Laity Lodge is one of our favorite places on earth (and we hope to be back for another Rabbit Room Retreat in 2017). Not only do they host soul-nourishing retreats, serve great food, and bring in great speakers and musicians, they also have a habit of making these awesome Box Canyon videos—this one featuring none other than Andy Gullahorn and Gabe Scott.

Fantasy adventure and slapstick cartoon humor. Martin runs from dragons and bandits, while Marco tries to break out of a desert camp. The River Fox, volume two of The Dragon Lord Saga is now premiering one episode a week at Webtoons (also check out volume one, Martin & Marco). Chapter two of The River Fox is now available! Don’t forget to log in and vote and share with friends. As cartoony as my comics tend to be, I often freehand my work . . . but it’s not uncommon for me to take a selfie to try to capture a certain facial expression, or scan a landscape photo and trace it for a background. When I wanted to show Robin’s “nonverbal cues” in this chapter, I knew it would require some acting. So I put out the call to some folks in the Rabbit Room. Here’s what Peter Brunone, Kate Hinson, and Stephen Hesselman came up with: Someone get these folks an Oscar for Best Offscreen Performance In A Graphic Novel!

“We will rock the hell out of you.” –Stryper Not long ago, when I heard about a certain concert happening here in Nashville, I sent out a tweet that bugged me almost as soon as I posted it. I twote: “I may or may not be taking myself from 25 years ago to see Stryper at the Wildhorse Saloon tonight. ‪#dontjudgeme ‪#weallcomefromsomewhere What bugs me most about that tweet is how much effort I spent qualifying something I genuinely wanted to do. “I may or may not…,” “Don’t Judge Me…” Insinuating that if I go, it’s an act of nostalgia. Why did I feel the need to distance myself from going to see the one band who probably received more of my teenage disposable income and bedroom wall space than any other in the history of the Floyd Rose Floating Tremelo System? For those unfamiliar with Stryper, a little history might be in order. They formed in the early 80’s, appearing on LA’s Sunset Strip music scene with other big-hair metal bands like Motley Crue, Cinderella, Poison, and Ratt. If you know these bands, you get the picture—long hair, spandex, ear rings, make-up, lots of promises to rock people—no matter where they’re from—and to rock them for seemingly unending periods of time. Stryper, from the beginning, occupied rarified air. If you were going to make it in that industry, there had to be something about you that 1) made you stand out, and 2) made people like you. With their yellow and black attire and their commitment to singing plainly about their faith in Jesus and the free offer of the Gospel, they certainly stood out. However, I expect both of those characteristics made the “make people like you” objective a little bit more of a trick. Why? Because lyrically and morally, they were swimming against the current of their competing colleagues’ core values. See, thematically, the bands of that genre and era devoted 90% of their lyrical capital to weird euphemisms about women, the anticipation of and participation in partying, and doing whatever they wanted to do, no matter what their parents thought. The remaining 10% of their lyrics went to space travel, rainbows in the dark, the travail of the early native Americans. (I’m looking at you, Europe, for two out of three here.) Stryper never tried to philosophize about the druids or sing about fighting super-natural serial killers while in a dream state. They kept things pretty straightforward. They sang mainly about Jesus. But if they were going to make this their play and earn a living doing it, they needed to be a great band. So what did Stryper do? They worked hard, and they became a great band. They worked hard at defining a certain sound built around both vocal and instrumental harmony and precision. They created a live concert experience that people wanted to come see and then keep talking about long after. They worked hard to promote themselves—gut-wrenching work because it often carries more rejection than acceptance. And all this work paid off, establishing them as one of the most visually and musically entertaining live acts of the MTV era. Then came the ’90s. I assume Stryper, like most of their peers from that era, faced a commercial decline when some kid called Slacker Angst rolled out of bed (at the crack of noon), put on his flannel shirt and handed Eddie Vedder a microphone to tell the Sunset Strip that the party was over. When grunge took over, it was a “Tower of Babel” moment for the Kingdom of Big Hair Metal. A lot of those 80’s L.A. glam bands just put down their B.C. Rich Warlocks and walked away sad because Seattle had confused their language. Some became tribute bands to themselves, earning their living by playing old hits and selling t-shirts. Some found gainful employment in reality TV. Those who weathered the storm stayed in their lane and just kept working, devoted to their existing fan base. Many of these bands have resurfaced in recent years as the new generation of “classic rock.” (Case in point: in the past year, Nashville has hosted concerts for Van Halen, Def Leppard, Poison, Cinderella, Lita Ford, Kiss, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, and Judas Priest, just to name a few.) What did I expect from this concert? What I found surprised me. The concert started at 7:30, the doors opened at 6:00. At around 5:00, I stopped by the venue to buy my ticket. What did I see? A line. There was a line. Fans were already gathering so they could get right up to the front of the stage—fans wearing Stryper t-shirts and holding records they hoped to get autographed. Why did this surprise me? It wasn’t that Stryper had fans. Of course they had fans— lots of them, from all around the world, and deservedly so. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how willing these fans were to so publicly identify themselves as such. But soon that question turned back on me: why had I been so unwilling do the same? As I took my place in line, I realized I didn’t exactly know how I was supposed to feel about this concert. Was I supposed to be excited to see my one-time favorite band? Did I think the concert would be, in some way, funny? Gimmicky? Ironic? Would I maybe get nostalgic for a time long past? And who were these people in line with me? I played it cool and kept my head down. The last thing in the world this introvert wanted was to get into some conversation with a stranger about what we hoped would make the set-list, or whether the band would be wearing yellow and black spandex, or whether vinyl was superior to digital. Then I began to notice that the people in line were mostly my age. When they were kids, they probably covered their bedroom walls with the same posters I had, saw the same concerts, wore the same tour T-shirts, and collected the same records. Could it be that these were, in fact, my people? Could it be that though we’d all weathered the ’90s differently, we had each come to gather on this common ground—ground we all felt, at some point in our lives, was the soil from which we’d grown? I slipped into the venue and climbed up to the balcony where I planned to observe the show from a distance. But so help me, by the middle of the second song I found myself headed for the stairs to stand among the crowd right in front of the stage. Why? Because my favorite band from high school was putting on an amazing live show, and I knew every word to every song. This was my band and these were my people. My story is joined, in a small but still real way, to those four guys from southern California—four guys who happen to rock. I would be lying if I told you I went to that show for purely nostalgic reasons, as my tweet suggested. I went as a fan. And it was awesome. __________ Postscript: Stryper has released new music in recent years. I bought it and shared it with my teenage son. Every so often I will knock on his bedroom door and find him listening to his favorite songs on repeat. ________________ Me in my bedroom at 15.

If you aren’t reading Russ Ramsey’s Behold the King of Glory this Lenten season, you ought to be. It’s the best Lenten devotion I’ve ever seen or heard tell of. Get his Advent devotional, Behold the Lamb of God, and you could be reading Russ 65 days out of the year–that’s 18% of the year! Read him on He Reads Truth, and you can bump up that percentage even higher. Until recently, Russ was my pastor. We were in the same small group when he went through open heart surgery a couple years ago. That experience gave rise to a book on suffering that will be released in 2017. Hello, Russ, and welcome to Sad Stories Told for Laughs. Nice to be here. Just this week you submitted to the publisher a manuscript about suffering. Yes. A lot of it is based on your own health troubles, no? It’s autobiographical. I use my story as the setting, but the subject reaches to a broader exploration of common things people experience in seasons of affliction. Often in this series we talk about public embarrassments–stage mishaps, unattended book signings, etc—but today I thought it would be interesting to talk about the humiliations and mortifications that go along with having a body. You have come to the right guy. You had some pretty major surgery–what, three years ago this spring? Summer of 2013. I developed a blood infection that lodged in my heart and chewed up my mitral valve. I had three different week-long hospital stays, the second of which was so that they could operate on my heart. You spent your fortieth birthday in the hospital. I remember this because I was there that day, and so was your mother… I said, “Mrs. Ramsey, tell me about what you were doing forty years ago today.” She gave me kind of a blank look and said, “I couldn’t say,” the way I might if somebody asked me, “Tell me what you were doing the night of October 18, 1998.” One year she forgot my birthday until the end of the day– which was a Sunday. She knew I liked Baskin Robbins ice cream cakes, so she went to the local Baskin Robbins, which was staffed by one teenage boy. She scoured the freezer for a cake and found one that said, “Happy 21st Birthday, Steve.” She took it to the boy at the counter and said, “Any chance you could change this to read ‘Happy 29th Birthday, Russ’?” He looked at the cake for a second and said, “I think I could change the 21 to a 29, but don’t think I could do anything beyond that.” She said, “Fine. Do that.” So she proudly brought me home a cake that said, “Happy 29th Birthday, Steve.” It was delicious. It is the only cake I have any real memories of– and I love that story. To clarify, you aren’t the sixth of nine kids or anything like that? One of three. Her favorite, by a mile… Readers of this feature expect deeper humiliation than having a couple of birthdays forgotten by your mother. Surely your hospital stays produced some mortifications of the flesh. Well, when [my wife] Lisa and I arrived at the hospital for my open heart surgery– which happened to also be our 18th wedding anniversary– we signed in and took our seats. It was maybe 5:30am. A guy in black scrubs appeared, carrying a clipboard. He barked, “Ramsey. Ramsey!” He sounded like he was angry with me. Nervously, I went over to him, and he told me he would take me up to pre-op. In the elevator, he said, “Well, if you have any modesty issues, now would be the time to get over them.” “Why?” I asked. “Because they are about to make you strip down naked. Standard procedure.” He still sounded angry with me. It turned out that what he lacked in bedside manner he made up for in accuracy. Sure enough, a pre-op nurse showed me to my bed and handed me a small hand towel and then said, “Go ahead and strip down. I’ll be here on the other side of the curtain. Just let me know when you’re ready so we can shave you.” “Um, what?” I said. My nurse said, “Didn’t someone tell you? We shave heart patients from chin to toes. You can use the towel to cover up when you’re done.” I was as vulnerable as the day I was born. (Now would be the time for all readers to close their eyes and envision Russ Ramsey naked and getting shaved. Take as long as you need.) Did she shave your back? Ah Hah! I caught you. My nurse was a dude. Yes, I guess you did catch me. That being said, I’m still going to picture a female nurse next time I envision this scene. It makes a more memorable image. Well, that’s all I have to say about that. There was another time, prior to that, when I had to have some kind of scope or something and I had to go under anesthetics. At the hospital, they have these people called “Transport” and their job is to wheel patients around to their various tests and scopes, and the like. Anyway, this Jamaican woman with a super thick accent came a got me to take me to my test. Along the way, in an effort to comfort me, she said, “You know what’s the truth, mon? Death comes for everybody. Young or old. Doesn’t matter none.” Did it comfort you? It made me laugh, and as soon as I came to, I wrote it down in the little journal I kept for moments just like that one. Bedside manner is a funny thing Comfort is a funny thing too. It’s hard to know what’s going to work. Yeah, but it’s not that hard to guess when something WON’T work. Being in the hospital is an upside-down experience. Nothing is normal anymore. You’re there because something is wrong, and everyone else is there because the same is true for them, or they intend to be involved in the process of fixing you. Modesty goes away. Medicine often takes away all our filters. We’re just out there. Tact is gone, inhibitions too. The day after my surgery, I was still pretty medicated. The nurse wanted me to move back and forth from the bed to a chair every other hour, to keep me moving around. But it was a very painful process, and because of a neurological problem I had which made my left foot go completely numb, I needed two people to help me out of bed. It was usually my wife and a nurse. And early on, whenever I would make that move, I’m told I would erupt in a profanity-laced tirade that would make a comedian blush. I have little recollection of that. The one memory I do have is that after saying a bad word, I would think, “I hope no one heard that.” I’m not much of a cusser, but apparently I dug deep for some of these tirades. My wife suggested that I might have dusted off some of my old material from when I was a kid. I guess this is kind of a character thing. I had arthroscopic meniscus surgery around the same time, you’ll remember. But I never erupted into any profanity-laced tirades. Yes, but your surgery might not have been on the same scale. I hardly think that’s yours to judge. I hope your knee feels better. Do you think that diminishes its importance if you call it a “knee” instead of a “meniscus”? You’re right. The meniscus is only a tiny part of the knee. Sorry man. That must be the lingering effect of the anesthetic from three years ago. You deserve better from me. I hope the tiny part of your knee that they operated on for that one hour that afternoon feels better. It does…which is amazing, because I’m not sure anybody but me prayed for my recovery. When I heard those terrible words–“torn meniscus”–I thought, “Finally, I’ve got something to contribute during prayer request time.” But no, there’s somebody in my small group about to have open-heart surgery. If I’m not mistaken, it was literally the same day I was going to do my big reveal that you asked people to pray for your “heart problem.” I remember that. And I went first. That did stink for you. You had your surgery while two of your friends were facing major health issues. No one showed you any love at all. Is there a word or phrase to describe getting trumped like that on a prayer request? If there isn’t, there ought to be. Let’s invite that in the comments. Folks, what should that be called? I don’t know if you remember this, but about the time of my surgery, Lisa heard about somebody who had died of complications from a meniscus surgery. Yeah. The relative of a co-worker or something. She couldn’t decide whether or not to tell me. She didn’t know if it would terrify me or make me feel validated. I thought it was incredibly validating. Still, you were the one getting all the love. God has put eternity in our hearts. But he has put our hearts in these bodies… As somebody said, this is ridiculous, like a dog wearing a tuxedo. Yeah, but its also sacred. Your meniscus, my heart– they were both moments where we had to face the reality that our bodies break down. I refused to wear the hospital gowns in favor of my own clothes. It made my IV port less accessible, but I felt that if I could keep at least one part of my life normal, it wouldn’t be so bad. We cling to things that remind us that even though some affliction has pinned us to the mat, our lives continue on. As you’ve already suggested, there were plenty of indignities involved in your hospital stays. What did you learn from having to live with those indignities? Or to put it another way, what have you taken back into your “regular” life, where it’s easier to guard your dignity? I am willing to talk very openly about my mortality now. This has proven to be helpful for others. I’ve sort of lost the sense of discretion when it comes to telling my story. We use the word mortification as a synonym for humiliation or indignity. We’ve been talking about mortifications that are related to the flesh and the failures thereof…do you see any connections between those mortifications and the old idea of “the mortification of the flesh”? We just recently celebrated Ash Wednesday, where the priest bends down and whispers into the congregant’s ear, “Remember that you have to die.” I think going through an affliction, or being shaved from chin to toes, reminds us of our mortality, which, for me anyway, helps to shape humility. Are we still laughing? The pastor can’t help himself. We don’t have to laugh the whole time. Having said that, Lent is a great time to laugh at ourselves. Yes it is. It is a good time to remember that we are fools. I think one of the most important messages of Lent—and suffering—is that we don’t have to take the world as seriously as the world takes itself. I actually kept a page in my hospital journal just for the funny things that happened. Humor played a vital role in maintaining sanity. During my third hospital stay a drunk and disorderly guy was wheeled into the area next to me. We were separated by a curtain. When he first arrived, he was unintelligible, in and out of consciousness, and clearly in pain. When he would come to, he was belligerent. The police had brought him in and I could hear their radios squawking in the hallway. After a couple of hours, he sobered up enough to have a semi-lucid conversation with his ER doc. Part of the conversation when EXACTLY like this: Dr: Sir? Guy: What! Dr: Sir, did you at any point lose consciousness after your cousin hit you in the head with the sledge hammer? Guy: (clearly insulted, disgusted by the question) No! Dr: Well, you’re a much tougher man than I. Guy: Exactly… (nods back off to sleep.) The absurdity of that conversation was like medicine. It hurt to laugh, but laugh I did. Beautiful. Exactly… But even that guy, tough as he might be, is made of dust, and to dust he shall return. And so are you, Russ. And me. And you, dear reader. Thanks, Russ, for sharing your Sad Stories Told for Laughs. Glad to bare my soul. (Get it?)

