Earlier this year, I read and loved Dawn Morrow’s poetry book The Habit of Hope. The poems are profound and honest in a way that’s easily accessible—Dawn writes “for people who don’t like poetry.” The collection weaves together poems about family and growing from childhood to adulthood. The refrain throughout the book is hope, but the poems never shy away from the reality of suffering. I was excited to speak to Dawn about the collection, her writing process, and practicing hope amidst despair. I called her during the delightful juxtaposition that is her evening commute, beginning at FBI Headquarters (where she runs all of the medical and psychological services at the FBI) and ending at a dance studio (where she takes lessons at West Coast Swing). Caitlin Coats: I love that you say that you write poems for people who think they don’t like poetry. How does that guide or inform the kinds of poems that you write? Does it change anything at all, or does that kind of come naturally? Dawn Morrow: I think it comes naturally because that was me for a long time. If you’d asked me eight or nine years ago if I liked poetry, I would have been like, “Absolutely not.” I still remember reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and I wanted to die twice. It was terrible. I thought poetry was all of these secrets. I thought you had to have secret knowledge to understand what was going on, so I was out on poetry. And that’s really because of the canon that we teach high schoolers. At least when I was in high school, it was all the classic canon. Very few women. Very few people of color. Very little contemporary stuff. So that was my understanding of the world of poetry. That was true, until I heard Andrew Peterson during a Hutchmoot seminar read “Adam’s Choice” by Jeanne Murray Walker. And I was like, “I love that, and also, I could have written that.” I’d written some poems before, but I wouldn’t have called myself a poet. That was the first time when I heard something that sounded like my own writing voice in a poem. So that really shaped the way I write poems. I'm super interested in those liminal spaces and those thresholds between the dark and the turning point of the story. All of that informed what I was writing toward—how I’ve thought about hope, and how I’ve written about hope. Dawn Morrow A lot of times when I’m writing, I think of an old boss I had here who’s a law enforcement officer. And when she had a bad day, she would text me and say, “Send me a poem.” So I always wrote with her in mind. The Habit of Hope. How did you land on that title? It’s a great title for a poetry collection. I’m curious if there’s a story behind it, or if you just found that after you had finished the poems that title felt right. My book actually started out as my grad school thesis, and it was titled Family Stories. My intention was to tell the stories of my family, and then 2020 happened. As I was turning out a lot of work for this book, I was in the middle of DC as COVID was happening. I was in the middle of all the protests. I was in the middle of all the January 6th stuff, and all the stuff that happened coming up around the election. And I was living in the second perimeter, which meant you couldn’t enter where I live without credentials of some sort that said you should be there. It was crazy. So I started writing a little bit broader across the spectrum. In my book, there are not overtly COVID poems but definitely ones that were colored by that time. There are overtly protest poems in there. One is called “June 1 2020.” And that’s part of the change of the tenor of the book. At some point, I realized there was a kind of pulse through the book where I would have a lot of darker poems, and then there would be this kind of bright spot. So it felt to me like hope was the heartbeat of the collection. That’s kind of where the title came from. I love the idea of practicing hope—that it is something we return to in a focused, determined, disciplined way. What does practicing hope look like to you? Is part of that writing poetry? It is, but I think it’s more about being able to tell our story. And I think it’s revisiting the places where God showed up—where there is that bright spot in the midst of all this darkness. Those are my favorite parts of the Bible. I’m super interested in those liminal spaces and those thresholds between the dark and the turning point of the story. All of that informed what I was writing toward—how I’ve thought about hope, and how I’ve written about hope. There are a lot of dark and vulnerable moments in your collection. As a reader, it was a gift to read these moments that are dark and painful, but honest. But I can imagine that as the writer of these really vulnerable poems, that might be a different experience. So I’m curious, how was that experience of sharing the dark moments? Was it ever a question of how much to put in these poems? A couple of the poems even seem to touch on that experience of writing and figuring out how much to share when your emotions are fresh. The poetry isn’t necessarily nonfiction. While a lot of my stuff is either biographical or kind of rooted in some part of my story, it’s not always fully true. Some of it is other people’s stories that I heard and wove together. Some of it feels a little bit more personal than it is. That being said, there are a lot of personal stories in there that are exactly out of my experience. So there’s one that talks about Christmas and my mother dying a little more every day. And that story is fully autobiographical, down to decorating the Christmas tree that sat next to her as she died. So I think for every story that’s an amalgamation of other people’s stuff, there’s one or two that are really mine. But sharing those moments never bothered me. I kind of removed myself from that until I published the book because I never thought people would read this book. Until my boss’s boss came up to me, and he was like, “Hey, I read your book. It’s great.” And I thought, “Oh, wow, I feel really awkward now.” There are people that I work with now and that I’ve worked with before that have all read my book. And that turns out to be weirder than I thought it would be. You get used to it after a while. And I chose to put those poems in the book, knowing they would be read. I think I just didn’t think about that in real life, what that would be like. So it got a little awkward. Now I’m kind of over it because it’s out there now. I also had readers who got the first copies of the book before it was really on sale. So that helped to ease into it. Pete [Peterson] and Jennifer [Trafton] actually, were some of my first readers. And they both called and texted with these super encouraging messages. It made it worth the cost of putting myself out there. Going back to that idea of hope. I’m curious if you chose to include those dark moments as a way to bring about more opportunities to encounter hope. That was my experience of reading, so I’m curious if that was intentional. I don’t know. I think a lot of things in poetry are happy accidents. I see where you get it, but I didn’t mean to do that. It was just accidental. That was something that turned into something else, but I think that’s what poetry does. I think every dark poem in that collection is a message that says you’re not alone. In every part of your story, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one out there, and I don’t think we tell those stories enough. I think we love to live in this happy, whitewashed Instagram life—especially as the church—and we don’t tell those stories. A lot of times we tell stories that end happily ever after, and the reality is that most of us are in the middle of the story. So I think every story or poem that I have is an invitation to hope. It means that you’re not alone. That’s all I want is for a poem to tell me that I’m not alone, and your poems definitely do that for me. They’re really, really beautiful. This could be a stressful question, but do you have any other projects in the works? I do! I actually have another poetry book in the works. The working title is Dancing Lessons. It’ll probably change three times before I get to the end, but that’s kind of the working title. This last book was a lot about disconnection and figuring out where you fit. The next book will be the opposite of that, so it’s about embodiment and connection. Which is also the power behind partner dance, which is what I do. My dancing teacher tends to say things like, “You just need to dance your own dance.” And I’m like, “Hey that’s a little too close! Get out of my soul!” There’s a whole series of poems right there. 2025 is probably when those will come out, if I pick up my writing speed. You can order a copy of The Habit of Hope from the Rabbit Room store now.

We love to shine the spotlight on friends who are crafting something meaningful, and Matt Wheeler’s new album certainly fits that bill. Matt is a friend of the Rabbit Room who is also a singer-songwriter from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, an artist who often leans on literary heroes for his musical inspiration. A Hard History of Love is his new project, a suite of songs and stories inspired by the short stories of Wendell Berry. Read on for our conversation about his love of Berry, the vision for his newest work, and the upside of creative limitations. Rabbit Room: I want to ask all about the new project, but even you define your own angle, so to speak, as a musician whose specialty is works based on classic literature. Can we begin at the point where you knew that was “your thing”? Matt Wheeler: I tend to like to read the books that you’re assigned to read in school. On my first few album projects, I wrote a song here or there that was based on a classic work of literature—two songs based on Les Miserables, one based on The Old Man & The Sea, a sea shanty loosely based on The Odyssey, a re-telling of an account from the Gospel of John, and numerous references to well-known writings embedded in songs. But where it crystallized into being “my move”, so to speak, was in late 2019 or early 2020, after Chris Hoisington from Old Bear Studio—and, more recently, the Rich Mullins tribute project Bellsburg Sessions—reached out to me about working together. Conversations surfaced two main themes: first, the idea of an album where all of the songs are based on stories from literature, and second, spoken essay pieces that would be a cross between stage banter and audiobook narration. The result is my 2021 album, Wonder of It All, based on books like The Horse & His Boy and Watership Down. It didn’t hurt that, at the same time as those conversations, I was also getting to know The Rabbit Room community through The RR Chinwag Facebook group. That helped shape some of the story selections, like the inclusion of The Hobbit, a book I hadn’t read before that. That album helped me find that literary niche. Some other songwriters lean into that type of narrative folk. Sarah Sparks and her work with Narnia stories comes to mind, but not many that I know of. I’ve found that it is a great fit for me, not only because I’m an avid reader, but because it sets me apart in ways that strictly autobiographical songwriting wouldn’t—or hadn’t. And “I’m a songwriter specializing in songs based on classic works of literature” makes a better elevator pitch than that, too. Also, I’m a husband, a special-needs father, and a full-time college employee, so I find that having something specific to write about—sort of a writing prompt and angle—is very helpful for focusing my creativity in the somewhat limited time I can put toward songwriting. I’m aiming to write songs that are good art, even if the listener doesn’t already know the literary source material, but that is also that much richer for those who do. How’d you decide upon Wendell Berry as inspiration for this project? When it came time to think about what my next project after Wonder of It All would be, I was leaning toward another album with a literary concept. I felt led to write about Wendell Berry’s work. And it may be more accurate to say that when the idea dawned on me, it felt like it had been staring me right in the face. From that point, I was pondering the project referencing Berry’s Port William fiction, his poetry, and also his essays. I was talking with my friend Ned Bustard at his Square Halo Gallery about what may be next and when I told him my ideas thus far, he suggested choosing a few short stories from the That Distant Land short story collection. With that refined focus, I was off and running. I was introduced to Berry’s work through the songwriting of Jacob Zachary back when I was in college in Virginia. Years later, around the time my son was born, I was laid off from my job, and I decided to pick up Berry’s short story collection, The Wild Birds. I was hooked. I proceeded to check out almost every fiction work by Berry that my local library system had. In his Port William fiction, Berry invites his readers into a rich community, a fictionalized version of the rural community where he grew up and still lives & farms in Henry County, Kentucky. Each story is a portrait of people who belong to each other and to their place. Berry has a way of winsomely portraying the complex, the mundane, and the sacred in the characters he writes. Berry dignifies good work, genuine love for God by loving one’s neighbor, and a right relationship with land and place. There’s just something that Berry can convey about what it means to be human that I’ve found few writers can match. Among my favorite aspects of Berry’s Port William fiction is the fact that he has been writing about the same community since 1960’s Nathan Coulter and as recently as 2022—Berry turned 89 in August and released two new books last year!—and that there is such continuity. The stories are set in a wide variety of years, from the 19th century to the 2020s, and yet the stories all form a coherent whole. Imagine being able to do that over six decades. And characters who are main figures in one story may be a supporting cast in another, or we may see a character who is a 5-year-old in one story appear as an old man in another, so you get a multifaceted view of them. I’m not into superhero movies, but I imagine the appeal is a bit like that of the Marvel Comics Universe. There's just something that Berry can convey about what it means to be human that I've found few writers can match. Matt Wheeler Simply put, Berry is my favorite living author, and his stories are so striking and vivid that they are fertile ground to inspire music. I’d love to have you clarify the nature of the project for us, because this one comes with some writing of your own, right? Yes. Alongside the songs are spoken pieces I wrote that have original music compositions backing them. Four of them are essays—fitting, as Berry is also an essayist—and each serves as a prelude for the song that follows. And there is an original poem titled “Gleanings” that follows the last song. I wrote “Gleanings” in March 2023, during the week of the recording sessions with Old Bear Studios, and many of the words and ideas came from looking back at free-writings that I did a few years ago when I was reading through Berry’s collected poems. The intended effect of this combination is something more like a concert experience than a standard album. You’re more likely to care about characters in a song or a book or a movie if you’ve gotten to get to know them a bit, and I hope that listeners feel that much more welcomed into the listening experience through the songs-and-stories approach—a little like my favorite type of music bookings to play, house concerts. Does that make this whole creative experience more fulfilling or more challenging or both? Limitations can actually be freeing. When I know that I’ll be writing about this specific moment in the lives of these particular people in this distinct place, it narrows my focus. And the short stories that I’m working with here are writing that I genuinely find brilliant, so it’s fulfilling to be able to translate what I find so moving about it from prose into songs, essays, and poetry. It’s a chance to share work I love with listeners in a way that may be their introduction to it, or that may serve to deepen their appreciation of it. So I find the creative experience of this way of writing and presenting the work very fulfilling, and that any challenges in it only serve to make the work stronger. Has this deepened your own love for Berry’s work? Certainly. I’ve heard Malcolm Guite speak of his literary influences as essentially his mentors, even those he doesn’t or didn’t know personally, and I resonate with that. There is a sense in which you get to know an author whose work you have read extensively—granted, a one-sided relationship, but it can still be a sort of apprenticeship. Wendell Berry has shaped my own sensibilities about faith, life, place, and art, much as C.S. Lewis has. Reading the short stories and understanding them deeply enough to write convincingly from the perspective of the characters has deepened my affection for them and for Berry’s work, much like getting to know a person’s story over time can have that effect. Check out Matt Wheeler’s new Kickstarter campaign for A Hard History of Love.

