle reference directing us to call into question all recent CIA activities and/or to maintain a vigilant suspicion of condors. Could you kindly confirm these theories (in further code, if necessary)? I would hate for our burgeoning conspiracy movement to go off the rails due to the admittedly slim possibility that we might have connected “a few of the wrong dots” as it were. Conspiratorially (but not the crazy kind!), —Desperately Decoding in Decatur _______________ Dear Decoderer, Why have we failed to toboggan? What shape skirts scare horses? Who controls two-digit trade protocols while the rest of us are sleeping? Why is the media strangely silent about sea urchins? What is the worth of a fife when all the bugles have been impounded? When did the muskrat enunciate? Was it always so lonely? What is the original name for space ice? What is the extra crispy name? How long before being five must one be four? Why must one be four? How in the world could you possibly believe that “one” must be “four”? Who is president of the oceans?1 Now please, please, please stop interrupting me, dear readers, that I might move on to my “stated purpose.” Namely, to complete this overly-protracted tale of the great Paul Harvey and of his ill-fated Abe Lincoln radio broadcast, and [SPOILER ALERT] his subsequent downfall as the nation’s most popular radio personality. Now for the love of small, Spanish goats2, let us please get on with Who Was This Paul Harvey & Why Should You Care About Part 3 of Who Was This Paul Harvey and Why Should You Care? Now, Dear Readers, where did we most recently leave off in our compelling narrative? Ah yes, right smack-dab in the middle of Paul Harvey’s ill-fated “The Rest of the Story” episode transcript. We were at the point (delivered in Harvey’s silky, saber-toothed3, midwestern croon) at which President Abraham Lincoln had, in a fit of protracted frustration and vexation, exercised the power of the “Executive Bellow,”4 to angrily and forcefully hail a moose-drawn cab. Eliminate All Space Ice!5 Now let us jump feet-first right back into the middle of the ORIGINAL Script for PAUL HARVEY’S September 27, 1977 “The Rest of the Story” RADIO BROADCAST Keep your knees well-polished, friends, just like the Harveys do, including the world-famous Harvey Quints, including Warvey the Elder! And now for the rest of the rest of the story… The rest of the story must be pieced together from the written records of two individuals: the cab driver Jed “Reeky” Pitt6, and a D.C. apothecary named Ebenezer “Untucked” Tuck.7 Lincoln, Pitt recounts, “brooded like a coiled reptile” in the bowels of the carriage, occasionally pounding a ham-sized fist into his palm with a threatening sluwumph! At first the nation’s chief executive barked no orders, so Reeky “shimmy-jacked a cordle of jerry-slack to the gabble-rashers,8” sending the hobbled moose along a meandering path, perhaps absentmindedly tracing through the city streets, in cursive, the name of some lost love 9. As they looped past the recently constructed Washington memorial, Lincoln is reported to have sneered and derisively muttered an ancient, incantational curse10. Fearing now for his life, Pitt turned the cab in the direction of the more populated areas of the capitol. Ebenezer Tuck, a rheumy, near-sighted apothecary headed home to his dank “reconstitution chamber” after brewing a potent filibuster potion for the Federalists, happened to see the carriage pass by. Immediately recognizing his President in stovepipe silhouette11, Tuck drew himself up and gave a smart salute. Lincoln responded by heaving his size twenty-nine battle boot12 at the startled Mr. Tuck, slicing him across the ear with the razor-sharp, spinning-tungsten heel. It was ever after a scar Ebenezer Tuck wore with pride and, albeit, some confusion.13 The moosiecab14 continued its route past D.C.’s once-famous Delbert Gilbert Still15 fountains and into the shanty towns around the seedy harbor, where the greasy air reeked of fish-oil smoke and cheap magic.16 There, Lincoln commanded the driver to stop, “jindle-pop down-wagon hoop abreavement,”17 and follow him into an alley, claiming that “executive orders must always be followed on penalty of death.” The frightened Mr. Pitt nervously obeyed, even while maintaining as much distance as he dared. Whether he would survive to see another dawn was far from certain. As they ambled down the alley, the gawky mister Lincoln undertook a series of “bizarre and spectral stretches,” as if he were “the ghost of an athletic competitor” warming up for some “forgotten sporting event designed especially for tall, gangly men at twilight.” “You,” the president said, abruptly turning and pressing a bony finger into the sternum of the hapless driver, “will be my second. You are to take my place as president if something goes wrong. And your valiant moose back there shall be my third.18 Now clasp my sacred beard in your red right hand and solemnly swear it shall be so!” “B-But I don’t know how to be president!” Pitt stuttered. “Oh yeah, like I really do either!” Lincoln replied sarcastically, shoving Pitt backwards, and turning on his heel.19 The commander-in-chief trotted down the alley singing an old West Point fighting song20, while Pitt scratched his head uncertainly21. It was then that Lincoln’s intentions became obvious. At the far end of the alley three wandering philosophers22 lay in crumpled heaps, sleeping off their latest “insights.”23  Lincoln approached and began kicking roughly at their boots to rouse them. “Mr. Davis,” he shouted. “Mr. Lee, and Mr. Booth! On your feet! Let’s settle this once and for all!” The driver observed in disbelief as the chief executive then heaved the disoriented men to their feet, stood them against the wall, and grappled them all at once in his long, wiry arms, ignoring their woeful cries and entreaties and also their poorly delivered incantations of warding, hastily composed from the writings of Rousseau and Aristotle. Lincoln’s relentless wrestling moves “did then flow like a ferrous, liquid lightning, furious and battering.” His pugilistic prowesses were as effortless, Pitt remembered, as those “of a great house cat,”24 and his aggression as fierce as that “of an enraged arena bull.”25 The three rattled philosophers may as well have been facing down a howling midnight train. “That’s for these United States!” Abe cried, slapping each fellow smartly upon the belly button, “And this one’s for me!” he all but roared, felling all three men with one Dormmitt’s Dread Crab Pincer™ wrestling move, his scissoring legs scattering them like a row of poorly-wrought bowling pins. The chief executive then danced around the alley a moment, waiting to see if any of the men would rise. None of them did.26 When Lincoln returned to the cab shortly thereafter, he was a calm, controlled man, no longer on the verge of an explosive hysteria. Both cab driver and moose27 were amazed at the change. “He was gentled, easygoing, pleasant,” Pitt told friends. “We made frivolous conversation all the way back to the White House as if nothing unusual had happened. When I scobby-whicked28 him at the door he slipped twenty dollars (Confederate money) in my hand and said ‘Be here next Friday night or you will regret it most forcefully I don’t know how I can make myself any clearer yes I am threatening you but perform these sacred duties and your reward shall be great I am your dread sovereign and I have spoken, mincing no words not even one.’”29 White House staff observed a stark and immediate change in the president’s demeanor. “Abe was suddenly staid, calm, resolute, like a glistened sheet of hardy dowdy girded by a brittle bottom of molasses plied most thicke,” official presidential descriptionist and White House food journalist Goodie Solyndra recorded in her daily presidential update. Gone were the angry outbursts, the fits of rage, the unwanted games of tussle-tag30. For the next three years without fail, every Friday [Down with Space Ice!!!] night Lincoln would fold his tall frame into Pitt’s imitation-mahogany31 moose-cab, and head off to frequent the back alleys of Washington, D.C., seeking out and defeating “in time-honored ceremony of grappling with little to no affection” the wandering philosophers of the city. Always to him they were “Mr. Davis, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Booth,” however, and occasionally “That Toad that Trapped Me In Marriage By Her Dark Magic.” And now you know The Rest of the Story.” END OF BROADCAST. PLEASE REMEMBER TO WIPE SPITTLE FLECKS FROM MIC AS COURTESY TO OTHER HOSTS WHO MIGHT HAVE TO USE IT AFTER YOU. AND PLEASE REMEMBER NOT TO READ ALOUD THESE PARTS IN ALL CAPS. THESE ARE JUST NOTES FOR YOU TO READ QUIETLY TO YOURSELF (WHEN THE GOAT IS NOT LOOKING). PAUL! YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN! YOU’RE READING THESE NOTES OUT LOUD ON THE AIR! STOP IT, MR. HARVEY! I MEAN IT! STOP IT NOW! THE GOAT IS PROBABLY LISTENING! STOP READING THIS ALOUD! SHEESH! EARTH TO HARVEY! HELLO-O??? COME IN HARVEY! _____________ So ended the infamous broadcast. The backlash was swift and rancorous. Listeners across America were incensed by the irreverent, unhinged portrayal of their second-most32 beloved president. “Even if it’s true, it’s still a lie!” unruly protesters shouted outside the studios of Harvey’s flagship station WKRP in Toledo33. They chanted furious slogans like “You can’t tell us