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If you’re unfamiliar with Tenebrae, it’s a traditional Holy Week service that uses the gradual extinguishing of light to draw attention to the sufferings of Christ and the resident darkness of the world. It’s an occasion to meditate on and lament the brokenness of the human heart and the groaning of creation. The following liturgy is taken from Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy. We hope it serves you well this week in the darkness before the dawn. (If you’d like to use this liturgy in a group or church setting, you can download it here.) A Liturgy for Those Who Weep Without Knowing Why LEADER: There is so much lost in this world, O Lord, so much that aches and groans and shivers for want of redemption, so much that seems dislocated, upended, desecrated, unhinged—even in our own hearts. PEOPLE: Even in our own hearts  we bear the mark of all that is broken.  What is best in this world has been bashed and battered and trodden down. What was meant to be the substance has become the brittle shell, haunted by the ghosts of a glory so long crumbled that only its rubble is remembered now. Is it any wonder we should weep sometimes, without knowing why? It might be anything. And then again, it might be everything. For we feel this. We who are your children feel  this empty space where some lost thing  should have rested in its perfection, and we pine for those nameless glories, and we pine for all the wasted stories in our world, and we pine for these present wounds. We pine for our children and for their children too, knowing each will have to prove how this universal pain is also personal. We pine for all children born into these days of desolation— whose regal robes were torn to tatters before they were even swaddled in them. O Lord, how can we not weep,  when waking each day in this vale of tears?  How can we not feel those pangs, when we, wounded by others, so soon learn to wound as well, and in the end wound even ourselves? We grieve what we cannot heal and we grieve our half-belief, having made uneasy peace with disillusion, aligning ourselves with a self-protective lie that would have us kill our best hopes just to keep our disappointments half-confined. We feel ourselves wounded by what is wretched,  foul, and fell,  but we are sometimes wounded by the beauty as well,  for when it whispers,  it whispers of the world  that might have been our birthright,  now banished, now withdrawn, as unreachable to our wounded hearts as ancient seas receding down some endless dark. We weep, O Lord, for those things that, though nameless, are still lost. We weep for the cost of our rebellions,  for the mocking and hollowing of holy things,  for the inward curve of our souls,  for the evidences of death outworked in  every field and tree and blade of grass,  crept up in every creature, alert in every  longing, infecting all fabrics of life. We weep for the leers our daughters will endure, as if to be made in reflection of your beauty were a fault for which they must pay. We weep for our sons, sabotaged by profiteers who seek to warp their dreams before they even come of age. We weep for all the twisted alchemies of our times that would turn what might have been gold into crowns of cheap tin and then toss them into refuse bins as if love could ever be a castoff thing one might simply be done with. We weep for the wretched expressions of all things that were first built of goodness and glory but are now their own shadow twins. We have wept so often.  And we will weep again. And yet, there is somewhere in our tears a hope still kept. We feel it in this darkness, like a tiny flame, when we are told Jesus also wept. You wept. So moved by the pain of this crushed creation, you, O Lord, heaved with the grief of it, drinking the anguish like water and sweating it out of your skin like blood. Is it possible that you—in your sadness  over Lazarus, in your grieving for  Jerusalem, in your sorrow in the garden— is it possible that you have sanctified our weeping too? For the grief of God is no small thing, and the weeping of God is not without effect. The tears of Jesus preceded a resurrection of the dead. O Spirit of God,  is it then possible  that our tears might also be  a kind of intercession? That we, your children, in our groaning with the sadness of creation, could be joining in some burdened work of coming restoration? Is it possible that when we weep and don’t know why, it is because the curse has ranged so far, so wide? That we weep at that which breaks your heart, because it has also broken ours—sometimes so deeply that we cannot explain our weeping, even to ourselves? If that is true,  then let such weeping be received, O Lord,  as an intercession newly forged of holy sorrow. Then let our tears anoint these broken things, and let our grief be as their consecration— a preparation for their promised redemption, our sorrow sealing them for that day when you will take the ache of all creation, and turn it inside-out, like the shedding of an old gardener’s glove. ALL: O Lord, if it please you,  when your children weep  and don’t know why,  yet use our tears to baptize what you love. Amen. For more information about Every Moment Holy, or to download this liturgy, click here.

[Editor’s note: In case you haven’t heard, Chris and Jenna have worked tirelessly and done a terrific job with their Kickstarter campaign—their campaign ends at 9 pm EST/8 pm CST today! You’ll receive an immediate download of their record upon backing, so do yourself a favor and put your chips in with these kindhearted people. You can support them on Kickstarter here. Scroll to the bottom to watch their Kickstarter video and stream a song from their album.] Drew: Another thing I noticed: your record—and the music video for “Monument” captures this—uses so much landscape language. Lots of overcoming the elements as a way of talking about emotion and changes in life. Your band name as well, Wild Harbors, is a thoughtful employment of landscape language. Is that something you saw bubbling up as you wrote individual songs, did you set out with that idea in the beginning, or was it both? How did that arise? Chris: Yeah, we wanted to call the whole album Landslide but Andy told us there was already a song called that… (laughter) But yeah, I feel like you’re in our heads. That’s not something we’ve talked about a lot, but during the process of writing I found myself thinking, “I don’t know what’s next for us, but I feel like we should stay away from water analogies, because I really feel like we’re hitting our threshold for it…” I’m aware of it, and I like it because it’s good imagery. Landscape imagery is very relatable, so it works. Jenna: It’s not an intentional thing, but it certainly showed up. Drew: And that’s why it’s effective. Because if you had set out with this grand idea to make every song utilize landscape imagery, it wouldn’t have turned out so nicely! Chris: And that’s something I have to resist, because my brain tends towards ideas like that! As soon as I noticed we had a song called “House On Fire” and Jenna was writing a song about “Water,” I was like, “Oooh, what if we had a four elements concept album? We just need something about Earth…” And I thought that would be so cool, but then the next day, I thought, “Wow, Chris, that was a dumb idea.” Jenna: That’s so funny, because I hadn’t thought of this in a while, but now that you say that, there were moments when we intentionally scrapped landscape imagery because we noticed it was so prevalent. We had to pick and choose. Chris: Not everything can be an ocean of fear! (laughter) Drew: Well I think you really struck a good balance. It’s there, but it never felt like you were trying too hard. I keep thinking of “House On Fire” because it also captures the idea of adversity. Not just landscape, but confronting resistance as well. Is there anything you’d like to share about that secondary metaphor that keeps coming up? The song “Battle,” the idea of fighting the good fight? Jenna: We spent a chunk of last year reading The War of Art, so go figure, it showed up in our songs. That book was so eye-opening for me to all the ways I stay blind to my own inner struggles. It’s so much easier not to look at it, so I continue in my own self-destructive patterns. So that showed up a lot as we recognized things about ourselves, wrote songs, and even ventured into music as a career. Fighting the good fight sums a lot of that up very well. “House On Fire” was the first song to get finished and set a new tone for us. Sharing that song at shows garnered a different sort of reaction from audiences. Chris: That was the turning point from, “Thanks for playing that song, it was so nice,” to “Wow, we really resonated with that. Thanks for sharing.” Drew: And that’s such a palpable shift to pick up on with people. It’s very real when that happens. Jenna: Yeah, and while the song is about pressing into conflict, I think learning how to co-write has involved that as well. For me, being a very emotional writer, I’ve had a hard time when Chris says, “I don’t know about that line,” and I feel myself reacting with, “Get away from my emotions! This is my baby, this thing I made!” It’s taken a long time for me to realize, “Oh, he can critique my song and it doesn’t mean he’s critiquing me and everything I believe and stand for.” We can evaluate this piece of art and I’m still an intact human being! (laughter) But we really learned how to do that by writing “House On Fire.” It began with Chris reflecting on the early years of our marriage, his reluctance to enter into any sort of conflict with the person he most cares about, and how to face that. Another thing is that I am very efficient by nature, so at first, co-writing for me felt like, “What are you talking about? This is terribly inefficient. I already have two verses and a chorus and this song is finished. Why are we writing it again?” (laughter) Which clearly does not make good art. Drew: Results! Results! Jenna: Going through that, both artistically and relationally, was such a humbling practice, and one that I needed very badly. Suddenly the answer to that question, “Why are we writing this again?” became clear. It’s fighting the good fight. It’s persisting in the work of marriage. This is why you do things that are uncomfortable: what comes out in the end is so much better than it could have been otherwise. Drew: Which is fantastic. I mean there’s analogy upon analogy there. The songwriting process, marriage, conflict, life in general. Those concentric circles all come together in that long persistence and obedience involved in fighting the good fight. We’ve talked a lot about writing, but I love that we’re also starting to talk about arranging. I noticed in “House On Fire” especially that you never settle for obvious harmonies with your vocal arrangements! And I’m a big fan of that. The way that Jenna comes in on the second verse of that song in particular, the lift of energy it creates as Chris switches to harmony underneath, that tension is so thoughtful. And I can tell that’s born out of a great meticulous whittling. Chris: We’re pretty meticulous, yeah! And a lot of that is because with our shows, it’s just the two of us playing and singing on a stage together, so we want to make sure that’s an engaging, enjoyable experience for both of us. I had a moment a while ago at a show where I was looking at the set list and thought, “You know what I’m really excited for? That cover song we’re playing!” And I felt bad for not being as excited about the songs we wrote, but the reason I was excited about the cover song is that I really, really enjoyed singing it. So then I thought, “Why don’t you write a song you really, really enjoy singing?” Jenna: I’ve always primarily been a vocalist. I studied that in college and instrumentation was always secondary. But vocals is something I can truly arrange when it comes to a band setting. I don’t know a lot about bass or lead guitar, but I love vocals, so I can be very intentional with that. I’m glad we’re not a band that just has one primary lead singer with another singer doing backup all the time. That’s not how our marriage works or how our partnership in the band works, so it just wouldn’t be us. Chris: We’ve tried that sometimes, where one person leads the song, but we always end up asking the other, “Okay, so what am I doing in this song?” Jenna: Like, “Jenna, look, I’m so glad you wrote another emotional girl ballad, but what’s my role here?” (laughter) Chris: Am I holding a tambourine? Am I shaking an egg? Drew: Not the tambourine! Anything but the tambourine. It really sounds like you enjoy arranging vocals. I can hear the joy of your arrangements through your recordings. At that point, you’ve gotten through the hard work of lyrics and song structure, so why not enjoy putting melody and harmony together? Chris: That’s exactly how I feel. I think, “You know what we did? We got through the silly part where you have to write the words.” Everything else after that is like the parade for me. Drew: Yeah! So much fun. And to touch on that a bit more, I’d love to hear more about your experience recording with Andrew Osenga. It sounds like he had some input in songwriting as well, at least with “The Ballad of Wallace and Jessie.” What was that process like, working with him? And of course Paul Eckberg. What an incredible human. Chris: The whole thing was magical. Our brief snapshot version is that we went down to Nashville with thirteen songs and went through every one of them. We would play them for him (Osenga) during pre-production, and he would say, “I like this one, here are my notes,” or “I like this one, don’t change a thing,” or “I don’t really like that one.” So that meeting largely determined what made its way to the record. Jenna: Our goal for that meeting—we primarily wanted to work with him because of what an incredible songwriter he is. For us, being at a point where we craved someone to tackle our songs and build them up with us to be as strong as they could be, he was instrumental. And instrumentally, some songs came out just how I expected them to, while others ended up completely differently than I imagined. Which is why we wanted his leadership. Chris: Working with him represented a sizable financial investment on our part, more than we had ever invested before, so we wanted to trust him in that and hold loosely everything we brought to the table. Drew: That sounds like such a vulnerable and exhilarating thing, and probably exhausting, all at the same time. Like, “Hi, I really respect you, and here’s this thing I made. I hope you like it, but it’s okay if you don’t, because that’s why we’re here.” Chris: You hit the nail on the head, yes. Jenna: It was vulnerable and exhausting. We had spent a year amassing all these songs, and now we have this long weekend for Labor Day where we’re going to just change all of them. Chris: One thing that helped for me is that I see songs like maps. So when you’re first writing a song, you have a thousand roads you could take, but by the time you’re in pre-production, really editing and getting them how you like them, your options have narrowed down to maybe four roads. So you know generally where it’s going. You know which thousand roads it’s not. Drew: It’s really cool how each step you take in songwriting determines the next step, and it keeps tumbling out that way. I also love that you had this whole year for all the songs to happen on their own time, then the deadline. And to be able to engage with both of those disciplines faithfully is such a challenging thing. Jenna: Andy’s instrumental knowledge so far surpasses my own—it was incredible to see how he heard ideas preemptively and let his ears guide him there. Trusting him with arrangement in that way was a tremendous thing for us. To put it mildly, he’s made some really good records, so we were in good hands. Drew: Yes, I’ve been geeking out about The Painted Desert recently. It sounds amazing. And so does yours! That’s the thing. I love how Andy and everyone involved honored the songs. It never once got carried away in the sounds for sounds’ sake. Chris: A lot of that goes to Andy’s credit and his direction for all the musicians involved. He’s very good at knowing when to say when. Drew: Well guys, it’s been so much fun to be let in on this album. Thanks for telling me all about it. Is there anything you’d like to share with readers about this before we come to a close? Jenna: With the Kickstarter, there have been people asking, “You’ve already made the record, so why do you need to raise money?” And the answer to that is all about investing deeply in people hearing the record. Andy’s wisdom in terms of what to do with the record we’ve made and how it can help us sustain the music we make in the long term, was so helpful to us. We want to serve the music well. We did a little beta tour before recording the record and saw the beautiful conversations that unfolded as a result. So it’s not just about a music career—it’s about wanting to be an encouragement to others, to stir up good conversations. We believe in what these songs are about and the capacity these songs have to help those who hear them. We want people to ask themselves and each other what they care about, dream about, and are afraid to do, in resonance with our own experience of that questioning. Drew: That’s such a Rabbit Room sentiment of art sustaining community and community sustaining art, investing in the long-term. Thanks for your good work. Learn about Wild Harbors’ Kickstarter campaign (which ends tonight!) below: Visit their campaign by clicking here. And stream a song we talked about called “Battle” below:https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/08-Battle.mp3

