Left His seamless robe behind Woke up in a stable and cried Lived and died and rose again Savior for a guilty land It’s a story like a children’s tune It’s grown familiar as the moon “There’s Only One (Holy One)” Written by Randall Goodgame, performed by Caedmon’s Call) A few nights ago I was driving up Franklin Road with the top down. It was a clear, unseasonably warm November night. The moon, high and bright, seemed to chase me over the hilltops. My car stereo was cranked up loud; my iPod shuffled to Caedmon’s Call performing “There’s Only One (Holy One).” The story of Christ, summed up so beautifully in word and music, unearthed a surge of emotion. It started in my gut and welled up through my throat into my eyes. Those true words: “it’s a story like a children’s tune; it’s grown familiar as the moon” seemed to flow in me. That moon–the one the band sang about, the one that chased me–is as ancient as anything I know. But the One who crafted it and set it spinning is more ancient still. His story was the first of stories, the one that started them all. All our stories, even the story of the moon, will culminate in his great ending. That great ending will be Christ’s Second Advent. As far as I can tell, the Church has told the story of Advent for 1631 years. Surely we have told it for longer, since the earliest days of the Church. I mean that by about 380 A.D. the Latin speaking Church had begun to observe this time of preparation before the Christmas Festival. Consider that for a moment. 1631 years. More than eighty generations of Christians gathering on Sundays, and throughout the week, telling again and again the story of the Second Coming of Christ. Yes, I meant to say “Second Coming.” For that is what Advent is about, at least in part, certainly in these early days of the season. But it’s Christmas time, why tell that terrifying story? When you’ve been waiting for something for a long time, it can be easy to forget what you are waiting for, or that you are waiting at all. When you’ve been waiting for someone to come back for 380 years? 2000 years? It may be that you need to set aside some time to remind yourself. The story we tell every Advent, like the story we tell every Sunday, is an old one. It is familiar like a children’s tune, like the moon. But it must be told again. We share the story of Advent every year at this time. We share it with the older generations as well as our children and grandchildren. We share it to remember whom we are waiting for. We share it to remind one another to wait with hope. We share it because it is worth sharing, worth repeating, worth telling. As familiar as the story is, it is still true. And one day, one of these Advents will be the last one. [audio:TheresOnlyOne.mp3]

Although we may believe Jesus died for our sins, and has given us Heaven, we often carry the weight of a lie within our hearts, thinking the commands are there to obey by exerting the power of our will; we attempt to find our identity in obedience. We think success in obeying means we are “good,” and failure means we are “bad.” This is the living death of which Paul wrote in Romans 7. It is the wretched-man existence, not the new creation life of union with Christ. It is a Christian saved from Hell in eternity by grace but trying to get free from the hell of his present sins by the exertion of his own will power. This is the backwards Christian life. To oversimplify, we think erroneously that we’re saved from Hell so we’re to try by our will power to show God how grateful we are in return by being good, by trying to keep his commands. This must be reversed. The commands are there to reveal when we’re not abiding, not living from our present-tense, God-given identity. They shine the light when we have tripped up in our trust and have started again to try being righteous by our own steam. Failure to abide, to rest, to remain, to faithe, to rely, leads to the frustrating life of Romans 7; we do what we hate, and don’t do what we love. We self-condemn, see ourselves as wretched sinners, and start again into trying to overcome the mess. The cure is to go back out of Romans 7 via the narrow gate called No Condemnation in Christ and get back into living in the faith-life of Romans 8. How do we do that? In Christ there is now no condemnation. Now. We recognize our identity no longer comes from performance. We have been given a gift of sonship. It is something bestowed by God; we had nothing to do with it. We have been washed, and cleansed, and filled by the Holy Spirit. That is given to us by grace. We are partakers of the divine nature. That gift doesn’t diminish or disappear based on performance. We recognize that even when we sin, there is no “I have to get back to God.” He is there, in us, present, available, even though we have not recognized him as such, haven’t drawn on his resources; instead, we have lived from a false idea of our own independent, fleshly ability to be good. Exerting such ability ends either in Pharisaic pride or self-condemnation, because we are attempting to live from a mentality which thinks it can be good independently from God’s power within. Our real identity simply is. It is a non-negotiable gift from God by his grace. When we step out of it, we thank God for the Blood, make necessary  apology or reparation to others, and move back into reliance on our real identity of being partakers of the divine nature. Of course, we want to be good. How, then, to be who we are? Playing music at a high level involves a lot of background knowledge and practice, years of it. Undergirding that, though, is an attitude of faith that drives perseverance in learning and growth. If a person doesn’t have that, much of his work will come to nothing. “If you are going to be a Christian, it is going to take the whole of you, brains and all,” wrote C.S. Lewis. Also, an old pastor of mine often said, “You don’t have to park your brain at the door to be a Christian.” So, knowledge is involved. But undergirding our growth in knowledge of “What is a truly Christian life? Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here?” is a faith which continually goes to God for the necessary resources – the God who claims to live inside us, in Christ, by the Holy Spirit. From God and God alone proceeds all necessary virtue: love, joy, peace, patient endurance, gentleness, goodness, faith, humility, moderation. The varied fruits of the Spirit are just that – fruits proceeding from the Holy Spirit into and through the abiding branch. Without this reliance, much of our Christian life will turn to dust and ashes on that Day. We have to begin to know who we are, and that means a Biblical definition. Not what the world says, not what the flesh says, not what the devil says. Not even what our friends say, or what our pastor says. Who does God say I am? The New Testament epistles are a litany of our real identity, and a word-picture of what that identity will look like when expressed. How to live from our real identity? How to be what we are meant to be? Dig. The Word is full of it, and the Word spoken in faith causes the invisible to become the visible. Seeking, and the subsequent right seeing, will bring the goodness we desire. Knowing our identity, not just theoretically but in practical experience, brings a love-life through us, as 1John 4:12-13 says: “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” We know that we are dwelling, abiding, relying if our life is showing forth love. If our eye is single to our real identity in Christ, that Christ within us is the source and ground of our being, our body will be full of light. If we are doubleminded, seeing our identity half from God’s Facts and half from the world’s definitions, we will be full of darkness, and manifesting that darkness. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these will be given to you as well.” We will gain energy from the sustenance of the Spirit, and be walking clothed in his righteousness and not our own striving. So, we must ask ourselves this question. “Do I see myself as God sees me? When the Word says I am dead to sin (Rom 6:2), do I agree with it, or hedge it about with all sorts of mental reservations? When God says I am a new creation, that the old man was crucified (Rom 6:6), do I eat that and say it is true, within myself? When the Word says I was buried with Christ through immersion into death, and raised to walk in newness of life (more Romans 6), do I faithe that as true, count it as fact, regardless of how I feel? Faith is conquered doubt. Do we doubt God and his Word? Then something has to give.

Jesus said “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

 –John 14:27 There are two seasons taking place right now. Both are filled with hope and expectation. Both have music and candles and sparkling lights. Both seasons are building up to December 25th. One is the Holy Season of Advent, the other is the Christmas Shopping Season. We live in both seasons at once, but they are not the same. 

The Christmas Shopping Season is an anxious place. It is anxious because everything about it all depends on you. You have to buy the presents. You have to go to the party. You have to send the cards. You have to cook the food and hang the lights. You have to pay the bills. You have to make sure not to forget anyone. If you mess up, people will get their feelings hurt. Will you have enough time, enough energy, enough money? Advent, on the other hand, is a peaceful place. It is peaceful because none of it depends on you. Christ came, and you can’t change that. Christ is coming again no matter what you do or don’t do. You can participate by choosing to pray for his grace, by choosing to keep your eyes open. But whether you choose to stay alert or not, he is likely to interrupt your life. You and I experience two seasons at once. We live in Advent and the Christmas Shopping Season. By God’s grace, we can focus on one more than another. We can set aside a little anxiety today and ask for a little more peace. We can choose to turn our attention to the coming Christ rather than the coming crisis, even just for a moment. Perhaps, a little at a time, we may find ourselves living for a minute or an hour or even a full day completely in the Holy Season. Henri Nouwen, one of my personal heroes, wrote a prayer that I would like to share with you. I commend it to your use in midst of these seasons. An Advent Prayer
 by Henri Nouwen Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do, seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things, look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so many ways, long for the complete joy of your kingdom. We whose hearts are heavy, seek the joy of your presence. We are your people, walking in darkness, yet seeking light. To you we say, Come Lord Jesus….
Amen.

One of the best things about life in Nashville is that I often find myself saying things like: “I’ll be right back, I’ve got to go to the spaceship for a minute.” How often do you get to say something like that while being completely matter-of-fact? It’s true, there’s a spaceship next door to my office and there’s a lonely astronaut inside it making awesome music. There’s a spacesuit and everything. I drove past it a few days ago while the door was open and it looked so cool I thought it might have actually been a tunnel into tomorrow. The record will be finished sometime this spring, and while Andy–I mean Leonard–isn’t ready to unveil the full-production tracks yet, he’s been awesome enough to record acoustic versions of three of the songs as a sneak preview. Here’s one, and you can download this and the other two when you pre-order the record in the Rabbit Room store. “Beat Of My Heart” by Andrew Osenga