things we don’t want to know!” “All Conspiracy Theories Must Be True, Otherwise How Could They Exist!” “Earth is No Place for Space Ice!” and “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Mister Harvey’s Got to Leave This Place Relatively Soon!” Within 24 hours the initially-geographically-focused protest had spread and devolved into wide-scale name-calling and furious “poppin’ & lockin’” dance-offs in the streets. Harvey’s sponsors began canceling en masse their blocks of ads34 scheduled for future “The Rest of the Story Broadcasts.” Sensing that the heart of the nation was like a rapidly-rising tide turning against him, Paul Harvey had to make some desperate counter-move, and fast, all the while never betraying the presence of the small, Spanish goat that had masterminded his vast media empire.35 Stunned by “the sudden loss of widespread affection for my merits both demonstrated and assumed,” Harvey tried to spin the situation as best he could, hoping to play up the educational value of the ill-fated broadcast. Rather than simply apologizing and enduring the traditional, humiliating penance of offering himself to be strapped “without raiment save a burlap onesie, and exposed to all weathers” for four consecutive weeks atop the dome of the Jefferson Memorial, Harvey instead panicked and ordered his staff to hastily design, assemble, and mail out “Harvey Happy-Time History Packets” to every elementary school in America. The packets included a recording of the Abe Lincoln broadcast (with the more incendiary statements either garbled or redacted), as well as a dozen other history-related “The Rest of the Story” broadcasts36. A hodge-podge assortment of hastily-printed classroom materials were included as well, with the intention that the mini-curriculum would be viewed as a great boon to public education, and would be utilized in history classes. The “Harvey Packets” also included one hundred wads of Bazooka Bubble Gum each. This was a move intended to re-endear Harvey to the schoolchildren and so to soften the now-loathed broadcast personality’s image in the minds of the younger generation. “My only hope of future idolization now lies with them,” Harvey told his staff, a lone tear reportedly streaming down his autumnal cheek. “Harvey’s Bungle,” as this desperate mail-out came to be known in radio circles, backfired when it was discovered that the gum wads were all pre-chewed—by Harvey himself!37 “But it’s still perfectly good gum!” Harvey protested, in the lone, ill-advised press conference he gave. “I never chew a stick of gum only once. It would be unpatriotic! We’ve got a war on, don’t we?38 Rationing is patriotic! Why, when I was the age of those kids, I had one piece of gum and that’s all I had. I chewed that piece of gum for eleven years. No, no, you’re all wrong. That gum I sent out to the kids was practically unchewed and let me tell ya, they should be happy to get it!” “Gumgate” marked the end of the beginning of the end for “America’s Wireless Sweetheart.” For the first time in more than five decades, Paul Harvey failed to make People Magazine’s list of “The 100 Most Popular Despite Not Also Being Really Buff & Dreamy Guys” list. The debacle of the “Harvey Packets” only served to further inflame sentiments against the public figure. His poll numbers absolutely tanked.39 Most of the packets were destroyed in public bonfires lit during city council meetings across the country.40 A lone copy of that original mail-out was preserved in the secure underground vaults of the Museum of Radio and Television in Washington, D.C., where once every five years, a random scholar is chosen by lottery and then, after great ceremony, allowed one hour’s access to the controversial documents.41 The scholar is afterwards publicly pilloried in atonement for what is now their knowing participation in the ongoing history of the scandal, and then they are afterwards “dealt with,”42 but not before being given the opportunity to recite hastily-memorized portions of the text (or portions of “the quotable goat’s quotable goat quotes™,” depending on which version of alternate reality you subscribe to). The crowd of spectators—forcibly assembled for the ceremony—whose unfortunate ears these words fall upon, are also summarily “dealt with” for their complicity-by-proximity43. Finally, or so the prophecy goes, Harvey himself, as the last undealt-with human on earth, will place himself voluntarily in the stocks and fling fruit at his own face till the old era is finally ended, and the mayoral hopefuls are at last proved right, and the sentient coffee sludge has learned to love, and the Mayors return to establish their village built of “a fine and glorious mud, in which king and commoner alike will frolic and enjoy abundance of sweet, clotted butter and sauces of vinegar and many pickled fishes perhaps not every day but no less than once per week.”44 And now you know a lot of things related to the story that you might not have known previously!™ Space Ice. Wrong for America! Wrong for Americans!™45 So that’s all I have to say about Paul Harvey. What, pray tell dear readers, will you want to talk about next? With feigned urgency, —Ask Doug! Click here to read Part 1 of “(Whatever You Do, Don’t) Ask Doug!” and here to read Part 2 of “(Whatever You Do, Don’t) Ask Doug!” #DKM #humor #PaulHarvey #RestoftheStory

“Are we really doing this?” my husband asks from the driver’s seat, damp and chilly. My resolve begins to waver, but the wail rising from the back of the van nips any change of plan in the bud. “I want to get a Christmas treeeee!!!” It may be raining out; it may be the Monday evening after Thanksgiving; the tree lots may be completely picked over. We are going to get a tree. We settle for Lowe’s, where a few of the trees—the old, the crooked, the growing brittle and dry and less sellable by the day, I suspect—are under an overhang, out of the drizzle, and won’t get the inside of our van or our house too wet. Why did I insist we do this right now? We could have waited till the next shipment of freshly-cut trees on Wednesday. We could have gone the following weekend. We could have shopped the tree lot at the local garden supply store. We could have spent an afternoon in the mountains at an actual Christmas tree farm. But tonight, the rainy Monday night after Thanksgiving, was the night. Advent had begun. Or was about to begin. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought the next morning, December first, was the day. Our church denomination celebrates Christmas, certainly, but we don’t tend to use church calendar words: “Advent,” “Lent,” “Epiphany.” I was once part of a wonderful church body that didn’t celebrate the Christian calendar holidays at all. Sermon texts on the book of Leviticus did not pause for the warmer fare of Christmas and Easter, because we remember every day of the week, every week of the year, that Christ has come. Year-round, God has done the miraculous, every day the debt has been paid, not just on one week, or in one season. There was something to that. There was some freedom, too, in escaping the emotional rigmarole of the music, the garlands, the tinsel and bows, and all the things that drive the Grinch so mad. But my world is different now, and my small children’s cries for festivity and decoration and my own need for light shed into darkness mean Christmas will come to our house. So we were going to get a tree. Right now, tonight. In three-and-a-half weeks, we would be headed north for the big family holiday, and I didn’t want to lose any time making this Advent season—making it what? What was it I intended these three weeks to be? I had been reading about Advent. In one place, I read that we decorate trees and hang lights because this is a season not just of light, a great and beautiful light, but of light in the dark. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That resonated. There is so much darkness. Dark, evil acts being done in other countries; driving people from their homes across dark, cold waters in thin, damp boats or deep into hills, in hiding. Dark, evil acts being done in our own country; in big, awful ways with guns; in small, selfish ways with fearful, mean thoughts and words; in cold, empty ways in our chilly, closed hearts, our absence of action and love toward our neighbor. There is so much hurt, out there and in here. And in this moment, at the beginning of the week after Thanksgiving, when the sky grows dim by five o’ clock, I wanted to push back at the night—or warm it up, at least, in this little space that I own, this home that I manage for our family, the four people out of all the world who live here with me. Advent is not only about what has happened; it is about what we still need to happen. Rebecca D. Martin With this intention, I have been making an Advent calendar, slowly stitching embroidery floss to felt. It will hang like a banner across our wall. We will see it when we walk in the door. It took me some time to decide what it would say. “Joy to the world?” “Glory to the newborn king?” “Jesus Christ is born today?” But no, Advent is not only about what has happened; it is about what we still need to happen. It is about waiting, about that quiet, anticipatory, mildly-uncomfortable moment before the song starts up, the lights come on, the guests arrive. Advent takes place in the dark. In the Advent season (my rendering of it, at least), we are remembering the long historical moment before the Prince of Peace got here. And we are remembering that we are still waiting for him to get here again. There may be eager expectation, but creation still groans. The dark remains very dark: the people walking and walking, without homes, without loved ones; the lives lost to strangers waving guns in what should be safe places; the stoniness in my own heart that declines to care about my neighbor, to love him. “Have mercy,” we cry. The wail rises from my daughter in the back seat of the car; the cries resound from as far off as a country hemmed in above the Arabian Sea, as a border crossing states and states away from me. “Come, Lord Jesus.” Quickly. Make this right. Ease up. Give us peace. I looked, and I found the right words for my calendar from deep in the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”: O Come, thou key of David, come, And open wide our heavenly home. Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. —”O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” The Tuesday night after we got the dry tree at Lowe’s, the first night of Advent by my own estimation, if not according to official church calendars, I sat at my dining table in the bedtime quiet, cutting felt for this calendar I am making, the rhythm of measure-and-slice, measure-and-slice like a kind of Protestant rosary. Consider my blessings, calm my thoughts, peace, peace, peace of Christ to you. It was night, and the day had been long. The children were in bed, and my husband, walking by the table, asked, “Do you want to watch something?” I told him, “Yes, but in a minute,” because I was in a hurry. I wanted to finish cutting these squares so I could stitch them together tomorrow and get this good reminder hanging on our wall. I kept cutting, and he went upstairs, and then I heard Christmas music coming from the bedroom, and I knew he was watching Youtube videos, and I knew in that moment that he was happy, and he didn’t mind that I was still downstairs, and I pulled across another sheet of felt, red, soft felt, wool felt. And I looked up, and suddenly, I was happy. The brightly-decorated, thinly-branched tree and the felt and the quiet and the kitchen open to the living room in this warm, safe house, and the children asleep, and my husband relaxing, and I am sliding the rotary cutter down a thick strip of rich fabric, and there are toys strewn across the rug, and there is a wall in the dining area that needs to be patched and painted, and there are the grimy window shades the old owner left behind, and it may not be the heavenly home I am waiting for in the long term, but right now, it is just right, and so good that it feels unfair. There are people across dark seas on cold waters, endangering their lives in hopes of finding better ones, of finding some light instead of darkness, and this seems unfair, very unfair, what I have here. In this late moment, there is not much I can do but keep cutting and keep waiting and hoping, and I do that, and the words that will go on my calendar repeat themselves over and over in my mind: “Come, thou key of David, come.” And the prayer is for me, and for my family, and for the world. This piece originally appeared in Art House America in 2016.

For 2021’s Advent season, we’ve shared curated collections of art, short essays, music, and more each Monday. This final week’s Advent collection includes a short essay from Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson called “That Holy Thing;” a painting called “Incarnation” by Tim Joyner; and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus” from Page CXVI. “That Holy Thing” by Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel” (which means “God with us”). —Matthew 1:22-23 (NIV) They all were looking for a king to slay their foes and lift them high; Thou cam’st, a little baby thing That made a woman cry. —George MacDonald, hymn, “That Holy Thing” The bone-chilling sea-damp is what I remember most from our first Christmas Eve service in Scotland. That, and the singing. Romantic on paper: a fishing village, an ancient stone church, the bells . . . but reality included huddling together for warmth. As we shivered the congregation rose for a hymn new only to us: “That Holy Thing.” “That Holy Thing” is not a typical Christmas carol; MacDonald reminds us that holy is not comfortable, let alone predictable. We want holiness to sweep away all ills and be cozy and Christmasy too. But holy does not avoid pain or difficulty, even while making way for good. It facilitates vulnerability; it usurps assumptions; it invites—sometimes even causes—tears. Here is real flesh-and-blood, breaking forth via real sweat-and-tears, into this real dust-and-mud world of his own Triune making. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson The Child comes and instead sweeps away our ideas of triumph. A “little baby thing,” the long-awaited Messiah is born into a low-income, scandal-threatened, displaced family. This seed of royal lineage is destined to become a border-crossing refugee before he is old enough for school. Instead of conquering the opposition and asserting the rights of his people, he arrives as a helpless infant that makes a woman cry. Here is real flesh-and-blood, breaking forth via real sweat-and-tears, into this real dust-and-mud world of his own Triune making. Woven into the pain of his unglamorous arrival is the promise of goodness beyond conception, but not in the way that even those who expect challenges expect. Christ asks not for political strength or financial security or even familial ease. Rather he asks that we welcome weakness, embrace the uncomfortable, step into that which may hurt—and promises that throughout he will be with us. The invitation is into an unpredictable holiness that is sometimes joyful and sometimes hard. But Emmanuel’s chosen identity pledges also, always, this: that even when huddled against cold or tears, we are never, ever, alone. Emmanuel, make us ever more aware of your abiding loving presence; may that give us courage this Christmas to be humble servants of your love in spaces we might otherwise avoid. Amen. Click here to visit Kirstin’s website and read more of her writing. “Incarnation” by Tim Joyner Foraged pigment on board-mounted paper 4×4” Incarnation, 2021 Every year my family picks out an ornament for our Christmas tree to represent a big moment or theme from the previous months. Last year’s ornament was a laser cut wooden dumpster, emblazoned with the dreadful numbers 2020 and spewing cheerful flames from an inferno within. This seemed funny at the time because, yeah, it had been an awful year, but we’d made it. We had cried and mourned and prayed, but now we were arriving on the other side of hope. And the Advent season had seemed the richer for it. In what year had we needed the light, warmth, and inevitability of Christmas more? And then there was 2021. I know I’m not alone in experiencing this past year as even more difficult than the one before. I could spend a few paragraphs examining why that is, but we’ve all lived it together. You already know. And so this Advent has been kind of weird, right? I’ve felt disengaged from the season. I’ve been dragging my feet decorating. I’ve struggled to enjoy the traditions that I usually cherish. Setting out to create a piece for this year, I started by trying to develop my standard Advent themes. I love painting for this season. Themes of arrival, hope, joy at the other end of sorrow, healing at the other end of brokenness—this is good stuff. But this year, I was having trouble seeing it. I was trying to convince myself of a truth I couldn’t feel. So I let the brush take over. Underpainting The painting that I wound up with is pretty dark for an Advent piece. It’s primarily Lamp Black (a pigment that I associate with longing and prayer because I make it from the discarded stubs of vigil candles), with some even darker Jet Black. There’s some white from Jingle Shells and a bit of Verdigris, but those are there mostly to make the black pigment look even blacker. Even the orb of gold leaf in the very center of the painting is obscured enough that it mostly just draws attention to the rising movement of dark pigment. Collecting Lamp Black pigment This painting is a reminder to myself that, yes, at the end of all this waiting there is an arrival. But it’s not me arriving at the other end of darkness or doubt, brokenness or betrayal. It is the Christ Child who arrives. He meets us here. And rather than chasing away all that it means to be human—including the pain and the longing unfulfilled—and banishing it forever, He wraps Himself in it. We find Christ not on the other side of our longing, but within it. “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus” from Page CXVI Come, thou long expected Jesus Born to set thy people free From our fears and sins release us Let us find our rest in thee Israel’s strength and consolation Hope of all the earth thou art Dear desire of every nation Joy of every longing heart Born thy people to deliver Born a child and yet a king Born to reign in us forever Now thy gracious Kingdom bring By thine own eternal Spirit Rule in all our hearts alone By thine all-sufficient merit Raise us to thy glorious throne Click here to visit Page CXVI’s website. And click here to listen to the Rabbit Room’s Advent playlist on Spotify and here to listen on Apple Music.