The books I typically like best are narrative fiction. Give me character development, symbolism, metaphor. Give me Narnia and Harry Potter. But, oddly, it’s a leadership/business book that’s currently making my heart race. My husband Chris recently introduced me to Simon Sinek’s Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. I haven’t finished the book yet, but already, my mind is reeling with revelations. Sinek examines how many companies and people will tell you What they do, How they do it, and then ask you to get behind what they’re doing based on those two things. If asked Why they do what they do, their answers might be tied to results as an afterthought (…to make money, to make quality computers, to write books). Sinek offers up the Golden Circle, a play off of the Golden Ratio, as an inside-out alternative to how the story can work: He examines how truly influential leaders and companies—Apple, Martin Luther King, Jr., Southwest Airlines, JFK—started with Why they were doing what they were doing. How these leaders approached their missions trickled out to their personal, political, or business practices, and it resulted in What they were doing. Every decision they made had to align with a bigger dream of Why they were in business or leadership in the first place. Sinek’s argument is that people can achieve more by first asking, communicating, and remembering Why they are doing it. The immediate applications of this easily translate to business, marketing, sales, formal leadership positions, etc. But, through just the first few chapters of this book, I am discovering how much of my personal and spiritual life has been affected by not starting out with that crucial question. When Chris and I sat down with a strategic planning-minded friend about a year ago to talk about our band, he said, “What’s your Why?” I didn’t know how to answer him. He shared some similar concepts to those outlined in the book and said that he probably wouldn’t be much help to us in pragmatic details (our What) until we had an answer to that question. We left and went on a Why date a few nights later. What came out of that night was not a band solution or a business mission statement, but an attempt at sorting out a Why for our marriage and our time on this earth. We talked and prayed about why we do anything at all with our time, why God had put us together in the bigger picture, and how we might measure the decisions we make in our life together by why we think we are here. This was coming after years of standstill at decision-making crossroads. I had been so blinded by what we could do (buy a house, have a child, move away, change our jobs…) and how we could make any of it happen that I hadn’t paused to start with Why. And go figure, I was getting nowhere. Sinek’s book even looks at the biology of this—the neocortex (outer brain) deals with details and analytical thought, while the limbic brain (inner brain) controls decision-making, trust, and feelings. Choices made solely using the neocortex take longer and are less certain, while choices made in the limbic brain are quicker and more lasting. In other words, constantly sorting through whats is not helpful—we need the Why. I am astounded at the light this sheds on my faith. I have never naturally been a creature of self-discipline, and it often results in periods of spiritual dryness for me. I slowly fizzle on reading the Word, my prayers become sporadic, my worship gets relegated to Sunday morning. I have guilted myself and beat my chest and tried harder and asked God to change me with no lasting difference. Do you see it? I have focused on what I am (or am not) doing, and how I should be doing it. What is so clearly lacking in those desert places is the Why. God is worthy and sovereign and loving and kind and so many other beautiful things. When I start with what I should be doing, I come up empty and discouraged time and time again. When I stop to consider why, though, it suddenly doesn’t seem difficult to desire or make time for these spiritual disciplines. There is a deeper reason for them, a love to drive them, rather than a behavior chart to keep up with. Finally finding the bravery to declare Why we were working in this band and making this album not only gave me courage to make life-changing decisions, but to invite others into them. Crowdfunding is a necessary aspect of most independent artists’ new albums these days, and it is a tricky road to walk. Asking others to financially support you can bring up a host of insecurities—what right do I have to ask other people for their hard-earned money? Is what I’m offering them worth it? This time, we aren’t as nervous to ask, because we have a clear Why. We want to spend the time we have left on this earth fostering connection among people and helping them to be brave. We have seen too many people secretly stow away their gifts and passions because they seem impractical or trivial or not enough by the world’s standards. We want them to feel encouraged to live into the stories God has dreamed up for them. Music is how we have seen that happen—a song can speak words where there were none, give voice to deeply buried hope, connect people who seem so different on the surface. So, we are finally becoming brave enough to spend more of our time writing and playing music, and we are asking others to invest in the album we’ve made. Because what we’ve done is an outpouring of our Why, and knowing our Why shows us that it’s important enough to justify starting this adventure and taking risks. Our Kickstarter ends tomorrow, Tuesday, at 9 pm EST/8 pm CST. Visit the page to learn more, pledge, and share it with others. The process of bringing these songs to new listeners cannot be completed without a tribe of people behind it who resonate with Why it was created in the first place. Thank you so much for doing so! Visit Wild Harbors’ Kickstarter page and back their album here.