The first rule of improvisational comedy, as I understand it, is as simple as it is profound. The rule is summed up in two modest words—three letters each–that together form a key that can open a door between heaven and earth. The words? “Yes, and . . .” Here is the basic gist paraphrased from wikipedia: In order for an improvised scene to work, the performers involved must work together responsively in a process of co-creation. It begins when the first performer makes what’s called an offer, throwing out a word or phrase that defines some element of the reality of the scene. It is the responsibility of the next performer then to accept the offer that their fellow performer makes; to not do so is known as blocking, negation, or denial, which usually prevents the scene from developing. Having accepted the offer of the first performer, the next performer then adds to it, building on what was offered, contributing to the scene while being shaped by it. And thus he or she makes a new offer to the next performer, who repeats the cycle. This is a process improvisers refer to as “yes, and…”–I say yes to what you offer me, and I add my part to it–and it is considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique. Every offer accepted (yes) and every contribution to the offer (and) helps the improvisers to refine their characters and progress the action of the scene. Next time you watch reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway watch for it. I’ve been thinking about “yes, and…” lately and the way this simple idea can invite the Kingdom of God into my daily life. In any given moment am I blocking or negating God’s offer and thus preventing the scene, or the ways that heaven breaks into my world, from developing? Or do I humbly accept what comes my way as an invitation to add my part and thus progress the action—his work in and through my life. By the time you read this we will have wrapped up the Called To Love Fall tour (but don’t worry if you missed it, we’re taking it out again in the spring) featuring Downhere, Aaron Shust, and yours truly. All of us are on the same label—Centricity Music—and released new albums within a week of each other, so it seemed like a good idea for us to take our new songs on the road together. When the tour began, Aaron’s song “My Hope Is In You” was already climbing the charts to become the #1 song in the nation (and still holding as I write this) and my own dark horse in the race, “Remind Me Who I Am,” was just beginning to find its stride. And then something remarkable happened. After years of being told how much he sounded like Queen’s Freddie Mercury, fate caught up with Downhere’s Marc Martel. Earlier this year Roger Taylor of Queen decided to put together a special tribute band to celebrate their music for a summer tour called the Queen Extravaganza and announced they were taking auditions on YouTube. So at the urging of all of his friends, and after much consideration, Marc threw his hat in the ring and uploaded his rendition of “Somebody To Love.” What followed was more than anyone—even Queen—could have predicted. Marc’s audition went viral with four million views in only a few weeks. With the internet buzzing, Marc became an international media phenomenon, even landing a spot on The Ellen Degeneres show during the first week of our tour. Queen fans felt like they got Freddie back. And it’s true – Marc’s vocal and even physical resemblance to Freddie Mercury is Even Queen’s Roger Taylor mentioned him in an interview, strongly suggesting that he’s a shoe in for the Queen Extravaganza tour–which is exciting! And kind of surreal. And even a little disconcerting. It raises a lot of questions: What does all this mean?  If Marc wins, what does it mean for Downhere? Can Marc, a gifted songwriter, be content singing someone else’s songs (even if they are some of the most beloved songs in rock’n’roll history)? If he wins, will Marc have to wear a unitard when he sings “Bohemian Rhapsody” (I won’t lie, I kind of hope so. I want pictures.) There isn’t a clear roadmap for an adventure such as this and there are more question marks than there are signposts. But I’ve been grateful to have a front row seat for it all, and I’ll tell you this: I’m daily impressed with Marc and the rest of Downhere—Jason, Glenn, and Jeremy—for their humble, God-honoring, and faith-filled response to all that’s happening. I see Marc and his band mates saying, “yes, and…”—prayerfully receiving these events as though they are from the hand of the Lord—with courage, respect, and humility as they wonder what part they’re supposed to add to it, trusting that though a man “plans his way, the Lord directs his steps.” This is where the rubber meets the road (forgive the cliché) of how you work out your theology of God’s sovereignty with fear and trembling. And here is where I see the beauty of “Yes, and…” To say “Yes, but…” is an argument and is to stand in judgment of a moment, to hazard measuring it by our own self-righteousness and risk blocking the scene from developing. “Yes, but…” is conditional and is something that I and so many of us in the Christian community are often guilty of. It is fundamentally defensive, fearful, and reactive. “Yes, and…”, however, is the fearless and humble acceptance of the offer of an adventure. “Yes, but…” kills the moment before it even has a chance to come to life. “Yes, and…” is pregnant with possibility. But it can also get messy. Or maybe I should say and it can also get messy. To walk the line of being sensitive to his church audience and his own Christian convictions while at the same time honoring Queen music lovers is a delicate balancing act that I see Marc and co. walking out with grace, kindness, and a generosity that imbues the conversation with the aroma of Christ. The question that usually comes up in interviews from Christian and non-Christian media alike is how Marc as a Christian feels about singing the songs of a renowned hedonist. Marc replies by gracefully bringing the conversation back to the heart of the matter (as well as the heart of the man) by reminding them that some of the best of Queen’s songs, like “Somebody To Love”, are born out of the same spiritual longing that is common to all of us. My favorite moment is one that I understand might offend the sensibilities of some, but for those who might see it, as I did, as inspired, funny, and gracious, I’ll risk sharing it. For whoever wants to seriously engage it, Marc doesn’t dodge the question, but one interview required a different kind of sensitivity. A shock jock seemed to want to corner Marc by asking him how he, a Christian, felt about singing the songs of a celebrated bi-sexual. It was, of course, a no-win situation and a question sure to stir up trouble and degrade the conversation into fruitless controversy. Marc, a French-Canadian, answered, I believe, with an inspired and artful Chestertonian dodge perfectly tailored for that audience: “Well, I’m bi-lingual, do you think Queen fans will have an issue with that?” Well-played, Marc. But wherever there has been an opportunity for fruitful and dignified dialogue, Marc has graciously engaged the question. Whether he’s talking with a secular deejay or a Christian news outlet, it’s been inspiring to eavesdrop on Marc’s many interviews. I’ve been grateful for how he represents Christ and my faith. I’m proud of him. With all of this attention, clearly the tour had to respond, and so our “Yes, and…” took the form of adding “Somebody to Love” to the set as a way of honoring the curiosity of those who might attend the shows after discovering Marc on YouTube. Some churches have cancelled future Downhere dates because of Marc’s association with Queen, which I think is a shame. It shines a spotlight on one of the failures of a particular segment of the Christian community. We have the unfortunate reputation for naming people for what we see as their sin and brokenness, as though that were the whole of their identity. To see Freddie Mercury, or anyone for that matter, solely based on their sexuality (or any one thing) is to miss seeing what God sees, which of course is the heart of a person and the story that shaped them. And let’s not forget that every heart is filled with enough hurt and disappointment to ruin the best of us. Compassion should always be our first instinct. Isn’t that what we hope for when our own brokenness rises to the surface of our own lives? Are we only ever the sum of our failures, brokenness, sin, or other’s worst estimation of us? I think of Jesus and the woman at the well. I think of the way that Jesus gave her dignity by receiving her and asking her for a drink of water, breaking with the cultural mores of his time and acknowledging her as a fellow human being. It was only after this that he helped her to see her own story and then invited her into a better one. There are other churches who, in the spirit of “yes, and…”, made use of Marc’s notoriety by advertising our tour on local classic rock stations. One of our shows was made up of about one third of people who may not otherwise have set foot in a church. Jesus was proclaimed, God was worshipped, and the scene progressed. Ah, the fruit of “yes, and…” Some people are concerned about Marc and ask me if all of this attention has changed him. I’m grateful to be able to say that from where I sit he’s the same Marc I’ve always known. In fact I’d say he’s as in touch with the moving of the Holy Spirit as I’ve ever known him to be, with a heart at the center of him that is increasingly humble, kind, and hungry for God’s leading. Which brings me to the part of the story that I most want to tell. The most beautiful moment of the tour put Marc’s heart front and center. You see, there was one night when a young man with Down’s Syndrome was in the front row, beside himself in fits of enjoyment, dancing ecstatically through all of our sets. It was delightful. During the final song, an anthemic worship chorus where we all took the stage to close out the night together, this young man was overcome with joy and stormed up the steps to take center stage with Marc. These kinds of moments are precarious and require the most careful and caring touch. As the artist, you’re the captain of the ship in a sense and you have a responsibility to manage any factors that threaten to throw the evening of course. But you also don’t want to hold the wheel so tight that you choke out the chance for God to walk through the room. I was standing right behind Marc when the young man took to the stage and it happened. It was a small thing, and yet a gesture so pregnant with grace that it still moves me to remember it. Marc kept singing and gently put his arm around the young man—his hand on his back—drawing him in, assuring him. Marc’s arm around him said this: “Yes… I receive this moment from the hand of God, I receive you. You are a gift of God and have a place here.” “And… Sing with me, let’s sing together. You have a voice! And you should sing with it, you so alive with your love for your heavenly father that you couldn’t stay in your seat!” Yes: An acceptance of the offer of a potentially awkward moment, an adventure. And: A contribution that progressed the scene, a beautiful scene that looked like Kingdom come. In a moment like that, it’s hard to tell who the first or the last or the least among us is, isn’t it? I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. If you’re concerned about how Marc will navigate this unlikely adventure he’s in, pray for him. But when you do, don’t pray out of fear, suspicion, or judgment. Remember the heart God has given him, and pray that the same God who is shaping the heart within him will also guard it. Check out this video, Marc’s second round audition of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” His brother David is an amazing artist, too, whose music is reminiscent of Fleet Foxes. This is his audition of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”: And why shouldn’t Glenn, Downhere’s bass player, join the fun? Here’s his bass audition for “Another One Bites The Dust”: And don’t forget to check out Downhere’s website UPDATE: Marc and David are proceeding to the final round! You can watch or listen to it live this Monday, Dec. 5th at http://www.queenextravaganza.com/ UPDATE #2: I was just made aware of a great piece that Jeremy, the drummer of Downhere, wrote as the father of a son with Down’s Syndrome. Beautiful: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150432691026355

I didn’t know it, but I loved jazz when I was a kid. I was a huge fan of the Vince Guaraldi trio. I didn’t know that either. I only knew that the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas was one of the best things I had ever heard. It was a risky move to pair grown-up jazz music with an animated children’s show in 1965; it would be a risky move now, in the era of Thundercats and Sponge Bob Squarepants. But the Charlie Brown specials have always made it seem that jazz for kids is the most natural thing in the world. The jazz combo Coal Train Railroad–Katy Bowser, Chris Donohue, and a rotating cast of exceedingly talented instrumentalists–works on that very assumption, that jazz is great music for kids. More to the point, they demonstrate that jazz and kids are a natural combination. Their new record, Coal Train Railroad Swings, releases today. Musically, this is the real deal. Inspired by traditional swing jazz and seasoned with a dash of polka and a little bit of Tom Waits, the musicianship is stellar. Katy Bowser’s vocals are a miracle–expressive and very fun, but also technically astonishing. She performs a vocal run at the end of “Get My Wiggles Out” that is positively pyrotechnic. One wonders if she could possibly do it the same way twice. That’s Coal Train Railroad Swings! for you: genuine virtuosity in the service of a song about getting one’s wiggles out. The same virtuosity is exercised in songs about going to the pool, leaving a lunch bag out in the rain, suffering from the common cold (“I Hab a Code”), and getting dirty (of dirt, Katy asks, “What am I supposed to do? This stuff is everywhere!”). The subject matter is perfectly relevant to the toddler set, but there is no condescension here. I have heard Katy Bowser speak of “inviting children into the conversation” with her art. To put it another way, Coal Train Railroad says to kids, “Jazz is your music too.” Indeed, in many ways, children are more ready for jazz than adults. For a baby learning to speak, talking is a lot like scat-singing. A baby plays with the sounds and rhythms of words before he knows exactly what to do with their meanings. Katy tells of her baby daughter Story’s ongoing riffs on the words “broccoli” (“bockly”) and “book,” repeating them over and over with different intonations and pronunciations and cadences. The great revelation of Coal Train Railroad’s music is that jazz, which seems urbane, highbrow, and frankly intimidating to many grownups, can be entirely accessible. I don’t even own a turtleneck, but still I love this music. Watching my own children enjoy Coal Train Railroad Swings! has reminded me that jazz, that great American form, is my music too. [Here’s the first track from the record, in which a girl in Wonder Woman Underoos and a boy with inflatable Hulk muscles do battle with Godzilla and a toothy cow. The album is available in the Rabbit Room store.] I’m Diggin’ Me by Coal Train Railroad [audio:DigginMe.mp3]

This past weekend I watched a documentary that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. It’s a sign of a good movie when I’m still thinking about it three days later. It’s an even better sign when I’m still mulling it over in bed at night after reading T. S. Eliot (though I suspect one could mull over just about anything after reading T. S. Eliot and make a good argument for doing so). The movie was called Life in a Day. We watched it on a whim and I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was what I’d read about it a few months ago when it was making the festival rounds. The story goes that on July 24th 2010, nearly 80,000 people in over 190 countries, individually shot 4500 hours of video documenting a single day in their lives. After what must have been a small eternity in the editing room, the result is a 90 minute film that builds a sort of quiet epic out of the most ordinary thing in the world: us. Every shot was made by an ordinary person with an ordinary camera and most of them were submitted via YouTube. To ensure that the entire world was represented, the team behind the project also sent out over 400 cameras by mail to parts of the world too far flung for internet access—or even electricity for that matter. People were free to film anything they wished of themselves and their lives, but the filmmakers asked them to answer a few simple questions: What’s in your pocket? What do you love the most? What do you fear the most? The film flows from the pre-dawn quiet of city streets and back country moonscapes through the entire cycle of a day here on earth, encompassing our joys, faults, fears, and hopes from cradle to grave. The moments captured are honest, funny, and overwhelmingly ordinary. Not boring, mind you, merely ordinary—moments we’ve all known and cherished or dreaded or forgotten. A child wonders and fears what it would mean if God wasn’t real. A group of eastern European farmers laugh together while they milk their goats. A “Love Parade” turns deadly and selfish. An elderly couple renew their vows after fifty years of marriage. A man professes love for his refrigerator. A crowd of faces animate with joy over a thing as simple as light in darkness. An old woman stands before the camera, spreads her arms and proclaims: “This is me. This is what I look like. This is what I’m most afraid of.” It’s a snapshot of a single moment in time, a portrait of a world, a family photo of our entire human race. As I watched, my mind kept circling back to the idea that what I was seeing was only a single day. One. One day plucked out of a continuum of millions, and since the beginning each and every one of them has been filled with the same sense of struggle, joy, love, pain, and loneliness. This is what God sees of us—and what more besides? As I watched Life in a Day roll by, I felt like I was catching, however slightly, a brief glimpse of divine perspective. And the smallness of that glimpse hinted at the vast wideness available to the eye of God for, as T.S. Eliot says, “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” I’ve been reading Eliot’s Four Quartets lately and I won’t dare profess understanding of half of what I’ve read. But I do have glimpses of understanding. And in the context of Life in a Day, I think those glimpses have, at times, lengthened into meaningful stares (though amiable nods of recognition are, I fear, still years off). Eliot talks of the “still point” where past, present, and future come together, and of the futility of dwelling anywhere other than in the eternal stillness, the ever-present dance at the intersection around which the cosmos spins. If he could see a film like Life in a Day, if he could see humanity caught in its wondrous, scandalous swirl for one, brief fleeting moment of presence, I wonder if Eliot might not have thought of a passage like this from his poem Burnt Norton: At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror. Yet the enchainment of past and future Woven in the weakness of the hanging body, Protects mankind from heaven and damnation Which flesh cannot endure. July 24th, 2010, captured on film. There the dance is. Everywhere. Around us always, at all times. And the incredible present-ness of the film urged me onward, of course, toward the further hope of the dance’s resolution. Again, as Eliot puts it: These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled. . . Life in a Day is a snapshot, a guess, a whole picture partially seen, a partial picture wholly present. And, hallelujah, Christ, the Incarnation, is the intersection of all things, the resolution of past, present, future. In him the beginning and end are made one. Every loneliness uttered in the flickering light of a laptop screen on July 24, 2010, and every day before and since, is answered. In his stillness, love and companionship are given. Every joy is rejoined and given substance beyond mere apparition. War is made safety. Sickness: health. Each life, in each day, exists most fully at its intersection with the Incarnation. In the words of Abraham Kuyper: . . . there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine! Life in a Day is a tattered corner of the map of that domain, filled with ordinary miracles, regrets, failures, laughter, violence, hate, love, and beauty. But hallelujah, the Ancient of Days knows and keeps them every one, ever since the dance began. And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well, because the tale is not over until its end is again its beginning, all things intersecting, all things beheld, from first to present to final, in the eye of the One. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. –from Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot

The first snow fell in Nashville this morning–though it might be a disservice to snow to call it that. It wasn’t anything more than a few wet flakes floating around in the miserable rain. But it was snow nonetheless, which means, of course, that there’s a reasonable need for Christmas music to go along with it. Until I listened to this song again a few days ago, I had forgotten just how awesome it is. I’m thinking of writing Zooey Deschanel a letter to let her know that regrettably, the original song will no longer remind me of her shower solo in Elf, or of a cotton-headed ninny-muggins, or even of Santa deposed from a throne of lies, but instead of Andy and Jill’s priceless duet. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips

[Editor’s note: You may have missed Hutchmoot this year, but Jennifer Trafton’s session was so good that we talked her into turning it into an post so we could share it with the rest of the world. Thanks, Jennifer.] I grew up in a book-loving family. Bookshelves oozed over the walls of our home, spreading farther and farther into the unused spaces as the years went by. We went to the library on Saturdays and brought home towers of books. One of the books my mother read aloud to me when I was ten was The Neverending Story, but this was one of those rare occasions when the movie version actually left a deeper imprint on my imagination. It was one of the defining films of my childhood—with its wonderful hint that those stories I was reading in books had an immense and fragile and beautiful reality behind them, and that I was always on the verge of falling into that other world, or seeing it fall into mine. My father read The Chronicles of Narnia to me (many times), and it filled me with a sense of the grand Story-ness of life—a feeling reinforced years later when I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time as a college freshman. I spent hours curled up on my bed with a profound longing in my heart, as if the veil had been pulled back for an instant on the Epic that I knew the world really possessed, if only I could live always in this glorious awareness of it. “The supreme adventure is being born,” said G. K. Chesterton. “Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament. Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story.” I think there is a sense in which the story of my own life and of my vocation as a writer is the story of one who is desperately trying to grow up without ever becoming a grown-up. One of my favorite writers when I was a child was Madeleine L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time. In her essay “The Key, the Door, the Road,” she talks about the difference between childish and childlike: A childish book, like a childish person, is limited, unspontaneous, closed in . . . But the childlike book, like the childlike person, breaks out of all boundaries. And joy is the key. Several years ago we took our children to Monticello, and I remember the feeling we all had of the fun Jefferson must have had with his experiments, his preposterous perpetual clock, for instance: what sheer, childlike delight it must have given him. Perhaps Lewis Carroll was really happy only when he was with children, especially when he was writing for them. Joy sparks the pages of Alice [in Wonderland], and how much more profound it is than most of his ponderous works for grownups. . . . But in the battering around of growing up the child gets hurt, and he puts on a shell of protection; he is frightened, and he slams doors. Real maturity lies in having the courage to open doors again, or, when they are pointed out, to go through them. This courage to keep reopening those doors, to break out of the adult shell of protection, to let joy loose in all its childlike messiness, is a daily struggle for me. But that is precisely why I will keep reading children’s books until the day I die, and why I know that I must keep writing them even if no one ever reads them. L’Engle said elsewhere, “My work is real work, and real work is play, not drudgery.” I have thought about this concept a great deal, because I am often asked why I am writing books for children. Sometimes it is with the implication that I have an ulterior motive—such as presenting a “message” or getting my foot in the publishing door by writing an “easier” kind of book (ha!). Sometimes people have sincerely thanked me as if I’m committing some noble act of benevolence. But the fact is, my motives aren’t nearly so heroic. I write children’s stories because when my imagination sits down to play, that is what comes out. It’s simply one of the best ways I’ve found to be myself. As a child I spent hours surrounded by my dolls and toys, scrunched between a bed and a wall, or under a desk, or in the bathroom. Barbie got kidnapped by a witch, and the Purple Pie Man commanded a pirate ship. Towels draped over chairs and boxes became a house or a hideout. I loved that magical space of time between turning off the light and going to sleep, when the whole earth was a blanket of silence around my shoulders, and I could drift into the next chapter of a secret story. These years of childhood are the last years of true imaginative freedom (because that’s what play is), the years when pure comedy is possible, without the bite of satire or the burn of cynicism. So it is primarily on paper now, in the act of creativity, that the child in me comes out to play again. When I am writing a story, I am back in my old bedroom, sending the creatures of my imagination off on wild adventures, stretching the universe into goofy new shapes with complete freedom, away from adult eyes and the chattering criticism of the world. If I kept thinking, “I am doing something that could shape the character and virtue of a child, redeem the brokenness of their world, teach them important lessons about life, etc.” the playing would stop, the grown-up mind would reassert itself, and the art would end. All of those other things are happy byproducts if they happen, but that is not my business. My job is to play with the pieces of the world I’ve been given, find the delight inherent in them, make something delightful out of them. Even if the only one delighted is me. I have read many theological discussions and defenses of the arts, and I am always torn in my response to them. For one thing, it saddens me when we feel the need to justify art by making it serve some other non-artistic purpose like teaching morality. But also, many of these defenses of art (think of Christian justifications for fantasy) seem to be afflicted with excessive seriousness, even self-importance. Do I believe that art can be a catalyst for social change, a commentator on the human condition, a conveyer of truth, a powerful agent of transformation in people’s lives? Yes! But to have to go about our business as artists while wearing that heavy mantle of responsibility seems crippling to me. And here is where I think the world of children’s literature has much insight to offer to these discussions about faith and the arts, because, perhaps more than any other genre, it reminds us of the redemptive power of a pure and holy silliness. Take Edward Lear’s poem “The Jumblies”, which I read regularly to jump-start the creative juices in my head. There is a kind of reckless, joyful dancing with words there that reminds me of another favorite poem by Lewis Carroll: `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” I love poems and stories like this that stretch the boundaries of what could be, almost as if they were thumbing their noses at a world that insists, This is how life is, and saying instead, Not necessarily. Imagine if it were different. Imagine lovely monkeys with lollipop paws and bandersnatches and places with names like the Chankly Bore. Imagine little people with green heads and blue hands embarking on epic adventures in unpredictably leaky sailing vessels. How can we possibly grasp the mystery of God and heavenly realities unless we have first allowed stories to take the lid off of what we think of as reality so that the stuff of creation can bubble over in shapes beyond our expectations? My favorite stories—and the stories I hope to write—provoke the question, “What if there is more to the world than what I see on the surface?” They make me more open to a world where the marvelous and the miraculous are possible. And they do it in a way that is delightful. That is what I mean by a holy silliness. Yes, there is a profound need for art that plumbs the depths of human depravity and suffering and shows that redemption is possible within that darkness. But there is also a profound need for art that creates spaces of innocence—innocent play, innocent joy, innocent beauty—in a world where innocence is violently stripped away from even the youngest children, and where adults have spent so long choking in the smog of corruption that they have forgotten what it is like to breathe pure fresh air. I will defend and defend the belief that the deepest reality of human life that we must impress upon children is not that life is hard and death is inevitable and they need to get used to sadness and darkness and make the best of it. The deepest reality is joy. The prize hidden under the scratch-and-win card of life is a beauty so big that no happy ending in a story can even come close to approximating it. War is a horrific stain on the floor of an extravagant ballroom. Tears are temporary; laughter is eternal. I am so grateful for art that takes us to the emotional place of the Cross—that place where we are forced to face the agony of evil in this world and walk through the door of pain to the other side. The courage and honesty of such artists is breathtaking to me. I long for more art that offers me Resurrection . . . Eden regained. The beauty of children’s literature is that it allows space for both—innocence and redemption, pain and silliness, honesty and happy endings. I think of the blending of joy and grief in E. B. White’s classic Charlotte’s Web, Katherine Paterson’s The Bridge to Terabithia, and Kate DiCamillo’s novels. Beside these I hold up the playfulness of Mr. Popper’s Penguins, James and the Giant Peach, Winnie-the-Pooh, and The Wizard of Oz. There is something about such books that cleanses me, like a baptism. Jesus did say, after all, that we must become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. This attitude of playing—does that mean writing is easy? No! It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I am not a garrulous talker or a prolific writer; words trickle out slowly. Laughter fights every day against fear. There are many, many times when I feel anything but playful. The work still has to happen. But I work in the trust that the delight is merely temporarily submerged. The times of playing make the other times of painful slogging worth struggling through and overcoming: The joy is the fuel for the hard effort. Every day when I sat down to write The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, the writing felt like trying to strain Mount Everest through a sieve. I was paralyzed by the fear of what other people would think, how the world would receive my little story that had been so private and dear to me for so long. That was the grown-up in me forgetting that I was supposed to be playing. And one of the things that encouraged and challenged me during that time was the story of King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant—unselfconscious, unashamed, childlike, his whole being thrust into the simple joyful act of the dance, caring only about the eyes of God upon him. I have a friend who is a ballet teacher, and she tells me about the great difference she sees between the children she teaches and the adults. Children dance as if they had burst out of the womb with the uncontrollable urge to wiggle in front of the universe; they dance with complete freedom. But as we grow up, the need to Not Look Silly in Front of Other People stiffens our limbs and shrinks our ability to express ourselves freely with our bodies. We move through the world in limited, socially acceptable patterns. We stop dancing. Creating something, like praying, is one of the most vulnerable, self-revealing things we do in this world. And if we are embarrassed to be caught in the act in front of other people, or if we cover our raw hearts in crowd-pleasing dress, we will kill the soul of our creation. Instead, we should let our art dance with reckless abandon, and if only God sees and loves it, we have no need for another audience; all other appreciating eyes are unexpected gifts. The moments when we achieve that state of complete unselfconsciousness—those are the moments when we are children again, innocent, naked and unashamed in the Garden of Eden. Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” I heard a story about a college art teacher whose seven-year-old daughter asked him what he did at work. He told her that his job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at him, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” In J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories,” he talks about Recovery as one of the things that reading fairy tales offers us: “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses—and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish. Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. . . . We need . . . to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness.” This recovery reminds me of G. K. Chesterton again: “At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder.” This is why adults should read children’s books. Go back and reread the books you loved when you were a child. Dig for that submerged sunrise of wonder. Remember. Not to dwell in sentimental nostalgia, but to exercise a muscle that tends to go flabby with age. And then: Go out and be creative the way you were when you were a little girl or a little boy. Play. Make a beautiful mess. When I write, when I play on paper, I’m practicing. I’m practicing for the day when the world will be turned right side up again. The day when God will set aside my paper dreams and teach me how to make a star. The day when human life is revised and polished and the true story finally emerges—a story of freedom, fresh air, laughter, and children playing. [The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton is available in the Rabbit Room store.]

Charles Kingsley (1819—1875) was an English priest known for such novels as Westward Ho!, for his political essays, for his poetry, and for his collections of sermons. Kingsley was involved in the Christian Socialist movement, and often wrote his novels to expose injustice. Kingsley is best known for his children’s novel, The Water-Babies (1863), which he wrote to teach Christian values. The main character is a ten-year-old chimneysweep named Tom. Due to mistreatment, Tom is chased out of town where he drowns in a river. Fairies turn him into a creature called a water-baby, and assign him a task. This book helped lead to an act of Parliament which prevented children being forced to climb chimneys. He was appointed the Queen’s chaplain in 1859, and became a professor at Cambridge University in 1860. Kingsley was also friends with the Scottish novelist George MacDonald. A LAMENT The merry merry lark was up and singing, And the hare was out and feeding on the lea; And the merry merry bells below were ringing, When my child’s laugh rang through me. Now the hare is snared and dead beside the snow-yard, And the lark beside the dreary winter sea; And the baby in his cradle in the churchyard Sleeps sound till the bell brings me. And here’s another: THE DEAD CHURCH Wild wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing? Dark dark night, wilt thou never wear away? Cold cold church, in thy death sleep lying, The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day. Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing; Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain. Weep, dear Lord, above thy bride low lying; Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again.