As I listened to Sara Groves’s new album on repeat, my mind grasped for the best way to describe what makes her songwriting so special. And as I grasped away, a moment from one of my favorite movies kept stubbornly arising in my head. It’s a scene from towards the end of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a special moment of understanding that unfolds between the story’s eponymous protagonist and his elusive, enigmatic idol, Sean O’Connell. Spoiler alert (but seriously, this movie came out in 2013, so if you haven’t seen it yet, then that’s on you): Walter Mitty has finally found Sean O’Connell in the Himalayas after spending a large portion of the story chasing him around the world. The moment Sean is spotted, he raises his finger to his lips to hush Walter and invites him to look through his camera lens. He’s found a snow leopard, or what he calls a “ghost cat,” and he wants Walter to see it before he snaps a picture. But even after Walter has taken a look, Sean does nothing. Walter urges him and asks, “When are you gonna take it?” Sean responds, “Sometimes I don’t. If I like a moment…I don’t want to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.” And sure enough, after a few seconds, the ghost cat recedes into the shadows, un-captured. I always get a bit teary-eyed at this point of the scene, and I think it’s because of the altogether different posture that Sean demonstrates by resisting the urge to immortalize that moment in film and instead inviting Walter simply to see. The first posture of “capturing the moment” would do the work of seeing for us in exchange for the ability to see it again anytime we like. But that second posture of “staying in it” gladly sacrifices the accessibility of a photograph for the profoundly fleeting experience of an intimate, irreplicable encounter. (Disclaimer: I’m not trying to make some absolute, moral claim that it’s always better to live “in the moment” and resist the urge to capture life with cameras and microphones. Far from it—if we did that, we wouldn’t have this amazing album from Sara Groves! Just using this scene as an illustration.) In resisting the urge to capture what she sees, Sara Groves leaves open the possibility that we as listeners might see what we need to see for ourselves. Drew Miller I’m reminded here of Malcolm Guite’s distinction between comprehension and apprehension (which he and Mark Meynell discuss—among many other things—here). By freezing their subject in one frame, photographs tend to convey a sense of having fully comprehended that subject. But the act of seeing is one of apprehension—looking through the frame of our eyes at a world that vastly exceeds what we could ever see of it. In the quest to comprehend, we seek to reduce reality to its lowest common denominator and say “mine.” But in the stillness of apprehension, we simply bear witness to reality. We ask for true testimony, aware that we will only ever know or be known in part. And why do we only ever know in part? Because humility demands that we acknowledge we are not finally in control of what makes it through. If you’ve spent some time with What Makes It Through, then those last few phrases will ring some bells in your mind. Imperfect though the analogy is, Sara Groves writes songs with something of Sean O’Connell’s love of bearing witness. She respects you, listener, far too much to take the picture for you. Because who’s to say that we’re seeing the same picture in the first place? Instead, ten times out of ten, Sara Groves will choose to write a song that models the act of seeing with unflinching faithfulness. As a result, you won’t be able to help but feel the irresistible invitation to see as well. How does she do it? Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? There’s no telling how she does it (I’ve been asking myself for years), although I have a feeling it has something to do with attentiveness, persistence, and definitely the Holy Spirit. Since I have no chance of comprehending for you what makes these songs tick, I can at least share with you what I’ve apprehended of this album, whose lyrics elude capture as surely as the ghost cat of which they sing. Speaking of which, What Makes It Through brings us face-to-face with the ghost cat from the very beginning with track 1, “Soul of Things:” How is it a stranger Can know you for a moment And call out pretty closely What it takes years to name? Why is it so hard To tell yourself the truth To see into the soul of things? What a mystery Your very heart Held inside you And known in part —Sara Groves, “Soul of Things” What Makes It Through begins with a song that models the path of all the songs to come: present an indecipherable conundrum, a tightly-wound knot; sit with it for a couple verses, examining it from different angles and wondering how it came to be tied so tight; then put a finger on the thread which, with the gentlest tug, may not unravel the whole dilemma but will at least loosen the tension, pointing to the possibility of wonder instead of vexation, liberation instead of constriction: Somewhere in the vast Waters of my mind A memory resurfaced And I’m looking in your eyes You are trying to tell me A better way to see Into the soul of things —Sara Groves, “Soul of Things” It is this quality in Sara Groves’s songwriting that brings me to tears as I listen. These are not “eureka” tears. Even less are they the tears of emotional manipulation. These tears are the subtle beginnings of a relief in tension from having watched the knot loosen. Many of my favorite songs from Sara are “slow burns,” working their magic with a disciplined steadiness, phrase after phrase, melody after melody, until the marvelous wonder of the ghost cat could not be more plain to see. The following quote from Alan Jones on the three imperatives of the Christian desert tradition perfectly describes this sort of contemplation that Sara’s songs invite me into: Look! Weep! Live! These three great imperatives from the desert tradition open up for us a way of believing that is life-bearing… In this process we are born again and again and again… The first imperative is, Look! Looking means a contemplative willingness to see what is there in front of us without prematurely interpreting what we see. The desert tradition claims that if we look long and accurately enough, the tears will begin to flow. Thus the second imperative is, Weep! The fruit of honest contemplation is “the gift of tears”; and the sure sign that our attentiveness has been focused and honest and the tears cleansing is joy. Joy is the fruit of desert patience. Thus the third imperative, Live! —Alan Jones, Soul Making, p. 22 Another song that had me looking and weeping was “Deal Breaker,” which soberly narrates the distance that has emerged within a precious relationship. Again, Sara honors and bears witness to the complex tensions of the situation, yet manages to pull at the thread that will loosen that tension before the song is over: And there’s grief like a black bird Ever present in the sky And I can feel all our distance And the hidden reasons why But some days I can see us And we’re soft and reconciled Last night we walked the riverbed Listened closely for what’s not been said Last night I dreamt of jubilee New beginnings as far as the eye can see —Sara Groves, “Deal Breaker” As I write this, I realize that this album is like a beloved book whose every word has been highlighted, rendering the highlights themselves useless—my own urge to “capture” this record for you and show you everything I love about it would have me quote the entirety of it right here in this review. Needless to say, that would be counter-productive. So for the remainder of this review, I’ll move on from lyrics and share a few closing thoughts on how this record sounds. (“But you haven’t even talked about ‘Reach Inside’! Or ‘Nothing’!” my betrayed inner voice says. I heartlessly ignore it). This album sounds like the desert, like the wilderness. It’s Sara’s first foray into self-production, and she’s taken these songs into a fittingly sparse direction, matching lyrical cues with finesse. Unsolvable mysteries are presented with parched sonic landscapes, dry and spacious with questioning. Moments of relief and epiphany bring with them swells of energy, riding on the backs of effortless drum-and-bass feels, string arrangements like underground wells springing up from below, and careful vocal layering (ex. the loosening of tension towards the end of “Nothing”). The amount of empty space that occupies the mix throughout much the album serves to make those breakthrough moments all the more compelling and satisfying. Sara Groves has made a life’s work out of paying attention, bearing witness, and telling the truth in her songwriting, and she’s been rewarded for that work with countless ghost cat sightings. In resisting the urge to capture what she sees, Sara Groves leaves open the possibility that we as listeners might see what we need to see for ourselves. I believe that this invitational posture has much to do with why her work has managed to reach inside the hearts of so many listeners—true testimony has a way of getting through to us just when we most desperately need to hear it. Click here to listen to What Makes It Through on Spotify, and here to listen on Apple Music. And click here to visit Sara Groves’s website.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with John Cal, a celebrity chef—at least among those who have participated in the Rabbit Room’s Hutchmoot gathering in the past few years. His food-related essay/orations are a Hutchmoot highlight. In this final Habit Podcast episode of 2021, John and Jonathan talk about feasting, fellowship, and other pleasures relevant to the Christmas season. Click here to listen to Season 3, Episode 51 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, 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.

