It’s been a few years since my brother-in-law, poet-bard Isaac Gill, approached me about working on the cover art for his first official LP. He was going to Kickstart it into the world (an endeavor he did successfully manage) and he wanted me to illustrate/design the packaging. The first post I shared with the Room had a lot to do with process, and I guess that’s where I find myself with this one too. Heck, that’s where I find myself on a moment-to-moment basis, in everything. I’m sure we all do. A while back, Isaac was elated to find that Pandora had finally processed (yes, that word again) his album and was about to release his music into the world via the streaming radio thing they do. This prompted me to post some stuff to Facebook in celebration, and that took me back into some of my old sketch work for the record, which was both cathartic and educational for me. “Did I really generate this many test sketches for Isaac?” “How many different kinds of hand-rendered typography did I pitch to him?” “I can’t believe I worked out the whole cover in water color before deciding to go with a digitally-rendered composite!” Looking back on all this (there are plenty more where these came from) helped me to remember some things I’ve been forgetting in recent months about patience, planning, and process. It also helped me realize “Wait. You’ve done this before. You can do it again for this next project, or that one over there, or just for the love of it in your own ‘spare’ time.” The projects are always there, just around the next bend, and I’m always wondering whether I have the spark and the fortitude to engage in them. Now if only I can find the courage to re-submerge into the same process, the same good work, the same creative labor, tomorrow and the next day and the next. You can hear the songs that inspired the illustration on Pandora, Spotify, or Bandcamp at: isaacgill.bandcamp.com

Last night I sat down with a C.S. Lewis essay titled “Miracles.” Lewis is my favorite author, but I wasn’t expecting much from this topic. It’s not that I’m not interested in the mystical, it’s just that miracles aren’t very effective. People who don’t want supernatural evidence for God will grit their teeth and explain away a cosmic whamboozie, even if one smacks them upside the head. Miracles aren’t a riddle for science, reason, or intellect to crack. They aren’t some kind of cognitive hurdle to overcome. They are revelatory. They generally reveal what observers have already decided about God, based on old wounds and old battles. That’s why I wasn’t all that eager to engage. The topic didn’t seem very practical. However, Lewis takes an angle I wasn’t expecting. He writes that miracles tend to be supernaturally-condensed versions of divine engagements that happen to us every day. For example, 5000 people are fed from five barley loaves. “That couldn’t have happened!” we shout. Then a smart guy pipes up, “Hey, those people must have shared the bread they were hiding! It was like New York City after 9/11. Everybody jumped in. Jesus was a persuasive speaker, and cold hearts were warmed. That was the real miracle.” It’s a compromise that jazzes us. It bridges the seemingly uncomfortable gap between science and faith. It also makes us feel intelligent, because people 2000 years ago must have been too dumb to recognize everyone was just sharing bread, and boy, we are smarter than that now. What this interpretation misses, though, is that the miracle of the fishes and the loaves compressed an everyday wonder into a single moment. Every time a tiny seed of wheat is grown, a harvest is multiplied from nearly nothing. Feeding 5000 did not just happen once by the presence of Christ, it has happened for thousands of years, ever since God made the earth to flourish from planting, through processing and baking. Of course, the compression is not exact. Jesus was doing something unique in this moment. However, it is also the sort of work that urges to see beyond it, to the fact that Christ multiplies grain for our benefit so often that we don’t even tend to notice it. We are so numb to the everyday-miraculous that the only way we can understand the divine gift of our daily sustenance is by finding the wonder suddenly condensed. It is then that we are forced to see that God is the one who fills us all along. Or consider the Virgin Birth. Crude, non-believing men (thinking they have found a way to be witty) make jokes suggesting that Christ’s conception required God to be adulterous with a virgin. vikings rings. (Haw Haw Haw. Aren’t we clever?) Yet, is not God entering into a woman’s womb every time He uses a sperm and a egg to knit together life? Was not this miracle thematically connected in theme to billions of others hardly noted? Or take the Bible’s claims that water was turned into wine. The world-wise say the water soaked up the flavor of the wine jugs. Those people were drunk, after all. They didn’t know any better. Rationalists work so hard to patch it all up, missing the greater wonder that every time rain falls and waters the grape vines, every time the chemical process of fermentation occurs, there is a Divine gift, the changing of water to wine. A miracle condenses the miraculous so that we notice it is wonderful. It jolts us out of this lavish, sustaining grace that carries us from birth to death. Now I will tell you why I needed to read this essay. I needed it because this concept also applies to rescue. For several years, I’ve been disappointed that God’s rescue is so slow. I’ve seen bad people do bad things without consequence, and I’ve seen good people suffer in ways that aren’t fair. I’ve prayed and prayed, and God refuses to do what I want. I’ve wanted an angel from heaven (pow!), or waters divided (shazaam!), or fire and brimstone (zonk!). I have wanted God to get down here right now and compress this painful, terrible, laborious process of learning faith into a single moment of deliverance. I have wanted “That’ll teach them” and “Atta girl.” I have wanted every question and consequence packed into a nice little Reader’s Digest ending. Yet it is also possible that God is working out the miracle of my rescue more slowly, like the growing of wheat. And it’s possible that the process itself, this laborious, painful, confusing process, will train my heart in ways that an immediate answer would not. It is possible that God loves me enough to let the water inside me turn to wine over decades instead of overnight. That slow work is humiliating, and sometimes and it feels like dying. I am stripped down and impoverished. This is the tragedy; and yet, this is the miracle, too. What a sweet thing to be led through time and suffering into sanctification. What a beautiful thing to engage with a God who doesn’t always make things easy, but who allows me to work through the physics, and the biology, and the economics, the conflict, and the labor of the patterns he has written deep in the earth. It is a classroom fit for another world. Not my will, but Thine.

What do a bunch of space outlaws, a raccoon, a sentient tree, and a handful of human and alien superheroes have to teach us about the church? Quite a bit actually. I had the chance to see Marvel’s summer blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy back in August. With its story of a group of space misfits and outlaws coming together for a greater cause, it reminded me a bit of the TV show Firefly, the brainchild of none other than Marvel director Joss Whedon. Firefly, which attained cult status after its very brief run on Fox in 2002, follows the adventures of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew on the ship Serenity. These characters, all brought together from various walks of life and for sometimes questionable motives, are initially at odds. But over time they become a quirky family who learns to work together for a greater purpose, which in Whedon’s follow up film Serenity becomes unmasking the corrupt Alliance government. What Whedon excels at is giving each character their own screen time and back story in which we learn about the ways these loners and oddballs have been broken or wounded, and why they really need each other. Whedon, of course, went on to direct Marvel’s massive tag-team film The Avengers, in which Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and their associates come together to defeat the threat of Thor’s adopted brother, the scheming and narcissistic Loki. Avengers plays out this theme of misfits coming together on a larger scale. For a superhero film, it’s fascinating that Whedon spends almost two thirds of the time exploring the dynamics of these slightly dysfunctional, damaged, and extraordinary individuals coming together as a team. As Whedon has said about the film, “Ultimately these people don’t belong together and the whole movie is about finding yourself from community. And finding that you not only belong together but you need each other, very much.” We see this theme played out in the film. At one point, Loki mockingly asks, “How desperate are you that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?” Even Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/The Hulk acknowledges at one point, “We’re not a team, we’re a time bomb”. It is only after the death of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson that they learn to overcome their petty differences and save the world. This brings me back to Guardians of the Galaxy, which follows a similar vein. Set in a far corner of the Marvel Universe, the film tracks the exploits of Peter Quill, an outlaw known as Star-lord, who was abducted from earth as a kid shortly after his mother died of cancer. Quill finds a mysterious metal orb as part of a job for a dark figure named Ronan, and in the process runs into the female assassin Gamora, who is betraying Ronan and is also after the orb, and the raccoon-like creature Rocket and his sidekick-tree Groot, who are trying to capture Quill for the bounty on his head. Along the way they pick up Drax the Destroyer, a warrior bent on revenge after Ronan murdered his wife and child. This rag-tag team finds themselves together mostly due to circumstance and self-interest. As director James Gunn puts it, “All the Guardians start out the movie as bastards.” But when they find out that Ronan intends to use the orb to wipe out an entire planet, they find it within themselves to do something about it: Peter Quill: When I look around, you know what I see? Losers. [Everyone looks at him.] Peter Quill: I mean people who lost stuff. And man, we all have, a lot. But now life’s given us a chance. Rocket Raccoon: To do what? Peter Quill: To give a s**t. And I am not gonna stand by and watch as billions of lives are being wiped out. Through the film, they come to realize, like the Avengers, that they are greater together than they are apart. And having lost their families to murder or abduction, they find a new family in each other. In a touching scene at the end, the Guardians are stuck on Ronan’s wrecked ship as it plunges toward the surface of the planet Xandar. Groot, whose sole repeated phrase throughout the film is various inflections of “I am Groot,” begins to spread his branchy form into a protective sphere around his companions. As they rest safe inside, he says, “We are Groot,” which is enough to indicate how close these characters have become. In thinking about these films, I was reminded of a quote from C. S. Lewis’s essay “On Stories” about the power of myth: “The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores them to their rich significance which has been hidden by the ‘veil of familiarity’ . . . by putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we discover it.” We can often be blinded by this veil of familiarity as we sit in our places of worship week after week, and in doing so we too are often tempted to succumb to myopic pettiness and infighting. But the truth is much greater. Although we are broken and dysfunctional, we are extraordinary, and have been called together in the most unlikely way to save the world. I mean, look at the people Jesus called to be his disciples: fishermen, cheating tax-collectors, prostitutes, self-righteous Pharisees, and political zealots. To the world these would look like “such lost creatures” to call upon to save humanity. But it is God’s wisdom to call the misfits and disreputable into his family, to bind them up, heal them, and set them on a heroic journey for the kingdom. It can be easy to lose sight of this, but sometimes it takes a superhero film or a show about space outlaws to see that.

