Click through for this week’s edition of Jonny Jimison’s Rabbit Trails. Click here to check out more of Jonny Jimison’s work at his website.

I think we wind up saying to others what we need to hear the most. We know what’s right and true, but it doesn’t always sink into our own skin. Perhaps that’s why we keep telling other people about it over and over again—we need the repetition. I’ve consoled friends over coffee, speaking Holy Spirit-inspired words of wisdom, while internally chuckling at the irony that whatever I’m saying is what I should be doing. I’ve written talks preaching the importance of reflection and discipline that I so desperately need, yet often fail to maintain. When I manage to write a lyric that hits home, it’s usually not because I’ve mastered the sentiment behind it, but because it’s what I need to be reminded of. In this place of knowing the truth but doubting that I’ve fully grasped it, I’ve seen a film that makes me feel less alone. Won’t You Be My Neighbor is a beautiful documentary in which we get to know Fred Rogers and his journey in public television through treasured clips of him and the observations of those who lived and worked with him. We see glimpses of children’s responses to his program and his presence. We are shown a man who loved greatly and the ways that he was loved in return. This is a man who knew his mission, who poured out his ordained ministry in a unique setting, recognizing that children needed to be valued and brought into conversations about hard topics with gentle honesty. We follow Fred as he greets children in person, and he famously and resolutely tells them, “I like you just the way you are.” We then get to see and hear a few of their reactions, and one small girl approaches him and says, “I want to tell you something… I like you.” Another exuberantly tells him exactly what he emphasized to them on so many, many episodes—“I love you just the way you are!” It is special to hear an adult say this to a child; it undid me to listen to children say it back to him unprompted. It’s language I tried to use for a long time as a teacher with my students, but it’s language that I don’t always believe about my own self. I so badly want the kids I meet to be sure of their value, perhaps because in a deep-down place I forget or doubt my own. As the film continues, we catch moments where Fred Rogers may have wrestled with that same self-doubt. It’s stunning to me that such a tender, loving heart would question his own worth and ability. But that is precisely what so many tender hearts do. After stopping production on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and launching an ultimately unsuccessful program for adults, he faced the possibility of making more episodes of the Neighborhood. The doubts he typed in a note break my heart and sound chillingly familiar. “Am I kidding myself that I’m able to write a script again?… Why don’t I trust myself. Really that’s what it’s all about… that and not wanting to go through the agony of creation. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS IT’S JUST AS BAD AS EVER. I wonder if every creative artist goes through the tortures of the damned trying to create?” I wonder that, too, Fred. It’s true for me. And I like to tell myself it’s just me, that there must be something wrong with me, that maybe I’m not meant to create after all… oh, the temptation to doubt that steers us away from the very things we are made for! His note continues: “…Oh well, the hour cometh and now IS when I’ve got to do it. GET TO IT, FRED. GET TO IT… But don’t let anybody ever tell anybody else that it was easy. It wasn’t.” I think I’m going to adapt it and put it on my wall. GET TO IT, SELF. Doubts be damned. Years later, he was asked to come out of retirement to record a televised response to 9/11. His nerves were evident, and he confessed, “I just don’t know what good these are going to do.” The man whose platform was constructed upon doing good was not infallible. He doubted his gift, the goodness that spread from his wisdom and engagement of helping children interact with themselves and the world. Especially when faced with the enormity of a nation grieving unthinkable terror, he was blinded to how his meager offering could bring healing and peace. I have heard similar words from so many who are tempted to shy away from their calling, or even from a simple act of mercy. I have said them myself. Imagine the good the world would be deprived of if Fred had succumbed to his uncertainties—if we all succumbed to them. Each time the film revealed a moment of Mr. Rogers' doubts, I felt both the pang of wanting him to know that yes, he was good and loved and it was worth it, and the pang of familiarity with my own struggles in that arena. I wonder if the former is how God feels when he hears our thoughts enter that skeptical territory. Jenna Badeker His wife and colleagues give insight into how different characters he created were extensions of him and those around him. They suggest that Daniel Striped Tiger voiced the little boy still inside him, the boy who questioned and felt deeply. In one episode, Daniel sings out loud what so many of us have wondered inside. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m a mistake I’m not like anyone else I know When I’m asleep or even awake Sometimes I get to dreaming that I’m just a fake I’m not like anyone else Others I know are big and are wild I’m very small and quite tame Most of the time I’m weak and I’m mild Do you suppose that’s a shame Often I wonder if I’m a mistake I’m not supposed to be scared am I Sometimes I cry and sometimes I shake Wondering isn’t it true that the strong never break I’m not like anyone else I know I’m not like anyone else.” Sure, it’s a song written for children. But it sounds honest and confessional from the author. (It also sounds like what I’ve read about Enneagram type fours…) Moments like this are what made the program so powerful. Rogers’ ministry feels so profound not merely in spite of his self-doubt, but because he pours it out into his characters. His vulnerability creates a space for anyone who has thought such things to hear it spoken aloud and be met with a message of love and reassurance. Joanne Rogers reveals an instance of this self-doubt close to the end of Fred’s life. They had been reading from Matthew 25, which includes the passage on the separation of the sheep and the goats. A while later, from his bed, Fred asked her, “Do you think I’m a sheep?” He dedicated his life to serving God by serving children, he poured himself tirelessly into his ministry, and yet he still questioned his salvation and his worth. I have fallen prey to this perpetual doubt. We have a blessed assurance, promises from the Lord, and I am ready to remind other hurting souls that they are seen and loved and treasured. I fully believe it, too—they’re not a set of platitudes, but a burning desire for another person to see what I see and know how wonderfully he or she is made.  Yet deep down, the question remains, “…me, though?” I keep an endless laundry list of the ways I’ve come up short, the limitations of my creativity and my stamina and my craft. The ways I could be considered unworthy of love. The wondering if my efforts will really do any good. Each time the film revealed a moment of Mister Rogers’ doubts, I felt both the pang of wanting him to know that yes, he was good and loved and it was worth it, and the pang of familiarity with my own struggles in that arena. I wonder if the former is how God feels when he hears our thoughts enter that skeptical territory. Doubts like these can keep us from serving others and making art. However, they are the very reason we need to press on and do it. For every negative thought, there is likely someone else thinking the same thing. They need to know they’re not alone and need to be told they are loved just the way they are. And we need to receive that reassurance when it’s spoken back to us. In this way, we can continue the legacy of honesty and worth that Mister Rogers left behind, and we can continue to impress the essence of the love of God on those we encounter.

Way back in 2011, Rabbit Room Press was proud to shepherd into existence Russ Ramsey’s first book Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. Over the past seven years, it’s been a joy to watch Russ grow and stretch his legs as an author—since that first book, he’s published his second and third (Behold the King of Glory, and Struck). Today we’re delighted to help him celebrate the release of his fourth, The Mission of the Body of Christ. Today marks more than the release of a single book, though. This new book, in which Russ unpacks the events of Acts and the birth of the Church, is actually the third of the series that began with Behold the Lamb and Behold the King of Glory. Those books have been picked up and repackaged by the good folks at InterVarsity Press and today they are all available in a complete set called the Retelling the Story series. So in other words, Russ isn’t satisfied just to release one book today. He’s dropping an entire trilogy in one fell swoop. It’s like he’s bringing the Netflix binge-viewing model to books. Well done, Russ. Well done. We’ll have an in-depth review of the new book in the coming weeks, but you can pickup the entire series in the Rabbit Room Store today. “God had not just sent his Messiah into the world. He had sent him to them. They were known. In all their guilt―intended and unintended―they were known and invited to find refuge in the grace of God, accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. And the church continued to grow.” Russ Ramsey’s dynamic narrative traces the journey of the early church with thirty-one daily readings through the book of Acts, as the people of God carried out Jesus’ mission as his ambassadors. This unlikely band of believers faced enormous challenges yet experienced God’s power and grace as they moved forward in the Spirit. Through this new community, a movement spread around the world that continues to this day. Come discover the transformation that energized the early church. And you too can play your part in the unfolding story. The Retelling the Story series explores the narrative arc of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation in compelling language that is faithful to the text of Scripture. The stories are told afresh to help readers hide God’s word in their hearts by way of their imaginations. [All three books of the series are available in the Rabbit Room Store.]

Have you ever felt confused by someone’s inability, or refusal, to listen to the viewpoint of another? One episode of this that plays in my mind was grad school days at Notre Dame: I was a teaching assistant for one of the theology professors. He assigned an essay by Leo Tolstoy to his class. It was one of Tolstoy’s classic scathing essays of social critique. When the prof opened the class up for discussion on the reading, the first student to make a comment said: “I did not know Tolstoy was a heretic.” The student refused to engage. He wanted to dismiss Tolstoy altogether because of particular elements of Tolstoy’s theology. The professor looked stunned, almost personally insulted. He was one of the few truly big-brained people I have known, and knew how to do theological critique of Tolstoy’s heterodoxy certainly better than the student ever could, and had loads of published works to prove it. But this professor steadfastly refused not to listen to someone’s argument. He believed it to be part of the Christian tradition itself, a sort of non-violent listening to the claims and words of another. As a matter of fact, he would tell me that year that he wanted me to go to a conference held by a Catholic priest on economic questions which he knew I would find distasteful. “You need to understand their arguments,” he said to me, “so you need to go.” I dutifully did so. Through such experiences I learned how much I could learn from people with whom I disagree about really important matters. More than learning a lot from the Catholic-priest-with-whom-I-disagreed, I ended up writing a chapter in my dissertation on Tolstoy. He was, as the student had noted, a heretic; that is, Tolstoy did reject certain basic tenets of Christian orthodoxy. But here was the deep irony: he made a convincing case that the Orthodox church had, in its supposed orthodoxy, and allying itself with the violent power of king and emperor, corrupted the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a “heretic” not in service to some new-fangled fad; he ended up a heretic as a sort of effort to be conservative, a conservatism which sought to honor the radical teachings of Jesus regarding love of enemies and sharing of wealth. In our days of supposed enlightenment, glutted with the world of knowledge at our fingertips, we are increasingly siloed in our pre-formed convictions. Just think, there’s probably some Google AI algorithm trying to sort out whether this blog post is “conservative” or “liberal,” “Republican” or “Democrat,” “Christian” or “Muslim,” or whatever. We all want to be heard. It is central to the nature of our being, a sort of validation of our existence, for someone to pay attention to us. Lee Camp Perhaps this plausible suspicion that algorithms of so-called artificial intelligence are determining what gets served up to us means at least two things are required of us in the realm of social disagreement: One, we need to learn how to talk and think in a way that is not reducible to stereo-typical categories, not reducible to partisan commitments. I’m reminded here of Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” in which he counsels us to “be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.” A bit of mis-direction, a bit of non-malicious mischief may be the new necessary norm, simply as a way to get a hearing for any sort of good news which will transcend sectarian hostility. Two, we may have to keep going a long way out of the way to hear what others are saying. A friend shared with me last year David Augsburger’s wisdom: “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” We all want to be heard. It is central to the nature of our being, a sort of validation of our existence, for someone to pay attention to us. And because of this, in some cases, it may be that the best way to defeat a really horrible idea in the mind of another is not to refuse to listen, or be the first to launch a pre-emptive attack to convince them otherwise, but first really to listen. And it may be that we also learn some things along the way we would not have known otherwise. No guarantee of that, of course, but we may. And even if we learn nothing intellectually, we will undoubtedly grow in the virtue of patience. It’s a liberating experience, to be free to listen to and learn from people with whom one disagrees about deeply important matters. Hospitality, in other words, is not merely a gift to the recipient but to the giver. I’d challenge you to go out looking this week for someone with whom you could have a good argument. Then, once you find them, take the posture of listening and loving, and see what you can learn. This post was originally published here at TokensShow.com. You can receive a free PDF download of Lee Camp’s thoughtful and clever ten-step guide, “How Not To Be A Sectarian” by clicking here, then scrolling to the bottom of the page.

