To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world’s sake – even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death – that little by little we start to come alive. – The Sacred Journey, by Frederick Beuchner Before Rainbow Dull I had a short lived blog on which I posted only a handful of times. This was about ten years ago, when blogging was just getting going. A couple of old college friends had emailed me links and invitations to their own blogs, so I read several entries and decided it might be something I could do – maybe a way to take all my daydreams and turn them into actual words. I’d been obsessed with an Annie Lennox song in college, so I lifted a line from it and The Cultures of My Head was born. I showed it to my husband and he seemed to think it was cool. He can be a little vague in his encouragement though, and I didn’t realize he never cottoned on to my illusion. About six months later, I shared the site with a good friend, who was a huge Annie fan and when I told her about the title, she pointed out that the line actually said “contents” and not “cultures.” We had a good laugh about it though I was rather embarrassed, but in my defense, I was thinking about the people kind of culture, and not the science experiment kind. I only remember a couple of entries from that initial blogging attempt. The first is about some long lost friends from junior high and was inspired by a viewing of Stand By Me. It’s pretty passionate, but it lacks structure and assumes too often that the reader already knows what’s in my head. The other post I remember well was the late night letter kind. It was written to the picture in my head of a little girl that I never got to meet, the miscarried product of my second pregnancy. I began writing it a year and a couple of months after the miscarriage, but I didn’t finish until ten more months had passed and ended up posting it on the two year anniversary of that loss. The post was a way of finally saying goodbye and letting go so I could move on and take care of the four year old boy we already had as well as the baby girl I’d gotten pregnant with a month after that miscarriage. Two years later, we moved to Tennessee. Our kids, Sam and Laney, were seven and three by then. We’d sold our house in Maryland, paid off all our debt and moved in with my in-laws because we didn’thave jobs yet, and my husband John was thinking of returning to school for a master’s degree. It was there in my in-laws’ basement that I decided it was time to get serious about my writing. So I returned to blogging and came up with the name Rainbow Dull. I remembered that old doll, Rainbow Brite, I’d had when I was a kid and how her very essence was cheerfulness. I’d also been taking an antidepressant (for the first time) for about five months and was beginning to feel positive enough about my melancholic personality to try and make a joke about it. But like all good jokes, there was some truth behind this one. You see I wasn’t just popping happy pills, I’d also been to see a therapist (my second one) and together we had identified a few depressed episodes before this latest one. We talked about what depression meant for me – there are actually different kinds – and how I wanted to begin fighting it. Somewhere inside I knew that this tendency to analyze and get lost in the details was not simply how I “got stuck,” but could also be my way out. Once I got the analysis out of my head and all the details onto paper, I could examine it better – maybe even find joy and color, life on the underside of those clouds. I was also quite ready, after twenty-nine years of crying on the inside, to tell the world that being a Christian did NOT mean peaches-n-cream, roses and sunshine, all the time! My childhood in the preacher family fishbowl had taught me to paint on smiles and stuff away sadness. The hellfire evangelical tradition I’d been brought up in made me feel responsible for the salvation of the entire world. And if one member of that world saw me with any sort of doubt or less than one hundred percent perfection, he or she wouldn’t want what I had and would remain lost and damned. It had always been up to us to convince everyone that having Jesus makes you happy.It was a lie much, much older than me, but I had learned the truth the hard way and was more than ready to share my discovery. When I first began to write, I hoped to come up with a collection of stories about growing up in a nomadic preacher’s home: how our family got through the tough times, how we moved nearly every two years, how we all dealt with bitterness toward the church without ever losing our faith. I hoped it could be, in some way, the church girl’s version of Traveling Mercies, with a lot less cursing. But when I actually sat down to type I ended up writing whatever was on my mind at the time; I didn’t have a real plan or outline of which stories I should be trying to tell. I wrote when my son was at school and my daughter was napping, or after they’d gone to bed at night and my husband was job hunting. And one day I looked at our Narnia movie themed calendar and saw that the month of May had a picture of the White Witch: baring her teeth, sword and cold, pale arms. I’d been dreading the month anyhow because I knew the nineteenth would come and I would be forced to remember what I thought was the worst day of my life,but when I saw the picture I knew I had to write about it. So I found another picture, one I’d kept of myself, from Mother’s Day the year before.I posted them both and explained how it felt like the witch in the first picture had come for the girl in the second, how it felt like she was coming once again and the best way I knew to fight her off was to tell the story myself. So I made myself remember what had started the bleak episode I was coming out of, another miscarriage. I forced myself into the sad memories, and I couldn’t help but compare this one with the first. My experiences had been exact opposites. The first miscarriage seemed so completely in my head that I sometimes wondered if it happened at all. The second one was so physical that I still had photographic evidence. So the theme I decided to explore was senses. My plan was to devote five posts, the week leading up to the nineteenth, to each of the five senses. I never made it to smell and taste, as the grief work turned out to be too big a plate for just one meal, but the essays I wrote exploring the other three senses have long been some of my favorite posts, and I occasionally try to come up with ideas for the final two. If I ever came up with any, I wonder if I could pull them all together someday, either in a book solely about grief, or maybe as a chapter in the memoir I still daydream about. Writing time is scarce these days with three kids, (we got pregnant again the month after I wrote those memorial essays) ages 11, 7, and 3. But I know I’m still supposed to do it, and I’ve come to see over the years how writing helps me puzzle out the pieces of my life until they make a picture I can see. In some ways writing is my new form of therapy, although I would not say it has completely replaced it – I’m wary of claiming any kind of cure as there are many days when a listening ear is still the best medicine. Lately I’ve been questioning the justification of my blog, thinking perhaps it’s time to shut her down in favor of a more long term, less instant gratification type of project. I’m not sure what I will do yet, and I’m not really asking for an answer here. Rather I simply wanted to share what I have learned over the past few months of thinking about my writing and my life: certain themes have emerged. Kind of like when you pick what you thought was a unique name for your kid, then suddenly you meet twelve people with the same exact name. Is it simply that our awareness is heightened by our own experience, or is God actually lining these things up toward some greater purpose? Depression, loss and grief are the subjects I keep returning to again and again in my writing. There are days I want to run from those topics, as any sane person probably would. I worry that people are tired of hearing such morose ponderings. But then I hear of yet another woman dealing with the loss of a child, or I find myself in the middle of another conversation about loneliness and depression. Even when I concentrate all my efforts to write something a little more palatable and sweet, I inevitably end up with dark and savory. I hesitate to label myself or cast some grand mission on my life, but I cannot deny that life’s questions pulled me into a search for answers, and wrestling with them has become a near daily task. Blogging helps me mark the miles, for now. When I look back at the flags I’ve planted, I see a lot of the same color and can’t help but wonder if all of our Sacred Journeys are being shaded just so? Some green and lively, others muted and grey. Each playing the light off another, accenting hues in a band that spans the horizon, ‘til all is beautiful and bright.

Rabbit Room favorite Melanie Penn wrote these kind, necessary words on her blog recently and let us re-post them here. Melanie’s album Wake Up Love (produced by Ben Shive) is available in the store, and we’re certain you’ll love it. –The Proprietor ———————————– I’ve been thinking about words. I’ve heard that the two questions below are good ones to ask before saying anything. In life-in-general, I agree. If I were to ask these two questions before speaking I’d probably spare myself a lot of conflict and a lot of gossipy nothingness that I tend to regret. But what about as an artist? What about the artist’s life-in-general? Some would argue that art isn’t necessary (they’re wrong) and some would argue that art can be unkind (it can be). A dear friend recently stumbled upon something written about him on the internet. It was hurtful and scathing and a little bit true. It was a result of a l Talking with him about it made me wonder about songs and the lyrics to songs. What makes a lyric art? And what makes a lyric little more than a venting of personal frustrations and feelings? I can’t help but think that every word–no matter the setting–should be justified and weighed to see if it will do damage. I can’t help but think that artists have a unique call to be careful with words. Is each one necessary? Is each one kind?

Here’s the thing about Andrew Peterson: he’s never content to let ordinary things be ordinary. Vast meanings, cosmic meanings pulse beneath the most familiar facts of everyday life. In“World Traveler,” from AP’s new album Counting Stars, an act as common as looking in on the kids after bedtime becomes an encounter with the divine: Tonight I saw the children in their rooms, Little flowers all in bloom— Burning suns and silver moon. And somehow in those starry skies The image of the maker lies Right here beneath my roof tonight. This moment is emblematic of the whole album. AP marvels at the marvelous. It’s the sort of miracle that we learn to ignore, but AP insists, “Look at this! Can you believe it? The image of God himself—right here beneath my roof!” Or consider the hour of dusk in “The Magic Hour”: Here in the magic hour, Time and eternity Mingle a moment in chorus. Here in the magic hour, Bright is the mystery, Plain is the beauty before us. Could this beauty be for us? For all the wonders of the Magic Hour, the most wondrous, perhaps, is the fact that it happens every single day—usually while we’re fixing supper or ortherwise paying attention to something else. And yet God beckons out of a beauty that says—every day of our lives—“Psst…what do I remind you of?” We are full participants in the grand and overwhelming story laid out in Scripture. The God of Abraham is the God of our fathers and of us and of our children too. If we believe any of it, we must believe that. God told Abraham to count the stars if he wanted to know how many descendants he would have. We are those stars, suns burning hot and bright with the image of God himself. It is a great mystery, yes. But we don’t choose the mysteries we find ourselves in. As for my favorite songs from this album, it’s hard to know where to begin. “Dancing in the Minefields” is one that deserves its own post. Its honest portrayal of marriage gives me new courage and makes me want to kiss my wife square on the mouth every time I hear it. “The Reckoning” is an astonishing song in which an approaching thunderstorm isn’t just a metaphor for God’s fearsome power; it is God’s fearsome power. There’s a stark, Old Testament feel to this song that, like so many songs on this album, reminds us that this world we live in is the same world that the Scriptures depict. As surely as it ever was, this is our Father’s world. Two songs on this album are worthy of the darkest of David’s psalms—“You Came so Close” and “The Last Frontier.” I’m afraid we won’t be hearing either of these songs on the “Safe for the Whole Family” radio station I see on the billboards. These songs aren’t safe. They hunker down and wrestle around, and they come up limping. The hope they express is hard-won. But the whole album prepares us for these songs. Counting Stars is about the the great mysteries in which we live—beauty, marriage, redemption. And what is so mysterious as hope? To hope is to be open to the possibility that, however grim things look, you don’t really know how they are going to work out. Despair, on the other hand, is a false certainty that you already know how things will end—badly. What I love about Counting Stars is the fact that it causes me to know again what I forget too easily: I’m a part of something huge. My joys—even the small ones—are a faint echo of the deep hilarity of the divine comedy. My struggles—when I’m willing actually to struggle—are no less momentous than Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel. And while it’s true that I’m a jackass, it’s not the truest thing about me. The truer thing, as AP puts it in “Fool with a Fancy Guitar,” is that “I am a priest and a prince of the kingdom of God.” Hallelujah.