I grew up in a Pentecostal tradition that loved to call everything a spirit. If you showed up to church flustered because your kids wouldn’t get out of bed and your car wouldn’t start and you forgot to brush your teeth, they’d cast out the spirit of chaos. If someone had an allergy attack, they’d cast out demons before considering peanuts. If you were a woman with curves, they’d cast out the Jezebel spirit just to be safe. I love my charismatic roots, complicated as they are. They still sprout up from time to time with rich memories or funny stories, like when Sarah Macintosh, Jess Ray, and I were asked to write a song for the Faithful Project based on Psalm 68:4-8. We were drawn to this part: “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” When Sarah read it aloud, I was transported back to high school when a youth pastor— you guessed it— cast a spirit out of me. He called it the “orphan spirit” and commanded it to come out in Jesus’ name. I closed my eyes, opened my hands, and repeated the pastor’s words: “I am not abandoned or rejected. I am a child of God.” Now, listen. I wouldn’t recommend this tactic. I don’t endorse the existence of a literal orphan spirit (or spirit of chaos or any other spirit that has been cast out of me). I also know the Psalmist was not thinking of spirits, but actual orphans and widows. I’ll get to that in a minute. But while I can’t attest to the happenings of spiritual realms, I do know what happens in my therapist’s office. There’s this thing therapists use called “Internal Family Systems” (IFS) and the basic idea is that each of us contains a complex system of parts that help us function. Maybe you’ve said something like, “Part of me wants to take the job but another part of me doesn’t.” IFS basically names those parts (Judge, Inner Child, Manager, etc.) in order to help you identify what you need to healthily move forward. I have an orphan part. Maybe you do, too? It’s the part of me that never feels like I belong. It’s the part of me that is convinced nobody else will take care of me so I need to vigilantly look out for myself. That I am not safe. That I’m one step away from being abandoned. That all I have at the end of the day is me. Abiding in God slowly heals the part of me that is convinced I am on the outside; slowly thaws the part of me that has iced over in hyper-vigilance. Savannah Locke In Biblical interpretation studies, there is something called “The Two Horizons” which speaks to the two-fold nature of interpreting a text. One horizon is the text in its unique context; the other horizon is the reader’s own context. The Two Horizons speaks to how readers bring their own contribution to interpreting a text. When I read Psalm 68, one horizon I bring is the orphan part of me which feels abandoned by God. I am struck by the tenderness of God as Father who welcomes me into a holy family with lavish love: “Father of orphans…is God in his holy habitation.” God’s presence is home. Abiding in God slowly heals the part of me that is convinced I am on the outside; slowly thaws the part of me that has iced over in hyper-vigilance. And the horizon of Psalm 68 challenges me to stretch beyond myself. God cares for the orphan part of me, sure, but God also cares for actual orphans. Actual widows. People who are unhoused (vs 6). People who are in prison (vs 6). The nature of God is to protect the vulnerable and free the oppressed. God stands with the powerless. If orphans, widows, the unhoused, and those in prison matter to God, this ought to shape my community and me. James 1:27 puts it this way: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” This is God in his holy habitation, and this is how God’s church operates with sincerity in the world—by giving orphans families and supporting widows and housing the unhoused and loving those in prison. How do we, as individuals and communities, practice this type of religion? It seems to me, that is where the beautiful act of discernment begins. Who are the orphans in your vicinity? The widows? The unhoused? Those in prison? How might God be leading you and your community to be evidence of the Good News towards them? And maybe, in the same breath, you need to hear the Good News for your own heart? That you belong to God. That you are not rejected. That God is your provider. That there is enough. That there is a place for you filled to the brim with the loving presence of God. Sarah, Jess, and I wrote a song called “A Place For You” for anyone who has been orphaned or widowed— literally or not. I hope it meets the horizon of your life and encourages you to bask in the vast warmth of God’s holy presence.

When the hashtag #MeToo began showing up on social media feeds across the country in October 2017, Facebook reported that nearly half of its users were friends with someone who said they’d been sexually assaulted or harassed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised, as I’d already heard stories from two family members who were taken advantage of by close friends. One month later, #ChurchToo began trending on Twitter as users sought to increase awareness of this kind of tragedy happening in churches as well. And in the last six years, multiple stories of abuse have continued to be uncovered in the Christian world as we’ve seen leader after leader weighed on the scales of justice and found wanting. This is why Rachel Wilhelm wrote the song “Vengeance With The Sword,” using images and phrases pulled from the prophet Jeremiah. Rachel has taken it upon herself to stand up for the oppressed and deliver God’s message to leaders who abuse their positions of power, with lyrics like these: You will not be lamented, or gathered, or buried Strewn will be all the bodies, like refuse and carrion. A calamity will rumble  From the wine inside your cup And if you refuse to take it I’ll make you drink it up The song is the sixth track from Rachel’s newest album, Jeremiah, and whenever I listen to it I feel compelled to raise a silent fist in victory. Yes, I think to myself, God does care about justice. “The Old Testament is key to understanding the heart of Jesus,” Rachel told me. “There are a lot of sex abuse cases, clergy mishandling, and unjust power dynamics in the church right now, but something tells me this isn’t new.” “God sees it all, and has already spoken about it,” she added. “But not many listen.” I’ve been in a writer’s group with Rachel for a couple of years now, and when she first shared this song with us last November, I said, “This is the song I needed after I listened to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast. But in the last month, I’ve discovered that the album in its entirety attempts to fill a serious void found in modern Christian music: songs that express lament and doubt. “You Won’t Turn” starts off the record with some important questions: “Where is the Lord?” not a soul has asked / Not a prophet, shepherd or scribe who studies the law / “Where is the fountain of the Living God?” / They have molded vessels themselves with cracks in the clay.” Such words echo the hearts of many who’ve deconstructed their faith and walked away from organized religion over the last several years. Though I’m still invested in my local church, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t relate to the cry for accountability made in the 14th verse of Jeremiah’s sixth chapter: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious / ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, but the cover of Rachel’s album shows a young man smiling up at a beautiful sky—a scene that captures the complexity of someone who knows the importance of his calling. She commissioned the painting from Knoxville-based artist Barbara Thomas because she believes in fostering the arts in church. Rachel is also the Vice President for an organization called United Adoration, which has been holding songwriting and visual arts retreats across the US, Europe, South America, and even Africa for the last nine years. She ends the album with the haunting line, “Good Shepherd, break us as you must,” which is a fitting prayer of conclusion because restoration is not possible without repentance. Janna Barber Perhaps my talented friend relates to Jeremiah’s calling as a prophet of woe. Before this album, Rachel released Requiem, an album meant to help people during the pandemic who weren’t allowed to attend the funerals of loved ones they’d lost. Other previous albums like Daughter Zion’s Woe and Songs of Lament touch on similar themes, but Jeremiah feels more multifaceted, offering up songs like “I Know the Plans,” from the most famous verse in Jeremiah (29:11), which sounds a bit like a song The Welcome Wagon would perform. Then there’s “Fear Not For I Am With You,” a tune upbeat and hopeful enough to be played on some Christian radio stations, which ends with the beautiful repetition of God’s encouraging promise: “I’m not finished with you yet.” Earlier this year I told Rachel that her new music was beginning to remind me of Johnny Cash, and she said to me, “God cares for the vulnerable and unnoticed, so I care for the vulnerable and unnoticed. It’s my calling.” Rachel was joined by a host of talented friends in the recording and production of this album. Players like Phil Keaggy, Jered McKenna, and Adam Whipple, along with vocalists Karin Simmons and Devin Pogue. Pogue provides the lead vocal on a few songs, including “Turn to Me,” which contains my favorite line from the album, a promise from the Lord that says: Turn to Me, O turn to me I am merciful and gentle, turn to me.  A day will come when I’ll bring you home And your restless hearts will find shalom. I’ll forgive and I’ll take every disordered ache And I’ll anchor joy within its place Rachel is unflinchingly faithful to the themes of this complex book, penning lyrics like, “How awful that day will be/but on that day you will be saved” for the song “On That Day,” based on Jeremiah 30, which alludes to the coming of Christ. Then she ends the album with the haunting line, “Good Shepherd, break us as you must,” which is a fitting prayer of conclusion because restoration is not possible without repentance. In Jeremiah’s day, the nation of Israel did not have ears to hear his call for repentance, which caused him the terrible kind of suffering and lament that the songs “My Heart is Faint” and “Woe to You O Jerusalem” bear witness to. But what if these lyrics and melodies could be the beginning of something new for today’s churches and leaders? Perhaps Jeremiah’s message will finally be taken to heart, and God’s people will begin to live and love as though the Holy Spirit were near to their hearts, as well as their mouths. May it be so, Lord Jesus. May it be so. Check out the latest album from Rachel Wilhelm here.

Three nuclear explosions blasted across my screen when I went to see Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City several weeks ago. One of them was in Asteroid City itself. Another was in the trailer for Oppenheimer—a movie about the man who invented the atomic bomb, so, it figures. Yet another was in the final shot of the trailer for Dune: Part Two, just as Paul Atreides says, “He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.” In any given year, many movies will rise to prominence as a result of their individual craft or entertainment—and I love obsessively dissecting those movies and enjoying them for what they are on that level. One of the things that causes me to pay close attention every year, though, goes beyond individual artistic merit; instead, it’s about seeing and observing the ways that these movies are all in conversation with each other. And if we believe that artists are some of the closest things that we have to prophets in the modern age, even accidentally, then we should listen closely to what that conversation is about. Asteroid City has a lot going on. It’s easily Wes Anderson’s most metamodern, self-reflective film to date, examining the inherent artifice of art and the way it helps us understand our lives anyway. I don’t really blame the people who didn’t connect with it, but I thought it was a profound enigma. This is ironic, because the movie is very much concerned with enigmas; the plot revolves around the sudden (and extremely brief) appearance of an awkward-looking stop-motion alien in the desert town of Asteroid City, causing everyone to spiral into confusion, hysteria, and existential turmoil shortly thereafter. The atomic tests which can be seen in the distance of Asteroid City, momentarily shaking the buildings but leaving the residents unfazed, feel like an intentional parallel to the alien itself; in the same way that the mysterious appearance of the alien has left everyone with questions about their place in the universe, the advent of atomic weapons during the same time period was causing everyone in the real world to do the same. Of course, it doesn’t take much of a leap to see the ways that Oppenheimer is exploring some similar ideas in a much more literal sense; Nolan’s mythic and singularly-focused biopic examines that cultural moment quite deliberately through the grief and existential turmoil of the man who pioneered it. “You’re the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves,” says Kenneth Brannagh’s Niels Bohr, “and the world is not prepared.” It may seem at first that any story exploring the atomic bomb would be about power, but I think there’s more to it than that. Sure, for the person pressing the button or pulling the trigger, a bomb might be about power, maybe even for some zealous citizens in the nations such powers would benefit. But for most of the ordinary human beings living in an atomic age, perhaps the experience is much closer to that of the alien in Asteroid City: an uneasy enigma. We can’t control it. We don’t know how it will affect us. It might alter everything we think we know about reality, leaving us the slightest bit out of step. It's the lack of clarity or resolution that's so compelling about many of the stories dancing across our movie screens right now. It speaks to the restlessness we've all had these last few years. Houston Coley You’re probably smart enough to see where I’m going with this: if I were to liken the alien and the atomic bomb to any other “entity” causing the same existential turmoil in 2023, the topic of artificial intelligence would be top of mind. Lucky for us, we do not currently find ourselves at a stage where we have to ask questions about sentient computers or robots with feelings, but we are asking questions about the increasing role of AI in our lives—as a tool, a weapon, or an enemy, whether we want it or not. In Asteroid City, a kid on a school field trip writes a (characteristically quirky) country ballad to muse about the arrival of the alien in town; one of the funnier verses asks the alien, “Are you friend or foe…or other?” I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve been asking the same of AI in the last few months. With almost prophetic timing, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One was uniquely positioned last month to address this question quite literally and definitively. The “entity” in Dead Reckoning is a rogue AI that has gained control of every military, defense, and intelligence network in the world. Of course, it started by influencing social media. Where a more indecisive movie may have tried to make nuanced arguments about the way AI could be used for good, Dead Reckoning takes a much bolder approach: it goes all-in on the offensive, with very clear real-life subtext. “This Entity,” says Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt in the first 10 minutes, “I mean to kill it.” Despite Ethan’s heroic intentions to destroy The Entity for good by finding the cruciform key that can unlock its source code, every other government wants to eliminate him and get control of the key themselves to use The Entity for their own purposes. Less of the drama in Dead Reckoning is focused on what those governments would actually plan to do with the power of The Entity, though; more of it hinges on the way that this godlike AI uses its digital influence to literally rewrite our characters’ understanding of reality itself, leaving them unsure what’s real and how much choice they have in their fate. The experience is marked with paranoia and uncertainty, not dissimilar from that of the citizens in Asteroid City after they encountered the alien. The timing of a movie about Tom Cruise literally going to war with AI could not be more perfect, especially given the way that AI has taken center stage in the current union strikes, with more than a few studio executives touting generative artificial intelligence as the alternative to raising pay for writers and actors longterm. There was even a report by NPR recently revealing that certain studios have already been including a Black Mirror-esque clause in actor contracts allowing them to scan a performer’s body and face for one day’s pay and use their likeness in perpetuity via AI-aided VFX without ever needing to pay them again—similar to the digital necromancy worked to bring back hollow wax figurine imitations of Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, Adam West, and others in The Flash back in June. These specific examples might feel like minutia, but they’re a daily incarnation of what Bo Burnham managed to accurately describe in his song “That Funny Feeling” back in 2020: the tiniest and silliest changes to ordinary existence that actually reflect major shifts in the grander human experience, leaving everyone slightly off-kilter and unable to pinpoint exactly what feels uneasy. A key part of the strangeness of living in a digital age is knowing that huge, culture-changing things are happening regularly, but on a day-to-day basis, you’ll only ever interact with the comically shallow, consumeristic incarnations of those things. It leaves one with more sympathy for Augie in Asteroid City, melancholically staring out the window after the arrival of the alien and wondering what to make of any of it. Like the atomic bomb, AI has the (theoretical, hypothetical) potential to both save or destroy the world, but it will more likely do neither, leaving us in a perpetual state of disquieted restlessness waiting for the next penny to drop. Of course, there’s another “entity” that has plagued us for the last few years: the pandemic. In fact, I think the restless and disquieted tension these movies capture may have its roots in the shared cultural trauma of quarantine—a time when, much like these other examples, a strange and powerful force entered our universe and left us in an uncertain world feeling helpless and unsure when that force might affect us, too. The undeniable sense of “living through history” was surreal, and the loss of control was palpable. I think that feeling hasn’t faded yet. When I started writing this piece, I was seeking some form of clarity and resolution around why these ideas of aliens, atom bombs, and AI were floating beneath (and above) the surface of so many movies in 2023. I think, however, that it’s actually the lack of clarity or resolution that’s so compelling about many of the stories dancing across our movie screens right now. It speaks to the restlessness we’ve all had these last few years. Is that restlessness all about the new age of AI? Perhaps that’s some part of it. But maybe it’s also a general sign that we’re searching for meaning in a confusing world, marked by issues and enigmas that make us feel entirely out of control, lingering with a strange aftertaste that feels a bit like fallout.