by Drew Miller [Editor’s note: When I conduct interviews, I enjoy letting myself and the person I’m interviewing be as long-winded as we like. The goal in the moment is to get out all the thoughts so I can transcribe and edit them to concision later. My interview with Wild Harbors felt a bit different. It was full of digressions as usual, but the trouble was they were all so terribly engaging. I came away from our conversation with a big smile on my face and the foreboding feeling that editing would be an impossible task… And impossible it proved to be. So, rather than suck the life out of this lively time we had, I’ve decided to trust in the attention span and sheer reading capacity of The Rabbit Room community in all its glory, opting to share this conversation in two lightly edited installments. In case you haven’t heard, Chris and Jenna have worked tirelessly and done a terrific job with their Kickstarter campaign —they are so close to reaching their goal with only five days remaining. You’ll receive an immediate download of their record upon backing, so do yourself a favor and put your chips in with these kindhearted people. You can support them on Kickstarter here. Scroll to the bottom to watch their Kickstarter video and stream a song from their album.] Drew: It seems that the backdrop to this whole record is you making the leap into music full-time. What were each of your professions, how did you get from there to here, and what’s the narrative arc to that? When did music begin for you, even as a hobby? How do all those threads weave together? Jenna: We’ve been playing music together in some capacity since 2004, that being the “hey, there’s an event on campus that needs a cover band, and I like to sing so can you play guitar with me” age. Very informal, not knowing what we’re doing. Chris: For me, I knew you were pulling out your Howie Day covers, so I wanted to be there too. (laughter) Drew: Howie Day! Yes. That is 2004. Jenna: Exactly, it was my Howie Day and Chris’s punk rock music that led the way. Drew: So y’all met in college? Chris: Yeah, Jenna got to college a year before I did. So when I was a freshman, she was the peer mentor for my freshman class. Jenna: Yeah, I was a TA. We were great friends all throughout school. And originally we just played music with other people who could actually play instruments well, but then they went to go study abroad, so we were forced to increase our skill a bit. We dated for a couple years after college, then broke up and did not think we would ever speak to each other again, let alone play music together. But when we started to talk again, Chris had begun work on a recording project and invited me to take part in it with him. As we came back together, we found ourselves hitting the reset button, seeing that music was something that took up quite a lot of our time. We called ourselves “Chris and Jenna,” started pressing into songwriting more, and people would invite us to come play. We realized we were having a great time doing that. Drew: It sounds like there was something important about that, even from the beginning, if people were asking you to share. Jenna: Yes, I think so. Figuring out what we had to say. Beginning to write songs, sometimes saying it well, sometimes not. I was a teacher for eleven years in public school. Over the last five years of that, my position became gradually more and more part-time. God was so kind to me in letting me baby-step away from teaching instead of breaking away from it hard-core. So we started to see the possibility of really prioritizing music as a career path. And then last year, the edge of the cliff finally came. We had been going on the downhill slant, but there was the drop off, and we could either fall or fly. Chris: It’s like the slant doesn’t go all the way to the bottom—you’re still going to have to jump and it will be scary. Drew: That’s a great analogy. Jenna: It is! And we had started talking about making a new record. Here I am at 33 years old, not 23, and I was afraid to admit I wanted anything. I was fearful and apprehensive about doing things that don’t make conventional sense. But there’s only so much time to do the things you feel like you need to do in life. It was important for me to realize that while I am creative and a dreamer in a very real sense, the practical side of my brain had kept me from making big decisions like that for most of my life. But my resolve was strengthened by knowing how supportive Chris was in doing music full time. We realized that if we try and fail, that’s okay. We have people who love us, we have each other, and we have the Lord. If this bombs, we won’t starve. Drew: Chris, what was your role in all this? What were you doing before the jump into music? It seems like Wild Harbors has come largely from your persistence in this calling. Chris: Yeah, I was just thinking about how music has not been part of my life for that long, really. I bought my first keyboard in 2006, and before then I had never even thought of myself as a musician. I was always an art kid growing up, but I bought a $99 keyboard on Amazon one winter, and that’s where it began. I was never that kid who was eager to have a job. That’s probably an earlier seed of this for me. I had that classic dialogue in my head, “So, you’re going to school and then what happens?” “Well, you get a job and go to an office or something, and then your life ends…” (laughter) Drew: And you’re like, “Really? Do I have to do that?” Chris: I just had a hard time getting excited about that vision for adult life. As a result, I’ve always kept my career at an arm’s distance. I was a mail delivery man after college, I’ve done after-school teaching, I’ve been an art teacher, I’m now a children’s librarian. I’ve never put too much stock in the job I’m doing—instead, I’ve always thought, “I really want to make art. So if I have to have a job to help me be able to do that, then that’s what I’ll do.” Drew: Visual art? You said you were an art kid growing up. Chris: Yeah, pencil and paper. I wanted to draw pictures of Super Mario Brothers, anything I saw on TV. But when I wasn’t doing that, I was playing air guitar in my bedroom pretending I could do that. I always dreamed of music, but it seemed like such a foreign world. It was something my older brother did, so in some ways I felt like I didn’t have access to it. You want to be your older brother, so when he’s in a band, you think, “ah, being in a band! That’s cool, why didn’t I think of that?” Drew: “But he’s in a band, so now I can’t do that!” Right? Chris: He was born first, so he got to pick “band”! And I got stuck drawing pictures… (laughter) Drew: Oh, so true! Such mutual exclusivity going on there. Chris: Yeah! All that is to say, I am now a children’s librarian with our county’s public library. That’s how we’re providing health insurance. It keeps my life at least somewhat in Normal Person World, where I have to put clothes on in the morning and leave and go see people. It’s an excuse to be out in the world. Drew: That’s important, to have that anchor somewhere, especially when you’re pursuing something so amorphous like music. Chris: The nice part about that is that I’m still part-time, and when I took that job, I had written into my hours that I could have every Tuesday off. That was the beginning of us looking at the band as more of a business idea. Jenna said, “You’re off every Tuesday! So you’re not just going to sit at home and play video games on Tuesdays, are you?” And I was like, “No, no, no, of course not! I’ll be working on stuff, yeah…” as I kicked the video game controller under the couch. “I’m shocked you would even say I would do that.” (laughter) That was the shift for us to set aside more consistent days to treat the band as a business, rather than just stumbling through it. Drew: As you guys talk about your relationship with music, feeling somewhat like late-comers to the game, I remember that your record came off to me as very lyrically driven. It sounds like words, melody, and phrasing are all leading the way, rather than chords and instruments. And that seems to resonate with what I’ve heard so far about your experience with music, too. Is there a way songs typically begin for each of you? One track that really struck me was “The Ballad of Wallace and Jessie.” It sounded like it was taken from an old story you stumbled upon somewhere. Chris: You’re right on track with that one. It started with me wasting time at work. As a children’s librarian, part of my job is to clean up my section, make sure old books are taken off the shelves if they aren’t pulling their weight. One of the ones I took out was an old, eye-witness history book on the Titanic. So I got lost reading it and found this story about an orphanage in Scotland. It’s one of those unverified legends, so I didn’t care if it was true or false; I just thought the story was interesting. In this story a girl named Jessie is crying and screaming in the orphanage, and a person from the Salvation Army comes to check on her. And she says, “There’s a man on a boat and he’s playing the violin and they’re all going to die.” And about an hour later she has a high fever and suddenly passes away. And then as the story gets around town, they learn that there was a band on a boat thousands of miles away that very night, playing music on the Titanic as it sank. And it was led by a man with a violin named Wallace. Drew: That’s nuts! Chris: I was just captivated by this story. And this is a bit of an exception for me—most of my songs don’t start like this, but I just began researching. I read about it and decided to attempt condensing it into six verses. Drew: You did a great job condensing it, because I really got the idea. As I listened and read the lyrics for the first time, I started realizing the first four verses were all about Wallace, and eventually I saw there was only one verse for Jessie at the very end, which of course made me very nervous. What’s going to happen? And I got there and thought, “You did not just introduce a character at the end of the song, only to promptly kill her!” Terrible, but I loved it. (laughter) Jenna: Which is hysterical, because when we brought the song to Andy (Osenga), it had an entirely different structure. Same idea, same story, same melody, but the order of the storytelling and positioning of the verses was quite different. Drew: So he suggested a few structural changes? Chris: We had tried to bookend the song a bit so it would begin and end with Jessie. It was this Lost-style thing, flashing sideways, but ended up being too convoluted for a three-minute song. Clarity came first, so we shifted it a bit. Drew: I mean, talk about turn of phrase, structuring words so carefully—I love the line, “He gave them a gift they could not give him back.” Hit me right in the chest. Chris: I like that one too! Drew: Very well executed! And I had another moment like that, too, on “Come Clean:” “You’re going to be what you love whether you like it or not.” Mmm! So nice. Jenna, is that your song? Jenna: Yeah! That one was such fun. We had a drum sampler and I started playing chords over it, singing syllables, not knowing what it was about but having fun. So that was the exception to the rule for me, where what it was about only evolved later on. Drew: Chris, didn’t you say “The Ballad of Wallace and Jessie” was an exception to your writing rule as well? I just randomly picked the songs from the album that don’t represent the way each of you write. (laughter) So if you had to pick a song that feels the most like the way you typically do things, what would each of you pick? Chris: The two that felt most typical for me this season were “Monument” and “House On Fire.” Both began with this general, broad-stroke idea. For “House On Fire,” weeks went by before I finally found the lyric, “It’s like running headlong into a hurricane” to describe that broad-stroke idea. And that was all I had. That’s usually how it is: it becomes this long-form, back-and-forth process. Jenna: Totally. And I think Chris is the one to have a general idea, then write pages and pages of lines that will maybe end up in the song, but maybe not. I’m much more into starting with a very potent emotion, then developing lyrics and melody alongside each other. Sometimes that’s great, but other times it makes it harder for me to edit because the melody and lyrics already feel so attached to each other. An example for me would be “Battle”—it started with a strong emotion I was having, so I played minor chords on the keyboard and started singing about what I felt and took it from there. Drew: That song did seem to me like it rose out of a very elemental emotion, and you captured it so well. The other very emotional song I was going to mention is “Abigail.” I’d love to know the story behind that. Such a powerful song; I wasn’t sure if I could make it through without weeping. Chris: Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming at all. We had a loose date where we were planning to sit down together and try to work on a song. I had in my mind a certain song I wanted to work on, but everything unfolded so differently. That morning Jenna got a call from a friend to come visit her in the hospital. Jenna: We have a friend whose daughter is frequently ill, and we had been invited to come see her that night. And to be honest, neither of us felt like going. We had plans with our own family, but we felt like one of us should go, so I carpooled with another friend to make the hour-long drive. And being down there in Baltimore, at John Hopkins Hospital, really conjured up a lot of memories for my friend, Anastasia. I had known—she has four children in total, and two of them are twins. I had heard that one of the twins was a sort of “miracle baby,” but that was it. So on the way back from Baltimore, she really shared all the details of the twins’ birth and how Abby almost did not survive. Not just this general, “she almost didn’t make it and it was so sad,” but truly, she was reliving this experience in the car next to us. So many lyrics from “Abigail” were basically direct quotes from her that night. She described the depth of grief she and her husband experienced when the doctors told them to be prepared for Abigail not to make it. In those moments, Anastasia said she prayed the Prayer of Hannah: “If you spare this child, I will dedicate her life to you. She will be yours.” And he did spare her life. Years later, the twins were about eight years old and they discovered that because the doctors didn’t think Abigail would survive and there was so much else that was wrong at the time, she had a heart condition that was written down, but hadn’t been flagged. So at eight years old they discovered Abigail’s heart was beating ten times as fast as a kid’s heart is supposed to. She had to have heart surgery because it was in danger of giving out. They had thought for eight years that she was fine, but the whole time, this little girl was exhausted because her heart was working so hard. So I came home and relayed all of that to Chris— Chris: Right, and hearing that story triggered an empathy I had never been able to access before. Learning that this thirteen year-old girl I know and love has been walking on a razor’s edge between life and death—the specificity of that really changes things. We decided to stick to our plan and try to write a song, but it was eleven at night, we were so tired, and the only thing going through my head was the story Jenna had told me. So here I am, trying to be creative and insightful or whatever, but all I can hear is, “If you’re listening, please spare my baby.” We just sat there and sobbed and sang the words we knew to sing. It was one of those songs where we were like, “I guess this is the song we’re writing now. Didn’t plan it this way, but here we are.” Jenna: I felt that confirmation from God: don’t just turn on Netflix and say, “Well, too late!” Do the thing you said you were going to do. You have to follow through. Learn about Wild Harbors’ Kickstarter campaign below: Visit their campaign by clicking here. And stream a song we talked about called “House On Fire” below: https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/03-House-On-Fire.mp3

by Jonny Jimison Looking for something a little different for your graphic novel collection? Or perhaps a series for the budding artist or comic enthusiast in your family? We’re excited to introduce you to the delightful Hilda and her adventures in the Norwegian countryside. Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson (Nobrow Press, 2012) Graphic Novels / Fantasy / Kids and YA Why We Love It: Hilda is a young blue-haired girl who knows some important things: every day is an adventure, the world was made for exploring, and the hills are full of weird and wonderful creatures who need befriending. Welcome to the city of Trolberg. In the weird, wild, wonderful Norwegian countryside, Hilda stuffs her satchel with necessities (like her sketchbook and pencils) and tromps through forests and mountains and streams and caves, meeting trolls and gnomes and monsters and critters of all kinds. Standing out from American graphic novels and Japanese manga, European comics have a tradition of oversized volumes that deliver their storytelling through a rich aesthetic experience. Luke Pearson’s Hilda series is a beautiful example of these hardcover wonders – the illustration, colors and even the hand-lettering are rendered in vibrant, expressive, immersive detail. And most importantly, they’re just plain fun. The entire series is a joy to read, but Hilda and the Bird Parade turns the series upside down in the best way, forcing Hilda out of her beloved wilderness when her mother gets a job in the city. How will Hilda’s wanderlust survive in this new environment? Can she navigate the urban labyrinth the way she mapped the hill country? And will her new talking bird friend ever remember how to fly? Hilda is currently being developed as a Netflix animated series. Will it measure up to the charming, wonder-filled comics? Let’s hope so… but either way, these are bookcase treasures that are calling you to explore. Don’t miss the adventure! Here’s the first preview footage of the Hilda animated series: You can order your own copy of  Hilda and the Bird Parade  here.

