First of all, what is the good news? What exactly is the Gospel? Is it that Jesus paid my sin debt so now I can go to Heaven? Well, Heaven is part of the Gospel trip, but there’s a lot more to what Christ accomplished. The Word of God says I died with Christ, the old me. It says I rose again as Jesus rose, as a new me. It says Christ lives in me, and the life I now live, I’m to live by the faith of the Son of God in me. These and many other identity truths form the beating heart of the Gospel of power, not merely forgiveness. That all sounds good, but how does it work out practically? It starts by agreeing with God, recognizing our identity as he states it. That’s the background. We have to know who we are; we have to ask God to show us the difference between soul and spirit, between how I feel and who I am. Relationship with God and deriving our sense of identity from who he is and what he says about us – these things are always primary. We’re to practice faithing in our identity, practice recognizing the continual presence of God. But let’s get down to brass tacks with a specific example. Let’s say someone hurts us; they say or do something that causes us inner anguish. We feel an inner reaction. Incidentally, anger is often just self-protection for the hurt we feel. We’ve got to accept our reaction, our feelings; in short, we’ve got to accept that we are human. Cut my hand and I bleed. Cut my soul, and anguish in some form gushes from the wound. Some people think Christians are supposed to live in this cherubic place where nothing ever bothers or tempts them. As nice as that would be, that’s not the case. We live in a fallen world. Our human minds are subject to temptation, to believing lies, to fear, and a host of other ills. An unkind word or action slices us. Sometimes in the initial soul-bloodletting it is optimal to get away fast. This depends largely on the size of the cut versus the size of our faith. The relevant question is always, “Who am I?” If we have been raised with Christ, died to sin, died to self-effort, and are now indwelt by the Creator of the Universe, is that Being more powerful than any hurt? What it comes down to is choosing the truth even when we don’t feel like doing it, or even when our feelings seem more valid and real than the Facts in the Word of God. Some questions to ask ourselves when hurt by another: Precisely just what am I hurt about? What about this hurts me? For instance, if some friends snub you, what precisely is the sting in that? For me it would be the sting of not-belonging, of feeling on the outside. For an analytical mind like mine there would be the extra added bonus feature of spending a lot of time wondering what exactly one had done to merit such treatment, coming up with a list of possibilities, mentally voting on which scenario is the most plausible, and then going over it all again and again, always coming up with different answers, spinning wheels in the mud, which is mostly just a fixer trying to figure out a way to fix a situation. Isaiah 50:10-11 says, “Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. Look, all you who kindle a fire, who encircle yourselves with sparks: Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled—This you shall have from My hand: You shall lie down in torment.” Ever spend the night there, in torment from a flame created by the sparks kindled by your own effort because you’re not trusting the Lord in the darkness, instead trying to see, trying to fix, trying to walk by the light of your own fire? But let’s move on and deal specifically with the feeling of being left out, of feeling on the outside. It is a feeling, not a Fact. I am not my feelings. I am much more than how I feel. I am on the inside, on the inner ring, with the Creator of the universe. He died for me, and caused me to die in him, and rise in him, as a new creation, so that I could take part as a co-operator in his kingdom. He has given me everything I need for life and godliness. He claims he is one spirit with me, that I live by the faith of Christ in me. In other words, my feelings come and go. But the Fact of me remains, the Fact of who I am, who God has made me, how his Spirit lives in me, making me into who I am meant to be. I am Spirit, clothed in a soul and body. Sometimes clothes get dirty and need to be washed. I think we need to treat ourselves like we would treat a little child, to hear our feelings and recognize them for what they are – feelings. Feel them. But then look underneath the feelings to see the “Why?” And then deal with the “Why?” So back to the snubbing. I feel shoved outside. I feel rejected. Am I outside? With so-and-so, maybe. With God? No way. I am in Christ. I’m on the inside with the most powerful King in the universe. How much more inside can I get? Am I rejected? By so-and-so, maybe. But not with God. God has accepted me in Christ, totally, completely, forever. Satan is attempting to trick me into getting my identity from people. Maybe he even tricked me for a little while. But I am going back to trusting God, right now. Once I basically re-cognize my identity in Christ I’m freed to recognize an essential fact in dealing with people: Since God is love, and God lives in me and claims he is one spirit with me, I am love for the other person by virtue of Christ living in me. In fact, in reality, I am not here for myself; I am here for them. Was Jesus rejected by men? Yes. Yet because he knew his oneness with the Father who is love, he despised the shame of it, and because of the joy set before him – you and I – he endured being tortured and executed, faithing that he would rise again. With that same Spirit in us, we can take it. In fact, to go even further, Jesus called Judas, “Friend.” He said that the coming torture and execution were “My Father’s cup.” It was an opportunity to manifest the life of the Father to the world, and by that life redeem the world. These situations of temptation are our opportunities to manifest the life of God to others. God is actually using that other person in our situation to fix us more firmly in the truth of our identity. “The devil is God’s devil,” said Martin Luther. Maybe that snubbing is just one more of God’s chess moves to get me off of thinking I need to be liked or esteemed. Maybe, also, he is giving me something valuable to say which will benefit someone else. That’s our model. That is how we take up our Cross and follow him. That’s how we “fill up the measure of his sufferings.” We’re to live by faith and not by the appearances of things. We’ve got a God who is working “all things after the counsel of his own will” and working “everything together for good to them that love God…” I used to think I had to wrestle my false self to the ground and “get victory.” But I am beginning to see that all I need to do is turn my attention to my real self in Christ. Turn on the lights, and darkness disappears. Where does it go? The darkness is still there potentially, waiting, if the lights go out. But it has to disappear if the lights are turned on; darkness has no choice in the matter. Which of course is why so comparatively few of us know our real identity in Christ; it’s the dark side’s game of hiding the light switch.

You can call me Jacob today, for I intend to wrestle with God. Sometimes, there is no other way to know him. Sometimes I must grip him with the hands of grief or I will not be able to grasp him at all. This fight has brooded long in my soul, this struggle has grown like a storm on my horizon, for I have had a year of confusion. This has been one of those seasons in which every thing I thought God gave me to do fell through. The doors I thought he opened slammed shut. The grace I thought he gave turned to grief. Today, after a week in which three specific, long-held prayers were flatly denied, I have come to my quiet time with fight in every atom of my soul. God seems to have fooled me and left me in a bitter cold and I want to know why. How, I sputter as I settle into my quiet time chair, can God claim to love me and then abandon me to this desert? I open my Bible and turn to the story I have claimed as my own these days; the tale of Jacob’s fight with God. There is something about Jacob’s life, his grapple for favor and love, his frailty, his bargaining with the Almighty that reminds me of myself. I don’t find this flattering, but it is an odd comfort. Despite all Jacob’s foibles, despite his fight and fear, God stuck with this stubborn man. That gives me hope and sets my face, because today, like Jacob, I am at an impasse. I’m stuck in a desert of circumstance with fear and confusion crouching in wait for me just as Esau camped on the desert horizon the night of Jacob’s great fight. Jacob went out into the desert that night to plead with God, to beg his help and rail at his absence and he ended up in the arms of God himself, pounding out his anger, his fear, his need for God to hold him. Well, here I am to do the same. I close my eyes and open my heart. Let the battle begin. I fight my own self first, there in God’s arms. Dry as the bottom of the ocean drained of all its water, the desert of my life stretches around me. Is it of my own making? It could be. I have a trickster’s soul, like Jacob, a heart that thinks it can outrun pain and outwit the upshot of all my fearful and faithless hours. Maybe it is my pride that moors me in this dry, dark place. The brave choices I would not make, the love I would not give. I know my decisions are often faulty, my schemes for friendship or finances full of holes. Frailty runs in my blood, the awful inheritance that none can stem, and I feel it as I writhe in God’s hands. Is all this my fault? Then I wrestle pain. For I know this night is not of my making alone. I am imperfect, but I am persistent, and I have loved God and made his ways my own with every ounce of resolve I could muster. My wisdom may be scant, but my choices have been made in prayer. Knowing this, my fight is anguished and my hands come down harder on God’s silent arms. I am suddenly Eve as well as Jacob; Eve when the world was stripped of beauty, when the first stab of grief rent the air. What is this pain? Where is my God? My heart has never acclimated to sorrow, I still feel shocked when I am broken. Surely it wasn’t supposed to be like this, surely loving God should protect me. I wasn’t made for this disappointment,  this loneliness, for prayers that seem to die like mist in the great, broad air of God’s silence. Finally, I wrestle with God. My existence is his fault. He said he loved me and I believed him. Now I strike him with my pain as hard as I dare, trying to reconcile his love with the fact of a world still broken. I stretch and strain in the darkness, trying to grasp some sense of his care, something to help me believe he is the father I so need him to be. His hushed holding of me as I struggle is a strangeness I almost cannot bear. I long to escape him, to finish this fight, yet I know that he is the cause, the opponent, the peace I need all in one. Every question, every strike is to and for him, no part of this darkness can be explained apart from his troublesome existence. The only thing I hope to win is the working of his hand. He is my opponent, and he is my prize. My enemy, and the lover I yearn for with all of my soul. Whatever shall I do? If I follow Jacob’s story, then I will cling to God until I am blessed. I will clutch at his arms until he claims me as his own and gives me a name as his child. But I am afraid to end like Jacob, for the tale of his fight is a strange one, and the ending of it, more than I understand. Of course, God won. Jacob could not out-wrestle the one who made his own muscles, nor out-argue the one who gave him speech. God lamed Jacob in the end and perhaps the laming was mercy. For I think that Jacob might have struggled to death in his anger and fear. But Jacob clung even beyond that breaking, clung until God himself yielded a curious prize. The prize was a name. God’s trophy to his child, his challenger, was a new identity. The trickster Jacob, even with all his lies, his stealing of birthrights and striving for everything beyond his reach, would become the first of a mighty and holy people. God confirmed his choice of Jacob as the father of Israel by giving him the name that would define the nation. But what a name. If I were God, naming the people who would reveal me to all the earth (and I had just finished wrestling a particularly stubborn one), I think I’d give them an identity laced with command. I’d call them simply “faithful people,” or “humble ones,” or “those who do everything God asks,” or maybe even “the perfectly obedient followers of Yahweh.” But out there in that wild desert night with the stars in a whirl and the air thrumming with Jacob’s savage fury, God named his people something entirely different. God blessed Jacob, and all the holy people after him, by giving him a name that meant “those who struggle with God.” The name “Israel” basically means “those who fight.” Those who struggle and strive. Why would God call such trouble on his poor, holy head by giving his people the identity of scrappers? Why, I ask myself today, as I grapple with the hard way God leads, would God want little old me to be a struggler too? The name does ring true. My life since the day I “asked Jesus into my heart,” has been one long battle. Oh there is brightness to hearten me, and beauty to keep me in hope, but it’s been one long fight. Against sin and self, against the niggling of daily life on a broken earth, against the times, like this, when God is maddeningly silent. Yet every bit of it has been my offering of love to this God who saved me. And suddenly, as I look at the story of Jacob, look at the fight in my own life, I see something I never did before. God blessed Jacob for his struggle. He was proud of Jacob’s penchant to fight. God’s naming of Jacob smacks almost of a fatherly pride; “look at him go, he’s definitely mine.” Never did God condemn or disqualify Jacob for his fight; instead, God passed on that scrapper’s spirit to an entire nation of holy people. Finally, I begin to see. God loves those who struggle with him. God loves the fighters, the ones who grapple with faith and refuse to give up. When I struggle, my heart is alive. If I truly accepted God’s absence, acquiesced to pain, decided that darkness was all I could ever expect, then I would have no reason to wrestle with grief. God loves those who will not settle until they touch his goodness. He delights in those who hold fast through every doubt, cling harder with every seeming evidence of abandonment. Why? Because every lover of God must fight. I just never understood that before. I was blind when I began; I thought that loving God meant an end to all my troubles. What I have had to learn is that this is the broken place, a world scarred by sin and grief and from it, there is no instant escape. The problems I have right now? They are part of my story in the fallen world, a place in which loneliness and sorrow still reign. God’s love is absolutely true, his grace ever-present. But I will experience it in what C.S. Lewis called “the shadowlands.” I will be disappointed. Life will let me down, pain will pock my way until I am finally safe in the new heavens and earth. God acknowledged this reality when he gave Jacob, and through him all God-followers, the name of “strugglers.” To accept that identity is to understand that no one is exempt from fallenness or pain, from the ravages of sin in this world. But it is also to hold, with tears, yes, with a wrestling of heart, the belief that somehow God triumphs in the midst of it. Have you ever noticed how many times the word “overcome” is mentioned in the New Testament? Jesus, on the night before his death, told his disciples outright that they would have lots of trouble. “But take courage,” said Jesus, “I have overcome the world.” John heartens his readers over and over again with the promise that our faith overcomes the darkness. And in Revelation there is that haunting promise “to him who overcomes, I will give the kingdom.” God would not have called us to a fight he did not intend to win. The greatest wrestler in the world was Jesus. He came down into the gritty pain of our fight, he fought beside us, and he was the one who finally overcame the darkness by laying down his life. This is the hope to which we cling and this is what redemption really is. Redemption is not the zapping away of all that’s wrong, it’s grace turning all pain backwards into joy. By holding fast to God, even if it means we must fight, we enter God’s grand, slow battle to make all things new. It’s a slow triumph. But the promise of God is that nothing is outside the realm of redemption. Many things may hurt us here in the broken place, but evil may never overcome us, and in the end, even evil will be turned backward into grace. Our Jacob-like fight is is just one part of this glorious battle. As God lovers, we struggle toward light. We fight to keep faith alive. We don’t curse a faceless universe and stay alive out of spite, we have a goal, a marvelous light, an unceasing love that exists beyond the touch of any darkness. Toward that, we fight. For that good, we will grapple. For the proclamation of that reality, we will fling the whole of ourselves into the furious struggle to believe in the goodness of God. We will believe in a kind, laughing face whose gaze is fixed upon us, whose kindness holds us through the darkness and leads us, finally, beyond it. So call me Jacob. Call me “the one who struggles with God.” It’s not the name I would have chosen, but it’s the identity I’ll accept and the fight I’ll join. And with the help of that great wrestler Jesus, I believe I will finally overcome.