Didn’t get Hutchmoot tickets this year? Ever found yourself dreaming about starting your own “rabbity” gathering, but feeling like it is beyond your ability? Amy Jo Stimson and Steph Ebert discuss their experience creating an in-person gathering called a “Mini-moot” in their small town of Hilton, South Africa. In the following conversation, they share their introduction to Hutchmoot, their experiences with the virtual conference during the global pandemic, and what it took to get their gathering off of the ground in 2022. Stephanie Ebert: Wendell Berry, in Hannah Coulter, shares the famous line, “You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.” Berry is constantly calling us to dig into the present: to the local community right where we are, to these bodies, these hands, this place. Sometimes, as a dreamer and a wisher, and an art-maker, this can be difficult. I think back to places I’ve lived and communities I have been a part of: late-night conversations about philosophy until 2 am in college, being knee to knee with fellow pilgrims on El Camino De Santiago in Spain, passing the wine bottles down the table and laughing at the stories and challenges of the day, or that one time I went to Oxford for a few weeks and got to read Victorian Children’s Literature. Amy Jo Stimson: When beginning our Mini-moot journey last year, there was a significant amount that we didn’t know. We knew we wanted to have a day of community and discussion. We had a lot of ideas of how our conference/not-conference should not function: hollow and pale in its mimicry of other greater gatherings. Somehow, we wanted lived-in, dirt-under-your-fingernails, fresh, warm… vibes? A gathering. And whoever came, came, and would be welcome. As it was for Berry, it’s about beginning with the right instructions. Stephanie: Exactly. Where I live now doesn’t have the gleam and glamour of such romantic possibilities as Oxford and the Camino. I feel the hard, practical edges of limits. Limits on my energy, now that I have two children. Limits on my time. I am not gathered with people from all around the world around some fascinating idea, I’m kind of just stuck in a small town with people who have grown up here their whole lives. (A beautiful town, of course, to anyone else.) It can be lonely, sometimes. After feeling so isolated, my soul lacked deep, rich conversations with like-minded people about beauty, art, and faith, and the diversity of artists and thinkers at Hutchmoot was a breath of fresh air. Amy Jo Stimson Amy: When you don’t live in Western/Euro-centric cultural hubs, many experiences take on a fairy-tale hue. It’s what you get “Over There,” always at one remove (usually many more). A few writers had recommended Andrew Peterson’s music to me about the same time as I heard mention of this conference in Nashville that brought together creatives of all kinds in a glorious, soul-nourishing weekend that was so intentional about building community that attendance was deliberately limited and highly sought after. Stephanie: We each found an online community through reading articles on the Rabbit Room. Realizing that they had an in-person event where these conversations would happen in real-time (With music! And food! And guest artist speakers!) was so exciting for me, but we could never consider attending all the way here in South Africa. So when Hutchmoot went online during the pandemic, it was a gift of grace. After feeling so isolated, my soul lacked deep, rich conversations with like-minded people about beauty, art, and faith, and the diversity of artists and thinkers at Hutchmoot was a breath of fresh air. Amy: For me, it was the thrill of finding my community, of inspiration, of home for every creative impulse, zinging through my heart at all times. Stephanie: The following year, Amy and I managed to recruit a group to enjoy the sessions together. We camped out at someone’s house, had a fire going, and shared thoughts late into the night. We couldn’t wait to do it the following year. I wasn’t magically transported to a cosmopolitan city brimming with museums and symphonies, of course, but even within the small edges of our little town, God pulled together the eight of us to share artists and stories and thoughts and exclaim in a Lewisian way, “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Amy: Hutchmoot, the highly sought-after, limited-attendee conference for theists and artists in the States (that I would probably never get to in real life), became a 2000-member-strong virtual and spiritual gift. So it was something of a loss when the focus shifted back to an in-person event, as it should. The 2022 idea Amy: Community is important. Even streaming the content and sharing the meals (and kazoo symphonies) in group-viewing weekends could not replace it. In 2022, when discussing what to do with those yearnings, Steph and I discussed several options. We could host a weekend in which we streamed previous content from the Rabbit Room resource banks on their website, podcasts, and Spotify, until one of us said, “Unless we make our own…?” And that’s what started it. Stephanie: There were a few things that came together to make this happen. Some things had changed in the course of that year. One is that my husband and I now owned about 3 acres of land, with a large-ish house called Windhover. Rather than escaping to new, far-flung adventures, we were trying to answer God’s call to be present, to be neighbors, right where we were. There was a lot that went into this: our property is situated on a fault line between two very segregated communities, and we dreamed of Windhover being a place of peace and hospitality for our neighbors on all sides. There were practical ideas of what we should do with the space—job creation, small-scale farming, affordable housing—but the one longing I had (which sometimes feels a bit frivolous in the face of such dire economic needs around us) was that it would also be a gathering place of beauty. I kept dropping hints that Amy should turn our house into a North Wind Manor and host gatherings and symposiums there. Since she has her PhD in Literature (in Tolkien studies, no less!) she is more than qualified. So, when Hutchmoot online was canceled, we looked at each other, and she took up the mantle. Amy: We took up the mantle. We began by prayerfully pooling our resources. Who did we know? What could we do? What did we have already? Steph had some knowledge of events, and I had only post-grad conference experience. There were logistical things that had to happen, and the possibility of scheduled power outages on the day to contend with. And then there was the challenge of trying to explain what this gathering was. A gathering like this is quite a “taste and see” experience. It wasn’t testimonies or worship songs (though nothing wrong with either). We looked around the room and saw that our local community was rich in these things. Stephanie Ebert Stephanie: We were looking for artists and thinkers and makers who wanted to share about this intersection of faith, art, and community. We emailed out a very specific invitation to people we thought might have thoughts to share, in which we quoted Hopkins and Lewis. We linked The Rabbit Room and Hutchmoot as inspiration and hoped people would go for it. Amy: It often astounds me how God answers the prayers we haven’t even thought to pray. As we sat to brainstorm with our acquaintances the people likely to take on our vision, it turned out we were sitting on a goldmine of talent and passion. Most speakers were personal friends (many even Masters and Doctoral graduates), thrilled to have a chance to share something they were passionate about integrated with a Christian worldview—from creation care and conservation to culture and anthropology, and place-making. I had to repent of my small thinking; this is a small town, things don’t land here. It is a small town, and there is very little happening that makes it a viable place for a Mini-moot of this kind. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value hiding always just a little beneath the surface. Stephanie: We met for a prequel event on a Friday night and watched and discussed a short film. On Saturday, friends filled the spaces as the program made its way through talks, choirs, gardens, and dancing. We had a few local visual artists display their work. We looked around the room and saw that our local community was rich in these things. We didn’t have an Oxford pub, but we had students from the Bible College next door teach us about traditional forms of Zulu song and dance as incorporated into worship. We had avocado sandwiches at lunch with bread from a local bakery and avos picked from Windhover’s trees. We weren’t a huge bunch, but once we moved out our furniture, we were able to fit the 40 or so people who attended in our living room. It was life-giving and inspiring. Amy: When we asked our attendees to fill in a survey for a little feedback, the one thing each had in common was, “I hope this is going to be a yearly event?” Yes, it is amazing how much logistical effort just offering tea for 40 people can be. But in so many ways, this event was its own simplest, sweetest reward. I’ve had to recant my small-town thinking: the this-won’t-work, I’m-in-the-wrong-space-and-I’m-the-wrong-person mentality. It’s no Gideon and an army of three hundred, or the feeding of the five thousand. But God can do much with only the little that you have when you give it to his use. “I am not all the way capable of so much,” said Berry, “but those are the right instructions.” A Mini-moot DIY kit Here are some things we learned in our first Mini-moot: You don’t have to start big. We decided Windhover would host the event, and in case of rain, we had to limit the numbers to those we could fit inside our house! When we advertised, we told people we only had 50 tickets available. In the end, we didn’t have to turn anyone away, but starting small meant that the logistics were all much easier. Forty people are still enough to make something an “event”. Advertising and Registration: We used Canva to create a poster advertising our event, and shared it on our personal social media networks. We had a hashtag, but we didn’t have our own social media pages or website. We looked into using something like Eventbrite for tickets, but in the end, we went with a Google form for registration, with a link to an attached PDF that had instructions for the day, an outline of the speakers/program, etc. It worked just fine. Money. This was complicated as we are not some massive nonprofit. We were not paying any of our speakers, and the location was free, so the overhead costs were minimal. South Africa has massive economic inequality, and (in the spirit of Hutchmoot) we wanted to make sure the table was open to all, so we put a suggested donation price of R50 and asked people to bring cash on the day, along with “something to put on bread” for lunch and a “bring your own mug” request. We borrowed sound equipment from a local church. This kept our expenses low: thank-you gifts for speakers, bread from our local bakery, muffins and scones from a neighbor for coffee breaks, disposable plates, tea, coffee, milk, and some basic sandwich fixings. We were nervous about how lunch would go, but people showed up with more than enough “fixings” – from ham and cheese to Camembert. We sliced up the bread and ate lunch picnic potluck style and it was lovely. If we were to have a larger gathering (maybe up to 65 or 100) we could probably do something similar, but if the gathering was exponentially bigger we would need to think of something different. In the end, the money people brought pretty much exactly covered costs. We told people if there was extra, we would save it for next year’s Mini-moot or release it to a local charity. Speakers. We debated “zooming in” some more accomplished, well-known artists from overseas, or even from bigger cities in South Africa, but in the end, we decided to “go local” and embrace the beauty within our own circles. We realized that we collectively know a lot of visual artists—this area hosts an arts festival every year—but we didn’t know enough Christian musicians! Our speakers ended up being a bit more “literature/philosophy/culture” focused (although we did have a conservationist share!), and next year we will try to recruit people earlier for more diversity. But we also think it was good to celebrate who was already in our circles and just hadn’t had a chance to share before. And it was cheap! Breakouts. We had one “prequel” event on Friday evening before the main event on Saturday. The prequel was a smaller gathering, Amy led a discussion of a short story and a short film around brownies and coffee. We would love to do more of this next time—perhaps identify different “host” homes in the area who are willing to host poetry readings or read-aloud one-act plays, or if we could recruit more musicians to do a concert before or after the main event this would be cool! We also want to be more intentional about helping attendees connect next year during the main event. We intentionally tried to invite people from a diversity of cultural backgrounds in our area, and we want to put more thought into how to facilitate rich, meaningful connections around the art and speaker’s themes during the breaks. Perhaps we will have 10 minutes of random “group discussion” time with a question prompt, or some other scaffolding to allow for deeper interactions. Priya Parker’s “The Art of Gathering” is an amazing resource for planning an event like this. Program – Beginnings and Endings. Priya Parker points out that people remember beginnings and endings most clearly. So from the moment people pulled into the driveway, we tried to set the tone. We made extra signage to direct people. We also sent out a “packing list” the night before, to remind people to bring their mugs for coffee and tea, and their picnic potluck lunch item. When people arrived there was tea and a playlist of music from Rabbit Room artists mixed in with South African artists playing in the background. Amy started us with a compelling vision for the day, orienting people to what this was (as for many people this was their first time experiencing something like this), and getting them excited for the day. It’s tempting to start or end an event with “housekeeping”, but we tried to make sure we didn’t start or end with admin, but rather with beauty and wonder. Our finale was a time of corporate singing and dancing, led by students from a neighboring Bible college, which really summed up what the day was all about: the beauty of God across cultures, languages, and art forms, using our bodies to be creative. We had a bonus of swing dancing lessons for those who wanted to stay. So, dear reader, we encourage you to be present in the spaces that God has put you in. Look locally and find you do have a local flavor: this is not a poor man’s copy of an exclusive international event. This is a real embodiment of Christ and his church, and how Christianity looks and feels different in different cultures, and that’s what makes it important and valuable.