[The Molehill, Vol. 5 will be officially released on July 9th, but because Chris Thiessen, our intrepid manager of sales, is on the ball, books are already shipping out to readers. Here’s a little taste of what’s inside. This essay of Lanier’s was the first of hers I ever read, and it remains as good now as it was when I first encountered it nearly a decade ago. Enjoy. –Pete Peterson] And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.  —Nehemiah 8:6 I was a Christian, and I was a dancer. A ballerina, as I liked to avow with all the solemnity of seventeen. Studying classical ballet three and four days out of the week, showing up early to stretch before class, wrestling against all the opposing forces of aching muscles and tight tendons to add a fraction of a degree to my arabesque or half an inch of height to my grande jete’. I loved it, and I worked hard, both of which I owe almost exclusively to the much greater fact of a superlatively excellent teacher. She drew me out of the back corner of regional ballet school indifference and she scraped grimly away at an acquired layer of sloppiness and mimicking conformity, down to the very bones of my so-called technique. We spent untold class time spread out on the floor with anatomy books and I was made to perform all manner of ridiculous maneuvers in order to find and feel the muscles we were talking about. I danced for months without any shoes at all, and marched across the floor, en pointe, holding chairs over my head. She would call for sixty-four changement at a time and then call for them again, and drill me on the names of the famed “Eight Positions” as I assumed them in rapid succession. In short, she taught me how to dance.  She set something free within me; something longing for expression, but something equally desirous—even dependent upon—the limitations of form and structure that make classical ballet the art form that it is. I loved it more than ever; the more that was required of me—the more I experienced the essential freedom of the form—the more lovely it became. The restlessness and joy and angst and elation of youth found voice and wing in that simple studio, all alone, under the eye of a fiercely loving taskmaster. And I was happy. And I read in the Bible about ‘doing all things as unto the Lord’, and I was happier still. But I had no idea what it meant, that majestic little verse and the worlds of possibility it suggested. I had never gotten my mind and heart around the concept of art as worship. Never, that is, until the day we began working on our piece for the recital. There were three of us at that first rehearsal: my sister and another friend and myself. We were stretching out, whispering and giggling, and speculating inwardly, if not outwardly, about the diaphanous costumes the occasion would doubtless require. (It didn’t, by the way—plain white tunics and single silk flowers softening harsh little buns turned out to be the order of the day. And nothing could have been more perfect or appropriate to accompany Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, though not-too-distant memories of Nutcracker performances and pink net made it hard for me to see it that way at first!) We were talking—but suddenly our voices dropped and we looked around us a little awkwardly. Where was our teacher? She had been there a moment before, watching us stretch or cuing up the CD player. We hadn’t even noticed when she’d left, and it was odd that she’d disappear so soon upon the start of the rehearsal, being the stickler for time that she was. I looked around the open studio, beyond the marley floor which delineated our classroom, past the piano and chairs and shelves of music. And I saw her—in a heap in a back, dark corner of the studio. She was on her knees and her face was to the ground. And she was praying. At first I was frightened—had something terrible happened, or had she just learned of some disaster that had catapulted her into such a desperate, un-self-conscious attitude of prayer? But as the mists of my dullness gradually cleared, the truth broke with a light that pierces to this day: she was praying for inspiration, for the choreography and for the execution of it. She was entreating the favor of God upon this endeavor and imploring His ability to procure it. She had the spiritual vision to see that this was not just a workshop recital for families and friends at a little performing arts school—it was a chance to honor the God of the universe. To love God with the heart, soul, mind and strength. To create something beautiful out of love for Him and to lift it up as an offering of praise. That moment changed everything for me, in the way that small, seemingly trifling moments often do. All my loves—writing, music, dancing, homemaking, gardening—have since been charged with the influence of it. And not only by the ‘glory’ side of the equation; by the appeal, as well, if not more so.  I have in that memory of my beloved and respected teacher, face down before the God she adored, an image of the creative process that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Creativity is a giving, an offering to others and a glory to the Creator-God. But it is also a receiving. And the courage to create and not valuate our offering by the market standards of the world is, I believe, a gift in itself, and one to be sought most earnestly by the likes of such frail co-creators as we humans prove ourselves to be. I used to love to tell my ballet students and piano students what we all probably know and already admire about Bach, namely, that he ever signed his scores and compositions with the letters S.D.G. at the end: Soli Deo Gloria. But of equal insight to me is the way that he opened them: J.J. Jesu Juva. Jesus, help. Jesus, help me to make something beautiful for You. In this poem. In this bit of earth. In this story. In this cake or loaf of bread or painting or song. Not only can I not do it truly, essentially, without You. I can’t do it for You without You. The very acknowledgment is an act of worship, and I see the humility of the ‘great ones’ in this practice. Madeleine L’Engle underscores that writing—or any art form—is an act of faith. Not a blind fumbling in the dark but a reaching towards what we know is there. She loved to image artists as midwives, assisting in the birth of some bright gleam from heaven upon our world. I smile at the thought of C.S. Lewis by his study fire, musing patiently over the mysteries of God to the good of us all. And I read, with, O, what joy, of Sheldon Vanauken praying “daily, almost hourly, that God would speak through [his] two typing fingers” as he fulfilled his vocation to write A Severe Mercy. It’s a beautiful thing, this holy desperation, and liberating in the extreme. God is not going to magically make me write like Elizabeth Gaskell or Jane Austen or George Eliot just because I ask Him to. But He is going to enable me to write from the burden of love He has laid upon me, to the end that He desires, which is more desirable than all to me. And the desire and the desiring draw me irresistibly into the heart of Love itself. It’s one of the lovely paradoxes of this pilgrims’ way: we pour out our hearts in worship and find them filled in the very act. We stumble under our weakness, our grasping at words and colors and notes, and just when we think we’ve fallen we find the grip of a mighty embrace lifting us with wings like eagles’. We imagine we know the end of our art—where our ambitions lie—and we make our plans accordingly, only to discover we’re being propelled merrily along in some kind of crazy empowered helplessness towards a dream we’d likely have laughed at in our saner moments. I found myself toward the end of last year under a big writing deadline, the enormity of which I hadn’t the least idea until I had assumed it. To say that I spent most of November with my head down upon my desk asking God for help would not be too far off the mark. (I wish I could say that I spent as much time thanking Him for it when it came.) I have never felt so out of my league and over my head. And, as I told my husband, the joy of it was an almost incandescent thing. I wished that I could always live with such intensity, such dependence upon God and awareness of His help. Exhausting as it was, it was one of the shining seasons of my life. It was a glimpse, I think, small but lucid, of the great antiphonal exchange of prayers and praises, giving and receiving, with which art greets worship and worship quickens art. A snatch of the music of the spheres. A hint of what it’s going to mean to love God face to face. I think there’s only one thing I’m going to be able to do then: …And they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.  —Revelation 7:11, 12 [The Molehill, Vol. 5 is available in the Rabbit Room Store.]

This summer, the recommended reading list for my church community includes titles like The Rule of Benedict (Chittister), St. Francis of Assisi (Chesterton), and Establishing a Rule of Life (The Trinity Mission). We’re considering what it means to create a personal culture of faith by establishing a “rule” for living. For some, this looks like a detailed list of activities to be done every day, week, month, or year (like those who choose to live under Benedictine or Franciscan rule). For others, though, it’s simply a matter of deciding how we’d like to invest our time and resources and translating that into everyday life. My husband and I feel strongly about family culture, about having the big questions answered so that on the average day, we know what we’re working toward. We love nature, for example, and we want our children to love and care for the earth, so we plant gardens and make compost. We hike in our local parks and nature preserves. We learn the names of the birds we see and how to tell the difference between a maple and a mockernut. When we’re able, we visit the National Parks, and every other year we return to the same little town in Maine to play in the harbor and ramble over seaside cliffs. Sarah Mackenzie feels strongly about family culture, too, but in her newest book, The Read-Aloud Family, her emphasis is on creating a love for reading. Sarah opens with a memory from her early days of motherhood, when she first began to envision a family culture in which books and stories were vital. She carries us with her, to three children, to six, weaving accounts of personal failure and triumph and renewed vision into the why and how of creating a read-aloud culture. A key element (and one I appreciate) of Sarah’s vision is the idea that books bring us together. An exhausting day with a rambunctious toddler can end on a sweet note when mother and child snuggle up to read a picture book. Parents in conflict with a teenager can find moments of connection when they share a great story. An engaging audiobook can put an end to siblings’ squabbling and turn a tiresome road trip into a joy. “The stories we read together,” says Sarah, “act as a bridge when we can’t seem to find another way to connect. They are our currency, our language…The words and stories we share become a part of our family identity.” This is exactly the kind of bond I hope to create, and it’s my chief motivation for reading aloud to my kids. I want to raise a boy who watches in delight as the mother bird guards her nest, as the chicks hatch, as they learn to fly. I want children for whom love and delight are the driving forces behind all they choose to do. Helena Sorensen Another thing I love about Sarah’s approach is her focus on the heart. She’s not an elitist (an unfortunate tendency of many readers), and she’s not hell-bent on using books as a tool to improve her children’s academic performance. She’s committed to making reading a matter of delight, not merely a means to an end. Sure, reading (and being read to) increases a child’s vocabulary and his capacity for connecting ideas. Sarah’s suggestions for compelling questions to ask after reading a book are wonderful tools to encourage high-level thinking. But that’s not the point. Sarah quotes colleague and friend, publisher Rea Berg: “…we don’t want to create intellectual geniuses who don’t have humanity, compassion, and empathy. Intellectual genius without heart is a dangerous, dangerous thing.” I could teach my son everything there is to know about Eastern bluebirds—their anatomy, their call, their nesting habits. But without heart, without love for the beauty and grace of those birds, he might be inclined to walk out to the nest on our deck, grab a bluebird by the throat, and dissect it. Like Sarah, I’m far more concerned with my son’s heart than his storehouse of knowledge. I want to raise a boy who watches in delight as the mother bird guards her nest, as the chicks hatch, as they learn to fly. I want children for whom love and delight are the driving forces behind all they choose to do. I’m not new to the read-aloud culture. We read a great many books at our house. There are loaded bookshelves and stacks of books in nearly every room, and the kids know to expect books for birthday and Christmas gifts. But like all mothers (and perhaps especially homeschool mothers), I worry about whether I’m doing enough. I worry that maybe there will be holes in my children’s education, that I will fail them in their academic preparations and wake one morning to find they’ve posted something like this on social media: “Your not gonna believe wut just happened too me lol!” That little worry knot in my stomach relaxes when I read Sarah’s words. Her conversational style and her candor set me at ease, reminding me that small investments add up over time, that it is never too late to begin or improve. Her passion reminds me of what I’m aiming at: a family of word-lovers, book-lovers, story-lovers, a family with a shared vocabulary, shared jokes, shared memories, a small community of people whose hearts have been shaped by truth and beauty. If you’re looking to clarify your vision for your family and you’d like reading to play a more prominent part, Sarah Mackenzie’s The Read-Aloud Family is an excellent resource. As a bonus, Sarah includes several chapters with book recommendations and reviews for different age levels, as well as an extensive book list in the index. For a limited time, The Read-Aloud Family is on sale here at The Rabbit Room Store.

Each time I set out to put together a volume of The Molehill, I’m faced with a mystery. You see, unlike many magazines or journals, this isn’t a collection compiled according to a theme. There are few boundaries for what goes in and what stays out. “What are you looking for,” writers ask. I tell them to submit anything they’ve got; I’ll know it when I see it. But that itself is not the mystery. The mystery is that in an anthology of work that has no binding theme, a theme inevitably emerges. This year’s volume was, for me at least, even more mysterious than those before it. It’s taken over a year to pull the book together, and I’ve felt more disconnected from it than in past years. We have lots of new writers included, and a month ago I still had no firm conception of what might bind these disparate creations into any kind of coherent larger work. And yet… In the end, these works turn to the eternal. In Dawn Morrow’s poem “Intermezzo” and Andrew Peterson’s “Lenten Sonnets,” and G. K. Chesterton’s “The Wild Knight,” we are delivered through the fog and into the hope of all things made new, into the clear air where we see at last the world as it really is and not as we feared it to be. The Molehill’s tagline or motto is the Latin phrase e collibus montes: out of hills, mountains. I think this Molehill bodies forth that idea more surely than any past volume, for in these works, we learn that the smallest of us, even the most unworthy, may find our last home in the beauty of the high mountains. When our perspective embraces the full measure of that truth, we will see the distant hills for the small wonders they were. A. S. “Pete” Peterson Editor, The Molehill [The Molehill, Volume 5, will be released on July 9th. It is now available for pre-order in the Rabbit Room Store.] [Also a shout-out to Stephen Crotts for his amazing cover design!]

Click through for this week’s edition of Jonny Jimison’s Rabbit Trails. Click here to check out more of Jonny Jimison’s work at his website.

