I spent a number stressful days last week trying to write the last chapters of the next (and final) installment of the Fin’s Revolution tale: Fiddler’s Green. I’d put off those chapters for a long time because I needed to be patient and mull over Fin’s entire story and make sure that all the necessary events and emotions came together in just the right way. After writing all day on Saturday, I laid awake until three or four in the morning with a whirl of descending character arcs and plot resolutions spinning through my head. When I woke at seven the next morning my brain still hadn’t stopped. So I got up, got dressed, shirked church and sat in the coffee shop writing. At about 3pm on Sunday, I wrote the final sentence of Fiddler’s Green. An ending is a strange and delicate thing. In storytelling terms its importance is equaled only by its opposite: the beginning. The bits in the middle tend to be easier to shape because they’re open ended and the writer can, in some measure, both pre- and re- form them throughout the narrative. Beginnings are all promise and adventure, a setting out toward lands unknown. They signify a contract between the writer and reader in which the writer suggests a journey and, tendering a currency of time and attention, the reader buys a ticket hoping to gain safe passage through the writer’s mind in hope of entertainment, or escape, or revelation. But endings? Endings are final. After the last period, there’s nothing more to be said. All communication with the reader ceases. An ending might leave the reader angry or dissatisfied or, in the best cases, it can leave them moved to tears, or joy, or laughter. But laugh or cry, ending is a serious business. Think about your favorite book. There’s a good chance that when you recall it, you recall the feeling you had in its moment of ending. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities “Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand. The great valley of the Umzimkulu is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotsheni is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.” -Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country “Some natural tears they dropp’d, but wip’d them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide They, hand in hand, with wand’ring steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.” -John Milton, Paradise Lost “Her eyes filled with tears that did not fall, but she said quietly, ‘I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it’s being ruined is hard.’ […] She held out her hand to me. She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light.” -Wendell Berry, (book censored to prevent spoiler) “So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.” Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass “And Julian’s soul is laughing now, as booming and boisterous as the thunder. And the Lord’s embrace is his golden rope. . .” -Walt Wangerin, Jr., Saint Julian See what I mean? Each of those brief excerpts evoke their writers’ tales entirely. They stir up a swirl of emotions and I get misty-eyed and want to hold the book in my hand and smell it and smile. Each of these great endings has something in common: they convey not only a sense of resolution, but of continuance; they each imply, however subtly, that the story in some form goes on, or that we as readers, having spent our little time within the tale, are now drawn away, back to our own world, left to wonder at the mysteries still afoot in that other. This idea, that an ending can, or possibly should, imply a continuation or a new beginning, is important, I think. When done properly, it grants the book a sort of immortality because in the mind of the reader, the story has not ended but instead, continues into the distance. Certainly there are great books that end with finality but I wonder if they have the same endurance. To end well is a dire responsibility, it seems. In discussions of writing, people frequently ask if I have an ending in mind when I begin a story or if, instead, I simply begin writing and allow the story to unfold naturally and lead me to the destination of its choosing. Of course there are as many approaches to the process as there are writers. When some begin they have no ending in mind, only a vague direction. Others script their story down to the smallest scene before they write a word of prose. Still others write non-linearly, penning scenes and passages in whatever order they come along, only later finding a way to put them together into a cogent whole. None of these methods are wrong. But I can tell you that for me, I need an ending before I begin. I need a target to shoot at. A scene to earn. I’ve known the ending of Fiddler’s Green for nearly a decade now. It was in my mind almost as soon as Fin Button’s character took shape and I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I wrote the books for the purpose of writing the ending, two novels for the sake of a couple of paragraphs. That might sound crazy but writers have rarely laid claim to an excess of sanity. I think every storyteller knows what I’m talking about. You have an image in your mind, or a scene, and it’s something beautiful and wondrous and the need to communicate that bright moment is what sets us in motion. We know we can’t simply tell people about it because out of context it’s meaningless and silly; so we create entire worlds to explain our dreams and visions, to make sense of them if we can. I jotted down the ending to Fiddler’s Green several years ago and in the course of writing the books, I’ve gone back to peek at it often. It was like a treasure map that reminded me where I was going. Year after year, word after word, I followed it and after hundreds of thousands of steps, I arrived at the longed-for destination. But on arrival, I found out that it was surprisingly hard to stick the shovel in the ground and dig up the treasure I’d been chasing. So for a few months, I just stared at the spot on the ground, the big black X marking the spot. I walked around it and scratched my beard and I kicked the dirt awhile and I looked at it suspiciously from the corner of a narrowed eye. And then I took a deep breath and I sat down on a Sunday morning and dug. I’m not a parent so I don’t know what it’s like to experience the birth of a child or to see that child strike out into the world to make his own way. But I wonder if that sort of triumphal advent isn’t, in some way, akin to finishing a book. It’s an emotional business I can tell you. You live with a set of characters and their struggles for so long that when the time comes and you tell them goodbye, the experience is truly a kind of grief. I’m sure there are a few dozen people in Nashville chuckling and telling their friends about the guy they saw crying in the corner of the coffee shop on Sunday. The weight and finality of Fin’s last scene came down on me with such force that my chest was tight with it and my breath short. When the writing was done, I went home and paced my room for an hour with tears in my eyes trying to understand the strange emotional storm that ending the story had stirred. I still don’t fully understand it. Don’t read this to mean that the ending is sad; I won’t spoil that revelation for you. The emotional impact didn’t come from the nature of the ending, you see. I’d known that all along. The impact came from the finality of it, the realization that I no longer needed the map, that I was no longer searching for the means to explain a decade-long dream. The contract entered into so long ago had been satisfied. The beginning had found its fulfillment in the end. It’s something of a holy communion, isn’t it? To create. To love one’s creation. To lead that creation through trial and grief and, at last, to come through the grand adventure and say, “It is finished.” Oh, what a holy image we bear. The creation creates and so by labor and great mystery, glimpses the endless love of the Creator. So it’s done now. And I’m happy with it. Though the ultimate judgment lies with you, the reader, I think I’ve served the story well. I think Fin and her ragged cast have been honored and now that the writing is complete, I find that I’m humbled and incredibly grateful to have been entrusted with the gift of telling their stories. The book will be out December 7th, 2010. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you find that, in the end, it’s a story worth telling.

Hutchmoot was a beautiful quilt, sewn together with the ties of common bonds and uncommon love. Like a homemade quilt, lovingly crafted from swatches of familiar patterns, and recycled from classic old dresses, I witnessed a living and breathing piece of art. There was the memorable material known informally as Andyland (the Andrew Peterson Message Board). I finally met Allison and Gaines at the Counting Stars concert. They are a young couple with whom I’ve felt a special spiritual bond watching their family grow in the cyber world. How odd that this was my first real meeting of these delightfully kind and sincere young people, and yet I have long felt the compulsion to pray for them routinely. Then there was Chad, another long time Andyland friend. I first remember e-mailing Chad when he posted something that resonated on an early version of Andyland. Chad was serving in the military, and has been open about the battle he fights with cancer. He’s stayed in touch, despite much relocation. I was so thankful that he found me at the show. When I met Ron, lovingly referred to as Ronzilla due to his extra large stature, he reminded me that we became acquainted before both of his children were born, about ten years ago. Our cyber relationship was built on a mutual respect for straight talk, music talk, sports, and conservative politics. The relationship survived the infamous Amy Grant disagreement, a hot message board thread that seemed important at the time. Now I’d have to concentrate to remember what prompted such spirited debate.  I wonder if I may have carried things a little too far in that long-play thread when I began using footnotes. Then there was Rick and Melinda from Georgia, a beautiful couple and parents to Gabriel, 3 and Liliane, 1. I met Rick and Melinda at a concert in Cedar Falls, Iowa (or was it Cedar Rapids). Rick works for an airline and is blessed with the benefit of special airline privileges (read, free tickets), which they have used liberally to follow Andrew Peterson to shows all over the country. I saw Sharon again, a kind lady from Ohio that I first met via message board conversations. Later we put names with faces at an early Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb of God presentation at Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. Around a dozen of our giddy group shared dinner and conversation at a nearby restaurant. Sharon has promoted Square Peg concerts for years and is usually on the cutting edge of great indie music discoveries. Chris and Lyndsay Slaten made it after all, after a near cancellation. I’ve known Lyndsay–who can convey more enthusiasm in a message board post than pretty much anybody alive–for ages. They are fellow lovers of books, music, and film and Chris is an indie recording artist. I’ve long enjoyed the simplicity and beauty of his record Under Green Canopies. In my enthusiasm to say hello, I woke their newborn baby; that may have been my worst Hutchmoot moment. I caught a glimpse of Christiana and Heather. We exchanged hellos but little more; one of the weekend’s sad realities was being unwittingly swept from one conversation to another, without time to marinate in any one exchange. Then there was dear Brandy C., who introduced me to her Nashville friend, Mandy C. the editor for LifeWay Christian Resources. I enjoyed referring to them collectively as Brandy/Mandy through the weekend. I well remember when Brandy unexpectedly lost her step-father Dennis. She was transparent about her pain and the resulting struggles and questions. While attending college, Brandy apparently thought I had some kind of writing credentials and sometimes sent samples, asking for critiques. Now she could serve as my mentor as she crafts good work as a writer for Compassion International. By the way, Brandy authors one of the best food blogs around. And how about those Travis Prinzi and S.D. Smith dudes? Did you have the sense that their entire lives had prepared them for what they said at Hutchmoot? Could they have been any more informed and articulate? When Andrew Peterson ask Travis about the characters in fantasy literature that most embodied a particular characteristic, his off-the-cuff answer was like a scholarly laundry list, as if he had been researching that particular question for years. In fact, I suppose he has. Other beautifully familiar swatches of quilt material came from those I first met at an Andrew Peterson or Square Peg concert. It was a joy bumping into my old, young friend Ben B., who introduced me to his lovely and articulate wife, Ashley. Our initial meeting came when my son and I road tripped to an Andrew Peterson/Eric Peters concert at a church in Kansas City, so many moons ago. Ben B. was a student at the time. He brought his sisters, which was bound to impress a family man like me. I vividly recall Ben discussing the music of Andrew Peterson, how it touched him to the core, and often made him weep. Bingo. Instant friendship. Since then, I run into Ben routinely at area Square Peg concerts. Ben Y. was there. I’ve noticed Ben Y. at several shows, but was particularly moved when he once accompanied Randall Goodgame on the cello, with little rehearsal time, lending another dimension to Randy’s songs. Recently, I noticed a YouTube video of Ben Y. doing a spectacular  Jason Gray cover. I have talented friends. My friend Laura is another wonderful sister that I first met at a Behold the Lamb of God show that she promoted in Elkhorn, Nebraska. She brought her husband Tom, the C.S. Lewis buff. She is a strong, supportive advocate for meaningful music and puts her money and time where her mouth is. Laura is a sterling silver example of a woman that uses her God-given gifts to His glory. It was great to see people like the Bens, Laura, and Ashley, who are part of my literal community in Nebraska, be so moved by the concept of Hutchmoot, that they flew or drove half-way across the country to attend. The patchwork quilt was also crafted by my supremely talented Rabbit Room colleagues, some of whom I had not met until our planning and prayer meeting prior to registration. The substance and depth of these passionate men and women of the Lord humbled me, though I didn’t share as many moments with them as I would have liked; our goal was to use the needle and thread of Christ’s love to stitch everyone into a human work of art, to His glory, not to inhabit Rabbit Room cliques. There was Andrew Peterson offering a kind or encouraging word, despite his own worry and fatigue. And Jason Gray, who long ago and far away participated in a message board for Christian acoustic artists and fans that I moderated. He was present with humor, insight, and compassion. Evie’s work in the kitchen–assisted by her servant’s heart crew–were Babette’s Feast moments. Ron Block conversed with relaxed confidence and humility, as one who is assured that he is in Christ.  Ron’s Square Peg Concert moment was stunning. More importantly, his shoe-leather theology made me want to be more like him and Him. Jonathan Rogers wove tales in the story-telling voice of an old sage. I want Jonathan to be my neighbor. I shared a meal and conversation with Randall Goodgame, learning about his trip to Africa, and the gift from God that he brought home, his son. I awkwardly posed some nerdish questions about Randy’s songwriting process. Let’s be clear; Hutchmoot without nerdish moments would not be Hutchmoot. I enjoyed a few snippets of conversation with my old buddy, Eric Peters. Like many of the Hutchmoot artists, here’s a man who lives with the knowledge that if the market were just, his records would sell more units than Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman combined. Nevertheless, he persists with passion. And the solid rock was everywhere, otherwise known as Pete Peterson, who organized and by sheer force of will held together the world of Hutchmoot. Then there were the three clergy Musketeers, Thomas McKenzie, Russ Ramsey, and Matt Conner, who rode in with casual dignity, loving us with grace. These honorable men were always at-the-ready with kindness, compassion, and prayer. They offered sage, literate wisdom when the rest of us were at a loss for words. Sarah Clarkson, Chris Wall, Janna Barber, Kate Hinson, and those that I’ve failed to mention by name, you were part of the majestic beauty of Hutchoot. Your words were thoughtful and true. Your hearts were beautiful and transparent. Brannon McAllister is the designer and creative consultant from Brooklyn, NY, responsible for so much of the visual beauty on Andrew Peterson’s most recent records. The long conversation I had with Brannon was typical of those that randomly sprouted in the rooms of Hutchmoot, like wildflowers on sunlit mountainsides. The free form dialogue was as comfortable as the Church of the Redeemer couch on which we sat. Now the name Brannon McAllister will not be just a talented name in liner notes. When I think of Brannon McAllister, thanks to Hutchmoot, I’ll also think, “Nice guy.” There was Aaron R. who shared a personal/spiritual realization that had come to him at Hutchmoot, which provided peace of mind and an attitude of service. Aaron is a Rabbit Room buddy, our resident comedian. But woven into all that lighthearted humor burns an earnest heart of passion to be a man of God. I had a flesh and blood meeting with Aaron, his wife Lindi–who was so helpful in Evie’s kitchen–and their children, when they passed through Omaha on their way to a family reunion in Iowa, just several weeks ago. It was a massive blessing to renew that friendship at Hutchmoot. The late night, post concert kitchen conversations with Rabbit Room buddy, Tony and his wife Cherie, my new friend Tom M., Russ Ramsey, and so many others, were as meaningful as our Rabbit Room exchanges, with a little added warmth, like the insulating layer of that hand-made quilt. Finally, there were you, my new friends: Walt, Tenika, Anne, Breann, Phillip, Tom, John, Jennifer, Whit, and the rest of you whose names are inextricably linked to Hutchmoot. There was an art major from Grand Island, Nebraska and a songwriter from North Carolina. I wish there was a published list of Hutchmoot names, so I could better recall the beauty that is Hutchmoot. I met so many of you, whose names escape me in this stream of consciousness narrative.  Still, as swatches were tied together, I noticed you. Timing and circumstance didn’t provide enough time to learn more about you and your journey, but I wanted to. In some locales, quilts are called comforters and the threads that link swatches together are called ties. When a quilt is hand-made, the ties more effectively hold the material together than those quilts that are commercially produced; all the better to withstand washings and the rough and tumble of life. As the beauty of our respective lives are integrated into the fabric of our local communities, may we be mindful that despite its beauty, this quilt of community should not be the kind of art used exclusively for display. May it live and breath authentically as living art, reaching hearts that are weary and broken, loving uncommonly, like The Great Comforter. Blessed be the ties that bind.