by Andrew Peterson The only way to really learn something is to screw up. A few days ago (with the help of the good people at the Gospel Coalition) I released a music video for a song called, “ Is He Worthy? ” and just hours later I was sitting in my office with tears in my eyes. Not the good kind of tears. Among the very kind comments on social media were some painfully negative ones, pointing out that there was a conspicuous lack of racial diversity in the video. Someone actually said, “Man, that’s a lot of white people in one video!” Others said they wouldn’t or couldn’t share it with friends of color because it would cause them pain. The irony was that the song is based on one of the most gloriously inclusive passages in scripture, Revelation 5, which says, “From every people and tribe, every nation and tongue, he has made us a kingdom of priests to God to reign with the Son.” The camera swings past all the white faces just before I sing that line. This is the very definition of “painfully ironic.” What was meant to be a video drawing attention to the glory of Jesus, one that opened the door for all people to praise him, had become, for some, a source of grief. I immediately thought of some friends of mine and wondered if I had unintentionally hurt them. I called them and my worst fears were confirmed. They were very encouraging even as they helped me understand what it was like for them to watch the video, and in the end we cried and prayed together on the phone. The shoot, directed by Max Hsu (who is awesome), was crazy. We relied on an open casting call for volunteers to fill the chapel, but for some reason only half of them showed. It wasn’t until the fourth of fifth chaotic take (with string players, choir members, lighting crew, camera crew and congregation rushing to and fro) that I realized there were only white people in the room (other than the director, of course!). It’s not at all unusual for people of color to come to my shows, so I was surprised that none were there that night. I mentioned it to someone, but things were so hectic that the next thing you know Hsu had called for the next take. Honestly, the lack of diversity didn’t occur to us again until the day of the release when I read the comments. If I could go back in time I would tell the Andrew of a month ago, “Don’t assume. Make sure that this video is a true reflection of the Kingdom. Make sure it paints a glorious picture of the promise in Revelation that every people, tribe, nation, and tongue will sing (indeed, already sing) of the worthiness of Christ, the Lamb who was slain to free the captives. Think about the subtext, about what this video will say, wordlessly, to your friends of all colors.” I didn’t, and I regret that. Because I believe God works all things for the good of his people, I have to trust that, though I’m small potatoes in the music world, my misstep with this video will lead the church to good conversations, better understanding, humility and love and forgiveness between everyone affected by it. My prayer on the morning the whole thing started was, “Please, Lord, don’t let my mistake detract from the point of the song, which is to give voice to the truth of the Gospel, to invite many into the joy of singing about the beauty of who Jesus is and what he’s done.” But really, that’s merely my intention for the song. God’s intention may be broader and better—his intention may be to use my lack of wisdom and foresight to open the doors for reconciliation, repentance, healing, and mercy. As my friend said on the phone yesterday, “A hundred deaths, a million resurrections.” So, as a white American singer/songwriter whose only hope is Jesus, I’m asking forgiveness of the friends and listeners to whom this video brought any measure of grief. I’m also asking the good people who have come to my defense to refrain from using social media to do so. Be silent long enough to really listen. And then, if the Spirit leads, engage with love and patience and humility. As I said, the only way to learn something is to screw up. What was only a small voice in my head a few weeks ago will, I assure you, be a loud, clear voice of wisdom in the future. I’m sure I’m going to make a mountain of mistakes in the days to come, but, Lord willing, this won’t be one of them. I’m curious to see where this story goes. In the meantime, I’m still praying that this song and the accompanying video will continue to be an instrument of peace in spite of the broken vessel through whom it came. After all, I’m not worthy of praise or glory. Only Jesus is, and it is to his strong hands that I entrust myself and my faltering work. Do I feel the world is broken? I do. Do I feel the shadows deepen? I do. And I truly believe that all the darkness—even my own—won’t stop the light from getting through. I do.

by the Rabbit Room We’ve got an awesome lineup for tomorrow night at The Local Show: Elenowen , Jon Troast , and Tim Halperin , hosted by Andrew Peterson . There are a few tickets left here on The Rabbit Room Store , so snag them before they’re gone. We’d love to see you there.

By the Rabbit Room Would you like to simultaneously support International Justice Mission and hear a night of phenomenal collaborative music? If you answered “yes,” tonight’s “Make Something Right” concert is the night for you. Tonight at our favorite coffee shop on Granny White Pike, Local Show favorites Jess Ray and Taylor Leonhardt will be joined by forBrothers , a band comprised of two sets of brothers and self-described as “folk on steroids.” The night will open and close with all artists forming a seven-piece band, while the middle of the show will feature them each individually. Tickets are available for $15 at the door, which opens at 6:30. Show starts at 7:30. All proceeds go to International Justice Mission. Want to do some investigating first?  Check out Chris Yokel’s endorsement of Taylor Leonhardt here and listen to her outstanding song, “Would You Be Well.” Enjoy Jess Ray’s lyrical dexterity in her song “Too Good” here. And check out forBrothers’ song “Fall On Me” here.

by Sandra McCracken [Editor’s note: Throughout Lent, Sandra McCracken will be sharing weekly writings, each of which is tied to a song from her new EP,  Songs from the Valley, available at her website . Below you will find the fifth of these writings, to be read alongside her song, “Kindness,” which you can listen to here .] I was in a creative writing group last week and the facilitator prompted us with the question, “When was the last time you told your story?” Gathered in a circle with pens and notebooks, we each launched quietly and individually into a time of writing around this question. I thought of what it means to tell our stories. I thought of the weight of the words, each one carefully chosen. I thought of the trust required to speak each of those words. I thought also of the opportunity for relationship that this sacred sharing affords us. To know and be known is what we were made for. Friendship is the way by which we figure out who we are. This is you. This is me. This is where our lives connect. The song “Kindness” from Songs From The Valley is a litany of many small, meaningful intersections of friendship. It’s not just one person, but the song was written about a whole host of loved ones, woven together in these lyrics into one fabric of friendship and support. Once I stood in the rain under an umbrella on a neighbor’s porch. I had a notebook and a pen in my hand and decided not to knock. I walked home brimming over with gratitude like the rain pooling into my shoes, and I formed the words of this song. Sandra McCracken One afternoon, I had a friend unexpectedly fill my pantry with groceries. Another time there was a flower delivery from a friend just when I had a plumbing leak that had burst through the ceiling of my living room. A coffee gift card in the mailbox from a long-distance friend. A ride home from the airport. These are the ordinary ways of grace, and they carry me. Once I stood in the rain under an umbrella on a neighbor’s porch. I had a notebook and a pen in my hand and decided not to knock. I walked home brimming over with gratitude like the rain pooling into my shoes, and I formed the words of this song. One of my favorite scriptures rings out like a cheerleader from the sidelines of community, “Let mutual love continue.” (Hebrews 13:1) Yes and amen. Mutual love is love that goes both ways. Friendship does not try to make one like the other, it just rests comfortably and separately beside. Friendship is not transactional nor does it keep score (1 Corinthians 13). It is freely given without strings or obligation. Friendship is the joy of shared life. If kindness is a force that carries us, where is it taking us? I think of the story in the gospel of Luke when several friends carried a sick friend’s mat up onto the roof and down into the crowd, right at the feet of Jesus. Friendship has carried me there to Jesus for healing, too. I think of the ships and the fish and the cargo that follow the river’s curves all the way out into the ocean. Friendship has carried me long distances and opened my heart up into more vast, unsearchable waters. Friendship is the way by which we figure out who we are...the joy of shared life. Sandra McCracken I think of the wind that carries the seeds of the flower, deconstructing the first blossom to plant a dozen more, each in their own new place of reciprocating beauty. Friendship has been dispersed and multiplied like these seeds in my life, too. Kindness is the force that carries us onward in growth. In the transformation of God’s spirit, we cannot stay who we were, because he makes us new again and again. Kindness does not assert itself as a violent force, though sometimes it feels jarring. And kindness is not the same as nice-ness. To be nice is to keep from all disruptions. With nice-ness, the objective is peace, even if it’s false peace. But with kindness, the end goal is loyalty and truth. In kindness, it is the friend herself that matters most. In true friendship, temporary discomfort is a means of grace. The wounds of a friend are evidence of faithfulness. (Proverbs 27:6) We are shaped by gentle and affectionate correction. Sandra McCracken One of my favorite hymns from the 19th century, by Ellen Goreh, sings these lines; “Do you think He ne’er reproves me? What a false friend He would be if He never, never told me of the sins which He must see.” We are shaped by gentle and affectionate correction. Learning to welcome truth in the safety of a trusted relationship can be a messy practice. But where love is mutual, as we have all hoped it would be, kindness between friends makes for an increase of beauty in the world. In this kind of mutuality, each of us can become more glorious in the particulars of who we are. In sharing our stories with each other we find out our own names and how we are called uniquely on our journey. To this end, there is no limit to the inspiration of friendship; it teaches, illuminates and delights.  And all the while, by God’s design we are carried to safety by the current of kindness. Invitation to prayer: When was the last time you received truth from a friend that you needed to hear (even if it felt like a wound at first)? Are you tired from specific ways you have been propping up false peace? If kindness is the current, where is it taking you? Ask God to bring to your mind a few specific moments of friendship with another person and with God himself. Give thanks for these gifts. Ask God to meet you in friendship. Click here to listen to “Kindness” from Sandra’s new album, Songs From The Valley .

by Carolyn Givens Every now and then, we like to recommend a great audiobook for your listening pleasure. Our latest pick comes from one of our favorite authors, N. D. Wilson, author of the 100 Cupboards and Ashtown Burials series! (Please note that this is book 2 in his newest series  Outlaws of Time … so if you haven’t read the first book yet, beware of spoilers!) The Song of Glory and Ghost (Outlaws of Time #2)  by N. D. Wilson (Katherine Tegen Books, 2017) Fiction / Fantasy / Kids and Young Adult Why We Love It: It’s not often that the second book in a series is even better than the first. And it’s not often that the sidekick of one book becomes the hero of the next. N.D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time: The Song of Glory and Ghost checks both those boxes. What’s interesting then about reading it as an audiobook is how the male narrator of book one has the challenge of embodying the female heroine of book two. Read by MacLeod Andrews, the  Glory and Ghost  audiobook holds the honor of being the only book I listened to (or read) twice in 2017. I’d started reading the hard copy of the first book in the series when it came out a couple years ago, but hadn’t actually finished it. When I knew the second book was on its way, I borrowed the The Legend of Sam Miracl e audiobook from the library, and listened in preparation for book two. N.D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time books are rip-roaring adventures, full of wibbley-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff. There’s a boy with snakes for his arms, a black-hearted villain, and a time traveling priest. But most of all, there’s Glory. She starts off as just a girl, but she’s a girl with fierce passions: she thinks the ending to her favorite book—the ending in which the hero dies—is the best one, because the hero deserted his sister earlier in the story. That’s the kind of girl Glory is: she holds even her fictional heroes to the kind of standards she has for herself. But it’s in the second book, The Song of Glory and Ghost , that Glory truly becomes the woman I love. She grows, she deepens, and she becomes Glory Hallelujah, Mother Time, whose clear eyes see the path that must be, and who has the resolution to see the path through. I’m looking forward to the wrapping up of the Outlaws of Time books with The Last of the Lost Boys due out in April, because though Glory knows her path, I don’t see it clearly yet. When I saw N.D. Wilson at Hutchmoot last fall, I thanked him for creating Glory and he said that he’d tried to write a friend for his daughters. I can’t imagine a better friend for them — after all, she’s already become one for me. The hardcover edition of The Song of Glory and Ghost is available in The Rabbit Room Store.

by Chris Yokel I was around 20 years old. I’d been raised in a conservative Christian home, so my musical experience was limited to artists like Twila Paris, Steven Curtis Chapman, Keith Green, and Maranatha praise music. As I got older I discovered CCM, which even felt edgy at times ( Jesus Freak , amirite?). In fact, I vividly remember destroying one of my W.O.W. Christian albums  (remember those?) because I’d become convinced, in my impressionable youth, that rock music, even Christian rock music, used evil pagan beats. Thankfully, I got over that pretty quickly. As I moved into my late teenage years and started to get exposed to more Christian music and the world of secular radio, I found myself searching for a sound that could match all the seething emotions and thoughts inside of me. A lot of Christian music felt spiritually shallow and trite, but a lot of secular music I was hearing felt equally shallow. The name U2 was one I’d heard enough to know who they were and the respect they’d garnered in the world of music. I’d certainly heard their more famous songs like “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “Where The Streets Have No Name”. I’d also heard rumors that they were sort of Christian, but dubiously so because, you know, Bono cussed. I’d started to keep up on pop culture enough to know that they were releasing a new album that was getting a lot of buzz. Then I stumbled across a piece in National Review called “Courageous Crooners” , where the author was delving into the spiritual aspects of the new album, along with previous releases such as Achtung Baby! I was intrigued enough to bravely go out and purchase a copy of the album for myself. How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was, quite literally, a sonic explosion that ripped through my life, undoing and reshaping my understanding of how spirituality and art could work. I can still remember the thrilling and terrifying experience of listening to the first jarring notes of “Vertigo”. It was groovy, disorienting, edgy, sexy, alluring, and spiritual. My thought process went something like, “I really like this…oh my God, is it okay to like this?” Then after that ecstatic experience, the album shifts to “Miracle Drug” where Bono proclaims, “I’ve had enough of romantic love, I’d give it up, yeah I’d give it up, for a miracle drug.” “Wait, is he talking about sex and Jesus and social justice?” my 20 year-old brain wondered. As I continued to listen, I heard a man wrestling with God over the pain of the world and his own doubts, but also voicing his gratitude over the joys of marriage and family and love. When the album closed out with “Yahweh,” I realized I’d just listened to one of the most beautiful, honest prayers I would ever hear. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb exposed me to art like I’d never experienced before. It made me realize as a Christian that it was okay to create art that honestly dealt with the broken world without needing to quickly resolve it with a nice pretty bow. It helped me see that there was a world beyond my sheltered Christian subculture, and that it was my job to engage with that world. It also helped me realize that a healthy spirituality embraces gifts like sex and marriage without shame. It gave me new language to process my understanding of the world and my faith. Today, Bono and U2 continue to be one of my favorite bands and, in a way, spiritual guides in the realm of art. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb ‘s songs continue to resonate, and many of its themes have found resonance once again in U2’s latest album, Songs of Experience . Bono sings on the album that love is teaching him how to kneel. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb opened me up to new ways of learning how to kneel, to pray, to feel, to hope, and to love.