I wish I could go back in time and capture in stop motion the evolution of an idea. If I could, I would try to capture the formation of the Rabbit Room from its inception when it was not much more than an idea to the community it has now become. I was fortunate to be one of the original contributors to this site. Back then, we were nothing more than a collection of untested writers—most of us anyway. But what we had in common was a love of art and a respect for the way it can serve as a hammer and chisel in the hands of God. The blog began as a wood-paneled list of entries on subjects ranging from Lyle Lovett’s Road to Ensenada to an essay on self-righteousness told by way of a story about failing to recycle paint cans to a brilliant little piece A. S. Peterson wrote about pickles. We were taking some of our first swings at writing blog posts and finding our voices. I, for one, was awkward as a middle-schooler, all knees and elbows. But the life really came, in my opinion, when people began to post comments. Redhead Kate, S. D. Smith, Dave Bruno, and a host of others pulled their chairs up to the table and joined in the conversation. We began to come to know each other a bit. Occasionally we offended people, sure. This is the internet, after all. Much of the time we apologized civilly when we did. We fought to keep a spirit of peace, urging folks who wanted to debate online to go over to the zillion other sites that existed for that very purpose. We didn’t want the Rabbit Room to be a place for tearing down what we found wrong with the world. We wanted to tell each other about what we found to be true, beautiful, and rich. The names on the masthead have changed some over the years, but this little experiment in forging a “virtual community” in the hope that it would become a real one, well, it happened. Then came Hutchmoot, where many who had only typed little lines of text to each other met in person and embraced like old friends. Some of them fell in love and got married. (Now a host of mini-Moots continue to happen around the country.) Somewhere in there Rabbit Room Press was born, bringing a precious few titles into the world, with names like Peterson, Shive, and now (gasp!) Wangerin Jr. on the spine. Then came the Molehill—that esteemed anthology where the footnotes alone are worth the price of the book. And The Local Show—a seasonal weekly offering where a variety of musicians gather at a coffee house and trade songs in the round. Social media pages also crept in as more places where folks from this growing community have shared ideas, prayer requests, humor, and actual needs others in that community have been able to meet. The Rabbit Room went live in 2007 (I believe)—almost eight years ago. A lot has changed. But I am very thankful for this community. I am thankful for all the folks who keep this thing going. I am thankful for the venue it has provided for me to begin to learn the craft and love of writing. I am thankful for the lives it has drawn together who would not have met otherwise (this is where I met some of my best friends in the world.) I am thankful for the promise of all that is to come. This little venture has far exceeded anyone’s expectations. What can we expect but that the future will bring more of the same? May it be so by the grace of God. So on the eve of the new year, I raise a glass to the Rabbit Room Community at large. May we be a place that welcomes people in. May we continue to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. And may our love for what is true and beautiful continue to deepen as our new friendships transform before us into sturdy old ones. Hear, hear.

Time to wrap up the year with, as usual, a bunch of best-of lists. So let’s have it. What were your three favorite books, movies, and albums of 2014? Bonus question: What movie’s existence did Pete Peterson most regret this year?

[The following excerpt has been adapted from chapter 23 of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey.] In the months after the census, Joseph and Mary stayed in Bethlehem, making their home there. (Mt 2:11) Learned men from the east, experts in the sacred texts, had heard that somewhere in Judea a boy had been born king of the Jews. They remembered how the Jewish holy book said, “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” (Num 24:17) So when they saw a new star rise in the west, an uncommon one that seemed to have been lit just for them, they followed it. It led them to Jerusalem. Wanting to honor this king and pay tribute to his majesty, they began to ask around. Where was he? Herod the Great was a paranoid sociopath—a personality perfect for his position as the ruler of Judea under the authority of Rome. He built his empire to create the illusion that he was a man who could be in many places at the same time. Aside from his fortresses at Herodium, Sebaste, Machaerus, and Masada, he also built palaces in Caesarea, Jericho, and Jerusalem. At any moment, he could have been in any one of them, so at every moment, he might as well have been in all of them. His affinity for architecture was well known, as was his obsessive mistrust of those around him. There could only be one ruler in Judea. This was Herod’s passionate commitment. Already the bones of one wife, several sons, and multiple distant relatives cluttered the family tomb as the result of his conviction that each and every one of them was involved in a conspiracy to kill him. When he heard of these learned men and their quest, the dissonance of the words “king” and “Jews” with no mention of him was more than he could stand. To Herod, it wasn’t that complicated. If it meant killing every last baby boy in Israel, then that was what he would do. He called the chief priests and the scribes to tell him everything they knew about this king, smoldering with the feeling that they had been holding out on him. Herod summoned them, seeking a theology lesson, and the priests gave him the details without confusion or hesitation: the prophet Micah said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, just a few miles south, where Jacob’s love Rachel was buried and where King David was born. The chief priests were the keepers of the temple and of the religious life and culture of the Jews. The scribes, or teachers of the law, were the guardians of the Word of God. They wrote out copies of the sacred scriptures, poring over every last jot and tiddle. They knew the minute details of every scroll of every book. They knew the lore. Still, curiously, not one of them seemed motivated to see for themselves if the Magi were right. They should have been the most expectant of the Messiah’s coming, but all the religious leaders displayed as they rehearsed these ancient prophetic details of their coming king was apathetic suspicion. Jesus came to his own, and his own did not receive him. (John 1:11) They didn’t seek him then, and they wouldn’t seek him later either. Even when he was grown and ministering among them, they refused to believe in him. But Herod believed. At least, enough to worry. As one prone to err on the side of caution, it was enough for Herod that the Magi had come so far, laden with such gifts. And if there was such a king, maybe the Magi could lead him there. Maybe if he feigned a desire to bring a tribute of his own, the Magi would trust him and lead him to this new king. “When you find him,” Herod told the visitors, “come back and tell me where he is. I have a little something of my own I want to give him.” (Mt 2:8) After hearing him out, the Magi left for Bethlehem. It wasn’t long before their familiar star rose again, leading them like a shepherd leads its sheep to a house on the outskirts of town. When they found the king, it was no wonder he was nothing more than a murmur in Jerusalem. They entered the place where he lay and beheld a child in the arms of a young woman, practically still a girl. There was no crown or majesty that would attract them to him, no miracle they could see, no signs of greatness. Just a woman and her child. But there was something about that moment that only the woman, her husband, the Magi, and the child knew—something that bent the knees of those scholars to the posture of worship when they saw him. One of the Magi moved forward and produced a purse of gold, laying it at the child’s feet. Another came with a flask of myrrh, then another with a box of frankincense. Unaware that they were funding a hasty trip to Egypt necessitated by Herod’s paranoia, they gave these gifts for no other reason than to honor the one born King of the Jews. He wasn’t even their king. Israel’s God was not their people’s God. And yet, they had come because the thought of a God of mercy with healing in his wings awakened in them a desire to be close to the One through whom that healing would flow. They followed the star, and after countless miles of sojourn, they found the king. It was a quite a feat. They would rest well. But that night as they drifted into a deep sleep of satisfaction, an angel, unfamiliar to them but well known to Mary, stepped into their dreams and painted for them the bloody truth of who Herod really was and what he meant to do to this baby. He warned them to take another route home. (Mt 2:12) Herod’s motives were murderous. History would remember him not only dripping with the blood of his own wives and sons, but with the blood of countless others, mostly boys under the age of two. But not this boy king. Herod would not take his life. (Jn 10:18) The Magi departed for home in secret, avoiding the area around Jerusalem. For most of the residents of Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth went unnoticed, but heaven and earth converged in this little pocket of the Promised Land for the most important birth in history. The angels orchestrated the unlikely meeting of the poor, the displaced, and the curious to announce the coming of the Savior of the world. To some they appeared in dreams. To others they spoke from the sky. To others still, perhaps they shone like a star in the east, leading the Magi to the place where the child was born. Through it all, the angels of the heavenly host had their eyes fixed on this village south of Jerusalem. Since the fall of man, God’s promise to redeem and restore has permeated the air and found its way into the lyrics of kings and criminals. It has been the anthem of the helpless, blind, lame, and guilt-ridden—a song of hope in the night, rolling in from some distant country with the trace of a melody known by heart. Outside Bethlehem, this song rose like a celestial orchestra, crashing, singing, resounding with the music, holding nothing back. Then all at once, as with the fall of a curtain, the night fell silent, and the audience went back to their homes. Bethlehem went back to the ordinary town it had been for as long as anyone could remember. But the world would never be the same. ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