I think I made the wrong move. At least that’s how it feels. A few weeks ago I resigned from my job as the teaching pastor at a church, a role I’ve held for the last two years. In the days immediately following the decision and announcement, I met with several people to explain my decision further. One meeting was particularly probing, a concerned acquaintance who was intense in his queries, almost investigative. What will you do next? Was your decision based on fear or fleeting emotions? What was God telling you about your calling? “I don’t know,” I answered, again and again. “I really don’t.” Weeks later, I still don’t know. The best I can offer is a shrug and acknowledge that what’s done is done. I’d love to wake up to a pillar of cloud or fire. I’d be happy to come across a burning bush. I’d appreciate a talking donkey, even a burro who could connect with my elementary Spanish skills. Instead, all I’ve had for months is a heightened level of anxiety and negative emotions that led me to make the decision that I did. And now it’s done. To be candid, it’s exactly how I felt taking the job in the first place. Two years ago, I was approached about going back into ministry after a six-year absence, one I believed to be permanent. I’d certainly thought about jumping back into church work over the years, since I love teaching more than any other vocational responsibility I’ve ever had. It’s the place I’m most confident and comfortable. When you’re not doing the one thing you’re gifted to do more than anything else, there’s a nagging void that takes up space in your mind and heart. So when the inquiry came about my potential interest and availability, I decided to look at the job description after some family discussion. That led to a prolonged interview process during which I even backed out, nervous about what I was getting into. During the process of answering the church’s questions about my calling, I made it quite clear that I wasn’t entirely sure I was up for this again. But they seemed nice. I missed teaching. I also felt well-rested from previous ministry experiences. Am I called to vocational ministry or am I addicted to the validation that comes with it? Did God place me within a community of people to teach or did I figure out how to scratch an itch? Should I have stayed obediently to learn a hard lesson or did I make the right call by walking away? Matt Conner The best I could offer was “let’s give this a try.” Two years later, the friction became too much. Working in a church, or any public sphere for that matter, is going to require thicker skin than what I’ve developed. Over time, my ability to handle expectations as a spiritual leader, criticism as a public speaker, and demands as someone helping to run an organization all eroded. I began to hide on Sunday mornings to avoid crowds. I dreaded leaving my house for an event I knew would be entertaining and filled with people I legitimately love and appreciate. The same fears, emotions, and anxiety that caused me to resign from my last ministry position slowly crept back until they occupied my mind at all hours. So I quit. The reality is I haven’t seen a pillar in several years. I haven’t felt called to anything in a very, very long time, and even then I look back and wonder whether it was the emotions of the moment or religious jargon I learned to employ. Am I called to vocational ministry or am I addicted to the validation that comes with it? Did God place me within a community of people to teach or did I figure out how to scratch an itch? Should I have stayed obediently to learn a hard lesson or did I make the right call by walking away? I cannot tell the difference. I wish I could. I’d love to feel connected to any sort of symbol to which I could apply meaning. I’d love for my heightened senses to see or hear something unexplainable. I’d love to discern some internal compass that points undeniably toward its own magnetic north. Instead I’ve been wandering in a professional wilderness for the last decade or more, uncertain of when and where to settle or keep walking. The best I know to do these days is to simply lean in where I sense energy, toward the creative tasks that currently excite me, while remaining open to the places and people God may use to shape and mold me. Maybe I will teach again someday. I love it and know I will miss it. I also know that I’ve been a shadow of my best self for quite some time, without any real plan to claim it again. Maybe someday I will tie a nice bow around all of this and even teach some lesson learned about the beauty of not knowing. For now it’s a daily discipline of leaning into the unknown.

When I was going through a particularly hard time a few years ago, a friend encouraged me with a story from Corrie ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place. As a child, Corrie was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that her father would die one day. She and her father had this dialogue: I burst into tears, “I need you!” I sobbed. “You can’t die! You can’t!” “Corrie,” he began gently. “When you and I go to Amsterdam, when do I give you your ticket?” “Why, just before we get on the train.” “Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.” My friend said that God gives us tickets of grace to get through any given situation and that he would give me my ticket when I needed it. I loved this idea, but I didn’t think he had given me my ticket. I cried out to God one night, “Where is my ticket? You didn’t give me my ticket!” I thought my ticket would be an angel that would touch me and give me strength, a miraculous healing or a vision. Soon after, I had a dream that a friend gave me a sweater that I loved. The next day when I was pondering the dream, I felt that God was saying the sweater was the ticket of grace I was looking for. Life is too hard to take straight, to take alone, without the oil of friendship, without the intoxication of grace offered to one another through shared laughter and tears. Without music or walks in the woods. Without silliness and stories. I couldn't take life straight; I would die under the weight of grief. Hetty White I do not mean to diminish the hardships of life to say that a lovely cardigan can fix them. I mean to say that we underestimate cardigans. And gifts from friends. And flowers. And a nice card. And the perfect song. And a smile and a deep hug. I think when we receive them for what they are, we find ourselves surrounded by tickets of grace from God that enable us to ride the train of suffering and despair through this beautiful, crazy life. In the film Song to Song, one of Terrence Malick’s characters says, “I can’t take life straight.” I think he meant he needed to be under the influence to deal with life. I can’t take life straight, either. Life is too hard to take straight, to take alone, without the oil of friendship, without the intoxication of grace offered to one another through shared laughter and tears. Without music or walks in the woods. Without silliness and stories. I couldn’t take life straight; I would die under the weight of grief. The train is too hard of a ride. I once had the privilege and sobering opportunity to be with a friend when he died. I traveled by Megabus from Nashville, Tennessee to Brainerd, Minnesota to be with him in the last minutes of his life. After it happened, I was exhausted and if I’m honest, a bit traumatized. I called my mom from the room I was staying in that night. How was I supposed to sleep? Could I keep living after seeing what I had seen? After seeing how God had allowed a brutal sickness to ravage my friend’s body until almost nothing was left? I wasn’t sure what life looked like for me after this. Would I ever be happy again? Could I ever laugh again? And the most frightening thought of all: what if something like this happened to my family? To my brother or sister or mom or dad? That thought, I couldn’t deal with. It was too big, too horrific. “I can’t handle that,” I thought. “I wouldn’t be able to handle that.” As I talked with my mom on the phone that night, she encouraged me to remember all the things that had happened on my journey to see my friend. She didn’t know what that meant, but she sensed that God was wanting to remind me. The trip had been a hard one: it was freezing winter and I didn’t have a smart phone and I was trying to catch bus after bus, be at the right stop, and avoid unsafe parts of downtown cities at three in the morning, all while facing the fact that my journey ended in the death of a friend. But all along the way, people had helped me. There was an older woman in Memphis who waited with me for the bus. She was headed to a memorial service for a dear friend who had died at her house on Thanksgiving morning. I didn’t tell her where I was going. I didn’t have the strength to speak of it yet, but I found camaraderie in her. There was a girl on the bus to Minneapolis with short hair and a spunky attitude that helped me figure out where to get off the bus and find a coffee shop open at five in the morning. I was able to fall asleep on the table and charge my cell phone in a warm space while I waited for the next bus instead of standing around in seventeen degree weather in the dark hours of the morning. Then there was my guitar. I would not go without my guitar—I wanted to sing for my friend who had so loved music. Every Megabus let me put the guitar down below with the suitcases, even though they weren’t supposed to. And even more miraculously, it survived! In a soft case, no less. It still has thin white scars running up and down its body from that frozen trip where it cracked but did not break. Perhaps I still have some scars, too. When I got to my friend’s house, his father picked me up from the bus station. The sadness in his eyes was all I could see. I sat in the living room next to the bed where my friend lay, who looked like a shell of himself. His eyes darted back and forth, but finally fixed on me. I saw him. There he was: my friend, Doug. I got out my guitar. I sang for him and he died while I played. His sister said, “He waited for you. I told him you were coming.” I like to think that I helped him go—I opened the door for him. I gave him his ticket right before he needed it, and with the sound of music enveloping him, he boarded the train. Seven years later, the horrible thing that I couldn’t imagine has happened: my mother has cancer. My worst fear. The thought I couldn’t think is now my reality. My own mother. Since October, this season has been riddled with questions, tests, doctor appointments and above all, waiting. Waiting for bad news, waiting for good news, waiting for answers to questions that can’t always be answered. But somehow, we get through it. Over and over again, the Lord shows up in unexpected ways. Over and over, we are given tickets to get through the next hurdle, the next thing. I have a friend at church whose mom also has lung cancer and all along the way she has encouraged me, texted me, “How did the test go? What’s the news? How are you doing?” Another friend sent me a necklace with a lantern on it and a note that had the quote from when Galadriel gives the light of Eärendil’s star to Frodo: “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” I reach for it often these days and hold onto it. Months after he died, I had a dream about Doug. It was simple: he was well and whole, he looked the way he did when I first met him. And he gave me a big, long hug. And that was it. Call me a mystic, but I think that was really him giving me back something I gave him: comfort, relief, grace.

Janie said it could be the beginning scene of the indie movie about my life that, if you ask me, will probably never be made. On my first day of therapy three summers ago, I walked into the front room, confused by the lack of official-looking-person who was to tell me what to do. Couches. Doors. A vase of flowers. Peaceful noisemakers drowning out the sounds of tears and sorrow (I couldn’t imagine then that laughter might be an option). But there was no front desk, no greeting. I sat down on the couch. I stood up. I walked down the hall, but the rooms with open doors were empty and the ones with closed doors? There was no way I was going there. I returned to the front and joined the only other person in the room. He was maybe eight years old with blond, scruffy hair, glasses, and he didn’t look nearly as uncomfortable as I did as he sat on the couch across from me reading a book. I leaned in for a second. “Excuse me?” I whispered. He looked up, surprised. “What do I do? It’s my first time.” “They’ll come out for you. You just wait here,” he said. Just the simple facts. I sat back, comforted. I knew what to do. And so I waited. It felt like I didn’t have much of a choice about being at the counseling office at that point. Well, of course I did. I drove myself and all. But I had let the anxiety go too far unchecked and I knew it and my body knew it and it seemed all the cells that knew it revolted against me, making themselves known as though saying, “We need help. Please don’t ignore us anymore.” I heard them this time, loud and clear, unmistakeable. From the reference of a trusted mentor, I made the call for an appointment. “What in particular is going on?” the woman on the phone had asked. “Definitely anxiety. Perhaps depression. I’m not really sure,” I whispered the words because they didn’t seem real, not in reference to me at least. I don’t remember much about the specifics of that first session, except that my therapist commented on the quietness of my voice and used words for my feelings that I would have never afforded myself. She asked a few questions and I mostly cried and sometimes tried not to cry and told her why I thought I was there. She gave me tissues and prodded gently. Over the course of the next few months, I reconsidered ideas I had never once questioned. It was disorienting and dizzying and everything felt new, like I was a learning how to do the very basics again, like walk and talk and tie my shoes. Sometimes it is as simple as that I learned to tie my shoes one way and that way isn't working as well as it used to and I'm tired of tripping over my own feet. Kelsey Miller And truthfully, for me, that’s what counseling ended up being.  For the most part, my counselor Melanie and I would sit there and I would talk and then she would look at me and say, “Have you ever considered a different way of tying your shoes?” She never said that exactly, but the sentiment of that: noting with gentleness that I have been operating under some assumptions for so long that I never considered there might be another better, healthier, perhaps sometimes easier, way. There were those first few weeks of dizzying disorientation, but as time charged on and I along with it, it became less dizzying and in fact, it became a place of orientation, a place to practice my new walk in my newly tied shoes. We all have weird habits and ways of being with varying degrees of wonkiness and sometimes the best thing we can do is laugh about them, call them funky, and then move forward differently. Often, those closest to us are so privy to our own ways of tying our shoes that it takes a truly third party to note the particularities. That is where therapy came in. “Have you ever considered that you don’t have to apologize when you cry?” “Why is ‘hurt’ always the last emotion you’re able to name?” “Has your voice always been this quiet?” I guess I write this to say that even those of us who lived largely dreamy childhoods and have suffered relatively little still didn’t make it out unscathed. This is not to say that I am a tortured soul, but just to say out loud with confidence that I am a human being with a story that has included joy and sorrow and pain and love. Those of us who need counseling are not only those who are particularly sensitive or sufferers of abuse or those with a mental illness. For me, I was, and am, a human being who was finding it difficult to be a human being for a time. It is no more important or dramatic than that. Sometimes it is as simple as that I learned to tie my shoes one way and that way isn’t working as well as it used to and I’m tired of tripping over my own feet. And so I went and kept going even when I thought I might die if I had to say that one thing I hadn’t ever told anyone before. And in the process of telling my secrets and sharing my wounds, I recovered pieces of my heart I was ready to throw out with the cold bathwater and it is truly God’s grace that they were saved in time. And though I am still tripping over my feet over here, it doesn’t feel as fatal as it used to. Maybe that’s the real gift of it. Tripping, falling, and finding myself on the ground laughing at the newfound view. It’s so much more beautiful than I remembered.

When we first envisioned Supper & Songs, we considered it an exercise in thinking small: cozy homes as venues, a small enough guest list that we could get to know each other throughout the night, and just two artists. We had thirty guests at our April event with Liz Vice and forty in May with Jordy Searcy. We realized after the May event that, strange as it may seem, we were already thinking too big. Our Head Chef Kelsey Miller, in preparing dinner for these large groups, had to sacrifice some of her home-cooked ideals for the sake of quantity. But we want this to be more than just a house concert plus food. So we are going to scale this thing back to just fifteen tickets, sit all at one table for a delicious and wholesome supper, and invite you to ask questions between our songs. We’ll have three of these little evenings in August, September, and October to see how they feel. If you’ll be in the Nashville area August 7th, mark your calendars! The next Supper & Songs event will take place in the Cane Ridge area and tickets are now available, but they will go quick. Click here for more information. After the May 14th event, The Orchardist’s Janie Townsend wrote about the paradox of loneliness within community. You can read it here on the blog.