Several years ago my web store, the homespun operation which was to become the Rabbit Room, was run in my luxurious garage. Right next to the garbage can, over by the hot water heater, next to the rakes and the bikes and the folding chairs, I had a little workbench set up with a postage machine, a bunch of yellow, padded envelopes, and stacks of CDs. Almost every morning I’d head out there to fill orders in either my pajamas or, in the winter, a coat and scarf. Sometimes when I was on the road a lot, Jamie and the boys would fill orders for me—and “fill orders” doesn’t just mean stuffing envelopes. It means emailing people whose packages were lost in the mail, it means calling to order more CDs and/or books, it means refilling the postage machine and driving to the post office and ordering more packing materials. When I had a new CD release we’d sometimes have 1,000 CDs to mail, so Jamie, Aedan, Asher (Skye was just a baby), and I would make a game of it. The kids dove in with gusto and rammed CDs into envelopes, stamped the envelopes with either MEDIA MAIL or FIRST CLASS while Jamie and I threw packages into bins. What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s a lot of work. When it got to be too much we hired my friend Hitoshi “George” Yamaguchi, then Paul Jones, then Stephen Lamb to help out, and finally Eric Peters managed the store for a while. All those guys will attest to the headache it can be. I should also point out that there’s a lot to enjoy about it, too. It’s fun to recognize repeat customers (who are basically helping us keep the lights on) fun to have the occasional exchange with someone who likes your music, fun to be so closely connected with the process of literally sending the songs into the world for ears to hear. Years ago, when I was on the road a lot more than I am now, Jamie called me from home to tell me she’d just been reprimanded by someone. Her voice trembled. In between diaper changes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she had trudged out to the garage in the freezing cold to fill orders in my absence. Someone wanted to expedite shipping and Jamie sent a sweet email back saying that she didn’t know how to do that. Well, the customer replied with some pretty harsh words and told her how lame it was that our website didn’t offer shipping options, and how they were used to professional websites and thought ours was a giant hassle. She cried. I got home, read the email exchange, and was ready to crawl through the modem, emerge into this person’s living room as an Obi Wan hologram, and challenge him to a duel. I couldn’t imagine why someone who liked my music enough to order it from my website would then proceed to chew out my wife for not being web-savvy enough. (I’m still surprised by it, to be honest.) So I cracked my knuckles, rolled my head around a time or two, slammed back a shot of sweet tea, and typed a scathing email. I told the person I didn’t appreciate their tone with my sweet wife, I didn’t appreciate their insensitivity to how hard we were working to amend the situation, I told them I was shocked at their insolence, at their brazen belittling of my wife, and—and—well, you get the point. My mouse hovered over the “Send” button, just long enough for the Holy Spirit to tweak my heart a little. I shrugged it off and sent the email anyway. I stomped back into the house feeling a little guilty and a lot justified, informed my wife that I had just sent the guy an e-whooping, and refilled my sweet tea. I felt good. Except for the part of me that felt kind of dark. I sauntered back to the garage to finish filling orders and checked my email. The person had emailed me back immediately. I opened the email, ready for a fight, and it was immediately clear that the person hadn’t read my e-whooping. The person had sent an unsolicited and sincere apology. They were repentant and kind, and expressed gratitude for Jamie’s hard work. The person had been having a very stressful day, and goofed up. I felt terrible. I was horrified by the knowledge that any second that person would read my angry words. The Spirit tweaked me again with what must have been a holy “I told you so.” Then an error message popped up. “Message not sent,” it read. “Server error.” (Server error, indeed.) It seemed as though God had reached into the internet, grabbed my boneheaded email, and flung it back into my computer, sparing the other person quite a bit of pain. Ever since that day, which we’ll call Huge Sigh of Relief Day, I’ve tried to wait days, even weeks, before replying to an email that provokes me. I also try to let someone else read it too and offer feedback. Many times after a few days I realize a reply isn’t necessary at all. The world spins on and the rebuttal that once seemed so vital to the maintenance of my honor turns out to be rather dishonorable instead. A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 19:11

One of the best things about walking into the Hutch these days is hearing the occasional snippet of a new Ben Shive song as he works on his upcoming album next door in the Bee Hive. There are some wonderful things coming through the walls lately and I can’t wait to hear them all put together. While I wait for those Cymbal Crashing Clouds, though, I’ve got great songs like this one to hold me over. It’s called “Out Of Tune” and it’s about a piano, mostly.

A few years ago there appeared a post here about The Jesus Storybook Bible. That post was my introduction to the writings of Sally Lloyd-Jones. I don’t know what Sally’s writing process is like—if she tucks away in the corner of a coffee shop or spreads out at her own kitchen table, and I don’t know if she types her words into a computer or writes them by hand on a yellow legal pad. What I do know—and what is obvious to anyone familiar with her work—is that she is a disciplined, careful, whimsical and dead-serious writer of children’s literature. Not too long ago, she posted the following quote on Twitter: “Albert Einstein quote for today: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’” Einstein’s proposition here reveals one of the most confounding objectives for any artist: how to communicate to an audience truths that are, by nature, grandiose and unwieldy enough to inspire that artist to go to their medium to create. Sally Lloyd-Jones operates in a strange industry—Christian literature. This post is by no means offered as a critique of that industry, but I am going to mention one point of criticism I notice because it frames the context for what I’m hoping to express about her. Here it is: often it seems the goal of Christian writing is to take the mysterious and unfathomable in Scripture and distill them down into the plain and comprehensible—as if it is possible to do this and still remain faithful to the Biblical narrative. There are lots of books promising five easy steps to mastering life and faith, as if the mastery of these things comes through the simple process of accumulating more information. As for Sally, she displays a consistent habit in everything I’ve read of hers and that habit is this: she allows for the mystery and beauty of the Gospel story to remain mysterious and beautiful, even as she works to tell us what’s there. That said, I am certainly not taking anything away from her careful fidelity to what the Bible actually says. Sally is an excellent teacher, and she gives her little readers more detail, explanation, and context than she is obligated to provide. And she treats the continuity of the Biblical narrative with such respect and intentionality that one can’t help but understand the content of Scripture better, having read her books. The evidence for this, of course, is seen in how many grown-ups read The Jesus Storybook Bible as devotional literature—and how they often get teary when they try to read it aloud. (Cough, Andrew Peterson, cough.) But today, what I am writing to call broader attention to in her work is how she never seems to be simply about reshaping the extraordinary so that it might come down to her readers as ordinary. Or as Einstein said it, she works to make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler. I am thankful, thankful for the way Sally Lloyd-Jones takes the story of God’s “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love” and makes it simple, but not too simple. And I am thankful for the way she illustrates the processes of learning, grief, struggle, doubt, and growth by only ever offering us one Hero in the story of Redemption. And I am thankful for the way she tells these stories from Scripture as though they are her own story.