[The following excerpt has been adapted from chapter 22 of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey.] The shepherd’s life was ironic. Their job was to care for the animals that would be sacrificed to atone for the sins of the people. Yet because of their handling of these dirty creatures, they themselves were unclean and thus prevented from keeping the ceremonial law. And because they were ceremonially unclean, they were often regarded as untrustworthy, irreligious, and poor in reputation. Nevertheless, it was also expected that one who did his job well, a good shepherd, would be willing to lay down his life for his sheep. (John 10:11) A good shepherd was someone who cared deeply for the lambs under his watch, many of which were appointed to die on the altar of the Lord for the sins of the very people who looked down on the shepherds. The shepherds’ lives were, in effect, sacrifices. On one particular night, in the pastureland skirting Bethlehem’s northeast side, some shepherds sat like sentinels at their posts, keeping watch over their flocks, unaware of the angel regarding them from the skies overhead. What would an angel think of their strange vocation? It was God’s idea that in this world sheep would depend on shepherds to watch over them. The Maker could’ve made them differently—and yet there sat the musty men with their staffs and their rods, cooperating with the order of creation, lest the beasts under their care perish. Though their solitary work afforded them many silent nights except for what they chose to speak or sing over their flocks, this night would be different. A sudden, glorious light shone in the darkness as the angel of the Lord appeared among them. The shepherds were terrified. Of course they were. So wide was the gap between God and man that whatever information an angelic messenger was dispatched to deliver seemed more likely to be bad news than good. They were afraid because they knew they had reason to be afraid. But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid. Listen, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people!” The angel’s words painted a picture of the glorious presence of the promised Redeemer. He used names to describe the coming Messiah to these shepherds—names that spoke to his purpose. He called him the Savior, meaning he would atone for the sins of the people. He called him Christ, distinguishing him as their deliverer. He called him the Lord, identifying him as divine. (Lk 2:11) The shepherds might have wondered why the angel chose to reveal this to them. This sort of news seemed to belong to people of influence or nobility. It was hardly the kind of report they ever imagined would be exclusively for men of their vocation, let alone reputation. But then the angel used one more expression which brought overwhelming clarity to this moment. He told them Christ the Lord had been born “unto you.” (Lk 2:11) The divine Savior and Messiah had been born unto them! Though they lived most of their lives on the outside looking in, they would not be outsiders to this gift. They were the recipients of it. This was big news. The shepherds sensed it, but the angels in Heaven knew it, and their behavior offered a glimpse into the cosmic weight of this announcement. Initially, it was just one glorious but solitary angel who appeared to these men in Bethlehem’s fields. But as soon as he announced Jesus’ birth, “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” (Lk 2:13) It was as if there were millions of angels hiding just behind some celestial door, and once they heard, “Unto you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!” they were unable to contain their joy any longer and all rushed in, praising God, singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” For the poor, helplessly earthbound shepherds, this was a lot to take in. What had they just heard? What did it mean? How should they respond? Wisdom suggested that if the angelic hosts of heaven offered unfettered joy in response to this message, their reaction was appropriate. Though none of those shepherds ever before had an angel of the Lord tell them of the coming of the Savior of the world, the spontaneous eruption of angelic praise became the lens through which they would see this moment: God was at work. This much was plain. But why had the glory of all glories appeared to the lowest of the lows? Why had the angel chosen to reveal this message to mere shepherds, unclean as they were? Because poverty is relative. Could it be that from the perspective of heaven, the poor shepherds outside Bethlehem were no more or less poor than the rest of the world sleeping under its watch? Could it be that the poor of the earth were in fact all the people of the earth—poor in spirit, mourning and meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness? (Mt 5:2-12) Could it be that the Savior’s coming was for them as much as it was for anyone, and for anyone as much as it was for them? The angels gave the shepherds a sign that left them speechless. Their Messiah and Savior could be found where the young lambs were kept. He would be the one not covered in wool, but wrapped in a swaddling cloth. Where the lambs are kept? This they needed to see. When they found Jesus in the manger as the angel said, the very location of his birth was drenched in significance. The Savior had been born into their unclean world in the same manner as a lamb. The symbolism was not lost on them. When the shepherds saw Jesus there, they saw not only that he had come, but they got a hint as to why. He came to be the perfect lamb, the ultimate, lasting sacrifice. This baby’s coming was to accomplish and establish peace between the God of all creation and his image-bearers who habitually rejected him. And so it would be all his days. From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross on Calvary, Jesus moved among the people, came into their homes, touched their blind eyes, and permitted their unfaithful hands to touch him. He taught them profound lessons from ordinary events. He defended the defenseless and opposed the self-righteous. He ate at their tables, laughed with their children, and wept over their grief. Never did he abandon His purpose for coming, which was to die for a world of spirit-poor outsiders as the Lamb of God who takes their sin away. Jesus was born poor. He lived poor. And he died poor for the sake of his people. The shepherds could not have known that this boy came into this world in the same way he would leave it: out in the open, among the outcast, poor, and despised, but driven by one purpose—to ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile until the Son of God appears. ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

[Editor’s note: Some of you will remember Matthew Aughtry from Hutchmoot a few years ago. He and his friend Nathan Willis shot Andrew Peterson’s “Rest Easy” music video as well the “What Is Hutchmoot?” short. Matthew has made several short films since then and his newest was just born yesterday. We’re happy to feature it here today and we invited him to write a little about why he made it. Enjoy, and merry Christmas!] God with us from Matthew Aughtry on Vimeo. I became a father in September and, at the risk of employing a cliche, it has changed the way that I see the world. I spend a lot of time now just staring into my son’s eyes. There may be nothing more beautiful in the world than a baby’s eyes. They haven’t had the chance to become clouded with cynicism, nor do they have any pretense that they fully grasp what they’re seeing. Everything is new, everything is filled with wonder, each object is weighted with vast potential. I have no doubt that this film wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t recently become a father. Perhaps the most natural thing in the world for a parent to do is to wonder about his or her child’s future. So as I stared into my son’s eyes one night I began to wonder what his eyes would see in this world. I started to ponder what his hands would do and where his feet would take him. Then I thought of Mary. Did she do the same thing? Perhaps she was full of even more questions than I am. After all, his birth was preceded by the announcement of an angel from heaven. His life was full of promise. Yet did she also experience dread? Sometimes being a parent has more to do with worry than it does with wonder. The world is a dangerous place and children are so fragile. One does not have to look very far to see evil and to fear for the survival of the good, which often seems extraordinarily meek in comparison to the powers of darkness. All of the work was beautiful and it enraptured my imagination, yet it was an image of Mary with her child that most ignited my heart. Her eyes were undeniably sad. It’s not that I was unaccustomed to Mary’s grief—I just wasn’t used to it being portrayed in this context. This was not the Pieta, it was the Madonna and Child. I got as close as I could to the piece without setting off an alarm. Why was she so sad? Perhaps she had just escaped Herod’s assasins in Bethlehem and was beginning to realize that her son’s life would always be threatened by the Herods of this world. Or perhaps it had just dawned on her that this gift was not for her alone but that she would have to share him with the whole world. Or maybe she was just worried and didn’t really know why. Yet Mary is not remembered only as the Mother of Sorrows but also as the Blessed Virgin whose soul magnified the lord and rejoiced in his favor. For many, Mary is a symbol of hope. Yet Mary’s hope is not naive. It accepts the world as it is, it recognizes that it is dominated by malicious forces. Her hope is not that the kingdom of this earth can be righted but that it is destined to be ousted, that God’s plan is to overthrow the proud and powerful and create a kingdom of the meek and lowly in its place. It was this kingdom that her son would usher in. It was proclaimed with every miracle, made clear with each teaching, and ultimately inaugurated when his hands and feet were nailed to a cross. I hope my own son grows up to love this kingdom. I hope his hands bring healing and his feet bring hope. Yet I also know that belonging to this kingdom will mean seeing suffering and, ultimately, embracing it. I wait for the day when this kingdom will come fully on earth as it is in heaven. Until then, I hope to keep telling stories that long for that day as much as I do.

[The following excerpt has been adapted from chapter 21 of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative.] Nazareth to Bethlehem was a long journey. Weeks had passed, and they’d exhausted nearly every topic of conversation they could think of, including the details of the strange things they had seen and heard over the past year. They spoke of angels, of dreams, of their hopes for their people, and of their love and fear of God. The people of the cities and camps where they lodged along the way didn’t know much about Joseph and Mary. They could see that he was earnest and driven and that she was pregnant and about to burst. But this couple carried a holy secret, whispered into their ears by the lips of an angel and conceived in the warmth of her womb by the overshadowing Spirit of God. It played like a distant symphony, building in its movements and phrases to a coming crescendo that would shake the foundations of the world. But for now it remained a quiet, distant sound pulsing in the hearts of the man and his bride. To their amusement—and to her discomfort—the baby often turned and kicked. They hadn’t planned to spend the final weeks of her pregnancy on the road, but this miracle didn’t suspend life as they knew it. The extraordinary work of God and the ordinary business of living under Roman occupation ran in tandem. So when the order to register for the Roman census coincided with the final weeks of Mary’s pregnancy, it meant a trip to Bethlehem. They had to go. Although Joseph lived in Nazareth in the region of Galilee, he was descended from the great king himself, and thus he was Judean. So when the edict came down, he and Mary set off for Bethlehem, the City of David. The closer they got, the more travelers clogged the streets. In the long line of dispersed Judeans all on the same mission, it seemed Joseph and Mary were among those bringing up the rear. Joseph asked around but couldn’t find a place to stay, not even at the inn. Every room was full, except for the offer of a stable. It wasn’t much, but it was dry, warm, and at least had the potential to offer Mary a comfortable place to sleep. Besides, they were tired. The stable would be fine. ______ Her lips pursed as she sucked in short breaths of air. Her belly went tight as a drum. She looked worried, unsure—as if her mind and her body had all at once become strangers to one another. And then as quickly as it rose, the pain subsided. Joseph was at her side, willing and eager to do whatever he could, though there didn’t seem to be much for him to do. With the shafts of moonlight on her face, she looked beautiful—young but not quite like the girl she was when they first met. In a certain light, that girl was still there, but her features had deepened. And so had his vision. Between the angels, the pregnancy, the wedding, and the census, the theme of the past year had been about listening to the story of who they were. They weren’t children anymore, but they didn’t quite feel like grown-ups either. They were somewhere between who they used to be and who they were becoming, and there was no place in the world Joseph wanted to be more than right there at Mary’s side. Minutes later the pain stabbed at her again, only this time it was worse. Then it happened again. And again. Joseph busied himself, though he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. Make room, he thought. Carve out some space for her to have this baby. There was no one around to coach them, no one to tell them everything would be all right. He held her and he prayed. They thought of the angels who visited their dreams. They thought of Adam and Eve taking the forbidden fruit and how one of the consequences of that act of rebellion was shooting through Mary from head to toe, every three minutes now. It was not a silent night. She strained and groaned and fought for every breath. She pushed as sweat beaded on her forehead. Joseph wiped her brow and told her a hundred times that he loved her, he loved her, he loved her. Swept up in waves of pain and contractions, Mary continued to push and breathe and strain while time passed. Eventually, as if cresting a ridge, her labor gave way to delivery, and her groaning gave way to the sound of the cries and the coos of little lungs drawing in the breath of earth for the first time. Joseph laid the baby on Mary’s chest, and to the wonder of the helpless man and relief of the weary woman, they beheld him who, though he was the Son of God, was every bit a fragile, tiny baby. The little stranger was nothing like Mary imagined—not because he looked different from other babies, but because the face of a newborn has little room for distinctive features. It would be a while before this child’s wide eyes would stare into hers or his baby fat would fill in the wrinkles around his neck and thighs. But one thing was certain. He was beautiful. She loved everything about him—his tiny nose, his wisps of dark hair, his perfect little fingers and toes. The sound of his first cry was the loveliest tune she had ever heard. It was as if this baby had gone from being her burden to her physician, healing the toll her pregnancy had taken on her body simply by lying across her breast, absorbing her warmth. Together, Mary and her husband cleaned him and wrapped his little arms and legs in strips of cloth to keep him warm. When they laid him in a manger and finally exhaled, they gave him the name Jesus. And both remembered why. The incarnation of the Savior of the world could have come to pass any number of ways. But God, in his infinite wisdom, chose this couple for this night in this shelter. This boy, the angel told them, would be the heir to David’s throne. He would be their wonderful counselor, their mighty God, their everlasting Father, their Prince of Peace. The government would be upon his shoulders. (Isa 9:2-7) But there was nothing particularly complex or regal about this moment in the stable outside Bethlehem. There were no heralds in the streets announcing the birth of a king. By all appearances, it was a humble, simple affair, seemingly incidental to everything else going on in David’s town that night. But it wasn’t incidental. It was the most significant moment in the history of the world. There on the edge of Bethlehem, a child was born. A son was given. And the zeal of the Lord Almighty accomplished this. (Isa 9:7) ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

“No more let sins and sorrows grow Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow Far as the curse is found, Far as the curse is found…” This verse rarely seems to make the cut in modern versions of “Joy to the World.” Maybe it’s because hymns are often lengthy and difficult to get the head and voice around, or maybe thoughts of sorrow, thorns, and curses don’t exactly drum up holiday cheer. But a lot of truth is in that forgotten third verse; it captures the soul of Advent, the waiting, the intense anticipation for reversal. Far as the curse is found. Maybe farther. Hope, renewal, joy, flooding across the nearly-dead earth to drown the weeds. The first great curse is that we toil, surviving by sweat and tears and waging battle against thorns and drought and disease. Of course the beauty is there, but our joys and sustenance are tempered by futility, the sense that we can never do enough, or be enough, or win. But take heart, because the memory of Paradise sustains us, and the hope for renewal leads the way from winter’s bitter sting to spring’s gentle rain. The reversal has begun, and with heaven and nature we can sing. Joy to the weary, broken, beautiful world.