[Editor’s note: Throughout Lent, Sandra McCracken will be sharing weekly writings, each of which is tied to a song from her new EP, Songs from the Valley, available at her website. Below you will find the fourth of these writings, to be read alongside her song, “Lover Of My Soul” which you can listen to here.] I have had a thing for the moon since I was a little girl. One time it burst out in front of me, above the street and the traffic lights on my birthday. Another time it surprised me as it crested over the bathtub one morning in Florida, just behind the window shade. And in Tennessee in the fall, it shows up so large and red and low above our street, shining stark and mellow like a dim-lit bowling alley lane. Many restless winter nights, the moon’s reflective light has stayed up with me all night in my upstairs room. And in Oregon last summer, midnight was as bright as the afternoon. Every one of these times, and on countless other occasions, the moon has been one sure way that God has captured my attention and my affection. I have felt the love of God through the surprise of these poetically timed, ever-changing moon scenes. How is it that God can send gifts to each of us in such unique ways, all around the world, all at the same time? St. Augustine famously said, “God loves each of us as though there were only one of us.” The moon is a perpetual reminder of this important idea. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies. Do you remember the book Harold and the Purple Crayon?  Harold draws himself out of his room one night, into the town, has some adventures, eats some pie, runs into some trouble and tries to draw himself home. When he gets lost, he finally manages to draw his way home by drawing his window around the moon. The window frame he draws helps re-orient him so that he can finds his place again; his bed, pillow, his crayon. On the last page, he drops his purple crayon on the floor beside him as he drops off to sleep. I’d like to write pages full of songs to express what this single song is trying to express. It is a thimble full of what I mean to say about how loved I feel by the God who gives me the moon, over and over again. I cannot get over how he delights to take our breath away with moments of joy and surprise—for each of us in particular ways. He is the Lover of my soul, without a close second. He is the fulfillment of my truest desire. And when I am lost, he guides my purple crayon back to the shape of the window around the moon so I can find my way home again. He leads me home and gives me rest. Suggestion for Prayer: Like the moon, what is the means where you have been most aware of God’s love for you? Ask him to remind you of times in your story that he’s been close beside you but you’d maybe never thought of it before. Talk with him like a friend and recount times in your life together with him. Ask him to help you feel his love for you. Click here to listen to “Lover Of My Soul” from Sandra’s new album, Songs From The Valley.

We are beyond overdue for a poetry recommendation in Rabbit Reads. Wading through the abundance of poetry out there can be intimidating, but we’re here to help! Read on to find out more about a beautiful new poetry collection from Colorado author John Blase called The Jubilee. Why We Love It: Exploring poetry beyond the familiar classics you read in high school can be a daunting task. It’s a notoriously small and obscure literary niche, and some would say nobody reads it anymore. But if you spend enough time on social media, you might discover the world has more poets than you think. Exciting, sure. But it’s a lot to wade through. John Blase (pronounced “Blaze,” like a flash of fire) has pulled together a diverse collection of 50 poems for his 50th birthday, and what a collection it is. There are poems addressing the big ideas, like faith and doubt, and rooted poems about the simple, transcendent beauty of ordinary things. Paper receipts become “pages from our book of living.” Sharing instant coffee is an act of honor between father and son. An autumn leaf pressed in a book marks a tender moment between husband and wife. There are poems about aging—the author’s and his parents’—and poems that evoke wide spaces and natural wonder. There are psalms and parables, and meditations on dying and, yes, living. All of them finely tuned with wisdom, gentle grace, and a touch of humor in all the right places. If you’re looking for a place to start, here are a couple I enjoyed: Actually, Scratch That and As We Drove Back Home (slightly revised versions of these two appear in the book). There are many poems to explore on his website, but I recommend jumping in and ordering his book for a beautifully curated collection of the best. You can order The Jubilee from Amazon here and check out John Blaze’s website here.

Joseph of Arimathea got permission from Pilate to bury Jesus quickly because the Sabbath began at sundown, and the Jews weren’t supposed to touch a dead body on the holy day. We’re told that the women followed him to the tomb and wrapped Jesus’s body in linen to prepare him for burial. When I was in Jerusalem I was struck by the stillness of the city during the Sabbath, the poetic rightness of that stillness, in the wake of Christ’s death—even as the hearts of Pilate, the chief priests, the Roman soldiers, and those who loved Jesus would have been anything but restful. You can pick up Resurrection Letters: Prologue in the Rabbit Room Store and listen to “God Rested” here:https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/05-God-Rested.mp3

Does your Tuesday night need some extra love? Look no further: the inimitable Jason Gray, Andrew Osenga, Nick Flora, and The Orchardist will be sharing some tunes at The Well Coffeehouse on Granny White Pike this very evening. There are just a few tickets left here on The Rabbit Room Store, so snag them before they’re gone. We’d love to see you there tonight.

[Editor’s note: Jonathan Rogers has begun a newsletter in which he shares many years’ worth of practical advice on the craft of writing. He named it The Habit because, as he says, “good writing isn’t so much a matter of brilliance as a matter of habit: habits of seeing, habits of thinking, habits of working.” What follows is a peek into his wisdom. If you’d like to read more, you can sign up for his newsletter here.] The passive voice is a favorite of academics (“A study was conducted…”), politicians (“Mistakes were made…”), business memo writers (“The shipping department will henceforth be outsourced…”) and other communicators we love to hate. Indeed, the passive voice causes a lot of heartache for readers and writers alike. Somewhere along the line, you have probably been told to avoid passive voice. That’s not bad advice, except for the fact that sometimes the passive voice is exactly what you need. I just used it, in fact, in the sentence before last. “Avoid passive voice” is a helpful rule of thumb; but it’s only a rule of thumb. The deeper rule is this: Make active voice your default. And the rule has this corollary: Use passive voice only when you have a good reason to. A Working Definition Every sentence describes an action. Every action has an actor. If the grammatical subject of a sentence is the actor, the sentence is in active voice. If the grammatical subject is anything besides the actor, the sentence is in passive voice. We could get into the technicalities of switching the verb to the fourth principle part (from, say, “ate” to “was eaten”) and inserting a to be verb, but if you are a native speaker of English, you do that grammar instinctively. For our purposes, it is much more important that you be able to see the difference between a sentence in which the actor is the grammatical subject (active voice) and a sentence in which the actor is not the grammatical subject (passive voice). Consider this sentence: Ken gave Barbie flowers. Is that active or passive? It’s active: Ken is the subject of the sentence, and Ken is the person who is acting. But English grammar is flexible. It doesn’t require that the actor be the grammatical subject. If you want the recipient of the action to be the grammatical subject, English allows you to do that. Barbie was given flowers by Ken. The action hasn’t changed in that sentence. There is still a handoff of flowers from Ken to Barbie. But the actor, Ken, is no longer the grammatical subject. Barbie, the recipient of the action, is now the grammatical subject. I can even put the flowers the subject position, even though they are an inanimate object: The flowers were given to Barbie by Ken. You can do this with any sentence that has a direct or indirect object. “I took the bull by the horns” becomes “The bull was taken by the horns by me.” “Martha ate the cake” becomes “The cake was eaten by Martha.” If you get in the habit of thinking in terms of actions and actors, and if you clearly distinguish between the actor and the grammatical subject (which may or may not be the same), it’s relatively easy to move back and forth between active and passive voice. The Problems with Passive Voice Good writing is largely a matter of managing your reader’s expectations. That doesn’t mean you always have to meet those expectations; in fact, good writing requires that you often surprise your reader. But you need to be aware that any word, phrase, or clause that doesn’t meet your reader’s expectations (including unconscious expectations), attracts her attention. Extra Work for Your Reader Our brains are wired to expect the actor to sit in the subject position of a sentence. When the actor is the subject, we feel that things are moving right along. We feel that the grammar is guiding us toward that burning question, “Who did what?” The reader, of course, is fully capable of mentally flipping a passive sentence back to active and knowing who did what. In spite of the grammar differences, everybody knows that the following three sentences all describe the same action, the same actor, and the same recipients of the action: (A) Ken gave Barbie flowers. (B) Barbie was given flowers by Ken. (C) Flowers were given to Barbie by Ken. But you need to be aware that if you phrase that sentence as either (B) or (C), your reader has to translate it back to (A) in order to decode the sentence. If you ask your reader to go to that extra trouble, she is going to want to know why (if only at subconscious level). Granted, it’s a tiny amount of extra trouble you’re requiring of your reader, and there can be good reasons to ask it of her, as we’ll see below. But unless you have a specific reason to use the passive voice, stay in the active voice. Save the reader’s energy and attention for those moments when you really need it. Fuzzy Agency Let us return to that passive sentence, Barbie was given flowers by Ken. As I mentioned above, Ken is still the actor. But where is Ken in this sentence? He’s tucked away in that prepositional phrase at the end of the sentence. The actor is now a lowly object of the preposition by. Or what about this version? Barbie was given flowers. Who is the actor here? Presumably Ken. But maybe not. We have no way of knowing from the sentence. Ken went to all the effort here. He spent his hard-earned money. He drove to the florist. He walked up Barbie’s driveway and handed over the flowers. And yet the passive voice relegates him to a prepositional phrase, or perhaps even erases him completely. This is what I mean by “fuzzy agency.” Extra Words Generally speaking, you don’t want to add word-count without adding additional meaning. It takes more words to describe an action in passive voice than in active voice. The active sentence Ken gave Barbie flowers is four words long. The passive sentence Barbie was given flowers by Ken is six words long. That’s 50% more words for 0% more meaning. Or consider the passive sentence Barbie was given flowers. At four words, it’s the same length as the active sentence, but it conveys significantly less information (specifically, it doesn’t identify the person whom Barbie has to thank for her flowers). When is Passive Voice Useful? Every problematic construction in the English language exists because there are times when it’s not problematic, but exactly what a writer needs. Yes, you should treat the active voice as your default mode. But there are plenty of situations in which you’ll find it best to switch from default mode into the passive voice. Here are three of those situations. Passive voice is perfect for expressing passivity. Maybe this one is self-evident. Consider this sentence: Andrew was bullied as a child. To be a victim of bullying is to be in a posture of passivity. In this case, it doesn’t matter who the bullies were, even if the writer happens to know the bullies’ names. The important figure here is Andrew. The passive voice allows the writer to put Andrew in that important subject slot, even though he is not the agent in this situation. A sentence like Pete was convicted of perjury works in much the same way. It was a jury that convicted Pete of perjury (or was it a judge? or the state?). What matters is that Pete was convicted, not who convicted him. Here the passive voice has the added bonus of saving me from having to figure out exactly who convicts people of perjury (though, now that I think of it, probably the reason I don’t know the answer to that question is that people always frame that idea of “conviction” in the passive voice. Hmmm….) The passive voice is helpful when I don’t know the actor. Consider this passive sentence: My bike was stolen yesterday. I don’t know who stole my bike. If I did, I’d be reporting them to the police instead of writing sentences about them. So this is a perfect opportunity to use the passive voice. If I’m really being a stickler for the active voice, I suppose I could say, Some jerk stole my bike yesterday. The passive voice is a great way to conceal or deny agency. This is where the passive voice can get nefarious. When I’ve broken a lamp, I can say The lamp was broken. That’s not a lie. It’s just that the passive voice allows me to leave out one of the most important bits of information. I call this the “Mistakes were made” use of the passive voice. It is the refuge of obfuscators, politicians, deadbeats, self-pitiers, and the passive aggressive. This application largely accounts for the passive voice’s bad reputation. Passive voice can be a way to direct your reader’s attention. The subject of sentence enjoys a place of privilege in the reader’s mind. The reader pays extra attention to whatever noun is in that slot. The passive voice allows you to bring some noun besides the actor into that place of prominence. We have already looked at the sentence Andrew was bullied as a child, in which Andrew, not the bullies, is the focus of the sentence. Here are two sentences that describe the same action, the first in the active voice, the second in the passive: An unusually large piano player ejected Clarence from the saloon. Clarence was ejected from the saloon by an unusually large piano player. There’s not a huge difference between those sentences. But you can feel a difference, can’t you? The first sentence asks you to give a little more attention to the piano player. The second sentence asks you to give a little more attention to Clarence. You have the passive voice to thank for that slight change in emphasis. This is just nuance. But the difference between good writing and great writing is largely nuance. If You Ask More of the Reader, You Have to Give More Remember, every time you use the passive voice, you’re asking something of your reader. You’re asking her to take an extra step of decoding. Do you have a good reason for asking your reader to go to that extra trouble? If so, by all means use the passive voice. But if you don’t, stick with the active. You can sign up for Jonathan’s newsletter here. And if you feel like going the extra mile, there are two ways you can lend a hand to Jonathan’s good work. 1) If you found this letter helpful, please forward it to a friend who might benefit, and/or share on social media. 2) If you have a question that you’d like Jonathan to address in a future installment of The Habit, send him an email here.