So surrender the hunger to say you must know, Have the courage to say,’ I believe’. For the power of paradox opens your eyes, And blinds those who say they can see. ~Michael Card We were driving through downtown Atlanta, off on literary pilgrimage in the wind and sunshine of March. Just she and I, a sisters’ spree, making holiday in the middle of the week for a day trip to Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia. I think I was already feeling intimidated, haunted by the great one’s ghost, as it were, for as I threaded the umpte-eleven lanes heading south out of the city and fiddled with the AC, I kept prattling nervously about ‘my little manuscript’. It seemed so absurd to call it a ‘book’, even to her, who knows my own soul. Flannery wrote books. I scribbled things in secret. “Would you stop?” I cut my eyes over at Liz in surprise. In the middle of I-75? “Drop the ‘little’. It’s your manuscript. You wrote it. Quit putting it down.” Her words went to the quick: stung, ‘hurt good’, as a wise friend is wont to say. They touched upon a nerve already tender from the Physician’s gentle prodding and forced me to face my old, old foe. Yet again. Fear. The giant Apollyon that halts me in my tracks and sneers down all my hopes and aspirations. The paralyzing dread of failure; the horror of being misunderstood that stifles my voice and freezes my fingers above the keyboard. Fear of man’s opinion. Fear that when I open my heart’s treasures to the world, the world will be unkind and trample them underfoot. That morning I felt ill at the thought—I often do. But that’s exactly what it is: a feeling. My desire to write, to communicate and create, is not a feeling but a God-given passion; a relentless yearning that, quite frankly, at some times I rather wish would lie still, but in sublimer moments overspreads my life with the gilt and purple of love’s ambition. It took me a long time to admit of my vocation, though I’d carried it around with me for as long as I could remember. It was hard to make peace with the extravagant expenditure of time which serious writing demands. I longed to do it; I didn’t balk at the work. But I halted over all the officially sanctioned Christian duties I ‘ought’ to be putting my hands to instead of tapping out words in solitude. I read somewhere that it takes ten years to learn to write a book. I don’t know how true that is across the board, but I felt certain it would definitely be something like it for me. It seemed too sweet a thing to be indulged in. (I know—sounds crazy. Right up there with the fear of imagining God better than He is.) I prayed and prayed for direction; if not for outright heavenly affirmation, at least the quiet sense of God’s hand resting in favor upon my head. I ‘felt His pleasure’, as Eric Liddell so poignantly put it, when I wrote—when I really got cooking and lost my head among the stars. And yet the doubts still rose like a creeping poison: How could I dare to think I’d have anything to give to the world? How could I lavish so much love and energy on a project the world may never see? I needed to know. I needed, so desperately, to hear God say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a way that I would not be able to forget. Nothing dramatic; just an answer to my endless question: Do You really want me to do this? The answer came on an April evening, ordinary but for the Arcadian loveliness of spring’s wild greening and the profligate sweetness of breezes laced madly with jasmine and honeysuckle. We were sitting in the yard, my husband and I, sharing a pot of tea and a chapter in our latest read-aloud, Under the Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. In it, our friend Van was describing the directive he had received from God to write A Severe Mercy (our favorite book of all time and the only context of our friendship with him: he’s one of the first compatriots we’ll line up to meet on the other side). He wrote of the blinding and unmistakable sense of calling, such as he had never known in his life. Of the months, from January to May, that he planned out his book and prayed and thought constantly, and of the upcoming long vacation during which he intended to make a start—never dreaming then that he would finish it in seventy-eight days. I recall no process of thought or decision, certainly no Voice or Presence. The intention, calm, clear, firm, was simply there—a fait accompli—and thirty seconds before it had not been. That is all I know. But I believe as I believed then, that God had commanded me to write the book. It was, precisely, a vocation. In the Afterward of A Severe Mercy I put it thus: Beyond knowing, I believe (and did then) that, having been recalled to the Obedience by the nudges and, finally, by irresistible (or, at least, not resisted) grace, I was now commanded to write: vocatio. ~Sheldon Vanuaken, Under the Mercy My heart burned within me as I heard the words in my own voice: “Beyond knowing, I believe.” Vanauken made it clear, both from the setting and the usage, that this was no optimistic “I-deem-and-suppose” kind of believing. This was an “I-believe-in-God-the-Father-Almighty” conviction he was talking about. Not a confidence in oneself, such as to rival the supreme allegiance due only to God, but an expression of that allegiance. A living out of the wild impracticability of faith. As Christ-followers, we have to take everything at His word; there is very little we can claim to know, experientially and unambiguously, at least at the outset. But we have something better than knowing—we have faith. Rock-solid stone upon which we can build a house that will last and a life that will count for eternity. Belief is the gateway to the knowledge of God, not the other way around. It’s true, ultimately and superlatively, in our salvation. But it’s also true—interwoven into the very fabric of our identities—in the inexplicable summons of our vocation. In that blazing moment, I had my answer. My desire—so much a part of me—was the call. And the reply could only be made in faith. Art exults in its own implausibility; it is mystery and miracle awaiting the collaboration of a human handmaiden. It is a plunge in the dark; a walking on water. If St. Peter had been looking for a firm place to set his foot before embarking across the waves, he never would have gotten out of that boat. And neither would I. Faith is the only antidote to the fears that I face every day when I open up my laptop. It is the lodestar towards which my barque is bent and the lifeline when I’m mired in the mully-grubs and think I’ll never write anything of any value to anyone. God has had to bring me to this place again and again, down to the point of pain. For if I believe— radically, riotously—that this is my Obedience then what have I really got to be afraid of? I used to have a secret codename for writing—so secret that no one knew about it but me. “Stuff around the house” was what I’d volunteer when someone asked me what I was up to on a given day. I’ve long since seen how silly that is. It was only recently, however, that I recognized the inherent sinfulness of it. It’s a fear that is rooted in pride and it’s deadly to both faith and works. The Lord put His finger on that and it seared me to my back collar button: it was pride that was keeping me from telling people what I was doing with my writing. Not pontificating on the nuts and bolts, of course. That would be a different kind of pride. But the fact that I was doing it. Up until that point I would rather have died than confess to most people that I was writing a novel because, well, I mean, what if I failed? Miserably? And then they would all know about it! It is the fear of failure, masquerading as some kind of artistic modesty and propriety that has kept me from saying, “With God’s help I’m doing this crazy thing of writing a novel.” And then if it gets done, He gets the glory. And if it doesn’t? Lanier is that much more humble (I would hope) and honest, with herself and with others. And—I have to believe this—in some way that only He can fully valuate, God still gets the glory. T.S. Eliot whittled it down to one line of exquisite poetry: For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. I don’t want to fail. I want to sing the songs of Eden to a tired and homesick world. I want to write of beauty and truth and goodness, unashamed; I want to spin words and weave stories that will make other people know they are not alone. But even this ambition, sweet as it is, comes short of the mark. For if I truly believe that in attempting to write a book I am being obedient to something that God has placed within me, then His pleasure is the final word. It will not matter in the least whether I succeed in the temporal sense or fail utterly. In the words of the immortal Rumpole, it will be “a matter of indifference bordering on the supernatural”. Supernatural, indeed. For only faith’s vision can incite a recklessness of that ilk, that caliber of abandon that has made the disciples of Christ stand out from their kin like stark raving lunatics from the first Year of our Lord until now. God help me to be among them. The Apostle Paul called us ‘fools for Christ’, and I’ve always imagined he said it with a lopsided grin, a little dazed by the gorgeous insanity of it all. We are ordinary men and women aflame with immortality and moonstruck mad by a grace we can scarcely fathom. We believe crazy things and we do crazy things as a result. We are loved outrageously, beyond all wisdom and reason, and we can’t keep the joy of the joke to ourselves. The love of God has wrung all manner of impossible things from of the hearts of His people since the world began. And how much lovelier is the world because of it. It’s embarrassing to admit how often I need reminding of these things. I smarted under my sister’s sweet reproof for days. When I told my writing partner what Liz had said, she was all over it. (Bless her heart, she’s had to put up with enough of my insecurities as it is.) “I’m going to hold you accountable,” she declared. She didn’t have to wait long, for scarcely a week later she heard me pull the same stunt at a dinner party, fawning and halting about my ‘lowly book’. I felt her eyes on me from the other end of the table; saw that arch tilt of her chin. “Liz would love to hear you say that.” I looked back at her, shamefaced. And then I did the only thing I could do—the only thing such a clownish fear deserves. I laughed. Right in its ugly face. And I can’t help thinking that God laughed with me.

“Everywhere I go I see you.” Rich Mullins Lately, when people have asked “How are you?” I’ve been tempted to alter the usual “Fine” to “Finite.” That’s just how life’s been in recent months, a bit of an exercise in appreciating limits. I’ve been reminded again and again that some of what I’ve held on to with both hands has been more like sand than solid rock. Like the old cartoons, I have thrown high my rope, climbed it hand over hand into the sky, only to find there was nothing up there. Like the cosmonauts who went to space and announced that they had discovered God wasn’t there, I have looked in the wrong places. Or looked the wrong way. Our brother Jack Lewis said the cosmonauts might as well have looked in Hamlet’s attic for Shakespeare. Are you there God? It’s me, Boris. You know, the one with the beard. Where is God? God is invisible, but only in a certain sense. He is active, present, vocal, and, well, obvious. In Romans 1, Paul makes it plain that men are accountable because the truth about God’s presence, power, and provision is clear. This is why not being thankful is like rebellion, which is like witchcraft. It’s a perverse response. It’s one I’m frequently guilty of having. God can give water to his children from a rock, but more often he uses faucets. Still, it is no less from him. I’m not saying I understand all this, but I’m getting more comfortable with the presence and provision of God in what our modernist minds have called “natural,” or “ordinary” places. Is any place ordinary? Is fog or moss ordinary? Life is magical, charged with glory and light. No amount of indoctrination can fog that up forever. The true Story will escape. Again, Romans 1 talks about what you have to do to ignore the hand of God. You have to hold it down. Actively. You have to suppress it. It will bubble up through every hole unless you run around like mad plugging here and stepping there, scheming, stomping, working like crazy to keep it down. Though we are finite, God is providing for us everywhere we turn. In major ways. In minor ways. How can we be blind to it? Maybe you, like me, need to be reminded. Maybe we need wizards, not so much to put a spell on us, but to remove one. Sometimes it’s books or songs that tear away at the carefully crafted shackles we have allowed around our wrists, the bonds that blind us to the evident wonder of God’s great provision. Sometimes it’s a holy encounter with a saint. Sometimes it’s math, basketball, corn dogs, Victoria Falls, making love, babies, adoption, a painting, a person failing well, a fancy car, poetry, or water, or bread, or wine. Speaking of wine and bread: The sharp point of God’s provision is celebrated by Christians everywhere in these two gifts. Bread and wine. It’s in the cross that we see the greatest provision for our greatest need. Jesus is the sharp point of God’s provision. But it’s not only there, it’s everywhere. Ask for eyes and then look around.

Have you ever looked at an actual Rembrandt? I mean really looked? I have. And it is exhausting. Why? Because Rembrandt was a master. If you are willing to look, he will show more than you can take in. This is what masters do. The Dutch painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) is widely regarded as the greatest painter Europe has ever produced. Even while he was alive, people called him “the master.” Eager, rising artists would study under his watchful eye in his studio. They wanted to learn how to reproduce his technique and form. German art historian Wilhelm von Bode joked that the unintended consequence of this sort of mentorship was that “Rembrandt painted 700 pictures. Of these, 3,000 are still in existence.” The Adoration of the Shepherds Aside from his technical skill, Rembrandt was also a masterful visual storyteller. Every inch of a Rembrandt is filled with intentionality. His use of light to show you what matters (like the radiance coming out from the manger in The Adoration of the Shepherds) and his application of shadows to raise questions (like the dark figure in the upper left corner of his Return of the Prodigal Son) is often imitated, but never quite duplicated. His ability to capture furious motion a single frame (like in The Storm on the Sea of Galilee) plays like an optical illusion. I’ll leave you to discover the great Dutch master on your own. For now, I want to focus on something Rembrandt said: “I can’t paint the way they want me to paint and they know that too. Of course you will say that I ought to be practical and ought to try and paint the way they want me to paint. Well, I will tell you a secret. I have tried and I have tried very hard, but I can’t do it. I just can’t do it!” Rembrandt knew he was a great artist, no question. But he also knew he wasn’t limitless. And one of his limits (a limit we all share) was his inability to be what people sometimes wanted him to be or to do what people sometimes wanted him to do. This must have been very frustrating at times. Surely there must have been days when he would have loved more than anything else in the world to be exactly what others wanted him to be. I have those days. Return of the Prodigal Son He was so incredibly gifted and for this history will never forget him. But when he tried to train his hands to create another man’s vision, he just couldn’t do it. Neither can I. Neither can you. He was destined to paint Rembrants and Rembrandts only. He had to train his hands. He had to have started somewhere. It’s hard to imagine, but surely there once existed some pretty terrible Rembrandts. Early works. False starts. Work where he was clearly trying too hard. Too self-indulgent. Undisciplined. What’s not hard to imagine, however, is a solitary figure in a lamp-lit room mixing his oils, preening his brushes—thinking and painting and thinking and painting. For what? For mastery. And why? For joy, because the mastery of something leads to a greater enjoyment of it. Singers, musicians, painters, writers, athletes, and artists of every sort know this. The harder we work at something, the more we are able to enjoy it. Rembrandt knew this too. He said, “Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.” Annie Dillard said it another way: “Who will teach me to write? The page, the page, that eternal blankness.” The Storm on the Sea of Galilee All Rembrandt could do was paint and paint and paint. He couldn’t be a different painter. Only Rembrandt. And this is what he sought to master. For this he trained his hands. When I stand before a Rembrandt, my senses come alive and I know I am in the presence of greatness. I am a fool if I don’t at least try to understand the joy that comes from mastery. I’m a fool if I don’t regard myself as his student in those moments when we’re in the room together. His slow patient work of mastering a skill brings me joy. How much more joy must it have brought him to not only stand in front of one of his paintings, as I have, but to then also know that he was the one who created it. A couple hundred years after Rembrandt’s death, there came another student of the Dutch master, the poor and lovely Vincent van Gogh, who said, “Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. Rembrandt is truly called a magician… that is not an easy calling.” Mastery doesn’t just produce stories. It considers how to tell them, and occasionally even provides new language when there are no words. The canvases Rembrandt left us do so much more than illustrate scenes. They are like the picture of the Dawn Treader that sucked the Pevensies and Eustace into an adventure whose goal was to reach the end of everything in the hopes that beauty would be all that remained. What are you mastering? What are you practicing in order to make clear what you don’t yet know? If you’re anything like me, I’m sure you reach points where you begin to wonder if it might just be easier to plateau. And if not plateau, then quit altogether. Don’t. Please. This world is short on masters, and consequently short on joy too.