[With the release of the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (which you should all go see immediately!) we thought we’d repost this excellent article from Jason Gray.] “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.” (What is essential is invisible to the eyes – from Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince) These are the words on a plaque that hung in the office of my new hero. Who might that be you may wonder? Kierkegard? Billy Graham? Bono? Would you be surprised if I told you it was…Mister Rogers? Let me explain: During a run of dates in TX in 2009, I was talking with keyboardist Neil Tankersly about what we were reading when he recommended a book to me about children’s television icon Mister Rogers. My interest level in this kind of book was at about negative 137, but I pretended to be interested enough to be polite, but not enough to encourage him to tell me any more more about it. Whether my passive cues went unrecognized or ignored, I’m not sure, but Neil kept on telling me about how life-changing this book was and then went so far as to begin looking up YouTube videos of Mister Rogers for me to watch. I felt that brand of social anxiety that comes on you when you’re getting pulled into a conversational vortex about something you couldn’t care less about. His enthusiasm made me seriously doubt not only my new friend’s taste in books, but also question his masculinity. I mean, what kind of man gets that excited about Mister Rogers of all people? I remember dying a little bit inside at the prospect of having to sit there and watch what I imagined would be lame video clips of a man I had pre-judged as a bland, out of step, sweet but weak cardigan-wearing milquetoast with little to interest or offer a cultured and savvy sophisticate like myself. But then the video started playing. But my second and more relevant confession to you today is that I couldn’t have been more wrong about Mister Rogers. We were barely 30 seconds into the first clip when tears started welling up in my eyes and I had to do my best to choke back embarrassing sobs as I watched Fred Rogers’s acceptance speech at the Emmy Awards—a speech so utterly disarming in it’s selflessness and grace that as the camera scanned the audience it was clear that, for all the propriety and pretense that might be expected at a gathering of Hollywood’s powerful and elite, there was something more powerful still: love. As Rogers invited each of them to think of someone who had loved them into being, the emotional armor fell away, the make-up ran. What was visited upon them—and me—through this remarkable man (via my kind friend Neil) was a powerful moment of humanity and grace. So now I come to you, reader, willing and even eager to risk you thinking me uncool by daring to recommend, as Neil Tankersly did to me, that you too would do well to spend a little time in Mister Roger’s neighborhood. After returning home, I immediately ordered the book, I’m Proud Of You by Tim Madigan, the story of a surprising friendship that was born out of a visit when Madigan—a journalist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram-–flew to Pittsburgh to interview Fred Rogers for a piece he was writing. Not expecting much, Tim was immediately disarmed by the intense sincerity and humble kindness of this unassuming man who was a giant in children’s television. As Rogers spoke to him about his philosophy of imagining he was looking through the camera into the eyes of each child watching, trying to be fully present to their feelings and needs, Tim writes of how Rogers demonstrated this the first time they spoke: “Do you know what the most important thing in the world is to me right now?”“No,” I said.“Talking to Mr. Tim Madigan on the telephone.” At the time of their initial meeting, Madigan was in the throes of a desperate depression and on the verge of divorce. His personal and professional life caving in around him, he found an unlikely offer of friendship from Rogers—a relationship that would help shape his reformation in the years to come. I don’t want to give too much of the story away here, but the book chronicles how Rogers’s wisdom, kindness, and unconditional love guided Madigan through the darkest days of his life, giving him the grace and the courage to find a way out of the darkness, and giving him a glimpse of the Jesus Rogers testified about. The book is named after a key moment in their relationship when Madigan realizes that much of his pain and inability to love stemmed from never feeling like he could be good enough for his dad. In a moment of truth, Madigan wrote a courageously honest letter to Rogers saying: “…the last several years have been a very profound time of intense personal pain and great healing, a time of great self discovery as I’ve tried to come to terms with the realities of my life, past and present. At the forefront of my mind and soul right now is how hard I tried to get my dad to be proud of me, through sports, through school, through the ways I tried to be obedient and good. But no matter what I did, it never seemed enough. I could never wrest from him the sense of acceptance I so desperately craved as a child and have been craving ever since.I realize now that God is the ultimate source for that kind of love and acceptance. But I have also realized that I have gravitated toward older men in my life without really knowing why. Now I think I know….…I read Henri Nouwen this morning, and several chapters in the book of Matthew, and meditated for a long time on my pain, and realized what I need to do… In your letters and during our brief time together, you have done so much to teach me how to be a person and a man. And now I have this favor to ask of you. Will you be proud of me?“ Such risky vulnerability! A risk that was rewarded: Rogers’s reply was immediate and transformative: “YES! A resounding YES!I will be proud of you. I am proud of you! … Nothing you could tell me could change my YES for you. Please remember that…. I feel blessed to be one of your friends. Only God can arrange such mutually trusting relationships…. YES, Tim, YES.” Every letter Madigan would receive from Rogers after this closed with the initials, IPOY—I’m proud of you—a simple and constant affirmation that would seep like water into the deepest, darkest corners of his life. Throughout the book, Madigan invites us to eavesdrop on their conversations and correspondence, which throughout reveal Fred Rogers as a faithful Christian man who lived out the gospel with the kind of grace, kindness, and unconditional love that every soul longs and hungers for. “He was a man in touch with the eternal,” his friends would say of him after his death. Mister Rogers could be an easy target of ridicule and parody (and even was in Eddie Murphy’s “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood” on SNL), and the book talks about a piece that Esquire, a men’s magazine whose content is just shy of Playboy in its edginess and carnal sensibilities, did on Rogers in the late ’90s. What good could come of a feature in a magazine so antithetical to Roger’s priorities? The worldly and cynical journalist—whose predisposition to Rogers was much like mine—was surprised to find himself victim to the irresistible kindness, selflessness, and humility of this man who saw his ministry as not only broadcasting grace to children, but helping to put us in touch with the child in all of us. The journalist recounts their first encounter: “…and though I tried to ask him questions about himself, he always turned the questions back on me. And when I finally got him to talk about the puppets that were the comfort of his lonely boyhood, he looked at me, his blue eyes at once mild and steady, and asked, ‘What about you, Tom? Did you have any special friends growing up?’‘Special friends?’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe a puppet or a special toy, or maybe just a stuffed animal you loved very much. Did you have a special friend like that, Tom?’‘Yes, Mister Rogers.’‘Did your special friend have a name, Tom?’‘Yes, Mister Rogers. His name was Old Rabbit.’‘Old Rabbit. Oh, and I’ll bet the two of you were together since he was a very young rabbit. Would you like to tell me about Old Rabbit, Tom?’And it was just about then when I was spilling the beans about my special friend, that Mister Rogers rose from his corner couch and stood suddenly in front of me with a black camera in hand. “Can I take your picture, Tom?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to take your picture. I like to take pictures of all my new friends so that I can show them to Joanne [his wife]…’ And then in the dark room, there was a wallop of white light, and Mister Rogers disappeared behind it…” In another scene, we are witness to the tender sensitivity of Rogers when he goes to visit a severely handicapped boy with cerebral palsy: “At first the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that he … got mad and began hating and biting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room to talk to him. Mister Rogers didn’t leave though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, ‘I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?’ On his computer the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: ‘I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?’ And now the boy didn’t know how to respond. He was thunderstruck… Because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn’t know if he could do it, he said he would … and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn’t talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures Mister Rogers is close to God, and if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him too. As for Mister Rogers himself… he doesn’t look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact When Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him for being smart–for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself–and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. ‘Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn’t ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.’ The book chronicles how Rogers’s friendship helped walk Madigan through the process of reconciling with his wife, forgiving and loving his father, surviving depression (“The Furies” as Rogers called it), and grieving his brother’s death from cancer. Throughout are excerpts from their conversation that make us witness to an unabashed commitment to intimacy that, for me as the reader, had the effect of gently shining a light on my own sad attempts to keep people and love at arm’s length, my own fear of risking love and intimacy. Throughout the book, I was delighted to learn that Rogers and I shared an admiration for many of the same spiritual writers like Frederick Buechner, Anne Lamott, and Rogers’s friend and favorite: Henri Nouwen—an author whose work the Holy Spirit has used to shape and guide my own ministry. “What is essential is invisible to the eye,” reads the plaque on the wall in his office, and it was the essential that Rogers was always trying to impart to us. In the book we learn how intentional he was in his television show, understanding it as a ministry and lovingly using it to impart the values of the gospel that were so dear to him: grace, forgiveness, kindness, and trust in an Unconditional Love. I’m Proud Of You is an understated, well-written, and modest book. But within its pages I found something more than the sum of it’s parts. It is the kind of story that not only inspires you to be more human, live an ennobled kind of life, and to love better than you thought you could, but also reveals the grace that makes these things possible. It’s a cleansing book, one that blew through me like a light and fragrant spring breeze, warming places where the frost had set in. But looking back over what I’ve written here, I can’t help but feel I’m failing this book because I keep talking about what it’s about, sharing little passages and tidbits that are interesting as matters of fact. But what the book is about is less important than what the book is and what it did to me. Because what it is, of course, is a window in the world to offer a glimpse of another kind of life that could be lived—the kind of life the gospel reveals. In Mister Rogers we discover a man shaped by the tender heart of Jesus, and as I read I found myself looking for ways to bless others, to be more present to them, to be less afraid to speak tender words of intimacy to those around me, to be kinder and more forgiving. As for what the book did to me, it caused me to ask myself: “what might my life look like if I better incarnated the grace of God? How might the lives of those I love–my family, friends, loved ones–be different? Or any of those whom my life touches? Though I was never crazy about the whole What Would Jesus Do craze a number of years ago, I nonetheless find myself asking a similar question: what would Mister Rogers do? I mean no disrespect to Jesus, of course. It’s just that Jesus sets such an impossibly high bar, you know? But in Mister Rogers I find a flesh and bone man, an imperfect sinner like me, set free to love and live the kind of life that Jesus revealed. If Mister Rogers can find that kind of grace, maybe it’s available to me, too. In other words, I found I’m Proud Of You to be a potent invitation to spend beautiful days in the neighborhood of Mister Rogers, a neighborhood made beautiful by the grace of God. It has stirred a desire in me to live a life that makes space for that kind of grace and beauty in my own neighborhood—the one I take with me wherever I go. (Here are the two video clips I mentioned earlier, both from the presentation of his Lifetime Acheivement Award at the Emmys.)

That’s right: you may now order a copy of Every Moment Holy from the Rabbit Room Store (or Amazon!) and expect to receive it in the mail in an altogether reasonable amount of time. To celebrate this milestone as well as the travel-filled season of summer that is now upon us, we share with you “A Liturgy For Leaving on Holiday.” In the same spirit, if you will be going on vacation any time soon, enjoying the outdoors, convening with friends, or engaging in other such summer activities, we encourage you to consider how you may put Every Moment Holy to good use in these settings. Examples include “For Arriving at the Ocean,” “For Those Who Sleep in Tents,” “For Sunsets,” “For Feasting with Friends,” and “For the Marking of Birthdays.” Most of these are available for download at EveryMomentHoly.com if you do not have the book. Enjoy this liturgy, and we at the Rabbit Room wish you a wonderful summer. Leader: O Christ Our Sabbath, You have fashioned us to function best in rhyming lines of work and rest; our relaxations and recreations like unspoken invitations to that still greater holiday to come— when all burdens will at last be shed and weariness be put to bed, and gladsome joy stretch endlessly before us. People: Bless now, O Lord, this happy foretaste of that good end! Bless our pending trip here at its first christening. Bless the days to come: the days of duties undone, unbuckled, unbound. Bless our pilgrim quest for restoration! Prepare our hearts to revel in new exploration of cities not our own, and of landscapes less familiar. Along our way, in such places whose contours you deliberately created, may we pause to savor the evidences of your diverse imagination expressed in glories of scenery, and in an artistry of peoples and cultures. Waken our vision to perceive such subtle expressions of your nature. Rouse also our hearts that we might be quietly shaped by those whisperings of divine beauty. In our days away let us play together. Let us laugh together. Let us be moved to speak such meaningful words as ought to be spoken among family and friends. Let us linger long at tables and drink deeply of one another’s company, enjoying each for who they are with the steady pressures of our ordinary days now lifted. As you called your disciples to come away with you, retreating from the crush of crowds, pausing in their long work, simply to rest, to reflect, to enjoy your company, your words, your conversation, to enjoy their fellowship with one another, so help us also, in this time of our vacation, to carve out spaces merely to be, to be with you, to be together, to be refreshed. Ah, how we long for that fierce freedom for which we were created! Let us taste of it here in our travels! Bless our journey and our arrival. Bless our days spent away. And bless also our eventual passage home, that we might return as those who have been revived, with hopes resurrected, delight restored, hearts readied again for forward movement into life, strength renewed to shoulder once more the meaningful labors assigned to us in this season. You are our rest, Jesus. May this vacation serve your holy purposes. May the deep enjoyment and the grand adventure of it stir within us eternal longings, whetting our anticipation of that best holiday celebration that will one day encompass all days, and all of heaven and all of earth. Amen. You can order your own copy of Every Moment Holy at the Rabbit Room Store as well as Amazon. Individual liturgies are also available for download at EveryMomentHoly.com