This is a sneak peek of the outro of “Beautiful One (Nowhere),” one of the new songs that will be on Far Side Of The Sea. I started writing this song the night I learned my aunt was killed in an early morning car accident. Several weeks later, I made the acquaintance of a father coping with the sudden death of his teenage son. He mentioned that one of the things he missed most was playing hide-and-seek with his boy, that he wished Dillon were still alive to “sneak and surprise” him. I know of no other way to describe “Beautiful One” other than that it is my Ecclesiastes, an acknowledgment of the drastic and deeply felt hollowness of losing a loved one, of living with an ache that seems to have no meaning, gives no answer, and has no end.

Every year, the Molehill presents a new editorial mystery. I solicit contributions from writers and artists all over the country, and when their work begins to roll in, I find myself wondering how on earth their parts will ever fit together into a cogent whole. And every year, I’ve been surprised. Out of chaos, themes emerge. Each issue takes on its own unique character, and this issue has been no different. It’s been the most surprising, though. Why? One word: comedy. Comedy has always been knit into the bones of both the Rabbit Room and the Molehill. Whether strange videos of Andrew Peterson in the studio, or articles about pickles, or footnotes written in dwarvish runes, comedy is one of the ingredients that keeps the engine running. It’s a way of reminding ourselves, and everyone else, that while we like to talk, sing, and write about serious matters, there’s no reason to do so too seriously—at least not all the time. Sometimes I think the Church is plagued by seriousness, and I believe injecting doses of the cure into the body is just as important a ministry as many others. Good comedy is, I believe, not about mockery or making fun, but about reminding people that we are all worthy of ridicule, we are all fools, and we’re better off when we haven’t forgotten it. The ability to laugh at oneself ought to be a spiritual virtue, and the ability to laugh along with each other is a mark of true fellowship and community. So enjoy this year’s collection. It includes treasures like Walt Wangerin’s Suessish-yet-ghoulish “Solomon Grundy;” more recipes from Chef Lewis—fantastically illustrated by Stephen Hesselman; new fiction by Thomas McKenzie, Lanier Ivester, and Adam Whipple; a selection of poetry by newcomer Chris Slaten; and fine new work by the veteran Yokels. There’s even a sampling of Jonny Jimison’s comic strip world, a generous dose of oddity from the mysterious DKM, and something I can’t come close to explaining by Don Chaffer (isn’t that always the case?). I hope part of this book makes you think. I hope other parts make you laugh. And I hope at least some of it makes you do both. A. S. Peterson Editor, The Molehill [Get your copy in the Rabbit Room Store.]

Several years ago I heard, for the first time, the Easter homily (c. A.D. 400) of St. John Chrysostom. It was unlike any sermon I have ever heard. It had no seminar-room smell at all; St. Chrysostom didn’t expound Holy Scripture. Instead, he used it as a vehicle to fly the listener into the glorious atmosphere of Easter. The sermon was filled with the distinct Easter aroma—as the house at Bethany was filled with the fragrance of the perfume when Mary broke the jar and anointed Jesus’s feet. Four years ago I set out to do for Ash Wednesday what St. Chrysostom did for Easter. Not that I thought I could do it nearly so well. But I set out with the idea of getting my head into the Lenten atmosphere, using various texts appointed for Ash Wednesday to get there. Here is the fruit: the only sermon I have ever written, or am likely to write. Lent: Break Forth Like the Dawn Do you receive the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday? You do well: for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Do you fast? You do well. For even Jonah’s Ninevites, who did not know their right hand from their left, declared a city-wide, forty-day fast, and God relented from unleashing the calamity that was the due penalty for the city’s wickedness.[1] Do you weep, and fast, and mourn, and rend your heart rather than your garments? You do well. For so the prophet Joel charged the people of God to do—to plead “spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God?”[2] By regarding lightly the testimonies, the judgments, and the statutes of the LORD, we have borne His Name in vain. We weep, fast, mourn, that we may see his Name and heritage no longer given to open reproach, but publicly vindicated again, in our time and always. But do you disfigure your faces, and put on a show of fasting before men? Then the Lord Jesus tells you that their seeing your disfigured face will be your reward.[3]  Are you fasting for such a reward? So wash your face, and anoint your head, that your fast may be secret, and that your Father may see in secret and reward you. On your fast day, do you bow your head like a reed, and spread sackcloth and ashes under you, and stop at that?  Then the prophet Isaiah tells you that your voice “will not be heard on high.”[4] But if you fast as the Creator God would choose, loosing the bonds of wickedness, giving the bread you didn’t eat to the hungry, finding room in your house for the homeless poor, covering those who have not enough clothes even for their own backs, Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.[5] When you find yourself cast out into the wilderness, there is Christ, cast ahead of you by the Holy Ghost, your vanguard and your rear guard, parrying the crafty arguments of the Evil One. When you set yourself to fast, to mortify the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and pride in possessions, there before you is Christ, setting His face to go to Jerusalem — in Whom there is more life hidden for you than there is mortification in your fast, and more light than the noonday. Praise be to Him forever. Amen. [1] Jonah 3-4. [2] Joel 2. [3] S Matthew 6:16-18. [4] Isaiah 58:4-5. [5] Isaiah 58:8-11 (ESV).

Besides being the author of more than a dozen books and contributing regularly to The Gospel Coalition, Nancy Guthrie is a much sought-after speaker and retreat leader. She and her husband David live in Nashville where, she says, “life is less about professional pursuits than about the ordinary aspects of being a wife, mother, friend, and follower of Jesus, with clothes to wash, e-mails to answer, and a friend to listen to.” When I caught up with Nancy, she had just returned from a harrowing visit to the sinus surgeon. How was the appointment? Well I learned something new—the vagal response. Know what that is? Is that where you sneeze when you look at a light? No. It’s when you faint in reaction to a stressful trigger (at least that’s what Wikipedia says since I had to look it up after my doctor left the room). So you went vagal at this appointment today? Well, not out cold . . . but . . . It scared me when you said you had to take pain medicine BEFORE your appointment. I know! I scared me too! And thus the “stressful trigger.” But we’ve got to move on from this topic because my husband keeps being embarrassed when I tell anyone about my sinus fungus that was the size of a half dollar that was removed last week. Uh oh. I did it again. I’m glad you survived it. And I’m glad you reached out to offer your stories of humiliation and mortification. I just want to be a blessing. As you know, usually the guests on “Sad Stories Told for Laughs” are performers. Their humiliations tend to be a little more public than those of writers. You mean more public than my sinus fungus? That one is only as public as you choose to make it. I’m sure our readers will be glad you chose to share. But as I was starting to say, the writer’s mortifications are often more private than the performer’s. Well, I do get out, you know. Good. “Out” is where public humiliation happens. Absolutely. And more specifically, “up front.” Yes, I was looking at your speaking schedule. You’re up front quite a bit. I love getting to go out and teach the Bible. And amazingly, people keep inviting me to do it. I’m not really amazed to hear that. So what kind of odd things happen to an itinerant Bible teacher? A while back a church in New Orleans invited me to come. It was a great church. Rebuilt after Katrina. And it was my second time there, so we were like old friends. I was having a bit of trouble with allergies at the time. (Now that I think about it, maybe it was that fungus!) I was taking a decongestant that made me a little dry. One of the very kind pastors said to me before the evening started, “I put some water up there for you.” Now I’m not a big drinker when I’m speaking—water or otherwise—but sometimes you just gotta take a sip. Know what I mean? I do know what you mean. And you get into the flow and emotion of a message and you don’t want to take some big break and make some big production of actually taking a drink. I was in the heart of it—getting to the gospel of grace right there in the Garden of Eden after the Fall—and I was getting kinda dry. You feelin’ it? Yes. I’m there. Like one of the camels in the Garden of Eden. But I didn’t want to lose my intensity or flow. So, in my peripheral vision, I could see a bottle down on the floor underneath the podium. So without even looking at it, I smoothly swept down and scooped it up. Once again, keeping my focus on all my gospel goodness, so as not to distract my listeners, I unscrewed the top without looking at the bottle, and when I took a breath, i took a big swig. I can’t even guess what’s about to happen. It wasn’t water. What was it? Anointing oil. Yuck. What are you going to do with a mouth full of anointing oil in front of 500 women? Spew it out like the Laodiceans, I reckon. Well I didn’t want to spit it out. I felt like I had already desecrated something holy. So I swallowed it. A whole mouthful? Oh yeah. Then I spotted that bottle of water the pastor told me he had “put up there” for me underneath my seat on the front row. This anointing oil was in a regular water bottle? No, Jonathan. It wasn’t. What sort of bottle was it? And what made you think you could just drink whatever you wanted to? I’m feeling a bit judged right now. Sorry, but I have a reputation for a hard-hitting interviewing style. What can say? I was focused on my message and completely missed color of the contents inside the bottle. Of course the women were slowly figuring out what I had swallowed. It was that mixed response of agony for me and the inability to contain their laughter. I could see them mouthing it to each other: “anointing oil.” And then they would pretty much put their heads in their hands and giggle. You just try to get back to the gospel after that. What is anointing oil made out of? I guess it’s olive oil. That’s what I tasted well into the night. Lying in my bed, quite sure that I would never come to the point of finding this at all funny since I was so embarrassed. I texted a few of my friends who I thought would provide comfort and assurance. If that’s what you expected from them, your friends must be different from mine. Clearly they’re not. My friend Mary said she was glad she wasn’t there because they would have had to carry her out on a stretcher laughing. But surely my mentor in Bible teaching, Sue Johnson, would grasp the gravity of it and share my angst, right? One would hope. She texted back: “Well I’m just glad you don’t smoke, or you would have gone up in flames.” So what lessons did you learn from this experience? Look before you drink! Now I like to take a Diet Coke up there with me. You know, that makes some people crazy. They’re so sure Diet Coke is gonna kill you. Maybe it will kill you, but probably not while you’re on stage. Well my thought is: what a way to go. It’s probably better for you than straight olive oil, in any case. Exactly. When you travel, do you often stay in people’s houses? Sometimes, but rarely. I need some space and some quiet. And I don’t want to worry about needing to be a good guest. I was fishing for a “bad house guest” experience. That one is truly too humiliating for public consumption. Come on, Nancy. We’re all friends here. No, Jonathan. We’re not that good of friends. Have you ever had a speaking engagement for which nobody (or almost nobody) showed up? I have had a book signing when nobody (meaning zero) people showed up. (Anyone who thinks a book signing would be a big boost to your ego has clearly never done one.) I had to quit doing book signings. That’s more humiliation than I can handle. Actually, you and I first met at a book signing. I don’t remember a lot of books being signed. Yeah, that one was pretty sparse. They all are unless you’re like Tom Clancy or John Grisham. I once went on a rather odd book tour in California with several other authors. We did some outdoor, festival event in a small town. It was like a ghost town; I’ve never seen so few people on the streets of a populated town. The way I remember it, there were tumbleweeds. It was so depressing. What’s really sad is when you’re sitting there at the table and they come up and ask you where to find someone else’s book because they think you work there. Can we just agree it is all very awkward? They think you work there because nobody in their right mind would sit there like that for free. But it does beat digging ditches. Exactly. How about awkward book promotions? Any stories there? Well you have to understand that I started my career out of college as a publicist at a Christian publishing company. We published the BIG authors at the time. And somehow the promotions for my books have never looked much like that. I must have an exaggerated view of your importance in the book world. Clearly. Earlier you had started to tell me about some adventures you had in Colombia… Usually going to Colombia is not really high on the list of speaking destinations. It certainly wasn’t on mine. I got an e-mail one day from a guy in Bogota asking me if I would come to Colombia to speak. I knew I was going to speak in some churches, in a military hospital, at a home for teenage moms, and in the women’s prison. And then at the last minute he asked if i would speak at a feeding center for 250 prostitutes. What do you say when someone asks you to speak to 250 prostitutes except, “yes!” The first night I was in an open-air church on the edge of the jungle, trying to speak over a generator through a microphone that kept cutting out. The next morning I spoke in a church where dogs came in from outside and walked across the stage as I was speaking. I haven’t had that happen before. I love South America. I went to Ecuador once, and as we landed in Quito, a German shepherd ran out on the tarmac and chased the plane. Well, on our way back to Bogota, something very different ended up chasing us: The police. I knew Colombian law enforcement would catch up with you eventually. After a few days with our driver, my husband David had asked, “What does it take to get stopped by the police here?” That tells you something about his driving. I guess he finally did what it took to get stopped by the police? Yeah. He got out of the car and talked to the guys for a few minutes. Then he opened the back of the range rover and pulled a couple of my books out of the boxes in the back and asked me to sign them. That’s odd. It was how he got out of a ticket. He gave the policemen signed books by the “very important” American speaker. I had no idea this interview was going to involve bribery of government officials. Like I said, Jonathan, I am here to be a blessing. Back in Bogota, we headed to the Colombian military hospital. I had my nice little talk all planned but then I walked into what was like a big cafeteria with about 500 17- and 18-year old injured soldiers and I knew what I had planned wasn’t going to work at all. So on the way up to the stage I told my translator to scrap that and just follow me. I’m a gal who likes to work from notes and have it all planned out, but I just started in. I was glad I had a little time in between sentences while my translator translated; it let me think of what to say next. What kind of change-up did you make? I just started talking, Jonathan. I was trying to figure out how to make these guys care about anything some white girl from America had to say. But then there was a huge roar in the room. I looked up and one of these guys was charging toward the stage with his crutch up in the air like he was going to attack me with it. Wow! The roar was the guys in the back telling the guys in the front to tackle him before he got to me. My husband had stepped outside to get the video camera from the car. He thought I was really killing it with some joke. I hope there were some less-injured guys in the front. Fortunately there were. But you know, its kinda hard to get your audience’s attention back after that. I guess so. Does that mean this story doesn’t end with a hundred 17- and 18-year-olds responding to an altar call? No, it does not end that way. Should I stop now? No. Carry on. Hopefully it ends in mortification. You know, that’s the point of this series. Here’s a picture of how it ended: Those guys raising their hands…those are the ones getting saved? If I were a true evangelist, I suppose I would say yes. I think they were just impressed that I hadn’t run out of the place screaming after almost being attacked. Believe it or not the folks down there actually invited me back, and I went back to Colombia a couple of years later for another 10 days of adventure. You are an adventurous soul. Adventure is my middle name, Jonathan. So adventurous that I made a second trip to that military hospital to see what would happen. In fact, we went back to the same military hospital.This time it was a much smaller room with more seriously injured patients. My translator was a junior in high school. We got to the empty room and they started wheeling these guys in. You’ve got eye patches and burn victims and broken limbs. Hard stuff. Then right before I was to start speaking they wheeled in a guy who had a rod through his leg, and and open wound on his leg and put him right in front of me. I bet you had to take a swig of oil just to brace yourself. Hey now, that was kinda mean to bring that up. I just got up and started into my sweet little spiel about Jesus. Then my little translator stopped translating. She looked at me and said, “I think I’m gonna be sick.” And I’m like, really? you can’t keep going? So I asked if there was anyone else in the room who speaks English. Nada. Nobody? Time for an interpretive dance! Clearly you’ve never seen me dance. I’m so white and formerly Baptist I can barely clap on the beat. The guy who brought us down there—Rafa—was the closest thing a person who speaks English, but mind you, his wife translated everything to him around the dinner table. So we’re not talking a lot of proficiency here. He got up to “translate” and we continued. I’m just guessing here…but I imagine you’re using some words that aren’t in Conversational English 1. What’s Spanish for justification? Sanctifictation? Propitiation? That’s exactly the theological word I was grasping for. This is why you’re the Bible study guru. When I said something real serious and then everybody laughed, I knew there wasn’t not a lot of translating going on, if you know what I mean. I wish I could have been on both sides of that conversation. Did you ever see “Life is Beautiful”? The Italian movie about the father and son in a concentration camp? Love that movie. There’s that scene where the father is “translating” the German’s orders to convince his son that the concentration camp is more like a regular camp. Oh yeah. Here’s a link: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiK3HFwNDV4] You know the dad in that movie was sparing his son from the horror of war. I’m not sure its an apt comparison to what was happening at the military hospital. Anyway, surprisingly they haven’t invited me back to the military hospital in Colombia. They probably have their standup comics booked already. In any case, I’m glad you had the Spirit speaking in groans too deep for words. Yes. Of course, I am desperate for the Spirit to speak even when I’m teaching in English. But sadly I’m less aware of my need. True enough. Thanks, Nancy, for joining me on “Sad Stories Told for Laughs.” I’m grateful for your work.