Welcome, friends, to the new Rabbit Room. Some of you may remember a post from a zillion years ago called “The Suggestion Box,” where I asked you to tell me what you were looking for in an upgrade. You answered diligently, I put the suggestions into categories, and . . . a zillion years went quietly by. Well, thanks to our friend Jonathan Forsythe at Makeshift Creative, we’ve managed to wrangle the new site into the corral. Let me tell you about some of the changes: Prettiness. Jonathan Forsythe is the Verner Panton of web design. Verner Panton is a famous Danish interior designer I just discovered by googling “famous interior designers.” He—Jonathan, that is—bent over backwards to make a site that would resemble the website we would like to visit in our wildest dreams. Sharing. Let’s face it. Twitter and Facebook are here to stay. At least until they’re gone. In the meantime, we’ve entered the frenzy by making it easy for you to share your favorite Rabbit Room posts with your “friends” and “followers,” and also with “total strangers” and “people you only know through social media networks.” Functionality. Remember those tabs? “Story,” “Art,” “Music,” and such? Well, they were a decent idea, but they never did much good. They were, in the words of Eric Peters, “just dead weight, like a big ol’ mole.” So they’re gone. You’ll also notice that you can peruse the archives. At last, you can find that one post we wrote, about that one topic that one day. We’ve been putting up a post almost every weekday since 2007, so there’s a lot of interesting stuff buried in there if I say so myself, on behalf of ourselves. Podcasts! The podcast is finally alive again. We’re hoping to put one up every other week. Today’s features Randall Goodgame and a fun conversation about his seedy early days when he played jazzy versions of Jimmy Buffet songs for the old dudes in Polos at the yacht club brunch. (This is not a joke.) You can still get the podcast from iTunes, or you can subscribe and listen right here. Events. We’ve added a widget to the home page that will let you know about upcoming concerts and speaking events featuring Rabbit Room contributors and members of the Square Peg Alliance. What, you didn’t think the Rabbit Room writers were just sitting around every day reading The Silmarillion, did you? No, no. We’re traversing these United States with our guitars and swords, and we like meeting you guys. There are more little tweaks, but that’ll get you started. I’m sure there are going to be a few hiccups since this is a new baby and all, so have a look around and tell us what you think. If you run into any problems just leave a comment in this post and we’ll do our best to figure it out. When I say “we” I mean “Jonathan.” And when I say “Jonathan” I mean Jonathan Forsythe, the Verner Panton of web design. Speaking of comments, I need to address one more issue: Moderation. While the posts have remained more or less consistent in matters content, diverse though it is, the nature of some of the discussion has shifted. Over the years we’ve managed to navigate some pretty sticky topics with very little moderation; the conversation was civil and respectful and (for me, at least) enlightening. Lately, though, the nature of the comments has subtly shifted in a way that’s hard to articulate, and that shift has led to the moderation (read: deleting) of some comments. It’s also led to repeated complaints via emails and face-to-face conversations from long-time readers of the Rabbit Room, informing us that they’ve stopped reading the comment section altogether. Yipes! So, as the Proprietor of this establishment, I want to set some ground rules. (I also want to repeat the exclamation “Yipes!” for emphasis.) 1) Be sure your comment is gracious. Give the other commenters and/or authors the benefit of the doubt, and speak the truth in love. 2) Avoid nitpicking. If the comment doesn’t add real light to the conversation, or if it derails the conversation from the author’s subject, there’s a chance it could be deleted. (Note: I’m not talking about funny stuff, or lighthearted bandying. That’s all fine, to a point. I’m talking about critical nitpicking.) 3) Try not to overpost. I’m really glad we have such a high level of interaction, but sometimes a lot of comments from the same person can make the place feel like–well, like an Oxford pub where one person is talking louder than everyone else and dominating the conversation. Be content, from time to time, to simply sip your ale and listen. 4) Use good syntax. (Now it’s me doing the nitpicking, isn’t it?) As a general rule, don’t use exclamation points. As an absolute rule, don’t ever use two or more in a row. Check your spelling. Take your time, when at all possible, to make the sentences read well. I know it’s a pain when you’ve submitted a comment and realize too late that there’s a typo. A lot of you guys are diligent about posting a follow up comment with your correction, and whenever I see that I’m happy to sneak around back and fix it for you. This isn’t me saying that every comment has to be crafted out of immaculate, perfectly written sentences–Lord knows, our posts have plenty of errors. But here’s the thing: we’re shooting for excellence. It’s not like this has been a huge problem. I’m just throwing it out there, being the Proprietor and all. 5) Wake not the sleeping giant. What I mean is, if a topic has 98 comments and you read the first few, then scroll to the bottom and raise a bunch of questions, and then your post is moderated, it might be because the points you’re raising have already been addressed and re-addressed, hashed and re-hashed, and it’s just time to close the book. Picture a group of friends in the back room of that same Oxford pub who, having sucked the marrow out of some topic, are sick of it and ready to move on to the fish and chips–only to have some guy or gal burst into the room and loudly opine about the dead topic. I’ve never wanted the Rabbit Room to be a place for argument and debate, but rather a haven for discussion and even a place to experience beauty. That’s why we try not to write negative reviews or critiques (the One Minute Reviews being an exception, mainly because it’s so funny to watch Thomas get riled up over a bad movie); if we don’t like a book or an album, we just keep silent. Silence can be good. Even on a glorified blog. This list isn’t absolute. We may still delete a comment we deem inappropriate or unhelpful (or out of line with the above list in some way), and you may get mad or hurt. You may disagree with our judgment. Please know we’re not trying to be malicious. We’re doing the best we can to guard the magic of this place and follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. Hopefully no moderation will be needed, but we’re willing to if things get weird. Okay. I’m glad that’s over. Now we can get on with the poetry and videos and essays and stories and songs this place was created to foster. Dear Readers, I’m grateful for your kindness, enthusiasm, and support of this experiment in the celebration of beauty, truth, and goodness. Enjoy the Rabbit Room 2.0, The Proprietor

In early March I joined forces with Jason Ingram and Rusty Varencamp, th team that produced Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue, to break ground on my next full-length record. Originally we had planned to record last summer, but with the still growing success of “More Like Falling In Love” it seemed good to let Everything Sad Is Coming Untrue have a little more time to find it’s audience. We were then blessed again to have a good reception at radio for “I Am New” – after 11 years of doing this full-time, I am overjoyed to finally have connected with radio and have been grateful to find a whole new audience for my work. 2011 was a busy touring season for us, too, which left me little time to write new songs for the next record. But any moment I could break away was spent working on songs that I hoped would give shape to a new record and the next season of my ministry. I came into the first day of recording with about half the songs still needing the lyrics finished. Every spare moment was spent trying to find out exactly what these songs wanted to say. In the past, this kind of situation has caused me a lot of stress. But I was surprised at how much peace I had going into this. My mantra (I use that term in the colloquial sense, not as an expression of Hindu practice :- ) went something like this: “God has called me to this work, he’s made me to be a song writer, I’ve been entrusted with the gift of songwriting. God has intended for me to make this record. I trust his plan, I trust the gift and calling he’s given, which means that I trust that as a writer of songs, these songs will be written when they need to be.” Deep breath. Followed by waiting. And eventually they were all written!Sometimes I was working on the lyric up until the very last moment – and in one instance even going back after the fact and re-singing a new lyric – but they were all written, and I’m trusting that they are all what they were intended to be.It was the closest I’ve come to striking that balance of believing that it wasn’t all up to me, and yet working diligently as though it were. That sounds very Calvinist of me, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t mean it to be necessarily; it somehow feels to me both more and less than that. But that’s another blog… I’d like to think that this is my best record yet. Time will tell whether that’s just the newness of it all or a legitimate assessment, but I know one thing: I’ve never been more grateful for a batch of songs. I feel like as a whole they touch deeper places of truth, fear, and hope than any other collection of songs I’ve brought to a record. I was blessed to have the players comment repeatedly about how this project felt different and one night I even got a text from Jason Ingram saying he thought this was going to be a special record and that he was grateful to be working on it with me. Maybe that’s up to you, the listener, to decide, but these kindnesses and encouragements add up and help assure me that we’re on the right track. My modest success with radio this past year has made everybody I work with hopeful and expectant, but we still had to work with a realistic budget, which means that every moment had to count – no room for mistakes or for songs getting away from us. As we wondered early on about what the sonic signature should be for this record, we decided it would be cool to build it around the drums. So we brought in Paul Mabury – my favorite drummer in the business – a day early to be really intentional about beats and the overall drum vibe. He spent the day dreaming up live loops that he would create with stomping and all kinds of other cool sounds and we laid all of that down before the band came in. With the foundation of the live drum loops and textures in place, the rest of the band already had a bit of a road map for what kind of vibe to go after on each of the songs and we set to chasing after it. Guitarist Mike Payne joined us again and we also had Tony Lucido, one of Nashville’s most sought after bass players. With every song, we asked, “what’s your first instinct for how you would play this song? Okay, now let’s not do that and wonder what else the song could be.” They worked hard on every single track to reach for something that felt original and unexpected, and yet not showy in a way that would be distracting. John Mays, the head of A&R at Centricity, made me aware that nearly every song spoke of fear. I hadn’t realized that before, but as I look through the lyrics fear has emerged as a theme, as well as the antidotes to fear, which mostly have to do with trust and allowing ourselves to be loved. More on all of that later… I tried to make a one take video each day to let people hear little pieces of the songs as they were being “born” and I’ve included them here. They’ll probably make more sense when you hear the finished project, but hopefully they give you a little taste of what we’re cooking up for you. The release date is September 13th and the tentative title is “A Way To See In The Dark”. Thanks for listening and caring about my music, Here are the videos: Day 2: The Sound Of Our Breathing Day 3: Remind Me Who I Am Day 4: Good To Be Alive Day 5: No Thief Like Fear Day 6: Nothing Is Wasted

I think there’s a god in the volcanos. Let me explain. I came across a news item recently about the first ever expedition inside a volcano. There’s a National Geographic program coming up about it. I’m setting my DVR, because that is cool. But the article I read starts in an interesting way: Volcanoes have fascinated human beings since the dawn of time; thankfully, now we know enough not to think of them as powerful earth/fire gods, but to understand them as the magnificent phenomena they are. I’d prefer to remove the word “thankfully” from that sentence. In fact, I almost want to replace it with, “unfortunately.” I’m not trying to get you to embrace some kind of weird spirituality with minor gods everywhere, or to start sacrificing animals to volcano gods so they won’t erupt, but I think the loss of supernatural thinking is a detriment to our culture, not something to be thankful for. To be sure, believing in the wrong kind of god is dangerous, for we end up doing things like sacrificing animals – or worse. But not believing there is a supernatural force and energy operating within all physical phenomenon is harmful to understanding reality. We’ve abandoned faith as a way of knowing, which means we’ve abandoned spiritual vision as a way of knowing. A person who believes there’s an angry god in the volcano may not be at the truth, but he’s closer to the truth than the person who thinks there’s no god at all. This is why C.S. Lewis, for example, has no problem bringing wine gods (Bacchus) and fruit goddesses (Pomona) into Narnia. He knew full well that people who believed the gods could throw parties and make apple orchards grow were closer to understanding and knowing Aslan than those who didn’t believe in the possibility of the supernatural/spiritual in the physical at all. Our nominalistic thinking is not something to celebrate. I’m going to stick to my belief that God is in the volcano, and that when crawling through its holes, crevices, and lava pools, we can learn about the work of the Maker, the tragedy of a fallen world, and hope for the redemption to come.