Most people have a secret dream, a far-fetched vision that they keep tucked away in a hidden room in their hearts. Some may long to be famous singers. Others might long to travel around the world or to be the monarch of an important nation. Fame, money, power—these all are rolled into one in my ridiculous fantasy. If you were to catch me in reverie, I would most likely be planning and organizing The Square Halo Museum—a beautiful collection of contemporary art inspired by the Christian faith. In 2013 my good friend Dr. Robert Bigley was tasked with starting a performing arts center in our city, in the empty husk of the Lancaster Trust Company.1 He said to me, “I can’t give you a museum, but how would you like to have an art gallery?” I must have confessed my vision for The Square Halo Museum to him one night over a bottle of wine with our wives. Regardless of how he found out, I lost no time in giving him my reply: I immediately accepted his offer, and my first exhibition of art went up even before the doors to the rest of The Trust Performing Arts Center2 had opened. The inaugural show of the Square Halo Gallery featured art by a number of the artists from It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. Since then, I have averaged a new show every other month, showcasing a wide variety of artists—both living and dead, famous and should-be-famous.3 Square Halo Gallery is in the middle of downtown Lancaster and in the middle of the arts district—a block from “Gallery Row” and The Fulton Opera House.4 Over time, I found that the gallery was also in the middle of an aesthetic and theological no-man’s-land. Of the Christians who entered the gallery, assuming it was a “safe” place for their tribe, many found that the art they considered “too modern” made them uncomfortable. And of the non-Christians who came in believing that the gallery—like any other downtown art gallery—was a “safe” place for their tribe, many were made uncomfortable by art they considered “too religious.” This led me to eventually realize that my role as a curator and gallery director is actually that of a translator—explaining contemporary art to the church, and explaining the Christian faith to the unchurched. I have come to appreciate that the calling of the Square Halo Gallery is to be neither a fancy museum nor a cooler-than-thou moneymaking gallery but to be a place to educate and beautify the city for God. The apostle John also had a dream, a far-fetched vision we now call the Book of Revelation. In it, he saw a glorious New Creation and the city of God that defies description. That city has been the plan since the beginning. When God gave mankind the cultural mandate at the dawn of time, He was calling us to be city builders. “Cities are the ‘culture-forming wombs’ of the society, made by God to be so.”5 Cities are places for building, making, and growing. In cities, people come to work together, live together, and blossom together. Business, justice, science, architecture, and the arts find a place to grow in these “wombs of society.” Aesthetician Calvin Seerveld says, The reach of God’s rule, the city of God—Augustine’s civitas Dei— involves government, commerce, education, media, families, transportation, hospitals, organized sports, centers of art—all societal institutions. God’s city is the place where God’s will is to be done and cultivated as a tangible signpost on earth of the rule of God currently in place at God’s throne, which sinless “city of God” Jesus will bring fully to earth at the end.6 Seerveld has also observed that the biblical vision of the city of God is distinct from but related to the church, therefore charting “a wide open terrain for Christians in the visual arts. This biblical perspective helps prevent us from assuming ‘church art’ or ‘liturgical art’ is the primary model for Christians in the visual arts.”7 Should Christians be involved in growing cities? Tim Keller says that the “single most effective way for Christians to ‘reach’ the US would be for 25% of them to move to two or three of the largest cities and stay there for three generations.”8 In fact, Keller insists that “We can’t not be involved in shaping culture.”9 If this is so, what vision could we embrace to help us work towards cultural transformation? Keller writes: For a possible model, think about the monks in the Middle Ages, who moved out through pagan Europe, inventing and establishing academies, universities, and hospitals. They transformed local economies and cared for the weak through these new institutions. They didn’t set out to take control of a pagan culture. They let the gospel change how they did their work—which meant they worked for others rather than for themselves. Christians today should strive to be a community that lives out this same kind of dynamic, which will bring the same kind of result.10 Before founding the Square Halo Gallery I tried to follow the model of the monks and set up a gallery in the narthex of our church. Our congregation included an unusual number of artists for a Presbyterian church at that time, but that venture only lasted for several shows—it was closed down after some members told the leadership that they wanted to go to church, “not to an art museum.” My brothers and sisters did not understand that our calling to creativity was woven into our DNA in the Garden of Eden. This was disheartening, but it helped to prepare me for the educational aspect of the Square Halo Gallery’s calling to the city for God. Therefore, much of the work I do is to communicate to the church that “being made in God’s image means—it must mean—that human beings reflect in some way God’s creative work.”11 I find myself frequently reminding them that the first record of God filling a human with His Spirit is when the artist Bezalel is set apart for artmaking. (Ex. 31:1–6) Often I need to repeat Leland Ryken’s affirmation that the “Bible endorses the arts . . . [and] there is no prescribed style or content for art. God-glorifying art can be realistic or fantastic, representational or symbolic or abstract.”12 But the educational calling of my gallery occurs at both ends of the spectrum. For example, I have had visitors come into the gallery and ask “Why does that man have holes in his hands and feet?”—demonstrating the illiteracy of my community concerning even the basics of the gospel. And even the most rudimentary of Sunday School stories—Noah’s Ark, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and Jonah and the Great Fish—are unknown to many who step through our doors on a First Friday. One of the earliest titles from Square Halo Books is It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, a book I contributed to and edited. Over the years I have found that, if by chance someone has heard of the book, it is usually because they read a quote from it by Tim Keller. In his essay for It Was Good, he asserts that Christianity needs artists because “we can’t understand truth without art.”13 The transcendentals of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are so organically intertwined with one another that to we need beauty to pull truth from our heads to our hearts. Keller wrote that Art is a natural vehicle for pouring out the praise we long to give God. Without art, it is almost impossible to praise God because we have no means by which to get the praise out. We can’t enjoy God without art. And even those of us who are terrible artists have to sing sometimes.14 And so, as my gallery has grown, a calling equal—if not greater—to that of education has emerged: that of getting God’s praise out through beauty. It has been a delight to watch parched souls come in and drink with wonder (and amazement) from the wells of beauty they have found in the iridescent paintings of Makoto Fujimura, the gilded drawings of Sandra Bowden, the exotic prints of Sadao Watanabe, the scrumptious collages of Mary McCleary, and more. Real, honest beauty is such a rare thing in our society that to see it in person often produces a profound, indescribable experience in the hearts of my gallery’s guests. The impact beauty has on people is not a rare or debatable phenomenon. We are not surprised when people are moved beyond words by the sight of the mysterious Giant’s Causeway, the majestic California Redwoods trees, the epic Grand Canyon, the lush Great Reef, or the massive Uluru. In fact, entire industries have grown up to take us to visit them. But because art is man-made, the visceral reaction it can generate often catches us off guard. We need not be flabbergasted, for “At its best, art is able to . . . satisfy our deep longing for beauty and communicate profound spiritual, intellectual, and emotional truth about the world that God has made for his glory.”15 When we are swept up into the glory of natural or man-made beauty, we are, in a sense, returning to the creation of our entire reality that is described in Genesis. For, as poet Malcolm Guite reminds us, “at every moment in which we are conscious and perceive God’s world, God is in that same moment creating it.”16 Every human has been made in the image of God; we are by design creative beings. The artmaking of both the atheist and the follower of Christ is worth considering as praiseworthy because “all art and all creativity declares His glory, even apart from the content or the intent of the artist. As Author and Originator of all creativity, His signature is written on the creative act itself.”17 Of course, Paul wrote, “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21), and the apologist Francis Schaeffer warned that “not every creation is great art . . . So, while creativity is a good thing in itself, it does not mean that everything that comes out of man’s creativity is good.”18 That caveat for our fallen nature acknowledged, it is important that we seek out and encourage “artists to stimulate that imagination and to show us that things have meaning,” as Keller writes, because “Artists have a special capacity to recognize the ‘other country’ and communicate with the rest of us regarding the greater reality. A good artist will reveal something about the greater reality in an indefinable but inescapable way.”19 Calvin Seerveld explains some of how this is when he writes that God’s Spirit calls an artist to help her neighbors who are imaginatively handicapped, who do not notice the fifteen different hues of green outside the window, who have never sensed the bravery in bashfulness or seen how lovely an ugly person can be—to open up such neighbors to the wonder of God’s creatures, their historical misery and glory.20 I love the work of education and beautification the Square Halo Gallery does for the good of our city and the glory of God, and I still have a dream of seeing it become a full museum. But I have an even more glorious vision now—to see artists who follow Jesus be inspired by the creeds of His church and anchored in the strange and glorious Story our Creator is spinning. I long to see artists who, like Bezalel, are highly skilled and filled with the Spirit of God, making imaginative art that “goes beyond what we can think of and rises to lofty heights where it contemplates the glory of God.”21 This essay originally appeared in Ordinary Saints from Square Halo Books. ENDNOTES 1 In 1912, Lancaster’s largest bank, the Lancaster Trust Company, finished construction on its new downtown headquarters. Sparing no expense in the process, the Lancaster Trust Company built one of the region’s most stunning buildings, a Beaux-Arts masterpiece from the imagination of Lancaster’s leading architect, C. Emlen Urban. A century later, Mr. Urban’s architectural treasure was re-imagined as The Trust Performing Arts Center. 2 In 2013 The Trust Performing Arts Center (https://www.lancastertrust.com) was established to honor God by encouraging excellence in the work of student and professional artists and by enriching our community through inspiring, challenging, and redemptive experiences. “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness” (Ps. 37:3). 3 Some of the artists I have had the honor to feature in my gallery include Mary McCleary, Sandra Bowden, Guy Chase, Marc Chagall, Matthew Clark, Ruth Naomi Floyd, Makoto Fujimura, Daniel Finch, Jimmy Abegg, Mark Potter, Ryan Stander, Sadao Watanabe, Caleb Stoltzfus, Christine and Donald Forsythe, Wayne Adams, Steve Prince, Najwan Sack, Stephanie Lael Barrick, Brent Good, Craig Hawkins, Matt Stemler, Edward Knippers, and Georges Rouault. To learn more, visit https://www. squarehalobooks.com/sq-gallery/. 4 The Fulton Opera House, also known as the Fulton Theatre or simply The Fulton, is said to be the oldest working theatre in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. 5 Timothy Keller, “A Theology of Cities,” CruPress Green, accessed January 15, 2022, https://www.cru.org/ content/dam/cru/legacy/2012/02/A_Theology_of_Cities.pdf. 6 Calvin Seerveld, “Helping Your Neighbor See Surprises: Advice to Recent Graduates,” from Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds, ed. W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 213. 7 Ibid. 8 Keller, “A Theology of Cities.” 9 Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), Chapter 26. 10 Ibid. 11 Paul Buckley, “Genesis 1 and the Pattern of Our Lives” (sermon), October 20, 2019, Wheatland Presbyterian Church, Lancaster, PA. 12 Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1989), 62. 13 Tim Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” from It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, ed. Ned Bustard (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2007), 121. 14 Ibid. 15 Philip Graham Ryken, Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006), 8. 16 Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2021), 56. 17 Stephen Roach with Ned Bustard, Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity (Baltimore, MD: Square Halo Books, 2020), 10. 18 Schaeffer, Francis A., p.52 19 Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” It Was Good, 120. 20 Seerveld, “Helping Your Neighbor,” 211. 21 Keller, “Why the Church Needs Artists,” It Was Good, 120.