[Editor’s Note: We want to take a moment to celebrate the release of Russ Ramsey’s first book. He’s worked long and hard on it we’re anxious for each of you to enjoy the fruits of his labor. So congratulations, Russ. I’m happy to add the title of “Author” next to your name on the masthead.] Here’s the first chapter of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. If you’d like to download a sample and see what the actual book looks like inside, you can do so here. –Pete Peterson.] He did not have a home. People said he survived on little more than wild honey and locusts, and by the look of him, it couldn’t have been much more. He wore a coat of camel hair he cinched together with a leather belt, just like the prophet Elijah had done. Normally he was the one people stopped to behold, but at this particular moment, as he stood waist-deep in the Jordan, anyone looking at him saw that his attention was fixed on the man from Galilee headed his way. His face wore a mix of astonishment and joy as the man approached. “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” His voice trembled as water dripped from his outstretched finger and scraggly beard into the river where he stood. People might have dismissed this wild man as they would have any other tortured soul driven to live in the caves and wadis of the Judean wilderness—were it not for the fact that people knew his story. Or rather, they knew his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. These were honorable people. Zechariah had served many years as a priest in the temple, Elizabeth faithfully at his side in spite of the fact that, well into their old age, they had been unable to conceive any children. Being a priest, Zechariah knew the old stories of the barren women God had worked through to deliver impossible promises to an unbelieving people—to their people. When Zechariah and his wife were young, these tales gave them hope. God could break through her barrenness if he wanted. He had done it before. But that was a long time ago, and the stories were about people whose lives were central to Israel’s identity. Zechariah and his wife hardly regarded themselves as that important. Eventually they accepted that they would be childless, though they wondered why the God they loved and served had determined, in his infinite wisdom, that they wouldn’t know the blessing of children. Then one day the Lord sent his angel down with a message. The Author of Life was going to open Elizabeth’s womb and give Zechariah a son. But this son wasn’t given merely for his father’s legacy. This boy would have a specific function in the unfolding story the people of Israel had been living and telling as far back as anyone could remember. The angel told them, “He will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. He will make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” And they were to give him the name John. As a boy, John grew and became strong in the Spirit. His little mind was filled with wonder as he turned over the stories his parents told him about his birth. Angels were involved, and miracles. He was their miracle, a gift given by God himself not only to his grateful parents, but to the world. Everyone knew John as the boy with an intensity beyond his years—as though his entire boyhood was a time of preparation and he knew it. Not long after the boy became a man, he moved out into the wilderness of Judea. It was an inhospitable place— windy, craggy, and hot. It was also the sort of place where God had dwelled with his ancestors during the Exodus. There, without the simplest of creature comforts, John was left to find solace and companionship with God alone. Though his days in the desert could be lonesome to the point of pain, wilderness life suited him. It was a contemplative way to live, but one that strengthened him. He had no basic needs that he could not meet. Many of his days were filled with simple tasks such as finding water, scrounging food, staying out of the heat of the sun, and gathering wood for fires at night. Living off the land meant he needed to travel light. He needed to be able to go where the resources were and move on when they were spent. But it wasn’t just minimalist living that brought John to the desert; it was his call from the Lord to proclaim the message he had been born to tell. John didn’t move to the desert to withdraw from his people. He went to prepare for his role among them. Soon he emerged as a man with a voice and a clear con- science about how to use it. Wild and fearless, looking like he had grown out of the banks on which he stood, he called to all who passed, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” And he did it as one who seemed to possess the authority to demand such a response. He was, as the prophet Isaiah had said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.’” Prepare for what? A collision of worlds. Like a meteor falling to the earth, heaven was bearing down on the land of his forefathers. An old promise, so old that it had become little more than a legend, was about to be fulfilled—and nothing would ever be the same. The Messiah was coming. The very fact that so many people considered the Messiah’s coming more of a fairy tale than a future event was, in itself, a cause for repentance. It wasn’t just that God had promised to do it. It was that the reason he promised to do it was like an intimate promise between lovers. God’s promised Messiah was a merciful gift of love to a people who needed both mercy and love. He would come to them in all their pain, brokenness, and struggle, and make everything new. They were desperate for this, and the proof of their desperation was perhaps most evident in the fact that they couldn’t bring themselves to live as though this promise was real. Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! There was something magnetic about John, something in the way he suspended those he attracted between the poles of preparation and perdition until they understood that without repentance, there they would hover—not necessarily feeling lost perhaps, but not assured that they were found either. Hope began to rise in the hearts of the hopeless. Even in the call to repent, they heard the promise that if they confessed their sins, admitted their doubts, and acknowledged how their hearts had become cynical and jaded, God would hear them. God would hear them. People came from all over to the Jordan to step into that water with John the Baptizer. They confessed their failures, their lust, their greed, their pride. They admitted to him things they swore they would never tell a soul. But why? Who was he? Israel’s religious leaders had no answer, so they sent priests to investigate. Did this man think he was the Messiah? Or Elijah come back from his celestial chariot ride? John was clear in his answer. He was neither Elijah nor the Messiah. So the priests asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” John told them, “I baptize with water because there is a man, one who stands among you, and the strap of his sandal I’m not worthy to untie. Though you do not know him, he lives among us even now, and he is the Messiah!” Should they have known him? Or, if nothing else, should they not have been surprised at John’s rebuke? These were the priests of Israel, experts in the law and lore of God’s chosen people. Israel was a nation with a story, a well-rehearsed narrative these priests were sworn to preserve and pass down. John himself was a part of that tale, and so were they. And yet, like so many of their countrymen, they had begun to forget the story of God’s promises to them. But it was such a beautiful story. It was the story of how their holy God had cut a covenant promise in blood to redeem and restore the children who had rebelled against him. It was the story of how Jacob’s line came to be a nation—sometimes mighty, sometimes fragile, but always prone to wander and forget their God. It was the story of generations of war, infighting, and exile that should have wiped them off the face of the earth. The fact that they survived all this and so much more testified to God’s fidelity to his promise never to leave them or forsake them. That alone proved God was not through with the story he was writing. And if that was true, it meant he wasn’t through with them either. Even though it was still unfolding, it was already quite a story to tell, and it was the priests’ job to tell it. But in order to tell it, they had to know it. And to know it, they had to listen—which was why, since their earliest recorded history, every time the people of Israel gathered before the Lord for worship, the first word spoken to them was a command: “Hear!”

Christian Storytelling, Part I: The Right Stories I have always loved systematic theology.  I own four (Grudem, Oden, Hodge, and Reymond).  Ironically enough, I am going to continue my discussion of Christian Theology as Storytelling by quoting from a systematic theology, because Thomas Oden gets it right, I believe.  I’m going to let Oden do a lot of the talking here, but stick with it: It’s good stuff.  (Quotes are taken from The Living God: Systematic Theology, Volume One). The value of Oden’s already great “systematic” theology is increased by the fact that it realizes its own limitations.  Oden writes: The vitality of the biblical history of God’s acts does not easily boil down to the clear, consistent formulations about God attempted by systematic theology.  Try as we may, the biblical history resists systematization (p. 40). One might wonder why Oden writes this in the middle of a systematic theology. He rejoins: Yet since the Bible wishes to address each hearer as a whole person, it invites and to some degree requires that each believer bring its loose ends together, to listen for its unity, and to try to see it integrally.  In that sense the Bible invites systematic, cohesive thinking about its varied events and messages (pp. 40-41). Good answer.  Oden cautions that we do well not to pretend to be able to resolve the tension between the Bible’s inability to be easily systematized and its invitation to think about it cohesively.  In other words, we do systematic theology with a constant awareness of its own limitations, because the Bible is history and story, not a systematic theology itself. Oden’s ability to see the limitations of systematic theology is rooted in his accurate understanding of how God is revealed in the Scriptures: In the Hebraic religion, God is known by what God does.  What God does is remembered and recollected as history – the history of God’s encounter with humanity…That remains a constant frustration to our systematic attempts to get God safely boxed into our changing linguistic packages (pp. 40-41). So God is revealed to us in story form.  It’s not a made-up story like a fantasy fiction or a nursery tale.  Rather, it is God’s direct interaction with humanity within history.  Perhaps a personal insight will help me communicate the value of such an understanding. I recall the days when for me, biblical hermeneutics was about correct application of the grammatical-historical principle for interpretation, and then application to modern day.  “What did the Bible say then?  What does it say to me now? How do I apply that?”  As I operated on these three questions, it made much more sense to let the propositional truth statements be the key guide for interpretation, and the stories I relegated to illustrative material.  After all, if we’re making an attempt at systematic theology, wouldn’t it make more sense to read the “objective truth statements” of Paul and use Abraham, Moses, Acts, and even the Gospel stories as illustrative material of the Pauline corpus?  (Or the General Epistles, of course).  So my sermons generally consisted of the exegesis of a few verses from a Letter with OT and NT biblical stories as illustrative material. You’ve heard these sermons. Three propositional truth statements (with alliteration!), and a story to illustrate each point. There’s nothing wrong with this in and of itself, so don’t think I’m picking on your pastor. But when it comes to understand God and how He’s spoken to us, we need to let Him speak as He has chosen to speak, and not how we want him to. The way we handle St. Paul is a good example. We think of his letters as statements of propositional truth about God. Paul, however, built his theology the other way around, as Oden noted about Hebraic theology (“God is known by what God does.”) Paul did not start with a systematic theology of justification by faith and then tack on Abraham as an example or illustration.  The Abraham story and its culmination in the Jesus story is the foundation of the doctrine.  The story serves as the central point; justification by faith comes out of the story. To press this further, I used to believe the Romans was a good example of a sort of early systematic theology.  This was a terrible missing of the point.  As systematic as Romans may seem (and is, compared to the other epistles), even Romans is built on the framework of the story from Genesis to Paul’s time.  Creation-Fall-Redemption serves as the foundation of Romans.  Paul is explaining the story. It should be further noted that each epistle has its own story and context: the story of the humanity – the failures, questions, and struggles – of Peter, Paul, John, and their readers.  Some of these stories can only be speculated about, and this should lead to some humility on the part of the 21st century exegete. But the key point is this: in each epistle, all those truth statements are St. Paul’s bringing the Jesus story to bear on the historically situated, very human stories of the churches to whom he is writing. There is no question about it: this method makes theology harder. As Oden has noted, “History does not readily lend itself to systematic statement or definition” (p. 41; more on this subject in a coming post).  But it yields deep rewards in understanding a God who doesn’t just shout truth from on high, but enters into our world and our stories himself as the truth.

“I’ve seen Eric play his songs probably hundreds of times, and every time I’ve been struck by how blessedly peculiar he is. He’s self-effacing and passionate, he’s wry and gracious, he’s funny (especially when he doesn’t mean to be), he’s shy about his gifting and bold about his brokenness–and his songs are some of the most precariously honest songs I know. I need them. I think we all do–every peculiar one of us.”  –Andrew Peterson It seems like everyone who knows Eric Peters can articulate the unique genius of his music better than he can. It’s kind of strange, since he’s a lyrical alchemist, making gold appear mysteriously from the bubbling cauldron of his soul. I can remember describing his music in writing on one occasion and his response was something like, “Seriously? I never thought of that before. Well, I guess so.” I’ve always loved the music. Catchy and able to catch you off guard. Somehow, the careworn and carefree are often separated only by a soaring note from the most unique of all his instruments, his voice. That voice has always hooked me (and many others). Eric’s music is a burrowing owl, digging down into the earth of your heart. It lingers there, nestling deep. It breathes and sleeps and sings. Just when you think it’s confined and heavy, it takes flight, shaking off its clinging clods and soaring into a sunlit sky. I think that always happens with Eric’s records, but I believe this is part of what his new project is about. It’s one of many reasons I’m excited about supportting his Kickstarter campaign (which you still barely have time to help with). I’ve heard most of the songs that will be on this record and I expect it will be his best yet. You can be a part of making it. That is a pretty fun thing to do. Eric is migrating. The new record, Birds of Relocation , is your ticket to ride. Beetles will be eaten, new heights will be reached, new sights will be seen, and new nests will be built. (People will not be pooped on.) Perching at the intersection of catchy pop-folk and liberated introspection, this is one songbird you shouldn’t miss. Open your window. But don’t take my word for it. “The thing I love about Eric Peters is that he is a master craftsman with words; a poet, even in his prose. I’m always one to connect first with the lyrics of a song, like I have to trust where the artist is leading me before submitting to the spell of the music. With Eric, you have that unequivocal trust in one who both knows exactly where you are and calls you higher in the same breath. Like the best writers, he pricks you out of complacency with the exquisitely disconcerting reminder that we’re not yet all we’re meant to be—but we’re on our way. And we’re not alone.” –Lanier Ivester “Did you ask me to indoors Eric Peters? Oh sorry, well, I wholeheartedly endorse Eric Peters whether indoors or out. The vulnerable beauty of Scarce, Chrome or any of the Ridgely rarities I own are at home anywhere I go and I wouldn’t hesitate to put my money where my heart will inevitably be once I hear these tunes. –Matt Conner “The vast complexity of even Eric Peters’ minor and inchoate work puts one in mind of the greatest pillars of our musical landscape: Beethoven, Handel, Dylan, Esteban. That such a man, so small and so coarsely bearded, should alone possess power to rive asunder the very foundations of the acoustic/folk establishment and institute instead his own solitary and tyrannical vision of songcraft in a glorious Eric-ocracy of his own making, is cause indeed for raucous and limitless celebration and, in the end, unbounded hope.” –A.S. Peterson “A lot of people don’t realize this, but Eric Peters is younger than me. And yet he writes songs way better than I can. He supposedly cooks better than me too, but how would I know, since he’s never invited me over for his famous gumbo or étouffée or whatever it is? I’m pretty sure I’m better at board games than Eric. In any case, when he came over and ate my food, I beat him at a board game. I digress. This endorsement is mostly about Eric, not me. And from where I sit–a place of impeccable judgment and unimpeachable rectitude–I consider Eric Peters’ work to be brilliant. It grows out of an honesty and self-awareness that would terrify most other artists. But if the emotion in Eric’s music is raw, there’s nothing raw or unformed about the music itself. It’s thoughtful, challenging, excellent music. That’s just my opinion. But I’m rarely wrong.” –Jonathan Rogers, Ph.D. “Eric Peters doesn’t write songs as much as he opens up a vein and bleeds them. That’s why his songs feel more like a transfusion than anything else.  His music is most meaningful, I think, to others who have lost some blood of their own. To them his songs are life giving and saving. Not to belabor the metaphor, but I think we live in a culture that by and large refuses to bleed or otherwise enter the gift of our pain. But the slow death of denial keeps us from finding our hearts and ultimately from truly coming alive.  Into this world, then, comes the gift of Eric Peters’ music that wounds while it heals. Eric’s audience is likely to always be that brave but small group of people who aren’t afraid of the sight of blood because they recognize it as the life-giving force that it is. It often falls upon the living to care for the dying. Most of the hymns of our pop culture are broken anthems to self-indulgence and escapism that lead to a literal dead end. In a culture that sends Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’ to the top of the charts, the humanity of Eric Peters’ ‘Chrome’ is especially meaningful. The more I hear Eric’s music, the more aware I am of how generous he is, always giving away every bit of hope for the journey as he finds it. I’m grateful to be able to give back and help make space in the world for songs that bleed life, truth, hope, and beauty.” –Jason Gray Support Eric’s new project here.

