What are you looking for?

At the close of another year, I love to ask people what their 5 favorite films, records, and (especially since it’s the rabbit room) books were of 2010.  (Note: said films, records, or books need not have been released in 2010 – only discovered and enjoyed.) 2010 was an exceedingly busy year for me with little time to take in much in the form of entertainment, and as I sit down to make my own list, I realize that I don’t have much to draw from.  But here it goes anyway: BOOKS I actually read exactly 5 books this year (and started my 6th yesterday).  But if I was only to read 5 books, these were really good ones! 5. Telling Secrets – Frederick Buechner In preparing for my Hutchmoot talk, I revisited my favorite author and for the first time ever read a book for a second time.  It was even better than I remembered. Telling Secrets is the third of four memoirs written by Buechner and is also my favorite of his books. 4. Birthright – John Sheasby John spoke at an artist retreat I attended this year and what he had to say was exactly what I needed to hear at this time in my life.  His talks at the retreat are what this book is comprised of and though I may enjoy him more as a speaker than an author, his insights on our identity in Christ are truly transformational. His book helps lead us from the servant’s quarters to take our place as sons and daughters in our Father’s house (and heart).  (This post from earlier this year is the fruit of this message’s work in my life: http://bashful-building.flywheelsites.com/?p=10054) 3. Letters From The Land Of Cancer – Walt Wangerin Jr. Again, in preparation for Hutchmoot I turned my attention to one of my favorite authors and picked up this journal of his experience of being diagnosed with cancer. Full of grace and soul-baring honesty, this is a book that will be meaningful for people whether they have had to deal with cancer or not.  Mortality is a teacher that leads its students into depths of wisdom usually reserved for the dying.  Think of this book as an opportunity to gain access to wisdom and beauty without having to pay the usual harrowing price of admission. 2. Fiddler’s Green – A. S. Peterson Pete entrusted me with an advance copy of his new book and honored me by inviting me to make suggestions and speak into his creative process.  It was a generous invitation and I had a blast returning to the world of Fin Button!  I couldn’t put it down and was delighted to witness my friend discover his creative voice with such surety. I loved it! 1. Intimate Allies – Dan Allender This is perhaps an unusual entry, but I regard Allender’s book as the single most transformational book – outside of the bible, of course (that’s for the fundy watchdogs out there ;- ) – that I’ve ever read.  After 18 years, Taya and I were both surprised to discover our marriage was more fragile than either of us suspected.  The Holy Spirit used counseling, community, and this book to guide our ship to safer waters.  I’ve already read this book twice and will be reading it soon again. It gets to the heart of what’s broken in all of our relationships, focusing on the curse detailed in the opening chapters of Genesis, helping us to see the Big Idea of marriage as a holy means of sanctification.  So good – even if you’re not married or if you’re marriage seems healthy and happy.  This book revealed to me the fallout of the curse and how it affects every area of my life. NOTABLE MENTION: Yesterday I just started reading The Charlaton’s Boy by our own Jonathan Rogers and so far I LOVE IT!  I’m two chapters in and can’t wait to get back to it… FILMS I didn’t see a lot of movies either.  Or if I did, they weren’t all very good. (Yes, I’m one of those who saw The Last Airbender).  Though I don’t think my list is particularly interesting (I didn’t see a lot of art films this year), I still offer it humbly: 5. Shutter Island It was good clean fun to see a legit suspense/psychological thriller with such a signature atmosphere and competent performances from both cast and director. 4. Toy Story 3 My low expectations were blown away by the emotional weight of this family film!  I laughed, cried, and thoroughly enjoyed it in spite of myself. Pixar for the win.  Again. 3. Harry Potter My favorite of the Harry Potter films so far.  I really like the Harry Potter universe and have enjoyed the films thus far for what they were, but this was the first one that delivered more than I expected.  (Though I wish the one – for lack of a better descriptor – “love scene” had been handled a little differently.) 2. Up In The Air This is a 2009 film that I saw in early 2010.  I thought it lived up to the hype and especially resonated with me as a person who travels extensively and experiences first hand the challenges of staying connected with community and resisting the constant temptation of isolation.  