In part one I talked about poverty and wealth, and a father’s calling to care for his family. Now I’m going to broadly explain some of the nitty gritty nuts and bolts behind trying to make a living as an artist. It might get tedious, but bear with me. How to Lose Money. So these mugs. Oh, the mugs. We thought it would be fun to find a place to commission some handmade Rabbit Room mugs, partly to support the specific potter, partly to give ye faithful Rabbit Roomers a beautiful, somewhat meaningful souvenir, and partly (how foolish we were!) to help the Rabbit Room make some money. *Note: if this is totally boring for you, skip down to where it says, “Now, forget about the mugs.” Brannon McAllister suggested a potter (potteress?) in Greenville, South Carolina named Katie Coston, so I sent her an email and got the wheel spinning. She charged about $16 for each mug. That sounded like a lot until I thought about all the equipment she had to have bought, and the expertise (they were really beautiful pieces) and the clay and finish and other supplies, and the time it took her to spin each lump of clay into something beautiful, and the lettering, and the firing, then the shipping and packing supplies–and suddenly $16 didn’t seem like all that much. So I ordered a dozen or so (which came out to $192); with shipping the total came to a little over $200. If you subtract from that Katie’s hours, equipment, and supplies, I’m sure that didn’t leave her much. When Jamie goes to the grocery store for our family the bill can come to quite a bit more than Katie’s gross, so our order for mugs probably didn’t even buy her and her family a week’s worth of food. Hmm. We re-sold the mugs in the Rabbit Room for the same price, but the shipping kicked it up into the twenties. Add to that the packaging, the time it took Pete to put together the orders and drive them to the post office, then consider the fact that, no matter how well we packed the mugs, with every batch of mugs we’ve ordered, the good ol’ USPS pulverized at least one shipment. Sometimes more than that. Then we have to either apologize and refund someone’s money (because we’re out of mugs) or we apologize and ship another, eating that cost. It’s stressful just typing this out. (I should mention that the first two orders of mugs were handmade by Katie before she moved to England. After that we went with another guy in Wisconsin who provides handmade mugs with the bonus feature of the Rabbit Room logo. These new ones are a little stouter, a little less expensive, and the logo looks grand.) With all the broken shipments we decided we’d better start insuring the packages. Well, that costs extra, and we discovered to our shock and awe that it didn’t do any good. It seemed like someone went postal on the boxes in order to make the USPS pay. But the USPS insurance claim system is cumbersome and hardly worth the trouble. If you bought a mug, I hope this doesn’t make you feel bad. It brought us joy to bring these fine little pieces of art into the world and to get them to you. But we’ve lost a decent chunk of money on them. The only folks who made money were Katie and Stoneworks, who made very little in the scheme of things (and the USPS, now that I think about it. They may have come out on top). Still, I’m glad to have my mug, and I bet you’re glad for yours too. (If you didn’t get a mug, I’m sorry to say we won’t be ordering them until next year’s Hutchmoot, where we can sell them and safely bypass the post office.) Whew. Did you get all that? I know it was tedious, but I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes picture of what one can go through to a) support an artisan and b) to sell a unique and beautiful product. Was it worth it? If you ask Pete on a bad day, after stressing over all the shipping fiascos, no. When he sees you guys tweeting pictures of your unbroken and coffee-filled mugs, he’d say yes. Maybe. Now forget about the mugs. Imagine what it’s like to make an album. It’s a lot like making a mug. A $25,000 mug. That may seem like a lot of cash, and it’s definitely possible to make an album for less–but it’s also definitely possible to make an album for more. In the old days (as in, ten years ago) $25,000 would have been a teeny tiny budget. But here’s the breakdown, in case you ever wondered why some of us strangely insist on selling CDs instead of giving them away. You need a producer. A guy who’s smarter than you. For example, well let’s see…how about Ben Shive! Ben has a wife, four children, and a mortgage payment. He’s also really, really good at what he does. He could also make steadier money teaching college or playing piano in the corner at an Italian restaurant. But he believes in the work he’s doing and has carved out a good career making albums. He’s picky. He typically only produces projects he believes in because he knows he’ll spend weeks upon weeks with the songs and the artist–and because he wants to be a part of work that he values either for its artistic, spiritual, or relational merit. If you want a grownup to spend eight to fourteen hours a day for two months working on your album, you need to pay him. Right? Right. You need great musicians. This one doesn’t bear much explanation, but you should know that if you want a great player on your record you’ll usually need to pay him. He or she will be someone who’s had years and years of experience and will bring nuances to your songs you would never find on your own. They’ll make you sound better than you are. (This is definitely true of my records.) But these guys have families and mortgages and grocery bills too. So you need to pay them. You need a mixing engineer. Some guy with thousands of dollars of gear and a studio will tweak the tracks and set levels and turn knobs you never knew existed, all to make the song sound as beautiful as it can. Again, it takes years of experience to be proficient at this. And an engineer might be able to mix a song a day. So there’s another full-time job for a week or so. (Oh, and the producer is usually (and hopefully) still involved in this part of the process, so there’s his time, too.) You have to master the record. Mastering is the icing on top. It’s the final layer of sonic sweetness, and it’s when the songs are put in the proper order and burned to the final, glowing disc of ones and zeroes representing all your weeks of labor. Now you’re finished, right? Wrong. Now you have to hire an artist or designer. Someone needs to package the record and come up with a cover and lay out all the lyrics and thank yous and credits. After they come up with a (hopefully) mind-blowing cover and design they need to submit all that information to the printer. Oh, and you might need a photographer. This one goes before the artist/designer, in case you want to use pictures for the packaging. Me, I avoid this at all costs. (Take the Clear to Venus cover, for example. The one record with my face on the cover sold the fewest copies. Coincidence? I think not.) Then you need to print it. Usually folks print the CDs 1,000 at a time to get the best price break. So think about it. After all the above, then you still need to come up with $1,500-$2,000 to actually print the thing up! Unless you’re hip and you only sell it on iTunes and Amazon (or the Rabbit Room) digitally. Now imagine you have no record deal. You’re an independent artist. You book your own shows. You answer the emails, make the calls, manage your website, post Facebook status updates so people know you’re interesting and witty, and you’ve somehow managed to carve out enough time in your diaper-changing, utility bill-paying, yard-mowing, church-attending, self-doubting life to actually WRITE SONGS. Then what? Then, my songwriting friend, you have to come up with $15,000-$25,000 to record them (refer to above list), with the fool’s hope that you’ll sell enough to pay off the debt, or the financiers, or the grandparents so you don’t lose your shirt and your house. The artist’s life is not for the faint of heart, or the fiscally sage. It is an extravagant gamble. A leap of faith. Please understand–I’m not complaining. And I’m not complaining on anyone’s behalf. I’m grateful to still be doing this. I’m grateful that I have enough listeners to have a label to help offset that record-making cost. I’m grateful for a wife whose astonishing, audacious belief in my gifting has convinced me to keep at this for the last fifteen years. Lord knows I’ve been tempted to throw in the towel. I’m grateful for you, whose emails and purchases and attendance at my concerts have given me the chance to write, record, and tour. I do not take it for granted. I still get weepy if I think about it. But if you keep up with the Square Peg Alliance and the world of independent music you know I’m the least among my peers. There are so many writers whose songs are carrying the fire. I played a show in Chattanooga last weekend with Eric Peters and a band called Concerning Lions (who were really good). The concert was raising money for a group of counselors committed to making their services available to the poorest of the poor. One of them told how he plays Eric Peters’s song “Tomorrow” for many of his clients, and it helped them to voice their own fears and doubts and sorrows. I was so proud of Eric. And it reminded me (as if I needed reminding) how vital songs like his are in all this darkness. The music business, and now the book publishing business, is morphing even as I type this. By the time you finish reading this post there will be a zillion new bands, new websites, new ideas for the Future of Music. The times they are a-changin’. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of it like this before, but every independent artist you know is an entrepreneur. Many of us aren’t independently wealthy, don’t have benefactors, and have never written a hit song like “Awesome God” or “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” to provide so much money we have to cap our income and give the rest away. Most of us have at some point gotten royalty statements in the mail from ASCAP (who handles radio royalties) that said, “We’re sorry, but we don’t send checks for less than $10.” The music industry is vastly different now from what it was even a decade ago. Record labels have had to change tactics, the advent of the internet and digital recording has democratized record-making and distribution, and an artist’s level of success seems to be in direct proportion to how much time he or she spends on social media. There’s a great temptation to spend most of your time promoting your work rather than improving it. We have become better typists than players; my computer keys are worn to the nub, but my fretboard is good as new. I’m not saying Facebook and Twitter and blogging are necessarily bad (forbid it that I should point out the speck in your eye when there’s a blog in mine), but that our need to sell CDs and book concerts and remind the world that we’re still here–still writing songs, still doing our best to create truthful, beautiful, excellent works–can seriously intrude on the time we could spend (and ought to spend) practicing, studying, honing our craft. Again, this isn’t a complaint. I confess I have complained before, but this isn’t one of those times. I know full well there’s sex-trafficking, slave trade, genocide, war, and starvation all over this broken, beautiful planet. The Kingdom, God’s will done on earth, stabs into the wide blackness like a bright sword in the hands of missionaries, doctors, pastors, and Christians who die for love every day. Michael Card told me there’s more persecution in the church now than ever before. There are brothers and sisters in dank prisons right now. I don’t know why the Lord tarries. But until he comes, it is my job, in the words of George MacDonald, “to better what I can.” Look around you. See the sorrow and weariness in the world, in your own community and church, under your own roof–in your own heart, for Heaven’s sake–and better what you can. Let Christ lead you; he’ll show you how. If you’re wealthy, keep your job and fling the money at those who are bringing water to the thirsty. If you’re not wealthy, better what you can. Work your field. Tend your family like a garden. Write a song about your story. Write a story. Better yet, live a story. Make something beautiful, and make something beautiful of your life. There’s so much in the world that’s falling apart, so put something together. Find a way. If you’re called to write songs and that means getting creative with how you sell your product so that people with means can help you carry on, then so be it. Many of us in Nashville were drawn here because of a fire in our bones to create. When I hear Andy Gullahorn sing a healing song for a rapt audience I am convinced that while there are some in the Body called to teach, and to preach, and to carry the Gospel to the earth’s edge, others of us are called to craft melodies and lyrics and carry the Gospel to the heart’s hollow. Whether a medical missionary is mending flesh or Gully is comforting a lonesome soul with a song, the medicine is the same. We carry to the world the presence of Jesus in us and through us who are in him and for him. However we can, we better what we can. Next: MONEY, Part Three