(In which I revisit the thinking behind my song “More Like Falling In Love”) Give me words I’ll misuse them Obligations I’ll misplace them ‘Cause all religion ever made of me Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet… Verse two of my song “More Like Falling In Love” begins with a statement about words. I have a deep affection for words and language and the truth they reveal as well as the stories they conspire to create, which is one of the reasons why, I suppose, I enjoy my vocation as a writer/arranger of words.And yet the older I get the more I’m aware of their limits. Take for instance the exchange of words in any conversation: there are the words you speak and then there are the words that the other person hears, and they rarely carry the same meaning. I get discouraged about this and try to compensate by painstakingly choosing my words with great care in hopes of avoiding misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict. I do this in my blogs, in my songs, and nearly all of my conversations. It’s a form of control, I suppose – trying to manage things that are ultimately unmanageable. I also have a deep need to be understood that borders on obsession. That’s why my blogs are always so long – I try to anticipate misunderstandings and preemptively address them. But no matter how many words I pile on top of each other, few will read my words as carefully as I write them and I’m bound to get emails or comments from concerned readers who misunderstand my intent. And even if they do read them carefully, they can’t help but bring their own history and life experience to bear upon them in a way that will inevitably color them differently than I intended. So, though I love words, they fail me every time. While it may sound admirable the way I speak of taking such care with the meaning I intend to convey, It can get ugly when I try too hard to control how people will hear my words and even uglier when I try to manage the biases, baggage, and personal interpretations they might bring to them. In my marriage this can look like meaningful conversations degrading into fruitless battles over what was really said or even what certain words mean. “No, that may be what you heard, but that’s not what I said…” is the way that I might try to answer Taya when her feelings get hurt over a misunderstanding. It’s an answer that – even if it’s true – really only serves to clear my name while doing little to make her feel love. My solution has often been to use more and more words to try and clear up the misunderstanding – but more words only mean more opportunities to be misunderstood. A simple apology, willingly validating the other’s feelings and perhaps even absorbing the misunderstanding rather than compounding it, accomplishes so much more. My mentor told me once that when there is misunderstanding, he has learned to say less in hopes of avoiding more of the same. But I believe in words too much! I keep hoping they can save the day! I’ve been thinking about Jesus as he stood before Pilate and said… well… nearly nothing at all. Could it be that Jesus knew that words and well-constructed arguments would not save the day? “What is truth?” Pilate asks. Jesus’ answer couldn’t have been more potent when he wordlessly stands there as Truth himself. Ah words… I love them, but I hate them too. While they are a powerful resource I have for sharing my heart with others, they distort as much as they reveal the truth – and this is the way of it even when my motives are pure! Because of course there are other times when my motives are less than pure. We’re all familiar with the regret of saying things we wish we could unsay. In my anger and hurt I’ve used precious words to wound people. I myself have been wounded by vicious or even merely careless words. Sometimes we wound with the words we do not say. While we know all too well of the obvious abuse of the power of words, there are subtler and I would say even more insidious forms of this abuse, like when we use words to gain power or to hide. The Pharisees were lovers of words, and the words they loved and became skilled in appropriating were the very words of God. They became experts at pressing these holy, precious, and true words into the service of stroking their own self-righteousness, silencing their detractors, and gaining power over the people they were supposed to serve. What’s even more impressive is the way they managed to take these holy words that are imbued with life giving power to lay bare the human heart and twist them in such a way as to hide the wickedness of their own hearts. White washed tombs is what Jesus called them. Indeed, words are easily misused to wound others, distort the truth, and serve personal agendas. Sadder still is how even when we have the best of intentions, our words are still just as likely to distort, wound, and alienate – especially when it comes to conveying love. In my marriage, that Petri dish of sanctification, I can see how often I’m tempted to love my wife with the love of a Pharisee – hanging on her every word, cataloging them, cross-referencing them in an attempt to understand her, to be a good husband and get a handle on what’s expected of me. But just as the Pharisees knew the words of God inside and out but failed to recognize Jesus as the consummation of all those words, so too have I often heard my wife’s words but missed her heart. Ah words… you fail me at every turn. Lately I’ve taken comfort in the notion that maybe even God can relate to my predicament. In the Old Testament God gave us words to live by – ten holy commandments that were to help make us free and come alive.But down through the centuries these words have been misunderstood, maligned, and obscured as more and more words were added for “clarification,” only serving to confuse and leave us more fearful and guilt-ridden than ever. Is this a failure on God’s part to convey his heart? Or merely one more example of the limits of words – the way the meaning of words (even the words of God) can get lost in translation when we hear them through the filters of our shame, guilt, and fear? Generations later Jesus would try to make it easier on us by telling us that really, there are only two laws to really worry about: Love God, and love others (including yourself), and still we’ve managed to misuse and misunderstand even these. It’s comforting for me to think that maybe even God knows something of the frustration of the limits of words. But more than that, it’s inspiring to see His solution. After centuries of words piled upon words, he came up with a new way of speaking, a new language that would speak louder and clearer than all the words that came before. He boiled it all down and spoke a single, living, incarnate Word: Jesus. In the life of Jesus, the Word made flesh, the heart of God and the intent of the law is finally revealed. The Word of God now had hands to carry us.Love became less of a theory and more of a revolution.Or as I’d like to think our very own Ron Block might say, Love became less of a demand and more of a promise (what do you say Ron, would you have said that?). Where written words had alienated us, a Living Word redeemed us. That’s not to say, of course, that we should disregard the written words that came before. On the contrary, Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the law but to complete it. The Living Word – Jesus – helps us to better understand the written word. “Ah, that’s what God meant,” we say in wonder as we see the Mosaic law come alive in the life of Christ. In other words (ha! Here I go again, hoping to mitigate misunderstanding by using more words!), I can use words to tell my wife I love her, but when I add to those the action of living out my love for her in a way that helps her understand what those spoken words mean (like cleaning up after myself :- ), she’s more likely to believe it when I say “I love you”. Love incarnated is more persuasive than love merely spoken. I’ve used a lot of words to talk about the limit of words, but permit me a few more as I close with a parting story. I have listened to the words of many prayers over my lifetime, but there is one that I remember above all the others, and it was prayed over me by my friend Andrew Peterson when I was going through a very difficult time in my life. He listened to my pain and shared some great encouragement from the story of his own life. At the end of several days of conversation, he asked if he could pray for me, and I said yes – grateful but expecting the usual kind of prayer that feels a bit like being preached at. But his prayer was like no other I’ve ever experienced. We bowed our heads and closed our eyes as he put his hand on my shoulder. And then… silence. No words were spoken in his prayer, but I could feel him moving so I opened my eyes to sneak a peak and found Andrew earnestly praying words in his heart that I would never hear, with tears streaming down his face, his head shaking and bobbing emphatically with passion as he contended in prayer over my situation, in earnest conversation with God… It was not a prayer for the benefit of my hearing, but for the benefit of my soul and it reminded me that we serve a God who hears the deep unspoken groaning of our hearts. When he finished after several minutes, he finally said the one word he would speak of that prayer: “amen”. And I’ve never felt more confident of a prayer being heard as I did that one.

What more can be said about the storied career of Alison Krauss and Union Station? Krauss has 26 Grammy wins to her name — the most for any female artist in history — and her colleagues provide the stunning canvas upon which she sonically paints. Each record is equally inspiring, beautiful and haunting, and Paper Airplane, the band’s first studio release since 2004, is no different. Ron Block recently took some time away from dominating Russell Simmon’s Def Banjoetry Slam to answer our questions about coming together once again with Krauss and company and how the process affects him personally. Q: Just to start, can you take us inside the process of Alison corralling the guys back together again? It’s been several years, so do you get a random phone call? Is there a Krauss phone that lights up Batman style? A: No, I have an AKUS chip implanted in my cerebral cortex and she just pushes a button on her cell phone. Actually, I think after a certain amount of time went by it was just time to make a new record. There were schedules to juggle, songs to find, and everything else that goes with recording five people. Q: Why so many years since the last AKUS record? A: It just ended up working out that way. We came out with Lonely Runs Both Ways in November 2004, toured it, then Alison released A Hundred Miles or More in April 2007 and we toured that until the middle of August in 2007. The plan was to then take a year off. Making the Robert Plant record came along for Alison soon after that, with some touring once it came out. When that was over she hadn’t actually been able to take much time off. Once we started in the direction of making a record, it took a long time to find the right songs and make the entire record, so all in all it turned into six-and-a-half years since our last band record and nearly four years since we’d toured extensively. Q: Was it clear that the chemistry had changed in any way after that time apart? A: I think everyone has changed in certain ways, gotten older, more experienced in what matters and what doesn’t. Viewpoints have changed. From my personal standpoint it took me most or all of the record to figure it all out, where we were going, what people wanted, what I am supposed to do, what is my role, what is my place in the band. There have been a lot of shifts externally, too, shifts in Alison’s management and booking, so everything became different and new, and there’s a learning curve in figuring those things out as well. Q: Why do you say it took you so long to figure out what was going on this time around? Was that disorienting? A: Well, we’ve all been apart for awhile. When people are apart they are having separate, differentiated experiences. These experiences can lead them to come to differing conclusions about the things they do in common. If a husband and wife are apart a lot, they are having a lot of different experiences, which may cause them to come to differing viewpoints about reality. For instance, on Paper Airplane there was a shift from thinking of recording as a tracking/overdubbing process to simply doing the best to get almost everything at tracking. It is a move from seeing it as a process of getting a solid track and then painting varied colors and fixing things, to wanting it to be a single, continuous, experiential moment in time. Overdubs were still done, of course, extra guitar added here, lap steel added there. But the overall idea was to capture an entirely great moment in the first place. “Dimming of the Day” is one of the high water marks of this method on Paper Airplane. I have been the last to move from the concept of recording as painting. And yes it was very disorienting for me, having done it so long the other way. I haven’t been out there these past few years making records with various people and seeing a different way; I’ve been doing it the way we’ve done it before. Shifts like that aren’t easy for me. Q: Are those shifts that you’ll carry with you in your own solo work? A: Definitely. This time off we’ve taken, and these shifts in viewpoint in others have caused quite a bit of disturbance in me, and disturbance can be good. It can be a plowing of hard ground to get ready for the future. Q: With such a legacy for AKUS, how much discussion of this goes on within the band? Do you discuss the longevity or influence or platform? A: Not really all that much. Our discussions are usually more about what is happening now, what we are doing in the immediate future — touring, recording. I do feel like we are moving into an entirely new era for the band. Everyone is older, gaining experience, depth, wisdom, and that reflects itself in the music. Alison’s singing has reached an entirely new level with the new record, and Dan’s as well. It has been interesting being in a band this long; I’ve been with AKUS almost as long as I’ve been married, and in many ways the band experience is similar to marriage. Q: Can you expound on that last line — about marriage? A: In marriage there is courtship, falling in love, commitment, and then as that initial in-love phase dies away we must learn to live with one another as we are, to trust God with — and in — the other person, and to know that no matter what happens, no matter what outer or inner circumstances bring, that initial commitment still stands. I feel that way about AKUS, that no matter where our band goes, or no matter where each of us goes individually, I’m committed to the group both as a band and as individual people. I may sometimes kick against the goad of circumstances; I may feel down at this or that, but when the dust clears I find myself standing up with a renewed sense of knowing I am supposed to be in the band; I was meant for it, musically shaped for it. Being in AKUS has been productive in every way, from being musically satisfying, to relationally growth-producing, to financially sustaining, and especially in my spiritual life. Figuring out my place in the band has helped me sort through a lot of junk inside of me. Q: Just in terms of album support, what should fans expect when it comes to touring? A: We’ll be touring essentially from the beginning of June through possible mid-October. The set will likely contain a lot from the new recording but like other tours will also feature many songs from past recordings. Our tour schedule is up and running at Alison’s website.

I lie in bed these sweet few days When the windows yet are open And the weather yet is fine, And love to hear the dead of night Announce its living presence With hoot and croak and creeping vine. I love the knowledge that for years As I have waited on the bench Beneath the juniper tree, And paid such close attention, There is an owl I’ve never seen An owl, I know, who watches me. I love the sound of secret things, I love to hear their nearness, And to feel their wildness, too. (Three days ago we sowed the seeds And every hour I check the dirt For seedlings pushing through.) I lie in bed awake, alert, Aware of the God of the Garden. I sense in the seed a promise, An unfolding resurrection In the furrowed row, in soil And root, in husk and humus. I sense an ancient heart alive Who haunts these moonlit acres, Blessing, bringing life from death, Dawn from darkness, song from sorrow. The night owl swoops, the zephyr sighs; I hear within the tomb: a breath.