I like to think that when Philip and I got married our wedding presents to each other were music. Like all true lovers we were extravagant with our gifts. He gave me The Sundays and REM, Tchaikovsky and The Beautiful South and Catbird Seat. I presented him with the total pageantry of Italian opera and the English choral tradition, Palestrina and the masses of Mozart and all the elegance of classic jazz. Beatles and bossa nova, Gillian Welch and Gilbert and Sullivan, we exchanged with the abandon of those who have no thought for the cost. But among the most priceless of all the gifts presented was one that Philip gave to me. It was the innocence mission. They have granted me, like the best stabbing beauties of Lewis and the singing prose of Tolkien, glimpses of heaven, and of the love of God brooding over my life. I’m certainly not the groupie type, and from what I know of the members of the innocence mission, they’d turn their faces with a modest shaking of the head from such adulation. But we do treat our IM with a sort of friendly veneration around here. So much so that several little rituals have sprung up surrounding the release of a new album. One is that we are nowise permitted to give it a first listen without the other present. Another is that it has to be memorable. When Befriended came out I greeted the shipment at the store and drove immediately to Philip’s office where we listened to it at his desk, the day being too long to wait for his homecoming at its close. We Walked in Song coincided with a trip to England we’d been dreaming of since the summer of Befriended and we managed to discipline ourselves to save it till we were there; I opened it on a morning in May on a green Surrey lane fringed with bluebells and fool’s parsley and slid it into the CD player of a little manual transmission coupe. Tears instantly filled both of our eyes at the first tender swell of sound. And I think that they always will. We both tried (and failed) to surprise each other for Valentine’s last year with the EP Street Map. But we were literally ticking days off the calendar for this summer’s release of My Room in the Trees. Teasers and free downloads on the band’s site had tempted us, but we held out. Once it arrived, we dangled it like a treat at the end of an intense but happily-occupied Saturday. I had two favorite English ales on hand for the occasion and glasses on ice in the freezer, and at the appointed time we settled into our chairs in the den with a cat on each of our laps and the volume turned up high. And when Karen’s trusting, ingenuous voice filled the room and embraced us with the affection of a true friend, I knew that no treatment could have been more fitting. My Room in the Trees seems, in many ways, the fruit of other albums. If Birds of My Neighborhood touched on the nerve of infertility and the yearning for a child with the gentlest vulnerability and precision, then Room celebrates the longed-for children with an answering grace. All beloved IM symbols are here, the daily figures illumined with the divine light of sacramental living: birds, green and growing things, water and car trips and rain. But there’s a markedly new perspective, an eye-level observance of wonders even more artless, like imaginary dogs and leaf boats coursing down rain channels in the street and children glittering off into the night sky like shooting stars. All this mingled inexorably—almost unbearably at times—with the theme of the very adult necessity of letting go. Releasing these young flares to their destiny; releasing oneself to the relentless love of God. If Karen’s candor is disarming, her humility is absolutely devastating. It’s impossible to listen to that deceptively fragile voice winging over unexpected cadences and lilts without being startled out of a sense of self-complacency. Handling the objects of the everyday, savoring concrete words for the joy of the life they image, she manages to lift the veil on the holiness shimmering just out of sight of our earth-bound eyes: splendors shed abroad and rained down upon the head of every child of God. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give glory, might well be the theme of their music as a whole. To truly engage with it is to bow one’s head in like acknowledgement. Here also is the throbbing warmth of sound and musical intimacy that lovers of the innocence mission know to expect. The opening track, “rain”, is a mesmerizing weave of Don and Karen’s guitars, Mike’s signature bass and the surprising texture of a violin that seems to set the poignant tone for the whole album, though it does not appear again. And throughout, with the unobtrusiveness of a true compliment, the instrumentation bears and sustains the sense of quiet celebration: a walk home from school is buoyed along by artful plucking in “the happy mondays”; “all the weather” literally pulses with the joy of returning spring; the merry rhythm of “mile marker” might well be skipping over the water in a sailboat as traversing the highway in a car. Pump organ, melodica, whispering drums and a wistfully tinny piano all vary and conspire among the tracks to create a sound that is at once nostalgia and hope for things to come. But if there’s one thing that characterizes the innocence mission, music and lyrics together, it’s a certain faith-borne melancholy. A sorrow for the pain and losses and lettings-go that this life exacts, and a rain-washed face lifted smiling to the love of God that recalls all the ‘bright sadness’ of the best art in the Christian tradition. In this respect, “God is love” might be one of the best tracks on the album with its gentle staring down of fear in a minor key. But it was the last song that overwhelmed us with all the sweet paradox of life bound in time and Life that is everlasting. It’s another tradition of ours that the we don’t read the lyrics on a first listen—we soak in the songs as a whole before dissecting them into poetry and sounds, and it’s often weeks or months later that we’ll be surprised by some hint or glimmer we hadn’t noticed before. And so we sat in silence and let the beauty wash over us, throats burning, tears close at hand. As it turned out there was no need for liner notes—or time—to receive the full wealth and richness of this one: Karen’s voice rang out, pure and true and full of something she couldn’t quite seem to contain: All we can do, in this deep summer hour, with the rain, the taxis and the flowers, walking between the dear ones holding on, is shout, shout for joy. Everything that has been broken you’ll mend, throughout the morning of one day, sleeves fluttering in the air, in the air, and we’ll shout, shout for joy. lyrics © 2010 the innocence mission The tears in my own eyes felt like a healing rain. And the wordless smile on my lips was a shout of joy.

For the past few months I’ve spent time writing Fiddler’s Green nearly every day. I like to plant myself in the back corner of Panera Bread (because it rocks), or my neighborhood Starbucks (where they know my name and give me free stuff), or the burrito shop down the road (chips and fruit tea all day long) and once I’ve settled in with something tasty to eat or drink or both, I crack open the Macbook and get to work. Some days it might be an hour, others it might be six or more. And there’s a lot of hand-wringing going on because now that The Fiddler’s Gun is in readers’ hands, expectations have been whetted for the next book and the conclusion has got to satisfy. I’m humbled by how emotionally invested many readers have become with Fin and her story and I don’t want to let anyone down. So the writing has been a meticulous process of trying to make sure that everything is firing in just the right direction in order to complete the story arc and deliver the emotional impact that I’ve been imagining in my dreams for over a decade. It’s worrisome work at times. And wonderful. Now the grueling labor of squeezing the first draft out of my head is over and it’s been a relief lately to be knee-deep in the editing. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, but after 120k words or so of raw creation, it’s refreshing to know that the grunt work is behind me. It seems like I regularly hear of writers who love the creational phase of writing but loathe and fear the editorial. I’m the opposite. Editing might actually be my favorite part. I love massaging the seams in the narrative and developing characters and scenes that feel anemic or didn’t get enough attention. I love cutting out shudder-worthy adverbs and whittling down those over-written sections to get at their most vital core. I love deleting entire scenes and re-writing chapters. I even love the realization that something I’ve written is a god-awful mess that needs to go straight to the trashcan. It’s been said that good books aren’t written, they’re re-written. Believe it. It’s tempting to think once the initial writing is finished that the work is done, that it’s good, that it’s ready to be read by others. But it just isn’t true. There might have been great writers of the past that could churn out a brilliant first draft but I think I’ll remain skeptical. (Though it’s hard to imagine extensive rewrites before the computer age, they certainly happened.) The truth is that, in my case at least, the magic happens in the edits and the rewrites. The story doesn’t really shine until I start polishing it. And when I’ve rubbed the tarnish away and first start to see the luster come through, when I begin to see my reflection in the polish, that’s a great feeling. So I’m editing these days and I’m beginning to see sparkles here and there. I’m excited. I think there’s a great story at the heart of the mess. There’s certainly a lot of work that still needs to be done, and not just by me, but by my editor and by others who will read and critique and make suggestions. But the physical thing itself exists now; it’s no longer just a figment of my imagination. I can point to it as it lies on my desk and say, “That right there is the manuscript for Fiddler’s Green.” All that’s left to do is spit and polish.

A little boy approached me after a recent concert with something clearly on his mind. He had waited till the crowd dispersed, and his parents sat in the pews at the back of the auditorium, wanting to give him his space but unable to avert their eyes. He wrung his hands and shifted his weight from sneaker to sneaker. He wanted to ask me a question, he said. I said that was fine, and uncapped my Sharpie marker for the autograph I thought I was about to sign. Then he surprised me. He didn’t want an autograph, and he didn’t want to ask about songwriting. (I’m embarrassed at my presumptuousness.) He asked me, “How can I be sure I’m saved?” I blinked. I glanced across the room at his parents, then back at him, and saw that he was dead serious. I bought myself some time by answering his question with a question. I sat on the stage steps and asked him why he was asking. He told me he had been reading Jesus’ parable about the sheep and the goats, and also in Revelation about the final judgment. He was troubled by the parable of the sower, and said he was afraid he might be one of the seeds that fell by the wayside and was gobbled up by the birds. He told me he had doubts about his faith; he was troubled in spirit. By the time he was finished, his voice was shaky and he was on the verge of tears. What a burden for such young shoulders! I was overcome with admiration, and I told him so. That he was wrestling with these things was no indicator of a lack of faith, but an abundance of it. If he was wondering about things like salvation and judgment and the nature of Jesus’ love, he was farther along on his journey than I was at his age. Anne Lamott said, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.” Faith is obedience in the face of doubt, which is to say, faith requires doubt in order to survive. Faith is a courageous act of defiance, not always a happy-go-lucky frolic. So the problem wasn’t his doubt; the problem was his fear. “There is no fear in love,“ says 1 John 4:18. So ask your questions, lie awake wondering, wrestle with angels, even shake your fist at the heavens, but don’t be afraid. Perfect love drives out fear, and Jesus’ love is perfect. It is strong enough for our doubt, our sin, and even our secret fear. Perhaps the most amazing thing about my encounter with this young saint was that after he left and I packed up my guitar, I felt a glow in my chest. My own faith was brighter, stronger, more vivid to me because of his trembling confession. The boy revealed his darkness to me, and God turned it to light. May I remember that next time I’m tempted to carry my burden alone.