A passage worth reading from Thomas Wingfold, Curate, on making a living while following Christ: “‘Jesus buying and selling?” said Wingfold to himself. ‘And why not? Did Jesus make chairs and tables, or boats perhaps, which the people of Nazareth wanted, without any admixture of trade in the matter? Was there no transaction? No passing of money between hands? Did they not pay his father for them? Was his Father’s way of keeping things going in the world too vile for the hands of him whose being was delight in the will of that Father? No; there must be a way of handling money that is noble as the handling of the sword in the hands of the patriot. Neither the mean man who loves it nor the faithless man who despises it knows how to handle it. The former is one who allows his dog to become a nuisance; the latter one who kicks him from his sight. The noble man is he who so truly does the work given him to do that the inherent nobility of that work is manifest. And the trader who trades nobly is nobler surely than the high-born who, if he carried the principles of his daily life into trade, would be as pitiful a sneak as any he that bows and scrapes falsely behind that altar of lies, his counter.’ From another chapter called “Divine Service”: “‘Mr. Drew, your shop is the temple of your service where the Lord Christ, the only image of the Father, is, or ought to be, throned; your counter is, or ought to be, his altar; and everything thereon laid, with intent of doing as well as you can for your neighbor, in the name of the man Christ Jesus, is a true sacrifice offered to him, a service done to the eternal creating Love of the universe.’ ‘I say not,’ Polwarth went on, ‘that so doing you will grow a rich man, but I say that by so doing you will be saved from growing too rich, and that you will be a fellow worker with God for the salvation of his world.’ ‘I must live; I cannot give my goods away!’ murmured Mr. Drew thinkingly, as one that sought enlightenment. ‘That would be to go direct against the order of his world,’ said Polwarth. ‘No. A harder task is yours, Mr. Drew – to make your business a gain to you, and at the same time to be not only what is commonly counted just, but interested in, and careful of, and caring for your neighbour, as a servant of the God of bounty who giveth to all men liberally. Your calling is to do your best for your neighbour that you reasonably can.’ ‘But who is to fix what is reasonable?’ asked Drew. ‘The man himself, thinking in the presence of Jesus Christ. There is a holy moderation which is of God.’ ‘There won’t be many fortunes – great fortunes – made after that rule, Mr. Polwarth.’ ‘Very few.’ ‘Then do you say that no great fortunes have been righteously made?’ ‘If righteously means after the fashion of Jesus Christ — But I will not judge: that is for the God-enlightened conscience of the man himself to do, not for his neighbour’s. Why should I be judged by another man’s conscience? But you see, Mr. Drew – and this is what I was driving at – you have it in your power to serve God through the needs of his children all the working day, from morning to night, so long as there is a customer in your shop…Purely ideal or not, one thing is certain: it will never be reached by one who is so indifferent to it as to believe it impossible. Whether it may be reached in this world or not, that is a question of no consequence; whether a man has begun to reach after it is of the utmost awfulness of import. And should it be ideal, which I doubt, what else than the ideal have the followers of the ideal man to do with?’ ‘Can a man reach anything ideal before he has God dwelling in him, filling every cranny of his soul?’ asked the curate with shining eyes. ‘Nothing, I do most solemnly believe,’ answered Polwarth. ‘It weighs on me heavily sometimes,’ he resumed, after a pause, ‘to think how far all but a few are from being able even to entertain the idea of the indwelling in them of the original power of their life. True, God is in every man, else how could he live the life he does live? But that life God keeps alive for the hour when he shall inform the will, the aspiration, the imagination of the man. When the man throws wide his door tot he Father of his spirit, when his individual being is thus supplemented – to use a poor, miserable word – with the individuality that originated it, then is the man a whole, healthy, complete existence. Then indeed, and then only, will he do no wrong, think no wrong, love perfectly, and be right merry. Then will he scarce think of praying, because God is in every thought and enters anew with every sensation. Then he will forgive and endure, and pour out his soul for the beloved, who yet grope their way in doubt and passion. Then every man will be dear and precious to him, even the worst; for in him also lies an unknown yearning after the same peace wherein he rests and loves.’ He sat down suddenly, and a deep silence filled the room.”

A few questions were raised about the Counting Stars pre-order tiers we sold here, and about the pricey $20 Rabbit Room mugs. If a few people were brave enough to question it by commenting, I’m sure there were even more who kept quiet. There are a few more of those patronage plans on the horizon so I figured it would be a good time to explain our thinking. Years ago I played several shows with a few members of the Kid Brothers of St. Frank. Remember them? It was the unofficial pseudo-Catholic order started by Rich Mullins in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, and included a few younger musicians like Eric Hauck, Michael Aukofer, Mitch McVicker, and Keith Bordeaux (who wasn’t a musician, but who was on the verge of moving to Arizona to serve however he could before Rich died). I was as big a Rich Mullins fan as you could imagine, so in the years after his death I was honored and a little frightened to find myself occasionally doing shows with those guys. Eric in particular embodied the spirit of the Kid Brothers. He was hilarious, gentle and kindhearted, had a long biker goatee, a braided ponytail, smelled a little funny, drove a motorcycle, and played cello. You read that right. He played cello, and he played it well. Also, he never wore shoes. The only time I saw him with footwear was in the airport (because the FAA requires it). When they stopped him from boarding the plane Eric pulled out of his grimy backpack a grimy pair of flip flops to appease them. He was perfectly content to bounce through life without anything to tie him down, money least of all. I, on the other hand, was married and had two baby boys. I couldn’t just crash on random couches from night to night. I was responsible not just for myself but to provide food and shelter for my family. I couldn’t up and disappear like a burp in the wind whenever the mood struck. The day I got the advance for my first record deal we threw a party at our little house in Watertown, Tennessee (a 1000 square foot farmhouse we rented for $500 per month), and I splurged on the following: one cheap propane grill, some ground beef, and one Nintendo 64 game system. We used the grill to make burgers for our friends (several of whom were Kid Brothers) and the Nintendo to play the James Bond shooter Goldeneye until sunrise. All told, I spent $200. I remember one of the guys pulling me aside and gently questioning my materialism. I was flummoxed and a little defensive. Was I being materialistic by purchasing a $100 video game? Was I being materialistic to have bought a cheap grill to cook the food? (Food they were happily eating, I thought to myself.) These guys, back when they were official members of the unofficial order, had taken vows of poverty and chastity. I hadn’t. And besides, for the first several years we lived in Nashville (even after the record deal) we were living well below the poverty line. I stood there by the new grill thinking, “I haven’t taken a vow, but I’m living it, by golly.” It wasn’t a big deal, though. I shrugged it off and partied on. It was a good day, and the fun we got out of that James Bond video game was worth every penny. I love those guys and the mighty honor they paid me by letting me do shows with them. Just a few weeks before that, I was on a plane to Bolivia with Compassion International along with Keith, another Kid Brother. There, I met little Elba (whom we still sponsor), and I wrote “Land of the Free“, about my whirl of emotions, convictions and confusions over Elba’s joy in the midst of such poverty. I didn’t know what to do with the discontent I felt with my own lifestyle. The answer, I decided, must be poverty. If I want joy, I must live in a hut. I must follow the footsteps of St. Francis and Rich Mullins and become a mendicant bard. Houses are bad. Money is bad. People with houses and money are bad. I was fired up. I came back to the States ready to sell everything and live a communal lifestyle with a few other folks, and we even went so far as to look at some land where we’d sing hippie Jesus songs and share packets of Ramen noodles for the rest of our days. I was still grieving the death of Rich Mullins (we weren’t friends or anything, but I was still grieving in some sense), trying to sort out how to emulate the way Rich lived out his love for Jesus. I saw joy on the faces of the Bolivian Christians, and it was a joy I didn’t see at my church back home. I remembered Rich saying, “Following Christ is not about having your perfect little life with your perfect little house, far away from homosexuals and minorities.” How very true those words still are. But I couldn’t figure out my place in this way of living. I was thankful for our sturdy little house and our community, and didn’t want to leave it. I was haunted by the truth that if I asked Elba and her family whether she’d rather live in their house or mine, they’d choose mine. If they could opt to have running water in their home, they’d choose it every time. They’d choose to have good shoes, clean clothes, and plenty of food. So the answer for me, a family man, wasn’t poverty. Around this time I read an excellent book by Richard Foster called The Freedom of Simplicity, and I had my answer. What I envied about the Bolivians wasn’t poverty. It was simplicity. They didn’t choose it. It’s a necessary result of living in poverty, the silver lining on a dark cloud. That’s why people come back from Africa with that infectious gladness–not, of course, because of the terrible smell or the sickness or the injustice–it’s the simplicity. It’s a life uncluttered by television and power bills and traffic jams–a life enriched by the intense joy of interacting with other souls at a profoundly deep level, which is what we were meant for. What we miss when we come back from mission trips and church camps and spiritual retreats is life at its simplest. American culture is one extreme (a land of plenty at the cost of simplicity) and the Third World is the other (poverty with the gift of simplicity). Each has its blessings and its curses. This point of this isn’t to get to the bottom of which of these extremes is better, but to propose a better way. A Christ-centered life of intimate fellowship unharried by either sickness and starvation or the chaos of a capitalistic rat race might be a good picture of the order of the day in the New Jerusalem. We don’t want to thrust electronics and trinkets and McDonald’s fries on Elba’s family any more than they’d want to thrust their dirt floors and malnutrition on us. What I wish for Elba is clean streets and sturdy houses, good food and warm clothes: hope. What I wish for us is walks in the woods, good friends, a tight community with a loving church at its heart: peace. The only way to usher in that Kingdom is to walk in the way of Jesus. To love well, to push back the fall, to let the Spirit lead. Now, the beauty of it is that each of us carries a peculiar gift to light the darkness. Rich Mullins, God bless him, was single. That meant he could give most of his money away and hitchhike barefoot. It meant he could up and move to Arizona to live with Native Americans and he didn’t have to ask a soul. The Wind blew, and he floated on it. He wrote about his long, lonely, love-struck journey with Christ, and we, the Saints, were edified. But what about the rest of us? As much as I’d like to be as cool as Rich, I can’t. I got married at nineteen, so as long as I’ve been writing songs I’ve had a family to care for. That means I want a roof over their heads, and shoes on their feet (sorry, Rich and Eric), and beauty and safety and health. In my walk with Christ I have found that at times my footprints align with my heroes’ and other times they don’t, no matter how hard I try. Most of the time, their shoes are just too big for me to fill. Speaking of shoes, I grew up fairly poor. We never missed a meal, but that’s because many of those meals were a cheap tuna casserole called Peterson Special. (Mom named it that because we all loved it and the name gave the pot of noodles some dignity, I suppose.) Back to the shoes: I remember walking to school in 4th grade and noticing that I could stick my big toe all the way through the sole of my thrift store sneakers. I understood that new shoes weren’t in my immediate future so I duct taped them every other day. I remember sitting at my desk staring at the other kids’ Chuck Taylors, wondering why I couldn’t have a pair. I dreaded the days they’d ask us to take off our shoes in P.E. because my socks were so gray and ratty while all the other kids’ socks looked brand new. They stared at me and I stared at the floor. I know what it’s like to be the (relatively) poor kid in the room. Now, as a thirty-six year old father and husband, I have a thing about shoes. I’m disproportionately excited whenever I get to buy a new pair of shoes. I feel like the king of the world walking out of the store with those new cushiony insoles, and I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’m constantly checking myself out when I see my reflection in a store window on New Shoe Day. The same goes for my kids. My own 4th grade shame carries itself over into my kids’ lives so that Jamie knows to send me out with them to buy their shoes; I don’t trust her to choose cool enough shoes for them. The point: being poor is not the only way to radically follow Christ. Some people are called to it. I have long felt a tension between all that I learned from the Kid Brothers and Rich Mullins about identifying with the poor and the weak, versus my holy responsibility to tend to my family’s spiritual and physical needs. Had Rich ever married, I’m certain his wife would have appreciated a nice dress every now and then, or a bouquet of flowers, or a decent kitchen, and she probably would have lovingly insisted that he not give all his money away, especially after she bore his children and needed to buy diapers, and school supplies, and shoes for goodness sake. And the other thing is, Rich Mullins had hit songs that are still making money. He gave a lot of his money away, but he also had a constant stream of it flowing in. Lots of it. And I’m sure the ministries he supported with the surplus were grateful that he channeled it to them for Kingdom work. Money isn’t the root of all evil. The Bible doesn’t say that. Here’s the verse: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10) We’re called to keep watch so that we don’t fall in love with money. To be sure, wealth is a heavy burden and isn’t for everyone, just as poverty is a burden and isn’t for everyone. The people of the church are varied in strengths and weaknesses. Money itself isn’t evil. In fact, money can be a great tool for Kingdom work. It’s easy to tout ideals about how wrong it is to be wealthy until you’re on the receiving end of someone’s generosity. After all, someone has to buy the burgers. Next: Part II, The Extravagant Gamble