[Editor’s note: Back in November of last year, I interviewed Adam Whipple as he was finishing up an album called The Broken Seasons. A few months later, it’s finished and available to purchase here at The Rabbit Room Store. So here’s our interview in case you missed it the first time around, and don’t forget to check out his record!] Adam Whipple’s songs feel like dense works of fiction, making their own way between poetry and prose. You can sink your teeth into his words, savoring the many subtleties of flavor you’ll find on repeated listen. He just released a fourteen-song adventure called The Broken Seasons. In it you will find songs for the road, for home, and for everywhere in between. Imaginative characters and introspective poetry abound, riding on the wind of flutes, vibraphones, lap steel guitars, organs, and a myriad of other well-chosen sounds. I recently had the pleasure of listening to this album and talking with Adam about its making. Below you will find a transcript of our conversation followed by his song (one of my personal favorites), “Above The Clouds.” Drew: I picked up on a lot of traveling language in The Broken Seasons. Lots of songs deal with being away. “Eidolon” for instance is one of my favorites, and it opens with the line about feeling like a tourist on the streets of your hometown. Could you speak to traveling as a theme throughout the record? We don’t really go to work. It’s more accurate to say we’re sent. Adam Whipple Adam: As I’ve traveled around to play shows, we as a family have learned how to make my intermittent absence more and more a part of our rhythm. When I first started these road trips, I would take lots of CDs with me and listen to music constantly to keep the miles passing by. But now I’m typically just quiet. And you’d be amazed at how much I can talk to myself in the car when I’m not listening to music, so it feels like quite a departure to take these long, silent, solitary car rides. Drew: Do you consider yourself to be a verbal processor? Adam: I do, and that’s why talking can be both so helpful and get me into such trouble. Everything that comes out of my mouth is about 40% finished, so I’m editing it as it comes out! But with these long periods of silence, I feel like I’ve gotten to a new place with traveling. I can be okay with that empty space, relinquish the need to distract myself. “Eidolon” was written out of a place of wrestling with being away from home, with knowing the kind of strain it can put on my family. And there’s this idea I’ve been thinking about quite a lot and discussing with my wife—we don’t really go to work. It’s more accurate to say we’re sent. Our loved ones, by their consent, send us to do whatever we have before us to do. My wife is a teacher, I’m a coach at school, I run sound at a church in my town. We’re sent to each of these stations. It’s so easy to become enamored with travel. For me at least, there’s this element of trying to scratch an itch that will never quite be scratched by going to new places. And the trouble comes when I forget that at the core of it, I’m sent in all that I do. Drew: And that has a lot to do with the very word “eidolon.” I didn’t know what that word meant. I had to get out a dictionary several times while listening to your album, by the way, which is a compliment. That word in particular is such a cool word. Adam: I do love that word. It’s very melodic. Drew: It has a nice ring to it; it’s just asking to be the name of a song. So thank you for doing that for us! The definition I found says, “an idealized person or thing” or “a phantom.” And you found the perfect place for that word in this lyric: “Give me grace for the earthen feet upon the eidolon of everything I think I know.” Could you give a little insight into that line and how those words were put together? Adam: I think it was Nebuchadnezzar who had this vision of an idol, this big, tall thing made of various metals: iron, brass, and so on. But then its feet were made of clay, so they were more breakable. I love that image; the Bible at times obeys a fairy tale logic we have forgotten how to understand. So I was going for this image of standing on fragile feet of clay, especially as a symbol for the precarious nature of traveling. It’s so easy to slip into a mindset of glamorizing my arrival at new places. I’ve found that when that happens, I forget the notion that I am “sent.” So that song is me reminding myself that home is where the real work is done. As I travel and play shows, that may be the flower sprouting above the surface, but the roots are underneath back at home. Drew: Let’s zoom out a bit: I’d love to hear more about all that went into writing and recording The Broken Seasons as a project. It feels very purposefully put together. I’d love to hear what your vision was from the beginning—was it the kind of thing that sprung from a vision, or did you have a bunch of songs that naturally had a flow to them? Adam: I write by gathering thoughts into my journal, which contains songs, poems, essays, rantings, prayers, and so on. If you look at any set of pages, you’ll see some themes emerge organically from whatever I was dealing with at the time. Any sort of continuity garnered through that comes from what the Spirit was teaching me in the moment. I have a writer’s group, and I was working through some ideas for this album’s title. A friend suggested The Broken Seasons as a title because she had listened to some songs and heard those themes come out, like being away from home, broken relationships, and so on. As I sat with it some more, the name really stuck. Drew: For the arrangements on this record, did you have other musicians help you, or did you pull a Sufjan Stevens and play everything, or probably a combination of the two? Adam: I definitely had plenty of help from other people, but I also played a lot of parts because it’s cheaper that way, of course. I do like collaboration and I really wanted to collaborate as much as I could, but insofar as I love collaboration, I also like to have creative control over sounds. I generally know what it is I’m looking for. A few weeks ago I was going down to Georgia and I got this Joe Henry album and listened on the way. He’s produced a couple of records for Over the Rhine. He’s a brilliant songwriter. He has this way of taking groups of instruments that are similar in timbre and making the sound weave in and out of itself. So you’ve got a mandola imitating a guitar or a lap steel sounding like an extension of a piano, horns imitating an organ sound, those kinds of things. I love all of that and decided that was what I wanted to do with this album. I wanted the listener to not even know exactly what instruments are playing because they’re woven together so well. So that’s what I was going for, especially on songs like “It’s Been So Long” and “Eidolon.” On “Eidolon,” we used some bowed vibraphones. That was a lot of fun. Drew: Would it be fair to say “Above the Clouds” has that element in it as well? There were several moments as I listened when I could hear this ethereal sound, and I knew there was a string section there, but was there a xylophone or a marimba as well? Adam: Yeah, we did vibes and glockenspiel, with both mallets and bows. Drew: So you had two different modes of attack resonating together. Adam: Yeah, and there’s this crystal clear sound that comes out of that. I love bringing those elements into these recordings. Drew: Let’s focus on “Above the Clouds” from a songwriting perspective for a moment. It’s one of my favorites. The idea of the “lowlands,” trying to rise above them, but also hearing God’s voice from the kitchen sink while washing dishes—such a rich articulation of those tensions. Adam: In my neighborhood, when I look southeast, I can see Mount Le Conte in the distance. I love being able to see that as part of my visual lexicon. I didn’t know I could do that until I read Cold Mountain. In that book, the main character recognizes his home by the shape of the hills surrounding it. That inspired me, so I wanted to be able to identify where I am not by gas stations and restaurants, but by the landscapes that actually constitute the place itself. That led me to recognize that I can see Mount Le Conte from my neighborhood, and it just calls to me. If anybody said to me, “Hey, why don’t you set everything down and let me take care of it for the day. Just go to the mountains,” I would say yes immediately. I wouldn’t even take anything with me. I would endure the hardships of not being prepared to go to the mountains just to be in the mountains. In reality, when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m folding laundry, cooking a meal, serving my family, going to work—there’s probably a lot more spiritual weight to those activities than I give them credit for. Adam Whipple But there’s a funny anecdote to temper that with as well: my parents used to have this coffee table book called The Dictionary of Parenting, and it defines vacation as “where you go to get away from it all, only to find it there too.” That’s pretty accurate! If I go to the mountains, a lot of my desire comes from me trying to get away from my problems and even myself. But I took myself to the mountains, so unfortunately, I’m there with me. That’s not to say there’s not value in taking a second to breathe, but I can easily make an idol of “getting away.” In reality, when I’m doing the dishes, when I’m folding laundry, cooking a meal, serving my family, going to work—there’s probably a lot more spiritual weight to those activities than I give them credit for. Drew: I love your use of the word “lowlands” in the song. Between those first two stanzas, you’re going up above the snow line to find silence you thought you’d never find in the lowlands, but in the next stanza you say “the earth raised up a chorus to glorify the Maker of the lowlands.” It seems you’re saying that these two elements of life are not opposed to one another, but rather tied intimately together. The mountains can glorify the Maker of the low places. That hit me in just the right spot. Adam: At the end of the film version of Return of the King, you hear a voiceover of Frodo talking to Samwise. He says, “Sam, you can’t always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years.” That just breaks my heart. There are so many days when I would love to be torn in two. Whenever my wife finally has pity on me and says, “you need to get out of the house—go outside,” and I take her advice, part of me remains at home, wondering what’s going on with the kids, what my wife is dealing with, and so on. Drew: It would almost be easier to be torn in two so you could just leave that other half at home. Adam: Right—it would be so much easier to have two of me and be able to leave one elsewhere! I feel that acutely. I’m still at home even when I’m in the mountains. The part of me that wisely rails against the idea that spirituality is something to be found “out there somewhere”—that’s where “Above the Clouds” came from. Drew: Of course. And it wouldn’t be a Rabbit Room interview without exploring some theological themes. You just quoted Lord of the Rings, so we’re on track. Adam: This is the right place for that. Listen to “Above The Clouds” below:https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/09-Above-the-Clouds.mp3 Check out The Broken Seasons here at The Rabbit Room Store.