When one of the kids is sick, or Amy is worn out, or the Goodgames just need a quiet Sunday morning at home, my family opens up The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones for “home church.” We read a chapter or two, mix in some singing, prayer, and bible reading, and it’s our kids’ favorite kind of worship time. Granted, the whole “service” only lasts around 30 minutes, which has its appeal across generations, but the kiddos really look forward to the JSB. Every time, my eight-year-old son asks if we can read “one more chapter?” and often we do. So naturally, when I heard Sally read from Song of the Stars (her new Christmas storybook) in Nashville last month, I knew my family would love it. I’m so thankful for Sally Lloyd-Jones and her commitment to bringing real craftsmanship to books for children. Here’s my review from the Slugs & Bugs blog. Clearly, Sally Lloyd-Jones has a way with words. Her award-winning best-seller The Jesus Storybook Bible brought depth and artistry to tiny Sunday school chairs around the world, and even transformed the way the gospel is taught to pastors in places like Uganda, Guinea, Senegal and Cameroon. This year Lloyd-Jones published a children’s book focused on the centerpiece of the human story: the Nativity.  And with Song of the Stars, Lloyd-Jones again blesses families like mine with her uncanny gift for powerful, beautiful simplicity. Her Christmas story begins: The world was about to change forever And it almost went by unnoticed… But the leaves, that night, rustled with a rumor. News rang out across the open fields A song drifted over the hills. Song of the Stars supposes that all of creation inhaled with anticipation as the Christ-child entered the world. The wind whispers, whales sing, sandpipers dance, and wild stallions drum their hooves, all to proclaim the coming of the King. The refrain “It’s time! It’s time!” resounds from forest to ocean to meadow while providing a delicious two-syllable repeating phrase for listening children to taste for themselves. And beneath the prose, Alison Jay’s paintings leap off the page. With smart use of perspective and detail, Jay paints scenes that are both intimate and sweeping within the span of your lap. Song of the Stars bursts with imagination and playful reverence. A great white whale sings to a starfish. Baby Jesus rests in the manger surrounded by adoring beasts. I could feel the author’s love for the little ones who’s eyes will fill with wonder as the pages turn, while we parents read and wonder ourselves at this greatest gift of God. The Savior of the world arrived as a baby . . . maybe we were the last to know. I’ve been a dad for eleven years now, and I’m so thankful we get to add Song of the Stars to our collection of Christmas books. The other night our oldest (my daughter) was reading it to her two younger brothers, and they were hanging on every word. Song of the Stars is available in the Rabbit Room store.

[Editor’s Note: Earlier this year we selected two reader-submitted essays and read them to the assembled masses at Hutchmoot. We got a lot of great submissions and this was one of our favorites. Thanks to Alyssa for letting us read it. Keep up the good work! -Pete] Two trees stood side by side, and both were doomed. Around them, trees had been falling for hours. I watched out of the kitchen window as each sassafras giant plunged out of sight behind our privacy fence. With every mighty crash, I felt the ground shake. Now just two remained, waiting amidst the rubble of their generation, exposed and without hope. The trees were dead already. Rooted in the neighboring yard, their rotting skeletons had been dropping limbs onto our lawn for two years. One even broke our bedroom window during a storm. The trees were no longer a shelter, but a danger. They had to go. But these last two were tricky. One leaned toward our house, hunched with the heaviness of its fruitful days. A guide rope would have to steer it to the ground to avoid damaging our property. The straighter tree, itself hollowed and weak, would have to bear the weight of its stooped companion. The strength it had possessed in life would be called upon even in death. A workman first tried to climb up and remove some high branches. But the trees gave no foothold. They were so far gone that each limb he tested broke under his foot. He finally had to shimmy up between the trunks like a kid climbing the inside of a doorframe. At last he found a perch and sawed off some upper limbs. Then he tethered the trees together, the weaker to the stronger, and bound them up in a shared end. *** Two little ladies lay in their nursing home beds. Miss Frances, with her long braided pigtails, and my mamaw, her new roommate. Both were widows, and both had laid a child in the grave. Together they brought nearly two centuries of life into one small, curtain-divided room. Miss Frances couldn’t hear. If you had a conversation with her, the whole hall would know it. But she had a hearty spirit and a sharp mind. She had decorated her walls with stick-on dragonflies and flowers. A photo on a bulletin board showed her smiling with her former roommate. They had been good friends, but now only Miss Frances remained. She was eager to spend her days in Mamaw’s company. “Do you know the song ‘How Beautiful Heaven Must Be’?” she asked, and Mamaw said she did. Off they went, cutting through a million cloudy memories, singing every verse of a hymn learned in years long past. My dad visited Mamaw most every day, and he grew fond of Miss Frances as the weeks passed. He started bringing treats for both of them. When he showed up with a chocolate milkshake, Miss Frances swore she’d never had one before. She wasn’t big on sweets, but she decided the milkshake was quite tolerable. I’m not sure how they communicated during that month together – Miss Frances with her failing ears, and Mamaw with her soft voice. Perhaps they just shared the silence, glad for the warmth of each other’s presence across the room. My mamaw’s mind faltered as she neared the end, and she quickly declined. But Miss Frances wrestled for her in prayer. With my dad there, she once launched into a fervent petition before the Lord. Even if Mamaw didn’t understand it, my dad’s heart was cheered. Mamaw grew weaker until her days were spent mostly in sleep. When family members came to visit, Miss Frances was their company. She would sit up and swing her feet off the side of her bed, ready for a chat. Her words came with warmth and eagerness, but she never forced words upon an agreeable silence. Her cheery disposition was medicine for each aching heart who watched my mamaw fade away. I wondered if Miss Frances ever felt that she had outlived her usefulness. The nursing home is filled with people just biding their time, wondering why they’re still on the earth. Many are forgotten. They need help with even the most basic functions. What purpose could their existence possibly serve? *** The workman slid down the tree trunk and disappeared behind the fence. A stillness followed. It occurred to me that my landscape was about to change forever. At last I heard the sounds of the felling – the sounds that all day had preceded a deafening crash. The leaning tree began to quiver, too broken to stand any longer. But it did not fall. Instead, cradled by the last strength of its sister, it gently lay down to rest.

We’ve been busy little elves here in the Rabbit Room office this fall. Last week we announced Russ Ramsey’s Behold the Lamb of God book and this week we’re really excited to be able to announce another new book: The Cymbal Crashing Clouds by Ben Shive and Benji Anderson. Ben’s The Cymbal Crashing Clouds album is amazing on roughly thirty-seven different levels, and this book raises it to just about an even forty. It’s a companion to the album—but what the heck does that mean? It means eighty pages of great stuff like poetry, behind-the-music-style essays, and incredible Shel-Silverstein-meets-Pink-Floyd artwork by wunderkind Benji Anderson. Two entire songs from the album are given what can only be described as “the graphic novel treatment” with full spreads of artwork illustrating the lyrics as only Benji can. The bottom line is that it’s a hard book to describe because we’ve never seen anything quite like it—and that, of course, is why we at Rabbit Room Press love it. Printed in hardcover and guaranteed to make you wonder “Who or what is that owl-boy?” this book is unlike anything else on your shelf. Get one while they last. The Cymbal Crashing Clouds is now open for pre-orders. Books ship on the week of November 22nd. Here are a couple of full spreads, one from the first page of the song “Listen,” and one from the song “Someone Is Asking.”

There’s a scene near the beginning of the great film, Walk the Line, where a very young Johnny Cash is talking with his older brother Jack, who plans to become a preacher when he grows up. Johnny is lamenting that he doesn’t know the Scripture stories very well, but his brother points out that he knows their mother’s hymnal by heart. Johnny’s brother goes on: Look, J.R., if I’m going to be a preacher one day, I gotta know the Bible front to back. I mean, you can’t help nobody if you can’t tell them the right story. Indeed. I recall very well a weekend, years ago, that I was able to spend with 70+ college students at a local IVCF’s annual chapter retreat. I was invited to be the speaker. It turned out that a young Muslim man, at student at the college, had been invited by one of his friends from IVCF, and by the middle of the second day, he wanted to talk to me about his search for God. After a bit of discussion, he laid it out for me. “I need some kind of proof,” he said. Proof? Oh, well I can give that; I’ve got “evidence that demands a verdict”! But as I began to talk about the reliability of the New Testament documents, I watched his eyes begin to glaze over. This young man was hurting badly. If he received Jesus, he’d be an outcast from his family. He needed to know Jesus was the real deal. He most certainly did not need an intellectual, systematic defense of the Christian faith. We chatted for a few more moments, I can’t even remember what about, and then we parted. I prayed. I had no idea what to say to this young, conflicted man. Finally, Sunday morning, as we were packing our cars to leave, I found him one last time. I said: “Listen, I understand that you are searching for God. I wanted to share something with you quickly before we leave. It’s something my dad said at his baptism. My dad spent a long time searching all sorts of religions, looking for God. At his baptism, he said this: ‘I spent a lot of time looking for God. But when it came right down to it, I didn’t find God; He found me.’” His eyes widened. “That means a lot. Thank you for that.” He was genuine and appreciative. It was just a story, but it was exactly what he needed to hear at the time. I told him about a God who does not simply wait to be found, but actively seeks. As much as I disagree with Brian McLaren on many things, he is spot on when it comes to this matter: If you ask me about the gospel, I’ll tell you, as well as I can, the story of Jesus, the story leading up to Jesus, the story of what Jesus said and did, the story of what happened as a result, of what has been happening more recently, today even.[“The Method, the Message, and the Ongoing Story”, in The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives ed. By Leonard Sweet (Grand Rapid: Zondervan, 2003) 214] This is what makes Walk the Line such a great movie. It tells a brutally honest story of a terribly weak man whose only redemption was to be found in Christ. There was no doubt about it: Johnny Cash was a sinner, no hiding it. We are sinners as well, but we hide it better. And too often we hide behind our clever theology. If we’ve got our doctrine of sin and salvation down, but we can’t genuinely connect those truths to our own very real, very complicated stories, we might just be using theology as a hiding place. So I’m going to explore “Christian Storytelling” over a series of coming posts. We’ll be looking at how we understand the story of God and humanity, and how our personal stories are part of the greater story.