There’s a moment in George MacDonald’s Phantastes in which food makes all the difference. …it not only satisfied my hunger, but operated in such a way upon my senses, that I was brought into a far more complete relationship with the things around me. The human forms appeared much more dense and defined, more tangibly visible … I seemed to know better which direction to choose when any doubt arose. I began to feel in some degree what the birds meant in their songs, though I could not express it in words, anymore than you can some landscapes. Food can do this sort of thing. I’m sure you’ve experienced a baser version of his: not stumbling through Fairy Land trying to get a grip on what’s around you, but the simple grumpiness and crankiness that results from being late to get your meal. Tricia and I went through this in our experience at Hutchmoot, and in the moment our plane landed back in Rochester. We had spent all weekend having amazing meals courtesy of the cooking artistry of Evie Coates, who occasionally blogs for MyFoodSubscriptions. On the way home, our first flight was delayed, and we did not have time in the layover to get dinner. We were starving by the time our plane landed in Rochester. We got in the car and drove directly to get Rochester’s most famous meal: The Garbage Plate. (If you’re ever in Rochester, I’ll take you out for one of these.) We were revived (though I admit, the next morning I regretted the decision to eat such a plate at 10:30pm). Where am I going with this ramble about food? Wherever I want. It’s food. It’s worth talking about. But apart from that … well, let’s back up and say that Evie’s cooking is better, by far, than a Garbage Plate (and believe me: as a Rochesterian, that’s saying a lot). Combine Evie’s cooking with the great company at Hutchmoot and the wonderful conversation around the dinner tables, and you had an experience that helps you to see the world better, like the man walking through Fairy Land. It’s magic. It’s sacramental. AP told a story at some point during the weekend about bringing the same pot of chili to a family that had lost a loved one and a family that had welcomed a new baby into the world. Food, in all its wonderful varieties, is like the stories we tell. They are many and varied, but all the best ones have a source in One Story. Food sustains us; the Story sustains us. Food, like all the created world, points to the greater reality in and behind and around it, that there is a creator who sustains us and nourishes us. At the first meal of the Hutchmoot weekend, it was noted many times that Evie put a lot of love into her cooking. It might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. Love and food go together. And now I’m hungry, so I’m wrapping this up and heading downstairs for a burrito.

An airplane is such a sterile but dirty environment. It’s sterile in an aesthetic sense, plastic and vinyl and white luggage racks, like a line of drawers in a morgue, or bunks on a Navy battleship. It’s dirty because everyone is breathing the same air in a closed environment, and thousands of hands that have been who-knows-where have touched everything. On an airplane one has absolutely no control over one’s life. It is a total act of faith to get on a plane, especially these days. We use our reason to determine that most planes make it to their destination; we subconsciously calculate the risk of malfunction or fire or the captain suddenly becoming a paranoid schizophrenic. We mentally and often subconsciously calculate these risks, then make a leap. Any action is a leap; it’s just that some see more risk than others, and some folks lack the faith necessary to leap. But we must leap, even to get out of bed. We have no idea what the day may bring. Will it be another routine day, with a shower, breakfast, the paper, a kiss for the wife and kids, Starbucks on the way to work, lunch, work, the drive home in traffic with the monotony on the radio, dinner, a movie, and sleep? Or we can be met by natural disaster, a tornado or earthquake that wipes out our possessions, or even our family.  The phone rings. An accident, or a stroke, or heart attack. That kiss to the wife was her last – or ours. We try to console ourselves with routine, with keeping our heads down, by thinking like an ox treading out grain, round and round the circle of days, trying to believe that nothing  is changing, that life is linear, living with no aerial view, no overarching vision. But to be in time means to change. The body ages daily. The muscles weaken. The reflexes get slower; the mental faculties diminish. Time-bound experience isn’t linear; it’s often jagged, soul-piercing at times. From a solely human perspective, there is no such thing as hope. Death is the great equalizer. It brings down king and peasant, celebrity and nobody. So it makes sense to start with the inescapable Fact of Death and work backwards. What do I want my life to have meant? What will be the sum total written on my tombstone? What do I want the Lord Jesus Christ to say when I stand before him? This is the aerial view, seeing the end from the beginning. It is Sanity. We can hide from this Fact through hedonism, materialism, technology, and routine; we can be cowards and pretend everything is linear. This is what many of us do. I have often done it at times. But it burns up our most precious resource: time. Living for mere pleasure or possessions gains us nothing and ultimately costs us everything, like playing video games for eight hours a day, eight days a week. I want to live my life in light of the Facts, especially that of standing before Christ to account for my life. Jesus said the only way we could bear much fruit is to abide in him. I want to abide, every day, and bear much fruit. Too long have I hidden in the shadows, like Theoden, living in fear and self-delusion, not taking up the mantle of my kingship – the rule of Christ, through me, as if it were me living, in my domain, my circle of influence. Theoden had a mighty destiny, but the false counsels of Wormtongue stole many years from him. I have felt many years stolen from me by my own Wormtongue, the satanic counsel that comes into my own mind – fears, feelings of inadequacy, the desire to hide away at home and simply enjoy the blessings given through my work. But, like Theoden, right now is always the time to choose what is right. It would have been easier for Frodo, and Sam, and Merry and Pippin, to stay in the Shire and hide their heads in their hobbit-holes, to pretend that the world wasn’t being covered by darkness. But they were caught up in a story that wasn’t merely about their little hobbit-lives; it was about the life of an entire world, and each of them had a vital part to play in it. Many of us have our little hobbit-holes, those places of contentment and comfort, ease, where the steady supplies of garden vegetables, good ales and Longbottom Leaf keep us mired in the illusion of permanence. But we can’t stay there, not as a hiding place, if we want a life that resounds with the Eternal. While the Great War is on, Hobbiton can be a place of respite from my journeys, but I have a mission, a purpose, and the forces at work in this world are not going to sit back and wait for me to fulfill my calling. It will all pass me by, and someone else will be used in my place unless I step out in faith. Blessed is he whose trust is in the Lord.

A few times during Hutchmoot I heard about books I wanted to track down but I didn’t have anything to write on. Now I can’t remember a single one. I’m sure I’m not the only one, so I thought it would be helpful to start a list here. Some of these are available in the Rabbit Room Store, so check there before you go gallivanting over to Amazon or somesuch to spend your hard-earned money. We’ll put it to better use than they will. A few people asked me about the following: Walking on Water, by Madeline L’Engle The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott I also referenced in my George MacDonald talk the book The Sacred Journey, by Frederick Buechner. Anyone else?

The power of story. The beauty of community. Those, I would say, encapsulate the dominant themes and conversations from the initial Hutchmoot gathering. Both are sexy. Both require work. The common bond between so many convening around the Rabbit Room these days is a love for story and a feeling that God has given them a story to tell in the process. I met several burgeoning songwriters and authors over the weekend who mentioned they felt empowered to create what was within them. The community at Hutchmoot provided the impetus needed for these works waiting to be brought to life. And that’s a wonderful thing to be celebrated. But Hutchmoot is temporary. And the Rabbit Room is digital. We have certainly found inspiration and encouragement to this point (or else we wouldn’t be here), but a longing emerged from those present at Church of the Redeemer for a deeper level of artistic community. The friendships between various songwriters and authors were highlighted and then prodded, “How do I form what you have formed?” The underlying tension is that everyone in the room recognized that the songwriters pushed one another to be better. Pete and Andrew Peterson both said they shared their books with one another throughout their drafts. Like-minded artists pushing one another deeper into the excellence of their craft, of their own story, is what so many longed for. I spent the Sunday night after Hutchmoot in the Nashville area before heading home catching a Griffin House concert. He’s a Nashville songwriter who’s been able to ply his trade for a decade or so and he shared a new song he said was birthed in a community group. It was my favorite of the songs he revealed that night. Just a few weeks prior, Griffin gave us an interview for a music website I founded a few years ago. In it, he speaks of this community and the power of it in his own life: “I just joined this songwriting group with Bob Schneider and some other writers – right now Sarah and Sean from Nickel Creek are in it – and we all get together and write, sending in a song every week based on a prompt we’re given … we have to turn one in every week, it keeps us going. I’ve written my entire new record from that process. I’ve been amazed just how much having a prompt, an assignment, can help keep you focused.” I was amazed this last weekend at the need for homework and a community that will push me to complete it. It’s one thing to have a story in your head. That’s the romantic part. The grist mill of deadlines is the covenant relationship you make with that story. We’re not typically given to relationships so intense and demanding. But it’s the beauty of community that draws us to marry our story and, ultimately, introduce it to the world.