Earlier this year I read an article about a Dutch student, Zilla van den Born, who spent 5 weeks travelling in Southeast Asia. Throughout her trip she posted photographs to Facebook, recorded videos, wrote a blog and bombarded her friends and family with the technicolor details of her once-in-a-lifetime adventure. The remarkable thing about Zilla’s story was not the journey itself but the fact that, for the entire 5 weeks, she did not actually set foot outside her Amsterdam apartment. The whole trip—the photographs, the stories, the emails home—were all an elaborate experiment designed to show how easy it is to distort reality and create the story you want people to see. Since I read the article the questions it raised have been playing on my mind. I may not go to the same lengths as Zilla to concoct a 5-week adventure in Asia but I am deeply aware of a constant temptation to present perfect children, an idyllic marriage, and a relationship with God that never waivers or falters in any way. As a writer I struggle with the ever-present temptation to tamper with reality. I love words. I enjoy crafting them in the same way I imagine a sculptor loves to watch as the clay is moulded and shaped beneath his touch. However, I have discovered that there is a difference between presenting truth in a way that is beautiful and changing truth so that it will be perceived as beautiful. Some of the stories from the Bible that breathe hope into my soul are the stories of ordinary people who falter and fail but are still loved and used by a God who is never fooled by outward facade. Faced with my own failures I find great comfort and encouragement in the knowledge that God has a place in his story for people who sometimes get it spectacularly wrong. An apparently righteous and law-observant king allowed an unchecked problem to fester and grow until he found himself embroiled in a mess of adultery, murder, and rebellion against God. Yet, amidst the pain and brokenness of repentance, David finds himself forgiven and restored. A prince-turned-murderer-turned-nomad confronted Pharoah, led the Israelites out of Egypt, and parted the Red Sea with his staff, only to lose his temper and forfeit his own chance to go into the Promised Land. Yet, at the end of his life, Moses was taken to a hilltop from which he could see the promise coming true and then, on his death, was tenderly buried by God himself. A hardened fisherman and passionate, hot-headed disciple buckled under pressure and publicly denied Jesus. Yet Peter was not only forgiven, but entrusted with the shepherding of the fledgling church and the spreading of the story that would change the world. What if we were only given the good parts of the story? What if we heard about Peter’s commission but not his denial? Moses’ leadership but not his rebellion? David’s devotion but not his adultery? Not only would we be robbed of the hope of forgiveness and restoration, but we would miss the stunning evidence of God’s grace in the lives of his people. God’s grace is beautiful. That is a fact that needs no embellishment and is best served by truth. The problem is that in order to tell the truth about grace, we also have to tell the truth about who we are. When we play around with reality, trying to create or maintain the illusion of perfection, all we do is distract others from seeing grace for what it is. There is no doubt that it is easier to keep hiding behind the illusion; voicing struggles, acknowledging defeats and confessing failures requires courage. However, we can take heart in the knowledge that the same Jesus who rebuked the pride of the religious leaders welcomed the tears of those who had been broken and battered by sin, setting them back on their feet and giving them a story of forgiveness and grace.

My youngest son lived in an orphanage overseas until he was three years old. From what I understand, his first year of life was pretty rough. Missionaries who served in his facility were not allowed to touch the infants because officials didn’t want them getting used to snuggling. Once a baby knows what it’s like to be held, he will cry to be held more. Human contact was kept to a minimum to nip that in the bud. Before our adoption I had never given too much thought to the developmental importance of holding a baby. When my birth children came into the world, I held them because they were cute, warm, and cuddly. I “oohed” and “aahed” over their perfect little feet, I breathed in the vanilla tops of their heads, I tickled their fat, poochy bellies, I kissed them eight million thousand times in the sweet rolls of their necks, and I rocked them to sleep. I did those things (as most mothers do) because love for them came natural to me. I didn’t realize that physiological connections were being grown in my babies as a result of contact with me. I have learned since that when a parent touches her infant, she is helping him realize how his body connects to his mind. Because our youngest son wasn’t held much in his first year, that mind/body connection was damaged. When he first came to us, it was common for him to spin around and around in circles, to jump off of high places so he could feel the crash of the floor, and to wiggle continually. Even in his sleep, he was in motion. Too many nights I would hear a thump indicating that he had found a new way to fall around the bed rails. When I took him to an occupational therapist for advice, she explained that the orphanage had left sensory processing issues. The banging, the crashing, the wiggling were my son’s attempts to compensate for touch he never received. Because he wasn’t held enough, he had lost his body during those early years. Now his subconscious was trying to figure out where he was in the world. Then she taught me how to help him. She showed me how to do gentle joint compressions all over his body while saying, “Here is your wrist. Here is your knee. Here is your neck.” She taught me how to run a light brush over his arms and legs so that he find his own skin. As I began to work through these exercises, my son would giggle, then grow intensely calm. Sometimes huge tears of relief would well up in his eyes. He looked at me with such deep gratitude, as if I understood a need that he didn’t quite. I would watch him reconnect with himself, and that was as moving an experience as seeing a child born for the first time. The therapist also urged us to wrestle, to jump, to find safe methods of impact that would retrain my son’s brain. I began to knock into the world with him, and while banging around, I began to understand a little more about what he had lost. What could have been given so gently to a little baby required more extreme measures in boyhood. We had to take some risks together. We had to fall down sometimes. We had to steer ourselves through restlessness, through awkwardness, through an undefined ache that didn’t always have a clear cut answer. We were always a team, though, roughing about. As we figured out what needed to happen next, we cut each other a lot of slack and loved each other fiercely. My son is not alone in this need, you know. Most of us did not begin life as orphans, but we have experienced a similar disconnect between ourselves and the world. There are many days where I’m not sure where “I” end and begin, or how I fit in the world, or how to exist in community without running into everything and ruining it. Sometimes I have needs rise up inside me that I don’t understand, and when they show up, I can be weird to be around. Sometimes I find myself pushing into people, asking for something I can’t even explain. An article published in early November in the Business Insider magazine describes two traits necessary for long-lasting relationships. The research supporting this study goes back to the 1970s, but the conclusion is so obvious that you will shake your head that it took so long for humanity to get the clue. The bottom line in that study is this: how we respond to the attempts others make to connect with us matters. In fact, couples who stay together long term tend to affirm attempts their partner makes at connection about 87% of the time. Couples who don’t last only affirm 33% of the time. When my brother and I were little kids, we had a knock language that we used on the wall between our bedrooms. Four knocks was, “Goodnight.” Three knocks meant, “Are you there?” One knock was, “Yes.” Two knocks was, “No.” I hated lying alone there in the dark, and it was beautiful to send out, “Knock, knock, knock?” and receive a single “Knock.” Yes. All was well. I was not alone after all. This is what we do still. “Are you there? Do you hear me? Are we OK?” Please, someone hear me. Please, someone say yes. Over the past decade, I’ve read a lot of criticism about the world of social media. So many disparage “likes” and “favorites,” as if human beings should be above needing the affirmation of strangers. I get that. Nobody should need half a million people to affirm her fish pout. However, I also wonder if we are uncomfortable with the new normal because it’s a revelation of a need that embarrasses us. By social media, our pre-existing insecurities have only been brought into the daylight. For as long as I can remember (and I do remember life before the internet) people have never been OK as they’ve made their way through the floatsam and jestam of society; it’s just that the “attagirl” men and women sought in smoky bars in 1970 is sought now thrown out on Instagram. The moms who sought praise for their brilliant children during church Bunko games are now making Facebook albums of awards nights. The neighbors who showed slides of their trip to Hawaii now have a Vine. The venues have changed, but the want is the same. Why? Because it feels good to be seen. It feels good to be recognized and named. Most of us haven’t had the stability or the nurturing that we wanted. Life hurts, and many have lived feeling orphaned in one way or another. We’ve lost ourselves in years of neglect, and that loss is disorienting. Having someone put a hand on our head and say, “Hey, this is good!” works just like the joint compressions I give to my son. Human contact helps us feel more grounded. Of course, we can argue that God’s opinion of us matters more than the opinions of any human being, and that would be accurate. However, when Adam was in the garden alone, we heard the first Divine “it is not good.” Over and over again, God had praised what had been made: the light, the planets, the animals. Yet when He looked at the state of a man living with only God’s company, he said for the first time, “It is not good for man to be alone.” What an interesting word to choose. Alone in the company of God? It’s possible that I misunderstand this passage, but it seems to me that God recognized that we needed one another as well as Him. I think this was our commission to tend one another. It’s not difficult to argue that thrusting our vulnerability into the public sphere of social media is dangerous. However, that complaint is not the most important matter at hand. Quite simply, social media is part of the relational architecture of our time, and we must make the best of it. What we can do is recognize that those around us feel disoriented, that they are crashing into things looking for themselves, and that life is sometimes going to be ugly or awkward as a result. What then? When my youngest son came home to live, there were some days of exhaustion. His need was so great, the transition was bumpy sometimes. However, I always knew that he was worth the work it took to soothe him. It didn’t matter that we weren’t perfect, because we’d both been through a lot, and there was no shame in needing time to heal. I learned to just pull that wiggly kid into my lap and begin to calmly massage him, speaking over him, “Here is your leg. Here is your neck. Here are you! I’m so glad you are here. I love being your mom.” I think that is what we need to do with one another as well. Just about every week, I get tired of the chaos and risk of the internet. It hurts to live there; it makes me tired, and sad, and dizzy sometimes. There are a lot of weeks when I run and hide from it all. But I keep coming back, because I know that in all of human history, no other generation has ever been given such an opportunity. Every time I look at this screen I see need, need, need, need, need. And even though the grown children of the internet have been neglected, some of them are still crying out to be held. How can I be a mother here? How can I gently take the orphaned under my wing and find ways to engage? Can I hold those hands, and can we jump roughly to the earth together to combat our disorientation? How can I be a holy fool who tumbles, and wrestles, and knocks into walls with the lost? How can I put my hand tenderly on a nervous soul and say, “Here you are! I found you!” How can I comment, like, retweet, reorient, bless, comfort, name in such a way that the orphaned are redeemed? It’s not likely to be tidy work, but what a beautiful pursuit, moving into so much need, offering the stability of a human touch.