Advent has always been described to me as a time of waiting for the coming of the Christ child, and throughout my childhood, I accepted that information and didn’t waste too much brain space on it. Even when I did consider the implications of Advent, it always seemed so ceremonial and almost archaic to me, a beautiful ceremony without an abundance of practical application. The birth of Christ had already happened in time and space, in history, and while I understood the need and desire to celebrate that fact, I didn’t really understand why we still insisted on waiting. The light of the world has come. What are we waiting for in the Advent season specifically? Is it just a reminder? A sacrament like the Eucharist that mysteriously points back to the crucified Christ and forward to the renewal of all things? Maybe. I certainly don’t pretend to be an expert, but this year, Advent has meant something else to me. I got in an argument with a friend of mine a couple of days ago, right in the middle of the Advent season. It was a small thing, but there was hurt on both sides, and that one simple disagreement sent me reeling. I always feel relational damage at the core of my being, especially when the damage is my fault, and for some reason, the tiny gulf that it created felt impossible to cross. I wanted to build a bridge, or better yet, pretend the gulf had never happened and everything could be as it was before, but I felt guilty and weak and my usual perfectionist veneer had sprung a leak. There was a chink in my armor and I felt like I was bleeding security and identity, one drop at a time. It turned out to be a week for conflict. One of my closest friends found herself in her boss’ line of fire for no discernible reason and she came home shaken and scared and unsure how to get up the next day and face it all again. Another close friend found herself at odds with her roommates, and as the situation grew more and more toxic, she brought her stress and sorrow to her friends and we mourned with her. The relational fractures may have been small, but they were fractures nonetheless, and we all felt, by turns, the breaking of the world around us in hurtful, tangible ways. By the time the third conflict surfaced in our small group of friends, I became suspicious that God might be trying to get my attention and it was high time I listened. The feeling of loss, the gap between what I want to be and what I am, the heart-stopping struggle of loving people and being loved by them in return outside the gates of Eden, has given me the unexpected gift of returning to Advent. Carly Marlys Perhaps it’s my inner “Enneagram 1 idealist” springing to life, but I never feel the brokenness of the world more completely than when a relationship starts to fray at the edges, whether it is misalignment with my parents, a disagreement between friends, or the disapproval of someone I look up to. I never feel the need for hope and healing more than when I am living in the gulf between what I wish could be and what actually exists in this strained and shattered world of people who sin and misunderstand and grieve. Not every argument can be fixed in the moment. Not every mistake can be mended with frantically applied tape and glue. Sin and interpersonal struggle often force me to wait for God in the broken and voided places of the world. The feeling of loss, the gap between what I want to be and what I am, the heart-stopping struggle of loving people and being loved by them in return outside the gates of Eden, has given me the unexpected gift of returning to Advent. This year, Advent has been a time of waiting for the world to be made right. And yes, that does mean hearkening back to the way that the Israelites waited for the arrival of the Messiah, but I think there is more. We are waiting for the sharp edges and frayed nerves and hurt feelings that surround us to be healed. The realization that something is very wrong with our world and ourselves—that we stumble together through the darkness, waiting for a great light and not knowing when it will come—is the struggle of Advent. The glory of Advent is that it’s only a few weeks long. For the people of God, the wait does end. The promise of the coming savior is that the wrongness I feel, the brokenness of my friendships, the mistakes that I make, are not the end of the story. I don’t need to convince anyone that this created world is full of conflict and struggle and hurt feelings and rough words. I may try to forget that fact, but I know it to be true. This year, I have been forced to remember that Jesus, our Messiah, came because this is not how it is supposed to be. Wiping away every tear from every eye also means mending what is broken, our imperfect and stumbling love for each other, our self-condemnation, our long and unforgiving memories. As Christmas comes, as the waiting ends, conflict and guilt and the need to constantly heal and be healed will not just disappear, but this time of waiting, this time of feeling the fallenness of the world will not be wasted, because it does point to a time when sin has no more power to pull us apart from each other. May that day come quickly, and until then, we wait, for the God of peace and renewal to meet us at the end of Advent, pull us into his embrace, and heal what we have broken.