Winter and I got off to a bad start last year. I spent much of my first New England winter waiting out four blizzards with a broken arm and wondering if I’d ever see green again. So this year? This year, I’ve been determined to enjoy, or at least appreciate, the darker months. Here’s the story of our one lone snowstorm (so far)… stay warm and look for the beauty! *** Here’s to anticipation because meteorologists are not clairvoyant. We know that. Everyone knows that. But we are people of plans and details and we crave prediction, accuracy
 right down to next Thursday’s temperature at 2pm. So there’s the woman on TV with the announcer voice, the man with the Doppler radar throwing out guesses and models. The consensus is nobody knows so go ahead, get your bread and milk. Here’s to the week before when every bright day is a gift of cloudless blue and bare trees that seem etched into the sheer face of sky. So deceptive when you’re indoors, because how can the cold be so beautiful? You run errands without a coat, and remember yes, there are some days even the sun can’t thaw. Here’s to last minute grocery lists because the forecast is looking solid (ish), and you don’t dare run out of your staples: bread, milk, cans of soup or — let’s be honest — tortilla chips and TP. And here’s to coffee shop afternoons and a night on the town before the blizzard comes. Call it Cabin Fever Prevention. ‘Cause tomorrow, honey, you ain’t goin’ nowhere. The sun goes down. There’s a bite to the air, a sign of things to come. Here’s to those first flurries drifting silent from gathering clouds. You can relax now, finally! It’s here. The wind kicks flakes into drifts, and the other side of the window looks like television static — gray on white on gray. The rattling snow plows can’t keep up, but they’ll keep vigil all night if they have to. Here’s to rest. Here’s to blankets and coffee, good books and hot stew, guilt-free loafing, because your work is done. There’s nothing left to do but wait it out. Here’s to morning, and peeking out the window to see a landscape erased. Cement, cars, cigarette butts in the gutter— the cast-off detritus of the city is wiped clean and white, blazing with the glare of the sun. Even scrawny, shivering trees get their shot at glory, robed in crystallized icy splendor now. And finally, but not least of all, here’s to the clean-up. Because oh, we all hate shoveling, but look around at your neighbors stumbling out into the daylight, out from their hibernation, stretching and squinting in the sun. They pick up shovels and get to work. And the labels between us — friend, acquaintance, stranger — even those are wiped clean if only for one morning.

One part Lord of the Rings and one part Calvin and Hobbes. Volume two of Jonny Jimison’s Dragon Lord Saga is on it’s way, and the online premiere is happening soon.

My first contact with Jon Troast was via e-mail. He was a stranger to me, but I was writing about him and his music, so we started getting acquainted. The parenthetical portion of a particular sentence in that first email caught my eye: “I’ll send you a Dropbox link to my latest EP, titled ‘E’ (I’m working my way through the alphabet).” He does know there are 26 letters, right? I thought, remembering how Sufjan Stevens planned to record an album for each of the 50 states and managed to only get through Michigan and Illinois. My second contact with Jon Troast was during the Local Show Special Edition concert at Hutchmoot 2015. He was introduced by Andrew Peterson, who mentioned that he heard Troast had done something like 100 house shows in 100 days for 100 dollars each. Peterson paused, mentally crunching numbers, and beamed an almost conspiratorial smile. “That’s ten thousand dollars!” Troast smiled back, and said, “Yeah, for over three months of work.” I marveled, bluntly reminded of the cost of making music. I wondered if he had any days off, and how much his gas cost, and how on earth he booked all those shows, and then I was jarred back to the present as Troast sang. Ironically, his song was about the work people do, and in a room full of disparate individuals and professions, he managed to speak encouragement to each person. His second song was profoundly emotional, a song about his brother who died in May, and he managed to speak grace and tenderness to each and every person present. My third contact with Jon Troast was the next day, in a nursery at the Church of the Redeemer in Nashville. We sat on the far end of the sunlit room, in rocking chairs, and talked about making music. The conversation was easy, laminar, occasionally touching on deep truths of life but mostly talking about what has shaped the artist and his tunes. Troast is affable and easygoing, and there’s just enough undercurrent of quirkiness there that you’re not entirely sure what he might say next. I like that in a person. Troast’s grandmother was a church organist, and she gave him and his many siblings free piano lessons when he was a kid. “I was not a great student,” he recalls, and though the lessons ceased when the family moved away from Michigan to Wisconsin, he had enough of a foundation to return to the instrument later for the bulk of his songwriting. In between, he had a dalliance with the guitar. It was the ’90s, and guitar plus nineties equals grunge. “I knew the songs from the radio, but one day I heard some friends playing songs. There they were, outside of our high school, just waiting on a ride, and they were making these sounds. Hearing that was kinda magical.” Later, in college, Troast caught concerts by artists who would shape his own onstage manner: Jack Johnson, Patti Griffin, Bebo Norman, Ben Harper, Dave Wilcox. Bebo, in particular, was a bit of a revelation for Troast. “Onstage he was so humble and seemed like he was just letting you into what’s going on. It was a performance, but it felt more like a guy up there just talking about his life. It gave me encouragement as far as a route I could take as an artist. I didn’t feel like I could shout ‘What’s up everybody!’ from a stage. I could do that, and it would be funny, but it wouldn’t feel right.” That lack of pretense led Troast to the first of what would eventually amount to over 800 house shows. The format has become his niche, and even inspired a song called “Living Room Tour.” The lyrics tell a lot about the songwriter. “I travel ‘round from house to house, playing songs on my guitar / I eat your food, sleep on your couch, ‘cause it’s better than in my car.” And then the chorus: “I fell in love with your daughter, but I couldn’t tell her / ‘Cause your neighbor had too many questions.” The elements are all there: autobiography, charm, observation, and the freedom to spin a good tale that might or might not be entirely true. Troast’s stories from the road are remarkable. There was the time he slept on a rooftop patio overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, only to wake up drenched in dew. Or the time he played in a rented house at a law school and felt entirely obligated to respond in the affirmative when asked, “Well, we have a beach in the basement. Do you want to play there?” And then there was that audience of 15-or-so that was completely silent. “Nobody made a sound!” Troast recalls with a bit of a chill. “I tend to ask questions during a show–do you guys want to hear a love song or a breakup song?—to give them options. Nothing. They just stared at me. They didn’t even clap at the end of songs. The strange thing about it was once I got done, people were very nice. ‘Aw, this was great! We really enjoyed it!’” Though he’s new to many in the Rabbit Room community, Troast has a rich catalog of tunes, most created under the production talents of either Mitch Dane or Andy Osenga. Here’s a primer: He writes lots of love songs, some autobiographical and some based on keen observation of others (but often sung in the first person), and his ability to take a simple or even quirky story and turn it into a meaningful truth reminds me a lot of Andy Gullahorn. There’s a Bonnie Raitt vibe in much of his music, but he’s remarkably versatile. To wit: “F is going to be a country album, just because. There will be a frog with a fiddle on the cover. Why not?” His songs can be sweet (“Without You Knowing”), wise and perceptive (“Bench Building Blues”), heartbreaking (“Lying Awake”), and poignant (“At Least They’ll Know”).There are several full-length albums that precede the alphabet series, and a compilation album for letters A through D (you can figure it out from the title). Given this body of work, my forced encounter with Troast has felt a bit like stumbling upon a treasure chest that had been right out in the open for years, only I’d failed to open it. I shouldn’t have missed it. Beyond the multitude of living rooms, Troast has been invited to play on Prairie Home Companion, he’s sung live on ABC, and they play his tunes on SiriusXM. Given that he can humbly craft musical stories that give voice to our lives and emotions, I imagine Troast felt right at home at Hutchmoot. If you, like me, start mining these treasures and feel like diving in, you can join Jon’s 1000 Fans effort to build a group of sustainers. Or, you might want to open up your living room, or rooftop, or basement. Just – please – clap at the end of the songs. And keep an eye on your daughter. #JonTroast

I first met Kevan Chandler a few years ago when I sat down with him at Baja Burrito to talk writing and publishing. Kevan’s an author, a podcaster, a voracious reader, a movie lover, and a man of rare wit and humor. It’s been a delight to get to know him since that first burrito, and I’m honored to consider him a friend. Every time he’s in Nashville, we try to get lunch. He’s always got something new and interesting up his sleeve, and just a few days ago he launched his latest adventure. This is an adventure unlike any you’ve come across before. Let me explain. It began a while back with Kevan’s dream of going urban spelunking—that’s fancy-talk for exploring the sewer network under a city. Now, not everyone is fit for urban spelunking—but that goes double for Kevan. Why? You see, Kevan has muscular dystrophy. He only weighs about sixty-five pounds, has no use of his legs, limited use of his arms, and relies on a wheelchair (and friends) to get around. Urban spelunking provided a real challenge. But with the help of his friends, he overcame that challenge. He explored a network of city sewers while being borne in a backpack. It was a beautiful picture of friendship and service, and it gave Kevan an idea: Where else might he be able to go, if only he had someone to carry him? So was born the “We Carry Kevan” campaign. And this time he’s going a lot farther than the local sewer. He’s headed across the pond. Kevan is going to backpack across Europe—but Kevan isn’t wearing a backpack, Kevan is the backpack. While they’re in Europe this summer, they’ll be making a documentary film about the trip, Kevan will be writing a book about it, and the team expects it to give birth to a few songs as well. Ultimately, though, this is adventure of real friendship and Christian love. I get choked up just thinking about how beautiful it is for one to physically carry a friend, to bear the literal burden of friendship in complete selflessness. I think the whole idea is a beautiful expression of the love of Christ, and I’m honored to be able to help in the small ways that I’m able. I’m glad that I, too, get to help carry Kevan. Obviously, a trip like this costs a lot, and Kevan’s friends are putting their own lives on hold (and their own finances on the line) to make it happen. They can’t afford to shoulder the expense alone, so they’ve launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise money. The “We Carry Kevan” campaign is a chance to be a part of something incredibly unique. Take a few minutes to check out Kevan’s website. Or check out his podcast (hilariously called “Crips & Crepes”), in which he and his wheelchair-bound cohost discuss life over crepes. But definitely visit the campaign website and consider lending a hand to help carry Kevan.