There I stood, in front of the fireplace with my guitar strapped on and dozens of lyric sheets in my hands with songs like “This Is My Father’s World” and “Be Thou My Vision.” I turned to my left and gave the nearest student that familiar instruction to “take one and pass them back,” watching the sheets of paper make their way around the circle we had formed along the perimeter of the room. On this Wednesday morning, chapel was held not at school, but at our neighboring nursing home. In the middle of the room, couches were filled with residents, some smiling pleasantly, others vacantly, and still others giving the appearance of being annoyed at the general state of things. The smell of artificial maple syrup wafted through the air. The school is comprised of a mere sixty or so students, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and it occurs to me that every age from six years old to perhaps eighty-five is fairly represented in this room. This must be the most multi-generational room I have ever found myself in. When I took this teaching job, the leader of the school told me, “I want my students to be able to sing together, really and truly. I want them to experience the struggle and reward of learning to use their voices in harmony.” Every Wednesday morning before chapel, the school recites together a list of virtues and their accompanying descriptions from memory as guiding principles for how to interact with one another throughout the week. The list includes traits like “attentive: listening with ears, eyes, and heart,” “tenderhearted: feeling the joys and hurts of others,” “orderly: keeping everything in its place,” and “discerning: able to see things as they really are.” Every music class I teach the students hymns, in two-part harmony for the third through sixth graders and three-part harmony for the seventh through twelfth graders. The students are not always attentive, tenderhearted, orderly, or discerning, but I watch them learn how to become these things by trial and error. Music teaches them how, more viscerally than I had imagined. My ears perk up whenever I detect any potential for discussion of how music intrinsically embodies God’s intent for his creation. It’s what led me to the Rabbit Room, to Belmont as a Religion & the Arts major, to Tolkien’s Silmarillion, to the Punch Brothers, to write songs and start a band, and of course to write this post. Some days, my desire to experience something irreducibly true about the world through a song is what honestly gets me out of bed in the morning. Right now, the particular train of thought I can’t get over goes something like this. It's not that if you sing this note and I sing that note, we'll hear some compromise of a note created as a result, like how red and blue make purple. No, we will hear red, blue, and purple. If that's not magic, I don't know what is. Drew Miller In most arts, there is an element of hospitality, relationship, and proportion built in. Generally and traditionally speaking, visual art strives for balance of color and composition. Dance carves out physical space for bodies to inhabit. Poetry commits to a form, a structure, a method of phrasing and rhyme that results in a pleasing sense of unity. But two words cannot occupy the same space on a page. Neither can two dancers occupy the same physical space. It feels like a feat of magic to watch red and blue make purple, but once purple happens, red and blue are out of the picture. They cannot occupy the same space without forfeiting their identities as “red” and “blue.” On the other hand, in music we hear multiple voices occupy the same space. And the magic of it is that, when true harmony is achieved, we hear not only the new, unified voice created by the joining of multiple voices—we can still hear the individual voices that comprise this new voice as well. Individual identity is retained even as a new voice is made. It’s not that if you sing this note and I sing that note, we’ll hear some compromise of a note created as a result, like how red and blue make purple. No, we will hear red, blue, and purple. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. Those thoughts are a long way off as I stand amid the chaos of this room, wondering if we as a school are not in fact imposing on this nursing home with our clan of bumbling children. One of my superiors, also a teacher, leans over to me and says, “Thanks as always, Mr. Miller, for riding this wave.” My mind only begins to grapple how fitting an analogy this is as he introduces our school to the residents: “Our music teacher, Mr. Miller is going to lead us in some hymns for you this morning, songs we have sung many times in chapel together, and we’d love for you to sing with us. Our first song will be ‘Nothing But The Blood,’ which should be #135 in your hymnal.” I jump right in and start a two-step strum on my guitar to begin our song. The younger the student, the more their singing resembles shouting as they raise their voices: “OH! precious is the flow!” I’m overpowered by their enthusiasm. The older students look across the room and smile with polite tolerance at their younger companions. We’re making space for each other, or at least trying to. It may feel more like a cacophony than a symphony, but it is doubtlessly a “joyful noise.” After a few hymns, I lay my guitar in its case as one of the residents takes her turn to lead us in song. A fellow teacher guides her to the piano in the far corner of the room and helps her take her seat. She is blind, but she seems to know every note from the hymnal by heart. She prepares to play “Victory In Jesus,” one of her favorites. I feel the collective energy of the room shift as the student body is transferred from familiar hands to less familiar hands, from familiar songs to less familiar songs. The students now look with intimidation at their hymnals, attempting to sight-read while readying themselves for the unsteady, often abrupt cues of our pianist. Younger students begin to eye older, more experienced singers for direction. I have experienced time and again music's power to make one out of many, give voice to everyone in the room, and provide an occasion to receive the hospitality of others. What is simultaneously challenging and profoundly freeing for me is to witness this power even when the result doesn't sound 'good' to my Nashvillian ears. Drew Miller Then something altogether new and unexpected happens. As our pianist begins the song, everyone in the room both cringes and tries not to cringe. The piano is so badly out of tune that even the most musically skilled in the room can barely discern what key the song is in and what note to start on. Two things happen in rapid succession: first, everyone’s desire for harmony gains more resolve at this greater threat of dissonance; and second, like a parasite on the first, students fight nobly against the urge, primal as hunger and thirst, to laugh. Tension builds and it occurs to me that there is a music unfolding, a conflict awaiting resolution, a narrative with a most uncertain ending, that vastly supersedes this unfortunate rendition of “Victory In Jesus.” Teachers hold their breath, hoping for and desperately counting on their students to be tenderhearted, orderly, and every other virtue we recite on Wednesday mornings. Our pianist stops at nothing and students sing with their eyes closed, giving the impression that their goal is now merely to drown out the piano. The struggle is very real. I take comfort in the thought that God is probably laughing. We finish “Victory In Jesus” and begin “What A Friend We Have In Jesus.” Shortly thereafter we sing “How Great Thou Art.” By the middle of the second song, the school has miraculously adjusted to the new status quo, and I’m impressed by the tenuous order we’ve managed to find together. I’m also impressed by our pianist’s unflinching devotion to finishing the hymns we had set out to sing. The show must go on. I have been moved by the act of making music, of joining voices, countless times. Whether it’s tearing up at the sound of the Doxology in church as voices find their place in that resounding “amen,” arranging a song with my band and having my mind blown at its potential fully realized, or singing playfully around the house with my wife, I have experienced time and again music’s power to make one out of many, give voice to everyone in the room, and provide an occasion to receive the hospitality of others. What is simultaneously challenging and profoundly freeing for me is to witness this power even when the result doesn’t sound “good” to my Nashvillian ears. Yet there is a sophistication to the joining of a kindergartener’s voice with an eighty year-old’s voice that is perhaps audible only to God’s ears, and if we listen close, we can catch a glimpse of it. If we let it, the out-of-tune piano can be the greatest gift of all, instructing us in extending grace, telling us simply to relax—it’s all going to be okay. We’ll get through the song. God is not afraid of chaos; after all, he made the world out of it, and all evidence suggests he’s inviting us to make something of it, too.

The Local Show will be four years old this fall, and we’re having more fun than ever. This spring, filmmaker Karl Sutton caught up with three artists featured at the show to talk about where they’ve come from, how they approach the creative process, and what role community plays in their work. This is “Part One: Origins.” Come back next week for part two.

Every time I start a new online class, I send my students an introductory email that includes the following “Word About Feedback”: I am working on the assumption that you signed up for this course because you genuinely want to improve as a writer. And if you really want to improve as a writer, you need criticism. You need encouragement too, but you need criticism a lot more. I used to put a lot of time and energy into softening my criticism so that my writing students wouldn’t get discouraged. I have decided that this not a good use of my time and not a service to my students. My critique of your writing will be direct and blunt—and, I’m quite confident, on-target. I should also say that if you’re further along the path as a writer, you can expect my critique to be even more direct and more blunt. I criticize because I care. I’m not joking. I trust that you care enough to take my critique in the spirit in which it’s given. If that’s not what you want from this course, please let me know. I realize that it can be hard to receive criticism. Offering up a piece of writing feels a lot like offering up a piece of yourself, so “There are a few things wrong with this piece” can sound like “There are a few things wrong with you.” Think of the strategies people use when dealing with personal criticism: they include defensiveness, self-loathing, people-pleasing, etc… There are other, healthier strategies too, including listening, reflecting, and, when necessary, telling haters to back off. Because writing is so personal, writers can be tempted to go straight to those less healthy strategies when they receive writing feedback. I find it helpful to try to think of my work as a writer the way a plumber thinks about his work as a plumber. Or, conversely, sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like if plumbers thought of their work the way writers think about theirs, as in the following skit: HOMEOWNER Could I speak to the plumber? PLUMBER Speaking. HOMEOWNER Yeah, hi. You worked on my bathroom sink faucet yesterday, and now it’s shooting water up to the ceiling. PLUMBER That’s just your opinion. HOMEOWNER No, it’s not just my opinion. I’m sloshing in water up to my ankles. PLUMBER Maybe you should open up your mind. You seem pretty stuck on your pre-conceived notions of how a faucet ought to work. HOMEOWNER I don’t think my mind is the problem here. Water is running down the hall. My kids are putting on their swimmies. I’m telling you, there’s something bad wrong with this faucet. PLUMBER (After a long pause) You know what? You’re right. There IS something wrong with the faucet. I am nothing but a big fraud. HOMEOWNER I don’t know about that. I mean, the last time you came out, everything was fine. And the time before that. All I’m saying is that this particular faucet is shooting water up to the ceiling, and I need you to come fix it. PLUMBER No. I quit. I’m not worthy to call myself a plumber. I’m going to become a writer instead. A decent plumber—one who cares about his customers and about his work—would devote none of his energy to self-justification or self-loathing or self-anything-else. He would crank up the plumbing truck and go take care of the faucet. No matter how much pride a plumber takes in his work, he understands that he is not his work. If something is wrong, he wants to know so he can fix it. If you write out of love—if you write because you love your reader and you love your material and you want to introduce them to one another—you will welcome well-informed criticism. Jonathan Rogers I realize that the work of writing is quite a bit more personal than the work of plumbing. Nevertheless, you are not your work. I know you put a lot of your self into your writing. But the writing is not you; it is something you make. That distinction is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it gives you the critical distance you need to a) edit your work and b) assess and benefit from any critique you receive. So now I’m going to ask you a personal question: why are you writing in the first place? If you are writing to express yourself or prove yourself or win respect or notoriety for yourself or for any other reason that includes the word self, it’s going to be that much harder to take criticism. As I said earlier, if you are writing for self, “There are a few things wrong with this piece” sounds like “There are a few things wrong with you.” But if you write out of love—if you write because you love your reader and you love your material and you want to introduce them to one another—you will welcome well-informed criticism. Anybody who can help you connect with readers is an ally and a friend. I said well-informed criticism. I suppose that’s where the real rub is. How do you know which criticism to take and which criticism to ignore? If someone gives you advice about punctuation or grammar, that’s pretty easy. Go look it up and see if they’re right. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is a great resource. I commend it to you. But what about advice/criticism/feedback about style or organization or sentence structure or diction or, really, anything besides grammar and punctuation? There’s a lot of bad advice floating around out there. More to the point, there are a lot of people giving advice who know a few rules but have only a tenuous grasp on the big picture of how writing works. You may be in a writing group with one or two of these people. You might have quit your writing group because of one or two of these people. To borrow some language from the counseling profession, you have to have a certain amount of yourself in order to know what writing advice to receive and what advice to reject. A while back I was talking to a person who told me that she had just finished writing a whole novel when somebody in her writing group told her she shouldn’t use the word that. So she went through and got rid of all the thats. But soon after she got through that ordeal, somebody told her that it was ok to use that, and she shouldn’t have taken them all out. So now she was in the process of putting them all back in. “I get so much advice, how will I ever know I’m done?” she asked. That writer doesn’t have enough of herself (or, one might say, enough of her voice) to know which advice to ignore. So she jumps right on whatever advice anybody offers. This isn’t going to end well. Be aware that the great majority of writing errors come about not because the writer knows too little, but because the writer knows too much. Because you know exactly what you're trying to say, your sentences will seem a little clearer to you than they will seem to the reader. Jonathan Rogers My advice is to judge every bit of critique/advice/feedback in terms of connecting with the reader. If you were to implement a given piece of advice, can you see how it would help your reader understand your point better or enter more fully into your scene? Will it lower barriers between your reader and your material? If you don’t see how a given edit will make your reader’s life better, don’t be too quick to jump on it. Having said that, let me also say this: if a reader doesn’t get what you’re trying to do, pay attention to that. The fact that you can explain yourself doesn’t count for much. It’s your job to communicate with your reader; it isn’t the reader’s job to figure things out. And before you say your reader/critic wasn’t paying close enough attention, allow me to remind you that they don’t owe you their attention. That’s something you have to earn. Be aware that the great majority of writing errors come about not because the writer knows too little, but because the writer knows too much. Because you know exactly what you’re trying to say, your sentences will seem a little clearer to you than they will seem to the reader. So if it hurts your ego to acknowledge that a critic or writing partner is right, remember that one of the great gifts the critic brings to you is the gift of ignorance. She doesn’t already know what you’re trying to say. It’s time for me to wrap this thing up, so let me say one last thing about critics. Just as there are writers who write for self-centered reasons, there are also critics who criticize for self-centered reasons. They like to hear themselves talk, or they like to show that they know more than you do, or they have hobby-horses they like to ride for reasons that are known only to them. This kind of critic may accidentally do you some good, but I wouldn’t take them too seriously if I were you. But there are also plenty of people who offer criticism because they care about you or because they at least care about writing and they like to connect writers with readers and connect readers with good stories and ideas. These people are your allies. Stick to them closer than a brother. May the Lord bless them and keep them and make his face to shine upon them and give them peace. If you enjoyed this excellent advice from Jonathan Rogers, consider subscribing to his weekly letter, The Habit, to receive lots more. In addition, a new section of Writing with Flannery O’Connor, Jonathan’s six-week online class, starts on June 25. There are still some spots remaining. You can register (and find out more about the class) here.