[Editor’s note: Throughout Lent, Sandra McCracken will be sharing weekly writings, each of which is tied to a song from her new EP, Songs from the Valley, available at her website. Below you will find the third of these writings, to be read alongside her song, “Oh Gracious Light” which you can listen to here.] I was on a retreat in Texas a few months ago and I woke before dawn. I noticed a sliver of morning light on a glass bottle on the table beside the window. The tiny curve caught my attention with its beauty. There was not a sound. The moment felt prayerful, like morning and night at the same time. I watched the light expand from the rim of the glass like a crown of silver. I waited in the stillness. A few minutes later, another gentle spotlight appeared a few feet over on the canvas window seat cushion. This new patch was a dewy light. Next, on the leather pillow leaning on its side, the light there looked slick like a puddle of water, growing from faint to fullness. The increase of light was expanding my spirit. I didn’t need words to study. It was a holy display, an invitation to peace. Soon, I saw the wooden windowsill ledges were illuminated. And on the wooden sloped arms of the recovered chairs, the paint brushed print of the fabric took shape again after a night’s rest. After a time, the whole sky outside my window began to give up the darkness. I could see a thin stripe above the tree line. Was it a crack in the glass? Had I not seen it before? Maybe it was my contacts? Squint. Strain. Eyes open wide. No, I see it now. It’s a stripe, a line. It’s there. Is it a wire? I can only see in part. No, it is sure, it is definitely a wire. I guess I couldn’t see it because it matched the sky so black, but now the sky is lightening. Now there is contrast. Now there is vision. Scarcity is not the final word. It is as fleeting as the shadows. It has been defeated. Sandra McCracken But wait, is that another cluster of lines? Smaller ones? Smaller wires? One, two, three…yes, even four. Four more lines appeared in the cloud-covered morning sky. It grew white like coffee with milk. Grey on grey, before the color blooms. How much slow beauty do we see? How much does it reveal? How much does this attention to quiet beauty help us to see and trust that scarcity is not the binding rule? Even the ups and downs of the weather pull us forward into the stutter of early spring. Sandra McCracken Scarcity is not the final word. It is as fleeting as the shadows. It has been defeated. As the sky is above the soil, so are God’s thoughts, his ways, his abundance over us.  Peace to breathe. Light to see. Joy to resonate a new day dawning. We are two weeks into this season of Lent, two weeks closer to the feast. It feels a bit like a wilderness.  Even the ups and downs of the weather pull us forward into the stutter of early spring. Sometimes I think about the words of the creed that we say every Sunday afternoon, “God from God, light from light…” What does it mean that God is light from light? How can light come from light? How is it that God was not made, not derivative, and entirely original? I cannot wrap my mind around this idea. But I can say the words. The title of this song, “O Gracious Light,” and the opening line of the refrain is a Latin phrase, ‘Phos Heliron.’ It’s the first line of a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer used for a sunset prayer. ‘O Gracious Light;’ the juxtaposition of those two words stands out to me. The light is active and kind. Light is personified as an agent of God, like an angel, or like his arm extending to give us sight and direction where we are often in the dark about what is happening to us. Invitation to prayer: I heard a friend say recently; good things grow in the light. When life feels like a wilderness, how do we walk in the light? Spend a moment with the light in the room where you are. Consider the changes. Pay attention to the silence and the movement. In the quiet, ask God to meet you in the dark places of your circumstances. Ask God to meet you in the shadow places of your heart. Invite him to show his light there. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” – Is 9:2 Click here to listen to “Oh Gracious Light” from Sandra’s new album, Songs From the Valley.

It brings me great pleasure to announce that the Hutchmoot keynote speaker this October will be the wonderful Andy Crouch. If, upon reading that name, you first thought of gospel singer Andrae Crouch, then it means we’re about the same age. But while this Andy is, in fact, an excellent musician, he probably won’t be doing any killer vocal runs. Here’s what you probably know about Andy Crouch: he’s super-duper smart. He’s written quite a few books, and the thrust of his thinking and speaking has a lot to do with the Christian responsibility of “culture making,” which happens to be the title of one of his best-known works. That means Andy has spent some serious time studying the way art and faith and culture work together—and it also means he’s the perfect fit for Hutchmoot. Here’s what you may not know about Andy. He’s a pianist. An excellent pianist, in fact, who sometimes uses music theory to teach theology. A couple of times when Andy and I have found ourselves at the same conference, I’ve roped him into playing a few songs with me (and he killed it). Not only that, I’m pretty sure he played on one of Andy Gullahorn’s records. (Goodness gracious, there are a lot of Andys around here.) Being super-duper smart and good at piano is great and all, but those aren’t my favorite things about Andy. I can honestly say that after hearing Andy speak the first time he said some things that changed the way I live in demonstrable ways—and it wasn’t just what he said, it was how he said it. A few years ago in Colorado, as I listened to him talk about his book Strong and Weak, I found myself grinning and literally leaning into what he was saying. I perched on the edge of the pew, so completely engaged by Andy’s infectious, winsome demeanor that the big ideas he was talking about were in fact dwarfed by his joy. Andy doesn’t just love to think and create, he loves to help us to think and create. It’s as if his own excitement isn’t complete until we feel it too. I can’t wait to see the smiles on all your faces as Andy teaches us. If you haven’t yet, go read Culture Making, Strong and Weak, and The Tech-Wise Family, and get ready for a delightful Hutchmoot. Visit Hutchmoot.com to register. Registration begins March 1st @ 10am CST.

This song, though it may not sound like it, is a lament. That weekend I wrote the song and had the honor of singing it at the funeral. When I sang it in the studio I imagined how hard it would have been to believe in God’s goodness as darkness covered the earth and Jesus’s body hung limply from the cross. You can pick up Resurrection Letters: Prologue in the Rabbit Room Store and listen to “Always Good” here:https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/04-Always-Good.mp3

Hutchmoot 2018 is seeking sponsors who share our vision for building community by drawing people together around art, music, story, and the gospel. When you become a sponsor, you enable the Rabbit Room to build a better Hutchmoot, but you also join ranks with us as we welcome guests from all over the world to constitute a unique and vibrant community. We believe that community is made up, not only of individuals, but also of like-minded organizations, businesses, and institutions with the aim of ushering in the Kingdom. If you’d like to partner with Hutchmoot this year, we’d like to talk with you in more depth about our sponsorship programs. We can also discuss tailoring a sponsorship program to meet your unique needs. Contact us at info@rabbitroom.com and we’ll be in touch to answer your questions. You can also read more about our sponsorship programs here.

[Editor’s note: Jonathan Rogers has begun a newsletter in which he shares many years’ worth of practical advice on the craft of writing. He named it The Habit because, as he says, “good writing isn’t so much a matter of brilliance as a matter of habit: habits of seeing, habits of thinking, habits of working.” What follows is a peek into his wisdom. If you’d like to read more, you can sign up for his newsletter here.] This week one of my writing students submitted a very moving story about the fallout that occurred in a family when a boy received a Christmas present that his parents couldn’t afford. The story started with a great image: “The catalogs arrived in the same truck that brought the bills—a pile of shiny magazines full of things the Kramers would never afford, topped by a pink envelope that read, ‘FINAL NOTICE.'” Every time you write, you are doing at least two things: you are conveying information, but you are also creating an experience for the reader. To put it another way, you are conveying information, and you are inviting your reader into a scene. I am forever urging my students to focus on creating scenes and to trust that the information will take care of itself. Scene doesn't happen at the expense of information. It's just another way of communicating information—a way that feels more like the way we typically receive information in real life. Jonathan Rogers By “inviting a reader into a scene” I mostly mean giving the reader something to look at (or perhaps listen to or feel or smell or taste). If you give the reader the right things to look at, you can trust him to collect the information he needs. Which is to say, scene doesn’t happen at the expense of information. It’s just another way of communicating information—a way that feels more like the way we typically receive information in real life. How do you know the house down the street is on fire? You hear the fire trucks. You smell the smoke and see it. The information comes to you as sensory impressions. How do you know the dog is hostile? You see his posture. You hear him growl. You don’t have a narrator behind you saying, “This dog is hostile; stay away from him.” You don’t need a narrator. You have your own two eyes. My writing student could have started her story with information: “The Kramer family was in constant financial difficulty.” Instead, she dropped me right into the scene and gave me something to look at—a pile of catalogs and overdue bills—and let me decide for myself that the Kramer family was in financial difficulty. Flannery O’Connor wrote, “The eye is an organ of judgment.” You give the reader a gift when you invite him into a scene, give him something to look at, and let him exercise his judgment, just as he would in real life. You can sign up for Jonathan’s newsletter here. And if you feel like going the extra mile, there are two ways you can lend a hand to Jonathan’s good work. 1) If you found this letter helpful, please forward it to a friend who might benefit, and/or share on social media. 2) If you have a question that you’d like Jonathan to address in a future installment of The Habit, send him an email here.