Surely one of the great wrongs in the entirety of the music industry is that Jill Phillips is not a household name. This is a heinous crime against the arts. It will not stand. It must be rectified. Together, my wife, Danielle, and I will inflict correction upon the world. Wonder Twin powers, activate! Eric Peters: Jill, your new album, In This Hour, releases 11/8/11. This album’s initial recording and release were delayed by the May 2010 flooding in Nashville. Would you mind commenting on that, the damage to your home, and perhaps your emotional or psychological, even professional, reaction to that and to any ensuing events? Jill Phillips: Thankfully, we were not affected as severely as many of our neighbors. There is a street right next to us that is completely evacuated and all the houses are being bought out by FEMA. Our damage was minimal and the water only filled the basement, not the main level of the house. Still, the time, money and a canceled show or two to take care of it all ended up depleting much of what we had saved for my record. We were also exhausted for a while and I was in no place to make a record. All of this was the catalyst for trying to fund the record through Kickstarter, which ended up being a big part of the story. EP: I’ve noticed an increasing vulnerability in your work in the past couple of albums in which you seem to be delving into subjects, places, and emotions that perhaps you haven’t wanted to go previously. Has that been a conscious decision on your part, or a natural progression? JP: I am a very private person by nature, even though I can be chatty on occasion. The mix of my personality and having begun my career at a young age with a Christian record label shaped the way I wrote for a while. I am proud of many of those early songs and still play quite a few, but I was in a different headspace when I wrote them. I was thinking about radio and sales and trying to please everyone, and that can cripple you when it comes to being honest in your writing.  I should say that I think it’s possible to write honestly and find commercial success, but I think it takes a lot of fight. I probably cared too much about what everyone thought, and having some of those obstacles removed has felt like a weight lifted. The older I get and the more loyal and supportive the audience is, the less I have to fear, and that is always a good thing in art. Maybe part of it is just growing up, getting older, feeling more comfortable in my skin. Danielle Peters:  The nature of several of these songs is very personal to you. Do you write in the midst of your experiences or do they come together after you’ve had time to process? JP: I think I probably lean toward processing more, then writing. Maybe writing is part of the processing too. The song about my father came eight years after his death. At a recent show, I was singing “Grand Design,” which was written right before his death, and I lost it on stage. I completely fell apart and it really took me by surprise. That’s when I knew I was in a different place with that song and I needed to write another one for where I was now, eight years later. Something had obviously been changing in me all that time and it finally came out in a song. EP: Many artists bristle at this question, but I wonder if you had a central theme in mind during the writing and recording of In This Hour? JP: Bristle, bristle. Just kidding. I often have central themes when I’m making a record. I wanted to focus the microscope in a little bit more this time and write some very specific, personal songs. I wrote a song for a close friend, a song about my father, a song for a family member struggling with addiction. I believe specificity often translates better than generality–I’ve come to believe that in recent years, anyway. I was also profoundly impacted by a conference I attended at Laity Lodge with Eugene Peterson, Dr. Albert Borgmann, Pierce Pettis, and other leaders from across the country discussing the implications of faith and technology. As a semi-working mom of three kids, I feel the effects of our frenetically paced society, and I want to live more simply. I don’t want to open my computer and nearly cry because I have more e-mails than I can possibly answer, more tasks to accomplish than I can physically perform in one day. How do we navigate these things responsibly yet without a posture of fear? I am really interested in that question; several of the songs on this record were written after that conference. EP: Who or what inspires you on an average day? JP: I’m really inspired by being a part of my community. I like knowing the parents at my kids’ school, going to basketball practices, seeing friends from church, having people over for dinner. I like showing up at Baja Burrito for lunch and seeing you, Andy Osenga, Jeremy Casella, and Randy Goodgame. These small daily routines are life-giving to me. I need people in my life and I want to know them and be known in return. Two of the hobbies that bring me joy are cooking and running. I feel very alive and at peace when I am doing those two things. I also love to play good music around the house. Now that it’s fall I have David Mead’s “Almost and Always” record on repeat as I cook and clean, and it reminds me that everyday life is rich and beautiful. EP: Do you like bowling? JP: Ha! My husband is at his weekly bowling lunch right now. I can’t say I love it but I do enjoy going from time to time as a family. We just got back from the Northeast and we all went candlepin bowling. I have to admit, it was one of the highlights of the trip. I don’t like bad smells, so most of my resistance is in knowing I will smell like a bowling alley the rest of the day. EP: You obviously value strong melody. Your songs seem to hinge upon thoroughly catchy, fluent melodies and hooks that burrow deep into the listener’s brain for days and weeks on end. If you were forced to choose between one or the other for the rest of your life (thankfully, you don’t), would you choose to write only great melodies (with unmemorable lyrics) or only great lyrics (with a forgettable melody)? JP: I’m a melody kind of girl. That’s one of the reasons I love your music so much, Eric. You have that killer combo of catchy melodies and thoughtful lyrics which is perfection in my mind. I don’t know if I could choose melody over lyrics because at the end of the day I want my songs to be about something meaningful, but the songs I like have both. I don’t know if my songs accomplish that, but that’s definitely the direction I want to be headed. Andy played me some songs the other day by a new guy everyone is raving about and the words were fantastic but the melody was a bit monotone. I just couldn’t get into it. We each have our bent and what speaks to us, I just happen to love great pop songs with insightful lyrics. EP: Aside from the always-welcome presence of your husband and fellow artist Andy Gullahorn, you inexplicably asked me to contribute on a song, and you had a few new guest voices contribute to In This Hour, namely David Mead and Matthew Perryman Jones, two superb songwriters and singers in their own rights. Would you mind talking about how their involvement came about? This is your second album with producer Cason Cooley. Could you share a bit about that decision (if there was any debate in your mind) and how he came to be involved in your work? JP: Yes, I did branch out a bit with this record. The truth is that I don’t know how to make a record without Andy Gullahorn. He will be a constant presence as long as I make music because we are growing up together in marriage and in music and he knows instinctually what I am trying to accomplish. His playing and singing on the record is always just what the song needs and he comes up with the best ideas. I did feel the need, however, to bring some new faces into the mix. I had this mid-tempo, jangly melodic song that I just could not finish and I immediately knew I wanted you to help me. I wrote the song about my father with Randall Goodgame who was equal parts co-writer and counselor. I wanted you to sing with me on the song we wrote together and Randy played some piano on the song he co-wrote. It was so nice to be able to work with you guys because I love your music and our families live life together. You both knew what I wanted to say and where I was coming from. My producer, Cason Cooley, was also working with Matthew Perryman Jones while he was working on my record. They are old friends and Matthew stopped by the studio one day while we were working. Matthew has one of those voices that exudes passion and empathy and I asked him to sing with me on “I Didn’t Know That I Knew.” He knocked it out of the park. As you know, I am a huge fan of David Mead’s music. I can’t think of a voice I love more, and his records are at the top of my all time favorites list. We had met briefly through a mutual friend and I asked this friend if he thought David would be willing to sing on my record. I really didn’t know what to expect, but he graciously accepted. Cason and I kept looking at each other in the control room while he was singing and tried not to freak out. He was that good. I was most impressed with his humility and his desire to keep working, when we were more than satisfied, because he had more ideas or thought he could improve what he had done. His background parts are some of my favorite things on the whole record. I wanted to work with Cason again because our experience making The Good Things was so wonderful. I thought that record signified a shift for me and I wanted to keep on that trajectory. Cason is a fun person to be around and he’s incredibly passionate about making records. He has the technical expertise required to know the right gear, the right sounds, the right engineer, the right players, etc. for what I am trying to do. He’s also a musician and he cares about the songs, the performances, and the overall feel. His philosophy lines up with what I want for my records. Some producers are all about the feel, some are all about the gear and the technical side, and he is both. I am so thankful to have had an opportunity to work with him again. EP: You’ve called Nashville home for seventeen years now. Knowing that so few musician/artists living and working in Nashville are actually native to the city, do you and Andy (Gullahorn) ever feel a pull back to your respective homelands? Reflecting on your own personal roots, are there one or two things you miss most about your native Chesapeake, Virginia? JP:  Yes, I do. Nashville feels like home, but I don’t feel like a Tennessean if that makes any sense. When I go to Virginia and North Carolina to visit my relatives I realize that I’ve been shaped by those places. I love the history, the architecture, the trees, the water, the seafood. My mom grew up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and we go there at least once a year as a family. It’s a spiritual experience for me because I’ve been going there since I was a child. My grandfather bought the land when it was worth nothing and he dredged the inlets with a dredge he built himself. My dad is buried in my hometown in Virginia and my mom still attends the church I grew up in. Andy and I were married there, my father’s funeral was there, and the people have known me all my life. The pull is much more than the place itself. It’s the shared history and the memories. EP: Would you care to explain why yours is the music of choice in the Peters family car? Also, would you please explain to my five-year-old that he is emotionally, psychologically, and legally obligated, at least on occasion, to choose his father’s music instead? JP: My kids always want to hear your music, so how about that? I’m not going to do anything to discourage Ellis Peters from liking me, because that child is an absolute doll. I want him to grow up and manage my career. EP: When people write about the artist Jill Phillips in the year 2645–the very same year that cutting edge technology makes possible the $10.00 digital withdrawal from computerized bank implants in our foreheads–are there one or two things in particular you hope to be known and remembered for? JP: Our pastor, the infamous Thomas McKenzie, taught a wonderful sermon about this not long ago. He talked about how most of us won’t be remembered for long after our lifetime, very few of us for more than one or two lifetimes after we are gone. I am really fine with that. I don’t think anyone is going to remember me in 2645–I’m not the Beatles for crying out loud! I just want to, in the words of Sara Groves, add to the beauty. I want my life to matter while I am here and to love the people around me well. At the end of the day it’s not about me, it is about the One I am following. This gives me a lot of peace and it keeps me from stressing about my footprint in this world. The small day-to-day stuff matters. The first song on my record called “Show Up” deals with this as well. Rich Mullins always said that if you are trying to leave a legacy you will end up leaving a legacy of ambition. I want love to be the theme of my life. DP: It seems like there are a couple of songs that are charges to the Church. Do you feel compelled to write to any one particular group, perhaps specifically within the Church? JP: I have gotten to a place where I don’t really think about writing to a specific group of people. I think that is part of the freedom I mentioned earlier. I wanted to write a group of songs that were personal and honest and I hoped they would resonate with someone else. I can honestly say I didn’t have a target group in mind. Most of the songs, if they are charges, are charges to me. EP: The world is a better, more beautiful place with your music filling its halls. We readers and fans consider it an honor to call earth “home” at the same time as you. Thank you for continuing to create, for putting yourself forward, for being brave in that respect, and for loving your kids and hubby. Now, barring any political backlash, are there any questions I have failed to ask? Anything you’d like to say or add before we conclude and readers finally realize how utterly terrible an interviewer I am? JP: These are such incredibly thoughtful questions. You just need to set them to a catchy tune! Thanks to both of you for being a part of this record and for your friendship. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone for your support of this record. EP: World at large, consider yourself corrected. Before we have to open another can of Wonder Twin powers on you, go buy Jill Phillips’ brand new, wonderful album In This Hour. Now. Show Up by Jill Phillips In This Hour is available for pre-order in the Rabbit Room store. [audio:ShowUp.mp3]

Our favorite family ice cream stop is the Pied Piper Creamery. Tucked away in Berry Hill, one of Nashville’s quirky business districts, the PPC expanded from the original that has blessed East Nashville for years. With flavors like Baklava, Pancakes, Halepeño, or Red Velvet Elvis, we always taste four or five before deciding which to order. Last week was fall break for the kids, so we made an afternoon run to the PPC for what is probably our last ice cream outing of 2011 (I got two scoops: Baklava and Mocha). On our way home the sun hovered bright and low over south Nashville’s hilly spine, and from the back of the minivan my ten-year-old daughter said: “Hmmmm, what a beautiful sunset on a cloudless sky.” To which my eight-year-old son proclaimed with gusto: “The perfect time to watch a horror movie!” I’m laughing now, even as I type it–it was so incomprehensible. Then my daughter asked: “What’s that about?” We were all wondering. This is part of the magic of children. Though they see differently, they see clearly. In fact, you could argue that they are sharper and more aware than we old-timers at five, or six, or seven times their age. Where our minds are cluttered with habits, fears, plans, and presumptions, they are blessedly unencumbered by life experience. That’s why finding your “inner child” is not a quaint notion to simply disregard. It sounds hokey, but I re-learn how to live when I listen to my kids. They have things I lack. They are more honest, more transparent, more spontaneous, and more needy than I allow myself to be. So, what was Jonah talking about? Why was that the perfect time to watch a horror movie? Here’s what he said: “Because it is so beautiful outside that you wouldn’t be scared.” When he’s 16, do you think he’ll still acknowledge his fears with such careless ease? What about when he’s my age, or yours? When you spend time with children, whether they are yours or not, look for ways that you aren’t like them. They are our model for the charge Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 18: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