Editor’s Note: After the death of C. S. Lewis, Major Warren Lewis lived at The Kilns in Oxford, spent time with friends, edited his famous brother’s letters, and did a little writing of his own. Then, out of the blue, he got a letter from a stranger on the far side of the world. Over the years that followed, he and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, shared a vibrant correspondence. They discussed everything: their views on faith, politics, humor, the legacy of C. S. Lewis, and their own trials and longings. Enjoy a sample of their letters and a small window into their close friendship. Read the full collection in The Major and the Missionary. 3 August 1969 My dear Major Lewis, This correspondence has come a long way from the discussion of writing books which began it. I am too busy these days to think of writing except as a far-off dream; certainly not until I retire. I had serious thoughts about retiring after the present term of service, but our canny Bishop has given me a new job as Diocesan Medical Co-ordinator, and it is like creating a new portfolio; there is a fair amount of organizing to be done. I can’t foresee handing over to someone else in less than four or five years, so long as I have health and energy to keep at the job, so the Bishop will have me for longer than I planned, and my nice little cottage by the sea is fading into the future…sick patients still have to be nursed! Your holiday in Ireland sounds delightful; other people who have been there love the country too. Of course, you would look on it as your home. Have you relatives or friends still living there? I must confess that the news lately has shown up the Irish in a bad light, with their fights and riots on religious matters. It takes centuries to live down old injustices and prejudices. But our hustling cities are creating a bad kind of society too. Our Papuans are infuriating in their failure to value time, but in our more sober moments we realize that they have values that we have not. They rarely suffer from high blood pressure, coronary disease etc.… We are trying to help us all spiritually and to grow in Christian love by having weekly Bible Study classes. They are not my line of country at all, but anyway we are all trying. After a rather unfruitful study of St. James’ epistle we have now come on to Joy Davidman’s Smoke on the Mountain, a book that I have read and admired several times. We seem able to build more on her than on St. James! Basically of course, spiritual renewal must depend on prayer, and one has so little time and less energy for it. Life has been full to the brim of activity in the past three months, very interesting but very wearying. Today is the first day when I have declared war on “jobs” and determined to be social—on paper. If you will forgive my curiosity, I would love to know how the Gresham boys are faring. There is little mention of them in the book you edited about your brother… With all good wishes, Dr. Biggs 28 August 1969 Dear Dr. Biggs What a pleasant surprise it was to open your magazine and there to meet you, if not in the flesh at any rate by camera. I cannot say that I found the articles to be “simple” in the sense of being written for simple reads; to me they were just well-written and informative… I have also to thank you for a letter dated 3rd of this month, which was very interesting, though I’m sorry to see you in such an unsettled state. To an outsider it looks rather like a case of “too many cooks.” Anyway I hope and trust that the whole “tohubohu” (delightful and self-explanatory French word!) will sort itself out to your satisfaction. To get on with the job in a period of re-organization is one of the hardest things I know. Yes, my poor Ulster is passing through a bad patch, but I’ve seen many such before. The tragedy is that Protestant and Catholic are, one can say, born hating each other. I’m 3rd generation Ulster on my father’s side and on my mothers, 5th; I’ve lived out of Ulster for fifty years; and the other night when I saw on Telly the Protestant boys marching and heard the band playing “The Boyne Water” I felt as if I could throw a bomb with the best of them. Of course I said an instant prayer for forgiveness, but if I can react like that, imagine what the uneducated living cheek by jowl with their detested neighbors must be like! A sad, sad business… One great thing about retirement is that you do have the time for prayer but alas, not always the inclination; but one must stick doggedly to a routine and pray for inclination. My plan is to get up at 6 a.m., make a cup of tea, then pray while the whole world around me is quiet. I’ve long ago given up the almost universal habit of saying my main prayer last thing at night—about the worst hour one could choose, I think. I’m glad you like Smoke upon the Mountain which my brother thought highly of both before and after he met Joy. You ask about the Gresham boys for whom I’m glad to say I’ve no responsibility, they both being over 21. Douglas, the younger one is now a farmer in Tasmania and appears to be making a success of it—married to a nice girl (English) and with two children. The elder boy, David, is something of a problem. He is a strict orthodox Jew, intelligent, with no vices, but who at around the age of 28 has never earned a penny in his life, though he works hard. He is just back from a year at Jerusalem University and is now in England where instead of looking for a job, he is about to enter Cambridge University—to study the Talmud and Arabic! He inherited about £6,000 from a grandmother and it is I suppose on this that he has lived ever since. But even £6,000 does not last forever, and what then? We are all troubled about him, but he himself is as unconcerned as if he had inherited £6,000 a year… In case you have any curiosity about what I look like I enclose this snap. I’m the old gentleman in glasses and the other is my houseman. It was taken at a village on the Suffolk coast where we sometimes borrow a cottage. We go back there for a fortnight at the end of next month. I don’t expect you have gorse in Papua—the lovely rich golden wild stuff at our backs. With all best wishes, yours, Warren Lewis

Housemoot.com opens in six days! In case you missed the announcement, Housemoot is the Rabbit Room’s new pop-up digital conference, replete with a curated collection of pre-recorded lectures from some of our favorite writers, artists, theologians, and musicians. Because Hutchmoot, the Rabbit Room’s annual in-person conference, can be hard to get tickets to, we are offering Housemoot as a resource kit that you can use to create a “moot” experience of your own. We hope that it is a gathering point for your community. Go to Housemoot.com to learn more, buy tickets, or (if you are already a Rabbit Room member) let us know you’re joining Housemoot. Join Housemoot By way of whetting your appetite for the feast that is Housemoot, below is an excerpt with Andrew Osenga from a series of interviews with artists and creators about how music has helped them move through experiences of loss and grief. [If this topic speaks to where you are at right now, check out our new Music and Grief playlist and let these thoughtful, moving songs walk you through exactly what Andrew is talking about in the interview.] [Special thanks to Dave Trout and UTR Media for putting this interview series together for Housemoot!]

Being a self-described dreamer, I can tell you that having a dream is a complex predicament. It’s one of the strongest forces in our lives and sometimes gives us purpose and direction. It can also be as fragile as a dried leaf, at times crumbling between our fingers to be blown away by the wind. Dreaming isn’t just wishing on a star; it’s vision-casting, planning, implementing, perspiration, and perseverance. And even those who take the right steps in the right order are not guaranteed that the dream won’t hit a dead end or a major detour. I sat down recently with Chris and Jenna Badeker – the husband-wife band known as Wild Harbors.  I’ve been friends with them for nine years, and I definitely see them as fellow dreamers, but they might not be interested in that title. Jenna: Dream is such an interesting word. I think it’s one I’ve had a tough relationship with over the past decade. Chris: I always kind of bristled at that language of what we do like, “Go to Nashville and chase your dream.” Jenna: It sounds fun, and there are so many people who get into that thought. It’s been really interesting for me, through life and reflection and clearing out old stuff from my parents and finding old things from my childhood, little kid Jenna totally dreamed about singing and writing songs and being a writer and an author. Those were dreams. I think it’s interesting to realize that God has worked to draw us into paths that tap into those dreams that we both probably had when we were younger. I couldn’t have articulated as a young adult, “This is my dream and I’m going to chase it down and do x, y, z to make it happen.” I think there is some good and bad in that. On one hand, it helps maintain some groundedness – this isn’t some fairytale situation. We have budgets and need to pay our bills; we need to be practical about how we go about this. But there is also some potential for a lack of dreaming to continue. Chris: For as much as I kind of bristle at that dream idea, I’m trying to analyze that and pick apart why that is. For myself in particular, I think there is this tendency to take the dream and—just as we are attaining it—to move the bar further out to make it unattainable again. For myself as a kid, if you were to ask me, “What is the dream?” My dream was to be an artist. And that feels embarrassingly ill-conceived and not fleshed out, and there’s no marketing or plan behind that. It feels very naked, but that was my dream to be an artist. And at some point, whether that was in middle school, high school, or college, I was creating art and making art – I was an artist. Jenna: And are you talking visual art when you’re saying artist, or just anything? Chris: I think of an artist as a chef, a musician, a painter, a poet. I hold all of those under an umbrella for myself. I still want to be an artist – a musical artist, a singer, all those things. That’s what I want. But when I became an artist I didn’t have a sense of, “My dreams have come true.“ I had a new sense, “I need to be a full-time artist.” And then that bar got a little further out like, “Well, if I was a real artist I wouldn’t be working in a library, I’d be working on my art all the time.” And where did that come from? Maybe not the same place that the dream to become an artist came from. It feels almost like sabotage, like every time we realize a dream, it keeps morphing into a different shadow that mutates it a bit in a way that feels less and less satisfying. Maybe I’m just weary of the way dreams can get morphed and mutated and twisted through the lens of “I need to be doing this really professionally and really well, and maybe it was fine to dream of being an artist at the beginning, but now I need to be a serious artist.” And that feels like a way to crush the dream at its root and then the playfulness gets lost and the creativity gets lost and it becomes a job. It becomes something to fail at. Dave: I’m in the middle of reading the book Say Yes by Scott Erickson, and it’s got a compelling subtitle: “Discover the surprising life beyond the death of a dream.” I’ve been reflecting on how sometimes the big dream dies. I also ponder about the smaller dreams within the dream that sometimes experience mini-deaths. They can be very disheartening and very frustrating to deal with because we only plan for success. But the mini-deaths can also be an amazing guide and teacher. Has that been true for you? Jenna: I’m realizing that in making music my main career, focus, and source of income, I have subconsciously created these unintended weights upon what the original dream was. Sometimes I think, “You are doing it wrong, or I’m not doing it good enough.” Then I drill down into that – what is making me say I’m not good enough? It’s not as actually evaluative as my head wants to tell me it is. We look sideways, and we look on social media and we’re like, “This person’s releasing all these songs and we haven’t released a new song that we’ve written in years, so we’re doing it wrong.” Or “I’m not booking as many shows as these people are, so I am failing.” I think I’m at a juncture now of trying to take a lot of steps back and seeing there are – like you said – a lot of little deaths that are happening along the way. If there’s anything that can kill dreams, it is a really out-of-control inner critic who is going to stamp all that right out of me. “Of course, I’m not going to release anything new because I can’t write because I feel bad at my job.” That’s not sustainable. If I let some of those things die away from what I thought a full-time vocational musician should do, is there room for the deep-down core of that dream to still have a beating heart and to gain a sure foundation looking differently than what I imagined? Chris: The ability to create freely and to create joyfully just starts to deteriorate under the weight of our own added expectations. I guess we have to reckon with some of those little disappointments. Maybe it’s not meant to look like someone else. And it’s okay if we can’t out-finger-pick Andrew Peterson or we can’t out-harmonize The Civil Wars or we can’t out-suave Johnnyswim. There is no success for us trying to piggyback or replicate the accolades that other people have. Instead of having to say it’s okay, we’re not going to find our thing trying to follow those trails. It’s been freeing to cut that tether and unhitch our trailer from certain things, and that gives us freedom enough to say we’re allowed to do what we want to do, and it doesn’t have to look like what any of our peers are doing. That actually feels more artistic and more creative. Dave: Now you’ve created something new and released a brand new single “Daylight.” Can you share the theme of the track? Jenna: This song came about during the pandemic. Nashville had a very mild winter, and while we were chained at home, we could still go outside. Chris and I had taken our Christmas money that year and bought bikes because there are so many amazing trails around Nashville. One day we were riding and I started making up the song on my bike. I positioned my phone on the holder and hit the audio recorder and just started singing and riding and feeling this rush. I was physically moving forward. Everything had been feeling like we were stuck – time was passing and none of us were moving anywhere. It felt so good to feel the sun and be rolling down that hill. This melody and words came – there is daylight, and it is here, and I don’t know how much we get but I really want to do good things with it. We use the phrase “make the most of it” so often, I don’t feel like I can fully understand what that phrase even means. But to actually pause and take stock that you have these 15 hours or so of daylight in a day. What do I want to do with it? And not “Are you spending it right?” Because that’s my bent – are you doing the right things with it? Instead of spending it right, I’m focusing on spending it well. I want to do great things with it in a way that is inviting and exciting. I want to invite other people into that – we have permission to do good things with our time. I want to do that together. Chris: For me, it’s a song about spending a day well, but it’s also that this day represents what I do every day, and what I do every day represents the sum of this life that we are living together. You only really get to answer that question, “Have I spent my life well?” one time, at the end of your life when you can see the whole thing in retrospect. But you get to answer, “Did I spend today well?” every single day, seven times a week, 365 days a year. Dave: How does it feel to be releasing the first new original Wild Harbor songs in a few years? Chris: I think primarily it’s excitement. Releasing remixes and stuff felt like a way to keep things going from a logistics standpoint for us, but there’s not the same feeling of show-and-tell putting something like this out there. It feels like the next season. If that was Season One, this is definitely Season Two. It has been about a year that we’ve been sitting on these masters. We’ve shared them with a few friends and family here and there to show them what we’re up to. Even those initial reactions helped me to remember other people are really excited to hear this too. When it’s just a thing in your own house and in your own head, it’s easy to forget the part of the interaction that I love the most – the sharing. It’s fun to get back to that season. Jenna: We’re not doing this to increase a number on a chart, we’re doing this because we felt passionate about a story and we want to share that story with other people. So it’s really fun for me to hear it again and be reminded about why we do what we do and the prospect of having that new season.

Andrew Peterson is lecturing on unique challenges and opportunities artists face. Join us at North Wind Manor (or via Zoom) for the lecture on September 27 at 7:30 p.m. CST. Lecture Description Artists often move among the borders—they’re “borderstalkers,” according to Makoto Fujimura. This can give them a feeling of exile, and even loneliness, while they speak, write, and create along the edges of things—but perhaps they’re not as alone as they think. In this lecture, Andrew explores the feeling of displacement many artists experience and offers encouragement for the journey in the borderlands. Lecture Details—When, Who, and Where Date: Wednesday, September 27th 2023 Time: 7:30 p.m., Central Standard Time (Doors open at 7 p.m.) Where: In-person at North Wind Manor & Livestream (Available for Members only) Cost: $10 for those joining the lecture in person at North Wind Manor. The livestream option is available for members only. There are two ways to join the lecture: In-person and via Livestream If you want to come to the manor to watch the lecture in-person, purchase tickets below. If you want to watch online, members can receive a link to the livestream by reserving a free ticket on the plugin below. (If you are not a member but want to watch the lecture online. Sign up for membership here.) To view the event page and reserve tickets directly on Universe, click here. Mark your calendar for the rest of this year’s lecture schedule: October 25, 2023—Even the Darkness is As Light to You: Christianity, Horror, and Stephen King (Andy Patton) December 7, 2023—Living in the Creator’s Gift Economy (Andrew Fellows) (Yes, we know that these lectures are all from Andrews… it was mostly accidental. We shall endeavor to amend our Drew-centric ways in 2024.)