Andrew Peterson usually gets interviewed by publications like CCM Magazine, The Gospel Coalition, and World Magazine. He was kind enough to take a break from talking to respectable journalists in order to tell me about his public humiliations in pursuit of rock and roll stardom and literary greatness. Welcome, Andrew Peterson, to Sad Stories Told for Laughs. It’s an honor. I’m ready to bare my soul. Good. The Rabbit Room readers have come to expect nothing less from my guests. I’ve read all the other entries in this esteemed series, and I have to say, it’s been encouraging to know I’m not alone. I could relate to all of them–except for Nick Flora’s weird nudist story. That was weird, wasn’t it? Profoundly so. You were a character yourself in a few of those stories. Unfortunately, yes. I think you were in Jill P’s “Promoter who ran off with the money” story. Oh, man! That’s the only story I’ve been a part of that got legal. Litigious? Whatever. I did have the cops show up at a show of mine a long time ago… Tell us about it. I saw them lurking around the lobby, and when I asked the promoter about it he got all vague and shifty. I didn’t let up, and he finally admitted that there was a creepy stalker guy who claimed that Rich Mullins had sat next to him in class in college and stolen all his song lyrics. Weird. That’s not the weird part. Let’s hear the weird part, then. The weird part is, for some reason he had it in his mind that I was Rich Mullins, and had been calling the church demanding to meet with me so he could extract the millions of dollars I supposedly owed him. You mean he thought you were Rich Mullins in disguise? Or he was just utterly confused? No, I think he was utterly confused. Deluded. Who isn’t deluded? I’m not. At least, I’m not deluded enough to mistake you for Rich Mullins. Anyway, they called the cops and they chased him off, and tried to keep it from me because they thought I’d be freaked out. I was delighted. I would have loved to have met that guy. I think. Yes. That would have been better. You’re a man who’s willing to embrace the odd for the sake of a story. Absolutely. As Ira Glass said (maybe he was quoting somebody), Great stories happen to those who can tell them. That’s good. Maybe great stories happen to those who are willing to embellish. That’s also true. I have a cousin like that. He’s in prison now. Is there a direct link between his willingness to embellish and his being imprisoned? Yes. Time for me to do some soul-searching, then. He was going around telling folks I had stolen his songs in college. Haw! So if you’ve read previous episodes of this series, you know the main categories…odd venue, shifty promoter, finger puppets, public nudity. Right. I have one that sort of falls in the Finger Puppets category. Last night some neighbors came over for a movie night, and their son Harrison was telling me that he had a traumatic experience when he was about 10 with the song “Sweet Home Alabama.” One suspects many traumas have played out with that song as background. Most involving rope swings and bodies of water, probably. Well, this one is the emotional equivalent of being pushed off a cliff into the muddy river before you could grab the rope. Harrison was in this school of rock-type camp and was supposed to play electric guitar on that song, but right before he went on stage the kid who was supposed to sing backed out, so they made poor Harrison sing it. He said that was more or less the end of his music career. I tried to make him feel better with the following story. The year after high school I toured with a terrible–and I mean terrible–rock band. We played top 40 and rock songs for middle and high school assemblies. What was the name of this band? I’d rather not say, what with Google and everything. One of my keep-me-up-at-night fears is that one day some video of this band will show up on YouTube. All right. Anyway, it was pretty rock and roll. We got paid $95 a week, and had to buy our own food. We did about fifteen shows a week: one in the morning at, say, the middle school; one in the afternoon at the high school; then we’d drive back to the town from the day before and do a night show. Five days a week, plus a show on Saturday, for eight months. In some ways, for a kid from Lake Butler, Florida, it was a dream. In most ways, it was a nightmare. I’m no personal finance genius, but that was terrible pay. Even for a boy from Lake Butler. Yeah, but it was ROCK AND ROLL. We were playing Nirvana, Metallica, U2, the Cure, and Van Halen stuff. I knew it was bad, but it got me out of town. And as bad as the band was, I was playing music, and it was my job, and I was seeing the world. Well, I was seeing small towns in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Now, I’m no singer. I can sing, well enough to perform my own songs, but it’s certainly not my forte. Back then I NEVER sang lead. I couldn’t sing in tune (still can’t, half the time), and had no aspirations to be the lead guy. I sang the occasional background vocal–stuff like, “Whoa-OH!” right before the lead singer sang the words, “Living on a prayer.” That’s a pretty important Whoa-OH, though. Durn straight. One more thing you need to know about this gig. We played mostly small farm communities. When a rock band, no matter how lame, comes to Ely, Minnesota, people are generally pleased. There’s not much else to do other than ice fish, and we provided a pleasant diversion, so the students were usually nice enough. They tolerated us and were never outright hostile. You have a pretty low bar for what makes a suitable crowd. I’ll take what I can get. But if we played in a small city, there was a huge difference. The kids had seen bands play, so they knew how bad we were. They were generally harder to impress. So it was with great trepidation that we pulled into White Bear Lake high school in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ah. These kids were used to Prince. The artist formerly known as. Isn’t he from Minneapolis? Yeah. Minneapolis is a legit music town. Prince AND Sara Groves and PFR and Jason Gray. So we pulled up to the school, set up our show in the 2,000 seat auditorium, and watched as the students filed in with sleep still in their eyes. I was dreading it. Our opening song was Van Halen’s “Standing on Top of the World.” Do you remember that one? Sammy Hagar-era. No. I mostly listened to Amy Grant and Skynyrd back then. Ah. Well, Sammy sang high. That’s all you need to know. And Andrew didn’t sing at all. He just played bass and jumped off of speakers. You speak of yourself in third person now? It’s gotten worse than I thought. It’s my way of distancing myself from the pain. So there we were, standing backstage nervously while the vice principal (who also seemed nervous) was explaining to the students that they had a special program for their first period. I noticed our front man, James, looked a little pale. Right as the vice principal introduced us to a weak applause, James doubled over and puked into a garbage can. He shouted, “Go! Go, Andrew! I’ll come out when I feel better. You have to–” and he puked some more. I ran to the center mic with my bass guitar, heard the drummer count off the song, heard the electric riff scream the intro, and I stretched my neck out as far as I possibly could, and screamed “STANDING ON TOP OF THE WORLD.” Remember that scene in Back to the Future when Michael J. Fox finishes his electric solo and the crowd is staring at him in shock? That. But that wasn’t the end of it. I had to finish the song. And then the song after that. And the one after that. James was by now in a fetal position, hugging the trashcan on stage left. It was terrible, terrible. Did the crowd ever warm up to you? Take pity? Anything? Nobody clapped after the songs. Nobody laughed at the jokes. Just 2,000 high school students snickering or yawning or looking at us with loathing. Here’s the worst part… That wasn’t already the worst part? …this part I can still picture vividly. At the very center of the front row, presumably so they would behave, were about ten dudes. Every one of them was grinning wickedly, and every one was covertly (so the teachers wouldn’t see) flipping me the bird. Ten middle fingers presented to me, along with all the mockery. You’re about their age, right? You don’t have a lot of critical distance from this kind of chicanery. Nope. I was about a year older than they were. I recently dreamed that I was supposed to play the lead in a play based on Paradise Lost but hadn’t studied my lines at all. Your true story sounds much worse. At least there would have been some sense of decorum at a stage play. That was in 1992. What’s that, 23 years ago? Or 24. I still feel echoes of that desperation and embarrassment. So, finger puppets. Get it? Bird finger puppets. Nicely done. Why did schools invite you at all. Did you give some kind of “Stay in school, don’t do drugs” talk? Yeah, it was a motivational “ministry.” “Believe in yourself,” all that jazz. Then when we came back for the night show the next night, we would tell them that we were Christians. I don’t know what to say about that. Yeah, it was weird. One of the strangest places I’ve ever been, spiritually speaking. All this reminds me of an old joke about a guy who goes to his psychiatrist. Patient: ”Doc, I hate my job.” Psychiatrist: “What’s your job?” Patient: ”I work for the circus. I follow along behind the elephants and scoop up their poop. All day long.” Psychiatrist: “That’s a terrible job. Why don’t you quit? Patient: WHAT? And get out of show business?! EXACTLY. That’s the mindset the management impressed on us. “Make it happen” was one of their mantras. Can’t sing? Make it happen. I made something happen, I’ll tell you that. I think you’re the first Sad Stories guest who has had both musician humiliations and author humiliations. Yeah, I have some of those. You’ve done school visits. Yup. Which are wonderful. I completely agree. They’re probably my favorite part of being an author. But like any public performance they contain the potential for mortification. OH. I just remembered the story I think you’re leading me to. Well, I was at a school in Memphis–a great school, by the way–and was asked to speak at the end of their Faith and the Arts emphasis week. It was a big honor. But they gave me 70 minutes at the end of the school day on a Friday. For the high schoolers. Several hundred, once again packed into an auditorium. I’ll say that again: SEVENTY MINUTES on a Friday at 1:45. That’s an eternity at the end of a Friday. Right. I asked myself what I would have wanted or needed to hear when I was in high school if I wanted to be a writer or songwriter, and figured I’d just tell them my story. So I did. All the gritty details, all the ways I felt that God had provided, corrected, called me. I knew I had a lot of time to fill, so I spared no rabbit trails, opined about music and books I was into, just to fill the time. I wrapped it up. I said everything I could think to say. I had imparted every ounce of wisdom and worldly knowledge in my brain. I thanked them for listening, asked the headmaster if we had time for Q and A. He leaned forward and whispered loudly, “You’ve only been speaking for 20 minutes.” I had fifty minutes to go. That, to this day, was one of the most awful things I’ve ever felt. Praise God, there happened to be a piano on the stage, with a mic. But the problem was, I only knew about five songs on the piano. That got me through about 25 more minutes. Which left 25 minutes for Q and A. You’ve got this. You’re in the home stretch. Twenty-five minutes of Q and A is nothing. You know about Q and A reticence. I have lived through my share of it, yes. You have to stand there for an uncomfortably long time sometimes before some blessed courageous soul raises their hand. But you have to just stick it out. After that first question, it’s usually okay. Yes. So the first question finally came from this kid on the third row. It was a good question. Bless him. Do you remember the question? Nope. But whatever it was, I answered it eloquently, elaborately, skillfully, and when I looked down to thank him for his question, he was asleep. Amazing. And I mean happily, comfortably, unabashedly asleep. Head back, knee on the seat in front of him, drool glistening on his chin. Even at the time I could tell it would make a good story. Not so with the Minnesota bird boys. Tragedy + Time = Comedy Yes. Well, Andrew, we’ve come to the end of our allotted time. I didn’t get to tell you about the time I did a show at a huge church with lights and fog and stacks of speakers and six people showed up. Three of them were the promoter and his family. The other three got up and left after the first song. Or the time a lady walked down the center aisle during a show and gave me a chili dog. Or the time I was playing on a truck bed in Iowa with Ben Shive and Andrew Osenga and I looked up and saw, at the back of the crowd, a girl riding a cow. And how, about two years later I played in Iowa again and told that story, and I heard from the back of the auditorium, “It was me!” Or the time just about two months ago that I played in a backyard while a bunch of kids played soccer right next to me. While I was singing “The Rain Keeps Faling.” That’s probably the most soul-baring song ever. But as I said, Andrew, time is up. If you had wanted to tell all these stories, you could have been more efficient in the first part of the interview. But wait– Sorry. I don’t make the rules. Well, I’m here if you need me. Awesome. Thanks.

Kickstarting Ellen and the Winter Wolves was quite the exhausting undertaking, so getting the last supporters’ book in the mail was a relief. I’m really happy with how the book turned out and how it was received (people either liked it or refrained from telling me they didn’t), but after five months of all things Ellen, I’m excited to move on to other projects. (In case you missed the Kickstarter and wish you hadn’t, Ellen and the Winter Wolves is available in the Rabbit Room Store.) I hadn’t painted much since September, so after the Kickstarter responsibilities ran their course, I started a new piece. It’s so good to paint again! It’s called Cloak of Feathers and Leaves and is 30”x40” so it’ll take a while to finish. Here are some of the leaves that I’ve been working on this week. I look forward to sharing the finished painting with you all. Another project that I’ve begun is a picture book collaboration with Doug McKelvey. He’s written a beautiful little story called The Wishes of the Fish King, which means (among other things) I’m painting fish for the first time in my life. Here are some sketches that I’ve worked up. I really love this story. When Doug first emailed it to me I read it five or six times, transfixed by the imagery. I can’t wait to wade into the illustrations. We’re planning on crowdfunding it sometime in the spring, so keep an eye out for updates and the finished image of the Fish King.