In college I had a housemate who was a DJ at a Christian radio station. He believed (and freely admitted) that the music he played at the radio station was mostly a watered down imitation of the pop and rock music that was his first love. He viewed it as an act of spiritual sacrifice to give up “secular” music for “Christian” music that he considered artistically inferior. At the time I didn’t know what to think of this pious sentiment. I have since decided that this kind of thinking is a threat to civilization. I hear a lot of folks complain about bad art, and especially bad Christian art. I’m not really interested in jumping on that dog pile, but I do want to offer a distinction that might be helpful—a distinction between the right kind of bad art and a wrong kind of bad art. The right kind of bad art is the bad art that you make on the way to making good art. If you’re trying to make something good, but you just aren’t there yet, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. That kind of bad art is just part of the process. Keep fighting the good fight; you’ll get better. In fact, you’ve already gotten better. Just think what you used to write and draw when you were little. You wouldn’t believe some of the garbage I’ve seen posted on preschoolers’ refrigerators. It is exceedingly hard to make good art. With very limited tools (words, pigments, paintbrushes, musical notes, musical instruments, etc), you’re trying to create for the reader/viewer/audience an experience that feels in some way like the world God made. People fail at it more often than they succeed. As I said before, there’s no shame in failing at a task so rigorous. What hurts my feelings is all the art that is put into the world by people who aren’t even trying to do good work. The very idea that the sensory world is shot through with meaning is a spiritual principle first and an artistic principle only by extension. The habit of art is a spiritual habit. Jonathan Rogers Flannery O’Connor, a very good Catholic fiction-writer, wrote of the bad Catholic fiction-writer, “usually his sorry productions are a result, not of restrictions that the Church has imposed, but of restrictions that he has failed to impose on himself.” Yes and amen. My DJ-housemate thought he was circumscribing his expansive tastes, submitting them to the limitations of his faith. In fact, I think he was doing the opposite: by accepting and propagating substandard (but Jesus-adjacent) art, he was excusing Christian artists from the limitations of their art, which, as O’Connor points out, are considerably narrower than the limitations of faith. I don’t mean to suggest that faith commitments put no restrictions on the cultural artifacts we make or consume. There can be no such thing as Christian pornography, for instance. We are surrounded by cultural artifacts produced by people who believe that non-artistic concerns (including but not limited to theological, ideological, emotional, and especially commercial concerns) excuse the artist from the rigors imposed by art. I’m not just talking about “Christian” art. This criticism applies equally to Ayn Rand, Hallmark movies, pedantic children’s books, and much of the music produced in my adopted hometown of Nashville, Tennessee (Bobby Bare, Jr. was onto something when he said that Nashville produces the best music in the world, and also the worst). “If writing is your vocation,” writes O’Connor, “then, as a writer, you will seek the will of God first through the laws and limitations of what you are creating.” To write that way requires that one develop what O’Connor called the habit of art: “I think this is more than just a discipline, though it is certainly that; I think it is a way of looking at the created world and of using the senses so as to make them find as much meaning as possible in things.” The eye of the artist sees through manners to mysteries. The very idea that the sensory world is shot through with meaning is a spiritual principle first and an artistic principle only by extension. I may be stating the obvious here, but the habit of art is a spiritual habit. Besides being a habit of mind and spirit, the habit of art must also be a daily habit. “The artist knows total dependence on the unseen reality,” writes Madeleine L’Engle. “The paradox is that the creative process is incomplete unless the artist is, in the best and most proper sense of the word, a technician, one who knows the tools of his trade, has studied his techniques, is disciplined.” It is true that writing involves mysteries over which we have no control. The wind—including the wind of writerly inspiration—blows where it wishes. But some factors we can control, and those factors are largely a matter of habit. We can sit down every day. We can turn off the Internet. We can put our words down on the page, as uninspired as they may be on any given day. We can sharpen our skills. We can stay in the chair in the hope that today is the day that the wind will blow. As we commit to the slow work of habit, we create places where the mysteries can find purchase. Perhaps that’s just another way of saying that we commit to making bad art until we finally make good art; we make bad art, but we don’t settle for bad art. All of which means we have to leave room for grace. I work pretty hard at writing, and yet every good story or essay I’ve ever written has felt like grace. In daily practice, the mere act of sitting down and doing the work is a spiritual discipline. Most days, I don’t write anything that’s fit to show. Most days, the best I can say is, “Lord, I believe. Help me in my unbelief.” Then I wade in and hope for the best. Every day I have to learn what I’m doing, as if I’ve never done this before. Then sometimes, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, the wind blows and I manage to forget about myself long enough for something good to take shape. This piece was originally shared in Jonathan’s weekly Habit Newsletter. If you’d like your own inbox to be graced with such insight—and with staggering frequency, at that—you can sign up for it by clicking here.

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers interviews author and professor of theology at Covenant College, Kelly Kapic. His most recent book is You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News. Dr. Kapic and Jonathan discuss productivity shame, gratitude, and the truth that finitude is not a sin. Click here to listen to Season 4, Episode 3 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, 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.

Artists & is back! Join hosts Jamin Still and Kyra Hinton as they review the old year and walk into the new one, through the lens of visual artists. What worked? What didn’t? What gave you joy? What drained you? How can you shape your studio practice to focus on your priorities? They discuss these questions and more. Click here to join the artists & group on Facebook. Click here to begin with the first installment of artists & their stories.

If I say “pottery show,” chances are good you think of form and color: whimsical mugs on a shelf, maybe, or the elegant curve of a well-made vase. Images of 4th century monasticism probably don’t spring instantly to mind. I wouldn’t connect the two either, apart from friendship. But my longtime roommate Becca is a potter, and I study the early church. For a couple of years now, we’ve worked together on her shows—hammering out concepts in conversation and layering her clay-craft and my writing. Typically, our collaborations start with one zany idea. This time it was Becca’s. “You know how bowls look like inverted shields? I’m picturing a medieval hall decorated with heraldic shields, but they’re all serving bowls.” It was a promising riff on swords into plowshares. As we talked, it turned into an inversion of the emperor Constantine’s story as well. Go back in time with me for just a second: in 312 AD, Constantine was marching to battle his rival for possession of Rome. Around noon he saw a cross of light in the sky above the sun, and he heard a voice saying, “In this sign conquer.” So Constantine made a cross out of gilded spears. His soldiers inscribed the symbol on their shields. Then Constantine defeated his enemy, successfully launching his own empire and the fraught entanglement of cross and sword. Back to 2021. Becca and I wanted to tell the story of a different power, and in the hour after midnight we searched our knowledge of Christian symbols for images of self-giving instead of conquest. The pelican that wounds herself to feed her young. The seed that dies into life. The apple tree. “The apple tree?” And here is that other elusive link between pottery shows and 4th century monasticism: the Song of Songs. Strange as it sounds, the Song was the favored text of monks and nuns. They read it as a drama between Christ and the Church or Christ and the soul. In their hands, that riot of images turned the whole Bible into a poem. “As an apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my kinsman among the sons,” the Song goes, and theologians hear the music of Incarnation. The apple tree shares woodiness with the trees of the thicket—Christ bears our nature completely, without sin—and like the apple among thorns, he overflows our darkness with sweet, lifegiving fruit. Our whole life of desire is meant to lead to that tree. To see it is to behold the life of Jesus: the place we learn gentleness and forgiveness of enemies, where self-control and longsuffering teach love for even those who do harm. I didn’t have my early church bookson hand that night, but I must have managed a half-coherent summary because the tree made the list. Then Becca and I remembered that neither of us can draw. Fortunately, our friend Deirdre can. When she called to ask if she could do anything for the show, Becca appointed her Chief of Heraldry. It was an excellent appointment. Within twenty-four hours, she was sending us texts of shield shapes, meaningful color combinations, and Ogham signs for trees and their symbolic properties. The curve of the shield signals the wisdom of a king and the hazelnuts in the bowl's border stand for divine wisdom. Taken together with the apple tree, they spell out the head-spinning logic that God became flesh and the king died in his subjects' stead. Leah McMichael The apple tree was the first of her sketches, I think. And I know you’re supposed to let the art speak for itself, but we’re in the world of heraldry where everything means something by rules older than our own. I feel compelled to let you know that the curve of the shield signals the wisdom of a king and the hazelnuts in the bowl’s border stand for divine wisdom. Taken together with the apple tree, they spell out the head-spinning logic that God became flesh and the king died in his subjects’ stead. Such is the wisdom that confounds the wise. It slips through the hands of emperors and makes nonsense of all spear-wrought crosses. The hazel also nods to Lady Julian of Norwich, who saw the world as small as a hazelnut and still created, sustained, and held in the love of God. It’s a power Constantine had no category for: the Love that rules through self-giving and triumphs in descent. In this sign, conquer. [The apple tree and the larger series of heraldic bowls is part of the show “In This Sign,” which displayed in Indianapolis’s Harrison Gallery in August, and online at prakunpottery.com.]