In case you missed it, Sandra McCracken released a new record a couple of months ago. In Feast or Fallow is a mixture of Sandra’s own newly-written hymns as well as a number of old hymns re-worked. Here’s a song called “Give Reviving.” Take a minute to listen and if you like what you hear, we’ve got the entire album available in the Rabbit Room store.

I swore many years ago that I’d never make a music video. Back when my career began no one had ever dreamed of YouTube or Vimeo. If you wanted to watch a music video by a Christian artist you had to wait till the televangelists had gone to bed and the network couldn’t think of anything else to air, and so too few people would see it for the amount of money it would cost. But times have changed. Now people watch their computers as much as their televisions, and I figured a video like this might be good for somebody out there, even if they’re watching it at work when they’re supposed to be tweaking spreadsheets or something. I sat in a little coffee shop in Nashville with Ben Shive and director Grant Howard to brainstorm, and in about thirty minutes I went from being wary of it to being excited about it. My only stipulation was that I wouldn’t have to dance, even though the song is about dancing. We had the idea to shoot the video in an old house that had weathered a century of storms, and to invite a few luminous older couples who had weathered storms of their own to dance around in that old house. We wanted to make something that, like the song, would celebrate marriage in all its terrible beauty. Below the video is the little blurb I wrote about the song for the record label. Feel free to send the YouTube link to every human you know, as I’m pretty sure it’ll guarantee you a long, healthy life. ——————————————— https://youtube.com/watch?v=NtTa81LyuQM%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%3Frel%3D0 In December of 2009 my wife and I celebrated fifteen years of marriage. A few days later, we got in a silly argument and I wrote this song after she went to bed. Marriage, see, was God’s idea. It’s one of the most potent metaphors in all of Scripture for the way God loves us and the way we’re to let ourselves be loved by him. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. To the contrary, it’s fraught with peril. Any good marriage involves a thousand deaths to self—the good news is, in Christ that marriage involves at least as many resurrections. We lay our lives down and enter this perilous dance with another human being who has done the same. Why should we expect to emerge unscathed? (In case you’re wondering, two of the couples are my in-laws and Ben’s in-laws, and the other two are from Andy Gullahorn’s church and Todd Bragg’s church (both teach marriage classes in Sunday School, from what I gathered.)

I love my wife. I love my kids. And I love the call the Lord has on my life to proclaim His word in the context of the local church. Seriously, I feel like I’m getting away with something. I am one of the richest people I know, and I’m grateful for it.  Time with my wife nourishes me in ways time with no one else on this earth can. Time with my children brings to me a sweet mix of untold joy and sober reverence when I think of who they are and who I hope they become. Hours spent at my work reminds me again and again how precious and rare it is to be a man who is blessed to work at something I love. As it happens right now, my work has called me away from my wife and kids, geographically, for a season. One of the weird struggles I didn’t anticipate is the work of navigating how to explain why I am here apart from my family, without it sounding like a full-on plea for sympathy, or worse, a complaint. (in Olathe Kansas– great price, new furnace, awesome tree fort in the back yard… I digress), and unlike most of you, Dear Esteemed Rabbit Room Faithful, my family cannot manage two mortgages. Finding free temporary housing for one dude (many thanks, Osengas) is a different deal than finding free housing for a brood of six (plus a dog). Anyway, when I meet someone new (which is about a dozen times a day) the standard points of introduction usually get covered: Where are you from? Are you married? Kids? Where do you live now? Where are you working now? These are unavoidable points of context, and rightly so. How can you find me on a map without this information? How can I find you? But I’ve gotta tell you when I come to the place where I explain my family situation right now, I’ve covered a pretty impressive range of emotions to go with it. I’ve wept over it, shrugged it off, grimaced, laughed, drifted off into thoughts of those sweet people and how much I love them to the extent that I’ve half-forgotten what we were talking about. But I’m not looking for pity. And I’m not complaining either. God knows I’m not complaining. I know Team Ramsey is in a season of transition that will eventually reach its end. I know sometime in the relatively near future we’ll all be here, our stuff set up in some house in some neighborhood with a zip code beginning with the numbers 37. And I know that until then, I have a wife who is so on board with this move– so strong, encouraging, and eager to dive into this new community– that I can’t believe my luck. And I know many women here in this new city honestly expressing their desire to know her better– which will enrich their lives beyond their wildest imaginations! (Yes, that’s an exclamation point. Consider this a master class on where to use them.) Still, though I am not complaining about the distance, neither am I unaffected. I was talking with a friend the other day about this– a friend who is no stranger to similar seasons of separation– and he put to words something I was so thankful to hear: “When I’m with her and my kids,” he said, “the worst parts of me are diminished and the best parts are elevated.” Amen, friend. And thanks for that. My wife and kids bring out the best in me, and they have a subduing effect on those parts of me I wish weren’t woven into the fabric of who I am. The truth is that the version of me people are getting to know now is only part of the picture. It isn’t false, just incomplete like the picture above. And that is an important part of my context right now. Here’s what I really look like: Why am I telling you this? Because this season of transition is showing me parts of the depth of my own story I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When I explain the distance, the house for sale, the transition from one place to another and all that goes with it– when I tell you about my weaknesses and strengths and how my family lifts me up, in the end this not a complaint. Its a love story. A true one.