At the beginning of my twenty-ninth year, I got this crazy idea: to write a song from every book of the Bible before I turned thirty. But what began as a fun goal, perhaps just a way to end my twenties with a bang, changed the trajectory of my life. As it turned out, I absolutely loved writing songs from the Bible: delving into a passage, putting myself in each character’s shoes, trying to understand how this one small story connects with the whole, then coming up with a way to communicate that story with melody and rhythm and lyric. The songs from that year of writing eventually turned into the Blood + the Breath, an album that traces the theme of redemption from creation to the second coming of Christ (a la Andrew Peterson’s Behold the Lamb but with an emphasis on Easter rather than Christmas). But, like any good story, the Bible demands to be read and retold again and again. So I kept on writing songs from scripture, looking at this same Story from new angles, turning the diamond to let each slant and gradient shine some new light. Four years later, I was back in the studio with producer Gabe Scott to record A Home & A Hunger. Like the Blood + the Breath, this new album journeys through scripture, with each song parachuting into a different biblical scene. But this time, the songs explore a new theme: the tension between the “already” and the “not yet” of God’s kingdom, the hope and the ache we feel in the space between. The songs for this album were written during a season defined by upheaval and transition. While writing these songs, we had our third child, made two cross-country moves, and walked through hard things with our church. We saw suffering up close with friends and family, not the least of which was my father-in-law’s struggle with ALS, a degenerative disease without hope or cure. The nightly news brimmed with violence and terrorism, anger over race and politics, and Christians getting tangled in the mess. Everywhere I looked, I found evidence that things are not as they should be. Meanwhile, God was using motherhood and transition to expose my own brokenness and remind me of my need for the gospel. I tend to be an “achiever” type, and God brought me low in order to help me run to this gift I could never achieve or deserve. I am just a narrator. And yet these stories from scripture have traveled through me, breathed life into my darkest places, brought me to a place of humility and then lifted me up again. In this way, they are my stories. And I know that they are intimately yours as well. Caroline Cobb As I wrote, I gravitated toward passages that spoke into these themes. Songs like “All is Vanity (Ecclesiastes)” featuring Jill Phillips and “Eve’s Lament” linger in the dissonance of the “not yet,” leaving us hungry for redemption. Songs like “Fullness of Joy (Psalm 16)” and “Behold, Behold (Revelation)” come from passages that point us to the strong hope we cling to, even as we ache for the Day to come. Songs like “There is a Mountain,” “The Two Lost Sons,” and “Only the Sick Need a Physician” explore the confidence we sinners can have in God’s “upside-down” kingdom: a “mountain only the lame can climb… a table only the hungry find,” where “only the beggar will have the currency.” As you can see, these songs are telling His Story, not mine. I am just a narrator. And yet these stories from scripture have traveled through me, breathed life into my darkest places, brought me to a place of humility and then lifted me up again. In this way, they are my stories. And I know that they are intimately yours as well. My prayer is that these albums would help you remember and rehearse this Story of ache and hope. I pray these songs would be a channel for the Word of God to live in you, that His truth would get into your heart and mind in the middle of your everyday: when you’re stuck in traffic, cooking dinner, driving carpool, changing a diaper, or working from your desk. And I hope you will be encouraged to keep telling this beautiful Story in your own way: turning the diamond, reflecting its light, revealing new glories at every angle. For a limited time, Caroline has made her album available for free on Noisetrade. Check it out here. And click here to learn more about Caroline Cobb and her album A Home & A Hunger at her website.

In case you missed it, Andrew Osenga is back with Season Three of his podcast, The Pivot. He kicked off the season with a fascinating conversation with rapper/speaker/activist Sho Baraka. They talked about Sho’s winding career path, from hip hop to insurance to musical theatre to Faith & Work conversations in Atlanta, and the years where speaking his mind became a liability. You can listen to Season Three, Episode One of The Pivot podcast here. And consider supporting The Pivot on Pateron here.

Last week, I got to sit down with Buddy Greene and ask him all about his new retrospective record, Looking Back, as well as the narrative of his musical and spiritual life and how they have informed one another. Our conversation was a delight and I am pleased to share it with you here. To learn more about Buddy Greene and his new album, head over to his website. Drew: When you were first really getting into the bluegrass tradition, what caught your attention? An artist, an album, a song? Buddy: There was one particular album, and many folks in my generation point to it: Will The Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They came out with it in ’72 or something like that. I scoured this thing and played it over and over and over. It was my introduction to people like Doc Watson, Maybelle Carter… not only stars like them, but musicians like Junior Huskey played bass, Vassar Clements on fiddle. Musicianship was so virtuosic. Up to that point I had ignored country music or even turned my nose up to it, but I’d been getting into the blues ever since high school, with the Allman Brothers and folks like that. So the Allman Brothers were already proving to me that you need to know where your music comes from. When I listen to Fillmore East, the live album, Greg Allman would introduce songs and say, “This is an Elmore James song” or “This is a T-Bone Walker song,” and I was like, “Who’s he talking about?” He’s talking about pioneers of blues. As cool as I thought the Dirt Band was, the real coolness of this record was Jimmy Martin, Flatt and Scruggs, Merle Travis, Doc Watson. I could not get over them, and these were people twenty or thirty years older than me, had been around a long time. Masters of what they were doing. I was just enamored of that. That's the kind of musical world I want to inhabit—one where you're a member of this long tradition and you learn what's gone before you, you steward what you have, you add to it what you can, and you pass that along. Buddy Greene Drew: One thing that enamors me with music I love—I see it there on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album cover, it says, ”Music forms a new circle.” It’s almost like the communion of saints of bluegrass. There’s something so big about it. I hear it on your record too, when I hear these incredible musicians. Their skill is amazing, of course, but the thing that draws me in is not how good they are, but the hospitality everyone has for each other and the circle that’s formed in that. Everyone respects the fidelity of that circle. That’s moving to me and I wonder what your take on that is. Buddy: I notice that generosity you’re talking about in bluegrass music, players sharing what they know. That’s the way these guys learn. They go to festivals, hang out with their heroes, watch them play, get a chance to be in a jam session with them, ask, “how are you doing that?” I mean you can see this stuff on YouTube now, somebody’s posted some video of Kenny Baker showing Aubrey Haynie how to play some fiddle lick, and they just pass it on. And now Aubrey’s on my record, and he’s doing the same thing with young fiddlers coming along now. Drew: He’s nuts. There were so many moments when I thought, “I didn’t know you could make that sound with a fiddle.” Buddy: I know it. So everybody has those stories. And that’s the kind of musical world I want to inhabit—one where you’re a member of this long tradition and you learn what’s gone before you, you steward what you have, you add to it what you can, and you pass that along. And that’s in other music traditions, too. I just always felt like in rock and pop and stuff like that, there was always more of a competitive edge, this idea that “we are the gods.” But these bluegrass guys—for one thing, they don’t have that huge a mass market for what they’re doing. So they’re playing festivals and music clubs. You can see world-class musicians at a house concert in this genre of music. Drew: There is generally more of a focus on the individual “star of the show” in other genres than there is in bluegrass. Buddy: Well yeah! It’s what made me want to be a musician in the first place. When I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, I was like, “Listen to all those girls going crazy! These guys are on the top of the world! I want to do that!” And that eluded me my whole career! (laughter) But what I discovered along the way was just a love for music and a chance to get to meet some of these people, rub shoulders with them, get them to play on my record, make friends with them. You probably know Ron Block, right? Drew: Not personally, but I know who he is. Buddy: He’s a contributor to the Rabbit Room for one thing, but he’s also just one of the best banjo players on the planet and one of the best friends I’ve ever had. On Looking Back, most of the players are close friends of mine. We do a good bit of hanging out and impromptu playing from time to time. A lot of that was being celebrated there on that album. Drew: What inspired the idea to do an album like Looking Back, to chronicle this great accumulation of songs? Did it dawn on you one day that you should do it, or had you been considering it for a while? Buddy: Well there were a bunch of old songs of mine I wanted to revisit: songs that had been recorded on much earlier projects, from the late 80s, early 90s, that stood the test of time. I still wanted to play them, they held up musically and lyrically, and even maybe had a fresh application thirty years down the road. I love listening to those old records. The sonic value of them is like a time capsule: “Listen to that reverb!” “What a goofy drum sound!” But they were trapped in that time, in terms of a listening experience. So I wanted to take some of those songs, update them with new arrangements and a more mature voice, and hopefully a more mature approach to producing music. That had been on my mind for some time. Then after I finished the project before this one, I had talked to somebody about the possibility of doing a bluegrass approach to that idea. Somebody at a record label. And really, I have very little reputation in the commercial bluegrass world. Record labels are not beating down my door to sign me up for anything. But I know a few people in that world, so I was talking to one of them, and they said, “Yeah, let me hear what you’ve got.” So I called Bryan Sutton and told him what I had in mind, asked him to produce it, and he was down. The album became more than a revisit of earlier recordings—it became a retrospective on a whole life of making music. It helped me sum up my musical and spiritual journey. Buddy Greene Drew: And it’s a pristine-sounding record. Buddy: It’s a great production. I’m as happy with his production as anything I’ve ever been part of. He’s been doing a lot of work at Southern Ground studios, so he got me to come over there. We had two days booked in the studio shortly after that other project in 2016, and when we came out we had eleven songs tracked. And it was with this great band: Ron Block, Sam Bush, Bryan Sutton, Mark Fain on bass, Aubrey Haynie. And then me hanging on for dear life. (laughter) Drew: Well… you didn’t sound like you were hanging on for dear life. Buddy: Believe me, there were times when I felt that way. But I was delighted that I was in the middle of all that. The rough mixes sounded great and I was excited, so I sent them to the record label and kept waiting to hear back. I never did. By this time 2016 had already run its course, I was busy traveling, and so was Bryan. We couldn’t line up our schedules. Before we knew it the year was done. And whenever I listened to the rough mixes, I kept thinking of elements that were unfinished. I wanted drums on several songs, for instance. So when 2017 started I cranked it back up and decided to do another one of my self-released records. And it wouldn’t be a bonafide bluegrass project—it would be bluegrass-informed, but would incorporate drums, some soulful background singing, and such. There ended up being eighteen songs. I thought I’d whittle it down to a dozen, but the more I listened, the less I wanted to edit it down. The album became more than a revisit of early recordings—it became a retrospective on a whole life of making music. It helped me sum up my musical and spiritual journey. Drew: I got that impression from it. I loved reading each of the paragraphs you wrote in the liner notes about the songs. Hearing where they come from, what time they come from, and all the different people who wrote the ones you didn’t write. Like “Look Up, Look Down, That Lonesome Road.” Buddy: Isn’t that a cool song? Doc Watson’s father in law wrote that song: Gaither Carlton. I really am glad you liked that one. I’ll show you something here… Drew: Please. (Buddy rummages around for the record) Buddy: I’m a huge Doc Watson fan. I got to meet him, make some music with him, and he was so important in my musical development. And yet you don’t just say, “hey, I’ll do a Doc Watson song.” Drew: You have to tread lightly. Buddy: So here’s the album I originally heard this song from. Have you ever heard it? Drew: I have not. I’m excited. (The song begins to play) Buddy: When Doc died in 2012 or something like that, we did a tribute night at the Station Inn. It was me, Bryan, and a few others. We showed up and played some of Doc’s songs, and I thought if I get asked to do a song, I’ll throw this one out there and see what happens. Just me and Bryan did this song that night, and it became a moody moment in the set. Very moving to Bryan and me. When that was done, I thought, “I’d love to record that song one day.” When I was finally bringing all the elements of the record together, songs like that came up—I knew it was the homage to Doc that needed to be included. Jerry Reed was another huge musical influence of mine, and I was at a tribute concert for him after he died as well, and I was asked to do a song of his I’d never heard called “Big Daddy.” So that ended up on the record, too. I was in Jerry’s band for four years, which is what originally moved me to Nashville from Georgia in 1983. It was like a dream come true: first big break I had, on a hillbilly bus traveling around the country. Playing shows like Hee Haw with this huge, iconic country and movie star. By the time I got in the band, Jerry had already been in the business for twenty years. His star was starting to fade a little bit, but he could still have a nice six-piece band on the road, do TV specials, and make movies. He died in 2008 of emphysema. But being in his band was an apprenticeship I sorely needed. So I wanted something on the record that would tip my hat to Jerry Reed. That was one of the most fun moments on the record. It helped me talk about my career journey. And then songs like “Jesus Gonna Make It All Alright” never saw the light of day, but I played them all the time, especially in my early twenties. Every time I did, it was like hearing from home when I was in a dark, dark place. I was so far away from my faith, but that song was calling me home: “Buddy, come back!” So it’s such a monument to my spiritual journey. I was learning about being slave to sin, being in need of a gracious God who would love me no matter what I'd done, and an incarnate God who would die for me, rise from the grave, ascend on high, and send his Spirit who would help me be more than I was on my own. If that's true, I thought, then I need it. Buddy Greene Drew: I’d love to ask you—when listening to the record, I noticed it wasn’t just documenting your musical journey, but your spiritual journey as well. I’d love to hear about your conversion, the way those two things worked together, and how music and spirituality have been almost synonymous for you. Buddy: I’m from Macon, Georgia, a musical hotbed that’s produced Otis Redding, Allman Brothers, Little Richard, James Brown. When I was young and getting set free by The Beatles, I started learning about all this musical stuff in my community. I had a band at age ten, just jumped right in! Played baritone ukuleles before we could play full-sized guitars. In my early twenties, I played in this group called Uncle Ernie, and I was totally lost. We were this good-timing bar band playing for fifty bucks a night, drinking and smoking pot, carousing, total losers. I was a child of the sixties, drifting far away from church and thinking my parents’ generation had screwed up everything and we were gonna make it all better. But all I was really doing was partying, and I didn’t have much of a social conscience. By my mid-twenties I was already married and divorced, had made so many bad choices that I was just in pain. I wasn’t showing this so much with my peer group, but I was a lonely person, and I was starting to search in spiritual directions. My plan was to go to all these world religions and look for truth, then pick and choose what I liked. I started with Christianity because I figured I knew the most about it among the religions. So I read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I was immediately fascinated. I had so many questions reading those gospels for the first time as an adult. Then around that time, a born-again believer came into my life. He was hanging at these bars I was playing and he invited me to a bible study at his house. I was on the sly about it, but I pursued it, and it was a great place to land. It was almost like an AA group. Everybody would be hanging on the porch smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, a bunch of hippies like me. One of the reasons I didn’t want to go to a church those days was that I didn’t want to be detected. I had grown up Baptist, and those services always ended in an invitation, an altar call, and I was not interested in that. I was interested in information. I didn’t want anyone to know I was searching. So in this bible study environment, we all felt the freedom to ask questions. Questions about pot-smoking, sex, subjects I wouldn’t have felt comfortable with in any other environment. Around that time I met my future wife, who was such a cut above me! And I felt like all I was proving was that I didn’t have what it took to be a better person. All these old patterns were in place. I was learning about being slave to sin, being in need of a gracious God who would love me no matter what I’d done, and an incarnate God who would come here, die for me, rise from the grave, ascend on high, and send his Spirit who would help me be more than I was on my own. If that’s true, I thought, then I need it. By my mid-twenties I was at least admitting to myself that I wanted the gospel to be true. And I prayed one night on my sofa, “If you’re out there, if this is true, please show me and get to work on me.” A short time after that I was admitting it to my wife as we were dating. She was kind of a dormant Christian, had drifted away in college. She was out there on her own like me, and she had her eye on me. She knew something was going on. I asked her to marry me pretty soon after that, she said yes, and within a short time I got that job with Jerry Reed, before we even got married. It all happened at the same time. So I moved up to Nashville a new Christian, a new husband, with the first real job in music I’d ever had, and I started going out into that old touring world still feeling very vulnerable. Those first few years in that band were a real proving ground for me being in the world but not of it. I didn’t do well, either. When the band misbehaved, I did some version of it myself, and I’d come home feeling guilty. But I had a good pastor back home who counseled me along and encouraged me to be faithful to God and follow his lead. So I prayed to God for strength against all the old temptations. “Lord, help me not to get stoned this weekend. I want to pass the joint to the next guy.” And I’d come home and hadn’t gotten stoned, and I would feel such a sense of victory. That’s what I was learning. Drew: That is so concrete. Buddy: It’s what led me to write songs about salvation, deliverance, and a faithful God in the midst of weakness. I started writing songs when I was in Jerry’s band. Something new was growing. And that’s when my own recording career began. The rest of the story is thirty years of me being a recording artist, a songwriter—I may not have a whole foot in the world of bluegrass, but I do have a toe in there. But as a result, I’ve gotten to play music with so many folks I enjoy being around, and that’s what I love. That’s the journey. You can learn more about Buddy Greene and his new record, Looking Back, on his website. Meanwhile, take a listen to his version of “Look Up, Look Down That Lonesome Road” here:https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/14-Look-Up-Look-Down-That-Lonesome-Road.mp3