Hello, folks! I had good intentions of adding this resource list to the Rabbit Room’s annual “Stuff We Liked in 2021” post, but the document kept growing and I missed the boat. I ended up posting these on social media, but thought it would be helpful to compile them here for your perusal. One of my favorite parts of writing The God of the Garden was the excuse to read a whole bunch of books about place, culture, gardening, community, and the natural world, and to read them through the lens of my belief in Christ, his Kingdom, and the promise of a New Creation. Lest you think I read more than I do, I confess that I read a few of these in 2020, and a couple of others were first read years ago but were referenced in my book. I hope some of these will ignite in you a love for this creation that God so loves. As I wrote in the afterword, “We have a mandate to take care of the place, and we’re told in Scripture that the master of the house is returning. This is more than an environmental concern (though it is certainly that, too). It extends to the way we build things, the way we get around, the way we do the business of life. If God intends for us to flourish, we disregard the flourishing of his creation at our peril. Infrastructure, city planning, creation care, justice, neighborliness, and stewardship of resources are all theological concerns.” Happy reading! William Wordsworth: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney It can be difficult to know where to begin with a poet, so it’s not a bad idea to let another Great Poet point the way. This little pocket edition lived in my backpack for about a year, and is the reason the chapters of The God of the Garden were structured around Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne Selborne is a lovely little village in Hampshire, England, right up the road from English L’Abri. I have good memories of walking with Jamie through the pasture below the church and into the hills along muddy footpaths, where we were chased by cows. We learned that it’s difficult to run in Wellies, especially in ankle-deep mud. We also climbed the famous zig zag path he cut with his brother in 1753, up a steep hill into Selborne Hanger, where White spent a lot of his time carefully observing the minutiae of natural life. It’s a lesson in paying attention. Last summer we met some good friends for tea at the museum there, where we saw his original manuscript and then wandered the gardens he planted. He was a humble man, and pastored the church there for his whole life. His grave in an unassuming corner of the churchyard is nondescript, which feels beautifully appropriate. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry I’ve written at length about this one, so if you aren’t convinced yet, you never will be. One of the great works of American literature, says I. In 2014 I had the honor of “opening” for Wendell at an event here in Nashville, where I played about five songs, all of which were inspired by him (“Planting Trees,” “The Magic Hour,” and “World Traveler,” among a few others) with Mr. Berry and Tanya listening on from the front row. I was a mixture of wildly intimidated and wildly thankful. I brought my first edition for him to sign, and it’s probably the one book I’d rescue if the Chapter House were ever on fire. The Art of Pencil Drawing by Ernest W. Watson Drawing trees has taught me as much about them as reading. For the most part, the drawings in this book are all from either sitting in front of the tree itself, or from pictures I’ve taken with my phone. A few people have asked for sketching advice, which is kind of hilarious because I don’t really know what I’m doing. But songwriting and book writing have both taught me that the only way to learn is to do, and I’m committed to the long game. It really does come down to practice. That said, this book is full of good, practical advice on things like which pencils to use and when, how to compose a sketch, and techniques on textures and such. To be honest, though, YouTube has also been just as helpful. Simply find a how-to video of a tree you like, turn on some good music, and prepare to be disappointed. Try again the next day, then the next, and in a week your disappointment will decrease a little. Whatever you think of the final product, you’ll have learned a bit about trunks, branches, the habits of certain species, and I guarantee you’ll find yourself looking at the trees in your backyard with a better eye. For what it’s worth, I like Strathmore drawing paper and Derwent pencils. If you’re working from a photograph, edit the photo to black and white, since those are the values you’ll be working with. Once you lose the color, sometimes you’ll find that the photo you like doesn’t make for a good drawing because the values aren’t varied enough. As you’re finishing the drawing, don’t hesitate to darken it up. If it’s black on the photo, make it black on your paper. I’ve found that even the drawings I don’t like get better once the darks are really dark. Finally, don’t be afraid to screw it up, because there’s always more paper. Tree of Life by The BibleProject I love everything the BibleProject team does, from the videos to the printed materials to the podcasts. Their “Tree of Life” video and podcast series are excellent primers on the centrality of trees in the Bible narrative. Gardener’s World by Monty Don In February and March, when I can’t stand another dreary day of winter, I find myself wistfully watching old episodes of Gardener’s World. It’s a feast for the eyes, but it’s also extremely practical. Monty and the team are genuinely interested in helping viewers to see the great good of gardening and to grow things better. A Hidden Life by Terence Malick It’s safe to say that no film has ever affected me like this one. Made by a Christian, about a Christian, pointing to the suffering of Christ, the beauty of his world, and the coming of the New Creation, it is a resounding rebuke to anyone claiming that there’s no good art by Christians. Many of Malick’s films are eccentric, experienced more like poems than stories, but this I think is the one with the most straightforward narrative—that of Austrian Franz Jäggerstätter, who because of his faith refused to swear allegiance to Hitler and was executed. I beg you to see this film. So many of the themes of The God of the Garden are much better expressed there. A stunning portrait of moral courage—and timely. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot This is the kind of book I would have rolled my eyes at when I was a teenager, but I gobbled it up as an adult. It’s a somewhat fictionalized memoir about a 1930s country veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales, telling his tale with good humor, as well as lush descriptions of the fells and valleys of one of the prettiest places on earth. The opening scene features the rookie vet in a barn, his arm buried up to his shoulder in the rear of a pregnant cow, while the old codgers tease him. It’s a funny scene, but it’s also subtly profound, demonstrating in just a few pages the deep connection between the people and the land, the beauty of community, and the noble humility of humans willing to work and keep God’s creation. (P.S. The new show is a bit hokey, but it’s wholesome and beautifully made.) The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben What a splash this book made! Wohlleben’s research peels back just one layer of the onion of creation, showing that trees are more alive and mysterious than we ever knew. It changed the way I see the little patch of trees on our property. Culture Making by Andy Crouch I think every American Christian should read this book, especially in light of the craziness of the world in the early 21st century. Andy casts a beautiful vision of the Christian’s role in the world, which is more about caring for and building cultures than waging war on them. The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral by James Rebanks Rebanks is a Lake District sheep farmer, and he talks like one. I imagine him as a sort of British Wendell Berry with a twist of sea pirate. These two books are memoirs of his life as a farmer and are funny, wise, and elegantly written. The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf This one traces the history of horticulture in England, demonstrating how it became the garden mecca that it is. The “brothers” she focuses on were 18th century botanists John Bartram (America), Peter Collinson (England), and Charles Linnaeus (Sweden), among several other luminaries. It was a true delight to read of their delight of the natural world, and the great pains they took to catalogue and name the thousands of species. Gardening trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot were richer because I recognized plants Collinson had naturalized, and could chortle with self-satisfaction and inform other customers the significance of this or that Latin genus. I’m sure they were quite impressed. Mariner by Malcolm Guite If, like me, you’re relatively new to the wonder of poetry, Malcolm Guite’s spiritual biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a great place to start. A fun fact: in 2019 Jamie, Skye, and I spent a few days in Devon, in the southwest of England. I booked a random Airbnb room in an old parsonage, and just happened to be reading Mariner on the trip. We checked in, and I opened the guest information book to discover that the very room we were staying in was where Coleridge wrote “Kubla Khan,” one of his most famous poems. I almost fell out of my chair. He was well-known for his epic walks all over England, sometimes with William Wordsworth as his companion. Footpaths and poetry. How could I not love him? A Contemplation Upon Flowers by Bobby J. Ward This is the perfect bedside book. It’s an index of flowers, and each entry compiles references to poems, plays, and novels written over the centuries. It’s a wonderful thing to learn, for instance, that hellebores (which are growing right outside the Chapter House door) are mentioned in 16th century Christmas carols, Swedish folk tales, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and even as far back as 2,200 years ago by Hippocrates as an ingredient in a “poison paste to kill wolves and foxes.” The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith Smith, both a clinician and a gardener, makes a strong case for the psychological, physiological, and even relational benefits of getting your hands dirty. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler A great primer on how the U.S. became so placeless. It’s enlightening and infuriating in equal measure—infuriating because of the greed and shortsightedness that got us to where we are—and though I don’t agree with all of it (mainly Kunstler’s disdain of Disney World), I highly recommend it. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson If you’re not too put off by Bryson’s occasionally salty language, I don’t see how you couldn’t love his writing. He somehow manages to be at once hilariously wry and deeply thoughtful, cantankerous yet kind. He grew up in Iowa but married a Brit and now makes his home in England, so he has in some ways a deeper appreciation for the island than Brits do. He makes plenty of fun of them, which is their love language. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in an English house that didn’t have this book on the shelves—which makes me happy because it’s a rousing call to protect their precious countryside. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs I have my editor to thank for this one. Jane Jacobs was a New Yorker who stood up to mogul Robert Moses and basically saved Greenwich Village from being bulldozed to make a highway. It’s a tome, but if you’re interested in digging deep into the way cities work (or ought to work), this is a good one. She spends about 100 pages on sidewalks. Sidewalks! And it’s fascinating. We live on the outskirts of Nashville, so a lot of Jacobs’s analysis doesn’t directly apply. She makes a disclaimer early on that her expertise is city life, which has completely different rhythms and principles than country, suburban, or even town life. And yet, her work demonstrates how deeply one can think about the way humans flourish (or don’t), depending on the built environment. There’s a documentary about her called Citizen Jane: The Battle for the City, if you want a lower-risk commitment than a 1,000 page book. The Wilderness World of John Muir by John Muir I’d never read anything by Muir before, so this was the perfect primer—a chronological collection of his writings, along with notes on his life. I was stunned when I read about his thousand-mile walk from Indiana to Florida in 1867. I got out a map and retraced it, discovering happily that he would have walked right past my Florida hometown of Lake Butler just a few years after the Civil War. Also amazing, Muir wasn’t just a naturalist, he was a genius inventor. When he was young he invented and built an alarm clock that flipped up his bed in the morning, a la “Wallace and Gromit.” My dad told me to read this because Eugene Peterson told him to read it (as a recommendation in one of his books). I’m so glad I did, because few people have written with as much affection for God’s creation than Muir. The writer of the preface points out that Muir’s favorite descriptor is the word “glorious,” and he’s not wrong. Glory is indeed what you experience when you read about his time rambling across our continent. Ents, Elves, and Eriador by Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans I met Matthew Dickerson at Laity Lodge a few years back, and I loved his lectures on Tolkien. This book is an academic work, so don’t expect a breezy read, but it was a convicting and enlightening exploration of the way Tolkien’s love for Creation and his understanding of its proper stewardship shines forth in The Lord of the Rings. I love this: “…environmental writers like Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon, and others have not been deterred from trying to foster an alternative perspective on farming, food production and consumption, agriculture, and the economic and cultural issues surrounding them as part of the broader environmental movement. We suggest that the name J. R. R. Tolkien belongs on this list. His perspective on Christian stewardship—heartfelt devotion to a particular place, knowledge that the place ultimately does not belong solely to us, and a willingness to give it up to preserve it for others—is his plan for how such an idyllic vision can have a positive influence on this world.” A Natural History of Trees by Donald Culross Peattie Someone heard that I was working on a tree book and emailed me a few suggestions, including this one. It’s a big, fat, beautiful book with tons of illustrations and everything you ever wanted to know about the trees outside your window. The Seven-Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton A soul-stirring memoir by a truly great writer. His physical and spiritual journey from his birth in France to the monastery in Kentucky is remarkable. An American classic. Oak & Ash & Thorn by Peter Fiennes A fascinating history of England’s trees and forests, abounding with references to poetry and mythology. Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England by Frederick Law Olmsted The undisputed father of landscape architecture is Frederick Law Olmsted. He designed Central Park, Biltmore Estate, and the interconnected park system of Louisville, among many other notable projects. Imagine my delight when I discovered that when he was a young man he sailed to England and wandered on foot for a month in 1850. Walks and Talks was a fascinating glimpse into what would inspire Olmsted’s passion for shaping the land. Native by Patrick Laurie I absolutely loved this book. Patrick Laurie bought a piece of ancestral property in Galloway, Scotland and set about reclaiming the land and raising a rare breed of traditional cattle. He’s a gifted writer, and we get delightful passages like this: Every ripple and rock in Galloway has a name of some small fame; there’s Gutcher’s Lane to the Brockhole Stane; and the Hingin Bane by the Cuddy’s Wame; there’s words and words to the far horizon, but you soon lose words if you don’t use them. And there’s no logic to the ones we keep. Of course we respect old names for mountains and rivers, but I like the tales we tell for smaller things because those are all around us. There’s Crummie’s Knowe, where the bold dog Crummie went in for a fox and never came out. And that wide tree is called Chick’s Brolly because Chick was an old Clydesdale horse and he’d always stand there when the weather was wet. —Patrick Laurie, Native Until I read this one I didn’t know much about curlews (there’s one on the bottom left of the cover), and his descriptions of their call made me ache to hear one. When Mark Meynell and I reached the end of Hadrian’s Wall and stood wearily at the shore of Bowness on Solway at dusk to read the Every Moment Holy liturgy for arriving at the ocean, I heard my first curlew. It took my breath away. Farming and Gardening in the Bible by Alastair MacKay The title says it all. If, like me, you ever wondered how many species of trees show up in the pages of scripture, or how people would have farmed, or what kinds of things people ate back then, this is the book for you. A simple and practical reference. Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane MacFarlane is one of my very favorite writers (perhaps best known for The Lost Words, his poetic collaboration with artist Jackie Morris, written to rescue vanishing words like “acorn,” “bramble,” and “otter”), and this is a collection of essays about varying landscapes in the UK (flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, etc). Each chapter features a “word hoard,” a glossary of words that, because of our modern disconnection from the land, are falling out of use. For example, “ammil” is a word for “the fine film of silver ice that coats leaves, twigs, and grass when freeze follows thaw.” Or this one: “pirr,” which is “a light breath of wind, such as will make a cat’s paw on the water.” One of my favorites is “smeuse,” which is “the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.” I see gaps like that here at the Warren and I love that now I can call them something. If you’re a word nerd with an affinity for the created world, you’ll love this book. The final chapter on childhood is marvelous. And if you don’t have The Lost Words, then fix that right away. Click here to view The God of the Garden in the Rabbit Room Store.

We’re excited to share that Every Moment Holy, Vol. 2: Pocket Edition is now available for pre-order in the Rabbit Room Store—the complete second volume of Douglas McKelvey’s book of liturgies, at a fraction of the size and cost of the original. Every Moment Holy, Vol. 2: Death, Grief, and Hope is a book of liturgies for seasons of dying and grieving, including “A Liturgy for the Scattering of Ashes,” “A Liturgy for the Loss of a Spouse,” and “A Liturgy for the Wake of a National Tragedy.” These are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose and eternal hopes even when—especially when—suffering and pain threaten to overwhelm us. Every Moment Holy, Vol. 2: Pocket Edition is now available at the Rabbit Room Store