I’ve been writing about the music of Andrew Peterson for nearly ten years now. The first time was in an e-mail dated August 8, 2001. The tone of my prose was that of a breathless fanboy. I suspect Andy gets a lot of these notes: I listen to your music on my morning walks around the lake and in the car. When I walk, sometimes the converging of your music and the physical beauty of the scenery makes me feel like flying.  As I listen, mostly what occurs to me is the truth of your writing.  As much as religion has become part of pop culture today, it’s rare to find Christianity articulated in a profound and compelling way. Your music does that. I’ll admit to being a loyalist; once a supporter, always a supporter. I don’t shed my favorite artists like an old skin. Though I embrace variety and feel as if I’m on a perpetual quest for the next musical panacea–like the Lewis and Clark of the new music world–the songs of Andrew Peterson have been one constant. And a constant companion. I can tell you that Andrew has a thing about mountains. And thunder. Someday I’m going to count those musical references, just for fun. That’s the kind of thing that nerds do. With a prolific discography that extends beyond ten years now, there’s an impressive body of work from which lovely patterns emerge. We know, for example, that Andy is a family man. That’s not just a nod to the song from Love and Thunder, it’s one of the consistent values we observe from his discography: his uncles, his daddy and mama, brother, grandpa, children, and wife. Those are just a few direct references that come immediately to mind. More subtle is the living pulse of family that permeates so many other Peterson songs. In the early days of my fandom, I quickly learned that Andrew is an often contrarian writer, far more than his gentle nature might imply. But his words are contrarian only to the extent that they serve the truth, quite unlike a pedestrian praise and worship exposition. When his pencil meets paper, expect convention to be turned on its head. Consider, for example, “No More Faith,” a song that was misunderstood by more than a few: I say faith is a burden, it`s a weight to bear. It`s brave and bittersweet. And hope is hard to hold to Lord I believe, only help my unbelief Till there`s no more faith and no more hope, I`ll see your face and Lord I`ll know that only love remains. Faith, a burden? Who’d a thunk it? Brave and bittersweet? What’s that all about? And hope is hard to hold to? Why would hope be hard for a believer? These are the kinds of questions that come from those of us unwilling or unable to match the songwriter’s thoughtfulness. What some may not know is that Andrew has taken some heat for his sometimes contrarian style. “Mohawks on the Scaffold” and “Land of the Free” are two examples that come to mind. The latter became controversial because some critics thought it was inappropriate that the writer “is just a little jealous of the nothing that you have.” “He’s making light of poverty,” they said. The former apparently contained thicker sarcasm than some could digest. Or maybe it was the quote from Tommy Boy that people didn’t like. I don’t know. (For extra credit, what is the Tommy Boy quote?) So after a decade of listening to the careful, articulate observations of Andrew Peterson, I downloaded Counting Stars. I’m letting you know right now that I gave up comparing one Andrew Peterson project to another; I realized that comparing the relative greatness of a new AP release to earlier recordings was silly, like trying to compare kids, or mountains, or thunderstorms. Something else I’ve learned as a long-time supporter is that I can expect a nearly uncomfortable dose of candor from Andrew Peterson in every project. What this man has done for “Christian” music is not so much tell the truth, as it has been to tell the truth in a true way. Paint-by-number Christian songs that reveal some hint of darkness inevitably resolve, wrapped with a pretty red bow just in time for the last verse. There comes a denouement in which the birds suddenly sing like spontaneous combustion, and the writer is a good Christian again. Meanwhile, the protagonist in an Andrew Peterson song lies prostrate on the ground, bleating for comfort, wondering why the religious talk sounds hollow and inauthentic. Before my first listen, I watched the promotional video for Counting Stars and was moved to misty eyes when I began to sense the imagery of the primary theme. “God took Abram outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.'”  Genesis 15:5 Hey, that’s the mother bear of all promises, no? And we’ve all been witnesses to the profoundly, unspeakably beautiful way in which he delivered on that promise. Can I get a witness? By the way, this isn’t a review. In all fairness, as of this writing, I haven’t listened to the record enough to provide fair perspective for a review. I like to give myself at least ten listens before I start typing. Because an Andrew Peterson project is so rich–especially this one–I need to double that. So please consider these words as a primer–first impressions, if you will–something to whet your appetite. My first listen to Counting Stars was on a trek through the freshly harvested wheat fields of Kansas last week. It brought back memories of my inaugural listen to Clear to Venus, which occurred on a similar drive to Kansas City, on a parallel track just a few miles to the east. As I slid the CD into the drive, an eagle flew high above a farm pond and a wild patch of cottonwood trees. As Counting Stars began to unfold, my earnest hope was validated. I realized with each line that Counting Stars was a rich celebration of God’s providence and promise. God uses the vehicles of the family and the Church to reveal his love and faithfulness in ways we might understand. And in Counting Stars we have an artful and skillful portrayal of that truth. The great challenge of any writer is to convey the complexity and intensity of emotion over time. There’s something about the passage of time which makes deeply held emotions more meaningful. It’s the difference between infatuation and enduring love. Infatuation is easy; love is hard. And like the final scene in Big Fish or Toy Story 3, the passage of time reminds us of skinned knees and broken hearts which left scars, but have somehow been patched and redeemed with patience, kindness, and forgiveness. The three-month giddy love of a twenty-something couple is cute; the wrinkled hands of Eric Peters’s aged couple in “These Hands” is profoundly moving because we have an idea of what went before, for so long. It was in that context that I realized Andrew Peterson and his buddies were about to tell the tale of the most enduring love story ever told. Further, I realized that they faced a profound challenge. Still, I couldn’t wait to hear them rise to meet it. “Many Roads” starts with a familiar Peterson cadence which he uses when he’s building to something beautiful. This guy knows his audience. He knows we come to his shows expecting something special. We want to hear that story again. And yes, we bring our hopes and fears. We also bring an expectation of a certain humility because that’s what we’ve seen in the heart of this songwriter before. In “Many Roads,” that humble bearing comes in the form of some inside humor and a twist worthy of M. Night Shamalama Ding Dong. I won’t spoil the moment of Act 3. Discover it yourself. I wish you a fraction of the joy I received from it. “Dancing in the Minefields” is a picture of the wide contrast between unmitigated joy and homespun reality. It’s what happens after the honeymoon. Veteran Andrew Peterson fans take note: this project–though wholly original and compelling–is full of nods to earlier AP projects, which is not only fun, but moving. Seek and you will find. One of the first references are the echoes of “Don’t give up on me,” in the background vocals of “Dancing in the Minefields.” It’s a sublime nod (yes, nods can be sublime, thank you) to “Don’t Give Up on Me” the track from Resurrection Letters Vol. 2. This song cleverly meshes promises echoing from earthen vessels with the divine promises made to Abraham and his descendents. “Planting Trees” is a musical cousin to “Windows in the World,” from Resurrection Letters, Vol. 2, with a nearly identical guitar picking pattern, but in a slightly lower key. “Windows in the World” provides lyrical evidence of God in the world; conversely, “Planting Trees” isolates human creation as a reflection of God in the world. As the moon reflects the sun, so believers are called to reflect Christ. Andy uses the metaphor of planting trees to illustrate. This song begins with the universal and moves to the personal, the opposite of “Dancing in the Minefields, which begins with something personal and ends more broadly. “The Magic Hour” is my kind of praise and worship song. It begins with what I thought was a beautiful Ben Shive piano introduction. Turns out, Andy does more keyboarding than usual on this project and it’s his piano playing that we hear. I couldn’t help but think that while others are celebrating happy hour, the writer celebrates “The Magic Hour.” Is there any doubt that the place described in this song is a real place? The beautiful bridge integrates the eternal with the temporal and the divine with humanity. Sara Groves’s harmony, in my mind, symbolizes the integration of the two. “Watching the children laugh” is reminiscent of the line in “Don’t Give up on Me” from Resurrection Letters Vol. 2, about the golden dream with “angel voices in the rooms where the children run, all covered in light.” “World Traveler” takes us on three kinds of journeys, one literal, one figurative, and one eternal. For newbies, please find here exhibit one as evidence for the songwriting wisdom of Andrew Peterson, who routinely consolidates related but separate verses into a literate, consolidated whole. It began with “All the Way Home” from Carried Along, and continues on Counting Stars with “World Traveler.” The “wade into the battle” line could be thought of as a concurrent nod to C.S. Lewis and “Little Boy Heart Alive,” from The Far Country, which contains a similar line. “Isle of Skye” is a microcosm of the simple, elegant production character of Counting Stars. With such rich ingredients, the song doesn’t need to be long, either in words or instrumentation. It may be a decade or more before this little girl understands the depth of the love seeping from each measure of this song, but when it dawns on her, it will be something to behold. This is another Ben Shive arrangement, with the intermittent instrumental spice of John Painter’s horns, David Henry’s cello and violin, and keys from Peterson. If the introductory piano lick sounds vaguely familiar, check out Ben Shive’s “4th of July” from Ill-Tempered Klavier. In fact, you may not be surprised to find more than a few moments that remind you of The Ill-Tempered Klavier, since Ben shares producer credit with Andy Gullahorn. The beauty of these collaborative efforts is the extent to which the whole is enhanced by the contribution of the individual parts. “God of My Fathers” is an ideal theme song for this collection as the promise of the past is realized in the truth of the present. If you don’t have a copy of Carried Along, get one and check out a song called “All the Way Home,” which comes from the same genealogical lyrical line of “God of My Fathers.” Ya wanna feel good? I mean really good? Just lock this inspirational ditty on repeat. You say it’s been years since you’ve danced? This one may just impassion you enough to grab a partner and do-si-do in your living room. But don’t let this song’s perky demeanor make you lose sight of its thankful, prayerful, hopeful, personal wish for generational synchronicity. “Fool with a Fancy Guitar” is a song about who we are in Christ. Rabbit Room readers may wonder if Ron Block was the passive theological influence of this song. He often reminds readers that as believers, we are in Christ, and Christ is in us. In “Fool With a Fancy Guitar,” we find the screaming paradox of faith. Truth isn’t always tidy. Even in God the Father, we find apparent contradictory characteristics, which are also explored in the flagship song “The Reckoning.” “In the Night My Hope Lives On” has an old west vibe underlying its referenced Bible stories: everything from the Old Testament to the prodigal son, prostitutes, and Christ himself. Stuart Duncan’s fiddle is worth whatever they had to pay him. It embellishes, punctuates, and highlights the song. In the fiddle we feel the hopeful tune rising like the mist on the day of resurrection, revealing the victorious, risen Christ. “In the Night My Hope Lives On” is a first cousin–both musically and lyrically–to “High Noon” from Love and Thunder. “You Came So Close” feels so personal that it’s a little uncomfortable to hear. It’s a song about a person who broke his wedding vows. It feels scary, sad, and dark. Apparently, the man finds some measure of redemption, but as the song ends with the echo of the word “hope” we have the sense that the final verse of this song is yet to be written. “The Last Frontier (A Lament)” is another masterpiece (with yet another mountain reference). We inevitably contrast “Nothing to Say” with “The Last Frontier” and despite Andy’s habitual candor–to which I should be accustomed–I am still left with my jaw on the floor. You have never heard the timbre of this man’s voice more stark, deep, and real than on the performance of this song. You think “The Silence of God” from Love and Thunder was full of candor? You haven’t heard anything yet. Benjamin Disraeli said, “There is no wisdom like frankness.” Placing this profoundly mournful song as preparation for the next song,”The Reckoning,” was a good choice indeed. “The Reckoning” starts out with Andrew Osenga’s wandering, pondering electric guitar. Then, as if the writer suddenly summoned the courage to proceed with the boldness of tough questions, it takes off like a rifle shot, with an urgent, arresting tone, a musical intimation that the songwriter means business. It begins with a humble acknowledgment of the power of God. If I were getting ready to pose some of the questions that arise in “The Reckoning,” I think I’d provide a preface of humility too. The perfectly logical questions will no longer be suppressed. Faith without questions isn’t a mature faith. Humans were created with an intellect. So we ask questions like, “How long?” “How long before this curtain is lifted?” “How long before this burden is lifted?” “How long until the reckoning?” The bridge is an intellectual acknowledgment of the paradoxical character of God (the God of Love and Thunder), which we won’t fully understand this side of heaven. Apparently, that’s why they call it faith. “The Same Song” is dedicated to the Square Peg Alliance and the kinship of community that results when believers realize that to some extent, we are all the same. It’s fun hearing references that might only be apparent to those that have supported the SPA as long as some of us around here have. Not surprisingly, we see that the threads which solidify the Pegs are the same threads that inspire those of us who buy the records. Counting Stars is a paradox in that the songwriting is perhaps as personal as we’ve heard from Andrew Peterson. On the other hand, there’s a clear theme which examines the promises and faithfulness of a timeless God working his will in time and through humanity. Andrew Peterson’s most dedicated supporters understand his gift for writing poetically, with thoughtful double entendres and rich literary allusions. Still, despite being written and recorded expeditiously, the project may turn out to be as fertile as any of his projects, with levels, vistas, and perspectives which overwhelm our senses. Counting Stars is a love letter to someone and everyone. It’s personal, yet universal. It’s candid and clear, yet mysterious. It illustrates a promise made and a promise fulfilled. The stars Abraham saw when God made the Promise are the same stars that guided the three wise men to Jesus, the same stars our fathers and grandfathers witnessed on the night that we were born. Those stars represent the faithfulness of the one true God, the Father of the risen Christ, who loves and redeems us despite our rebellious nature and our intermittent unbelief. Pre-order the album here.