[The following excerpt has been adapted from chapter 20 of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative, by Russ Ramsey.] Joseph was a decent man. He didn’t want to shame Mary, though he could have and no one would have blamed him. But he didn’t want to lose her either. What could he do? His bride-to-be was pregnant, and he wasn’t the father. His world was spinning. This burden weighed heavily on his heart, flooding his thoughts and his dreams. Joseph wasn’t a complicated man. He was honest and hard-working—noble in ancestry and character. He dreamed of one day having a son of his own to teach the family trade. He dreamed of married life. He dreamed of a home of his own. He dreamed of the respect of his community. But Mary’s condition threatened all of that, waking the young man from his dreams to a harsh reality. He knew the moment approached when he would have to act. And when he considered his options, his heart ached. One night as he tossed and turned, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. He had come to set something straight. This baby was not forming in Mary’s belly because of anything she had done. This was something God had done—something God was doing, part of the order and structure of his divine purpose. “She will bear a son, conceived of the Holy Spirit, and you, Joseph, will name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Mt 1:21) There was a purpose in this for both Joseph and Mary—she would bear the child, he would name him, and the child would save them from their sins. Was this what the prophet Isaiah meant when he foretold that a virgin would conceive and have a son who would be called Immanuel—God with us? (Isa 7:14) This virgin Isaiah spoke of, could this really be his Mary? The prophet Isaiah had a tough job at a rough time in Israel’s history, and his ministry had become a sober part of every Israelite’s story ever since. God had called Isaiah to relay the news of the Lord’s coming judgment of his people. God had dispatched Assyria to carry his own people out of their homes and away into foreign lands. Babylon would bring a second wave of discipline. But laced throughout Isaiah’s words flowed a magnificent description of God’s plan to save and redeem this same people who had rebelled against him over and over again. These were the stories Joseph and Mary grew up on, stories of colossal failure and of magnificent hope, stories of judgment and of salvation. But what would God’s salvation look like? As a boy, Joseph must have listened to the men around his home speculate. Would the people’s ideas of that redemption bear any resemblance to the rescue God actually meant to give? After all, it was an utterly novel thought that this girl who caused his heart to flutter would carry in her womb the Son of God, the promised and coming Savior who could carry the governments of the world on his still-forming shoulders. Joseph might have recalled God’s great qualifier in Isaiah’s book. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isa 53:8) As the heavens are higher than the earth? How much higher is that? Salvation was such a paradox. The Israelites had ideas of what they thought they needed. For as long as Joseph could remember, God’s people looked to the east for their king to arrive in majesty, convinced they would know him when they saw him. So why, then, was God quietly sending his angel to a poor teenage girl and her fiancé in the no-account town of Nazareth? Joseph rehearsed what he could remember from Isaiah, contrasting it with the common ideas he grew up hearing. God’s people expected the Messiah to be known by all upon his arrival. Would God really announce his coming under the cover of darkness? God’s people anticipated a Messiah of unparalleled strength. Would they really be given a fragile, tiny baby? (Isa 7:14) Wouldn’t he inspire the masses? Wouldn’t the people instinctively know to follow him? Or would the true Messiah be, as Isaiah said, one who would be, countless times, rejected? (Isa 53:3) The people of Israel longed for their suffering and oppression to end with the Savior’s coming. Would he really come to suffer and live a life of affliction himself? Would he really take upon himself the wounds of his children and die under their weight? (Isa 53:5) As Joseph weighed the implications, he thought of the names the angel used for this baby—Jesus, meaning “God will save,” and Immanuel, meaning “God with us.” Together, these names came together to describe who this baby would be and what he would accomplish—the Savior, God with us. God was bringing his ancient plan to fruition, a plan forged in the void of the vast expanse that existed before the world was made, and Mary was somehow part of it. So was Joseph. They were a part of it because the baby in Mary’s womb was at the center of it, as he had somehow been since before time. Her son would be the consolation of her people, Israel. He would be their king, and of his kingdom there would be no end. (Isa 9:7) The angel said, “Son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.” (Mt 1:20-21) Joseph woke from his dream and for the first time in a while felt like a man who knew what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to believe. To believe God, and to believe Mary. He was supposed to love her, take care of her, and keep her as safe and secure as he could. So he married that girl, and together they set out for his hometown to register as a family. And Joseph told Mary, “When he comes, his name will be Jesus,” because the angel said he will save his people from their sins. (Matt 1:24-25) ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

In praise of Christmas raise your voice and join the boisterous angel chorus who celebrates the holy Son of heaven sent to earth. In praise of Christmas light your candles, deck your trees in red and gold, proclaim the dawn of Light upon a cold and darkened world. In praise of Christmas give your gifts to loved ones and to strangers both; reflect the generous King who gave His only precious One. In praise of Christmas mark the feast and raise your glasses high together, for the child’s laughter tells us hope has come at last. In praise of Christmas, laud the Father, laud the Spirit, laud the Son! Incarnation now accomplished, redemption’s loving victory begun!

In 2013 our church commissioned several musicians to write songs for the annual Christmas concert. At the time I felt drawn to write about shepherds, because my own son, Shepard, was reaching an age where he might begin to understand this strange story, and I wanted to approach the nativity in a way that might catch his interest. The more time I spent contemplating the pastoral scene of these random witnesses to the annunciation, the more I began to think about David, moving from the same mistrusted, marginalized occupation into the role of his nation’s most revered king. But what I find so compelling about Christmas is that it tells the reverse of David’s Cinderella story. While we spend much of our lives fighting obscurity, humiliation, and ultimately, death, chasing our American dreams, Advent celebrates the opposite: a movement from royalty to rags. The highest king, for love’s pursuit, dons the cosmic poverty and sheep-like insignificance we so futilely spend lifetimes fleeing. In hindsight, the birth of Christ completes David’s 23rd Psalm with a truth-ringing twist. To keep his sheep, this shepherd would go so far as to become one of them. Though we recorded “Little Sheep” in the heat of summer and there probably needs to be more sleigh bells for this to be considered a true Christmas track, I am putting it out for free on noisetrade for the holidays. Ben Shive pulled together a dream team band to help flesh it out (Jillian Edwards, Stuart Duncan, Gabe Scott, and himself), and I am so excited to share it with you all. We are hoping to be able to share the video with you before the end of the Christmas season. For now, you can add “Little Sheep” to your Christmas mixes. Enjoy! When I hear the wolves in the wilderness and my heart begins to leap I see my shepherd guarding the gate and I go back to sleep For the Lord is my shepherd He’ll do anything for me Lo! My shepherd became a little sheep I don’t like to be a follower I love to find my way but the animal inside of me takes me far astray I get lost and trapped and tangled I cry out for my needs he finds a way to bring me back no matter how he bleeds For the Lord is my shepherd and he was coming after me When Lo! My shepherd became a little sheep Glory hallelujah in the highest For he stooped right down to the very lowest When my fate was right before me, the slaughter and the flames, he came to speak my language he came to take my place Now I shall not want for anything for my god became a beast to prepare a table to prepare a table to prepare a table and to become the feast. For the Lord is my shepherd and behold this mystery When Lo! My shepherd became a little sheep For the Lord is my shepherd I will follow where he leads When Lo! My shepherd became a little sheep For the Lord is my shepherd I will follow where he leads When Lo! My shepherd became a little sheep

I’m often tempted to be envious of friends who make music in community. The harmony on display is so attractive. I have friends in Nashville who have the kind of creative community people like me dream about. Also, singer/songwriters perform regularly and get instant feedback. They might hear clapping and see smiles the day after they write a song. It’s an endeavor closely connected to community. By comparison, making a book is a solitary act—countless hours spent on writing, rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting. It’s an insane amount of alone time. I always knew it would be this way. Solitary. Except when it isn’t. In my journey toward the publication of my first book, my eyes have been opened to just how much it involves others. I could never have done this on my own. If I tried, it would have been an awful experience. One of those people who helped me tremendously was Helena Aman (Sorensen). She is an incredibly gifted writer, songwriter, singer, and on and on. She spent a lot of time editing my manuscript (and yelling at me in all caps to BE BRAVER). Recently, she and I were discussing the often disappointing world of publishing, and she said something that stuck with me. She said, in all the disappointments she has had, all she wants is to make art for, and with, people she loves. Yes. That’s it. In the old world of publishing, you begged and waited to be picked by a gatekeeper (publisher/agent) and you hoped they would care. There was no other way. With the flattened world of the internet, connections are available everywhere and finding your audience is now possible in new ways. Not easy, but possible. Connecting with those people you feel called to love and serve with your creative work is available if you have the passion to work at it and the luck/grace to be given lots of gifts along the way. I have been given so much. The Rabbit Room community? My goodness, what a gift. Story Warren’s little tribe of families fostering imagination? An incredible gift. Facebook has connected me with old friends from my little high school in Huntington, WV, and the other high school I attended: Hoerskool Ferrum in Newcastle, South Africa. Amazing. Because of the era we live in, it really is possible to make art for, and with, people you love. Of course it always has been. “You don’t have to change the world. All you’ve got to do is show up,” sings Jill Phillips. You don’t have to change the whole world. You can start with your “little” one. Little is the new big. You don’t have to be a NYT best-seller to change your world. Your world might be three little kids, or a small school, or a rural community that church-planting books don’t talk about. The internet does provide a vehicle for expanded connection that I’m grateful for. I’m afraid of what we sometimes trade when we look for intimacy on-line that’s designed for true incarnation. “Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood,” as Johnny Cash sang. But that’s not to say that the internet can’t be a launching point for incarnational endeavors, including art. There will always be people who don’t care. You can tell by how quickly they become disinterested when you stop talking about their money, or their pleasure, or their pride. The texts/emails stop being returned. There’s a transactional nature to relationships that’s hard to avoid. We’re all guilty of using relationships for our own ends. It’s lousy but it’s true. But what a pleasure it is to have the chance to connect with people you love, to serve and be served in some creative endeavor. I am astonished and grateful at the chance I’ve had through publishing my first book to be on the receiving end of all kinds of loving community. It’s something new to me. I feel like I was given the chance to make art for, and with, people I love. Is that really rare? It feels like it is. I feel spoiled. I feel special. I feel deeply loved. I’m probably a little naive. But with as little innocence as I feel like I have left in life to experience, I’m going to try to enjoy this. And I’ll keep on working toward projects that allow me to do this again. Because no matter what changes for me, more or less readers, more or less money, I think what I want most of all is what Helena said. I want to make art for, and with, people I love.