[Editor’s Note: Lanier Ivester wasn’t able to make it to Hutchmoot this year, but while we were convening in Nashville, she stopped by the original Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford, England where she sat down in the Inklings’ Rabbit Room and wrote this post. We read it aloud during “The Telling of Tales” at Hutchmoot.] Oxford is a golden city. The yellow Cotswold limestone from which it was raised seems to have drawn into itself the warmth and light of all the sunny days it has ever known, so that even in the rain it glows like a watercolor of Turner’s. But in the last rays of a vanishing day it awakens to a radiance so aureate it will literally take the breath away, if not the heart along with it, while a crystalline fire kindles in every leaded pane and the cobbled streets, emptied of tourists for the day, grow quiet and begin to remember their past. Poets and martyrs, theologians, painters, and storytellers have all haunted these edifices for centuries, and the time-blackened passages between them are crowded with invisible shrines and unofficial monuments to greatness. The first time I came here I was twenty-three years old and star-struck with literary hero worship. I wanted to see where a tongue-tied Charles Dodgson spun tales of Wonderland to a little girl named Alice, and I longed for a glimpse of the brown River Isis where Kenneth Graham had spent his school days messing about in boats. I gaped, agog, at Matthew Arnold’s “dreaming spires” from the top of St. Mary the Virgin and I knelt upon timeworn benches for evensong in the chapel of Tolkien’s Exeter. I even snuck into a lecture at All Soul’s—but that’s another story, and college porters tell no tales. More than anything, though, I wanted to find C.S. Lewis. I wanted to walk the cloisters of Magdalen where he must have sauntered thousands of times, his hands tucked contemplatively behind his billowing black robe or gesticulating in lively debate with another don. I wanted to see his favorite path along the Cher, bordering the deer park, where he loved to stroll and think his long, lovely thoughts. Most of all, I wanted to visit The Eagle and Child, the pub on St. Giles enshrined in the hearts of all Lewisites and Tolkies as the meeting place of the Inklings. “They called it The Bird and Baby,” my friend told me, who was a student at Oxford and self-appointed tour guide for the week. “And they met here every Tuesday night during term.” He pointed out The Room as we came in, flattening ourselves against the ancient oak paneling to make way for other patrons going out. I didn’t know then that it was the Rabbit Room, or what that would mean to me in future days. And it was so crowded with locals vying for a spot near the little hearth on that January night, that I barely caught more than a glimpse of the brass plaque on the wall proclaiming its illustrious heritage. But it was enough. I was there, where titans had been. Surely their influence lingered, a bequest to the unlost wanderers who came here seeking they hardly knew what. Heavens! There might even be a portal to a place we had never been but were all homesick for. We five ambled to a table near the middle of the pub, where we promptly instated ourselves, intent on soaking up the atmosphere with a thoroughness that would have satisfied Miss Eleanor Lavish’s most exacting standards for immersion. One of the guys whipped out a pack of cards and a game of Hearts commenced which lasted so long a bartender eventually came over to our table and asked us to leave. Evidently our one round of Coke was not sufficient inducement to prefer our patronage to that of the thronging customers who were standing about, drinks in hand. So, I guess I can say, among other peculiarities of my life, I have been thrown out of The Eagle and Child. But not before another long look at the Rabbit Room, and a certain photograph in particular hanging over the hearth of a portly gentleman with a penetrating gaze. What was it about Lewis that prompted such a pilgrimage? I had been pursuing beloved authors all over Great Britain in the weeks previous, from Wordsworth’s Windermere to Bronte’s moors. I had traveled by ferry to the tiny island of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides to trace the miraculous spread of my faith, and I’d had an opportunity to worship at the lively and dynamic Holy Trinity in London. But—I was almost ashamed to admit it—nothing had moved me to quite such an intensity as this crowded pub on a winter’s night. The magic was so palpable I could almost touch it. Lewis’s writings had both validated my longings and touched a blaze to them. Where well-meaning others had offered me my faith as a morality play, he had given me a fairy tale. And I had seen, with that unmistakable stab of confronted reality, that I was in it. Perils and imponderables and impossible joys: these were my lot as a child of God, and Lewis had shone an ancient lamp upon my birthright. I wanted to verbalize my gratitude, here of all places, but the words at my command were inadequate. Fortunately for me, I was in company with those who understood. We had smiled, and clinked our Cokes. And known. Ten years later, it happened again. Only I was at home in the States, staring at a computer screen, alone at my own desk. And yet, not alone, as the vigorous virtual community I had just stumbled upon was so insistent to avow. Not alone. Was that not, perhaps, Lewis’ greatest gift: the assurance that God had entrusted the same visions to other souls; that this was no solitary pilgrimage through enemy territory, but an intentional campaign of an organized host? It was as if for years I had been huddling over my own little blaze of artistic hope, endeavoring to keep it alight, only to look up and realize that the hillsides all around me were dotted with bonfires and beacons. A cloud of flaming witnesses. A fellowship. What I had stumbled upon, of course, was a gathering of God’s artists who were compassionate enough to allow their hearts to be broken over this world’s sorrow and brave enough to believe in beauty, truth and goodness in the face of it all. They, like Lewis himself, were saying things I had always known but hadn’t known I’d known. In short, They were telling the Truth, and they were telling it in a way that was alive. These people not only believed in fairyland–they knew it was Home. Last summer this community took on flesh. I still remember how nervous I was, walking into the Church of the Redeemer, clutching Philip’s hand and feeling like something stupid was just on the tip of my tongue. It was, of course. I immediately mistook Pete for Andrew and called Evie “Ee-vee.” But it wasn’t five minutes into that invocation of Andrew’s that my mind was drawn blessedly away from myself and my silly inadequacies and swept up into the remarkable story that was telling itself all around me. And just as in the very best stories, I was an indispensable part of it, ludicrous as it might seem at first glance. An unlikely heroine, in a room full of people who felt exactly as I did. The friendships inaugurated that weekend had an air of Kingdom freshness about them and a sympathy as of long years’ duration. This was the real Rabbit Room, embodied in a living conviction that there was a meaning in joy, even at its most inexpressible and fleeting and a reason for hope, even when the world seemed crumbling to tragedy all around us. And that any effort to contribute to the great undergirding conspiracy of goodness by creative human effort had its resounding affirmation in the heavenlies. I had a striking realization in the middle of Jennifer and Pete’s wedding not a month before, so thunderingly obvious it nearly bowled me over right there in the pew. It was during Russ’s reading of the Gospel, the centerpiece of an Anglican service, and as the holy words filled the room a holy awareness settled itself in my heart. This was it: The Gospel was what it’s all about. It was the hilarity behind all these kindred connections in the Rabbit Room; the essence of all the “what, you, too?” moments at Hutchmoot last year. It was the author and end of all these artistic ambitions and it was the immaculate original of the deathless vows that were being taken before our eyes that August afternoon. In the way that only the most stupendous things can do, the truth overwhelmed me with its titanic presence, like the giant sustaining Jennifer’s Mount Majestic. We Rabbit Roomers are not just lovers of Lewis and Tolkien; we love who they loved. We’re not out to solve the mysteries of the universe, but to celebrate them. Philip and I are here in Oxford, but our hearts will be in Nashville this weekend, with a curious and courageous band of artistic adventurers, gathered not merely to share their stories, but to tell each other the Gospel in a thousand unique ways. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and give you peace.

In her keynote address at Hutchmoot a few weeks ago, Sally Lloyd-Jones told the harrowing story of a time she was left alone with a roomful of elementary-aged Sunday schoolers. The teacher stepped out of the room while Sally read the story of Daniel in the lions’ den from her wonderful Jesus Storybook Bible. The kids were loving it. They were bright-eyed, alert, engaged. But when Sally got to the end of the story, the teacher hadn’t returned. It was just Sally and the Sunday schoolers. Expectant faces. Awkward silence. Sally glanced toward the door. No sign of the teacher. She panicked. “So, children…” she began, forcing a smile. “What lesson can we learn from this story?” The children, so willing and eager a few moments earlier, slumped in their chairs, as sullen as washed cats. Sally knew better. Of course she knew better. She wrote The Jesus Storybook Bible, for crying out loud. She only did what you or I would have probably done in the same stressful circumstances. When it comes to communicating truth to children, our default tends to be moralizing and lesson-mongering, especially when we don’t have the time or energy to put more thought into it. One of the things I love about Slugs & Bugs Under Where? is the fact that Randall Goodgame so skillfully steers clear of moralizing while still speaking some big truths to his young listeners. There are songs on Under Where? that are just a ton of fun. “Mexican Rhapsody,” a rock opera piece about Mexican food, contains the following lines: What does pico de gallo mean? Beak of the rooster. Beak of the rooster. Sounds kind of pointy. I don’t want to eat that. These lines, by the way, are sung with a bombastic mock-seriousness that is reminiscent of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The song “Food” declares, I won’t eat a taxi or a mannequin hand. I won’t eat chicken feathers. Just food, food, only food for me. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in this album. There’s also a lot of this kind of stuff: I’m very, very capable of anger. Just try and take my candy bar away. I’m very, very capable of selfishness, When I only play what I want to play. Usually I’m very sorry later, But eventually it happens again. If this sounds like you and you’re so confused, I’ve got good news, my friend. Just tell it to Jesus, he already knows. Tell it to Jesus, before it grows. We all mess up, it’s sad but true. But that’s what human beings do. So tell it to Jesus, cause he loves you. That’s from “Tell It To Jesus.” It’s hard to imagine a clearer, more concise, or more compassionate statement of the gospel for young listeners. Or consider “I’m Adopted,” which deserves to be an anthem for adoptive families everywhere. I was born into a story full of twists and turns even the scary kind, and that’s the truth Yeah that was my beginning, but just turn the page And there you’ll find, in chapter two How love had a plan for me And a great big family I’m adopted, I’m adopted It’s the New Testament doctrine of adoption, placed in the context of family adoptions that kids see all the time. This isn’t exactly lightweight theology. All three Slugs & Bugs records speak to kids on their level without speaking down to kids. To put it another way, they’re more concerned with the way kids think than with the way kids ought to think. In “Under Where?,” Randall and Andrew Peterson (wearing Bubba teeth, I’m pretty sure) get all the way down to the level of the youngest listeners–maybe even lower–with an old joke. (“Have you looked under there?” “Under where?” Get it? Underwear?) That’s one way of getting down to a child’s level. Another way is to speak of truths that are shallow enough for a child to wade in and deep enough for an elephant to swim in. “God makes messy things beautiful,” or “God made you special, and he loves you very much” (that last was originally written for Veggietales). Katy Bowser of Coal Train Railroad speaks of “inviting children into the conversation” with her music. I love that. And I think it’s a great way to talk about what Randall is doing with Slugs & Bugs. Besides inviting children into the conversation about faith, it invites them into some interesting musical conversations too. This is good, complex music from many different genres: New Orleans horn jazz, western swing, arena rock, African music, Chinese music, even a little klezmer. A horn trio (Dennis Solee, Roger Bissell, and Kevin Smith) add all kinds of depth and color to many of the songs on this record. The musicians are top-drawer, including Buddy Green, Stuart Duncan, Jeff Taylor, Paul Eckberg, Andy Osenga, and Ben Shive. Ben co-produced the record with Randall, and his brilliance shines throughout. And Andrew Peterson, besides adding some great vocal harmonies, also did the cover illustration. There is a long tradition that treats story and song as a means of sneaking lessons past our children’s defenses. “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” according to Mary Poppins. Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld published a book called Deceptively Delicious, with recipes for spinach brownies and chocolate chip muffins with yellow squash and whatnot, whereby children unwittingly ingest vitamins while they eat dessert. That’s not what happens here. In the Slugs & Bugs world, the sugar is the medicine. It’s a world where delight carries the day, whether that’s the delight we experience in ninjas and lightning bugs and getting dizzy, or the delight that God experiences when he sees the children he loves so deeply. Slugs and Bugs reminds us that delight is intertwined with grace, coming and going. So, children, what lesson can we learn from Slugs & Bugs: Under Where? Simply this: the world where we live and move and have our being is a world full of delight. And also this: you, child, are a source of delight yourself. You are loved. Mexican Rhapsodyhttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/MexicanRhapsody.mp3 Slugs & Bugs Under Where? is now available in the Rabbit Room store.