Allen Levi, Ben May, and I stood on Wendell Berry‘s front porch as nervous as schoolboys. Allen had prayed aloud as we pulled up to the little Kentucky farmhouse that God would keep the visit from descending into some goofy hero worship, and that we’d remember who we are, that somehow our visit would amount to a blessing to the Berrys even as it would be to us. Basically it was, “Dear God, don’t let us be dummies.” There was a lot going into the trip. Early this year Ben May wrote Wendell a letter explaining that he and a few of his singer/songwriter friends had been greatly moved by his writings and would be honored to spend a little time with him. Wendell agreed to it, on the condition that we not drive all the way to Kentucky just to see him, saying he didn’t think he was equal to such a responsibility. So we let him know we’d be in Kentucky for concerts in August, and the date was set. Allen and Ben read and re-read Berry’s books before the trip. I keep a number of Wendell’s books of poetry at arm’s reach and read from them often, but have been too busy this year to dream of re-reading any novels or essays. But just to be responsible I brought Jayber Crow with me on the trip. In my hotel room the night before, I flipped through it and read passages at random, reliving the heartbreaking beauty of the story, and ended up re-reading much of the last chapter–clear to the bittersweet ending that left me sobbing on the floor of my office five years ago. (“Sobbing” isn’t an exaggeration. The book wrecked me.) Allen and I met for coffee at Heine Bros. Sunday morning before the visit and talked about songwriting and stories for a few hours before we picked Ben May up from the airport. Between that conversation and the previous night’s in-the-round concert with Allen, one of my hopes for the trip was realized. See, meeting Wendell was only part of the point of the trip. From the first time I met Allen I hoped to be grafted into his story in one way or another, so our “goofy rabbit trail” (as Ben referred to it to Wendell later) was an excuse to spend some time in the car with a few kindred spirits. And the nice thing about that was, by the time we picked up Ben, the trip was already a success. My soul already felt healthier just being around those guys. It took the pressure off. Wendell could have been a crotchety old geezer who shooed us from his porch and we still would have driven home happy. But Wendell and his wife Tanya were anything but crotchety geezers. We approached the porch in silence, each of us thinking of our own favorite stories about the Port William Membership, each of us took a deep breath, and Ben knocked. After a few moments a beautiful, sharp-eyed, white-haired woman answered the door and welcomed us in: Tanya Berry, who, as anyone who gives a hoot about Berry’s writing knows, transcribes Wendell’s hand-written manuscripts with her trusty typewriter—the same Tanya who lived with him many years ago on the banks of the river in the long-legged house. She smiled and offered us seats in the front room. About that time came footsteps from staircase, and Mr. Berry descended, greeted us with a giant smile, and looked each of us in the eye. I had read that Wendell Berry can intimidate. I assumed that meant he was standoffish or stiff. Quite the opposite was true. The source of any reputation for being intimidating was, in fact, his kindness. He looked me in the eye when he asked my name, and he seemed to actually care about the answer. It wasn’t a formality, and as far as I could tell he wasn’t just being nice. I was a guest in his home and he wanted to know my name, it seemed, in a deeper way than I was used to. I don’t know that I managed to meet that formidable gaze or that enormous grin. We sat and talked for two hours. When Allen, God bless him, exercised his gift of southern palavering and told Wendell all about his timberland in Georgia, Wendell sat up and started talking. It was a subject that interested him, which was no surprise. In minutes I had learned more than I ever wanted to know about Native American forestry in Wisconsin, which meant I was free to let my eyes roam around the room while Wendell talked. There was, as you might imagine, no television. In the center of the room was a woodburning stove, and on every wall were books, books, books. Virgil. William Blake. Books on Kentucky birds. Shakespeare. At some point Allen asked Wendell if he wrote every day. He more or less deflected the question, then turned his bright eyes on me. “What about you, Andrew? You’re a writer. Do you write every day?” Again, that intimidating interest. I gulped. I was a possum in headlights. I told him I tried, but it was hard. I have these three kids, and we homeschool, and the demands of a music career make it difficult. I mumbled something about how music uses a different part of my brain than book writing, so it’s hard to move back and forth between the two. To my great horror, Wendell disagreed. He said kindly, “Now I don’t buy into all that scientific talk about ‘parts of the brain’. I think you have one mind.” I gulped. “Well, sir, what I mean is that it exercises a different kind of creativity. Surely you, uh, feel differently when you’re writing a poem than when you’re writing an essay or a novel, don’t you?” “But you can’t think about that while you’re doing it,” he said. “If you think about what you’re doing, then you’ve stopped doing it. If you stop writing your song and think ‘I’m writing a song,’ then you’re no longer writing a song. The bird,” he said, “has flown.” I gathered my wits. “I guess what I’m saying is just that writing an album is a creatively demanding process and–” “But are you writing songs or are you writing albums?” asked Tanya from her rocking chair. Her brow was furrowed and she was weighing my every word. “Uh, well, both, ma’am. It’s not like this for everybody, but a lot of times I’m thinking of the album as a whole while I’m writing the song. I want the album—and I think of it like a photo album—to tell a story, sorta. I gather the songs together and sort out the good ones from the bad ones and the good ones make it to the record–” “So,” Wendell said, “you write bad ones. How do you judge the good from the bad?” By now my adrenaline was pumping into my system full-bore. I, the youngest person in the room by nearly fifteen years, was being grilled, more or less. “Well, sir, if I hold two songs up next to each other, usually one will say better than the other what I mean to say. If the song doesn’t say it well, it gets shelved.” I hoped this would satisfy them so he and Allan could get back to their discussion about Chief Milwaukee’s timber wisdom. But no. “Then it’s about what the song is saying, then,” Tanya said, still watching me with an eyebrow raised. “Not the music?” “Well, it’s both. The lyric and the music are married,” I said. “Do you write out the music?” “No, ma’am.” “Hmm.” And then, thank goodness, Allan or Ben chimed in and those spotlight eyes and the intense interest passed on to someone else. I was so relieved I almost crumpled into Wendell Berry’s couch and fainted dead away. For another hour or so the talk meandered, and at one point Wendell turned to Ben with a grin and said, “Well, Mister May, you haven’t hardly said a word. Are these two all that entertaining?” Ben had his minute in the sun, as it were, and offered up to Wendell his gratitude for his hospitality and his work. A few minutes later I had my chance, too. I took a deep breath, steeled my nerves, and told him how I grew up loathing all things agricultural, and how my parents always impressed on us the beauty of the land and the old ways but I kicked against those goads. I told him how I found myself living in a cookie-cutter subdivision in Nashville as I read the final pages of Jayber Crow, and how I picked myself off the floor, wiped my eyes, and immediately started looking online for land in Kentucky. I wanted to live a richer life, one where I and my wife and children could hear what the land had to say. I told him how his works teach me to care about things that matter, and how his stories have encouraged some of us in Nashville to approach our music more like farmers tilling ancient soil than miners digging for gold. He nodded. Then he deflected the compliment again. He said, “Well, the only thing I don’t like about that is that you all think it’s me and my ideas. It’s not. I learned all this from many teachers. If you subtracted from my work all that I learned from my teachers there would only be the tiniest bit left. And I don’t want to take credit for their work. I will take credit for the discipline of sitting down and writing it out. But that’s all.” “You don’t have to take credit, sir. I just wanted to thank you.” I was a guest in his home, so I didn’t want to be contrary. I appreciated his humility. But if I were a bolder man or a friend of his I would’ve said this: “But Mister Berry, I’m not reading your teachers’ books. I’m reading yours. And besides that, I don’t know another author who can say these things like you can. I don’t know anyone else who walks their woodlands on Sabbath mornings and writes verses like, ‘And now the remnant groves grow bright with praise / They light around me like an old man’s days.’ No other author has used his sage imagination to construct a fictional town like Port William and populated it with characters like Hannah Coulter, Andy Catlett, and dear old lonesome Jayber Crow. No other author has so ascribed dignity to the men and women who have chosen to stick around their homes and communities while so many of us abandoned our roots as if they were there to kill us and not to keep us alive. My life is richer because of you. Like it or not, Mister Berry, we have you to thank.” Wendell and Tanya graciously gave us their Sunday afternoon. And the more I thought about it the more I realized what an honor they paid me and the other guys simply by listening. They didn’t nod and indulge us for a few minutes until we awkwardly excused ourselves (a scenario for which we were fully prepared). No, they turned their bright eyes on us and paid attention. If they didn’t understand what I meant, they said so. If they disagreed, they said so, kindly. If Allen or Ben said something that lit Wendell up, he in turn illuminated us. More than once, he told a funny story that ended in a burst of laughter that warmed my heart. When he grinned his whole body grinned with him. For two hours we engaged in something called “conversation”, in which ideas and opinions are exchanged, challenged, and sometimes—if you’re lucky—agreed with. In that mighty company I was forced to think about what I had to say, because they were listening. And doesn’t that sound just like the Wendell Berry you’d imagine? To write those kinds of essays, stories, and poems, you have to have a strong mind—one mind, he would argue—and wide-open eyes, and ears to hear. You have to pay attention. I could not be more thankful for the two hours I spent in that storied room with Allen and Ben and the Berrys. I asked Tanya if she had a CD player, and she did, so I left her with a copy of my new album. I hope she listens to “The Magic Hour”, and hears the nod to Wendell’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things“, and knows that some of us, feebly though we do it, are trying to pay attention too.https://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/TheMagicHour.mp3

As the protagonist of Phantastes awakes under the beech tree (which wants to be a woman), he reflects on his desire to stay with her, and then narrates, “I sat a long time, unwilling to go, but my unfinished story urged me on. I must act and wander.” Isn’t that a great summary of almost every moment of life? My wife wrote some beautiful words about Hutchmoot, which I cannot even begin to parallel. Please read the whole thing, but let me quote the ending: I am home. And while my time on this street has been short, I can clean up this neighborhood in what little time I have left. I can plant trees and I can teach people to garden and I can paint buildings. But closer to the heart of what it means to revitalize, I can tell stories. With words, I can shape a context for those roaming this bleak landscape. God comforted me with story. I will care as I have been cared for. Tricia and I are wrestling deeply with what was, three years ago, a seemingly clear call from God to move into a tough part of the city, and what is now a seemingly clear call to leave. There are conflicting emotions: Are we leaving because we’re afraid and pulling a Jonah? (I guess we’ll find out if a whale spits us back up on Grand Avenue.) Or would hanging on here simply be an act of pride? (“What will they say if we leave – that we failed God’s calling?”) The “For Sale” sign is stuck in our yard. We know we’re supposed to go. Our unfinished story urges us on. We must act and wander. Why do I mention this? It struck me, as I read it in Phantastes, that all of us are part of unfinished stories. This is obvious enough, and in MacDonald’s book, the protagonist makes that decision in isolation, and moves on. In our world, we bump constantly into other people who are also in the middle of unfinished stories. A hundred of us gathered at Hutchmoot, and we were a hundred unfinished stories, all intersecting in the same time and space. We intersect with other unfinished stories every day, and this should cause us to be filled with grace toward one another. I think we’re often like the taunting fairies just a few pages earlier in Phantastes: “Look at him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a beginning, and it will never have any end! He! he! he! Look at him!” It’s easy to forget that each of us is stumbling through fairy land with hardly the faintest clue what direction we’re heading in, and it’s easy to taunt each other instead of encourage one another. For my part, this whole transition into and out of the city will hopefully remind me that I’m as clueless in my unfinished story as everyone else is in theirs. I hope it helps me to walk with others when our stories intersect, rather than taunt and jeer, because they’re not walking like me, or in the same direction.

A poetic, hard, empathizing look at a rugged community in the Ozarks, where almost everyone you know is related in some way, and meth–cooking it, distributing it, and using it–surrounds you. Clapp, describing her work, writes: “Miles recognized that the “luxuries” of the hill folk were “all romances,” and included “music, whiskey, firelight, religion, and fighting.” …Noting that her Appalachian neighbors had no theaters, bullfights, or sports arenas, Miles said of music that “it is their one emotional outlet.” Commenting on the nasally, high-lonesome vocalization of the mountain singer, she remarked that “the oddly changing keys, the endings that leave the ear in expectation of something to follow, the quavers and falsettos, become in recurrence a haunting hint of the spirit-world; neither beneficent nor maleficent, neither devil nor angel – something not to be understood, yet to be certainly apprehended.” Hillbillies, if I may respectfully resort to that term, did not theologize very explicitly, corralling spiritual realities or perceptions into systematized categories and giving them Latinate names. Nor did they complain, not in general, and certainly not about their lonesomeness in particular. But in their music they felt free to acknowledge loneliness and other pains, even to weep openly in the company of others. Loneliness is admitted and alleviated in church, where preaching and especially singing express grief and separation and long-felt agony in a way not otherwise noted in the stoic mountaineer’s life. Here is Miles at church, singing along and looking about: “Tears are running down seamed and withered faces now, as the repression and loneliness of many months finds relief; the tune changes again, and yet again – they do not tire of this… [In these songs about meeting deceased fathers and mothers in heaven, the singers anticipate] Broken ties restored, old pain of lonely nights to be no more – that is the dearest promise of this religion; the aching of old grief suddenly caught up and whirled away in this aroused hope of glory. ‘By-and-by we’ll go and see them…’ Did ever Israel captive peer into the future any more wistfully than these?” So what does any of this have to do with Winter’s Bone, the new movie from writer/director Debra Granik? Maybe not much, but for me, it provided a context for the part of the movie that left me stunned, sitting speechless in my seat for several minutes after everyone else had left the theatre… but let me back up for a minute. Winter’s Bone is based on Daniel Woodrell’s 2006 novel of the same name. Set in the Ozarks, where Woodrell grew up, the story follows 17-year-old Ree Dolly (played by Jennifer Lawrence) as she tries to locate her father, who had recently been released from jail after posting bond, just before his court date to face charges of cooking meth. Ree finds out that her father has put up the house that she and the rest of her family live in and if he doesn’t show up for the trial, they will lose their home. With the family already riding the fine line between barely subsisting and having nothing at all, and with nothing to fall back on, Ree knows they won’t make it without the house. Because Daniel Woodrell was writing about the culture he grew up in and lives in and because the movie adheres pretty closely to the book (I’ve heard), the story never strikes a false note. It was filmed on location in the Ozarks, and in fact, the little girl playing the younger sister of the main character actually lives in the house many of the scenes take place in. In the last act of the film, there were three or four times I was afraid the story would follow the path of a typical Hollywood film, offering some kind of easy resolution or contrived climax, but instead it went where the story needed to go. The ending itself is absolutely perfect. But make no mistake, this is a dark film. Peering into the underbelly of an insular culture where the distrust of outsiders-even when they are family-is compounded by the secrecy surrounding a drug culture means that you won’t find a story filled with bright, sunny, fields and flying unicorns. It is hard not to see parallels between shots of cattle and the way women are treated in that culture, and it’s hard not to wonder where God is in a story like this. That’s not to say there aren’t moments of grace, though. At one point Ree offers up an incredible statement about the joy and the burden of love, telling her two younger siblings “I’d be lost without the weight of you two on my back.” Flannery O’Connor, in a statement that seems like it could have been behind the making of this film, once wrote: “There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.” Returning to my opening, here’s where I made the connection with Emma Bell Miles’ words about the role of music in the lives of her friends and family:  the first song that plays over the end credits is sung by Marideth Sisco, a woman who made an appearance earlier in the movie, at a “singing.” Here, at the conclusion of the story, the choice of songs is Farther Along, an old gospel tune that, in light of what I had just seen, overwhelmed me. It gave me a richer appreciation for the story, and reminded me again of the hope of the Gospel, the promise that, one day, all things will be made new.