Sally and Sarah Clarkson released a beautiful book into the world this week: The Lifegiving Home. I’m sure I need only say that our own dear Sarah had a hand in it to make everyone rush out and buy it without delay. But let me add that, not only is it penned by a mother-daughter duo we love and admire, it’s an absolute feast of ideals and inspiration, weaving everything from family devotions to picture books to picnic hikes to soup and bread suppers into a story of tangible, touchable love. What’s more, it’s a story for everyone. The Lifegiving Home is a cup of cold water to weary mothers parched for encouragement, and it’s a gladsome challenge to the newly launched young adult just setting out into the world for the first time. It is a book for grandmothers, roommates, husbands, and children. More than memoir or mere instruction manual, The Lifegiving Home is an ally in the lifelong adventure of creating kingdom outposts in the spaces of our lives. For homes don’t just happen, the Clarksons insist, they are made. And The Lifegiving Home is a celebration of all that it means to make home, in every sense of the word. Sally and Sarah champion the essential belonging a real home can provide in the midst of a heartsick, homesick world. They cast a vision for a lively center of fellowship, ministry, discipleship, and healing, and then they build a strong foundation of scriptural unction and practical application beneath it. The Lifegiving Home is the deeply personal story of the Clarkson family, told with warmth, honesty, and staggering generosity. But it’s also the story of all pilgrim-believers, “wending our way through unknown country, Home.” Sally is the mentor so many of us long for, and Sarah is a wise and kindhearted comrade along the way. I had the joy of talking with Sarah about The Lifegiving Home earlier this week (and Sally stepped in for a bit!) and I’m delighted to share a foretaste of this timely gift of a book. Enjoy, friends. And congratulations, Sarah and Sally. I am so happy to see this story come into the world, as I know lives will be enriched, nourished, and changed by it. Lanier: One of the things I love best about your book is the universality of its message. While many in this world would only connect the concept of homemaking with marriage and family life, you cast a vivid vision for “making home” in any place and season you happen to occupy. What are some of the ways you have cultivated “home” in this season in your life? What are some of the distinct challenges you have faced as you enflesh your ideals in a physical space of “belonging and becoming?” Sarah: Home, like beauty, is something we tend to pigeonhole as peripheral to faith. We give great attention to the list of things we believe, but not the spaces in which we incarnate, discover, and choose those beliefs, embodying their veracity in the way we love, relate, cook, play, and exist on a daily basis. Home is an incarnational work in which we work out our belief amidst the stuff of the ordinary. Our everyday spaces and rhythms become the image of the beauty and love that we believe to be at the heart of reality. That’s a long preamble to say that I think home is a work and a world that every lover of Christ, regardless of place or season, is called to by the nature of their incarnational faith. I definitely have to remember and choose that on a daily basis. In my season of life, as a full-time student, with an intensive part-time job, and freelance writing on the side, I feel sometimes that I barely have energy and margin enough to cook a meal, let alone make a home. But the cultivation of home is very much a discipline, a habit of creativity I practice by conviction because I know that if I create a space of comfort and hospitality, friendships will form, meals will happen, late-night talks will proceed, and contemplation will occur that would never take place otherwise. I live in a little cottage near Oxford town center. I have my one room and share a kitchen with several others. We don’t really have a sitting room (despite our ingenious maneuvering of the kitchen table to make space for a couple of extra chairs), so I managed to cram a sofa into my little upstairs nook, creating a corner with flowers, books, a few favorite pictures. That corner is the spot that waits to receive me with calm and quiet at the end of a frantic day. If I can manage nothing else, I try to keep it straight and spend time just breathing in the mornings and evenings. I think that’s the first major cultivation I would list, the making of a single space for quiet, a place that reflects in some sense, the inner room in my soul where, as St. Teresa says, the Beloved waits to meet with me. Just to know that space is there is one step toward being present to the Love waiting to invade it. The making of a homey kitchen was another specific cultivation. Oxford is crammed with people who don’t quite know where they belong. People just arriving, people on their way out, people, more than anything, with a thousand questions and hungers. We girls who live in this house made a community decision in the first weeks that we wanted to be a place of feasting and friendship. So we cram guests in random chairs around our rickety table. We’ve covered the walls with art prints. We stock our shelves with delectables in preparation for random events. We made the house one that is ready to receive people, and it has meant dozens of meals shared, talks held late into the night, laughter, and grace. The challenge here primarily, is to keep a vision for home, and to give the necessary work and verve to its creation. This is a hurry-up, nonstop world. Of course, I think most people in the modern world live somewhere on the hurry-up spectrum, if only by virtue of the sleepless presence of the internet. But I think it is vital to step back from that buzz, to create space in which rest and quiet can grow once more, because those are the rich soil in which wonder and worship grow within us. Another challenge is simply to keep a tender and livened heart. Exhaustion has a way of turning one inward. Because everything costs energy, everything, from a meal to a conversation to an hour of work, becomes demanding. In the midst of that, it is often difficult to look beyond the borders of my own life into the needs and presence of others. But that is, I think, vital to knowing the living reality of Christ, “playing in ten thousand places” in the people of the world. To sit in the kitchen, to brew a cup of tea, eat a biscuit (otherwise known as a cookie), and do it with a friend, is to reorder and reaffirm what I value most: Christ, his people, and the love with which he fills the world. Lanier: Throughout The Lifegiving Home, you and your mother continually treat the concept of making a home as a spiritual vocation, worthy of our best efforts and most focused love. You espouse the cultivation of natural gifts within an infinite range of individual possibility, but you are careful to maintain an eternal perspective. What are some of the ways you seek to maintain this perspective, particularly in life’s more challenging seasons? How has your vision of homemaking as both an art form and an act of worship impacted your relationship with God, your family, and other people? Sarah: Home is very much something cultivated and chosen in the face of a dark, broken world, a world that has lost its identity as a home because of its disconnection from the Creator. In many ways, the cultivation of home is, I believe, part of the kingdom come, the taking of my “one place on earth” to use a Wendell Berry phrase, and making it a place of belonging, a named, known, and hospitable “here,” which is what I believe God meant us to experience in the great gift of his world. In some of my loneliest seasons, in times of deep despair, the choice to create beauty within the spaces of my life, to affirm goodness by the cooking of a meal or the lighting of a candle, was a defiant act, one made in opposition to grief and loss. The making of home wasn’t a denial or escape from broken relationships, sickness, or struggle, it was an answer to them, an affirmation of a Goodness much larger than the dark circumstances of the moment. To make home was to embody hope. In this sense, homemaking, for me, is very much an act of worship. It’s my immediate, practical, embodied response to the promises of Scripture. It’s the way I extend the love of Christ, the way I make my hope in a saving, redemptive love something that I, and others who need it, can taste and see. In my own times of struggle, the invitation to enter someone else’s home, to be sheltered by their provision, love, and hospitality, has given me the space and nourishment I needed to hope for one more day. That’s a gift I always want to give in the spaces of my own home. Lanier: Your parents have been so intentional, both in building a vision for your family and putting a strong foundation under it, and now you and your siblings are all out in the world espousing that vision in your own uniquely creative ways. What were some of the original sources of inspiration that fed into the family culture they created? What are some of the ways your parents (or your family in general) have worked together over the years to bring this culture to life, and how have your personality types enhanced and contributed to it? Sarah: I think both of my parents inherited a sense of the value for hospitality from their own families. But I think my parents were blessed to be living in different situations overseas in the early years of their marriage. Their time in Vienna, especially, a city known for its celebration of art, music, and conversation, deeply formed their ideals of community, education, and home. It’s not that they couldn’t have come by those values in other ways, but it quickened and revived their idea of what a home culture could be. One of the things I love to realize about my childhood home when I look back now, is how crammed it was with art and books, and how formed by music. My parents realized early on the impact of beauty on the spiritual sensibilities of a child. We were immersed in a world in which there was always more goodness to discover and that sense of the great richness of the world is something that still drives my love for study and my conviction that beauty communicates the vibrant reality of God. I know that Edith Schaeffer was a huge influence on my mom with her account of life at L’Abri (French for “shelter”) and the idea of a faith both thoroughly known and richly lived. Not to over-spiritualize, but God was a lively presence in and amidst our making of home. There was a sense in which the meals we ate, the music we made, the spaces we filled with beauty, were all done in participation with a laughing, creating, ever-ingenious God. My brother once, when he was about twelve and just discovering the joys of coffee, lifted his overflowing mug of mocha and said “I just love it that God made coffee and whipped cream.” We created in company with the Creator, we made a home in the presence of a God who formed his garden of a world and made it our place of belonging. And I think that made home, not a Martha Stewart enterprise, or simply a list of chores to do, but rather a living, daily creation that took hard work, but reflected the deepest goodness of reality. Of course, that required things like actually having to make chore charts (because wild idealists like to think that house elves really do exist) and enforce them. It meant forming rhythms so that there was time and space in which to make good meals and let deep relationships happen. It meant a lot of forgiveness, but home is nothing if not an enterprise carried out by deeply sinful people. And ah, personality. Home is a place where personalities are all jostled together. The inevitable reality of fallen humanity is that jostled personalities cause all kinds of irritation, emotion, and, well, sin. But the beauty of home is that it is a circle of a place in which irritation doesn’t mean one can just jump ship. Home is a community in which we work out what it means to love, give, and forgive. Home is also a place where the diversity of God’s personality shimmers and gleams. We have so many different—and sometimes divergent—strengths in my family. For MBTI types, we’re a fairly even divide of introverts and extraverts, thinkers and feelers. Dinner table conversation is generally intense because we all have an opinion, and we all know the best way to cook/clean/host/whatever. To learn how to weave those disparate strengths together, allowing them to create a stronger pattern than merely to fray, is part of learning what it means to love. Lanier: I love the way you Clarksons celebrate life! Celebration and tradition are the heart of your story, imaging the Story of God’s love and redemption in your lives. You have made choices, year after year, to anchor your family in this “tale within a tale,” and your memories are all the richer for it. But I know that the relationship between tradition and flexibility is a delicate dance. What are some of the ways you maintain tradition while keeping your heart and hands open to the changing landscape of your lives? Is there a natural give-and-take of certain family rituals based on the season you are in, or have you had to make some hard decisions regarding which customs to keep and which ones to let go? Sarah: It’s funny. There are some things that remain the same no matter how long we’re gone, the deep, key beats in the song of our home life that remain, however the melody of our coming and goings alters things on the surface. I may have been away for six months, there may be only two siblings home, but every Sunday we will have teatime on the Gmunden china my mother carted home from Austria. We will always keep the same round of Christmas traditions—Shepherd’s Meal on Christmas Eve, stockings, breakfast at a hotel near our house, lunch later on at home—these are anchors so integral and familiar to our rhythms as a family that they continue to root and refamiliarize us with our own history whenever any of us kids go home for a visit. They are the practices that provide a sense of identity. But then, we stretch and change too. As the demands of work, school, and relationships have taken us far from our childhood home and changed our rhythms of relationship, we’ve had to adapt. Some things do fall by the wayside. Whether that’s the cancellation of one of the traditional Christmas parties (because every minute when we’re actually home together is rare and precious now), or simply the acceptance that we cannot maintain the number of homemade meals as before, there’s an opening of the hands that has to accompany the advance of the years. Some traditions fade. New ones begin. The fun part is discovering new things, encountering a new tradition added by a friend or significant other who visits. I’m sure I’ve brought home a few little traditions from England, as have my siblings from other places. Home is, by essence, incarnational, reflecting the dynamic, forward motion of Christ coming into the world. Home isn’t static. Home is a place and an idea that can stretch to fit new loves and fresh traditions. That’s the nature of the kingdom coming into the world. Lanier: And now, a question for Sally. Crafting the kind of home you write about doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve been so faithful to remind your readers that it takes a sacrificial commitment of time to invest that kind of practical love in the members of your family. But you never portray your home as a self-contained nucleus—on the contrary, you are passionate about discipleship, mentoring relationships, hospitality and fellowship. Home, as you present it, is not only a refuge for your family, it’s a center of ministry. How do you establish boundaries between the two? What are some ways you’ve learned to protect your family time while embracing a ministry of hospitality? Sally: I had to learn the secret of boundaries through the years, learning that it was ok to say no to people. Making plans for all of us and putting it into a calendar helped determine what we could commit to and what we could accept. We had a night each week when we would have friends or company over. School nights were pretty protected. Our ministry nights in our home, like my women’s Bible study, were held on a monthly basis since our schedules were so busy. I would also keep my eyes on the state of Clay and the kids. If they seemed exhausted or overwhelmed, I would purposely leave as many private days open as possible until it seemed we had caught up on life. Often, we would all schedule a weekend away to rest, so no one could find us. A lovely mountain timeshare became a private haven for us each year. Being overbooked for a little while happens to every family, but I learned to create a pretty focused weekly schedule that helped us with outside friends. All of us needed a break from the crowds once in a while. We planned times in our schedule when only family would be together. (Of course this was a general rule that could be broken if something special came up.) Lanier: Sarah, you and your mother describe home as both refuge and launching pad, which is about the most perfect description of a real home I can think of. But in an intentionally close family the “launching” aspect can be a bit tricky to navigate. (I think your parents have done an outstanding job!) What are some of the ways they have launched you and your siblings into the world, without loss of your identity as a family and the vision you share? Sarah: I think a lot of successful launching has to do with identity, and where that is rooted. If we had been a family whose concept of home was one tied to the exact ways my parents did things and a life in a specific place, home would soon have become too small to contain the restless needs of the children growing to adulthood within it. But our concepts of home (as well as family) weren’t of home as the end point of our identity, or family as goal of our traditions. Those were both secondary to the first reality of God, and the fact that we were part of making his kingdom come. Home, then, was based on our values to love and know God, to love each other, to create in such a way that we reflected his beauty. Our identity, then, was based on the shared values of kingdom living—of shared stories, music, and art, of friendship between parents and siblings—but also on our value for ideals and following God to whatever new adventure he choose. Our identity didn’t end in home, it began there. But the rootedness of our shared identity, of the story we formed together in the space of our home, gave us a shelter from which to foray, and a refuge always awaiting our return. It also gave us the freedom to take that heritage and create is afresh in every situation in which we found ourselves. My little cottage in Oxford is connected by spiritual roots to my childhood home in Colorado. Home is heritage to be continued, a grace to be given again, a gift passed on, ever-living, ever-new, to each generation. Lanier: Thank you, ladies, and Godspeed to The Lifegiving Home! [The Lifegiving Home is available in the Rabbit Room Store.]