While I was happy with “Better Way To Live” as a pretty solid pop/rock song built around one of the hookier choruses I had at the time, it wasn’t necessarily a song that I was particularly passionate about including on the new record.  I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, but I think maybe it felt to me like a song that I would have expected from my previous record, and I wanted to go to new places.  It also didn’t hit me as an especially singer/songwriter kind of lyric.  But everyone else involved in the project was really excited about the song and it seemed like it could be a potential single, so it made the cut.  It’s the kind of song I rarely do well: a punchy pop/rock song with few words and a big old hooky chorus. I wrote it with my friend Chad Cates and have been blessed to find that my lack of enthusiasm was misplaced as I’ve gotten numerous emails back from people who are fans of this song in particular.  I love being wrong in cases like this. It turned out to be one of the songs that the players were most excited about and even Jason Ingram, the producer, told me afterward that this song was his favorite drum performance.  I think for the players the song provided the best opportunity for a groove to happen and their enthusiasm and investment in it elevated the merit of the song in my mind, making me grateful for it’s inclusion. I loved Gabe Scott’s dulcimer and lap steel flourishes, too.  Paul Mabury, an amazing drummer from Australia, set up his flip camera to record his performance while we were tracking and sent it to me.  Hearing/seeing this song from the perspective of the drum room gives me a different perception of the song.  Watching Paul play this brings back good memories, I remember how wore out he was after this track – he laid into it, giving every hit everything he had in order to get the tone he wanted.  Here’s his video, I hope you enjoy it! Better Way To Live Jason Gray and Chad Cates How long have you been dreaming Of a life bigger than the one you lead Your hurt has left you guarded But hope is tugging at your sleeve You were meant for something more All I know is there’s a better way to live We were made for so much more than this It’s not the love you have but the love you have to give All I know is there’s a better way A better way to live All my life looking in the mirror Praying for the will and wings to fly But when I saw the world out my window With a broken heart I came alive Cause I was made for something more Chorus When we step aside From the center of our lives When we learn to love mercy More than being right Pursuing peace and honesty Starting down the road of selflessness And seeing where it leads Chorus

Folks, I don’t know if you remember Allen Levi’s previous posts here in the Rabbit Room, so I’ll reintroduce you. He’s a southern gentleman from Columbus, Georgia, a singer/songwriter, a lay farmer (if there is such a thing) and is one of my all-time favorite people. In light of Lanier Ivester’s recent post about work and art, I thought it was appropriate to steal this post from Allen’s blog. (Also, since I happen to know Allen’s at least 12 feet tall, that makes the pictured sunflower a freak of nature.) ——————— I taught Sunday School this morning for the high school class. It was me and one student, a bright and inquisitive 10th grader named Kiana. We talked about heaven, in keeping with our lesson text from 1 Thessalonians K: “What do you think we’ll do there?” Me: “It’s hard to know isn’t it, but i rather think that we’ll work.” K: “You think we’ll work in heaven? I thought there wasn’t supposed to be anything unpleasant or difficult there.” Me: “Well, maybe work isn’t unpleasant or difficult. We were created to work, and its original design was one of blessing. Think about it; do you remember when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, before they disobeyed God and ate the fruit? When everything was still good and God walked with them every day? Before there was any sin in the world?” K: “Yes.” Me: “That was life in a still-perfect world, wasn’t it?” K: “Yes.” Me: “And what did Adam and Eve do then? How did they spend their days? They worked. They had a job. They were caretakers of the creation around them. In Genesis it says that ‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.’ And the work was good, pleasurable, God-honoring. I think we could say that it was even worshipful.” K: “Okay.” Me: “But then Adam and Eve messed up, right? And after sin had entered the world, then, and only then did work become cursed, a hardship, a grind. It is pure conjecture on my part but maybe, in heaven, work is restored to what it is supposed to be and it will be a part of our life there. It’s hard to imagine how good it might be, but even now, there are days that I labor and have a deep sense of love for it, whether it’s songwriting work or weeding the garden. And maybe, in some way, that’s why we’re told to work with all our hearts at whatever we do; because it might help to prepare us for our return to the Garden, to ‘Paradise Regained.’ Anyway, it’s just a thought.” I sleep really well at nights in the present routine. A short bit of reading is usually all it takes to put me under.

This says it better than I’ve ever heard anyone say it. From Biblical Ethics: The Bible does not deal with sin as a disease; it does not deal with the outcome of sin, it deals with the disposition of sin itself. The disposition of sin is what our Lord continually faced, and it is this disposition that the Atonement removes. Immediately our evangelism loses sight of this fundamental doctrine of the disposition of sin and deals only with external sins, it leaves itself open to ridicule. We have cheapened the doctrine of sin and made the Atonement a sort of moral “lavatory” in which men can come and wash themselves from sin, and then go and sin again and come back for another washing. This is the doctrine of the Atonement: “Him who knew no sin” (not sins)—Him who had not the disposition of sin, who refused steadfastly, and to the death on Calvary, to listen to the temptations of the prince of this world, who would not link Himself on with the ruling disposition of humanity, but came to hew a way single-handed through the hard face of sin back to God—“He made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (rv). The disposition of sin that rules our human nature is not suppressed by the Atonement, not sat on, not cabined and confined, it is removed. Human nature remains unaltered, but the hands and eyes and all our members that were used as the servants of the disposition of sin can be used now as servants of the new disposition (see Romans 6:13). Then comes the glorious necessity of militant holiness. Beware of the teaching that allows you to sink back on your oars and drift; the Bible is full of pulsating, strenuous energy. From the moment a man is readjusted to God then begins the running, being careful that “the sin which doth so easily beset us”does not clog our feet. I believe that God so radically, so gloriously, and so comprehensively copes with sin in the Atonement that He is more than master of it, and that a practical experience of this can take place in the life of anyone who will enter into identification with what Jesus Christ did on the Cross. What is the good of saying, “I believe in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world” if you cannot answer the blunt question, “What has He saved you from?” The test is not in theories and theologies, but in practical flesh and blood experience. Jesus Christ is our Saviour because He saves us from sin, radically altering the ruling disposition. Anyone who has been in contact with the Lord when He alters the ruling disposition knows it, and so do others. But there is a painful, tremendous repentance first. The whole teaching of the Bible on the human side is based on repentance. The only repentant man is the holy man, and the only holy man is the one who has been made so by the marvel of the Atonement. And here comes the wonder—let the blunders of lives be what they may, let hereditary tendencies be what they like, let wrongs and evils crowd as they will, through the Atonement there is perfect readjustment to God, perfect forgiveness, and the gift of a totally new disposition which will manifest itself in the physical life just as the old disposition did (see Romans 6:19). Jesus Christ comes as the last Adam to take away the abnormal thing (which we call natural), the disposition of my right to myself, and He gives us a new disposition, viz., His own heredity of unsullied holiness, Holy Spirit.

(Note: I wrote this post after the release of The Happening two years ago. I thought it might be interesting to continue the conversation now that Shymalan has again sabotaged his once-promising career.) M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, The Happening, opened this past weekend and as a big fan of most of his work, I made sure I was there on opening day to see it. When I left the theater, I was dumbfounded. I was shocked and horrified. Is it that good? Well…no, it’s that bad. It’s a train wreck, a film so inconsistent, so incoherent, so poorly shot, edited, directed, and resolved, so carelessly crapped onto the screen that it’s a mystery to me how it came out of the same creative well as movies like The Sixth Sense and Signs. Something has gone seriously awry in the land of Shyamalan. Why is this happening? First let me tell you why I like Shyamalan’s work. It’s very distinct, and no, I don’t mean it’s marked by a ‘twist’ at the end. I think his success with The Sixth Sense unfairly set up an expectation that all of his films would have that same sort of shocking reveal in the third act. When I say distinct, I mean in style. His dialogue (full of pregnant pauses), framing (long reaction shots), and pacing (slow burn) are all very recognizable, very quirky, and for the most part (for me) very enjoyable. And then there are his undeniable spiritual themes and focus on character detail. I could dial in the Theolo-vision(tm) on his movies all day long. His rise started with The Sixth Sense, a movie I admired for its cleverness and execution but didn’t really care for on any emotional level. It wasn’t until Unbreakable that I realized that Shyamalan was someone whose work I was going to get attached to. Unbreakable was not only truly unique, it was emotionally powerful. There are all sorts of truths in it about embracing who we are born to be, becoming the hero within, that sort of thing. Of course, it starred Samuel L. Jackson too, and seriously, how can you not love that guy? Then there was Signs. This is one I can watch again and again and again. It’s just a great movie. Well acted, well directed, well written. And it had to be, because if it hadn’t been all of those things, then the entire film could have collapsed under that huge logical problem of aliens invading a planet made up of 70% water, a substance that is lethal to them. I mean seriously, all they had to do was wait for it to rain. But that didn’t matter to most of us because we cared about the people in the movie, the aliens were just a device providing conflict for the greater story of a man’s struggle with his own faith. The Village is my favorite of his films and one of my all-time favorite movies period. It awed me and moved me to tears the first time I saw it and it gets richer and deeper with every viewing. It’s just a stunningly beautiful film. I’d love to have a poster of the shot of Ivy’s hand held out into the darkness as the monsters are coming and she refuses to withdraw because she knows Lucius will come for her. And when he does, at the last possible moment, and that incredible violin piece in the score plays…wow, it’s just transcendent. Once again, it works because I care so deeply for Ivy and Lucius that I’m willing to trust the storyteller to take me anywhere so long as he remembers to come back to what’s actually at stake. On the heels of that, I couldn’t imagine what on earth he could do to top it. Lady in the Water was his attempt, and the beginning of his fall.I wanted to love this movie and in some individual parts, I did.But it didn’t hold water (har-har).It was too many pieces trying to fit into a cohesive whole.The mythology was too foreign, too complex, the characters were too many to get to know individually.At the end of the day, it didn’t work because I didn’t care enough about anyone and, in my indifference, I was left to see the holes in the rest of the film. Some people may not have heard what happened during the making of the film. From what I’ve read, a lot of people told Shyamalan that the film had serious problems but he ignored their advice. Sometimes, I think the best thing an artist can do is ignore the critics and go his own way, but sometimes the critics are right. This was such a case. There was a good film lurking in the script but Shyamalan smothered it. On one hand I applaud him for going his own way, but on the other, I wish he’d listened to the people that tried to advise him otherwise because I feel like we, the audience, were robbed of a good story. Okay, he stumbled. He put out a stinker. No problem, happens to us all. Time for the comeback. The Happening.The movie starts out wonderfully.It’s creepy.It’s a great set up.It’s got everywhere in the world to go. But all those quirky shots and that stilted dialogue that worked so many times before are broken in the extreme here.I can see how this movie was supposed to work conceptually, I can imagine it taking form in his brain, I can see what he wanted and where he wanted it to go but it didn’t translate onto the screen at all.The performances are bad across the board, the dialogue is almost pure exposition, shots are framed wrong, cut together wrong, it’s funny where it should be frightening, and eye-rolling when it tries to be funny, it tries to be scientific but is so full of logical problems that you can’t buy into it on any level. Outside of two or three creepy shot sequences, the film is completely broken. It’s Battlefield Earth broken, Mystery Science Theater 3000 broken. By the end, I almost felt like it was bad on purpose. There is a scene with an old woman near the climax that is so bizarre that I honestly had no idea whether it was supposed to be funny or disturbing. And when we finally do get to the climax of the story, it’s supposed to be emotional, but it’s not. We don’t care anything about the characters. I don’t blame the actors for this, Zoe Deschanel and Mark Wahlberg are fine actors. I blame the director. It’s the director’s job to see the performances and know whether or not they are working. So I want my Shyamalan back. What’s the solution here? Here’s my advice, I think it’s time to get back to basics. Forget all the weird set-ups and get back to making movies about people, about how they act and interact. Maybe it’s time to collaborate. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Some smart guy said that once. Personal style is well and good but maybe it’s time for Shymalan to step outside his own little box and relearn some things. If you can sell a relationship between two people (and he has) then you can take your audience anywhere. Forget about selling the premise, sell the people in it. If you want me to care about Mark Wahlberg walking across a field to die with the woman he loves, then I need to believe he loves her more than anything else on earth. I can’t even remember her name. That’s how much I cared. It would be really be interesting to sit in a room with M. Night and watch The Happening with him just so I could pause it every few seconds to ask him what on EARTH he was thinking. How can a person that has clearly demonstrated an understanding of cinema put together a film that misfires at every opportunity? Hopefully the experience of making something as abominable as The Happening will be a catalyst for some sort of creative rebirth. I’ll still look forward to his next film because I think he’s capable of more goodness like The Village and Signs but I don’t know how his career can stand another event like The Happening.