(The following excerpt has been adapted from chapter 19 of Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative.) No one remembers where Mary came from, but Joseph was descended from the great King David, though for his part he was a common laborer, a carpenter. They were simple, honest people, dreaming and working toward a life they could live out together as husband and wife and, God willing, as a family. They probably expected to be ordinary in every way and perfectly happy for it. But all this was interrupted in a moment when the angel of the Lord—the same one who visited Zechariah six months earlier—appeared to Mary and told her something that would alter the course of her and her husband’s lives—and for that matter, the world itself. The angel said to Mary, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Though the angel’s words were friendly, Mary feared for her life. What could this messenger of the great I AM possibly have to say to her? Mary belonged to a people familiar with the word of God. She grew up under its teachings. Since she was a little girl, laced throughout her lessons about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David was the prophetic foretelling of God’s promised Messiah. Young and old tried to imagine what his advent would lead to. Would the Lord’s salvation come in a radiant swell of angelic fury? Would deliverance take the form of a mighty army rolling over Rome with some mythic warrior-king leading the charge? Down through the generations, the people tried to imagine it. When the angel Gabriel stood before Mary, the hypothetical gave way to the real. The ordinary stories all at once glistened under the extraordinary light of this celestial storyteller. As she listened, there rose inside her a sense that the glory of his tale was nothing new, but rather was older than time. She only needed uncommon light to see it. She had, Gabriel told her, found favor with God. She shouldn’t fear this visit or the message he brought. It must have been strange to stand before this seraph dressed in light, strong and otherworldly, and hear him tell her not to be afraid. Perhaps it was even stranger for Mary to discover that God had formed an overall impression of her. She was known by God, and he favored her. He liked what he saw? The angel then came to the reason for his visit. He told Mary she would conceive a son. He would rescue his people from their sins. God had already chosen his name—Jesus, which meant “salvation.” But the message of the angel did not come without consequence for Mary and Joseph. It would lead these two young people to live as fugitives for a time, fleeing from the paranoia of a ruthless and powerful Roman ruler. And on top of all that, as her belly expanded, Mary and Joseph would have to endure the suspicious looks of friends and relatives who couldn’t help questioning her purity and his character. Eventually, as an old cleric named Simeon would later predict, the anguish accompanying the consequences of this angel’s news would be like a sword that would pierce through Mary’s very soul. (Lk 2:35) All this was coming, and so much more. The angel continued with his message. Mary’s boy would grow to reign over the people of God as their savior and king. The God who promised David so many years before that his royal line would see no end would keep that ancient covenant by bringing an heir to Israel’s throne through this young woman. “But how can this be, since I’m still a virgin?” she asked. For her to bear this son, she must conceive. And how can a virgin conceive? Virgins don’t conceive. Everyone knows this. The angel explained that all the laws of nature are amendable by the One who wrote them. Mary lived in the world that was made, and the Maker of this world was the sole author of what could and would happen here. The Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and when he pulled that shadow back, this virgin would become a mother to a son. How this would happen was incidental to the fact that it would. And God would be the one to do it. Knowing his words required a shift in her understanding of how the world worked, the angel gave Mary a sign to help her believe. If Mary would only go visit her elderly cousin Elizabeth who had been barren her entire life, she would find a woman only months away from having a miracle baby of her own. Elizabeth was now six months pregnant. This, the angel told Mary, was a sign that she might understand that nothing was impossible with God. Now it was Mary’s turn to speak. Wrapped in the vertigo of this inter-terrestrial conversation, she answered simply, “May it be done to me as you have said.” What else could she say? The angel’s message was as much about the character of the God who favored Mary as it was about what he meant to do for his people through her. ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

[Editor’s note: Do not let the picture mislead you! This is not a sad, sad post about a dying puppy.] Meet Surry Virginia Thistlewoof. Yes, that’s her full, registered name. It’s engraved on a tag from PetSmart so it’s super-official. She’s a wire-haired fox terrier/schnauzer mix-ish. You may think your dog is the sweetest creature, ever. I’m sure he/she comes close. However, Surry takes the cake (or the bone) in that regard, paws down, and if you ever met her you’d concede. She’s a rescue. We picked her up from a foster home in Kentucky last December. Since then it’s been a difficult journey from utter nervous anxiety to calm, stable, and happy. She’s come a long way in just 12 months and she even gets along with our other rescue, Figaro—an old, one-eyed, tailless black cat. Surry is amazingly gentle and timid, but she loves tug-o-war. Like any red-blooded canine, she naturally bites into most things when teased into playing and proceeds to gnaw, grind, tug, and shake. I love our games of fetch and tug. Judging by the rate her tail gets going—like a floppy, furry, out-of-control metronome—I can tell it’s her favorite thing in the world. At the same time, I’ve never encouraged her to chase or kill any unsuspecting rabbits, chipmunks, etc., that find their way into our back yard. No, Figaro has hunted and killed enough for both of them in his years of rogue cathood. Maybe that’s just it—our cat seems more likely to kill, and I even find it amusing on some level, sometimes. Surry on the other hand, she’s never killed anything that I’ve ever seen—until this morning. I let her outside, as usual, to run and do her business before coming in to scarf down her breakfast. This morning she was met with a rather large, lumbering chipmunk (we’re talking almost squirrel-size here, people) just at the foot of the porch stairs. Surry flopped awkwardly down the flight after the poor creature, and I said aloud, “She’ll never catch it,“ because she never does. Chipmunks are fast! This time, to my surprise and horror, Surry managed to coral the creature against the fence that borders the yard. It threw itself in the air sporadically, and let out a sad, ineffectual chipmunk screech. Then it happened. I watched, in disbelief, as Surry—my sweet, innocent, timid rescue of a dog—grabbed the panic-stricken chipmunk in her toothy jaws and proceed to shake. My smirk transformed into a grimace. I winced. Shake! Shake! Sniff. Lick. Shake! Many of you are thinking right about now, Oh, come on! That’s what dogs do! Yeah, I get it. But not Surry. Not until this morning. Suddenly, she went from being a life-enriching rescue animal that needed my love and care to another sad creature unwittingly participating in the cycle of death. That was the horror. That was why I winced. That was what took my smirk and smudged it into a grimace. I shut the door and tried to get on with my morning coffee. I was pouring a fresh mug-full, when the back door creaked open and I heard familiar paws clicking, thudding into the living room. Turning, my horror compounded as Surry proudly plopped the broken animal onto the wooden floor and sat, staring at me awaiting my glee, my approval, my encouragement. She brought death into the house. Surry brought death into the house. Surry killed this helpless little animal. I set my bitter, black coffee down and knelt to check that the chipmunk was indeed dead. That chilling scene from Lewis’s Perelandra comes to mind. You know the one? When Ransom happens upon a trail of dead creatures along the beach of an otherwise unmolested world. The death trail he follows lies in the wake of the eerily un-emotive Unman, who has been stabbing and tearing at the creatures with its long nails for the sheer pleasure of it, then discarding them and finding new ones to destroy. That’s what I felt. This is the Enemy’s handiwork. Sound extreme? Or is our numb acceptance of death in the world the more extreme tragedy? There really is no corner of creation that isn’t touched by the cold finger of death, is there? Dammit. Damn this. I’m angry. Not at Surry. At Death. Especially when I’m forced to see creature-on-creature massacre, be that animal to animal, human to human or any combination of the two. So, it fell to me to do something with the small, lifeless animal. It was, for the moment, still warm and soft, but its warmth was quickly draining away, becoming a stiff, unnatural cold. Unnatural. That’s what I was thinking as I palmed the corpse and plodded to the back of the yard, looking for a somber spot, away from the nose of the dog, the claw of the cat, the eye of the buzzard. What I wanted to say to the chipmunk as I set it amid some wet leaves and proceeded to cover it in a kind of shroud of more wet leaves, was something like, “This is unnatural for you, I know. You should be frolicking. This isn’t your natural lot in life. Death isn’t your norm. It’s not what you were made for. Take heart! Someday, your chipmunk brothers will frolic in a land that never dies. Life, Himself, will laugh and run and romp with you and all other creatures. Someday, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the dog will lie down with the chipmunk.” I didn’t speak the eulogy. I thought it, though. All I could manage to think as I walked back to the warmth of the house was “Lord, help me. Help me. Have mercy. Where are You in this?” I didn’t scold Surry for the kill. I tried not to alarm her or make her aware of my shift in mood. I wanted to console her. She seemed confused about it all. Why hadn’t I patted her head and played tug o’ war with the creature she’d brought in to give me? I wanted to explain to her “Look, girl. It’s going to be ok. I know you’re confused. You didn’t mean to. In the New Creation you wouldn’t have even known to do such a thing. All will be restored.“ The whole scenario seemed to fit quite nicely into this gloomy Advent day. I miss the sun. I miss the warmth of blooming life, the buzz of bees, and the romp of smelly dogs like Surry in lush, newly grown grass. I’m sick of Advent. We’re what, a week in? Not even? Skip the Christmas tree, let’s fast forward to April or May. But then . . . I’d miss out on the glorious culmination of it all. The remembrance/celebration/acknowledgment of Christ’s very literal arrival into his own death-ravaged creation. Granted, he didn’t come the way I’d want him to (as a fully-grown king, mighty and terrifying, out of the sky, lightning flashing, sword-swinging, exterminating death in some flagrant show of divine might). He didn’t even arrive the way his own people would have preferred. He didn’t topple the Roman Empire and reclaim the throne of David in an epic, *Peter-Jackson-battle-scene sort of way. (*A battle scene from the original LOTR trilogy is what you should be picturing, not a scene from the tragically CGI-glazed theme-park ride that is the more recent Hobbit series of cinematic fiascos.) It’s difficult to remember, to believe, that the way in which he came was so much more than what I would have wanted. That his way of entering his own creation as a helpless, flesh-wrapped infant was so much more intentional, permanent, enduring, subversive, brilliant. By way of his death in the flesh and his resurrection in the flesh, he did assert his absolute authority over creation in a way that is unfathomable. And yet, stranded in time and space, a human being in 2014, I’m still waiting to see the full result of that authority, that victory. Death still occurs, all around me, everywhere. Today, my sweet Surry broke a chipmunk’s neck, and I had to bury it. It will probably happen again, and again. That doesn’t mean that our Advent won’t end, won’t eventually give way to Christ with us, to creation restored, to peace on earth. I just pray for the grace to bear up under the weight of the curse and of death, while still being livid, furious, enraged at death, until the dawn finally breaks in on us and all is made right. Until we all awaken on the Christmas morn that will never, ever come to an end. #death #dog #grief #Advent #creation #animal #chipmunk #Christmas