Editor’s Note: Ashley Bayne, producer of Alter: The Movement of Change, this year’s open-to-the-public concert during Hutchmoot, reflects on some of the experiences of change that went into choosing the theme of this year’s show (October 6, 7:30-9:00). You can get tickets and learn more at Universe.com. A few months ago, I was invited by the Hutchmoot team to produce a show for the Friday evening of the 2023 conference. The year prior to COVID, I put together a show called “WELL” for Hutchmoot, which featured Sara Groves, Andrew Peterson, and Ella Mine, among many others. It explored the idea of mental health and wellness through a Kingdom lens with personal stories and music. Mental health was a hot topic that year and putting the show together was my way of sitting with this topic and gaining a deeper understanding of its role in my life, my community, and the world. I was asked, could I do something like that again? At first, I was nervous. A great deal has changed since 2019. Then, I realized that’s exactly why I needed to take the project on. This time last year, I was awaiting the arrival of my 4th child, due in mid-October. After her arrival, I would quit my job to stay home full-time; a job I loved with some of the loveliest people I knew. The regular rhythm of sitters and breaks that I enjoyed from my kids wouldn’t fit in the budget anymore, and the extra income that made life more comfortable would be gone for a season, making us more conscious of each dollar spent. But there was also a sweet new squishy baby to be held and loved and enjoyed in the fleeting newborn days. There was a village of friends and family that showed up to help in all sorts of ways that tore down my self-sufficient walls and flooded us with love, encouragement, and friendship that has permanently altered how I exist in the world. Since that moment in October of 2022 when the baby arrived, life has felt as if it was tipped on its head. It has been full of moments, decisions, and experiences that permanently altered my trajectory; friends moving away, new work for my husband, and a search for a new church family. I find myself telling the stories of all that has happened lately to help me process. Whether desired or not, planned or unexpected, my stories all circle around the theme of change. As I ruminated on all the change since my last Hutchmoot show in 2019, I realized it’s actually been since the beginnings of COVID that I have found myself in an overwhelming and unrelenting sea of change, and I know I’m not the only one. In 2021, 48 million people quit their jobs – a phenomenon aptly dubbed, “The Great Resignation”. One study reported that only 15% of churches described their congregational attendance numbers as “steady” over the past 3 years. Homeschooling enrollment has increased by an estimated 30% since 2019. These all signify huge shifts in the lives of millions. Not one of us is alone in our grappling with the plethora of “new normals” that we are facing. In light of the changes we have all experienced, what better theme could there be for this year’s Hutchmoot show than change itself? So the Alter event was born. Alter will be a chance to pause and simply sit with the idea of change, acknowledge its presence and role in our lives, to recognize how life has been altered these past three years, to mourn, celebrate, and honor those changes before diving back into the deep turbulent life-altering waters of daily life. Above all, it will be a time to remember that God, unlike all of creation, exists completely outside of the grasp of change, and yet chose to change—to be born as a baby, to grow as a man, to die as a human—for our sake. On October 6 at 7:30 pm at Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN, we are going to sit with this big idea of change and consider where it all might be leading. In the end, we’ll celebrate a God who is in it all yet remains unchanging in his promises and faithfulness. Our time together, while not quite a concert nor exactly a worship service, will be filled with music, words, and movement through dance all working together to help us along as we pause and contemplate together. I’m excited to have a variety of guests joining us, each with a unique perspective and their own stories of change: Jon Guerra, an accomplished singer-songwriter whose beautiful, poignant and honest songs have been the soundtrack of my life through this year of transitions. Odessa Settles, a wise friend and incredibly accomplished vocalist and activist who has lived through more change than most of us may ever experience. Philip Yancey, an award-winning and critically acclaimed author who is uniquely engaging in change with his newest work, Undone. Thomas Austin and Skye Peterson, both eloquent and wise singer-songwriters, anticipating the delightful change of marrying one another. Sho Baraka, a multi-talented writer and hip-hop artist with his own story of change to tell. Andrew Peterson, a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of Rabbit Room, who recently became a grandfather and also a filmmaker. My hope is that in the words and music these fine artists share, we’ll find some collective revelations about the nature of change and the nature of our God, and that we’ll all leave with a sense of greater communion with each other knowing we are walking this ever-changing experience of being human together. I hope you’ll join us. You can purchase tickets today at Universe.com. Ashley Bayne

[Editor's note: This fall, Rabbit Room Press is releasing the third volume in the Every Moment Holy Series. This post is the foreword to Volume 3.] It is a point of discussion in some theological circles whether the Greek word leitourgia—from which we get our word liturgy—is most accurately translated as “the work of the people” or “the work for the people.” I would suggest there might be ample room in the word to encompass both meanings. Because what Christ has done for his people, and what we, as his body are to be about in response, are—together—from beginning to end, the work of Jesus for, and in, and through his people. Jesus has done a good work for us. The Holy Spirit is doing a good work in us. And God equips and calls each of us to go out and do good works, works that he has prepared in advance for us to do, and that he alone, by his power and his Spirit, will bring to completion through us. In this sense, for the child of God, all of life ought to be seen as liturgical, because every part of life is meant to be lived as a facet of our unceasing labor of worship. Our relationships with spouses, parents, children and friends, our caretaking, our town planning, our artmaking, our storytelling and music making, our gardening and governing, our baking, our tending and maintenance of things, our greetings and our goodbyes, our learning and studying, our eating and drinking, our contemplations of truth and beauty and the natural world, our labor and leisure, our love, our hope, our loneliness and fear and discouragement and loss and grief, our repentances and forgivenesses, our hardships and celebrations—all these parts of life are to be lived in view of the work of Christ for us, and in willing surrender to—and participation in—the ongoing work of Christ in and through us. And herein lies the great mystery of the church. God does not need us. He could accomplish his labors by divine fiat. Yet it is his good pleasure to labor through us. And this despite our many foibles and failings. He doesn’t need our prayers. Yet he moves in response to them. He doesn’t need our acts of mercy, compassion, and generosity, yet he chooses to display his own heart through them. He doesn’t need our strengths. Yet he displays his strength in our weaknesses. He doesn’t need any of our creative works, our sacrifices, or our service. Yet he invites each of us to play some part in the outworking of his redemptive plan for his kingdom, his people, and his creation. He certainly doesn’t need our friendship. Fullness of love and delight exist eternally within the triune godhead. Yet he calls and draws and welcomes us into relationship with himself, and by so doing, he also beckons us into a richness of relationship with one another in the family of God. So perhaps we could look at it this way: The essential liturgy, the leitourgia of Jesus, the work for the people, the work of the One for the many, is the great overture of God. But in light of that great work undertaken on our behalf, we are invited to participate in the liturgical response of the work of the people, which is also the work of the One through the many. And even these works, accomplished through us, are still the ongoing work of Christ for the many, for it is he who is the head of his people, the church, and he who labors through us to accomplish his ends in culture, in the creation, and across the span of history. Every Moment Holy, Volume III, is the fruit of labors undertaken by many in glad response to the work for the people accomplished by our Lord, and in the good hope that what we would create together might in some sense truly become along the way a work of the people, the process nudged and guided by God’s Spirit, the end result offered to Christ that he might bless, multiply, and distribute it as he would, for the nourishment of many. Every Moment Holy, Volume I was penned over the span of a year in 2016-17. EMH Volume II (which focused on themes of death, grief, and hope) was a two-year writing endeavor. Community served to shape those prayers in ways that were significant and necessary, but the actual writing of those books was a solitary labor. This Volume III, though, was conceived as an explicit labor of community from beginning to end. More than sixty authors, poets, and songwriters were invited to contribute original prayers, and seven artists were invited to create the accompanying prints. Some are names readers will recognize. Others might be encountered here for the first time. Some are emerging talents in their mid-twenties, with much work before them. Others are more seasoned creators, journeying even well into their nineties, who already have a great body of work behind them. Most authors are contemporary, but some are followers of Jesus who lived decades, hundreds, or even more than a thousand years ago. We are particularly pleased to offer here for the first time in print, three prayers penned by Dorothy Sayers—prayers only recently uncovered in a library archive. Sometimes it is a great encouragement simply to learn that the things we struggle with or delight in today are the same for another, even if they might have lived in some other part of the world long ago. The kinship and fellowship of the family of God extends across time, as does the consolation and encouragement we might offer one another. Who knows? Perhaps in a few hundred years some of the newer prayers and illustrations in this book, so lovingly crafted by these authors and artists in hopes of serving the church, will still be circulating in some form, offering solace, direction, encouragement, or insight to pilgrims who today are not yet born, articulating the cries of their hearts in a way that makes them pause and say “Wait, how could they have known, so long ago, what I would feel today?” But the ways in which these prayers circulate and serve the Body of Christ, where and for how long, are not in our hands. All we can do is offer the fruits of this labor to God, to use as he pleases, for his good glory. The work of the people is, after all, from start to finish the work of our Lord through his people, as all of us are called into this great project of divine redemption, called to live and love and labor for the good of our neighbors, for the glory of God, and for the advance of his kingdom as it is worked out across every square foot of creation, in and through every people group, across all vocations and callings and fields of study and labor, across the span of time and history, in every relationship, in joy and in sorrow, in work and rest and play, in all our hours, in every moment. The advance of Christ’s blessed kingdom, even in this age between his first and second advents, is a thing we are always to be about individually and collectively—many parts, one body; each of us laboring unto the same good end, encouraging, equipping, and cheering one another on. Our hope is that our collective labors to build this book will resound to the praise and glory of Christ who is ever at work, laboring for and in and through his people. αχρι ημέρας —Philippians 1:6 Douglas Kaine McKelvey Conon Bridge, Scotland, Conon Hotel, Room 9 7 June 2023

W. David O. Taylor is Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books, including most recently, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of the Physical Body in Worship (Baker Academic, 2023). He lives with his family in Austin, Texas. You can find him on Twitter (@wdavidotaylor) and Instagram (@davidtaylor_theologian) Praise God from earth, you sea dragons, you fathomless ocean deeps; Fire and hail, snow and ice, hurricanes obeying his orders; Mountains and all hills, apple orchards and cedar forests; Wild beasts and herds of cattle, snakes, and birds in flight; Earth’s kings and all races, leaders and important people, Robust men and women in their prime, and yes, graybeards and little children. ―Psalm 148:7–12 the message “When [God’s] hand was opened by the key of love, the creatures came forth.” —Thomas Aquinas Some years back my wife and I visited the small village of Glen Coe in western Scotland. We chose it chiefly because of its proximity to the West Highland Way, a popular walking trail that runs ninety-six miles across the Scottish Highlands. Formed into a U-shape by an ice-age glacier, the trail narrows sharply at a point called the “Pass of Glen Coe.” This pass is famous not just because it served as a location for Monty Python and Harry Potter movies, but also because of its stunning geography. Lying between the six-mile-long notched ridge of Aonach Eagach and the truncated spurs of Bidean nam Bian, the glen is an ice-worn valley mantled with screes and debris from the mountains. As the Scottish National Heritage describes the area, the peaty flats of the lower glen stand in sharp contrast to the towering precipices and waterfalls around them. The region includes rugged mountains that soar from the flat valley floor as well as waterfalls, vertical outcrops, and hanging valleys. During our three-mile hike up Stob Mhic Mhartuin, Phaedra and I played a game that we have often played during our walks in nature. It’s a game that I learned about in seminary called the “Divine Game of Pinzatski.” Conceived by Arthur and Ellen Pinzatski, the game calls for one person to point out an object in nature that the other person must then, as best they can, state what the object might say about God and why. I’d point to, say, a bit of green moss, and Phaedra would say, “the gentleness of God,” and explain why she thought so. Or she’d point to a boulder-strewn cut in the mountain, and I’d say, “God’s severe mercy,” and explain why I thought so. Playing this game over the years has taught us to pay attention to the details in creation and see that there’s no such thing as generic moss but rather things like Perthshire Beard–moss and Woolly Hair–moss; that rocks are not just rocks but can be volcanic or sedimentary. It has taught us to hear the voice of the Maker in the things that he has made—that moss and rocks do in fact praise God in their own unique language. It has taught us to re-see ourselves as humans, how small we are yet how well-loved we are, too, in this “theater of God’s glory,” as John Calvin once described the world. And it has taught us to see what the psalmist saw long ago, in Calvin Seerveld’s translation of Psalm 19:1–4: The heavens are telling the glory of God. The very shape of starry space makes news of God’s handiwork. One day is brimming over with talk for the next day, and each night passes on intimate knowledge to the next night —there is no speaking, no words at all, you can’t hear their voice, but— their glossolalia travels throughout the whole earth! their uttered noises carry to the end of inhabited land! The Psalter opens with an echo of the first chapters of Genesis and it closes with a vision of the entire cosmos at praise. Before humans arrive on the scene, the psalms would remind us, creation was already at praise—long at praise. Once humans enter on the stage of history, creation does not cease to play a role. It continues to supply the proper context for all faithful praise. As I wrote in my book, Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, within the context of the psalms, creation enacts the praise of God and it summons us to fullsome praise. Hill and dale, fire and frost, along with amoeba, atom, Asiatic Black Bear, and Arcturus, twenty times the size of the sun, all rejoice in the Lord, and their praise extends to the “ends of the world,” as Psalm 19 puts it (niv). Throughout the psalms, we see how God ravishes us with his creation and so invites faithful praise from the human heart. We see how creation invites us to participate in its joy in God, and in giving ourselves willingly to such a joy, we discover our true purpose as creatures made in the image of a joyful God: to faithfully reflect the divine image in all contexts of our created life as royal representatives of our Creator-King. It's an astonishing vocation, which creation would remind and inspire us to continue to fulfill, if we but had ears to hear, a nose to know, and a mouth to taste and (eyes) to see that the Lord is indeed good. When we find ourselves forgetful of our truest vocation, my wife and I might head out again on a walk through the neighborhood in order to re-play the Divine Game of Pinzatski. Our walks are less breathtaking in our aesthetically washed-out, architecturally grim neighborhood in northeast Austin, Texas. But with eyes to see and a willingness to attend to detail, we’re bound to notice the hidden grace of God in a small tuft of grass that has survived the hottest summer on record in this region of the world or the tenacious nature of God’s promises in the dogged roots of the Bradford Pear tree that sits on our front lawn and that refuses to yield its leaves to the rays of a seemingly pitiless sun. Photo by Niklas Weiss on Unsplash