My little sister and her husband are painters. They’ve dreamed of careers in art since they were children. And it’s with much more than a sisterly bias that I can say they are both extremely talented. With an enviable ardor they packed up and left everything they had ever known not six months after they were married to go and study at the legendary Art Student’s League in New York City. There they managed to get into a class taught by one of the world masters of realistic painting, a class which usually has a waiting list years long. And so, living happily and simply in a tiny apartment, working part-time jobs and prowling the Met all they can, they pursue what they love every single day. All under the banner of their indefatigable motto: Hard Work and High Spirits. I have never had the slightest doubt that my sister would succeed as a painter. I know her—her drive, her zeal for true beauty, her precision and skill and devotion. She’s never been afraid of the work involved. She’s never retreated before the scorn of critics who were too enamored with the new and edgy to appreciate the divine, ‘old masters’ look of her paintings. But it has always taken me off guard to be reminded of her confidence in me as a writer. She was the one who listened with shining eyes to those first fanciful, overly-eloquent stories and loved the bit of my soul they revealed. And she is the one today who treats me as a fellow artist, and views my scribblings and yearnings with the same gravity as she does her own portrait work and gallery pieces. Introducing me to someone at a party once, she said, ‘This is my sister, Lanier. She’s a writer.’ In one moment, in one small sentence, she declared her faith in me. I was so overjoyed I wanted to hug her on the spot. She had called me what I had been afraid to call myself, and it somehow made it true. I was a writer—not because I had published books or won awards, but because the unique stamp of God’s image on my personality was ‘the pen of a ready writer’. Because I wrote. She told me that night without a word: “You want to be a writer? Then the first person you have to convince is yourself.” It was Liz who finally persuaded me to make my writing a daily part of life. A priority of the highest order, not a treat to be relished when every other possible task had been attended to; a ritual as regular and dear as my devotions and my homemaking. But it was her husband, Marshall, who first suggested ‘The Contest’. Part of the self-generated ‘Art Revolution’ that he and Liz were championing in their own lives involved a minimum of thirty minutes’ drawing per day. Focused sketching for the purpose of honing the foundation of their painting. Recognizing the natural human tendency to strive for excellence when the stakes were high, he made me a proposition the summer before they left for New York. If I would write for half-an-hour a day, he would sketch for the same. At the end of the month we would tally up our hours, and the winner would be entitled to a favor of any description from the loser. I laughingly accepted the challenge. But at the end of the first month—during which I had written more than all the past several months put together—I was amazed. As Marshall said, “It really is surprising how prolific you can become with even a short daily commitment.” He was right. And with those faithful, daily doses, goaded onward by the spice of friendly competition, writing had become the priority that I had always wished it to be. No more dreaming of some magically uncommitted time in my life to hole up and dash out the next great novel, but real, integral writing intentionally squeezed into a full life simply because I couldn’t not do it. We exchanged all kinds of daring banter that summer. Marshall laboriously glued back together some impossibly delicate demitasse cups of mine. I toiled over a pair of dress pants tailored to his specifications. Early on in our challenge Liz reminded me of the great motto emblazoned over the door of the Art Student’s League and they became my standard: Nulla Dies Sine Linea. Not a day without a line. The prerequisite for the artist’s life. Before they moved away, Liz and Marshall took a week-long camping trip with my husband and me in our 1962 Airstream trailer. It was a precious time made all the more dear by their impending departure—looking back it seems I savored the best moments with a lump in my throat. In the late afternoons we’d settle in our camp with the sunset gathering beyond House Mountain to the west and spilling its radiance over the temperate corner of the Shenandoah Valley we were privileged to call our own for the week.  Enveloped in a silence so perfect it seemed enchanted, we would give ourselves over to artistic pursuits. I remember typing madly in my sling back chair, a cup of tea close at hand. Liz was beside me committing her own thoughts to paper and Philip was stretched out in the trailer with Walden or a notepad of what Liz dubbed ‘life thoughts’. Marshall set up his easel facing the beloved view that greeted us each morning: the old barn, the vegetable garden bejeweled with tomatoes and peppers and tasseled with golden corn, the winding drive with the willow at the bend. I will never forget the sweet compatibility of those hours as we strove together for expression in words and in paint. Silently minding our endeavors as darkness fell; an almost holy pause before the hilarity of the evening ensued, when sparks would fly heavenward from our campfire and laughter would ring out upon the uncanny stillness of the night.  It was a solitude of perfect unity, a joyful seclusion in the haven of true understanding. It hardly seemed possible that such harmony could exist this side of heaven. Not long after we returned I went over Liz and Marshall’s apartment to help them pack. It was so awfully surreal to be wrapping their wedding presents and books and stashing them in boxes for a destination I couldn’t even picture. I fumbled about for words to tell them how proud I was, how much I admired their faith in their calling. But I kept tripping over how dreadfully I was going to miss them. “Don’t!” Liz warned me, catching sight of my brimming eyes. I swallowed hard and started bundling paintings in towels and sliding them into long boxes. But there was one painting that I couldn’t package with the others. It was a small one, six by eight, of a tin-roofed barn, a garden tossing with corn, a bend in the road and mountains beyond. I was still holding it rather hesitantly when Marshall came in. He grinned. “That’s one of Beetle’s favorites.” ‘Beetle’ is his term of utmost affection for my sister, and I remembered plainly how she had appropriated that painting when it was hardly dry, mounted on an easel in the Shenandoah Valley. “You still owe me one—for August, you know.” I held the painting a little closer. “Call it even?” Marshall shrugged and looked at Liz. “It’s up to Beetle.” Liz stopped piling clothes in a box and frowned slightly. “Permanent loan,” she decreed. “Until he can replace it with another one.” I was happy and carried my little painting home in triumph. I propped it on the bookshelf, where I’d see it more often than any place else in the house. That was almost five years ago, now, and Liz and Marshall each have distinguished themselves with a résumé of awards and scholarships and residencies as long as their respective arms, not to mention a body of work literally heartbreaking in its beauty and humanity. But their challenge rings just as true as ever: the bone and marrow of the artists’ life is lines. Words, notes, brushstrokes. One after another. Every single day.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” Psalm 23:4 “Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.” Frederick Buechner Do not fear. Those three words are at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Before he enters into our wrecked lives we have good reason to fear. Before his grace restores us we are a ruin, a foggy graveyard in the dead of night. We’re too lost even to ask for direction, too feeble to beg for help. We may be wealthy, successful, beautiful, even happy–but we know that our deepest heart is a wasteland, a vast, black emptiness of stone and sorrow. To know that emptiness is to be afraid, and that fear is good. That’s the kind of fear that leads to humility, the kind of helplessness that leads to repentance. But once we’ve heard the Lion roar, once we’ve felt the earth tremble beneath his feet as he strides through the valley of death to gather us up, when we have looked into his loving eyes and seen the forges of heaven there, when we have finally stopped running, when we have given up and have at last let him heal us where we’re truly broken, everything changes. The wasteland is green. The graveyard is a garden. Our senses sometimes tell us otherwise, and it’s hard to believe, but faith gives us eyes to see his invisible face, ears to hear his silent voice. Those walking in darkness have seen a great light, said the prophet Isaiah of Jesus’ triumphant arrival. Here is a great mystery: that very light lives in us. In the streets of our Bethlehem, a child has been born. On the hill of our sin a man has been crucified. In the garden tomb of our hearts that man has risen and proved that he was also God all along. What have we to fear? Nothing. Yea, though I walk through the grief of my loss, through the confusion of my suffering, through the powerful sadness of getting out of bed when all seems lost, I will not fear, for he is with me. As I walk through the city, as I struggle to follow, as I pay my bills, as I fill my tank and feed my children, I will not fear. Though enemies plot, though the bombs are tested, though the nations rage, though all Hell break loose–I will not fear. He is with me. Of all the gifts he came to bring–forgiveness, restoration, love, purpose, beauty, mercy–the one that defines our daily life in him is peace. Peace. We have nothing to fear. The maker of all things dwells within us. That idea is too wonderful, too mysterious for one sentence to contain, so it bears repeating: God himself–somehow–inhabits us. Why should we cower behind locked doors? Why should we fear men? Why should we let anxiety steal our joy? When the angel appeared to Mary it said “Don’t be afraid.” When they appeared to the shepherds they said, “Don’t be afraid.” At the transfiguration Jesus said, “Arise, and do not fear.” When the angel appeared at the tomb it said, “Do not fear.” Again and again God tells us the same thing: fear not. Rest. Hide if you like. He’ll find you. Cower like the apostles after Jesus’ death. They locked the doors and drew the shades and trembled in the dark–and who can blame them? But deadbolts are no trouble for Jesus, who walks through walls. What were the first words out of his mouth when he dropped in on his old friends in that locked room? “Peace be with you.” And then, after he showed them his scars? “Peace to you.” What did he say the next Sunday when he surprised Thomas? “Peace to you.” It’s as if, fresh from the tomb, toes still wet from his walk through the dewy grass, there was one thing he couldn’t wait to tell them: “You don’t have to be afraid anymore. Of anything, ever again. Rest easy, children. It is finished.”