A few weeks back, I woke to an email in my inbox from a friend who had created a Facebook page for my book Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. I immediately thanked him and then panicked because I didn’t really have any idea what I was supposed to do with it. Here’s what I’ve come up with: a daily advent devotional to go along with the chapter of the day. I would love for you all to check it out, and I would love for any of you who feel so inclined to tell your friends about it and share it around the interwebs. In the coming weeks I’ll run a few longer excerpts from the book here at The Rabbit Room as well. Hope you enjoy. Also, my follow up book, a 40 chapter Lenten companion called Behold the King of Glory: A Narrative of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ will be available through the fine folks at Crossway Books in January. ______________ Follow Russ on Instagram Follow Russ on Twitter Follow Russ on Facebook

A style is found by sedentary toil And by the imitation of great masters. W.B. Yeats, Ego Dominus Tuus One of the classes I’m taking this term is a poetry writing course, and it’s been at once one of the most challenging and most delightful things I’ve ever tackled. I’ve learned so much about style and form, and I’ve been required to produce such a quantity of poetry on demand (and publish it in the course forums!), that I’m feeling rather intoxicated on words these days. It might be a stretch to say that I’m dreaming in iambic pentameter, or that my fingertips are calloused from beating out syllables on my desk—but there’s no doubt I’ve written more poetry in the last couple of months than I have in the whole past year. I’m loving every assignment, but my favorite thus far has been an exercise in learning from the great masters. In much the same way that art students in a classical atelier learn to “see” as painters by the practice of drawing plaster casts, any serious study of poetry is going to involve identifying the masters that have inspired you and practicing the attributes you admire until you are able to reinterpret them in your own unique way. At first, we were asked merely to name our greatest poetic influences, and to elaborate on specifics of style, subject, and form which we admired. Next, we were instructed to choose a favorite poem and draft a piece of our own which attempted to incorporate some of the techniques employed by this master. The poets I most admire are Keats, Wordsworth, T. S. Eliot, and G. M. Hopkins, and there’s no doubt that I’ve been influenced by them. Wordsworth has fed my reverence for nature, and his high tone and poetic structure is something I’ve always instinctively admired and been drawn to, though I’m only now beginning to fully appreciate just how and why as a result of this course. I love Eliot’s daring; his experiments with form; his bold commentary on life and faith: with them he has given me a framework to help me understand the structure and possibilities of free verse. However, I would have to say that of all poets, G. M. Hopkins has most influenced both my style and my subject matter over the years. I’ve definitely imitated his alliterative bent; I’ve thought long and hard to come up with metaphors as surprising and creative as his are. He, in fact, is the one who really taught me what a metaphor is, in the truest sense, with his shocking images that at first seemed so disparate to what they were referring to, and then, all at once, were absolutely perfect. I admire, and seek to emulate, the close attention Hopkins paid to the world around him: he was known to take detailed daily notes of weather and nature to hone his descriptive powers, and this is something I need to be more disciplined about as a writer. I’m also challenged by his deep honesty with regards to both sorrow and joy. Both subjects take great courage. Hopkins has inspired me to find my own voice by expressing his unique one so beautifully, and I think that this is the most profound way I’ve sought to make the values I’ve found in his poetry my own. Shakespeare taught me how to write a sonnet, but Hopkins taught me to love them. The poem I chose as my source of inspiration was G. M. Hopkins’ exquisite sonnet, Hurrahing in Harvest. It’s written in his characteristic sprung rhythm, and like many of his sonnets, depicts a profound experience in which he celebrates the presence of God “within the world’s splendor and wonder.” The first stanza in “Hurrahing” is purely descriptive, the second more than hints at that presence, and the third expresses his encounter with the Divine in jubilant terms. My attempt sought to follow this pattern somewhat. But giddy as I was over this experiment, I found it to be the most challenging assignment to date. What came of it in the end was a hard-wrung and highly imperfect draft, within which I learned to admire Hopkins’ genius more than ever. The debt I owe him is enormous, past all my powers of expression. As I was reminded, drawing on the riches of the masters’ experience is not merely imitation: it’s part of an arduous process of finding our own voice. Autumn-Anthem Lift, lift up, your molten-maple gladness, trees, Your ambered arms and age-wracked fingers ringed With yellow gold! Cerulean sky, your firstborn sapphire sing!— As down your favor kingly falls on all you see. Beneath blue hazes, violet-veilèd meadows dream, till seized With wakeful western fire, upstirring wingèd Embers from the brume. To Grace in all this glory, rememb’ring Earth lifts chaliced ‘thorn, decanting praises on the breeze. Dear dying world, such seasoned glories seem twice fair As those with which your youth was clothed in April’s mirth. This death a likeness of that sorrow none could bear But He; this beauty vouchsafe of that birth Which follows death. Mark, my soul, such sweetness in the air! What secrets in decaying leaves and sodden earth! So what about you? Who are your masters? How have their works helped shape your style, subject matter, and vision?

Every year I spend about six months wondering who in the world will fill the shoes of the previous year’s special guest on the Behold the Lamb of God tour. I used to stress about it for six months, but it always works out so now I just wonder. We’ve been blessed not only with the crazy talent of the yearly band and artists, but since this thing started we’ve been joined by some amazing special guests—and most of them ended up on the tour due to some pretty random occurrences. Either I bumped into someone around town or sent them a text or they came to mind while I was jogging. My son Aedan is responsible for Thad Cockrell being on the tour this year. Here’s how it went down. Carly, the songleader at the 12 South congregation of Midtown Fellowship, does a fantastically understated job of choosing songs and leading the music. There for a while we sang a few old hymns and gospel songs that I was surprised I’d never heard. The first was called “Oh To Be Loved,” a slow and simple waltz that was comforting and sad at the same time: “He knows the names of my sorrows / he knows the names of my fears / Why should I let them bother me? / For I know he is near.” Simple, direct, and the melody suits it perfectly. Another old standard that I had apparently missed when I was growing up was “The Master’s Calling.” Listen while you still can hear Listen while you still can hear The Master’s calling The Master’s calling Bow down while your knees still bend Bow down while your knees still bend The Master’s calling The Master’s calling I don’t wanna walk away Walk away from Him No, I don’t wanna walk away Don’t wanna walk away from Him Bind me to your side Bind me to your side Seek him though your eyes don’t see Seek him though your eyes don’t see The Master’s calling The Master’s calling Praise him while your lips still sing Praise him while your lips still sing The Master’s calling The Master’s calling Once again, the straightforward and repetitive words are upheld by a pleasing melody that soothes you even as the lyric demands a response. Lastly, Carly led us in a song called “Great Rejoicing,” about heaven and forgiveness and joy—somehow made the more beautiful by the sadness that haunts the edges of the music. I’ve ugly cried from my pew as I joined my voice with the saints and sang these words: Someday you will find me Guarded in His fortress Open heart and wings That never touch the ground Someday we will gather In a grand reunion Debts of this old world Are nowhere to be found Nowhere to be found There’s gonna be a great rejoicing… Well, one Sunday Carly wasn’t there, so a singer/songwriter named Thad Cockrell led the music. One of the songs he played was the first one I mentioned, “Oh To Be Loved,” and that was when I realized that he had written it. I could hardly believe that the song wasn’t a hundred years old! Then I discovered that “The Master’s Calling” and “A Great Rejoicing” were his songs, too, so that day I bought Thad’s album To Be Loved and became a huge fan. About a month ago I went to bed wondering (not stressing!) about who would be the special guest on the tour. I had asked a few friends and they weren’t available, so time was getting tight. Aedan happened to get up before me the next morning, and as usual he turned on iTunes and listened to a random album while he did his homework. I heard Thad’s voice echoing through the house, his high and lonesome tenor reminding me that there was going to be a great rejoicing someday. I sent him a text and asked if he would hop on the bus. He agreed, and in my house there was a great rejoicing. Here’s a link to Thad’s albums on iTunes.

We love books. You love books. But this little girl really loves books, and she’s not afraid to tell you why. We’re currently in talks with Madison to see if she’ll anchor our speaking roster at Hutchmoot 2015.

I arrive just in time to see one yellow leaf at last let go, slowly spinning through morning sunshine to quietly ripple the stillness of the pond There is something almost holy about the light of autumn mornings, the way it glints through tree and leaf, filtering down through the thinning, colorful canopy to the forest floor. This morning I came, hollowed out and husk-dry from the cares of life. As I crested the bank from the gravel parking area to the pond, I saw a single golden leaf fall through a beam of sunshine, to quietly ripple the sublime stillness of the surface. Climbing down to the other side of the road, I watched as water poured over the dam and burbled between banks flecked with rich gold and red. In such a place it feels easier to pray than it has in days, to commune with the One breathing behind and into sun, water, leaf, and tree. Everywhere my eyes turn he is fluttering behind a tree, making leaves death-dance in beautiful ballet spirals, laughing in the mirth of the rambling stream, or waiting in the silence of the still water. He is red, and gold, and green. He is filling me with fresh air, and breath, and Spirit, restoring life back to weary bones, even in this one glorious seasonal moment before death.