Think of all the amusing anecdotes you know about junior high football. I’m guessing 75% are set in that “magic hour” when the boys have arrived at the practice field but the coach hasn’t. Thirty junior high boys, no adult supervision. Something’s bound to happen. In eighth grade, my cousin Brett got his pants pulled down at football practice. The coach was elsewhere–wrapping up bus duty or finishing one last cigarette in the teachers’ lounge before facing the barbarians. Frank, the starting fullback, snuck around behind and snatched Brett’s pants in front of God and everybody. It was a beautiful pantsing, not one of those awkward affairs where the victim clamps his knees together and goes into a squat, clutching at his britches and his dignity. No, this was clean and quick. Brett’s pants went right to the ground. Frank whooped and cavorted in his triumph. It was easily the best pantsing of the season. The other boys howled and pointed at Brett. Who just stood there. The hooting mockery swirled around him, but Brett stood his ground–pants around his ankles, arms akimbo, a look of perfect serenity on his face. The howling became nervous laughter as the mockery gave way to confusion. The boys had never seen such a thing before: the one boy who maintained his dignity was the one whose pants were crumpled around his ankles. Frank looked fitfully toward the school, whence the coach would soon be coming. “Hey, Brett,” he said, his voice broken by a nervous chuckle, “pull up your pants, man.” Brett crossed his arms and stared off into the middle distance, as grave as a statue. “Brett, man,” Frank repeated. “Pull up your pants. Coach gonna see.” Brett shifted his weight but didn’t otherwise move. “I didn’t pull them down,” he said, with withering dignity, “and I’m not going to pull them up.” Frank looked from Brett to the school building and back to Brett. The fascinated boys had gone silent. The door from the equipment room swung open, and the boys gasped in unison at the sight of the coach’s lanky form emerging. Frank hesitated. For an instant it appeared he would run away. He took one last look at the approaching coach, then circled around behind Brett. Sighing grimly and rolling his eyes, Frank pulled Brett’s pants back up where they belonged. It was one of the great moments in the history of eighth graders.

Rewind one week. Hutchmoot 2010, there is much bustle and chatter in the sunshine-yellow kitchen…Saturday evening’s Moroccan Spiced Chicken, not to mention many other tasty foodly items, would not have come off in as timely or seamless a manner if not for one…(kindly insert lively drumroll)…Redhead Kate. Our acquaintance began with a string of emails about baking ingredients and an offer of a suitcase full of sweet potatoes. “Good thing I’m traveling Southwest!” she said, since two pieces of luggage are allowed, bless that airline’s heart. I knew I liked this girl, a real thinker, expeditious. She works for her family’s sweet potato company in North Carolina and brought with her quite a large box of the beauties as well as a deep, wide knowledge of the product. She laughed as she watched the gems get run through the dishwasher before roasting. Nothing but the best, cleanest sweet potatoes for our guests. So Kate showed up on Thursday evening, donned an adorable apron she brought along, and got right to work. (Oh, if anyone wanted brownie recipes, she’s the one to ask.) She baked while simultaneously helping Pete with registration matters and making merch lists and such. Truth be told, I’m not sure exactly what it is she was doing, but she did it well and without fuss. Her genuine laugh, her easy manner in the kitchen, her calming tone when I was about to lose my cool while getting ready for service, they were all ways in which I was blessed to the bone by her presence last weekend. In preparation for Saturday morning’s breakfast, I was thrilled by her lovely arrangement of the meat and cheese plates (which I usually have a hard time delegating because I don’t think anyone will actually do it to my standards). Her lovely little landscape of gently curled slices of ham and her asymmetrical placement of cheese wedges pleased my discerning eye. What a God-send she was, in so many respects and in the most literal sense of that word. God sent her directly to my kitchen, armed with understanding, a cool head, humor, and love for the craft. She spoke my language, finished my sentences, read my mind. Miraculous, that. Now, for the chicken. (No drumroll really necessary.) I’m going to share a slightly different way to do it, for one chicken, since I doubt very seriously that you’ll be making 40 of them. Preheat oven to 425. Ready a roasting pan or oven-proof skillet large enough to cradle the dear chicken without crowding the pieces (we want crisped skin, not the steamed, slimy sort…gross.). Rinse thoroughly and pat dry (I mean really dry) one whole chicken, cut up. In a large mixing bowl combine: 1/4 cup olive oil the zest and juice of one lemon 3 cloves of fresh garlic, finely chopped 2 tsp. of fresh ginger, grated (a microplane or fine grater will do the trick) 2 tsp. each of chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, coriander, kosher salt Add the chicken pieces to the heady, fragrant mix which now resides in your bowl. By the way, make sure you cut the breast pieces in half, crossways, since they’re always so gigantic…those poor chickens, having to heave those breasts around the barnyard/crate/what-have-you. Zhoosh them around in the paste mix, cover and let it loiter in the fridge for a few hours if you can, but if you can’t, it’ll still be mighty tasty. If you have planned accordingly and therefore have had time to let it sit in the Frigidaire, you’ll now need about 30-45 more minutes to let the chicken hang out in its bowl on the counter. It needs to shake off the chill, relax a bit. Putting it straight in the oven would be kind of like how you feel when you walk out of your meat-lockerish, air-conditioned homes these days in Nashville into the searing, eyeball-melting heat. No one likes that feeling, not even a dead chicken. Be kind to your product. Scrape off any larger chunks of garlic (since it quickly burns and turns bitter) and arrange the chicken pieces in the roasting pan, skin side up. Roast in the upper-half region of your oven for somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour. Meanwhile, your house will smell like very heaven, and it will be hard (I speak from experience) to resist opening the over door frequently to steal little bits of crispy skin. Deny this urge its power. The oven wants to maintain its level of heating excellence. The skin should be golden brown and sizzly when it comes out, and there should be some real gorgeous Chicken-y love swimming around down in the bottom of the roasting pan. Aw come on, who am I kidding? If you’re game enough to make this chicken, you are probably the sort of person who knows when a chicken is done. Let her rest for a bit after coming out of the oven, the juices need time to meander back to their rightful spots. Et voila! You’re done, and so is the chicken. So now it’s time to eat…with your hands. No forks allowed. Let the spiced oil and juices run down your wrists and drip onto the other residents of your dinner plate, it makes for a much more sensually fulfilling affair. A little finger bowl on the table next to each place setting is nice for sticky fingers. Fill small reservoirs of your choosing with an inch of water, an ice cube and a sprig of fresh mint or sprinkling of fennel seeds. It’s the little extravagances, you know. Here’s a similar version of this dish from my blog, for those of you who like to experiment.

Last night I wrote a fable. It’s fabulous. And by that I mean it’s a fable. With me? Words really mean things. I want to be someone whose appreciation of this fact fuels more intentional investigation into word origins. I only have one book on my shelf that I can think of right now about word origins in English. That book is pretty amazing (now I’m thinking of what amazing history the word “amazing” might have), but I ought to have more. I almost have aught. I remember hearing Ken Myers talking to some fellow about how he was grading a student paper where it was said that a boat had “arrived half-way across the ocean.” The fellow was objecting to this use because the word “arrive” has in it the notion of coming ashore. So one cannot arrive half-way. It means to get there. Specifically to “come to shore.” So, at Hutchmoot this idea of the power and origin in the original power of words arrived on the sandy beach of my mind. Courtesy of Walter Wangerin, Jr. Walt (I call him Walt, because I was close enough to yank his pony tail–but I didn’t, amazingly) was amazing. <—–  I haven’t looked that up yet. I felt a thousand things as he spoke, which I feel incapable of putting into adequate words. I feel like a clever monkey trying to explain to Beethoven (who is deaf and dead) the joys of flinging poo. I felt validated, inspired, full, hopeful, peaceful, joyful and the list goes on and on like a long, long list. But here is one thing. Walt knows words. He inhabits language like the oldest local. He speaks as one with authority, as if in his naming the thing may finally–again–be itself. It was not that words were used by him, or that he was commanding with them. I can aspire to that. It was more. He cooperated with words. Co-operated. He and the words were on the same side. He has arrived on their side after a long, literate life’s journey. His relation of the history of schap (forever on the chalkboard of my mind) was a significant life event for me. Because, in so many words, he told me who I am. I am a schap. A shaper. This is how he talked about storytellers. And words are the tools of my trade. I will use them, care for them, add more to my bag and hope that one day I will do more than use them. I will inhabit them. Know them like an intimate friend. Partner with them. Conjure up with them a vision for those without eyes to see. And tell stories. Like Walt.

This is an attempt to collect all the posts out there referencing the inaugural Hutchmoot. It also attempts to present websites/blogs of Hutchmoot attendees. It further attempts links to those weirdos what made some kind of presentation at the 2010 Hutchmoot. I’ll continue to update it, so just comment if you wish to be included. I hope it’s helpful. –S.D. Smith Hutchmoot-specific Posts Hutchmoot 2010, from Christina Szrama Telling the Old, Old Story, from Bernie Walt Wangerin Teaches: Hutchmoot Keynote, from Word Lily Entering the Hutchmoot Fellowship, from Heather Ivester Hutchmoot in the 2nd Chair, from Dan K Hutchwhat?, from Kate Hinson Waiting for the Artist, from Lanier Ivestor Artist v. Dreamer, from Katherine Still Here, from Leigh McLeroy Hutchmoot Recap, from The Aesthetic Elevator I Can, from Jodi AP and Eowyn, from Christina Szrama (pictured above) Dripping With Holiness, from Laura Boggs Hutchmoot 2010, from The Grouchy Ladybug Taste and See That the Lord is Good, Dan K Counting Stars, from Dan K Sigh, from Kelli A Bit More, from Kelli Hutchmoot cartoon pt 1, from John Haney Hutchmoot cartoon pt 2, from John Haney Hutchmoot, from Tricia Prinzi What a Weekend, from Andrew Mackay Hutchmoot Explained. Mostly, from Team Redd Ripe, from Brandy Hutchmoot, from Mark Geil Hutchmoot: Hutchmeets?, from Mark Geil Hutchmoot: Starting to Listen, from Mark Geil Hutchmoot: Composed Experience, from Mark Geil Hutchmoot: Marching Orders, from Mark Geil Hutchmoot, from My Friend Amy Epiphanies, from Sarah Clarkson Happy Monday Morning, from S.D. Smith Facebook’s Hutchmoot Group Hutchmoot: Reflections on Comunity, from Jason Gray *RR Post Hutchmoot #1, from Andrew Peterson *RR Post Hutchmoot Pics, from Andrew Peterson *RR Post Apples of Gold in a Setting of Silver, from S.D. Smith *RR Post My Best Laid Plans…, Luaphacim And Websites/Blogs from Hutchmoot Attendees (I know I’m missing a bunch here) Lanier Ivestor Leigh McLeroy Heather Ivester Ryan Szrama Christina Szrama Eowyn Szrama My Friend Amy The Grouchy Ladybug Aaron Roughton Dan K Kelli John Haney Andrew Mackay Leigh McLeroy Team Redd Brandy (I’m Just Sayin’) Mark Geil Word Lily The Aesthetic Elevator Shedding Velveteen Are We Here Yet Biblical Counseling Through Song Tony Heringer Hutchmoot Presenter Blogs/Websites Travis Prinzi Thomas McKenzie Matt Conner Jason Gray Randall Goodgame Sarah Clarkson Jonathan Rogers Chris Wall Evie Coates Curt McCley Pete Peterson Eric Peters S.D. Smith Ron Block Andrew Peterson Russ Ramsey Kate Hinson John Barber Janna Barber Andy Osenga Andy Gullahorn Jill Phillips Note: I probably left people out of each section. If so, let me know who/what/whereupon. I just put up all the ones I could find/think of. It’s not an authoritative list. But you will be disciplined if you don’t obey it.