Click through for this week’s edition of Jonny Jimison’s Rabbit Trails. Check out more of Jonny Jimison’s work at his website.

Sometimes, especially if you’ve grown up in the church, Scripture becomes so familiar that it’s easy to miss the beauty and poetry of those old words of life. So we look for ways to shift our focus—trying out a new translation, diving into an intense study, or learning ancient prayer practices that engage the text. And for the Psalms, there is nothing quite like hearing them sung. But how do you turn Bible verses into songs that feel worshipful, reverent, and… well… sound great? Thankfully, The Corner Room is doing just that, and their latest entry Psalm Songs Vol. 2 is a record we’re excited to commend to you. If you love what Randall Goodgame is doing for your kids with his Sing the Bible series, then you just may find Psalm Songs to be the perfect complement to your own worship life. I was grateful for the chance to chat with Adam Wright, the leader of this group, about their new record. Read on to get to know him, watch an acoustic performance of “Psalm 139:1-6,” then pick up your copy of Psalm Songs Vol. 2 at their website! Adam: I have been the minister of music at Cahaba Park Church for nearly nine years now (hard to believe!). Part of my job there is to plan the liturgy for our worship services each week, so I’m always looking for creative ways to thematically tie the service elements together. Back in 2013, our senior pastor, Murray Lee, preached a 16-week series on the Psalms. I thought, “Why don’t I try to set these to music? After all, these were originally sung!” The first week he was going to be preaching on Psalm 1. So with Bible, guitar and a voice memo app in hand, I began writing my first psalm song. Within two hours, I had completed the arrangement, and was more acquainted with this passage of Scripture, both cognitively and emotionally, than I’d ever been before. Over the next two summers, I set over 20 psalms to music! Each psalm song was shared in our services before each psalm was preached. In talking with people in our congregation, it provided a new and unique way to engage the text and connect with it on a more emotional level. With a good amount of material from two summers of writing, I decided I would record and release ten psalms set to music, Psalm Songs, Volume 1. The name for the ministry, The Corner Room, comes from the actual location where the music is produced. My church meets on a piece of property in Birmingham, Alabama that contains a historic house called the Carraway-Davie House. I was given two rooms on the second floor, one of which I’ve turned into a recording studio. It also happens to be in the corner of the house, hence the name, The Corner Room. Although I’m the primary writer and producer on these projects, I am thankful to have a talented team of friends and local musicians that help to make these projects great! Birmingham has a very rich artistic community and I enjoy being able to work with a wide variety of musicians from different churches. Jen: What’s your creative process like? Any challenges in setting Scripture to music without tweaking any words? Adam: For me, there’s an interpretive element to the process that precedes the actual musical part. First, I begin by reading the text and try to identify the psalmist’s intent (thanksgiving, lament, praise, etc.). For example, a slow and meditative setting of Psalm 100 would (in my humble opinion) miss the mark. This step informs the mood and style of each setting. I give this a good deal of thought before jumping into the music. Then, I think about form. My whole mission in writing these is that the words would stick with the listener. Song forms that are recognizable (verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus) tend to be more accessible for most people. I try to structure each song this way, but sometimes, the text dictates something different. Every psalm text presents different challenges and it’s become a very enjoyable process to structure them musically in a way that doesn’t compromise the intent. Within the form process, I look for repetition in the text that would lend itself to a chorus. For example, Psalm 67 has a section that repeats itself in verses 3 and 5: “Let the peoples praise you, O God! Let all the peoples praise you!” Psalm 8 begins and ends with “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” If there’s not an evident repetitive section, I usually try to find the main idea of each psalm and create a “chorus.” Once I’ve given these things some thought, I will pick up an instrument and a voice recorder and begin to craft a chord structure and melody line. I love listening to music with unexpected “twists and turns,” and I like to create moments like that in each song. Jen: What is your favorite Psalm/song these days? Adam: Psalm 139 has been a favorite for some time. I marvel that God knows me; that he cares about the minute and the mundane; that even though I rebel and choose sin time and time again, he extends grace and forgiveness to me and promises to make me more like Jesus; that he’s sacrificed his own Son to give me new life and make me his child. As the psalmist states, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” May God continually keep me in child-like awe and wonder of the deep, deep love of Jesus. Jen: You’ve also got an album of 1 Corinthians 13 (also great! We already highlighted it here.) What’s next for you? Is there another part of the Bible you’d love to adapt to music? Adam: The “Psalm Song vault” is nearly dry now. I’ve recorded most of the psalm songs that were written in those two summers. I’ll definitely continue to write Psalms to music, so there will be a Volume 3 at some point. I’ve also set several shorter passages of Scripture to music that I’d like to adapt into a “Meditations” project. I’ve set the first half of Isaiah 53 to music as well and would like to release that chapter as a 3-4 movement suite, similar to Love Never Ends. Whichever comes next, I feel compelled to continue to set Scripture to music, that it might cause those who hear it to know and engage Scripture more deeply. You can check out The Corner Room and their project, Psalm Songs Volume II, at their website.

In a recent interview with Terri Gross, the writer David Sedaris remarked, “I’m rarely the smartest person in the room. I have other qualities, but searing intelligence is not one of them.” David Sedaris is a hilarious writer and an excellent prose stylist, so it is tempting to chalk this up to false humility. But I’ve been pondering his remarks in my heart, and I think there’s a lot of wisdom in separating excellent writing from “searing intelligence.” What does “excellent writing” even mean? Because this is a letter and not a book, I’m going to grossly oversimplify: Excellent writing is technically proficient, at the sentence level and at larger organizational levels. Excellent writing gives the reader something he couldn’t have gotten for himself. Technical proficiency requires practice, and while I concede that it also requires a certain amount of intelligence, the threshold isn’t especially high. You can learn the technicalities of writing just as you can learn the technicalities of basketball. People who can make 80% of their free throws look like wizards to me, but only because I’ve never learned the basics of free-throw shooting–or, rather, when people have tried to teach me the basics of free-throw shooting, I have never followed up with practice. I am fully convinced that if you will simply pay attention to the world as it presents itself to you and write what you have seen, you can hardly help but give your reader ideas and images he has never considered before. Jonathan Rogers I’m not talking about the technicalities of writing this week, except to say that they are teachable and learnable, and to put them into practice requires commitment more than intelligence. But what about that other requirement of writing excellence, to give the reader something that he couldn’t get for himself? The great pleasure of reading is to have an idea or image put into your head that you would have never thought of yourself. Doesn’t that require searing intelligence, to come up with ideas and images that your reader has never considered before? In short, no. I am fully convinced that if you will simply pay attention to the world as it presents itself to you and write what you have seen, you can hardly help but give your reader ideas and images he has never considered before. To put it another way, if you see what you see and write what you see, originality will take care of itself. Last week one of my online students wrote a piece about the basement of the church where her father preached when she was a little girl. This sentence fairly jumped off the page: On Fridays, the basement echoed with the thump of the mimeograph machine as Dad printed the church bulletins, cursing under his breath at the spread of slippery purple ink. At that moment I felt that this writer was giving me access to a world that I otherwise had no access to. A preacher cussing the office equipment is something most of us won’t see first-hand. But this writer has seen it and remembered it, and when she offers it up to the reader, it feels as if we’ve been let in on a secret. If someone assigned you or me the task of writing about a church basement, it would never occur to either of us to depict the preacher quietly cursing a mimeograph machine. But once you see it in this writer’s story, it is entirely believable. Unexpected but believable. That sweet spot is the essence of what we call originality in writing. And the most reliable path to that sweet spot is to pay attention to a world that is forever serving up the unexpected. Later in the same piece comes another great image from the church basement: Martha brought cakes tasting of cigarette smoke, a pretty pattern swirled into the nicotine-tainted frosting. Again, unexpected but entirely believable. Was the preacher’s daughter being original when she depicted her father cussing at the mimeograph machine or a cake that tasted like cigarettes? In her mind, probably not. She was just telling what she had seen. But the reader experiences those images as fresh and original. The writer has given us something that we didn’t have any way of getting for ourselves. That kind of writing has nothing to do with intelligence. I’m not commenting on this particular writer’s mental capacities one way or another; she could be the next Einstein for all I know. All I’m saying is that this kind of writing doesn’t require towering intelligence any more than shooting free throws does. I don’t wish to oversimplify the very complex act that is writing, nor do I wish entirely to demystify a process that is mysterious. But as a writing teacher, I see my role largely a matter of helping my students relax into the confidence that their unique experience and their unique view of the world are the raw material for excellent, original writing. If you enjoyed this excellent advice from Jonathan Rogers, consider subscribing to his weekly letter, The Habit, to receive lots more. In addition, a new section of Writing with Flannery O’Connor, Jonathan’s six-week online class, starts on June 25. That’s less than three weeks away, and there is plenty of space remaining. You can register (and find out more about the class) here.