It’s release day for Jill Phillips’s new record, Mortar & Stone (available here in the Rabbit Room store). Last week I chatted with Jill via Facebook about her record and other things. Mostly other things. She was just coming in from tutoring a student at her kids’ school, which draws students from very expensive neighborhoods, from housing projects, and from every sort of neighborhood in between. That was where our conversation started. Your kids’ school is pretty interesting—this meeting point between families of privilege and families who don’t enjoy nearly the same advantages. I agree. I want my kids to go to a school where people don’t have all the privileges they have. I want them to know that in all the important ways, those other kids aren’t that different. I think the things they see there hopefully build character and compassion. We talk about their school and friends in the context of the gospel all the time. I want them to see Jesus there and in their classmates. The thing that makes people the most anxious about sending their children there is really its greatest gift. I think that has some relevance to the music you and Andy [Gullahorn] have been making—and the life y’all have been living—for a long time. So many of the songs on Mortar & Stone are about the blessings that come out of things you didn’t want at all. That’s really interesting. I do think that’s true. I don’t think we can avoid pain. Our kids can’t avoid pain growing up. I can’t avoid pain in my daily life. Part of maturity is knowing who to turn to when hard things happen- who is Lord of it. I want to sing about all of those things. Every grownup in the world will tell you that the things that made them a better person are the hard things, and yet most of us don’t want hard things for our kids. As much as I know I need Jesus, I don’t want my kids to have to need Jesus I know, it’s so true. Even as I write that and know I believe it I fight it every day. I don’t want them to suffer, I don’t want to suffer. Kids are the final frontier when it comes to the gospel. You would know, too! I hold on to some of the stories you guys have told about your kids as we enter the teenage years. Speaking of kids, I’ve got to tell this anecdote: My kids are big Jill Phillips fans. They’re also big Mrs. Gullahorn fans… I love your kids. One day we were listening to one of your CDs, and my son—he was eleven at the time—got to looking at the CD cover and said, “Look, Jill Phillips looks just like Mrs. Gullahorn!” I thought he was joking at first, but he wasn’t. When I told him that Jill Phillips WAS Mrs. Gullahorn, you could have knocked him over with a feather. HA! I love that story so much. Laundry and dishes by day, stealth musician by night. He’s used to knowing people who turn up on the iPod, but you’re the only one of our musician friends who uses a code name. I know, the name trips people up all the time. They think I am either making a feminist statement or trying to distance myself from Andy. The truth is I did music before we were married:) Even though it says Jill Phillips on the cover, your music IS the music of Mrs. Gullahorn. It so obviously grows out of the life you’re living every day. Absolutely. No one outside of music knows me as Jill Phillips. Jill Gullahorn, mom, neighbor, wife, friend—that is absolutely how I see myself. My life feeds my music, not the other way around. Wait a minute. Is that completely true? Doesn’t your music feed your life too? Well, I guess that’s true too. But I suppose I mean that without my daily life my music would be without context. They have to go together maybe is a better way of putting it. Aha! That was the first “gotcha” question of the interview. The first of many. I don’t doubt it! To what extent does your sense of self come from the fact that you make music? I have thought about that before. Honestly, I’m not sure because I’ve always been a career musician. I am sure if it all came to an end there would have to be some kind of reckoning and I would know the real answer. It is a big part of who I am, but not the most essential thing. I feel I identify much more with being a wife, mother, friend and neighbor. That’s the second time you’ve identified yourself as a “neighbor.” I love my neighbors. But I don’t think of “neighbor” as being in the top four categories of my identity. What’s so great about your neighborhood? It’s never been on my top four either. We just landed in this amazing neighborhood when we moved into our current house. When we moved in they were all out in our backyard waiting to meet us. The people who live in this neighborhood are invested in each other’s lives. I love them. I use neighbor in the literal sense and the figurative sense in which Jesus talked about neighbor. I’ve met several of your neighbors at the bowling alley. I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but while they may be great neighbors, they aren’t all great bowlers. Ha! But they will show up week after week. That is a great point. And I also caught the veiled criticism of my poor attendance record at Bowling Lunch. It’s hard for me to get there every week, so don’t judge. Let me just tell you that criticizing your interviewer during a “gotcha” interview is not a good move. Not at all:) I have no idea who comes every week except a few neighbors. You could be President of Bowling for all I know. Too late. The gloves are coming off. Back in the day, you and I competed against one another in an American Idol Fantasy League. Very true. Those were the days, right? That league was the best. You earned a reputation in that league for threatening to punch people in the throat. That’s a lot of anger just below the surface. No, just a sad attempt at humor. Mmm hmmm…doesn’t that refusal to acknowledge your anger issues just make you that much more angry? In all seriousness, I don’t think I’m angry. If I am going to go to a bad place it will be fear or anxiety. That’s my poison. Songs dealing with fear and anxiety aren’t exactly the fast track to radio hits, are they? No, but they should be! A lot of people are afraid. Just watch the news for two seconds. You make a great point. There are a lot of people who make a lot of money by stirring up fear and anxiety. It’s a whole industry. But the way to deal with fear is to name it. Name the fear and know who is the Prince of Peace who brings healing. It’s a constant process. Yes and amen. The fear industry, on the other hand, says, “You’re afraid? You don’t even know the half of it. Listen to this other thing you should be afraid of.” Yes. My friend Suzanne Stabile is an enneagram teacher and she says the news shows really ramp it up around sweeps time. Lots of wars and rumors of wars, danger about certain products our kids use, etc. They know we watch even when we don’t want to. It’s a strange phenomenon, but very human. I do that kind of thing any time I get away from gospel sanity. Which is to say, pretty often. Absolutely. We may not change our reaction but we can recognize it and counter it with truth. Here’s one of many things I love about your songs: Your songs say, “This broken world, this hurting world where fear and anxiety romp around at will—this is exactly the place where the gospel does its work”—not some imaginary world where I’m hap-hap-happy all the time-time-time. That is really kind. I sure hope they say that. I have had the benefit of learning from a lot of great people along the way who emphasize that fact. This world is beautiful and it is where His redeeming work is happening. Cycles of Good Fridays, Holy Saturdays and Easter Sundays all the time. That’s what I love about Flannery O’Connor’s stories too. So, see: I like you and Flannery O for some of the same reasons. I’m going to entitle this interview “JR talks to the new Flannery O’Connor.” I’ll take that any day! You know, you are the one who made Andy fall in love with Flannery O’Connor. He talks about her writing all the time. I consider that one of the great accomplishments of my writing career. He might say that too:) But I am not as tough and honest as she is. I aspire to be. How is anybody who is fully engaged in family, friends, and neighbors going to be as “tough” as Flannery O’Connor? She didn’t have to be in the middle of it every day the way you are. There are different kinds of toughness. She just seems really fearless in her writing. I will probably get more and more that way with age, but I’ll always be my personality I suppose. An encourager by nature. Here’s hoping. As much as I love Flannery O’Connor, I wouldn’t much want you to turn into her. Here’s something else I love about your songs: I love the fact that if I put your songs beside Andy’s songs, it’s obvious that they come from intertwined lives. It sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but there are plenty of married couples who might not be talking about the same things. I really appreciate that. I am such a fan of his songwriting. One of the great gifts of being married to Andy is we are interested in growing together. We don’t want to be stagnant. I feel that there are similar themes we are drawing from that do flow from our lives and what we are learning. Mortar & Stone and Beyond the Frame feel like companion pieces to me. Oh, I love that. You know, it makes sense. He produced Mortar & Stone and we worked at home. The songs were simple and I wanted simple production to fit them. I think he is really gifted at that. I heard him do it on his record so beautifully. On a different note, I see that the door fell off Bono’s private jet while he was flying to Germany. What?? This is one of the amazing things about doing an interview on FB chat…the newsfeed just keeps coming. It will be on the news in a second. “Private plane danger at 5:00!” As it turns out nobody on the plane was ever in any danger. So, more fear mongering. I’m sorry. Is that rude to go off and read a news story in the middle of an artist interview? I meant no disrespect. Not at all. It’s Bono. You’re a Christian for crying out loud. Unavoidable:) You’ve probably folded two loads of laundry during this conversation. Actually, I bet you’re careening around Nashville in your minivan texting this whole interview on your phone. No, I’m upstairs in a quiet house. Heaven. But I’m not above it. I multi-task all the time. I’m a mom. It’s survival. I know many of the songs on this new record came from walking through some pretty intense situations with friends. It’s been a hard year in our community and with some dear friends. I feel like it’s natural that the songs would be informed by real life. And I have walked through some pretty hard years myself so I wanted the songs to ring true to anyone in a hard place. Acknowledging the pain, clinging to the hope. That’s what you were saying a minute ago: naming the fear or the pain or the anxiety is a step toward bringing the gospel to bear on it. Which is a very different thing from wallowing in it. Yes, I think so. And maybe there are seasons for wallowing and we have to be patient and bear with one another. We are all at any given time in different places with our faith. We have to remind each other of what is really true and who we really are. I have had many people do that for me, who currently do that for me. And I have had the great blessing of being able to do that for my friends from time to time. You’re a wise lady. Nah. I’m copying all of this from a blog. Has anybody ever told you that you look like Jill Phillips? Yes, actually! A really smart, funny little Rogers kid.

Jill Phillips’ brand-spanking new full-length album, Mortar & Stone, is now available. If you were at Hutchmoot 2014, you were there for the release concert (and maybe even picked up an advanced copy). If you pre-ordered the CD, it’s probably already on your doorstep. If you pre-ordered the download, you can log in to your account page and start downloading the full album right now. And if you haven’t heard the songs yet, get thee to the store and listen. Jill’s songs have always connected with listeners on a deep, personal level, and this collection is no different. They meet people where they are and join them along the road, both in darkness and in light. It’s a beautiful piece of work. Stay tuned for a release day interview by Jonathan Rogers. Go grab yourself some great music while you wait.