Those eloquent Welsh folks have a word for something we vagabond Americans can’t seem to name: hiraeth. It means something like homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or even a home that never existed at all; an intense longing for one’s motherland; a grief-tinged nostalgia for the lost places in the world where one’s heart once fit. I’ve been thinking about the idea of home a lot over the past year and a half. Pete and I have settled into what is in many ways the house of our dreams, or at least a work in progress towards the house of our dreams, which may or may not be the home we build for the long term. In the hope that we’re putting down roots, my parents decided (with our enthusiastic blessing) to move closer to us, which means they are preparing to sell the house of my childhood, the one place in the world that has ever truly been home to me. And in the midst of all this, somehow, inexplicably, unfathomably, I turned 40. So here I stand, teetering on the edge of my fifth decade on earth, teetering between the home-gone and the home-to-be, staring down the second half of my life and daring it to do its worst—and its best. And feeling, occasionally, a sharp twinge of hiraeth. I know that many in our transient culture like to talk about home in terms of people—home can be anywhere as long as you’re with people whom you love and who love you—and I certainly don’t deny that family and community are inseparable from the concept. But it is precisely the placeness of home that I am interested in: the incarnate reality of it, the dirt and the roof and the bones of it. My deep longing is rooted in earth. Perhaps this is because I am acutely sensitive to setting—which is ironic, because I’m not especially observant. I miss things that are right in front of me, and I accidentally walk into trees and telephone poles. But places have a kind of scent to me—an emotional scent. I wish I could name a new sense for it: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and placefeeling. In books, setting is as important to me as character. Setting is a character. Avonlea, Middle-earth, Narnia, the Hundred Acre Wood, Port William—each place has its own voice, its own aroma. Each leaves a different footprint on my heart. The placefeeling of the house I grew up in is utterly unique, and soon it will be only a memory. And I’m ready for that change. It’s time. I know that the story imprinted upon that spot of earth is a story that, for me, lies in the past. It’s a story of daughterness, and I am a wife now. When that house, standing empty now, is finally sold, a character in my story will die. And that is necessary, and as it should be, but the change of setting carries a grieving with it. Though I have lived in many places in my adult life, there is no other place in the world—yet—that is home for me in quite the same way, in the very deepest sense. But what do I mean by that, exactly, beyond simple nostalgia? What is this earthly, tangible thing called home, and why do we attach such deep emotions to it? The first word that comes to mind is the obvious one, perhaps: sanctuary. A safe, sheltered place, wrapping us in its protective presence. The place to which we can retreat, where we are loved and understood, where the evils and complexities of the world outside are temporarily held at bay, where we can find peace and rest. But many places in the world can be sanctuaries. Only one or two of those places can be home. So I will refine my definition: Home is sanctuary and story intersecting at a single point. To say that one feels “immediately at home” somewhere is a little like the idea of love at first sight. There can be a core of authentic emotion there, but it’s not really love yet—and it’s not really home yet. Love and home both involve the longevity of a story. They are not platitudes but plots, packed with action and conflict and redemption. They require the turning of many pages. Going home, when I was in my 20s and 30s, was always like standing on a mountain looking down over a city, seeing the whole in one glance. Home was the high point where I could gaze down upon the entirety of my story. There was a sense of timelessness there. I would wake up in the morning in the bedroom of my girlhood and suddenly it could be any morning in that story. All of the moments were present to me at once. There are many settings we pass through in the stories of our lives, but not all of them are safe havens. There are many sanctuaries in the world, but not all of them carry the pages of our story like the worn covers of a beloved book. I am well aware that the chance to grow up in a single stable environment was a rare and profound gift. My husband and many other people I know can’t point to a specific house that holds most or all of their childhood (much less half a lifetime) in its embrace. My niece and nephews of the Warren have received a similar gift—I watch them wearing down the paths of their childhood through rooms stained lovely with laughter, bounding towards the aging oak tree with a gentle white giant of a dog, building their fantasies with sticks and moss in a quiet green wood, and I know that someday they will weep with thankfulness for the story that is written upon this little hidden sanctuary on a tumultuous earth. The blessing of a permanent physical home offers children a particular kind of grounding and identity—not only because of the love of those who lived there and the memories of events that happened in that place, but because the place itself binds those intangible realities with tangible ones in a unity of spirit and flesh that is sacramental. The tree, the peculiar bend of that path, the scratch on the windowpane, the dust motes in the ray of light that falls on the threadbare bedspread with that brown stain that would never come out—they are all a holy communion, meting out grace bestowed upon them by the hands and feet of the saints who passed there. The love of the mother and the worn space on the bedspread where she sat are profoundly linked. That tree is like a push pin holding precious memories in place—once the tree is gone, the memories are floating, homeless, rootless. But this is more like a series of popular online friv games than what is described above. I like to think that our lives are burned into places like the negative of a photograph. The film is not the story, but it is the carrier of the story. Imagine if we could take this earth into a photographer’s dark room and develop it. What stories we would see there, carved by light into the very bricks and trees and stones! And speaking of light . . . How do you know when you are home? My answer sounds a bit like the instructions for a quest: When you stand in the exact spot where story and sanctuary meet, you will recognize the light. This will probably make sense to no one but me, but I can’t help it—it’s the best way I can find to express the homeness of a place. The last time I went home before my parents moved, I realized what it was about my old bedroom that made it precious to me: I know the light in that room. I have dwelt in the light until I recognize the color of it, the quality of its presence, the slant of the refracted sunbeams through those windows—bare now of curtains, though once filtered by rose-colored fabric until the whole room bloomed like a quiet flower, especially in the morning. Nowhere else in the world does the light fall at that particular angle and reflect off one particular room, reflecting those colors and those colors alone. Things look different there. I look different. The emotion I was feeling a week ago in another place looks different in the light of that room. Life casts its shadows in unique places. The light meets me there, always the same, and shows me my true self again, and washes me clean. Even at night the light is welcome and known. There—at that window in the corner by the closet—there is where I stood so many nights after the rest of the house had gone to bed, entranced by the way moonlight glistened on the windowpane, illuminating my face so that the glass became both window and mirror. There I was, safe on the inside of the window. There was the world, wide and unknown on the outside. And the moonlight brought both together into one shimmering image, my dimly lit face against the silver outline of a quiet landscape, giving me the courage to leave home and go out into that world (once morning came and the room bloomed rosily again) precisely because the light had brought the world’s beauty into my place of safety and comforted me there. Home is the place in the world that is both your soul’s sanctuary and the anchor of your story, the place where the light slants on your life in such a way that all veils fall off, all shadows flee, and you can see your own face in the window merged with the world beyond. . . . I am looking for a new home. Not just a place that is familiar and comfortable to me. Not just a community of family and friends. Not just a permanent house. Something that includes all of those yet goes deeper still. When we moved into North Wind Manor a year and a half ago, I loved it immediately yet felt inexplicably lost within its walls for several months. Then one evening just before sunset I was putting the chickens to bed and turned—and stretched out before me was a Winslow Homer painting. Ramshackle porch strung with little white lights, vines creeping up the walls, crooked stone patio leading out to an ancient-looking carriage-house-turned-workshed nearly swallowed in wild honeysuckle, and over it all a vibrant purple and orange curtain. Never mind that there were remnants of the workmen’s long day strewn across the lawn and empty paint cans piled up on the porch, or the fact that we had just gazed up at the house and remarked, “There’s a tree growing out of our roof. Huh.” For that one moment, the light of the setting sun bathed all of it in the grace of a sanctuary and a story.  Pete reminded me that this was the “magic hour” so precious to photographers, and I thought of the line in Andrew’s song: “Time and eternity mingle a moment in chorus.” This is the Celtic twilight, the thin space between worlds, when the place itself is the window between now and timelessness—a story concentrated into a single point. For the first time since we moved, I felt welcomed and embraced. Well hello, light, I thought. Hello, magic hour. You and I are going to be good friends. Perhaps it is here that the earth will capture the burning images of our unfolding adventure and keep them safe for us in the years to come. Perhaps not. There is no knowing, now, whether this ordinary, magical spot will be a permanent dwelling or a just a memorable way station on a longer journey. Sometimes I wonder if, in the second half of my life, home will not be a house at all. I would not be surprised if home were a boat on the water—sky and clouds and water and sail, where Pete and I will come again and again through the storms of our lives—a place of quietness and healing, a place where our story intersects with eternity. After all, boats and water have run like a motif through so many chapters of my life, connecting me with what has come before, bringing me back to myself. I lie on the deck of our sailboat staring up at a white canvas curtain fluttering against a blue ceiling, my heart wide open to the sky, and I say to myself, I know this light. Yes, I know this light. We were created with place knitted into our souls. Hiraeth burns in us all, whether we have the word for it or not, whether we are yearning for what is gone forever or for what  never was. And that is why I do not believe in a disembodied heaven separate from the earth we have known and loved. It is gnosticism to imagine that we will slough off physicality like an imprisoning shell. No, love is a body embracing me, and home is a warm, aged quilt on my skin. And even sunlight burns, and the burn is the blush of life. It is all a great mystery, but I don’t think that when we die we will simply leave one home behind and go to a better one—not exactly. More like this: all of that human sense of homeness will be gathered together—the homes we have loved and lost, the homes we have longed for and never found—concentrated into a single point, magnified and perfected, like light focused by a lens, bending every comfort toward each of us till our hearts are set aflame by refracted joy. Light we know. Light that knows us.

Last week I put on my smart hat (I don’t actually have a smart hat) and went to Vanderbilt University. Professor David Michelson is teaching a course on early Christian poetry, and after one of the recent Local Shows he kindly invited me to audit the class. “As long as I don’t have to write any papers,” I said. He convinced me to stop by for a session, and—other than the fact that my smart hat was smoking and singed around the edges—I loved it. Here’s what I learned in just two hours. Homer’s epics were written to be sung. Obviously, we have no way of knowing what the music would have been, but there’s an inherent rhythm to the original Greek. (Also, another Greek professor came to the class and read some of it aloud, and it was awesome. I greeked out.) There was a guy named Lactantius who was a Christian apologist—there were apologists in 250 A.D.?—who also wrote some poetry. We read through one called “The Phoenix,” which wasn’t explicitly Christian, but stuck more or less strictly to the resurrecting phoenix myth. It made me wonder if old Lactantius (to whom the poem is attributed by most) was subversively writing to a Roman audience, seasoning their hearts with a tale of resurrection so that they might connect the dots and see that the true myth had played itself out in Christ. Maybe he wrote it knowing that Christians (who were being persecuted at the time) would see Christ in it and find some edification or encouragement. Either way, it was interesting that there wasn’t a one-to-one correlation between the phoenix in the poem and Jesus, but rather a poetic ambiguity about it. The ambiguity kept my mind engaged and made me want to go back and read it again. (I’m with Tolkien on the opinion that allegory is boring.) There was another guy named Juvencus. Around 330 A.D. he decided to write out Matthew’s Gospel as an epic poem, a la Homer. Homer’s works cast a long shadow (they still do), and Juvencus wanted to tell the story of Jesus in the language that history had proven was all but immortal, so he more or less converted the Gospels into verse. Athanasius wrote a letter about the Psalms to Marcellinus on the interpretation of the Psalms. This would have been in the fourth century. He pointed out a few fascinating things: The entire story of Scripture can, either thematically or explicitly, be found in the Psalms–even prophetic psalms about Christ’s suffering and resurrection. The Psalms are unique in scripture because we read them as our own words. We inhabit the psalms as we read them. The Psalms are written by God, through David (and the other psalmists), for us. Since Jesus was Jewish, he would have grown up reading the Psalms, and of course quoted them–notably Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Get this. That means that the Spirit was inspiring David to write the words that the Son would need to express his own desolation to the Father. That’s mind-blowing. The Psalms give us a picture of not just the Trinity but the way God invites humans into his creative act for his glory. So the Psalms were written by David to God. They were also written by David, through the Spirit, for Jesus. Further, they were written by the Spirit, through David, for us, for the purposes of our own comfort and edification, and also for God’s praise. There you have it. Class dismissed. What a great blessing it is to know that our faith is ancient, that it is poetic and reasonable, that it speaks to every human need, every single corner of our hearts, every nook of our experience. Now go read a Psalm. Many thanks to Professor Michelson for letting me hang out.

Lots of people assume that this is a video of JJ Heller playing really tiny instruments. The truth is far, far stranger. This is actually a video of a GIANT JJ Heller playing normal-sized instruments. We hear she’s only playing arenas now due to the troubling issue of low ceilings in other venues.

A few months back, my buddy Pete (a.k.a. A. S. Peterson) asked if I would be up for doing some art for his wintery, Twilight Zone-like, Civil War-era tale, The Timely Arrival of Barnabas Bead. Pete had actually contacted me about this same story sometime last year, but scheduling conflicts prevented us from working together and my pal Jonny Jimison did some art for the tale. This year, when Pete asked, I was actually right down in the thick of the largest book project I’ve been involved in to date. I was inking anywhere from one to four illustrations a day, sometimes seven days a week, for months on end. Inking that much can really wear you out! I didn’t actually know that until now. Pete was really hoping for art that was gestural, smokey, mysterious, and anything but the typical detailed ink work I am usually asked to do. And that was just what I needed, right when I needed it. Barnabas Bead became my warm-up and cool-down art for a week straight. It was a total joy to just pull out sheets of printer paper, grab my Ebony pencils, technical pencils, and my good ol’ Ticonderoga HB #2 and go at it (cue giggling from Rob Collins for my love of good pencil lead like he did at Hutchmoot this year). I had been painstakingly scratching away on 2-ply Bristol board with my Hunts 102 quill for months, seeing nothing but tiny black lines against clean, flawlessly smooth, stark white board every day. But with Bead’s arrival, I could get messy, get my hands dirty, smudge my fingers into the slick Ebony pencil lead and not even care if I got fingerprints all over the page. It was like recess for me on a muddy playground. Pete asked for whatever I could afford to provide with my free time. I enjoyed it so much that we ended up with eleven drawings, almost entirely from my imagination and generally without use of photo reference, and each done in one take. That kind of freedom provided a lot of fun for me as the artist. I hope you order yourself a copy of this book and have just as much fun reading it.

Walt Wangerin has started a great series of posts on his blog, Between Us. Check out part one, in which he discusses Maurice Sendak and the necessity of wild things. Adults who write to their image of a child, rather than writing to genuine children, do in a real sense utter baby talk. And they miss the mark of a child’s intense experience. They make a conventional assumption of pastel innocence, angelic goodness, fresh unsullied souls (“trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home”)—and in consequence their language lisps, their menu of topics is reduced to the sugar cookie, and their attitude is offensive. Even as they presume to know better than the child, they present a teller and a tale too simple and simply less than a child can (and ought to, and wants to) experience. Simpletons tell simplistic tales. Read the entire post here.

Jon Foreman, the Grammy Award-winning artist and lead singer of Switchfoot, has been in quite a whirlwind lately. He’s released four EPs in a series called The Wonderlands, writing a song for each hour of the day. Meanwhile, he concocted a matching concert event, with 25 shows in 24 straight hours, in the midst of a full-on concert tour. I recently caught Foreman’s concert at The Loft in midtown Atlanta, and before the show I asked him about the new music, his approach to writing it, and the chaos he’s created. There’s quite a contrast between Legend of Chin and Fading West and even The Wonderlands work. How would you describe your growth as a songwriter and performer? On the one hand, everything has changed since then. We were still in high school and college. On the other hand, everything is the exact same; I am still writing songs about the questions and the things that are on my mind. Maybe it’s not so much a chemistry class anymore as it is death or faith or doubt. The other thing that has stayed the same is as a musician you hear something that challenges you musically from someone else and that inspires growth. Man, I’ve heard so much music since then, and hopefully that has challenged me to new places as well. The Wonderlands has 24 songs, one for each hour in the day. How much did you stick to that formula in the songwriting? I totally broke the formula. I’m going to put 25 songs out, because it feels more fitting with my life right now. Maybe it’s like daylight savings time. I’m always trying to get another hour of the day, so this is doing that. Maybe it is wishful thinking or a nod to the fact that I’ve got too many things going on right now, but there’s one per hour except for I think 11:30. Darkness has one extra song. What’s your favorite hour of the day? My favorite hour of the day is the golden hour, when the sun is just going down. And if I could pick anywhere to be, it would be in my hometown, Cardiff by the Sea, in the water either with my daughter or on a surfboard. That’d be the best place and time on the planet. When you’re in the water, on the right day, it feels like you’re paddling through a painting. It feels like some sort of molten gold that you’re paddling through. It’s remarkable. Each of the 25 songs is produced by a different producer? Where did that idea come from and how did it work? That was unintentionally the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done. How do you do a record when you’re touring? A friend of mine and I had the idea to give the songs out to other producers to produce while I’m on the road. So I would be recording in backstage dressing rooms, they’d be recording in studios, we’d be talking on the phone and over email sending files back and forth. Voila! The song is born. So this was how it happened for all of the songs, but then you have to try to make them all sound like one cohesive body of work. Not 25 different records. That was the most difficult thing, trying to keep the idiosyncratic elements that each individual producer added to the song and yet make it feel like a cohesive statement when you play the whole thing together. That was the most challenging thing of this whole project, but I’m really proud of where all the songs ended up and all of the producers did some incredible work. For me as a songwriter, I love having a sparring partner. I want someone to hit back and who has their own musical muscles who isn’t just saying yes to all my ideas but who adds their own ideas as well. Why is the project called The Wonderlands? I wanted to create a place and build it out of melody and lyric. Music was always this space that I would go to that would give me objectivity as I look back at the planet. So I figured, what if I could create my own planet of sorts, cosigning God’s blank check, with that kind of concept? That’s where the land comes from. And wonder: to create art, wonder is the first step. You acknowledge your own finite elements and you acknowledge the infinite. When you realize the wonderful and mysterious is around you, you kind of assent to the idea that you are not in control and you begin to wonder. And that’s where the songs are born. You reference that mystery in “All of God’s Children,” when you write “I believe in a world that’s beyond me, I believe in a world I ain’t seen.” How was that song born? That’s been around for a little while. A lot of these songs have taken a long time to come out, some of them even ten years. Other songs were written specifically for the project. “All of God’s Children” was written around the Vice Verses era for Switchfoot. Whenever I write a song, I never know which way it is going to go, I just try to chase it down. Sometimes it comes even when you don’t want them to come and you’re stuck with them. After watching the news and reading the newspaper, I had this objective view of the planet. But each one of the men and women making the headlines by the atrocities that they commit or the atrocities committed to them are all just kids. You add 20, 30, 40 years onto them and maybe deep down underneath, that kid’s still there. At The Loft, though our interview was long over, Foreman might have given his most insightful answer to my questions. He strummed his acoustic guitar, and the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of strangers in the sold-out club paused their dance. He explained in casual California voice that he was a guitarist, so sometimes he explained life with guitar metaphors. The string of the guitar is stretched between two ends, he said. He asked us how often we are stretched between two ends, be they fear and love, what is and what will be, or the beginning and the end. And then he offered a challenge, one with a different meaning to every story-maker in the audience: “Embrace the tension, because in the chaos, there’s music.” #JonForeman