[From Meredith Goehring’s Afterword for The Major and the Missionary, available in the Rabbit Room Store.] Born on the 20th of December, 1909, in North East Tasmania, Blanche Biggs was the youngest child in a family of ten. In her last years at secondary school, she decided that she wanted to study medicine. From pocket money and various odd jobs, she saved one shilling a week until she had enough to enter nursing school. While a student, she contracted tuberculosis. In those days, tuberculosis was often a death sentence. She spent six months in a sanatorium and following that, six years being cared for by her parents. During those years, she grew very close to her mother. They both prayed, and they believed that God heard their prayers. After long years of convalescence, Blanche was pronounced completely cured, and she went on to finish her medical degree at Melbourne University. Soon after, while attending an Anglican church service at St. Peter’s Eastern Hill in Melbourne, she heard a visiting preacher appeal for medical missionaries willing to go to Papua New Guinea. Blanche believed that God was telling her why He had answered her prayers for healing. Blanche took several extra courses in tropical medicine and received training as a midwife. Then, on the 7th of September, 1948, she was appointed by the Australian Board of Missions to the mission field. Blanche spent the next 25 years serving in Papua New Guinea. She specialized in tuberculosis cases and worked among those with leprosy. But, as is often the case in mission hospitals, Blanche was also called upon to provide whatever medical care might be needed: delivering babies, tending to burns, and performing surgeries. In one of her early newsletters from the mission field, she describes an encounter with one patient as follows: Since I wrote last, I have done a fair amount of traveling, finally collected all my straggling bits of luggage and unpacked; and can fairly say that I have settled in. There have been odds and ends of surgery, none of it major; the most alarming thing I have done so far has been to repair a man’s arm after a crocodile had finished with it. Both the patient and I, I think, offered up thanks that it was a small crocodile. In spite of the filth that crocodiles are credited with carrying in their teeth, the wound healed by first intention. (Newsletter 2) This crocodile encounter occurred during her first year of service in Papua; her tone expresses a robust sense of adventure and curiosity that would sustain her through the next 24 years. She continues, “There are plenty of most interesting medical problems here, and one often longs for up-to-date laboratory facilities; however, one must go ‘by guess and by God’ and leave it at that” (Newsletter 2). Though she was often overwhelmed by the amount of work she faced, she seemed undaunted by the challenges of the jungle. Blanche did it all; she hosted Bishops and managed Church conferences and inoculated children against polio. Throughout her time on the mission field, she held two full- time jobs: as a hospital administrator and as a doctor who served as a midwife, primary care physician, and surgeon. In 1950, a year and a half into her tenure in Papua, she was presented with a little girl whose lips had been fused together by a tropical infection. Known colloquially as “yaws,” this infection causes areas of the skin to swell and burst, forming lesions. Blanche writes that the girl was kept home from school and could only whisper. Blanche restructured the girl’s lips in surgery and was “rewarded by a funny little smile” the first day she dressed the girl’s wounds (Newsletter 10). Tuberculosis was (and still is) one of the most prominent killers in Papua New Guinea; it was one of Blanche’s fiercest challenges. She and her fellow missionaries were able to cure most of the cases brought to them. For example, she treated one woman with hardly any lung function. She had wasted to a mere skeleton. However, after receiving care in the hospital, the woman’s appetite returned, and she was strong enough to participate in the mission’s Christmas festivities (Newsletter 65). Blanche cared for everyone she could. During her time in Papua, Blanche was awarded the Order of the British Empire. John Biggs notes, “Her OBE was the only instance where she might have been accused of the sin of pride.” In trying to sum up his aunt’s life and contributions, he writes, “She firmly believed that God had guided her life, and that intercession by prayer worked.” He concludes, “Her oldest sister, Lil, was a saintly saint, her other sister, Win, a worldly saint [...], Blanche, the youngest of the three surviving sisters, was a feisty saint; a saint who pulled no punches.” Blanche Biggs and C.S. Lewis’ older brother, Warren Lewis, exchanged letters for years. In October of 1968, Blanche wrote the very first of [her] letters to Warren. In it, she ponders the merits of burning her extensive memorabilia of documents, photographs, and journals, collected over a lifetime. Then she hesitates: “Some of my letters and papers might be useful in the future, even after my death, not because of their merit in themselves; but I have been a missionary doctor living in this same area for 20 years, and I have seen this Territory developing right under my nose, from primitive life to a pseudo-civilized one” (Letter 1). Blanche was wise to consider that her letters and papers might be useful one day. They offer a genuine portrait of life as a missionary in Papua New Guinea in the mid-1900s, articulated with candid authenticity. Blanche wrote for the joy of self-expression and connection with her reader. It is a gift to us, the audience Blanche would never have imagined, that one of those favored readers was Warren Lewis. It was certainly a treasure to him. Warren’s connection with a missionary doctor across the seas enriches our understanding not just of the elusive Major, but also of the Lewis brothers and the Inklings. Blanche and Warren’s story entrusts us with the same charge as the greatest tales: to live sacrificially for the sake of the good we see, both in the world and in one another. Blanche’s story in particular is engaging and inspiring in its own right, and more: it is a reminder of generations of unsung heroes—missionaries and others—whose own stories deserve to be told. Blanche’s commitment to Christ steered her life. Just as it guided her through her years of service in Papua, her faith guided her during her last years. Even in retirement, when she had settled in Brisbane, she sought opportunities to serve: “I have been doing a refresher course in medical work, and hope to do a bit of medical work; perhaps among the aboriginals who are pretty plentiful in this city, and need medical care” (Letter 85). She emphasized an open attitude to people no matter their abilities or background, writing that the hospital tried to create a spirit “of service and friendship to all, regard- less of barriers” (Newsletter 8). She carried this conviction to the end of her life, remaining a robust and servant-hearted woman all her days. As she approached her 90th birthday, her good health faded. She suffered multiple health crises in her last decade, “each of which,” as her nephew says, “she hoped would deliver her to her Maker, who she yearned to meet face to face.” Blanche herself says little about this yearning, but her nephew John Biggs believes that her point of view was much the same as that of her grandmother Harriet Burville: It may be that I am nearly home... but I am not a bit afraid. My precious Jesus, who has never left nor forsaken me in all the years since I gave myself to Him, has taken away all fear of death... my whole trust is in the finished work of my Saviour, who is always my constant, ever-present Friend, close enough to be touched [...] I have not gone home yet, but waiting, trusting, and longing to go, and yet quite willing to stay here as long as my loving Father pleases. ... His will be done. Blanche Biggs died on May 7, 2008. Her ashes are scattered in the rose garden of the Kenmore Parish Church (Queensland), where she was an active member. The papers, letters, and photographs that she had collected over the years were not destroyed: she donated her correspondence with Warren Lewis to The Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois, and the rest of her accumulated papers, diaries, and photographs to the special collection at the Fryer Library, the University of Queensland.

As our team loads up the van, puts together folders, and welcomes speakers and participants from far and wide for this weekend's Hutchmoot conference, we want to recognize the people who make it happen. And no, I’m not just talking about the people who plan the details and programming, but the people who make the event (and everything else around here) exist through their support, the Rabbit Room members. Thank you! For those of you who are not yet members but are interested in joining, read on. We have something for you. When you sign up for membership today through Monday, October 9th: Your initial donation is doubled for a potential $10k matched You’ll receive a handmade, leather Rabbit Room bookmark from our friends at Growley Leather along with our 2023 New Member Mug. (Reminder- you’ll also have access to our Housemoot Digital conference at no extra cost) You may be thinking, “Wait a tic... is this just for people attending Hutchmoot or Housemoot?” Set thy hearts at rest, friends. The answer is no. Everyone who signs up during this time window can make the extra impact and receive a bookmark. If you’re ready to take the step and partner with us, you can join the membership here. Expect your new member package in the next few weeks! If you’d like to learn more about the exciting new opportunities in Membership that go beyond supporting Rabbit Room programs (like access to Housemoot, lectures, and Member course opportunities), you can click here. We’re grateful for those who want to partner with us in this mission and support all Rabbit Room programs through membership. Thanks for being here and taking part in the work!

Editor’s Note: Undone is acclaimed author Philip Yancey’s latest book, published by Rabbit Room Press. In it, he renders 17th-century poet John Donne’s meditations on illness and suffering into modern English and adds his own commentary, informed by his experience with a debilitating diagnosis. Read Philip Yancey’s preface to Undone, explaining his heart behind the book. I was born at the height of an epidemic. In 1949, just over 42,000 Americans contracted the disease polio, most of them under the age of five. Less than 10 percent of the afflicted died, but a large number experienced paralysis. Children with crutches, leg braces, and deformed limbs were a commonplace sight, spreading fear among parents and children alike. My father, though an adult, somehow became infected. He spent several months in an iron lung, completely paralyzed, and then died at age 23. My first book explored the question Where Is God When It Hurts?, a question that had hung over my brother and me like the shadow of a missing father. In the years since, my writing has often circled around the issues raised by pain and suffering. Then came 2020, when a global health crisis put everyone on the planet at risk. Within weeks, a tiny virus overwhelmed hospitals, disrupted economies, and upended everyday social interactions. For a time, everything came undone. We had no instruction manual on how to respond to a pandemic—or did we? Historians soon dug up lessons from prior outbreaks of diseases such as polio, smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague, and Spanish influenza. At various times, these scourges spread terror and brought normal life to a halt. Each pandemic reduced humans to frail, bewildered creatures facing questions that seemed to have no satisfying answers. Where could I find a guide who had survived such an ordeal, and who offered wisdom for the ages? I found the answer in a journal predating COVID-19 by four centuries. John Donne wrote Devotions upon Emergent Occasions in 1623, during a bubonic plague epidemic in his city of London. Here, at last, was a master tutor, a trustworthy companion in crisis. Thrilled at the discovery, I sequestered myself in a mountain retreat and began a project that would occupy me for several months. My goal: to make more accessible for 21st-century readers the timeless insights from one of our greatest writers. The understanding and treatment of disease has changed dramatically since Donne’s time, and yet I know of no better account of someone confronting God during a health crisis. Ironically, just as this book was being edited, my doctor confirmed a most unwelcome diagnosis: ‘Philip, you have Parkinson’s Disease,” she said. Suddenly I knew exactly how Donne felt when he wrote the first words of his book: “Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man! This minute I was well, and am ill, this minute.” Unlike Donne’s feverish battle with immediate symptoms, I face the challenge of adapting to a chronic, degenerative disease. Yet I am finding that his journal of suffering points the way toward a hard-won faith. John Donne composed twenty-three meditations charting the stages of his illness. They include some of the most famous passages in English literature: “No man is an island . . . never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . .” To Donne’s meditations, I have added seven entries that explain some of the author’s background. Donne wrote as a form of contemplation, and his reflections should be read that way. I recommend reading one entry per day over a thirty-day period, slowly and meditatively. I was brutally selective as I edited Devotions, slashing anything that required explanations: archaic science or Greek mythology, or even obscure Bible passages. retained only parts that seem to have an immediate relevance, not only to the COVID-19 crisis, but to any crisis that stirs up existential questions. And, wincing at my own effrontery, I sought to tame his complicated writing style into something that modern readers can more readily absorb. I sought to extract from Donne’s literary masterpiece universal truths on how to live and how to die. —Philip Yancey, 2023

Here comes Act II of The Orchardist’s People, People. The official release date is August 4th, but you can pre-order today and get an immediate download of the track “Quiet, Now.” People, People: Act II is the second installment of a three-part album about the classic human story of looking for shortcuts through life in the naive hope of avoiding the pain of transformation. Like any fairy tale or classic adventure story, the road between start and finish is fraught with pitfalls, unpleasant surprises, monsters to be faced, and unexpected moments of healing. With these songs, The Orchardist laments and celebrates the truth that we can only receive the fullness of life by holding onto every part of it, bitter and rich and everything in between. Click here to pre-order.