Follow me a bit further, if you will, down the road I started in my previous post about the woman who anointed Jesus on that Wednesday evening of that first Easter week. Mark writes, “While Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head.” (Mk 14:3) John tells us she used about one pound of this “nard.” First, some context: What is nard? Nard is an oil-based perfume that is extracted from spikenard, a flower that grows in the Himalayas of China, and also in the northern regions of India and Nepal. In Jesus’ day, it carried both medicinal and hygienic value. As a perfume, it was intensely aromatic and of a thick consistency, sort of like honey, only oily instead of sticky. In our convenient world of electrical sockets and running water, we take for granted our ability to take a shower when we stink. This wasn’t available in Jesus’ day, so people often masked their offensive body odors with oils. This is where you get references in scripture that talk about men putting oil on their heads. (Mt 6:17, Lk 7:46) It was a customary sign of hospitality to offer perfumed oils to guests in your home, like we might offer someone a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. With this context before us, let me invite you to imagine the results of this woman’s actions after the dinner was over. What happens when a woman pours a pound of thick, richly aromatic oil-based perfume on the head of a man who doesn’t shower every morning? He takes that scent with him when he leaves. It coats his hair. It eventually trickles down his neck and onto his back and chest. It gets in his pores. At rest, he is a walking diffuser. When he scratches his neck, the scent is agitated and released into the air like a scratch-&-sniff sticker. So what if… What if the scent that filled the room at Simon the Leper’s house also filled the Upper Room the next night? Can you think of a reason it wouldn’t have? I can’t. What if, as Jesus wound through the narrow city streets of Jerusalem, the scent of that perfume lingered mysteriously in the air like a spirit after He had disappeared from sight? And what if, after His arrest, as He was stripped down for the cat of nine tails, the scent of this Himalayan flower was released into the air with every blow, filling the courtyard with an aroma that made everyone ask themselves, “What is that fragrance? Is that nard?” And what if the scent followed the cross to Golgotha along the Via Dolorosa? What if as Jesus hung on the cross dying, every time He pushed Himself up for a breath, the nard came to life again? That would have to be one very expensive application of one very intensely aromatic perfume. Even a year’s wage worth. Imagine that as the Man of Sorrows died on that hill outside Jerusalem, surrounded by Roman soldiers, confused disciples, grieving friends and self-righteous men whose entire lives were one big exercise in missing the point, imagine that the scent of extravagant opulence hung in the air. It would be just like God to do this. Why? Because the cross is the most extravagant example of opulence ever offered, and because the scent of the opulence of His gift of life still hangs in the air today. Where? In His people. Paul puts it this way. “Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16) Easter is more than a story. It is a present reality. My Redeemer lives. And He calls me to a new life, not only in the world to come, but even now. May we never forget what the opulence of God makes of us.

(I’ve included the primary Scripture reference for this meditation at the end of the post.) The first several days of the first Easter week were filled with tension and anger from Jesus’ opponents and unflinching resolve from Jesus. He had been on the move, juggling His time between Bethany, Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. Words had been His currency, and He had spent piles of them opposing the self-righteous and preparing His disciples for what He had been telling them about for a while now: “that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Mt 16:21) How confusing this must have been for them. But by the time Wednesday rolled around, Jesus was still. He went to the home of Simon the Leper, a man known for what was wrong with him. They shared a meal together and afterward settled in for a time of conversation. As they sat, a woman with an alabaster flask approached Jesus. Though Matthew doesn’t tell us her name, we not only know who she was, we know a little something about that flask too. John tells us this was Mary of Bethany, Lazarus’ sister, (Jn 12:3) and suggests she had been saving this perfume, which was worth a full year’s wages, for this very occasion. (Jn 12:7) She began to pour the perfume on Jesus’ head and feet, which Mark tells us she did by breaking open its container. (Mk 14:3) With this fracture, there was no turning back. Breaking open that alabaster flask was like popping the cork on a $20,000 bottle of champagne. She was not acting on a whim. She offered Jesus everything she had. What drove her? She somehow sensed that what He was about to give was for her. The perfume was a response to what He was in the process of giving to her. The disciples reacted like many men often do. They considered the value of her perfume and regarded her actions as though she might as well have been burning a year’s wages in a bread oven. But they dressed their indignation up in the noble auspices of concern for the poor: Think of the poor people who could have benefited from the sale of this perfume. (cf. Mt 26:8-9) But this is not how her actions hit Jesus. He comes to her aid. What she is doing, He tells them, is beautiful. Appreciate the doctrinal principle here. Though the perfume could have been sold for a year’s wages, what is perfume for? Is it merely a commodity Mary should have held on to in the event that she needed to cash it in? Is this how God would expect her to regard this valuable resource? Apparently not. Perfume is meant to be poured out and released into the air until it is gone in order that it might fill a room with its beautiful and startling aroma. So Mary breaks open the jar and the scent electrifies the senses of everyone present, and Jesus says it is beautiful. Everything in creation testifies to a Creator who delights in beauty for beauty’s sake. So many things that are beautiful didn’t need to be. And it was God elected to make them that way. He opted to make autumn a season saturated with bold, changing color. He didn’t have to make the setting sun the spectacle that it is. But He did. Why? One reason must be because beauty pleases Him. And another must be in order to arrest people by their senses when they’re otherwise just plodding along, heads down, learning to live within the economy of pragmatism. What Mary did was beautiful and Jesus wanted His disciples to know it.She was preparing Him for burial. Jesus sees a great kindness and honor in her gesture. So He returns the honor by saying history will never forget her act of beauty. And as it is, this act of gratitude has been recorded in over 150 languages around the world for over 20 centuries. J.C. Ryle wrote, “The speeches of parliamentary orators, the exploits of warriors, the works of poets and painters, will not be mentioned on that day [of God’s coming Kingdom]; but the least work that the weakest Christian has done for Christ, or His members, will be found written in a book of everlasting remembrance.” By the Wednesday of the first Easter week, Jesus is placing everything in the context of His pending death. Here in this intimate setting with dear friends—with all their quirks and flaws and reputations—the scent of redemption fills the room. Matthew 26:6-16 6Now when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, 7a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table.8And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? 9For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor.” 10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. 11For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.12In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare me for burial. 13Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.” 14Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver.16And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.

Some months ago I had a friend redoing my basement after it flooded last May. During his time at my house he mentioned he had been designing the set for a movie being shot at Grace Chapel’s big old barn out back. He told me some of the plot line, which I found intriguing, being the me that I am, and I mentioned, off the cuff, that if they needed any music for it to let me know. It wasn’t long before my friend told me to come over and meet the folks shooting the movie. So I became involved. Never having done anything remotely like this, I had no boundaries or “ought-tos” in my head. I also had no idea of what to do except proceed. One of the things that helped me greatly was the time crunch. The film The Nothing was accepted for the Nashville Film Festival, which put my deadline at the morning of April 6th. We pulled an all-nighter and pushed through. From a human perspective, offering to do the music was a completely stupid thing to do on my part. With no training, no experience, I opened my big mouth and made my committal. I had my studio, and my instruments, but that was all; I was to make sounds that brought tension, fear, relief, hope, anger, sadness, redemption, and I had little idea how I was going to do it. The end result was that I learned something experientially; that in composition, as in any other area of music, art, or life, the best stuff happens when caution is thrown to the wind, rules are bent, and we refuse to listen to the voices in our heads saying, “It’ll never work!” or “What will so-and-so say?” We step off a cliff edge in faith knowing God will cause us to fly.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TheNothing.mp3 From a spirit-view, this was the best thing I could have done for myself. It is easy to spin our wheels holding to old paradigms, other people’s perceptions of us, and especially our perceptions of other people’s perceptions of us. These manifestations of the false self tie us down, shut our mouths, and put the light of Christ in us under a bushel. In some areas of my life I’ve allowed this to happen, especially in the past few years. But none of that matters. In fact, nothing matters but faith expressing itself through love, utter reliance expressing itself as a wholehearted committal of one’s entire being to a particular project, a particular person, a particular God. We are to create as children create, taken up in the thing itself, not bothering about whether so-and-so will think it is good, burning with the fire of creation, the passion of purpose, the thrill of bringing an idea into manifested, tangible reality. I don’t mean simply creation of art. I mean any kind of creation – the creation of a marriage, of a family, of a job, of a friendship where only enemies had existed before. In the end doing this project was an eye-opener. I had real joy in the process, a spontaneous faithing that was nearly continuous, and some ridiculous ideas that actually worked. The Nothing premiered at the Nashville Film Festival April 14-15. It was a good test run. There’s still work to go on finishing details.

Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday. Is there a more ambivalent day on the Christian calendar? “Hosanna!” shouted the people lining the streets of Jerusalem. Literally, “Save us!” Save us, they meant, from the Roman oppressor. Jesus did come to save them, of course, but not from the Romans. Over the next few days, the crowd would come to realize that Jesus wasn’t on board with their agenda. By Friday the very people who shouted “Hosanna!” were shouting “Crucify him!” So it has always made me a little uneasy to commemorate the shouting and the palm-waving on Palm Sunday. Does praise count as praise when the people are that confused and, as it turns out, that bloodthirsty? We have baptized all our children on Palm Sunday. The first was more or less accidental; the Sunday that was convenient and available happened to be Palm Sunday. We held our boy in his long white gown and the children came down the aisle with their palm branches and the big organ rumbled and we sang, All glory, laud, and honor To Thee, Redeemer King To whom the lips of children Made sweet hosannas ring. Immediately we understood that Palm Sunday, traditionally associated with the faith and praise of children, was the perfect day to recognize and celebrate a child’s place in the Covenant. So we baptized our other five children on Palm Sundays too. We came to think of Palm Sunday as our family holiday and were a little sad whenever the day came around and we didn’t have anybody to baptize. It may be my imagination or selective memory, but Palm Sunday seems always to be beautiful–sunny and bright after the long, gray nastiness of a Nashville winter. Yet Palm Sunday has still troubled me. What, exactly, are we celebrating? My friend and pastor Russ Ramsey preached yesterday. He helped me see that we celebrate on Palm Sunday the same thing we celebrate any time we baptize a baby. He summed it up in a sentence: “Jesus is always doing more than you think.” We expect Jesus to deliver us from Romans or fears or insecurities or money troubles or addictions or heartache or loneliness. But Jesus came to deliver you from troubles that go much deeper than any of those. “I am doing a new thing here,” he is always saying. “You have no idea.” On that first Palm Sunday there wasn’t a soul in Jerusalem who understood what Jesus was up to. As the scripture points out, even “his disciples did not understand these things at first.” They were as ignorant of his purposes as a little baby at the baptismal font. When it comes to that, if I’m any less ignorant myself, it’s through no merit or wisdom of my own, but only by God’s grace. Yet Jesus did what he came to do. He continues to do what he means to do, requiring neither our permission or our full understanding. I don’t wish to suggest that our will and our understanding don’t figure into the equation. I do wish to suggest, however, that this business of sin and redemption is full of mysteries, and our grasp of things isn’t as important in the end as our willingness to believe God even as we inhabit the mystery. And I’m thankful for a day to commemorate Jesus’ unflagging determination to rescue people who had no idea how badly they needed to be rescued. Hosanna! He is always doing more than we think. Russ Ramsey has put together a series of daily readings he calls “Easter Week in Real Time.” They walk the reader day-by-day through Holy Week, showing from the Gospels what was happening each day between Palm Sunday and Easter. You can find “Easter Week in Real Time” here at The Rabbit Room. I’ll be reading them this week, and I commend them to you.