I lifted the idea straight from a Grace Livingston Hill novel: I had read dozens of them in my teens, and I was enchanted with the way those beautiful jazz-age heroines of hers always seemed to be stumbling into winter house parties on grand estates. The literary uses of the form varied, of course: if the heroine was an ingénue, the house party would serve as an excellent illustration of the vanities of the frivolous life and an opportunity to illumine the darkness of worldly pursuits with the sweet influence of her character. If, on the other hand, she was of the glittering beau monde, smoking cigarettes and shamelessly flaunting wide-legged pants (I remember one lovely creature whose inner quality was expressed—rather tastefully, in my opinion—by her arresting gold bangle in the shape of a serpent, wicked-looking emeralds for eyes), then the gathering would be the one place in all the world where she might encounter for the first time the warmth and welcome of a real home—an experience that would unfailingly change her life for the better and generally land her on the front row of the local church at the earliest possible opportunity. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not poking fun at dear Grace, though I’d never deny that her stories were formulaic. I doubt she would deny it herself, written as they were to keep the wolf from the door after she was widowed with young children. But if her books were predictable, they were also reliable, and in more than one sense: they were permeated, often with more zeal than art, by the faith that was central to her worldview. And they never failed to paint a tender portrait of what home can mean, in all its most sacramental significance. I think I’m probably just realizing, all these years later, how much her ideals of homemaking helped shape my own, throwing in spices and herbs of fundamental thought to the strong brew of values already steeping away at the back of my young mind. I can still see the golden loaves emerging from fictional ovens and feel the warm triumph over a perfectly molded aspic or a mousse whipped up miraculously out of a bare larder. Grace’s girls knew how to pack a picnic and how to cook a roast that would have a man proposing before the meal was over. And they knew that it all mattered: that the practical love of hospitality had its origin in the warm and supremely real invitation of Love itself. So when the idea popped into my head a few years ago to throw an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned house party—the kind of house party that Grace herself would have been proud of—I knew it fell right in line with my heart’s truest desires. Philip and I love to entertain; hospitality is central to the vision we share for our home and marriage. But there’s just something about the notion of overnight guests that kindles my womanly vocation into a merry blaze. To be able to provide not only an evening’s diversion, but a welcome rest for the night and a series of meals epitomizes my dreams for this drafty old farmhouse of ours. For houses have vocations, too, you know. And ours is never happier than when stuffed to the rafters with people we love. And never more so than at Christmas. The news of dear friends coming into town for our annual Christmas party set my mind humming on the matter. And when I learned not long after that another friend who is all but a little sister to me would be home from Sarajevo on brief holiday furlough, it was a settled affair. Invitations were joyfully extended and accepted, and just to complete the party I invited a couple of local friends who promptly said yes even though the night fell on their wedding anniversary. From that point on, my thoughts—and, consequently, my “to do” list—were divided between preparing for the actual party and preparing for the house party afterwards. The former was a black tie affair, for, with all its bright revelry, Christmas inspires my domestic soul to the utmost formality. No festivity of the whole year together is so deserving, in my opinion, of the very best we have to offer. Consequently, the December days leading up to an event have often seen me shuttling around town with a carload of my mother’s china and my grandmother’s sterling, consulting a list as long as my arm at the farmer’s market, and devoting whole afternoons to ironing family linens and tablecloths. I make it a tradition to polish the silver in November, well before the sweet madness overtakes, but invariably, some obvious item is overlooked (most often the venison dome on the kitchen hutch upon which I lay eyes every day of my life and which is an absolute bear to polish) and later wedged somewhere between peeling oranges into careful shells for the sweet potatoes and refreshing a thousand candlesticks with fresh tapers and tying red ribbons on just about every stationary object in the house. I do love it so—all of it, even the wild thrill of, “How under heaven am I going to get all of this done?” But it comes together at the last minute, superfluous things gone by the wayside and essentials prioritized or delegated to an exceedingly agreeable husband. (I may feed a lot of people over Christmas, but Philip feeds me in the days leading up to it.) And suddenly, before I can half realize it’s happening, the time has come to light candles and touch a match to ready fires, and I wait, breathless as the rooms themselves, for that first merry clang of the doorbell and the first cheerful greetings of friends. I adore that moment, and my house adores it too: I can feel the bright expectation gathering around me as I stand surveying the table in that last hush before the happy bedlam ensues. I feel like a director upon whose play the curtain is about to go up. It might just be my favorite moment of all—after weeks of preparation and work and worry and excitement, we are ready, my house and I, and Love’s sweet office is eager to be fulfilled. But as much as I enjoy getting ready for my Christmas party, I think I had even more fun that year preparing my guest rooms. Mantles were laced with pine garlands and fires were laid. I wired sprays of holly and greenery to bedposts and bedside lamps and made up the beds with cool cotton sheets and freshly ironed pillowcases. On a last whim, I put trays on the beds with posy vases of holly and cedar, silver dishes of chocolates, and a few cherished December issues of Victoria magazine. And all throughout the party, amidst all the laughter and merrymaking and constant replenishing of trays and chafing dishes, I kept thinking about those quiet rooms upstairs and the dear souls that would rest there that night. The other guests cleared out after midnight and I was confronted with the yearly mountain of dishes and ravaged spread of party fare in the dining room. But with indefatigable energy these friends of mine fell on the ruin, and in less time than I dreamed possible, the leftovers had been attended to, the silver dried to my standard, and the plates and coffee cups stacked neatly on the sideboard, ready to be put away. (It’s another tradition that, even with Philip’s help, I regularly see dawn on the morning after our party just as I’m tottering to bed in a sheer stupor of exhaustion.) We played loud Christmas music and sipped mulled wine as we worked, husbands drying as wives washed, until there was not a spoon out of place or a crumb unaccounted for. Then we all flopped in our finery in the den by the fire, where we laughed and yawned well into the early morning hours. That’s one thing that Philip says he loves about a house party: you actually have time to get past the cocktail banter with people and really talk to them. Philip woke at eight the next morning and started the percolator. Around nine we decided that we wanted to treat everyone to coffee in their rooms, so I assembled the trays with pretty mugs and sprigs of holly and cream and sugar and, each carrying one, we ascended the stairs, grinning at one another like children. We delivered their coffee with bright greetings, and Philip started the fires in their rooms so that they could relax in bed for a while before breakfast. I told them we would eat in an hour: already the sacrosanct aromas of my mother’s Christmas Morning Breakfast Casserole, reserved for only the most special of occasions, was filling the air with invitation. Everyone trailed down eventually and we had a fresh pot of coffee and a jolly breakfast in the den by the fire, complete with sweet rolls and clementines and Christmas records on the turntable. There was enough champagne leftover from the party for mimosas (Grace wouldn’t have liked that at all—I think she was a teetotaler), and we just lounged in our pajamas and talked and laughed for a couple of hours. In a season characterized by hurry, it was an oasis of indolence. After the dishes had been cleared and a leisurely ramble had been taken to the barn to greet the animals, I decreed a round of naps all around: an edict with which all present were only too eager to comply. I got up just in time to spread out the makings for lunch—pimento cheese sandwiches and more clementines and a pot of tea—and we ate once more in the den with plates on our knees as the tree was just too inviting. But a great mobilization was eminent: as a last treat, we were all heading together to the cathedral downtown for the dearly loved tradition of Nine Lessons and Carols, and I set an egg timer in the kitchen so we wouldn’t be late. Nevertheless, when the bell went off, we dispersed like a covey of quail: running up and down the stairs, doors slamming, the dog escaping and being rounded up again, dashes back into the house for a last check or a forgotten scarf—all things considered, it was a miracle that we made it to the cathedral at all, much less before the service started. But barely before: the only seats available were on the back row. There was just room for us, and as we sank into our pew, the soloist in the balcony chanted the first lovely strains of “Once in Royal David’s City.” Such a moment of grace, surrounded by such dear friends with such a happy memory behind us. And I think that might just be my favorite thing about a house party: the shared experience you can laugh over and remember together as “glad and golden hours” for years to come. But there was one last gift with which the weekend was to be sealed in our hearts, and it came at the end of the service. I confess I had been a little disappointed to be on the very last row, as the acoustics just aren’t that great in the cathedral. Every regret disappeared, however, when the Great Recessional began and I realized, with tears in my eyes, that the sopranos were assembling all around our back pew for the final descant of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” It’s always been one of my very favorites—long has it made my heart pound with joy. But I will never, ever forget that moment of singing it—or trying to sing it with a choked voice and tears that were pouring down my cheeks to the sublime accompaniment of that angelic chorus just behind me. We were borne up, as it were, carried on wings of worship, and Philip and I both confessed to one another later that we gave up trying to sing and just stood in a worshipful silence, cherishing it and trying to imprint it on our memory forever. It was a moment of such majesty that it made our Christmas. A pure gift of love from the Father of Lights. And when the service was over, we all mopped our eyes and congregated in the atrium for final rhapsodies and last Christmas wishes. I ran away from them all for a moment, out into the frosty twilight, to hear the bells chiming out the message of Christmas to the city, to look at the pale faded sky and the bare branches against it and the twinkling lights of the neighborhood across the street and the lampposts all decked with Christmas wreaths. It was one of my own sacred moments, as the glad clamor of bells pealed overhead and the beauty of the evening opened before me, winsome as a scene from a Grace Livingston Hill book. I think dear old Grace would have been pleased with our house party. We had loved our loved ones with the utmost energy of our hearts. And we had all ended up at church together—she would have liked that. Originally published on the Art House America blog, December 2013.

Two and a half years ago, Andrew Osenga set out on his Heart & Soul, Flesh & Bone musical odyssey, and today the project has finally come full circle with the release of Bone, a six-song instrumental EP. The whole project began in July of 2013 with Osenga aiming to make four EPs, each with a different genre of music. Heart was an acoustic singer-songwriter collection. Soul was full of soul and blues tunes. Flesh was straight rock and roll. And Bone is an atmospheric wonderland of electric guitar landscapes. Taken as a whole, Heart & Soul, Flesh & Bone is a collection of Andrew Osenga’s finest work. Bone is now available in the Rabbit Room Store, and you can get the full set of EPs for just $16.