Congratulations to my little (but taller) brother, Andrew Peterson. The second book in his acclaimed Wingfeather Saga, North! Or Be Eaten, went into the ring tonight to contend for the 2010 Christy Award in Young Adult Fiction and emerged victorious. The Christy Awards honor the best in Christian fiction in nine categories. From the official announcement: North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson In Book Two of the WINGFEATHER SAGA, escape with Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby as they flee north, to the Ice Prairies, where they will be safe from the cruel Fangs of Dang. But first they have to survive the dangers along the way—and the dangers within themselves. Andrew Peterson delivers more breathtaking adventure in this tale for all ages. Andrew Peterson is the author of Christy finalist On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, Book One in the WINGFEATHER SAGA, and The Ballad of Matthew’s Begats. He’s also the critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter and recording artist of ten albums. He and his wife live with their two sons and one daughter near Nashville, Tennessee. (Do I smell a nomination for Jonathan Rogers next year?)

It’s been a long time since I’ve written here– busy and filled with a lot of transition in my family’s life. We are in the process of relocating to Nashville, and we’re super excited about it. That season of transition has had a lot to do with my radio silence here. As I’ve thought about starting up the old blog post engine again, I’ve wondered what might flow forth first. Would it be what God has taught me during a major vocational move in my late 30’s? Would it maybe be a celebration of fifteen years of marriage to a wonderful woman? (Love you, Lisa!) Would it be a boast, dressed up in a pre-release review, concerning the fact that I have had Andrew Peterson’s upcoming record, Counting Stars, for a couple months now and I think it is ABSOLUTELY TOP SHELF! (Because it is.) Nope. I just want to ask an honest question about 3D movies. Do you prefer 3D over regular old 2D films when you are given the option? I do not. I have to confess I have driven 15 miles to the smaller theater across town just to see a movie the megaplex a mile from  my house has, but only in 3D. I’m trying to understand what it is about 3D that turns me off, but I’m telling you I really don’t like it. Maybe it is because I have never been a glasses wearer, so the apparatus throws me off. Maybe it is that most 3D films today are ones I see with kids whose heads are just barely big enough to hold those suckers on. Maybe it is the upcharge and I’m just too cheap to get over the fact that the theater has found a way to make the cost of a movie even higher than they’re already asking. Maybe. But in all honesty, I think the problem is that what film companies call 3D doesn’t look 3D to me. It looks layered, like what you used to see through the old ViewMaster toy, but not deep. And I think it does something to my brain that causes me to process the information my eyes are taking in differently than standard 2D. I feel distracted pretty much the entire time the film is playing, as if my mind is trying to process too much information at one time, leaving little margin to really enter in to the story itself. I don’t know. And I’d love to hear your input on this, because as it stands, it seems like half the movies I have been excited to see this summer are coming out in 3D, and I’m sort of bummed about the prospect of seeing “Dawn Treader” in 3D. I think my major issue is that I don’t feel like I need that extra dimension to take in what I’m seeing. Well shot films never leave me wishing I could have seen it with cheap glasses putting that tree I already know is in the distance “actually” in the distance. Our minds learn to fill in what the screen lacks, and I contend that for the most part we take in 2D films in a more genuinely three dimensional way than a film shot in 3D offers. Am I alone? Am I missing something?

My friend Justin Taylor, over at a great blog called Between Two Worlds, recently posted this video about C.S. Lewis, and I thought you guys might find it as interesting as I did. It may be because I’m prone to believe anything if it’s said in a suave British accent, but I really think there may be something to this. Lewis was a man of formidable intellect and education, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to find that he was following a planetary mythology with the Narnia books. If it’s true, there’s something wonderfully boyish about the fact that he kept this undergirding a happy secret, something for his own nerdy satisfaction. In a MUCH less intelligent/awesome way I’ve enjoyed peppering my lyrics and stories over the years with elusive references, internal rhymes, and/or meanings that are only noticed and appreciated by a few people, if any at all. I don’t mind being the only guy who knows. I haven’t read the book, but this little clip makes me want to. Kind of. I wonder if it would be better not to look behind the curtain?

You hear a word, see a color or come across a concept that, for you, is not part of your routine and suddenly you notice you can’t stop noticing it. It is everywhere: on everyone’s lips; on the morning news; now in the story you’ve read ten times before; at the airport on a woman’s handbag. So many people are wearing orange lately. Has it always been like this? Am I just now starting to notice? It’s ubiquitous. Perhaps serendipitous. Carl Jung called it synchronicity.  Everyday psychology calls it selective attention or perceptual vigilance. It sounds like you should seek professional help when you call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Resistance has been the theme running through my life for the past few months and I don’t expect it to cease, now that I’m on to it. When Baader-Meinhof strikes, someone is trying to tell you something and you better take note. It showed up first as a word, then as a concept, then a physical fact and now as a growing appreciation for just how beneficial it can be. It’s been fun trying to spot it—á la Where’s Waldo—but in the fun are those Emmausian epiphanies I’m hoping to catch before the moment is over. “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” It was writ large in my mind through music first, from Muse’s 2009 album The Resistance, on which the title track declares “love is our resistance” against forces trying to split apart lovers. Hmmm … love is resistance. When limiting or otherwise getting in the way of a force, how often am I resisting in love and with love? Music often lays down the backing track for my life, but I didn’t expect an encounter with the cleverly goofy band Everybody Was In The French Resistance … Now to keep pressing the concept of resisting upon me. No songs on their only album to-date specifically address resistance as a topic, but their band’s mission is resistance. As they say, they are “correcting the mistakes of pop songs past” by telling the points-of-view of other characters in some of our more well-known pop songs. Sometimes speaking up for a point-of-view is an act of resistance. A few months ago in the dead of winter, I went into the gym with more dedication than ever before.  About that time I was also reading Adam Gopnik’s accounts of raising his young family in New York City.  He observed the differences between the Running Fathers who jog around Central Park and the Motionless Mothers who sit to get fit in the city’s yoga studios. While turning the two groups into metaphors for a Life Lesson, he tells of a yoga master’s disdain toward all those who are bouncing, dancing and jogging for their health. “All that matters to the body (and, so the hidden corollary runs, to the soul, as well) is resistance. That is what the body is made to learn from, and all that it is made to learn from.” Gopnik remarked, “The theory is impeccable, or at least persuasive. Muscles learn only from failure, like French schoolchildren, and they can be made to fail only by repeated stress slowly applied.” Hmmm … here I am in the gym a few days a week, choosing to stress my body and make resistance situations for it, and then I go home to relax with a book only to read about exactly what I just did. By spring, I started wondering if anything in life was NOT a picture of le resistance? Buds bursting open to keep trees alive. Young robins learning to harness and even push back against an invisible, necessary power swirling all around them. Our 10-year old child asserting herself more and more, with seemingly more dramatic crises per day than even Shakespeare would spread across five acts. The muddle at church on a Sunday morning; the spousal missteps; the way writing-as-work leads to revising, editing and back to more writing. I’ve got to get this all down. It’s too prevalent to ignore anymore and I think it’s doing a good work in me. I’m aware, too, that I resist. As a phenomenon, it isn’t always something that comes to you; you can create it. You can use it for good or use it to block a growth process intended to transform you more into His likeness. In some cases, I am still resisting and that’s not a good thing. One way to resist can be to force disagreements away from you–“clearing the room of argument” as Bono is fond of saying–by both pushing others away and encouraging only the like-minded to stick around. A room emptied of argument arrests the creative energy needed for the lasting works of art, politics and love that will change the world. It’s because of the power and pervasiveness of it that I am starting The Chronicles of Resistance here for not just me, but for anyone who can contribute an entry. I bet I’m not the only one. Andrew, The Proprietor, and I met in Xenia, Ohio. I was his driver. He invited me into The Rabbit Room and I’m happy to be here and am encouraged by what’s going on. (Greetings, fellow warren-dwellers.) I’ll write on other things too under different headings, but for these chronicles, I wonder: How is resistance helping or hindering you in your acts of worship, fellowship, art, family and life? And if you haven’t thought about it lately, just keep trying to not think about it.

Once upon a time I was riding in a car full of working men (funny how that has a totally different connotation with girls) and the subject of what to listen to on the radio was being hotly debated. It quickly became clear that the majority of the car preferred music of the country variety to which I replied, “Oh, I’ve got one for you. Check out this song by Andy Gullahorn. It’s all about country music.” So I plugged in my iPod, played the song and waited for the laughter. It never came. Each of them sat and listened with suspicious and curious expressions until the song was over. “It’s funny, see? Don’t you get it?” I said. They all looked at each other and shrugged and frowned at me as if I were the one on the outside of the joke. As if to offer me some comfort, the guy sitting beside me said, “I don’t know, man, but I sure like that part about the workin’ man.” True story. I swear. “Workin’ Man” by Andy Gullahorn

From Screwtape: “The enchantment of unsatisfied desire produces results which the humans can be made to mistake for the results of charity. Avail yourself of the ambiguity in the word ‘Love’: let them think they have solved by Love problems they have in fact only waived or postponed under the influence of the enchantment….” “The erotic enchantment produces a mutual complaisance in which each is really pleased to give in to the wishes of the other. They also know that the Enemy demands of them a degree of charity which, if attained, would result in similar actions. You must make them establish as a Law for their whole married life that degree of mutual self-sacrifice which is at present sprouting naturally out of the enchantment, but which, when the enchantment dies away, they will not have charity enough to enable them to perform. They will not see the trap, since they are under the double blindness of mistaking sexual excitement for charity and of thinking that the excitement will last.” “Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as ‘one flesh.’ He did not say ‘a happily married couple’ or ‘a couple who married because they were in love’, but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes ‘one flesh’. You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of ‘being in love’ what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call ‘being in love’ is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy…In other words, the humans are to be encouraged to regard as the basis for marriage a highly-coloured and distorted version of something the Enemy really promises as its result.” From George MacDonald: “While one is yet only in love, the real person lies covered with the rose leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person. A thousand fancies fly out, approach and cross, but never meet. The man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity. But though at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, their contact points are the merest brushings, as of insect antennae. The real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true . . . to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being! They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitness of temperament, be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.” “The negative and positive relation we live daily causes us to emerge from beneath the rose leaves and penetrate each other so as to have really seen and be seen. It takes the negative to arouse each of us from our sleep . . . But the miracle of love that comes to birth each time forgiveness appears is truly the kiss of the spirit.”