Smack on the corner of the busiest street in Asheville, North Carolina, scrunched between a rickety old neighborhood and the black snake of the freeway is a health food store. I know this because Asheville is one of my favorite towns in the world and when, in my travels, I can snatch a day or two in its tree-guarded streets, I do. There is a gracefully decrepit old bed and breakfast that makes a cozy base for my many rambles up ivy-tangled streets. By dawn and dusk light, I prowl old roads and woodsy dead ends, steeping myself in the cool, mountain quiet that comes so rarely in my busy days. Several visits back, I got hungry one night after a long evening walk and forayed out in search of a homemade treat. The locals pointed me to a natural foods store for the best desserts around. I found the shop just before it closed, whizzed my car into a spot and was in a mighty hurry to snatch my snack. I walked through those doors, took one look, and stopped still. Weathered wood floors and bins piled with homegrown vegetables met my eyes. Bread in wicker baskets, and that fresh, growing smell of countless green things tumbled together greeted my nose. I walked slowly in, amidst flatbeds of seedlings and bins of grain hunkered next to stands of fresh, local fruit. I wanted to stop, right there in the entrance, to take all the toppling beauty in, for that store jolted my soul. Some sleeping part of my heart that once lived, and loved, much closer to earth and plant and sky came suddenly awake. Though I am thoroughly ensconced in the suburbs at present, I did spend quite a few of my young years as a country kid. My grandmother had two-hundred acres of scrubby, cedar pocked land which I spent countless hours exploring. There was a stubborn orchard that bore bright, stunted apples, and a beleaguered garden in which we daily battled ferocious bugs to cull a few, ruby-sheened tomatoes. But all of it was my delight, all of it a new world for my taking and my just-wakened little soul was keenly aware of every whisper and scent of the earth as it sidled up to greet me. The musty damp of a barn corner, the heady green scent of fresh-mown grass, the scratch of cedar, the fragile perch of a butterfly in my hand. I couldn’t have said it out right, but some hushed corner of my heart knew that my outdoor world was rife with wonder, with growth that never ceased, colors that waxed and waned, scents that came to me as if from another world. I hunger for that in my modern, streamlined life. Sometimes, amidst a day of car and concrete and computer, I yearn for earthiness with something akin to homesickness. One step though, in that Asheville store, and I was back in the tumbled, gorgeous world of my childhood, where every corner of creation whispered a secret I yearned to know. That night, I shook myself back to reality and unearthed a chocolate cake to rival few I’ve yet tasted, but I walked out slowly, sad to leave this small world of a place in which the wonder of my childhood greeted me at the door. The next day, on the way to the airport, I hurried in to grab a snack for the airplane ride home. I was looking for some vitamin or other when I suddenly turned round and saw… well. I saw something that grew a poem in my head right there. The sight I saw compounded all the old mystery I felt, all the remembered savor of earthy things into a few words of wonder. This is what came: Grocery store corners and neat row Lines and price-point signs For cabbage, cakes, and bursting Grapes in hurried hands of people In a speed of modern harvest for Their nightly feast, the slap-bang Grab of sustenance before they Sleep, I pitter past, list half done, Check one item more, I bend down, snatch my prize Stand up and Stop. One jar of red like cardinal’s wings One sapphire stack of cornflower Sheaves, and one jar labeled Horehound leaves. Caldendula, mint, cranberries; Holy basil, lemon thyme, All glassed and jarred in grinning Lines, three sudden shelves of rainbow Jars, I’m Eve, flashed back into a Garden world where leaves were healers, Roots were keepers of the dim, Sweet secret forces formed To spark our blood Alive.

Florida State University film student, Patrick Gines, approached me early in 2010 about writing a commissioned song for his film thesis project, When The Waters Rise. Randomly, I was scheduled to play a concert at his home church in Tallahassee just a few days after his initial email. (“Random” never seems quite an accurate enough word for these sorts of occurrences.) Patrick (director) and I met at the show where he handed me an early draft of his script. With another couple of Florida concerts that weekend, I read the script and, in a Sarasota hotel room, wrote “Don’t Hold Your Breath.” Returning to Florida a few months later, with only a brief window of time to shoot, Patrick and I (mostly Patrick) made a music video – my first ever – in which a homeless man named “David” unequivocally steals the show. DHYB will be on my new album, hopefully releasing in 2011. Until then, I hope you enjoy. [Song recorded & produced by Andrew Osenga] Don’t Hold Your Breath by Eric Peters from Patrick Gines on Vimeo.

(Last year I wrote this series of posts in response to questions about the meaning of my song, “More Like Falling In Love”. With the re-release of the song on my current remix project, Song Cycles, I thought it was reason enough to revisit, revise, and repost them.) It ought to be More like falling in love Than something to believe in More like losing my heart Than giving my allegiance Caught up, called out, come take a look at me now It’s like I’m falling in love… When I first got the idea for this song, it seemed like an obvious enough truth that God prefers passionate devotion to cool intellectual assent; that he desires the kind of worshipful obedience that overflows from a relationship with him instead of the obligatory obedience based on fear and our misguided attempts at self-sufficiency. It seemed like Christianity 101 to me, maybe almost too obvious if anything. And yet I’ve been surprised to receive more push back on this song than any other I’ve written. Since its release there’s been a steady stream of criticism that the song is, as one person said, “based too much on love” (which is a remarkable statement in my opinion, but that’s probably a topic for another post). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily bothered or threatened by any of this – by and large the majority of listeners have embraced the song and I’m grateful – but I’ve been perplexed by the number of people who have expressed concern over it since it seemed like one of the “safest” songs I’ve ever written. I never saw it coming. I know that I’m not infallible and that of course there may have been another way I could have written the song that might have been more clear, so I don’t mean this as a defensive missive to silence critics. But everything being equal, it’s given me an opportunity to be curious about the different reasons it may have sparked the response that it has. For starters, I suppose a lot depends on the predisposition a person brings to the song based on what the words “falling in love” mean to them. I can understand their concern if they assume that the kind of love I’m talking about is based on emotionalism – warm, fuzzy feelings about God, reducing Him to a cosmic boyfriend/girlfriend. Maybe they think what I’m talking about here is the same kind of thing our culture tries to pass off as “love”: self-centered, hormone induced, emotionally driven romantic Hollywood “love” that is soft on commitment, sacrifice, or backbone. Somebody recently asked my wife in casual conversation if she still felt I was her “soul mate” or if she wanted to “switch it up” and see if there was someone else out there for her. I don’t think this person was maliciously trying to undermine our marriage, but the question revealed how much our culture has distorted the meaning of “love”, reducing it to a matter of selfish fulfillment instead of a life-long bond meant to daily ask of two people to die to themselves and serve the one they have chosen to be bound to. Our very own Andrew Peterson once said that marriage is God’s way of helping husbands die a little each day to our wives because He knows we aren’t man enough to do it all at once. The same could be said for wives, perhaps (I wouldn’t want to disregard their sacrifices). When we allow ourselves to fall in love with someone, we are in a sense choosing the person that we will die for. Of course that means more than simply taking a bullet for them. As heroic as that may be, it is in some ways easier than the more difficult business of a lifetime of hourly dying to our own selfishness and pride, our need to be right, to have the upper hand, and even the instinct to withdraw and protect ourselves from hurt instead of living open-heartedly toward another. All this to say that if the word “love” conjures up images of sappy Hollywood rom-coms instead of the idea of a call to radically give ourselves away, I can see why some might be troubled by a song that champions salvation and discipleship as something more akin to “falling in love” than anything else. But I can’t help but think that if these same people were to give me the benefit of the doubt and consider that I’m reading the same bible they are, they might just as easily assume that I’m talking about love as scripture defines it, where, among other things, we are told that there is no greater love than the kind that would move someone to lay down their life for another. Assuming this context, we might understand “falling in love” as the ignition of a fire that will consume our whole life while it lights up the dark, a wonder as terrifying as it is beautiful. But there were some who, even if they didn’t have an issue with the word “love”, still took me to task for the decidedly romantic language of phrases like “falling in love” and the image of being “swept off my feet”. I get it, I really do, but c’mon – it’s a pop song. We’re already stretching the medium by asking it to convey theological assertions. Besides, the language still works for me – it serves the breezy light-hearted nature of a pop song about love, but it’s also theologically meaningful for me. “Falling in love” and being “swept off our feet”, in my mind at least, imply a loss of control, a sense of being overcome by love. And I wonder if this is closer to the heart of the issue for some who have taken offense with the song. Many of us (myself included), though we long for it, are threatened by love and have found a thousand little ways to flee from it. For love – rightly understood – is dangerous. Like no other force, love will cut us to our core and peel back even the thorniest of our self-protective layers – exposing the depths of our hearts, revealing what it wants to heal, all the while asking us to trust, and drawing us out of our hiding places. We are defenseless against a Love that won’t stop until it sets us free. And freedom, of course, is nearly as terrifying as love. Most of us have been prisoners so long (since the day we were born perhaps?) that we become like inmates who grow to love the predictability of the walls of their prison cell. Freedom is disruptive and represents a new way of living that is beyond our control. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if control is what’s really at stake here. In order to love and allow ourselves to be loved we must give up control, we must become vulnerable. My wife shared a poem with me recently called “The Man Watching” by Rainer Maria Rilke about a coming storm. Here’s part of it: What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need names. When we win it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament: when the wrestler’s sinews grew long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this Angel (who often simply declined the fight) went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. Love is the greater thing that wants to defeat us, the “magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God” as Frederick Buechner says. Could it be that by insisting on the legalistic and intellectual terms of our religious inclinations we are trying to maintain control of the relationship – making our salvation, sanctification, and redemption about what we do? Are we refusing to be defeated by Love? Are we refusing to be set free? It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Galatians 5:1-6

“The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne – everything – to rescue the one he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life! You see, the best thing about this Story is – it’s true. There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every Story in the Bible whisipers his name. He is like the missing piece in a puzzle – the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture. And this is no ordinary baby. This is the Child upon whom everything would depend. This is the Child who would one day – but wait. Our Story starts where all good stories start. Right at the very beginning . . .” So begins The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. You may remember that passage if you’ve been to one of the Behold the Lamb of God concerts. Andrew reads it at the opening of the show and it sets the stage perfectly for the musical story to follow. When we sat down to discuss who we wanted for a guest speaker at this year’s Hutchmoot, Sally Lloyd-Jones was one of the first names to come up. Her melding of story, art, and the coming of Christ is a central theme in the Rabbit Room and something we hope will be the subject of much lively conversation this September. So earlier this year, we extended our invitation to Sally, and now we’re delighted to be able to announce that she’s accepted. Born in Kampala, Uganda, raised in East and West Africa, and at a boarding school in the New Forest (Manor House), the first book Sally ever remembers reading all the way through was The Complete Nonsense by Edward Lear, and she says “Things have never been the same since.” She was educated at Sherborne, went to Sussex University and Paris Sorbonne IV (where she studied Art History), and worked in children’s book publishing for several years (Oxford University Press in Oxford, Octopus Books in London, Joshua Morris in CT, and Reader’s Digest) before leaving in 2000 to write full-time. She’s written many books for children including the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller How To Be A Baby: By Me, The Big Sister (a hilarious “manual” on the behavior of babies by the elder sibling), one of only six children’s titles selected by The New York Times as Notable for 2007. She’s a world-renowned writer with a unique understanding of the power and beauty of storytelling, and we couldn’t be more excited to be hosting her as our keynote speaker at Hutchmoot 2011. Be sure to visit the Hutchmoot website to check out the suggested reading list. We’ve added The Jesus Storybook Bible and a few other topical reads. Look for more to be added as sessions and speakers are announced.