Andy Gullahorn’s stirring new album Fault Lines was born as part of a November Kickstarter campaign, which succeeded in just twenty-four hours. With the goal eventually tripled, Gullahorn sent the project out to eager supporters in December, and it’s set for wide release on January 26th (pre-orders are available here). We asked Andy about the new album and got some fascinating insight into his musical background, his approach to songwriting, and why he might or might not be a mad mathematical scientist secretly manipulating your mind. You produced Fault Lines yourself, but I can hear a broad range of production styles within your well-defined singer/songwriter genre. I like having the limits there and saying “How can I make these songs sound different with this limited palette?” You said in another interview that you have a mathematical bent. Is there a mathematical approach to songwriting? I definitely think there’s a mathematical approach. It’s not like I’m some math genius, but there are things about math that actually excite me. The structure of it. In songwriting, I like the formula, the structure of a song. So my songs in general—there’s nothing crazy, trying to throw people for a loop. It’s fairly standard structure. I like those confines, like in production. Seeing how much you can do within the confines of a structure. If people go through my catalog, they’ll find a lot of “if-then” songs. If a is true then b is true. As somebody who is trying to build bridges through music, it’s speaking someone’s language and saying, “I’m with you, I’m with you, and I think this.” The first part of a song might be setting up an argument so the last part of the song makes sense. If I’d just started with the last part of the song, it might not be absorbed as easily. I do think about that as a way of communication, showing people the connections between things. It makes sense because you have a way of connecting a person with a song emotionally. Whether they’ve had the experience you’re describing in the song or not, someone can say I can resonate with that feeling. Then, you progress the person from a feeling to a truth. I see a formula in that. It’s also not like I sit down and say, “What mathematical formula am I going to use to manipulate people this time!” It’s just, whether I want to do it or not, there are certain parts of that that are just the way I process things in the world. It’s just, for better or worse, what comes naturally to me. I’m always telling songwriters to do what comes natural. That’s the strongest thing you have to offer the world. What comes naturally to me isn’t the same as what comes naturally to Andrew Peterson or Eric Peters, and it’s not any better or worse. It’s what I have to offer the world that’s different from anybody else. We’ve all tried to be somebody else. I’ve tried to write songs that are maybe obscure and artsy, and then I think, Wow, that means nothing to me. It doesn’t work coming from me. It just doesn’t feel true. For somebody else it could feel and be very true to them, and I love that. Part of the battle over the years was figuring out what I’m good at and what I’m not good at. To realize, I’m not going to waste my time trying to be that. You’re one of my favorite guitar players. The versatility of your sound makes me wonder what your musical background is. I guess I had a musical inclination as a kid. I played piano when I was very little. I quit when I was about twelve. I’m not really proficient at piano at all, but it was a foundation for me. Do you write on guitar? Mainly guitar, but some piano too. If I write on piano it has to be in the key of G. I started playing guitar in high school. I mainly started playing country music, or James Taylor or Dan Fogelberg, a lot of finger picking. I don’t think I played with a pick until I had been playing about four years. I also didn’t know the names of the chords for about four years. It was just listening to a song and trying to figure out the chords; I didn’t know what they were called. Later on I’d be at a camp, and someone would teach me the names of what I knew intuitively. At some point, late high school, more in college, I started experimenting with open tunings. That affected my songwriting. It made it less country-sounding. It opened up new areas musically for songwriting. Who was your favorite artist growing up? In junior high and high school, it was definitely Garth Brooks. Maybe by the end of high school, maybe junior year is when I first heard David Wilcox. Guys like David Wilcox and Pierce Pettis and John Gorka—folk singer guys, they changed my outlook on songwriting. David is probably the biggest influence on my writing, playing, and the way I try to look at the world. There’s a song on Fault Lines—“I’ll Meet You There”—that totally sounds like a Jackson Browne song to me. Just enough country, but a California singer-songwriter vibe. I remember when I first started playing songs in high school, people would say it reminded them of Jackson Browne. I didn’t know who he was. So obviously you weren’t copying him! Yeah, since then I’ve gotten a couple of CDs, and I like him a lot. He has a way better voice than I do, but I do hear phrasing things, and I think, “That’s what they’re talking about.” When does songwriting happen for you? Are you always jotting down little ideas and notes, or is it a more seasonal approach? There are definitely seasons when it’s easier, but it’s also a constant thing. There aren’t seasons when I say, “Now I’m going to look at the world as a songwriter and pay attention.” You have to pay attention all the time. That’s a challenge, not sleepwalking through the world. Not trying to force anything, but noticing that, say, an image struck me in a certain way—always being ready to jump into it. There are some seasons when I’ve had more time at home or on the guitar and it’s easier, but it needs to be constant. I’m not half as prolific as I used to be when I was writing for a publishing company, and I had a drive to write so many songs a week. I’m not writing as many songs as I used to but I don’t ever “clock out.” I think with any writing it’s a muscle that, when it’s well exercised, you can get pretty prolific because you’re in the groove or the ideas flow easier. You don’t have the barriers of space and time, of all the things you do to prepare your heart for it. You’re ready. It’s like recording. When I’m in the middle of doing a record, I have the mic set up and the studio is all ready. Whereas today, if I want to record a song I’d have to pull all that stuff out, and get mic stands set up and all that. There are more barriers to get going. It’s not that I can’t do it, it’s just that it’s not as easy to do when I don’t have all the stuff set up for it. Do you practice guitar? I don’t. Not that I don’t need to, it’s just that I don’t. There have been times when I would tell myself that I’d love to do flatpicking, like bluegrass stuff, or try something new. Maybe a couple of years ago after the Christmas tour, there were some songs I’d start learning slowly, and I’d have a guitar around. There was one year where Ron Block taught me some scales. I had never really done any scales or knew how to play past the fifth fret of a guitar, so I asked him to show me some things that I could sit down with a guitar and do for two minutes. I’m not very disciplined at keeping up with that. Usually when I’m home there’s not much guitar playing for fun or practice. The guitar will sit in the office from airplane to airplane. Which makes me wish I was back in college, when I had time to learn new things. It’s fun when I have to learn new songs for other people, and chart them out. It’s actually enjoyable for me, but I just don’t do it very often. Do you remember the first songs you ever wrote? They were all depressing. The first one was called “Me, Myself, and Thy.” It was about being lonely in high school. It was a country song about somebody leaving you, like I knew what that was at 15-years-old. It wasn’t that I was like a depressed kid; that’s just what I thought I was supposed to write about. That’s interesting, since you’re known for the humor in many of your songs now. There were some early attempts—I use the term “humor” lightly—it was really just cheesy and stupid, but one of the early songs that I wrote was about talking to this girl about this friend I have who’s a really good guy for her—Andy is his name. It was that kind of thing. Back then people thought it was funny. You produced a band in Brazil and then toured the country. How did that come about? These two brothers were studying to be pastors up in Michigan, but they were both from Brazil. They had heard one of my old records—I think Reinventing the Wheel—and they emailed me and said, “We like the way this record sounds and we want ours to sound like it. Will you produce it?” At which point I said, “No.” I don’t really produce other people’s stuff. Some people are like, “I want to get off the road and just do production.” That’s not me. I enjoy parts of it, but it’s not the end goal for me. It’s not what I would want to do full time. I told them there are lots of great people I could recommend to them. They kept emailing me. Then finally I watched a YouTube video they sent of them playing live, and something struck me. I don’t even know exactly what it was. They were great singers. They were in Portuguese, so I didn’t know what they were saying, but I liked the songs. Usually when people contact me and say they want me to produce a record for them, I might ask to listen to a song and think that I wouldn’t be the best one to offer what they’re looking for. They might want singer-songwriter, but then get in the studio and want to add a little electric guitar, full kit drums—that’s not what is appealing to me, and there are producers who are way better at doing full band stuff. But when I listened to this music, I thought, “This really could fit the kind of style that comes naturally to me.” So, I said yes and they came and stayed here in my studio while we recorded for a week and a half. Then I did a lot of guitar work on it, and they put out a record, and it did really well in Brazil. Sony picked it up, and it went to #1 on iTunes. We did another record, an EP that released this year, and it also did really well. What’s it like to produce a record when you don’t understand the lyrics? It’s really different! It makes things like editing vocals hard because I don’t know where one word ends and the next begins. It all runs together. I do have the translation so I can get a feel for what the song is about. But when you’re producing a song, you’re going to have to listen to it hundreds of times, over and over again. So what it really does is makes it to where, I’m kind of a lyrics-first person, so if I’m not into the lyrics, the aesthetics of the song can only take me so far. So being a lyrics person and listening to this record, I felt like I needed to have something to keep my attention in the song. It forced me to add elements to make it exciting for me to listen to. It helped me to be more creative musically. I’m proud of the records we did, and I think we’re going to put out another one. So I don’t produce much. It’s just my records, and Jill’s, occasionally, and these Brazilian superstars. You have a strict Brazil-only policy now. Yes! I actually have had many requests to produce Brazilian records after doing theirs. I’m like, “Don’t you guys know there are a lot of producers who are way better than I am, and would do a much better job?” It’s a time thing for me. If I was doing records all the time, I could be more efficient. But when I travel on weekends, I can’t do that. Especially for independent records. I tell people that what I would have to charge them to make it worth my time would be more than I would ever tell anybody that they should spend on an independent record. There are producers who can do it way faster than I can. Your Kickstarter tripled your goal. What does that mean for you practically? It’s funny with Kickstarter. We did one for Jill early on in the Kickstarter days. There’s a weird mindset that happens. If you get the goal, you feel like you have this extra money to do extra stuff—we could add a stretch goal, or do a book, or do t-shirts or whatever. But then you realize, really what you’re selling is pre-orders for a CD or whatever. All those orders take time and cost money. We learned in that experience that we can’t afford to do all this stuff, both time-wise and financially. For me, just the first day of shipping things out, I was like, “I just paid a thousand dollars to the post office.” So, it’s helpful in that it’s a great way to do pre-orders. I try to pay for my records myself, so there’s already a lot that I was planning on paying for. Producing it myself, I try to keep the costs low. I’ve seen people break the bank to make a record, and then they can never make another record. I want to do this for a long time, and have a sustainable budget, something that’s not going to kill me. To be able to pay for the record is a huge thing. It’s a great gift. The other thing I love about Kickstarter is I like the connection that it facilitates for people who are interested in supporting it. My favorite part is filling out the envelopes and seeing the names of people who have supported it, a lot of people I know, and people I don’t. I like that personal connection. And your brother gave you, what, $1.69? Yes, his was really generous. Compared to how much money he owes me, it’s a small down payment. It might have been interest for the month. Is there an ego thing with something so quantified like that, with a specific goal and a number of backers? It’s definitely encouraging. But part of me just feels bad asking for anything in the first place. So I wanted to set my goal low. My whole career is on the foundation of setting low expectations for myself, so the goal was part of that. We reached the goal in the first day, I think. What that did for me was it took off the pressure of having to hound people about it on social media. I was like, “I don’t have to say another word about it.” And, maybe that day or that next day was when the attacks in Paris happened. The last thing I wanted to do was tweet something about raising money for my record. I thought, “If I don’t make another dime, it’s okay. I’ll make it work one way or another.” There are themes of addiction on the record, and I imagine some of those are going to hit people hard. I always have songs about either addiction specifically or just issues and stories common to people in recovery. There are a lot on this record because I’m writing for places that I’m playing. I’ve done retreats and conferences and I have friends who are addiction counselors. I’m really involved with the National Association of Christian Recovery. The person who’s the head of that asked me to be their art director. I’ve been at a lot of places for people in recovery who are dealing with addiction, which, by the way, is everybody. I think the people who are in recovery, who are in twelve-step programs, are the smartest ones. Everybody could use that. I also write out of situations I’m dealing with in real life, both for myself and for encouraging other people. I can’t help but write out some of that stuff. There are songs on the new album that speak of particular struggles, but the pain and the challenge is universal. A song like “Not Bad Enough” is one that is encouraging to the alcoholic whose family has sent him to rehab five times, and to the family who is sending their son to rehab five times. I’ve heard feedback from both sides of that. Depending on where I play, each song on this record—and my last was this way, too—there are concerts where I’ll say, “There’s no way I’m going to play half the songs on this record.” But there are other concerts where that other half might be perfect. They’re all useful to me in different settings. There are certain settings where I could sing a song like “Dad Like Mine” and other places where that wouldn’t be a good song to sing. But I feel like each song on the record has a home somewhere. The images in “I Want to be Well” have really stuck with me, like the lady throwing the bottles away and going back at night and digging through the garbage to find them. You don’t have to have been an alcoholic to understand that depravity. I’m not super-creative enough to make that stuff up. That’s about a counselor friend of mine. That’s a story about her going and sitting on the curb, and she talks about sitting on the curb, digging through bottles in the trash can late at night, until she was able to picture Jesus sitting with her, not judging her but going out and sitting with her. That was the healing place she had to get to. And the story in the second verse is about my friend who is in federal prison still for embezzling all that money. These are real stories from friends who are close to me. “God Forsaken Place” is another song that resonates with me. I remember a line in a Carolyn Arends song from years ago “There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town”—that stuck with me. You fleshed that concept out so well. That song means a lot to me. It came out of a Laity Lodge addiction retreat. I was playing “Not Bad Enough” at that retreat, and as a response one of the speakers said that even Hell is not a God-forsaken place. I was kinda hoping that song would get me into trouble, although it hasn’t happened yet. I kinda hope that it does. Theologically? I’m not a theologian, but that line “even Hell is not a God-forsaken place,” I thought that seems like people would get pissed off about that. Depending on how you twist the words around. I like that it’s a shocking phrase. I’m not an agitator, but I’m kinda waiting for the emails. [Fault Lines is available for pre-order in the Rabbit Room Store.] #AndyGullahorn #FaultLines

Eric Peters is a great songwriter (check out his music here). He is also a bibliophile (check out his Bookmole online bookstore/book-finding service), a visual artist (here’s some of his artwork), a history buff, and an amateur ornithologist. He is also a world-class self-deprecator, to the chagrin of the many friends who love him and think he’s brilliant. Welcome, Eric Peters, to Sad Stories Told for Laughs. Thanks for the opportunity to humiliate myself. Your reputation for humiliation precedes you. Yeah, I’m good at going Eeyore…. One of my favorite Eric Peters stage moments was this fall during the release concert for Andrew Peterson’s Burning Edge of Dawn Record… Uh oh…I know where this is going. Andrew had been threatening to beat you up if you went Eeyore on him. And you were doing much better in that regard. You were getting almost exuberant: “I’m awesome,” you said, or words to that effect. “And this next song is awesome. It’s called ‘Field of Failure.'” I don’t know why, but it just struck me as hilarious. I remember that stage moment. I think AP actually got up from his seat and kicked me. (Or was that in another city?) There was at least simulated violence. I should also say that I think “Field of Failure” is brilliant and beautiful. Like you. I really love that song. And I feel very uncomfortable unloading it on unsuspecting folks. But to return to an earlier point, do you think AP could actually beat you up? I’m not sure anyone could beat me up if they made me angry. I’m a tiny male, but I’m scrappy, agile, and will defend myself like a wild animal. My thoughts exactly. We’re all glad that you’re not easily angered. Is there any occupation that creates more opportunities for public humiliation than that of singer-songwriter? Comedian? There’s no guitar to hide behind when it all goes south. I guess that’s right. I need to round up a comedian for this interview series. But for today, you’re all I’ve got. Don Chaffer and Nick Flora have offered me $3000 to do a 30-minute stand-up routine. They would make that money back easily. I know I’d pay for a ticket. This standup routine: what will it consist of? Actually, the idea is for me to ACCOMPANY a comedian on stage. The idea being that I would be the one who explained the joke just told. A double-whammy of humor. Right? That’s brilliant. Let’s try it…I’ll be the comedian. So these two cannibals are eating a clown. One of them turns to the other one and says, “Does this taste funny to you?” See, it’s like this, guys: the cannibals, who by definition eat other humans, whether for sustenance or ritual, are remarking in this scene that this particular person – one whose purpose in life is to act and BE funny – tastes “funny.” Because, you know, we say something tastes funny, and by that we mean, it’s not quite right. Almost as if it is rank or spoiled. [drops mic. walks off stage] You ruined that joke, man. Then ruined it is. So, to return to the topic at hand…public humiliation: what have you got? How many do you want? Two? Three? You start spilling them. I’ll tell you when to stop. One: Macon, Georgia, some coffeehouse, circa 1999. Full room, no one listening (not to me, at least). Loud game of Scrabble being played on the table directly in front of the stage. Two: Somewhere in South Carolina, “Christian” coffeehouse (remember when those were in vogue?), 1998. The owner required that I tell him my testimony before playing that night–sort of an interview. I guess he accepted my testimony of faith because he allowed me to play for his thoroughly UNpacked house of zero people; just him and a coffeehouse worker/volunteer. He felt sorry for me afterwards bc he gave me twenty dollars for a hotel room. Twenty dollars! Yow! I think there are some hourly hotels where you can stay for twenty dollars. For a little while. Three: Dallas, TX, megachurch city-wide Bible study, circa 2002/03. I played two songs at the Monday night service/event, then was to play in the atrium (yes, atrium) after the Bible study. How do I know it was a Monday night? Because behind me, while I sang my songs to a vast space of empty chairs and tables, they were piping in the Monday Night Football game on a large screen directly behind me. I have never forgiven the Oakland Raiders for that. That was pretty humiliating, but I think I got paid a hundred dollars that night. All of these are early career moments when I would play anywhere for any amount. One thing that has surprised me, however, in these “Sad Stories” interviews is how often the humiliations are still happening deep into one’s career. Buddy Greene was a professional musician before you were born, and yet he still had some pretty fresh stories to tell. Yep, the sad stories keep being told, I suppose. There’s also the time I played a YoungLife fundraising banquet and had brought a pal to accompany me on cello/upright bass. His last name is Yamaguchi. In the middle of my set, possibly during a song, a lady approaches the stage to ask if he was related to the Olympic ice skater, Kristi Yamaguchi. People do funny, dumb things. I spoke of the “Fields of Failure” intro as one of my favorite Eric Peters moments…but another favorite moment was one I wasn’t there for. Andrew P was telling about your UK tour, and the fact that there were people there who were huge EP fans, who absolutely needed what you were bringing. Your friends call it Eeyore, but other people call it being real, and bringing hope to hard reality. At Hutchmoot one year I met a woman who told more or less the same story–that your music got her through a really hard time in her life. I hope those kind of stories make you feel that the empty coffeehouses and the front-row Scrabble players are worth it. I don’t know how folks perceive me, whether as a brooding, perpetually serious, unhappy person, or what. But humor is one of the main ways I cope with life. I have never been able to make that come through in my songs, though. I’m no Andy Gullahorn. (see how I just compared myself?) I’ve always written the only way I know how: out of vulnerability, or at least my version of vulnerability. Frankly, I was shocked when I heard that my music had meant something terribly deep to a lady in far away England. I am both shocked and grateful when I hear these stories of connections being made, of my work being something like a light. These are the things that make me want to keep writing, to keep at it, to continue touring and playing the odd shows. You’re doing good work, important work. Thanks, amigo. Thank you for inviting me to relive the past. As a history major, I loved it.