Here are a few of the pictures Grant Howard took at the ‘Moot. Ron Block, Randall Goodgame, Jason Gray, and Andy Gullahorn’s Shoulder during the songwriter panel. Chris Wall, a good friend who produced several VeggieTales films at Big Idea (including the ones featuring the Goodgame/Peterson silly songs “Monkey”, “The Biscuit of Zazzamarandabo”, and “Sneeze if you Need To”). Chris was a part of the storytelling panel. The infamous Eric Peters, who is much more road weary than this picture suggests. He drove straight to Hutchmoot from his summer Young Life stint in Georgia. Russ Ramsey, who only hours after Hutchmoot concluded moved his sweet family from Kansas to Nashville to a little house right down the road. He’s the newest pastor at our church, Midtown Fellowship. The songwriter panel, featuring Ron Block, Goodgame, Jason Gray, Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Andrew Osenga, Eric Peters, and me. Matt Conner moderated, and made the comment at the beginning that we looked like a Caucasian version of Leonardo’s Last Supper, at which point we all struck the pose pictured in Jason’s post yesterday. This was taken at the Counting Stars release show at Fellowship Bible Church on Friday night. That’s Kenny Hutson (lap steel), Ben Shive (keys), Ken Lewis (drums), me, Andy Gullahorn (guitar), and James Gregory (bass). It was a packed house, a great gift never taken for granted by a bunch of singer/songwriter folks like us. S.D. Smith, who led a session titled “Perfection in Weakness” along with A.S. Peterson and Travis Prinzi. Sam, his brother and a few friends showed up early and helped a TON with the weekend. Thanks, West Virginians. The book table. Ah, one of my favorite things in the world. We had a lot of new books by our favorite authors, along with a lot of used treasures (nearly all of which were sold). That’s Brannon McAllister in the foreground, a good friend over the years who is responsible for designing my last three or four album covers. Jonathan Rogers, who with Russ Ramsey led a session on Annie Dillard and Flannery O’Connor, two of the Rabbit Room’s favorite writers. Jonathan’s newest novel The Charlatan’s Boy releases later this year. Randall Goodgame, the brains behind Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies and its super-cool tour. Randall drove through the night from Arkansas to make it to the ‘Moot in time to be a part of the songwriter panel. Ron Block, the Rabbit Room’s resident banjo-theologian. Ron and I spoke about George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis’s immersed imaginations. He’s also the only Rabbit Room writer who can totally pull off that moustache. Jill Phillips’s Shoulder, Andrew Osenga, Eric Peters, and me on the songwriting panel. Andy Gullahorn, Jill Phillips, Andrew Osenga, Eric Peters, and My Hands. Eric closes his eyes when he’s being super brilliant. After everyone left this was the crew who ended up in the kitchen cleaning up the last bits of Evie’s feast. Ron Block, Russ Ramsey, Pete Peterson, Aaron Roughton, Kate Hinson, me, Lindi Roughton, and Whit Elam. Evie was off somewhere collapsing. Thanks for your unexpected help, Roughtons. We loved having Charlotte Crawford set up shop Saturday morning to serve free coffee drinks for the Hutchmooters. Not only was she awesome to have around, her drinks were really, really good. She runs a business called Latte Elegance. More elegance. Lattes of it. Finally, I leave you with Scott Rinehart and his Awesome Shirt. Which sounds like a movie featuring Michael Cera. I got a few more pictures emailed to photos@rabbitroom.com, which I’ll try to post soon. Send ’em on if you have ’em. Thanks to Grant for taking such great pictures. He also took a lot of video, which we’ll put together to promote next year’s event.

As I write this, Taya and I are on our flight home from Hutchmoot 2010, set to arrive just in time for our twin boy’s birthday party. The Hutchmoot was delightful! We feel so privileged and grateful to have been a part of it and for all the people who came from all over the country to participate in the weekend. Our only regret is our exhaustion that made it difficult for us to be as present as we would like to have been (this weekend was the last stretch of a marathon summer schedule, and Taya and I remarked that we can’t remember a time when we felt more exhausted than this week). I wish I could have given more of myself, and for all of those I wish I could have been more present for, I do apologize. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. (Taya just said to me, “I’m afraid I may have disappointed just about everyone at the Hutchmoot. I was just too tired to have a conversation with anybody.”) But in spite of that we met some wonderful people and enjoyed our conversations, though too brief. In preparation for the Hutchmoot, I kept trying to think of what we were aiming for. What were we gathering around? The Rabbit Room is such a varied place it was hard to say–were we gathering around the arts? Books? Music? Storytelling? Cultural commentary? Jesus? Yes on all counts, I’m sure, but as we gathered to pray for the weekend on Friday, the larger answer began to emerge for me. I think for all of our talk about music, stories, and whatever else it is that Rabbit Roomers are inclined to talk about, we were gathering around Christ centered, story focused community. Maybe that was clear to everyone else all along, but I’m often late to the party on these kinds of things. During the song-writing session, when someone asked about how to replicate the kind of community that they perceived we on the panel shared, it was nearly all I could do to swallow the lump in my throat. I recognized the longing in that question, the longing to belong, to have friendships that bring you life, that remind you of who you are, of who God created you to be, that invite you to set aside your masks and be known. I had given up on this long ago, having failed to find it time and time again, experiencing disappointment and often hurt every time I entrusted myself to another person in my continuing misadventures in seeking community. And yet here I was. It occurred to me to think of how the bond we shared as the people on that panel looks different to me now on the inside than it used to on the outside. Less the romantic idealization I might have made of it at one time, and yet all the richer for that, I think. At one time I sat on the outside looking at these very people I was now on stage with, wishing I could have what it seemed like they had. And then somehow, over time, without hoping or asking for it, one day I found myself there on the stage with them, talking about our shared passions at a thing called a Hutchmoot: Randall Goodgame seated on my right, singing his new Christmas camel song in my ear moments before the panel started because it was bursting to come out of him and he just couldn’t keep it to himself; Andy Gullahorn seated on my left, conspiring with me to whisper sophomoric color commentary to each other while other panel members addressed the audience; my good friend Andrew Peterson at the end of the table asking me to share a story of a moment we shared together in an art museum. He cried when he greeted Taya and me upon our arrival on Friday, which was perhaps the greatest gift of the weekend for me. “What am I doing up here?” I’m thinking to myself, counting my lucky stars. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” the psalmist says. Yes, yes. Amen. How did I get there? I’m certainly convinced that it’s not because of my credentials. I have to resist the fear of being discovered as an imposter most of the time when I’m with these people. I’m delighted to discover that most (if not all) of them feel the same way. It’s good to feel lucky, to feel blessed. Russ Ramsey, one of the rabbit room community members of the pastoral variety (I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to see a preach-off between him and Thomas McKenzie, followed by a one-minute review assessment of how it went) invited us to his church that Sunday morning, and he shared a sermon about community, with communion that we the congregants served each other afterwards. It was Taya who called my attention to the personal significance of this moment. We were seated with friends from the Hutchmoot that consisted of Elsa, a friend from Minnesota who has known our family for 13 years; Breann, who we met on tour a couple years ago and has become a friend; and Evie and Whit, friends who represent the artistic community we have in Nashville. The different communities of our home, our ministry, and our passion all converged as we walked to the front, knelt down, and shared the body and blood of Christ, broken for us. What does it mean? I’m tempted to try and extract some applicable take-away from the moment, but am grateful to find that I’m unable to reduce it that way. It is blessedly enough to say the moment was pregnant with ineffable meaning. It was a grace. The text Russ preached on was the closing verses of Colossians, a passage dealing with greetings and personal instructions for the community of believers in Colossi. A seemingly irrelevant portion of scripture came alive that morning as Russ helped us see the beauty of it, which of course is the fact that it reveals that theirs wasn’t a romantic idealization of community, but instead a messy, organic, community rich with conflict and humanity. One by one Russ went through the names Paul lists at the closing of this epistle: Tychicus, Epaphrus, Demas, Mark, Luke…names that remind us that the holy scriptures were human documents first, letters lovingly written to friends, not unlike the way I write to you now. By asking us to pay attention to these names Russ showed us how they help us see what it means to be in community with others. What Paul writes at the end of Colossians 4 reminds us that these letters were written to real people with names like we have names, histories like we have histories, and who loved each other as much as they failed each other. There’s Philemon whose house is where the fledgling church gathered to meet, Russ told us. Some time before, his slave Onesimus had stolen from him and hightailed it to the big city. While on the lam, Onesimus ran into Paul, became a follower of Christ, and now Paul has sent him back to his master with two letters in hand: one for the church, and one especially for Philemon himself, appealing to him to forgive Onesimus, “who has become like a son to me,” Paul says, and to receive him no longer as a slave, but as a brother in the Lord. Russ imagined for us the awkward moment: the knock on the door of the church at Colossi, the door of Philemon’s house, and who would have answered the door but perhaps Philemon himself (with no one else to answer the door since his servant ran off, Taya suggests)? And who is standing there with two letters in his hands but the wayward Onesimus? And all of a sudden this brief book of the Holy Bible becomes earthy, taking on flesh, becoming part of the larger story of the human drama of betrayal and forgiveness. As my friend Eric Peters said in our session together, this human context takes the text “off the mantel and brings it down to earth.” And then there are the names that represent their relationship to Paul–messy relationships that tell the tale of the joys and heartbreak of entrusting your heart to others in community. As much as I am tempted right now to recite the major insights of Russ’s sermon for you so you might partake of the richness of the image of community that he painted for us, I know this post is too long as it is. Perhaps we could entice Russ himself to share these thoughts with us in the form of a post? Russ, what do you say? Are you out there? The point, to me anyway, is that community is messy and wrought with human drama: betrayal, joy, disappointment, and forgiveness. Real community will never be the romantic idealization that I’d like to make of it. In other words, it’s not for sissies. Few could blame you for saying to hell with the whole affair and holing up in a shack in Montana. It’s all too risky, with too much potential for pain and disappointment. And yet we long for it, all of us, because we were created for it: a place to belong, a people to belong to, a chance to be named at the end of somebody’s epistle, for good or ill. And that’s why we gathered at the Hutchmoot, I think. Sure, it’s fun to talk books, music, and listen to the brothers Peterson make nerdy Tolkien references every chance they can. But I suspect that it’s for the longing of a place to belong that we all gathered, myself included. To the question that the man asked the song panel regarding finding community, I never felt like we offered a, well, satisfying answer. But Andy Osenga came closest I think when he said that it was all about keeping our hearts open to the kind of community that might present itself to us. Maybe it’s people in our church or down our street–we just have to try to hang out with them and see what happens. It’s an ambiguous and unsatisfying answer, but the truth often feels that way. At least at first blush. Keeping your heart open to the community that presents itself to you. Maybe that means that beggars can’t be choosy, and who among us doesn’t feel like a poor beggar in this regard? Maybe part of it means that we need to do the hard work of valuing those currently around us that the Lord has already presented instead of wishing for more “suitable” candidates. Maybe it means making the best of a messy, less than ideal situation. You know, like Paul had to, and Philemon, and even Jesus. “On the night he was betrayed,” Russ began as he introduced communion–those familiar words from the holy text–“Jesus took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’” And then all of a sudden, there they were: the lump in the throat, the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes–those blessed signposts that alert me to pay attention, because something holy is asking to be recognized. And then I saw him, Jesus, there in the upper room giving to his disciples, and to all disciples ever after, the communion table–the greatest symbol of community in all of human history–a place to come, gather, and share in common our need for the body and blood broken and given for us. Not just for me, but for us, the community–ourselves broken and bloodied, if by nothing else than by the hands of others in the community who have betrayed us or broken our hearts. And when did Jesus do this? On the night he was betrayed. There he is, knowing full well Judas was soon to betray him to a grisly execution and that within hours these his friends would all abandon him. Yet he holds nothing back in self preservation, giving his feckless friends then and since the grace of community–the means to come, gather, and share our humanity in common: the gift of a meal together. Come. Take. Eat. Drink. It is at once the holiest and most human of moments. It is an act of superhuman generosity on Jesus’ part. I couldn’t have, wouldn’t have done it. Jaded, bitter, hurt, I would have withheld community, passive aggressively punishing them for how I knew they were going to break my heart. I know this because this is what I always do. This is my broken way of circling the wagons and protecting myself. But to keep my heart open to the community that presents itself–imperfect and messy as that might be–is at least part of what it means to have community, isn’t it. “His body broken for you” we said to each other as we knelt and served communion to each other. But it must have been His heart that was broken first. And so it was with a broken heart that Jesus showed us how to make community with each other. I think now of all my failed attempts at community, the loneliness over the years of feeling misunderstood by those around me, how it made me circumspect and inward, how at times I even rejected the community that presented itself to me for fear of being rejected. I wrote a chorus recently that challenges me to “bring my heart / to every day / and run the risk of loving completely without running away…” I think this is what community–wherever we may find it–requires of us. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus said as he presented himself to the community that was present to him. Understanding that this is part of the daunting task of being in community makes the ease by which we all gathered together and enjoyed each other’s company at the Hutchmoot an even richer delight, don’t you think? Hutchmoot 2011 anyone?