Lake City, MI is as fine a place as any to witness the kingdom come. Throughout the course of my thirty- days at a Young Life summer camp, the faint revelation occurs every Wednesday evening just as the night’s burger-themed dinner is winding down. Tangibly speaking, it has all the trappings of a drive-thru restaurant, minus the automobile exhaust and roller skates. Yet the unmistakable aroma of gifted myrrh and heaven’s grace permeates the room the way a perfume awakens a forgotten memory of a forgotten soul. This unpretentious setting is as placid and unassuming as it is dangerously rife with Habsburg wedding than it does an American 1950’s-era grease joint At first glance the scenery, characters, and homemade props are innocuous. But like the curtain going up on the final act of a play, I see something more everlasting, the true scope of the moment. As the evening progresses and the scales fall from my cynical eyes, this benign vignette trumpet-screams with sacred peals that make me wilt. The event’s zenith takes place after the dining hall work crew, comprised entirely of high school volunteers, serves the final embellishments of dinner. They clear plates, cups, and silverware and then discreetly retreat into the kitchen. Amid the general playfulness of the room, no one seems to notice the servers’ subtle disappearance. The vast dining hall is decked out in all the vestments of a pre-60’s America, from the red-and-white checkered tablecloths to the shimmering streamers and paraphernalia draped festival-like overhead. Everyone, campers included, is bedecked in period garb: rolled up white-sleeve t-shirts, pomade pompadours, resplendent bouffant dos, and painted lips and eyes. The girls and boys serving on work crew are a forty-person team: beautiful, handsome, and hailing from all points of America. Suddenly, era music (á la Chuck Berry) blares over the loudspeakers, and the previously sequestered dining hall servers simultaneously burst back into the room parading with one another and dancing a choreographed bit. As if on cue, they fan out into the seated, gawking crowd of teen-aged guests and proceed to select dance partners from among them. In many instances I witness attractive work crew girls taking the hands of some not so worldly-handsome, or “lovely,” high school boys to dance with them. By the looks on some of their scarlet faces, I imagine it is probably the first dance for many of these gents. As I witness the boys’ delighted, silent pride at being handpicked for the occasion, I empathize with their sweaty palms and gut full of nervous butterflies. (My own memory of being shy and scared-to-death-of-pretty-girls is still fixed vividly and awkwardly in my mind. Some inadequacies are slow to erode.) But they dance, and it is at this moment when the noise of earth – our longing for acceptance and approval – is drowned out by the melee of a welcoming heaven in its unconditional melody. I see illustrated before my eyes, like the intentions of a renowned playwright, the glory of the lovely seeking out the unlovely, rapturing them, revealing to them in so few words that the heart is, after all, the thing that matters most. Traversing all points past and future, the canvas vigorously paints itself before me, reminding me of my own final and glorious Reconciliation: the first dance shared by the long-separated bride and bridegroom. In short, it is a brief snapshot of an eternal kingdom, of a good and merciful heaven, that final resting place of flesh, bone, hate, hypocrisy and perception masquerading as truth. Can you see it? It is the lone lamb missing from the fold, resting now in the lion’s arms, unscathed, un-fearing, cherished beyond rational comprehension. The question is not whether we get lost. The question is whether or not we allow ourselves to be found in our unloveliness. Most days I spend veiled in some desperate form of vanity, basking in rabid self-centeredness, unable to see heaven revealing its secrets to me like a prolific victory garden. I am thankful that once a week, at least during my double fortnight here, I am allowed to witness this playful, harmless, innocent scene. I must excuse myself from the table and from the dining hall because the holiness whirling about me is more than my presence can bear. I quell tears at the sight of homely children waltzing about the room in the hands of lovely and handsome members of the opposite sex, many of whom may not fully comprehend, this side of heaven, the full implications of their small act of restoring value and worth to a fellow human being. On this night of metaphor, the pairing of human dignity and God’s habitual love is clothed in purple royalty. At epiphany’s dawning I realize it will one day be me doing the dancing: the unlovely, ragged creature of earth taking the hand of incarnate beauty, dancing about the halls of heaven as if that luminous venue had been reserved for me from the beginning. It is a dance I long for.

When the recording of my next full length album got pushed back in mid-2010, we started to wonder about releasing an interim project for the fans who were early adopters and have been waiting for something new for a while now. The original plan was to try and do a covers project with Derek Webb (something I still hope to do in the next 12 – 18 months :- ) in the Fall or early Winter, but it quickly became clear that our schedules wouldn’t allow for it. Kind of… A remix project is less certain to sell than a cover’s project, so my label had to scale back the budget, hoping to earn back their investment. The new budget would allow us to do only four songs with Derek, but limitations can often be creativity’s best friend. As we wondered about how to make the most of what we could of these remixes, the head of A&R at Centricity, John Mays, proposed we turn this project into an inside look at the journey of a song, incorporating the work tapes that I record into my laptop when I’m working out ideas, to the little homemade demo I turn in to the label as we wonder about which songs are worthy of inclusion on a record, to the album version, and then finally to Derek’s remix. This concept got me really excited. As far as I know, this kind of project has never been done before. I fell in love with the uniqueness of the idea as well as the opportunity it gave me to let people have an up close and personal experience with my recording process. For instance, in the work tape of “More Like Falling In Love,” if you listen close you can hear my 4 year old boy, Gus, singing along with me (before he drops what must have been a Lego creation on the floor and yells, “dang!”), and in “Jesus Use Me I’m Yours” you can hear a bit of a completely different version that I had been working on before abandoning it to try a fresh approach with my friend Matt Hammitt (of Sanctus Real). You can also hear Matt and I fishing for melodic ideas for the bridge and the (sometimes awkward) progression as the song finally starts to take its final shape. I love hearing Matt’s voice on this, too. You can also hear Joel Hanson and I as we discover the outro for “I Am New”. Considering the vision of this project, Derek Webb was, of course, the perfect fit. Centricity (my label) wanted us to focus on the two singles that had performed well at radio this year, but I got to pick “Blessed Be” and “Jesus Use Me I’m Yours” – both important songs from my live show that I thought would lend themselves well to being re-imagined by Derek (I think “Jesus Use Me, I’m Yours” is my favorite of the remixes). I imagine it may not be a project for everybody, but it was made specifically for the fans who have graced my work with their attention and enthusiasm and I hope they enjoy the peek behind the curtain of my creative process. It has been a joyful little project for me to work on (mostly because Derek did most of the work ;- ). We made a limited run of only 2500 copies and after that it will only be available digitally. The new full length record is coming in September! But until then, I give you Song Cycles.http://bashful-building.flywheelsites.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/MoreLikeRemix.mp3

Andy Osenga hopes the force is with him. Or perhaps he’s boldly going where no songwriter… you get the picture. In case you haven’t heard, the talented songwriter/producer is making a sci-fi concept album and asking you to blast off with him. And if you think that sounds nerdy, you haven’t even scratched the surface. The beauty of Andy’s latest project is that it’s a sign of an artist confidently creating out of his own identity and asking a community of people to join him to that end. To this writer, it’s a glimmer of the life to come — a place where truth, beauty and community all take primary seats at the table together under the banner of a glorious God. It’s artists like Andy, who follow their admittedly nerdy hearts to the places they’re called to, who serve as important guides challenging us to do the same. To the communal end, Kickstarter is the central hub for all who want to support Leonard, The Lonely Astronaut. Whether you’re in it to support the arts or to own a piece of backyard aeronautical history, everyone at the Rabbit Room believes it a worthy endeavor. Q: Let’s start with this idea of inviting the community to be a part of the recording process or to fund it. Was that a difficult decision at all or was it rather easy? A: The last couple of records I’ve done have all been very fan community oriented going all the way back to The Morning record which was in 2005. There was no Kickstarter back then, but I funded that record with pre-orders. Ever since then, I’ve done that with every project, so Kickstarter was an obvious choice. It was a much better looking version of what I was already doing. It’s a little easier to use and navigate and it’s also more legit rather than sending me money and trusting you’ll get something in eight months. So I’ve had this record in my mind for a couple of years and I finally thought this was the year to do it. I think it’s great that people can get involved at all levels. People can sign up for different things and I can offer things like songwriting sessions, pieces of the actual recording or props that are involved. It’s just a fun way to involve people in a community. Q: What does the Kickstarter project look like? Is it weird to think about, ‘If someone gives this amount of money, then I’ll give them this?’ A: I was up late last night figuring that stuff out. [Laughs] ‘What do I have to offer and how much is it worth?’ But it’s actually a lot of fun, because it frees you up to do some fun things. You can create extra songs for people. You get to honor someone or allow someone to believe in your project at an amazing level like $500. That’s a crazy amount, but if someone wanted to do that, it gives me the chance to do something amazing for them. It’s an honor to get that opportunity. Q: So what are people buying into? What’s this space concept? A: The record has a backstory. It’s a concept record set in the future in space about a guy named Leonard who loses his wife in an accident in the midst of a divorce, so he’s already sort of lost it. He’s this lonely, angry guy. He takes a gig on a long distance space freighter, so he’ll be alone in space for a year. When he comes back home, because of relativity, everyone he knows will be old or dead. So it’s about him saying to the world that he’s done with it all. So he brings along some antique recording instruments, which just happens to be the stuff that I own. So I’m going to play him and actually build the interior of a spaceship like a movie set and then move my studio into it and then record the whole thing in uniform. [Laughs] Q: [Laughs] So what is the genesis of this idea? A: I’ve always loved science fiction and just love literature. I love a big sweeping story and I think good sci-fi is up there with that stuff. I love how it just removes you from the context. You can put something in a completely foreign context like being in space 500 years from now. The preconceived notions of who the good guys and the bad guys are go away. It gives you a freedom to go places and ask questions that you don’t otherwise get a chance to ask or that you’re too biased to even know to ask. So the genesis of it is that I’m a nerd. When I can’t sleep, I just lie awake and wonder what kind of spaceship I would have. [Laughs] I’ve developed this mindless way of slowing myself down when I can’t sleep, so I’ve always had this in my head. Then I just started building a story around it and suddenly I’m writing songs around that story. Then I made the mistake of telling Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive one day, ‘Um, I kind of have this idea.’ They said, ‘Dude, you’ve got to do that!’ That was a couple of years ago and I kind of pushed it off, but you eventually have that realization that you’ll be 75 someday and will have never built that spaceship. [Laughs] So I’m going to do it. Q: Why go to the external trouble to build something that won’t tangibly make it onto the recording? A: There will be a lot of video involved, and I think we’ll even have some short films. But primarily the reason is that it just sounds really fun. My little kid makes forts all of the time, so it’s just a big version of that. I love the idea of putting myself in a place that feels different and where the things I’m looking at are not the things I’m usually looking at when I’m working. It’s just being in that different environment to see what happens. It’s also for me to be able to walk in and know that I have six weeks in this place and then I have to tear this down. This is my moment. I already know that I will be really sad about it. Then again, there’s also the marketing aspect to it of, ‘Dude, this guy built a freaking spaceship.’ [Laughs] I’m hopeful that helps it get heard. That’s not my initial intent, but I can see as I talk to people that it probably won’t hurt from a marketing standpoint. Q: Do you know how you’re going to build it? Have you strategized that? A: No, I’ve just started to talk to designers and folks here in Nashville to give me pointers. So I’ll be working on that over the next couple of months, but I won’t be building it until the fall. I’m actually going to host a weekend for the building, so anyone who wants to come can be involved. I might have to cap it if there’s too many, but if we can get 40 or 50 people to just come over and bring a hammer, that would be great. I’ll play a special concert and we’ll make a whole special weekend out of it. I think that will be grand. Q: Have you already pitched this to some fans and friends who you think will help you? A: Yeah, I’ve got about half of the songs written at this point, so I’ve started playing some of the songs live. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. That’s not something I expected. I figured people would roll their eyes at me a bit more, but everyone has been saying, ‘Man, that is awesome.’ [Laughs] A lot of people have said they want to come and help out. I love it. Q: On a philosophical level, does this affect your thoughts as an artist of following convention versus following your heart? A: I think it even comes from a slightly deeper place for me. It is obviously the fruit of a lot of conversations that I’ve had about identity and how that’s rooted in Christ and that I am made specifically to do and enjoy certain things. When I was in junior high, I hid the fact that I played music because it wasn’t cool. I tried to play basketball and ignored the fact that I took piano lessons because that wasn’t cool. But I love music and I love books. But I hid my love of books and hid sci-fi even longer. [Laughs] But that’s what I’ve always loved even since I was a little kid. So the chance to not only enjoy it but create something that’s real and deep and honest out of that is some of my best work. It’s also very personal. I feel like it’s just a matter of saying, ‘I can’t let myself be defined by what I want you to think about me. I’ve been fearfully and wonderfully made and I just have to embrace that.’ I know there will be people who won’t get it, but I hope there’s enough people who can at least help me fund it on Kickstarter.