Melanie Penn hopes you trust her when she tells the story of her latest album. Specifically, she’s hoping not to come across as too “mystical” or “freaky,” but the reality is Immanuel, Penn’s first Christmas album, was birthed in a supernatural way. Instead of spending last Christmas with her family like normal, she spent the holidays in seclusion in her New York apartment, crafting songs as they unexpectedly came to her, first-person narratives from characters in the Christmas story. One by one, she obeyed the creative impulses until the scope of the project came into view. Immanuel is the beautiful result. Melanie recently sat down with us to detail the album’s origins and to share how friend and producer Ben Shive talked her into following through on the scariest part of it all. RR: Immanuel is an interesting spin on a Christmas album in that it tells the story from various first-person perspectives. Where did the idea originate? Melanie: 2016 was a really tough year for me. I headed into the month of December wondering how I could put the year to bed in the right way. I’m a believer in ending things well and starting things well. Those two ideas are related inasmuch as you can’t have one without the other, so as I rolled into the end of 2016, I wondered how I could end the year well and start off into the next one. It’s hard to explain this, but I really felt the Lord was calling me to hunker down in New York to be alone, to be by myself. I had this odd sense that God wanted to give me something at the end of this hard year. And again, it all sounds very mystical, right? It’s just an impression that I had. So I didn’t go home for the holidays. I usually spend Christmas in Virginia with my mom and dad, but instead I spent it in New York really alone. I randomly one day wrote a song from the perspective of one of the wise men in the Christmas story. The song was about following a star. The obvious narrative was that it was about one of the wise men, but the other part of it was about trusting that you’re on the right road. You’re not sure where the journey is going to culminate, but there’s something guiding you and you trust you’re heading in the right direction. I wrote that song and it intrigued me that I’d done that. Then a couple weeks later, I had a Christmas show in New York. It’s an annual tradition and a lot of people come and I sang the song as one of a collection. It’s usually only covers, but people came up saying they loved the song. So that intrigued me, too. Then a couple days later, still in this month of December when I was secluded in New York, I wrote a song from the perspective of one of the angels in the angel chorus. Again I have no explanation for any of this. I don’t know why I started writing these songs. Then I started reading Isaiah and the prophecies of Jesus being born and I wrote the song for Isaiah. They came out easily in a way but there was also a lot of labor. I was immersed in these melodies and the lyrics of this very ancient story became everyday. I wanted to narrate them in a modern, everyday, simple way. After the third song, I thought, “Okay, now I’m in this thing.” [Laughs] I continued to write the songs and once I got to the song about the shepherd, which came at the end in January, I realized I was into something that was engaging me totally. I thought it was weird. I wondered, “Why am I writing all of these Christmas songs?” I sent all of my voice memos to Ben Shive who’s a longtime collaborator of mine. We were talking about doing a different project, but I wanted to let him know what I was working on, and he said, “When are you coming to Nashville to make this Christmas album?” So the songs started coming to me as a gift, but there was no grand vision to make an album. My life didn’t get consumed by it until weeks into writing the songs. I didn’t expect it, but I think it turned out so well. For me the process has been so wonderful and special. I’ve had so much joy doing this and I hope that people get that out of it. I really want there to be a pure tenderness and joy in the album because that’s how I felt while making it. RR: You said these songs presented themselves to you in a way. How different is that from the normal process of songwriting? Melanie: I still consider myself a nascent songwriter, so I’m in no way an expert. I would say that the difference in these songs is that typically I’ve taken an experience I’ve had or something I think and I try to distill it into a song. Whether that’s trying to find a theme that exists in the world already and trying to write my own or having an experience and then trying to articulate it in a universal way, it’s all come down to me and things I’m going through. But these are all about other people. I’m trying to get into who they were and what they might have gone through. These songs are very biographical, which is totally different for me. I have to believe the saints are in heaven. I believe they are eternal souls. I have to believe on some level that they’re watching over us. I would ask them from time to time, “What would you want me to say? I’d love to know your story.” That can be freakish to talk about channeling Mary and Joseph. No! I just mean that I have to believe on some level that we all exist together as the eternal church and I did inquire of them what they felt and what they might have thought. I just wanted to be true to who they were. So that was very different. RR: You started with the wise men, Isaiah, the angel, etc. Is there a moment when it becomes more intentional, where you have seven songs and you need ten, so you pick a new perspective on purpose? Melanie: It became fun because honestly there are so many people you could write about. There’s Simeon and Anna and all these other characters. Most of the characters gravitationally pulled me, so I knew there were songs there. I knew I wanted to write a song for the innkeeper and the star of Bethlehem. Those were organic and had gravity that I couldn’t explain. I just knew it had to be done. I was going to leave Mary out of it totally because I was terrified to step into her story, so I thought I would leave her out. Ben was like, “That’s super cute if you think you’re going to write a Christmas album and that you won’t write one for Mary.” After our first week of pre-production, he sent me back to New York and said, “Why don’t you go write a song for Mary?” That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to pick a week in May, I think, and a friend lent me a house in the Hudson Valley. I went there specifically to write a song for Mary. Even when I wrote it at that point, we recorded it and then in August I rewrote the chorus. It just wasn’t good enough and I knew it wasn’t. I wanted it to be worthy of her story and worthy of who she was and I don’t know if I accomplished that, but I now have peace about it enough to let it go. RR: Was there ever consideration that you would leave it out since you said you weren’t quite sure about it even after you first recorded it? Or were you 100 percent committed to finding a way to make it work? Melanie: 100 percent committed. It was never a question. I knew that Ben was right. I knew she had to be included, but I just wanted a way out of it. Once I faced the truth of that, I knew I couldn’t complete the album without her. RR: That’s powerful what you just said, because you just admitted you had this single thing you wanted to avoid and yet it took community to push you to do the thing that you ultimately wound up so committed to. Melanie: I love how you put that about community and it speaks to the creative relationship I have with Ben. It feels very meant to be. He speaks a lot of truth to me and I think I speak a lot of truth to him. When I think of what I’d want artistic collaboration to look like, it definitely looks like our working relationship. RR: I love that the perspectives aren’t just those immediate figures we find in any nativity scene but you include Isaiah and this Old Testament lead-in. Was that purposeful to give it that breadth of scope? Melanie: I don’t know if it was intentional. Isaiah’s song is long at six minutes, which to me is a little risky. But in a way, it felt like the thesis statement, not only for the album but the story itself. It’s also so relevant for today. Today more than ever, we need to hear there is a ruler coming who is going to reign in peace and speak peace. Isaiah’s words about Christ’s coming just felt so in the moment we are in and then also foretelling what actually happened. It felt like the natural launching point. Preview the songs here. The album will be available tomorrow!

Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1 will be available on March 30th, but you don’t have to wait that long to get a taste of the new music. Resurrection Letters: Prologue is now available in the Rabbit Room Store. What’s a prologue? Here’s how Andrew describes it: [With Resurrection Letters, Vol. 1], it felt odd writing about Christ’s victory over death without spending at least some time on his death itself. That led to the idea of Resurrection Letters: Prologue, which is—let’s face it—a prequel to the prequel. (I can already hear the jokes about me waiting another ten years to release a prequel to the prequel to the prequel, called Resurrection Letters: Title Page and Contents.) In the spirit of Lent, the season of fasting that precedes Easter, we put together Prologue, a collection of five songs that take us from the last words of Jesus on the cross to his interment in the tomb. And then comes the long wait for spring. This is our hope, and I’m still surprised by it. The stories are true. Click here to download Resurrection Letters: Prologue.

“You are the cause. I am the effect. The rest is destiny.” Today in 1797, Mary Shelley was born, and 21 years later the first edition of Frankenstein was published. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the novel. It’s become one of our most enduring stories, and this year A. S. “Pete” Peterson went to work with Studio Tenn to develop a fresh new adaptation for the stage. The show opens tomorrow and will run for two weekends. The story of Victor Frankenstein and his creature is much more than a mere monster tale. It’s a story rich with theological, sociological, and psychological layers exploring not only what it means to be human, but what it means to be shaped by the power of love—or hatred. What obligation has a creator to his creation? Where does human kindness come from? Is true justice possible? These questions and many more are deftly investigated in Peterson’s probing interpretation of Shelley’s classic work. The show is a classic example of Studio Tenn’s sumptuous production aesthetic and is not to be missed. Receive 20% off tickets by using the discount code: RABBITROOM. Purchase tickets to A. S. Peterson’s Frankenstein by clicking here. And if you can’t make it to Nashville for the show, the play script is now available in both hardcover and paperback from the Rabbit Room Store. Click here to order.

These days, worship music is an entire sub-industry in the realm of art. There are conversations over the nature and performance of said music, and about as many worship traditions as there are denominations. Having been a worship leader on and off for most of my adult years, I know this world fairly well. But I can’t say I’d ever heard much time spent discussing the connection between our worship and our everyday work. Sure, there’s a strong Protestant tradition for the sacredness of ordinary work, but not many songs about, at least that I’m aware of. So I was pleasantly surprised to recently hear about a project called Work Songs, produced by the sacred arts collective The Porter’s Gate. Work Songs involves some Rabbit Room favorites such as Josh Garrels and Audrey Assad, as well as artists like Latifa Alattas (Page CXVI), David Gungor (The Brilliance), and Joy Ike, among others. Here’s a short video clip about the project: Works Songs is available through most digital music outlets.

Jess Ray’s music defied the conventions of debut releases. She seemed, with 2015’s Sentimental Creatures, to have leapt right into her stride. Now, this year’s Parallels + Meridians jumps equally as far ahead of its excellent predecessors. The pop hooks, even when they come softly delivered, as in “Humble Heart,” are anthemic in scope. This is the kind of music that you could imagine holding a stadium’s worth of listeners to rapt attention. Yet in further contravention of most stadium-rock radio offerings and pop music in general, the lyrics are full of delightful specificities and the bravery of truth. As with her earlier hit “Headed for the Hills,” Ray leans hard into a sound built on the road. The aural landscape is wide open, full of miles and deep-breathing expanses. There’s also a rock solid groove that pervades much of the record. Opening with a one-two punch of “O Great Light” and “When I’m With You,” you are immediately transported into joy and mystery. My wife is a dancer, and so are my daughters. I instead claim the dance handicap of growing up Southern Baptist. I’ll bob along enough to embarrass myself now and again, but it takes a lot to make me do this in public. Yet, you can put on a Jess Ray record and that’s enough to get me moving around the house, hoping the neighbors don’t look in through the windows only to wonder if I have a complex. The beat leans back into a history populated by Des’ree and Lauryn Hill, but it’s definitively Jess Ray. The lyrics are full of delightful specificities and the bravery of truth. Adam Whipple Lyrically, Ray continues to favor bare-knuckled expressions of humanity. Yet while her phrasing is comfortably raw, it comes across with the finesse of maturity. “Funny how I could just turn and run from this,” she says in “You and I.” “Maybe I am too afraid; maybe I don’t want to change.” On “No Man,” she opens the track with “Your daddy didn’t love you like you wanted him to,” a call-out of the broken world that burns more with each repetition. Guest vocalist Ellie Holcomb follows it up with a second verse: “Your husband didn’t love you like you wanted him to.” The ache is palpable. Yet the album is also rife with hope. Ray even braves the revelation of what sounds like a church youth group experience (though it could be any number of similar events): Years ago, down in Orlando, I heard an old man speak. I was not prepared for what he shared, Sitting in the bleacher seat. — “Did Not Our Hearts Burn” Having grown up with the kind of gatherings portrayed here, I am possessed of an ingrained cynicism regarding them. There is the danger, even in such a personal story, of the episode seeming trite at large. Yet in “Did Not Our Hearts Burn,” I find an approachability that encourages me to accept the Spirit’s mysterious work in such instances. There’s even a winking sense of final victory: The harder the wind will blow The deeper roots will go, And the devil is gonna hang, Oh, the devil is gonna hang, The devil is gonna hang From his own gallows. — “Gallows” The comeuppance represented here is reminiscent of the same humor that led medieval Christians to dress Satan up in red pajamas and give him a pitchfork. This, even while Ray evokes a great relief that the last enemies will, in the end, be defeated. I suppose that’s a great word to describe Parallels + Meridians altogether: relief. It’s everywhere. Relief twirls down from Ray’s voice like autumn leaves. Catharsis pools in the arrangements like water in cupped hands. If you feel the great rumblings of the earth, the nerve-pinched vibrations of the world spinning toward hell, here is a weaving of songs that offers to hold you in an embrace and remind you of the brooding wings of the Holy Spirit. You can learn more about Jess Ray’s new record at her website.

If you know anything at all about Sarah Clarkson, you know this: she loves books. And today she uses her lifetime of reading to bless us all with her newest book: Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treaures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life. Book Girl is now available in the Rabbit Room Store, and look for more to come from Sarah in the coming days.

Drew Miller’s new project, set to release October 4th, is now available exclusively in the Rabbit Room Store for the next week. And it includes an unreleased bonus track, supplemental videos about the project, and beautiful liner notes in PDF form. Click here to view the Desolation EP in the Rabbit Room Store. And here to visit Drew’s website.