Over a decade-and-a-half stint as a lyricist I began to notice a pattern: The songs that mattered most to me tended to also be the ones that record labels had no interest in. At a certain point, I quit even trying to pitch those sorts of lyrics in industry settings. Instead I wrote them for my own reasons and tucked them away. One of those was a song I called “North Atlantic.” The lyric voiced the unfolding, final thoughts of a man on a ship going down in frigid waters without hope of rescue. He speaks to his wife words she will never hear: Nothing flashed before my eyes but my thoughts were all on you, and on the children left behind. God knows what you will do. I counted up the days I’d seen as I felt the ship descend. Oh, we never really finish, do we? We simply reach the end. We never really finish. We simply reach the end. Don’t you suppose that’s how it will be? Each of us will reach the end of life with some unfinished business: a novel half-written, a friendship never fully cultivated, dreams unrealized, a journey incomplete, still struggling to learn to love, still fighting to forgive, still battling a besetting sin, still hoping to heal from old wounds. If life was a course taken for credit, we would all exit the semester with an incomplete. But maybe that’s all irrelevant. Because maybe the deeper truth is that life isn’t about finishing something. It’s about becoming something. It’s about day-by-day surrendering to the redemption that is already at work, so that our own hearts gradually become ever more conformed to the likeness of Christ. This life isn’t about attaining perfection, it’s about being shaped by grace. Or, to put it another way, grace isn’t a destination that we by our hard work and determination might eventually arrive at. It’s a thing already present with us that we learn to abide in, that we learn over and over again to say yes to. And in that long obedience, our hearts and minds are shaped. That’s why the proverbial rat race with its focus on material acquisition and the pursuit of that magical unicorn dubbed “the good life” is in the end a futile endeavor. There is no “there” at which we can arrive and secure peace and meaning via physical or financial prosperity. And the goal is equally as elusive if we view “the good life” in purely spiritual terms. We don’t suddenly wake one morning to find we’ve arrived, attained enlightenment, leveled up, reached our destination. Not in these days of inbetween. When a man walking along with the knot of disciples gathered his courage to declare to Jesus “I will follow you wherever you go,” our Lord’s response seems to contain some sort of gentle corrective. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” The call to the disciples was never Follow me to power, or Follow me to prosperity, or Follow me to the revolution, or Follow me to achieve your full potential. It was simply Follow me. Doug McKelvey Perhaps he was just saying that following him is going to involve hardship, but I have long wondered if what he sought to communicate was something more along the lines of, “It is not about a wherever. You are not following me to some place. There is no ‘to’ in the sense that you imagine it. You are simply following me. Or not. I am both the journey and the destination.” If that is true, it would further confirm that our spiritual journeys in this life are not about arriving somewhere. They are about following. Which is the same as to say they are about being. Being with Jesus. Abiding in the vine. Practicing the presence of God. The man along the road might have done well to cut off his bold statement after the fourth word, simply to say I will follow you. That would have been enough. That, in fact, would have been everything. The call to the disciples was never Follow me to power, or Follow me to prosperity, or Follow me to the revolution, or Follow me to achieve your full potential. It was simply Follow me. We go wrong when we labor under the delusion that we can arrive at places that cannot be arrived at or complete things that cannot actually be completed. At least not perfectly. At least not now. At least not by us. It is after all the same in sanctification as it is in marriage as it is in ministering as it is in vocation as it is in art. By faith we are becoming something or shaping something that we will not finish in this life. Not on our own dime. Not in our own time. We long for the perfection and the completion we were created for, and we hope for it and reach for it in our lives and our relationships and in our prayers and our creative endeavors, but in the end we give voice to our own part of creation’s groaning chorus, for even while we can see that a thing is in some ways good, it is never as good as it might have been. It is never as good as we know it should be. The best thing you or I have yet accomplished or produced is still marred by the inward curvature of our souls. It is not yet fully liberated from the temporary futilities of a broken creation. Who knows where and how our halting efforts might be met by a God who inhabits our weaknesses, whose pleasure it is to take our meager and imperfect offerings and to multiply them unto the meeting of needs and the spread of his kingdom? Doug McKelvey And while this might at first seem discouraging, there’s actually a deeper freedom that comes from acknowledging and accepting this humbling truth. To bow to the realization that our best works will always be imperfect can become the key that frees us from the impossible tyrannies of pride and perfectionism. And once freed from those cruel taskmasters, who knows what wonders we might witness in our lives simply by seeking to be faithful stewards of our gifts? Who knows where and how our halting efforts might be met by a God who inhabits our weaknesses, whose pleasure it is to take our meager and imperfect offerings and to multiply them unto the meeting of needs and the spread of his kingdom? Even our good works, we are told, are things God has prepared in advance for us. If so, then he alone can bring them to completion. And such completions might not happen during the fleeting spans of our brief lives. We cannot control the flow of history or even of our own days, so it is vital that we learn to be less invested in the outcomes of our efforts. We can only be faithful. We can only follow. And if we cannot control the storyline or assume the destination, then we would do well to make some sort of peace with the perpetually unfinished nature of our works and even of our selves. One of my college English professors had hanging over his mantle what I would like to think was an early Makoto Fujimura painting. I remember it as stylistically similar to Fujimura’s works. I also remember that it was from an emerging, somewhat-known painter with Japanese roots. But at the time the painter’s name wouldn’t have been familiar and as I have a habit of losing names as soon as I hear them anyway, almost three decades later I simply can’t remember. Here is why I still remember that painting, though: In an effort to gently encourage me toward the habit of a more painstaking crafting of my poetry, this professor related the story of how—when he had selected this painting—the artist had lifted it from the wall, considered it a moment, and then declared it unfinished. He had never been satisfied with it. He grabbed a paintbrush and paints, and went to work on it again, further shaping an already-sold painting in those last moments before it went out the door. Maybe you should look at your poems as things that are never finished, my professor told me, as things that could always be further crafted. It would require a hard process of years before I would begin to grow into and understand that professor’s sage advice. First, writing would have to become a struggle so that for years I despaired of my ability to create anything meaningful. I would have to slog through a morass of my own insecurities and fears and disappointments with myself before I finally came to the end of any real confidence in my own ability. But in that emerging doubt and trepidation, a new possibility surfaced, an inkling of an idea that maybe I had gone about this all wrong. That maybe whatever creative talent I had at my disposal was never supposed to be about me anyway. I had been trying to write because I wanted to be a writer. Maybe that’s where I had gone wrong. What if writing was meant instead as a means of serving the community around me? One must first be rooted in community and dependent upon community...if one is to create anything useful to community. Doug McKelvey Maybe the work before me was to write things that might build up, or nurture, or stir hunger and wonder sufficient to incline hearts in some small way toward their Creator and his kingdom and his eternity. And when one recognizes that any gifts one has are given to serve the needs of the Body of Christ and of the community and of the world, it is not much of stretch from there to recognize that one must first be rooted in community and dependent upon community and in some real sense submitted to community, if one is to create anything in its proper context, which is to say, if one is to create anything useful to community. These thoughts of creativity and community and of the unfinished nature of our endeavors are swirling in my head afresh because of the newly-arrived second printing of Every Moment Holy. More than any other work I’ve participated in, that book has been a project born of community. The concept had its genesis around Hutchmoot 2015. There, the voices of community first responded to the idea, collectively affirming the value of it. Still, it would have been an impossibly daunting project for a small press to undertake, financially and logistically. So a year later the possibility was set before community and the question was asked, Is this a thing we, together, want to make possible? Is this a thing we want to collectively birth? The community responded and made the theoretical possible. The first printing was financed by donations from hundreds of individuals and families. But it wasn’t just about funding. During the creation process that same community helped to brainstorm liturgy topics. Input from dozens of people shaped the direction of the book, especially in those last couple of months as the manuscript deadline loomed. I was working through a much longer list of topics than I could conceivably write liturgies for (at least for Volume 1), but I had a short list of twenty or so remaining liturgies I expected to complete. Still, I tried to keep such expectations at arm’s length so as to remain consciously responsive to any real needs that emerged in the community around me. Every step of the way, the project was affirmed and shaped in real time by the joys, sorrows, and needs of community, by all the collective voices saying Yes, this is something we need and want. Doug McKelvey When the Ivesters’ beloved house burned, they asked if I had a fitting liturgy. A Liturgy for Those Who Suffer Loss from Fire, Flood or Storm was not on my short list, but I saw the tangible need as direction and turned my attention to the writing of that liturgy. As a sidenote, shortly after Every Moment Holy went into print, wildfires ravaged parts of California, and flooding ravaged Houston, and that liturgy was employed by families and churches suffering devastation and loss in both places. How humbling that our own work as a community to comfort and encourage one another in our griefs has already spilled outward as a grace and a comfort to so many others. Similarly, when a family member was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I eschewed the liturgies on my short list to write A Liturgy for Those Who Suffer the Slow Loss of Memory. When a friend’s faithful dog died tragically, I wrote A Liturgy for the Loss of a Living Thing. When someone asked for a liturgy for their wedding celebration dinner I wrote A Liturgy for a Gathering On the Eve of a Wedding. That list goes on. Every step of the way, the project was affirmed and shaped in real time by the joys, sorrows, and needs of community, by all the collective voices saying Yes, this is something we need and want. I love this line from Havergal’s hymn: Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love As I wrote, I fought my tendency to become rigidly set in the path of my own plans and expectations. If Every Moment Holy didn’t ultimately serve the community that was breathing life into it, then it really had no reason for being. I prayed to remain fluid throughout the process. And here’s where I’m going with all of this. It seems to me an artificial and even dangerous logic that would say a thing is unalterable once it is made “officially” available. Just because the book has now seen a first printing doesn’t mean that process of shaping must necessarily end. Just because the book has begun its journey doesn’t mean it’s not still in some ways a work in progress. It doesn’t mean subsequent printings can’t become truer and clearer, or more thoughtfully formatted for the uses of community. It doesn’t mean that—like that-painter-who-might-or-might-not-have-been Fujimura—each time a new printing is going out the door we can’t be further shaping it. As people integrate various liturgies into their lives, families, and churches, if the wisdom of community suggests changes that would streamline the book for better service, I want to remain attentive. This time around, because several voices (all ministers, as it turns out) spoke the same word of caution about a particular line in one of the liturgies in the first printing, I gave careful consideration, discussed it with the folks at Rabbit Room Press, and ultimately decided for the sake of clarity to make a small revision rather than to risk misinterpretation by some readers. The last liturgy in the book was also the last one I signed off on in August 2017, around midnight on the night before the manuscript was due at the printer. I was pleased with where A Liturgy of Praise to the King of Creation had landed, but I also felt a certain hesitancy about it, a certain tension that I didn’t quite know how to interpret. The refrain “Our names for you, O Lord, have been too few,” was poetic. It had an internal rhyme, and a nice cadence. It was a figurative, poetic way of saying “We have not fully considered the outworking of Christ’s Lordship over all creation as it filters down into the countless specifics of all created things.” As poetry, it worked pretty well, I think. Poetry after all can create epiphanies of understanding through juxtapositions of novelty and ambiguity, forcing a reader to perform feats of abstraction, connecting dots that previously were not connected, so that in the tracing of that line between those two dots a new sort of understanding emerges. There is a certain real power in that, forcing us to see an old thing in a new way. But Every Moment Holy is not primarily a book of poetry. It is a book of liturgies and prayers for use by individuals and families and churches. And a more formal prayer or liturgy requires more rigor and preciseness of expression than a poem. It rightly should be held to a higher standard of specificity and clarity. My purpose in penning that liturgy was simply to call us to a deeper consideration of what it means that Christ is the King of all creation through whom all things were made and in whom all things are held together and by whom all things will be redeemed. I wanted to unpack those abstractions, to put some flesh on them. I hoped it would be an exercise of the theological imagination that might lead us to a more engaged doxology. But to express those truths in terms of “Our names for God,” rather than as the implicit corollaries of his names for himself, might have left the waters too theologically muddied. I didn’t want to create a statement open-ended enough that some might interpret it to mean that we have the right or the authority to name God, to shape him into images of our own making, or to interpret his divine nature however we see fit, as opposed to how he has revealed himself in scripture. I see all of these edits as small evidences of the notion that even our best works are incomplete. Doug McKelvey So when those three ministers each made the same observation, their cautions confirmed the tension I was already feeling. If this is a book built to serve the church and to shape theology and to train our hearts towards a mindfulness of God at all times, then it matters that it not have expressions so hazy they might be interpreted in ways opposite those intended. So for this new second printing of Every Moment Holy, I changed the line that read: “Our names for you, O Lord, have been too few,” to now read: “Our thoughts of you, O Lord, have been too small, too few.” I expect there are some who will lament the re-write of the “Our names for you” lines. I hope this explanation will help smooth over any aesthetic misgivings. I believe the edit is a reflection of the ongoing work of community together shaping a thing that will better serve the church now and hopefully in later generations as well. Truth is worth safeguarding. On a functional note, I also reworked the parts distribution of the final liturgy so that “the people” are much more involved in speaking significant portions of it, rather than only weighing in on the refrain. That was another comment I heard from some who used that liturgy in corporate settings: We want to be more involved in the declarations of Christ’s authority and glory. Don’t let the leader have all the good lines! I see all of these edits as small evidences of the notion that even our best works are incomplete. Sanctification is an outworking of grace that refines and shapes our thoughts, our theologies, our relationships and yes, our artifacts as well. All of our lives are unfinished works in the process of becoming, of straining forward, of yearning, of reaching for something more like what they were intended to be. We keep crafting, but our crafting can only shape a thing so far. What we long for it to be, a true artifact of eternity, is not something we can achieve. Not now. We will not taste glorification in this life. Neither will our offerings. Perhaps at the redemption of all things we will see our labors refashioned or unveiled incorruptible. In fact, I have no doubt it will be so. But still, for now, not yet. Only glimpses. We are, and for this life will remain, a people in process, purveyors and inhabitants and curators of the unfinished, a community of grace called to this business of becoming together. You can pick up the second printing of Every Moment Holy right here in the Rabbit Room Store.

You may or may not know that The Orchardist has been releasing their new album, People, People, in three parts throughout the past year, telling its story a few songs at a time. Well, the day has finally come that you can listen to their entire album from start to finish: Acts I, II, and III. In a nutshell, their album People, People narrates the classic human attempt to find shortcuts through life in the naive wish to avoid the pain of transformation. The moral of the story is one that all the great stories convey: that we can only receive the fullness of life by holding every part of it, bitter and rich and everything in between. You can listen to their new album all the way through starting here with Act I, then Act II and Act III. If you’d like to dig deeper into the narrative of the album, you can read some delightful musings from The Orchardist’s own Janie Townsend here. And here is Andrew Peterson’s unique and imaginative take on the voice of The Orchardist.