There was this guy, and he cared about the environment. He never threw mostly-empty paint cans in the trash when he was finished with a painting project. “Paint is bad for the environment,” he said. “It goes in the landfill, it ends up in the groundwater.” So he put his old paint cans in the shed to await the day when he could carry them to the paint disposal place across town. All his friends said, “Listen—all you’ve got to do is to throw your old paint cans in the trash, put some garbage on top. The trash men will carry them right off. They’ll never know the difference.” The guy said, “You like drinking paint, do you?” “Pardon?” his friends said. “You like drinking paint? That’s what you’ll be doing if everybody throws their paint cans in the trash. It gets in the groundwater, you know.” His friends went away chastened. The years went by, and the guy repainted rooms, touched up the shutters, re-did the trim. The paint cans piled in his shed—a dozen, two dozen and more. “You’re crazy,” his friends said. “Just throw these paint cans in the trash—a few this week, a few next week, a few the week after that. They’ll be gone in no time.” “I’m not a polluter,” the guy said. “Then take them to the paint disposal place,” his friends said. “Who wants old paint cans taking over his shed?” “I’m going to take them to the paint disposal place,” the guy said, with a firmness that quailed his friends and cheered his heart. More years passed. The pile of old paint cans grew ever higher, so great was the guy’s conviction. In the fullness of time, the guy sold his house. Moving day approached, and he thought of the mountain of old paint cans in his shed. “I am not a polluter,” the guy said. “In all these long years, I have never thrown a paint can in the garbage. Not one!” His voice trembled with more conviction than ever. “I am a busy man, and a good one. I am moving, for crying out loud! And the paint disposal place is many miles away.” So under the cover of darkness he loaded all the paint cans in a borrowed truck and placed them—quietly, quietly—in the nearest construction dumpster.

There’s an aspect of writing that I often struggle with in which I find that my own style is reshaped by whatever or whomever I happen to be reading at the time. I’ll write a passage one day and when I peruse it the next I’ll discover that, like the skin of a chameleon, it’s taken on the rhythm, structure, or vocabulary of someone else. For instance, I began writing The Fiddler’s Gun almost immediately after reading Frederick Buechner’s Godric and in the end I had to completely rewrite the first few chapters because they had the same archaic and often yoda-like sentence structure as Godric. It was fun to write but it certainly didn’t fit the tone of the book. It wasn’t really my writing–I was parroting, riffing off of a better author. I find that this sort of thing happens to me all the time and often wonder where the line is between influence and imitation. Last week I started re-reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. It’s a magnificent western with a very distinct style and voice that I suspect only McCarthy can rightly pull off. Yet in the last couple of days as I’m writing a section of Fiddler’s Green that takes Fin on horseback through a desert country, I find that it’s almost impossible not to fall back on inspiration from McCarthy. Here’s an example: McCarthy (from Blood Meridian): “In the evening they came out upon a mesa that overlooked all the country to the north. The sun to the west lay in a holocaust where there rose a steady column of small desert bats and to the north along the trembling perimeter of the world dust was blowing down the void like the smoke of distant armies. The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor.” The Chameleon (from Fiddler’s Green – first draft): “Through the night they rode on. Fin nodded in and out of sleep. At times she awoke to the lunatic yap of jackals that moved like grey wraiths flitting between the rocks as the horse stepped sidewise and rolled its eye in fear. Once she started awake thinking she heard the low roll of drums and to the south she saw, lit by a sliver of moon, an endless congregation of antelope that moved across the nighted plain raising a cloud of dust behind them that swallowed the stars and turned the moon paler yet and rusty brown as a scrape of ruined iron. Near dawn, in that fabled darkest hour, she raised her head again and saw to the north the passage of sails. They hovered over the deep like a parade of phantom cavaliers tilted upon hellish steeds. Razor-tipped lances plowed the way before them. They passed in waves, ranks upon ranks of ghostly warlords bent toward the coming dawn as if to impale the sun itself and set it atop a spike in the blackened sky.” See what I mean? I could do the same thing with passages from Tolkien, Milton(!), Buechner, Wangerin and half a dozen more. During the editing process I have to go back through passages like this and trim them, reshape them to make sure it’s A.S. Peterson who’s writing and not just some aspiring Cormac McCarthy imitator. I tend to feel like an idiot when I see this happening but then I look around and realize that it occurs in other disciplines as well. Andrew has songs that clearly invoke other artists like Marc Cohn and Rich Mullins. Filmmakers like Tarantino have made stunning careers out of paying homage to those who have come before. I suppose it’s true that to varying extents we’re all “standing on the shoulders of giants.” This illustrates plainly, I think, the great importance not only of reading but of reading well. What would my writing look like if I spent my downtime blowing through Twilight, or The Lost Symbol instead of Paradise Lost, The Book of the Dun Cow, the poetry of Wendell Berry, or the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. If the authors I read are going to have such a shaping effect on my own work, then by all means let it be the greats I’m reading rather than the penny dreadfuls. So the key is in finding a balance between what you are creating and what inspires the creation. Rely too much on the latter and you are left with a hodge-podge of imitation rather than a work of your own. But hopefully, during the process one finds a synthesis that enables a new tapestry to emerge from old thread. Does anyone else experience this sort of chameleonism? How do you combat or embrace it?

. . .because I’m about to post about the Twilight Series! When you are finished gasping please note that no, I haven’t actually read them. No, I probably won’t. And no, I don’t have a hugely literary opinion upon them other than knowing that every person I know who has read them has nothing to say in their defense. My checkout girl at Whole Foods yesterday leaned across the counter and whispered the fact that she was reading them. Couldn’t admit it out loud. I even heard of one guy who put the book down three pages before the end because he just didn’t care. Can you imagine? What I am going to say about these infamous books is that gazillions of girls (and grown women) are a bit gaga over them, and it is this phenomenon upon which I will opine. I read a Christian review recently that attributed Twilight’s popularity to the fact that all women have a selfish lust for worship, and that Twilight played to this want. Edward, a “god-like” character, and his love or “worship” of Bella, was supposedly what made girls all swoony over this series. I know I’m probably overreacting here, but whoa. Let’s stop right there and talk about this, because that sort of response from the “Christian side” is one I find to be all too familiar. It is a wholesale condemnation, not just of the books, but of the people who read them. At heart, it is simply provocation; the only response it can elicit from a girl who loves those books is defensiveness at best, total antipathy to Christians at worst. Entirely lacking in compassion, that review misses the fact that often, it is gaping, unmet needs of the heart that drive the appetites of a culture. While I agree that these books manipulate the volatile emotions of teenage girls, I don’t think its lust for worship they exploit (though I’m sure there’s plenty of teenagerly swooning). I think its desire. This could get tricky, but that review convinced me that we God-lovers sometimes have a hard time knowing the difference between a sinful hunger and a sacred one. We are tempted to treat any strong, romantic (or otherwise worldly) desire as bad because we are (rightly) intent on keeping ourselves pure from an all too sinful world. From what I understand, the Twilight books portray a shallow, self-centered view of love between a man and a woman. Sure, we can debate that view, but if we are quick to attack the girls enamored of it, we will miss a deep insight into their hearts. We are so quick to judge, we miss the point that not all desire is wrong. God made love and romance, beauty and food, laughter and laziness. We humans are made in such a way that we will literally die without community, touch, fellowship, and affection. Our want for these things is in keeping with the soul of our Creator. I believe that if we approach myriads of teenage girls as lustful, despicable sinners because they bear these needs, we’ll drive them straight away from the God who is longing for their hearts. Thing is, I know, and rather adore, quite a few teenage girls. I remember being one (and have moments when I feel like one still). And I can guarantee you that most aren’t harboring a dark desire to be worshiped by a man. What they do want very much is to be loved. Are the lot of them boy crazy? Pretty much. And I’m sorry, but isn’t that part of how God made us? Sometimes I think we criminalize teenagers for having desires that God gave them so that, good grief, they’d get married and have kids. The problem is not that these girls like a boy. The trouble is that there are thousands of girls, millions, who don’t have fathers, families, or homes to fill the gaping want in their heart or show them a holy way to have it filled. Fooled by a culture shaped by casual sex, isolation, and divorce, girls look to flirtation, to the swooning moonlight farce of self-centered infatuation portrayed in Twilight instead of the deep, self-giving love that comes with marriage, and the God who created it. They fill a sacred desire with a cheap, confusing satisfaction that will leave them hungrier than ever. Yet the original desire for love remains a holy thing. I wonder if we underestimate the sacredness of desire, its power to speak to us of a God in whom all things are right and good. After all, every sin, every false desire, is only a degradation of an original good. In his allegory of heaven and hell, C.S. Lewis portrays a man who struggles with lust, and the man’s sin is pictured as a lizard perched ominously on his shoulder. When the man finally defeats his sin and casts the lizard from him, it becomes a snow white stallion that bears him deep into the new heavens and earth. The force of wanting for love in that man had been corrupted by sin. But when it was purified, the desire became what it was meant to be: a force to carry him straight to the heart of God. I wonder if its the same for most of us, and for the gazillions of girls whose desires are corrupted by a promiscuous culture. Do their desires, do ours, need purging? Of course. We are all tainted by sin, frayed at every edge by need. Are teenage girls inherently selfish? Probably. I know I was. Am. Are they often misled by their emotions? Yes. But the answer is not to beat them over the head with condemnation. It’s to point them, and any seeker, to the God who will fill, heal, and answer their deepest desires with a goodness that will never destroy. A goodness that purges us of sin, enriches us with beauty. Delight yourself in the Lord, says Psalm 37, and he will give you the desires of your heart. So. I still don’t know about those Twilight books, but I do know what I think about the girls who read them. What they need is a love that will never fail them. I know a Man for them. And I’m ready to make the introductions.