And lo, in the year 2010, an idea stepped out of the realm of theory and into the realm of time and space. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of what to say about the weekend, but my heart and brain are still so jam-packed I don’t know how to do it. I’m waiting on some pictures from Grant Howard (the guy with the fancy camera who walked around all weekend) before I write an official play-by-play, but in the meantime I thought I’d ask you guys to post your thoughts. What did you like best about the weekend? What were the surprises? What did you learn? Did you make any connections with future good/best friends? If you have any photos, would you mind emailing them to me at photos@rabbitroom.com? I’ll pick the best ones and include them in a post for everyone to see. What a weekend. I’m grateful to each of you. Stay tuned for info about next year. The Proprietor

As I sling imperfect measurements of flour and brown sugar into a big enamelware bowl this morning, as I sip my coffee out of the Swede coffee cup (“you can always tell a Swede but you can’t tell him much”), as I drag my brushes through the vibrant liquid colors and commit them to the paper, my grandma is with me in the kitchen today. Hazel was my mother’s mother. Her middle name was Fern. She loved her family and was a consummate homemaker. She loved the nothingness of the Arizona desert. She loved the pink, cloudy evening skies of the West. In her opinion, the Tetons were God’s most extravagant gift to his children. S When my grandfather first saw her, he was dumbstruck by her raven hair, her smooth, dark skin and her tiny waist. (His name was Philip Oscar.) Hazel was a profound beauty. Her deep, rich, lolling laugh was unmistakable and filled the air. She had able arms of Biblical proportions; she worked hard alongside her husband and supported him in his endeavors as a farmer and a carpenter. She certainly wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. She was a creative thinker. She took apart the children’s clothes and made more clothes out of the fabric. Mom said that one year she made a Christmas topiary tree out of spray-painted tumbleweeds. Her homemade butter was always sweet and much fresher than Aunt Berneece’s because she pressed every bit of water out of it, the story is told. She kept her soap in a little red plastic flower-shaped dish by the kitchen sink which I always thought was beautiful. She taught me how to read in the back seat of the Ford which carried us to California in the summer of my fourth year. One of the first phrases she helped me identify and sound out was “extraordinarily long arms” from the book “Mr. Tickle.” She had soft skin — the very pillow-softest. When she held me her neck always smelled powdery and clean. She made clothes for my baby doll using patterns she made by tracing her form onto paper towels. One piece was a double-breasted, winter white overcoat with a Peter Pan collar. She even made matching nightgowns of pink flannel for me and my doll. She was a faithful woman. She loved Jesus with all of her self, trusted in him wholly, and lifted her family up to his care daily. She left us when I was ten years old, and her lasting gift was this brilliant, shimmering collection of so many glad memories. I was given grandma’s art supplies when she passed away. Every time I hold one of her drawing pencils in my hand, I wish that she could know me today as a grown woman. She would laugh that marvelous laugh and shake her head at how alike we are and how I am, most definitely, Hazel’s granddaughter.

“This is your first lesson in shared dreaming.” Talk about a line to get a writer thinking. The minute Dom, a major character in the movie Inception, said it, I sat up straight and wished I had a pen in hand. I went to the theater expecting an action flick, I came out feeling that I had taken part in a swift, sparkling debate; the sort you have late at night with best friends, drinks and elbows on the table, eyes alight with big ideas. I love a movie that makes me want to be a philosopher. I love it even more though, when the movie is philosophizing about what I, as a writer, love best: the telling of a story. Inception, I realized, is a conversation in the art of imagination. This is a movie about the making of dreamscapes – worlds made in the mind of one person and offered to another. As a writer, this captivates me. Isn’t story the same thing? What is a novel, but a dream world built in the mind of an author? What is a storybook but a wide, new space of imagination into which a reader is invited? Inception is an excellent movie for writers. With this in mind, I returned, late last Thursday night, notebook in hand, to jot down a few of the ideas flung to me by the movie. Perhaps they will spark a new debate and keep the ideas flowing… I was struck first by the movie’s emphasis on the architecture of the imaginative world. In the beginning of the story, a brilliant young architect is hired to construct the landscape of a dream. As she begins her first exercise in creation, she is cautioned: the dreamscape must ring true. If it is to be accepted by the mind of another, it must taste and smell, feel and look, real. This is a challenge faced by all crafters of story. The scene must be set, the reader brought by words, almost unaware, into a world as personal, touchable as our own. We all have those books we have read where the scenes were so vividly wrought, we feel we lived rather than read them. Twenty years after reading it, I still remember a scene from The Wind in the Willows, where Mole finds his old burrow. The musty scent of his abandoned hole, the ache of homesickness suddenly relieved, the hominess of his fireside and newly swept rooms, I can see it all still because the imagined world was masterfully made. Yet a story world must also ring true to soul. There is a straight-shooting sense in our hearts of what is true about existence; hunger for beauty, need for love, our own frailty, the crying need for redemption. If a story lacks that truth, my heart will write it off as a dream not worth pursuing. I wonder sometimes if this is the element so many find to be missing in modern “Christian” stories, both in literature and film. They portray the good of Christianity, but neglect the dark that makes faith necessary. The world is thus incomplete. All elements of reality must be included in the soul world of a story, salvation and sin, grace and guilt. I found next that story is, truly, a shared dreaming. The dream worlds in Inception may be created by one person, but they are peopled by the subconscious of the others who enter them. I had never considered the idea that what I create as an author is, to an extent, unfinished until it is met by the imagination of a reader. I cannot transmit my creation, with all my own images intact, into the brain of another. To enter my dream, my reader must begin to dream himself. He brings his thoughts, the faces formed by his brain, his memory, his desire to the making of the story I have begun. Can a story be fully realized in isolation? I begin to think not. Inception reminds me that storytelling may start in solitude, but its end, its goal, is only realized in community. A shared dream. And what is the purpose of this dream? What do I offer the soul of a reader through my gift of story? Most authors write their stories with some idea in mind, some truth, some knowing they feel they must communicate. An idea for “inception” if you will. And so, I have always thought that some nugget of truth must be one of the main gifts I give in any story, even if it is subtly or symbolically given. While I can’t say much lest I give away the plot, I will say that Inception broadened my understanding of this gift. It helped me to see that sometimes the gift is simply the space of the story itself. An imaginary world creates a new room in the mind where the boundaries of material life fall away. In the reading of a story I inhabit someone else’s world. In it, perhaps I am freed to confront and recognize my own emotions and desires more clearly, as they are sparked to life and bumble into the story I am reading. Perhaps the gift of a good tale is the space in which to find and realize truth, to see it afresh, not merely have it imposed. Or perhaps, I make room so that another, more powerful Creator can implant an idea. Is it possible for one human to plant an idea, untraced, into the mind of another? Inception asks this question, and I don’t know about a human being able to do that. But the Holy Spirit sure could. The whole time I was watching the expert “dreamers” in the movie struggle to implant an idea in their subject’s mind, I thought of God, sparking knowledge in us as we are unaware. God creates ideas, as he does worlds, out of nothing, he is the kindler of every act of creation. He is the silent partner in every “dream” we create. What if God himself joins writer and reader to bring a new idea into being? What if our stories, our shared dreams, offer a space wherein God can bring about the inception of his own perfect ideas? So there you have it. Hamlet said he would “sleep, perchance to dream.” I think perhaps I’d rather write, for then I’m sure to dream, and the world I make is one that I can share.

We’ve already got one post on the subject and I don’t want to beat the issue into the ground but I read this on My Friend Amy’s blog and I think it provides an important second perspective. It’s a simple, thoughtful letter to Anne that comes pretty close to the way I feel. Here’s an excerpt: “I can understand wanting to disassociate but I feel like in so doing you lumped the rest of us together. Many of the reasons you cited for leaving I suspect I feel the same as you and it makes me sad that you’ve drawn a line and said “these are the things Christianity is.” I don’t believe that to be true and what is so beautiful and splendid about Christianity is that it’s an umbrella term for a group of people from all over the world who believe Jesus is God. That’s the tie that binds us together, the thread that pulls us close. We have many different theological ideas and beliefs, we practice and worship in a variety of ways, we speak different languages, and we experience life differently. Yes we argue. And yes we get things wrong and yes we need to learn how to give space to differing interpretations. But we’re a family, we share a heritage, and a common Father.” Read the rest of the letter on her blog.

Not only is this song exactly how I feel lately but one of my goals at Hutchmoot this weekend is to coerce Andy Osenga into playing a 27 minute extended version of the intro. If I’m successful, it will be awesome. I may have to bribe him with burritos.

My friend Russell Moore (I guess you’re friends with someone once they’ve bought you a Johnny Cash t-shirt) had some great thoughts in response to the furor over Anne Rice’s comments about Christianity. You may remember our own A.S. Peterson wrote a review of her newest books, which aren’t about vampires but about Jesus. Here’s a bit of what Dr. Moore had to say: “Yesterday the Internet was abuzz with news that Anne Rice has renounced Christianity. The best-selling vampire novelist, who professed faith in Christ several years ago and has since written several books about Jesus and her conversion, publicly quit Christianity on her Facebook page. There’s a real opportunity here that hinges on how we respond to this, or, rather, how we respond to her. Anne said that she was leaving Christianity b Anne Rice is, at best, our sister-in-Christ who is going through a dark night of the soul. She is, at the very least, someone who has encountered something of the light of Christ, is drawn to it, and is now “kicking against the goads.” In either case, she is not our enemy.” Read the rest here.

It’s a day that I look forward to. The first of its kind was three years ago when my brother and I harvested our first real batch of honey, about 10 gallons, from our beehives. Last year, we got about 20 gallons and we estimate that, today, we got around 24, a respectable yield for 4 hives. All year long, I saved glass jars in anticipation of this day, saved them as an act of faith that they would be filled with something sweet, beautiful and valuable at summer’s end if we did our part and the bees did theirs. And what I ended up with was an assortment of containers, in all shapes and sizes, each cleaned multiple times before being lined up, sparkling, to catch whatever honey might be extracted from the hives. From 9 this morning until almost 9 o’clock tonight, we worked in sweltering heat doing the messy but rewarding task of filling our jars, almost a hundred of them, with the sweetness of a year’s work from 200,000 bees. By day’s end, the empty containers glistened with pure gold – some darkened with the early nectar from the tulip poplar trees, some lightened to translucence with the nectar of wildflowers – each a monument to hard labor and a compelling instance of transformation. They represent millions of foraging flights and the microscopic contributions of no-telling how many blossoms from trees and flowers in the area surrounding our home place. The honeybee, and the harvest, is a tutorial in wonder. From empty to full; from barren to sweetness; from labor to rest. The season is over and a new one begins… Last night, my dear friend, Benjamin “Shorty” Floyd, whom some of you know from my album People in my Town, died, just a couple of weeks past his 86th birthday. He was, from every worldly standard, a poor man. He could not read or write, didn’t finish high school, and grew up when it was hard to be a black man in America. His laughter was irresistible. He cried easily when he felt joy. He spoke of Jesus as though they shared meals together. He repeated himself a lot as he got older – “I have been all over the world, all up to Spartanburg NC and Macon Georgia. The Lord been good to me.” He had an old dog named Queenie who must wonder where he’s been these last four days, since Thursday last when Shorty was taken to the hospital. He dearly loved me and my brother and proudly called us ‘his boys.’ As thankful as he was for it, his house was, by any grade, an old shack — drafty, dilapidated, small. This coming Saturday, a group of us had planned to do some renovation for him — to make his small porch more accessible, to fix his door, to chop his firewood and get it closer to his house. He sang with meager talent but huge enthusiasm. He usually wore farmers overalls, and had a habit of only buckling one side. He spoke a brand of English that was all his own and prayed in a gibberish that was barely understandable except for the dozens of times that he’d call the name of Jesus. He would talk back to the televison when he watched the evening news. He was an elder in every sense of the word at the Longstreet Baptist Church where, he said, “the doors (doze) is built on welcome hinges.” He trusted a God Who “sits high but bends low” and He loved the Christ Who taught that we should “do unto others as we wish to be done about.” Though he could not read it for himself, he loved the scriptures and quoted them frequently. When we sang happy birthday to Shorty last year, he expressed his reluctance to have “and many more.” He believed in and longed for a home not built by human hands. By the time he took his last breath last night, his body had long been worn out and tired. The same might be said of his heart, which was sensitive to and grieved by the brokenness of our world. He wearied of people who showed so little reverence to the Lord of Creation, and was stung at how cruelly we can treat each other at times. He was a glistening jar waiting to be filled. And last night, what was empty became full. What was bitter became sweet. What was weary found rest. What was common and unrefined became golden. The season is complete. And a new one begins. “He has crossed over.” “He’s home.” And, as a long tiring day concludes, I feel some fullness myself. A fullness of thanks, of sweetness, of sadness, of curiosity. A fullness that tells me I am rich to have the indelible memories of a rickety porch, some listening hours, and an old black man whose heart was pure treasure. I just returned from the worship service that celebrated Shorty’s life. At the family’s request, I edited a copy of the spoken words that i used for Shorty’s song on “People in my Town.” We played the recording at the gathering this morning and it was a perfect eulogy for the occasion. If you haven’t heard Shorty, here is the version of his monologue that we used this morning, complete with his singing of “Come and Go”. [audio:shortyfloyd.mp3]