My two youngest children sit together on the floor in a bedroom. They spend their days playing beside each other with a myriad of toys, co-imagining worlds filled with talking construction equipment, neon-hued horses, and plot lines that range from pedestrian to strange and violent, often within seconds. It’s fun to stand around the corner and listen to them, but invariably, I have to intervene and referee a dispute. Kind words, and kind hands, I say. We share our things. We certainly do share our things. At least, that’s what I try to reinforce. Yet, amid the repetition and rote indoctrinations against covetousness, my wife and I also tell our children about the things we don’t share. Medical reports, for example. No, you may not tell the cashier why we are buying prunes. No, even two weeks after, you do not shout “lice” in a crowded room. This, of course, causes otherwise calm children to part like the waters of a frightened Red Sea, isolating the poor afflicted kid on the dry ground of pariah-hood. Then there are hats, speaking of that. You may never share hats with other kids at your school. It’s funny, coming up against exceptions you didn’t think about before, and I find myself subject to the same family sermons. Two churches stand along the interstate, for example. Here, they shall go unnamed, but know that they exist. Facing each other from opposite sides of the freeway, their buildings, which look to be of roughly equivalent size, once bore banners saying things like “Not Like Your Regular Church” or “A New Way to Do Church.” They seemed to be waging a subtle marketing war, telling thousands of passersby, “We’re not like them. Don’t go over there to that church. Our church is better.” To be perfectly honest, it infuriated me. The Church belongs to Jesus, and if he refuses to have even angels pull the tares from the wheat until the end of time, who are we to presume to take on the job here and now? I am not saying we ought to falter in our use of discernment—and oh! let us use good judgment in using the word judgment—but it often feels like we’re the Yankees trying to buy Babe Ruth (and everybody else), blowing through money to build the prize-winning team. This, of course, is not a biblical idea. It’s easy to pick on those two churches however, because it’s always easy to pick on Them. We know this to be true. I find myself tempted even in this writing to tell you what churches they are. Whoever Them is, we find slander and gossip about Them as easy to share as lice from a grade school hat. The problem is worse on social media, and I’m guilty of it. I have hung the sign out on the front of my public impression, saying, I am not those people. You are free to stand beside me; you won’t catch what they’ve got. Disconcertingly, in the Church, it is really not up to me. “The body is a unit, though it is made of many parts,” says Paul to the Corinthians. “We were all baptized with one Spirit into one body.” The holy catholic church. The communion of saints. The forgiveness of sins. This means that They are me, by the Blood of the Lamb. One body, one Spirit. I cannot by dint of my disgust or horror separate myself from them, nor they from me, no matter what one of us has done. I cannot hand the Bride of Christ a razor blade and ask that one arm cut the other. The Church belongs to Jesus, and if he refuses to have even angels pull the tares from the wheat until the end of time, who are we to presume to take on the job here and now? Adam Whipple What does this mean we are to do? When and if we share articles on social media or topics at the water cooler, where do we draw the line between being up front about our faults as The Church and slandering the Bride of Christ? When is it that we have moved from discussing these things within the Family of God to flinging our brothers or sisters out to the mob because they failed or thought differently? I do not know, but I do know that one action is the high calling of boasting about our weaknesses for Christ’s sake, while the other is certainly a sin. Assuredly, we all know various prominent personalities are going to say unbiblical things. We know that certain people are never going to preach on the evils of idolatry after wealth or on the exclusivity of Christ. Do we share those things in order to separate ourselves from those people? If there is a chance that they are actually believers—or even if they are not—do we do well to share their faults as though denouncing them from the guillotine scaffold? Certainly, the apostles had no problem calling out sin in the Body of Christ where they saw it. Yet, while I believe I have the Spirit, I am also not one of the apostles. When I share what some church or Christian is doing wrong in the public sphere instead of approaching that group or person with honesty and grace, I cannot claim to act in love. We believe so hard in earning the right to be heard with regards to, say, evangelism. Yet, with haste, we assume we have the inalienable right to be heard in regards to defamation. It cannot be so. I have never written a letter to a multi-millionaire televangelist. My prayers for politicians are far-between and paltry. I am ready to listen to my neighbor next door, but I cannot give a pundit the time of day in a clock shop. Yes, perhaps it’s a function of television and the internet, but that is no excuse for me. The Church is everywhere, and she is one Church, no matter how one arm pummels the other. Thanks be to God. I should be ready to share my own faults before I share the faults of others. My children are young now, but at some point soon, I shall have to begin to advise them in the use of the internet. They will interact with friends and acquaintances in the subconscious tattoo-ink of the ether. I hope they will act honorably; it seems now a dreadful thing to give such powers to a teenager with little conception of the consequences. Who knows what social media will even look like in that day? Yet the ability to slander has been and will forever be the same, and I can foresee conversations. Yes, I know that person did wrong. I know you are hurt and angry. No, you still may not irrevocably tell the whole world how wrong you thought it was. I will still be refereeing disputes, acknowledging the hurt done even while encouraging grace—let us hope. We don’t share hats with schoolmates, after all, but we do share kindness. Even if our friends have nits, we don’t shout ‘lice’ in a crowded room.

The first time I heard the band Frightened Rabbit was eight years ago, on a cruise ship in the gulf of Mexico. My husband and I had joined another couple on a five day Carnival cruise. We spent one day on the beach in Cozumel, and another visiting ancient Mayan ruins in Progresso, but the rest of the time we were on the ship. The main attraction for most cruisers is the ocean view, but for those who aren’t interested in wild seascapes, there’s plenty of entertainment to be had inside. And from the casino, to the dining hall, to the nightly shows, there are always drinks to be had. But on this particular trip I was the only one who hadn’t committed to abstain from alcohol, so we never ordered any. Until the last night after dinner when we were walking around looking at the ocean (again) and I decided to treat myself. I got a pina colada and walked to the bow of the ship to drink it by myself. My husband gave me his iPod and earbuds, with the perfect song cued up for me, “Swim Until You Can’t See Land.” I remember how the music sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. Epic ballad bands like Arcade Fire and fun. were still in the making back then, and while Frightened Rabbit was never really part of that scene, they still have the ability to sweep you away with one song. Part of their charm is Scott Hutchison’s heavy accent, but the music itself is haunting, blending mechanical and machine like sound with honest lyrics of everyday life. And while my romantic setting helped, there’s something about repetition that allows a line to really sink in. The last two questions rang in my head for days. “Are you a man? Are you a bag of sand?” Obviously I’m a woman, but I’d be lying if I said I’d never imagined myself floating alone into oblivion, on waves that stretch into eternity, like some indiscernible grey blob, apt to sink at any moment. A few weeks ago, Scott Hutchison walked out his front door and never came back. On purpose. Because he didn’t want to be found. I don’t know if he drove off in his own car, if he had a destination in mind, or simply set out on a walk alone. Other than his final tweets, he left no substantial clues or a notes behind, and though his friends, family, and fans held out hope for two days, his plan of self destruction ultimately succeeded. We all know people like Scott. They may not be artists, or write songs, or play guitar, but we’re still privy to their stories. They’re our friends, our brothers, our distant relatives and our next door neighbors. Sometimes they’re famous people and sometimes they’re just regular joes. Sometimes they’re candid about their struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they wave white flags of surrender as they depart from this world and sometimes they disappear silently. We live with the knowledge of such hopeless endings and still, when someone we care for goes missing, we can hardly imagine this will be their story. So we send out calls for help as soon as we discover their absence. We cobble together timelines and eye witnesses. We search everywhere we can think of. We pray for miracles and angels and courage. We rally around the ones left behind and we wait, hoping to hear good news, crossing our fingers and banishing tragic endings from our minds, until we know for sure. But with every passing hour our hope fades, with every new phone call or false lead we begin to imagine the worst. That this temporary upheaval is now a permanent change. Which is where we find ourselves now that Hutchison’s body has been discovered. Now what, we wonder. I don’t know Scott personally so I won’t speak for his family and close friends. I can only speak as a fan. I’m sad the world will never hear a new song written by Scott Hutchison, or see another new drawing he’s made. I’m sad I’ll never get to see him perform again. I’m sad that his work and legacy may be overshadowed by the final choice he made. I’m sad that people who knew and loved Scott are hurting now, feeling confused and shocked, numb and angry, perhaps in danger of following those muddy footsteps themselves some day. Grief. It’s not easily measured in five predictable stages. It’s longer, messier, and more sorrowful than we want it to be, and the more we run from it the more it overwhelms us. Which is why I’m writing about mine now. That doesn’t mean I won’t have any left when I’m done with this essay; it just means that for now, I’m going to keep swimming. People battle depression and lose, not because they gave up or didn't fight hard enough, but because it's a disease, and even those who seek treatment and publicly share their struggles can still fall victim to its clutches. Janna Barber When I went to see Frightened Rabbit last summer, the crowd was made up people I don’t normally hang out with. I felt old and square in that group. Most of them were young and single, but there I was with my husband of twenty years—who works for a church—at a run down tavern lately turned concert venue. It was dark and dingy, and the air smelled of stale smoke. Everyone in the room was standing and we were merely ten feet away from the band performing on a three foot stage. There was one older couple down front, but they were quite the opposite of myself and my husband. For one thing they were Scottish, and they spent half the show yelling at the band members like they were long lost sons, finally come home for a visit. You could tell they were having a great time and that they loved the music, but they were messy drunk and emboldened by shared cultural history with the band, in a room full of (to their minds) foreigners. The most telling moment of the night came when the band played “Keep Yourself Warm” and the crowd joined along with a passion Sunday morning worship leaders would envy, as we sang, “You won’t find love in a/ Won’t find love in a hole.” The song makes obvious and graphic statements that on the one hand don’t need to be said, but on the other hand singing words like that out loud, with people who may or may not share the same values as me, lends prophetic depth to the lyrics. And that’s the real gift Hutchison gave to the world, truth. “Here’s what life is really like,” his songs seem to say, “for me, and lots of other people you know,” and because he never shies away from the grit and horror of the world, when hope shows up in one of his lines, it’s all the more powerful. Hutchison’s songs often decried the hypocrisy he saw in organized religion, but the hearts of the characters he painted long for redemption, for sacrificial love to be real, and I can only pray that Scott experienced that kind of love for himself at some point in his journey. I hate trying to pick favorite songs, but one I’ve listened to over and over is called “Nitrous Gas.” I love it because it demonstrates how difficult it can be to find happiness. How sometimes happiness feels like an outside entity, a foreign substance you can only ingest every once in awhile, when you stumble upon the good fortune of finding a full tank to hook yourself up to. Yet the singer confesses in the second verse, “Oh, where love won’t grow/Oh, I’ll build my home,” hinting that perhaps he’s somewhat responsible for his own state of affairs. It’s tempting to turn Scott’s story into some sort of cautionary tale, but I think doing so is a disservice to people who struggle with depression as well as those who love them. Like the music of Frightened Rabbit, real life is not simple, and there are seldom easy solutions. People battle depression and lose, not because they gave up or didn’t fight hard enough, but because it’s a disease, and even those who seek treatment and publicly share their struggles can still fall victim to its clutches. Suicide is the ultimate tragedy, and we wish we had more control over it, so it makes sense that we should use these situations as reminders to be vigilant; but I can’t be too proud to say that “but by the grace of God, there go I.” As one who’s often tempted toward despair, I no longer have the luxury of pride. Instead I try to live my life one day at a time. I do not feel like a dead bag of sand today, but there’s no guarantee tomorrow will be the same. And if it’s not I’ll have to decide whether or not to ask for help, whether or not to ignore the pain and hope it’ll go away, and whether or not to seek solace in a good place or a bad place. I wish Scott had chosen differently, but through tears I choose to believe the most hopeful line he ever wrote is still true. “All is not lost,” friends. I hope you can believe it, too.