When I do the dishes, I use way more water than my wife uses when she does them. This is because I am not as skilled as she is and I think that by an avalanche of water I may drown away my dish washing inadequacies. Of course, she doesn’t complain about the water. It occurs to me that the same is true in writing and communication in general. If we are unsure of ourselves, unskilled, we pile up the words. We believe we must say everything we think and so overcome any chance that we might have missed something. But so often less is, as they say, more. This has something to do with the idea of expression vs. communication. Artists sometimes get the high-minded, self-important notion that we’re a special breed of human, superior and sophisticated. We might believe the most important thing is “expressing ourselves.” But the artist under God understands she is a servant. She works, just like everyone else, to love and serve those who receive her work. She is like the farmer, the plumber, the pastor. She is concerned with communication (and communion), with connection, with service. It’s less important that she “express herself” in all the ways that can be self-indulgent, and more important that her work serve people. Not that it serves whatever they wish (as our market-driven, utilitarian society calls for), but like all true love, serves the person’s best. This is a vocation, not a cult. She is called, not enthroned. Of course, the beautiful thing is that often our calling is at the crossroads of what we feel burdened to express and the way the world needs to be loved and served. In fact, an important question to ask oneself when considering any calling, including that of an artist, is “Does the world need this?” Another couple of ways to say this: “Are people served by this in such a way that they are more fully what they are called to be?” “Does this work I feel called to contribute to human flourishing?” If it does, then God is probably really calling you to the work. (Other questions include “Am I good at it?” and, “Does anyone say I’m good at it besides my mom and people really motivated to please me?” and, “Can I do this while fulfilling the more clear callings in my life?” Such as, if I am a husband, am I fulfilling the clear command to provide for my family?) The self-indulgent artist, writer, communicator is all about expression and so may not be concerned with brevity, feeling it might limit her expression. The kind of writer I want to be can say less and so say more. I’m striving for an economy of words. It takes more time and more care to say more while saying less. Have you ever been in a conversation with some one who is just a never-ending Gatling gun of words? This person will wear you out. They have so much to say that, ironically, in the end you can’t remember any words except, “How might I escape?” I can be like that, at times. But I want to be otherwise. Others-wise. I want to say less. I want to serve with my words. I want to pass them out like a soccer mom passes out snacks at a game. And feel not a bit superior.

[Rebecca Reynolds (aka “Becca”) has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Her creativity has greatly affected my own in the past few months as we’ve been writing songs together. This post from her blog is typical of her depth of seeing and style –Ron Block] Four months ago, the hillsides tumbled green upon green. Valleys and rises were determined by a narrow spectrum of shadows and brights. More or less, the landscape was monotone, summer lazy, and supple. Confident maple leaves hung in all their twenty-something vigor, acquainted with hearty rain and heated winds, thinking they knew what there was to know. I remembered being that age, so I didn’t laugh. Instead, I was tender, because October visits us all. Yesterday, thrown handfuls of yellow leaves hung like stars against a navy green wood. Spots of light clung to branch with newfound brevity, sensing their weakening connection to familiarity. That which has nourished will release. In the glory of dying, in the flame of brilliance, each little golden body realized that it would pass through the womb of falling to the earth. I beheld contrast upon contrast. Each life manifest its individuality, because this is what happens in the season of death. The green has gone, the true has come. The covering of the corporate is no longer. Ochre grasses were painted willowy and bowing in their individual lines. There were tufts of silver grey, slices of red, bushes burning like a hearth. White seed pods cast their children upon hope of spring. Shrubs fussed over their holiday decorations, and fifteen stubborn trees held desperately to the last of their lime like thirty-nine-year-old women. Autumn awakens. Here, depth is defined by variation. Most of my life, I have walked among a summer’s faith where two-dimensional promises were made by a pleasant Western culture: “Jesus will perfect my marriage. Jesus will make my children wise, and strong, and moral. Jesus will help me obtain financial abundance. Jesus will make me confident, exegetically sound, and able to collect a little flock of admiring disciples. Jesus passes out health in twelve steps and truth in five points. I will walk manicured and full of my own right choices into a ripe old age of comfort.” Perhaps. Yet often we imply that the Jesus we worship would never allow us a season of uncertainty, or vulnerability, or war. We think he wants us to be fat, full of ourselves, and sure. We know belief tumbling in summergreen strength through valleys and heights, simple and monotone, making promises of happily ever earthly after. It is a breed of faith easy enough to manage among wealthy people expecting pleasant things. That is why the anomalies are so horrifying: sicknesses, disasters, misunderstandings, prisons of all sorts, Novembers in June. The story shouldn’t go this way, we think. Dyings are such a shock, for the Jesus we have loved is pleasant and easy, and we shop for him until we find him sold our way. A thousand times I have read the words, but who ever believes them without October skies grown low and grey? You have died. The old has gone. The new has come. The old shell must be sucked of its green juices and tumble down, resigned to the contrast. For there is another world, and it is often winter here when spring there rises. The veins of fallen leaves read like hymns, yellow-running, red, and holy. They are prophets of a new dimension. My life is gone. Behold what is left: Brilliance.

After my last post, I received quite the flurry of responses, most of them positive, some of them critical. Some people were quite offended, feeling that I had attacked their personal view of what worship is. What a massive subject—the definition of worship! It inspires tremendous passion. Most pastors would agree that nothing can tear a congregation apart faster than disagreements over worship styles. I’ve experienced the agony of worship wars too many times. I’d like to reiterate that the primary goal of my last blog was to encourage specifically those who are attempting to write modern hymns. I was not trying to pass judgement on contemporary worship choruses (though I have plenty to say on the subject), nor was I turning my nose up at simple choruses and worship songs. I have written and recorded plenty of both, and intend to do more in the future. The discussion prompted me to think about how the critical process has been instilled in me and has become vital to me as a song writer. I’ll start with a quote from one of my favorite authors of the last century, Flannery O’Connor. This quote is from one of her lectures to college students, aspiring writers: Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. I experienced a dramatic stifling as a musician when I was 21 years old. I flew out to the east coast to audition for graduate schools in piano performance. I had worked hard for several years and knew my pieces well. I was practicing Chopin Ballade #3 one night at the Juilliard School (a friend let me in), nervous about my audition at Stony Brook the next day. Suddenly I heard the same piece coming out of a practice room down the hall. The person playing was a fantastic pianist—technique to burn; gorgeous, mature tone; deep, thoughtful musicianship. I recognized instantly that at my very best, I would never be capable of playing Chopin as well as this person. Thoroughly intimidated, I walked down the hall and peeked into the practice room. Seated at the piano was a young girl, maybe 13 or 14 years old. The lesson for me was huge and devastating. In an instant, I became acutely and painfully aware of the limitations of my gifts as a pianist. I was not a world-class pianist (as I had secretly entertained in my mind). I was merely a good pianist—better than average, but by no means gifted enough to compete in the classical world I longed to be part of. I fell into a depression that lasted two years as I began to sort out more honestly what musical talents I had been given, and which talents I had not been given. I look back on the whole experience and recognize God’s hand of mercy on my life. It was also Providence that brought me a few years later as a young song writer to the classrooms of Elaine Rubenstein and Peter Morrison, two poets who taught writing workshops at Irvine Valley College in the late ’80s and through the ’90s. The workshop was, for me, at first, a fairly brutal weekly event. Each student wrote a poem within the framework of whatever we were studying that week—a catalogue poem, the Art of Tea, the Navajo creation story, a psalm, or a beatitude. At the following session, we read our poem aloud in front of the class. Critique was provided by the students and the teacher. You weren’t allowed to defend yourself or argue back—just to take it all in. I was often discouraged to realize that a week’s worth of writing had rendered perhaps only one keeper line, or worse, a rhythmless poem riddled with clichés and sentimentality. As I write these two stories down, I’m reminded of the important, sometimes predominant role negativity has played in the creation of my songs: so much stripping away, so much tearing apart before I can get to the heart of what I’m trying to communicate. There are songs I wrote years ago that I’m still proud of today. They caused me a lot of sweat and agony, struggling over single words for days or weeks, pacing up and down the length of our driveway at night, driving my wife nuts. And there are songs I wrote and recorded that I now find cringe-worthy. I would have been better off starting over from scratch, or filing them into the nearest paper shredder. All these years later, I still send most of what I write to Peter and Elaine for critique and guidance. They have keen eyes and ears, and they’re excellent teachers. They’re beautifully and eloquently honest. The process of getting to the heart of the matter still isn’t easy for me, but I’ve learned to welcome it.

[Editor’s note: This is a portion of Travis’s Hutchmoot session entitled The Shape of the Stories We Tell.] Since it’s October and Halloween is approaching, it’s a good time to talk about scary stories. “All stories are about the Fall,” said Tolkien. If this is true (it is), then one of the most important ways to shape our stories – or perhaps one of the most important shapes in our stories – is the use of the Gothic, or the grotesque, or simply put: horror. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown,” wrote H.P. Lovecraft, godfather of the modern horror story, in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” Fear and supernatural terror have been part of literature as long as story has been around. Lovecraft wrote, “Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races, and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings.” Lovecraft is interesting on this subject, because one of his most oft-used examples of this cosmic terror is distorted shapes. When the protagonist sails out to find Cthulhu, he finds his place of dwelling to be filled with shapes that he cannot even describe, that do not correspond to any of the shapes in our world, and that are terrifying. He describes “The Unnamed” in a story by that title: It was everywhere — a gelatin — a slime — yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. Why engage in this kind of terror? In a preface to a book called Letters from Hell, George MacDonald takes up the issue of Christian engagement with horror. I would not willingly be misunderstood: when I say the book is full of truth, I do not mean either truth of theory or truth in art, but something far deeper and higher – the realities of our relations to God and man and duty – all, in short, that belongs to the conscience. Prominent among these is the awful verity; that we make our fate in unmaking ourselves; that men, in defacing the image of God in themselves, construct for themselves a world of horror and dismay; that of the outer darkness our own deeds and character are the informing or inwardly creating cause; that if a man will not have God, he can never be rid of his weary and hateful self.[1] MacDonald argues that horror shows us the “awful truth” of dehumanization – what happens to human beings who stray from their created purposes. We see this kind of gothic imagery in our best monster stories: vampires, goblins, zombies, and werewolves are all humans or former humans. MacDonald argues that we should “make righteous use of the element of horror.”[2] Moreover, he gives a warning to those who oppose the use of horror in art: Let him who shuns the horrible as a thing in art unlawful, take heed that it be not a thing in fact by him cherished; that he neither plant or nourish that root of bitterness whose fruit must be horror – the doing of wrong to his neighbor; and least of all, if the indifference in the unlawful there be, that most unmanly of wrongs whose sole defence lies in the cowardly words: “Am I my sister’s keeper!”[3] In other words, when we fear the use of horror, we dismiss something of great value: an imaginative engagement with the consequences of rebellion against God. In fact, we become cowards ourselves, comfortable in our sin, committing the very evils we say we should not be reading in a story. When we throw out the horror genre altogether out of fear of Satanic influence, we give in to fear itself, become cowards, and lose a valuable conduit for truth. This is not to throw discernment out the window in our storytelling, but we err on the other side when we pharisaically rule out the genre altogether. Christ himself used grotesque elements in his stories. Gehenna, undying worms, a rich man in the torment of hell, murder, and life after death all play roles in Jesus’ stories. He had actual encounters with demons who drove people insane, caused them to throw themselves into fires, screeched and screamed, and the evangelists did not shy away from these stories when recounting Jesus’ life. In a world where horror is real, stories must contain monsters and demons. Evil should not be celebrated, but it should be portrayed in our art, music, and movies. Many horror films, especially those containing supernatural terror, belong to the symbolist tradition of storytelling. In other words, horror films belong in the fantasy fiction genre. They are fairy tales, in essence, because they use imaginative worlds and creatures to create a myth-like experience that conveys truth. So the Ring Wraiths of Middle Earth are gothic figures, monsters of horror that fit alongside zombies and vampires as symbols of dehumanization. Dr. Ann Blaisdell Tracy believes that “the Gothic world is above all the Fallen world, the projection of a post-lapsarian nightmare of fear and alienation.”[4] She wrote, …novels with Gothic overtones might best be identified not as those which contain some superficial trapping like a ruined monastery or the rumor of a ghost . . . but as those . . . which contain imagery or action pertinent to the Gothic/Fallen world., i.e. wandering, delusions, temptation.[5] Horror and Gothic stories, then, help us put symbols and images onto the many nameless and shapeless fears we experience in this Fallen world. They give us an imaginative context for thinking about what it means to live in a chaotic world that is not as it was created to be. [1] George MacDonald, Preface to Letters from Hell, Anonymous. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1887), Vi-vii. [2] MacDonald, viii. [3] MacDonald, ix. [4] Ann Blaisdell Tracy, Patterns of Fear in the Gothic Novel, 1790-1830 (Ayer Publishing, 1980), 313. [5] Tracy, 327.