A great film with great performances that skillfully explores it’s themes with a light touch. 1. Inception Loved it.  Just like most everybody else. What I loved most about it was that I had never seen anything like it. A great idea well executed that generated a lot of great conversation (especially here in the rabbit room!). RECORDS: 5. Sigh No More – Mumford & Sons This gets my vote for the raw passion of it alone. This record also gave voice to many of the things I was feeling in the midst of a turbulent season in our marriage. I felt like they wrote the soundtrack to my journaling.  Interestingly, Taya felt much the same way, and so this record became a kind of common ground for us in a time when we needed it.  Besides that, the post-Christian consciousness of much of the lyric content provided good fodder for reflection and understanding the current zeitgeist. 4. Waking Up – Onerepublic An unapologetically great pop record.  My sons discovered this one and shared it with me, which was a rewarding experience in and of itself.  Big, hooky, anthemic melodies set to classic pop music with a hip-hop rhythmic sensibility.  A fun record with surprisingly organic production and GREAT sounding drums. 3. Flamingo – Brandon Flowers Another great pop record recommended to me by Andy Osenga.  Thanks Andy! Brandon sings with 80’s alt/pop bravado and brings Daniel Lanois in to participate in the production, bringing musical gravitas to these catchy melodic gems that harken back to the hip records of the late 80’s. This is more than your average pop record, with a sonic landscape that calls to mind the open lonely spaces of New Mexico and the shiny “all that glitters is not gold” lights of Las Vegas, Nevada. 2. Scratch My Back – Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel has been one of my favorite artists of the 80’s, 90’s, and now into the new century with the best cover record I’ve ever heard.  Here he takes a sampling of songs that have meant something to him and covers them backed only by orchestration, thus rescuing the songs from the sonic era that would otherwise entrap them.  The orchestration is timeless and progressive in it’s elegance.  It was also fun to learn what Gabriel is listening to, from David Bowie and Lou Reed to Arcade Fire and Bon Iver. “The Book Of Love” alone is worth the whole price admission.  (I wrote a review of this record here: http://bashful-building.flywheelsites.com/?p=6559) 1. The Suburbs – Arcade Fire Though I was initially disappointed with it, this became my favorite record of the year.  Worthy of an entire post, it’s hard to sum up what I love about this record in a paragraph. It’s reflections on the spiritual and emotional sickness of the modern man is insightful and artfully rendered, describing the hangover of modernity (or what I’d like to think of as our generation’s version of what Walker Percy called the “malaise”).  In a single line, Winn Butler names what we’ve lost for all that we’ve gained: “I used to write… I used to write letters, I used to sign my name…”  Check out the remarkable interactive video for their song “We Used To Wait”: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ So what have you been listening to this year?

Note: I wrote this a few years ago for a CCM article. There was a limit to the word count, and I remember having a hard time not writing pages and pages about all the ways Rich’s life has affected my own. I can’t remember if it was ever published, so I dug it out in honor of the man whose music and ministry quite literally changed my life. As of this week, Rich has been dead for fourteen years, but his memory is very much alive. ——————————– Today I drove across the wide prairie that lies at the feet of the Grand Tetons. My wife of twelve years and our three children were with me on the journey, and as is our custom on long trips, we let the kids take turns choosing the music. We listened to Riders in the Sky (the best cowboy music around), the soundtrack to Silverado (the best Western film score ever), and some Sara Groves (who doesn’t have much at all to do with the Wild West, but who was a welcome salve after ten hours of the kids choosing the aforementioned music). We rounded the bend at sunset and there before us stood those craggy Tetons, all gray stone with white snow tucked into the fissures. The clouds were gold with sunlight and long, misty fingers of rain dangled from them, caressing the peaks and the aspen- and fir-covered shoulders of the range. Who else but Rich Mullins could write music that would adequately suit a scene like that? I demanded the iPod, selected A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band, and we drove the next forty-five minutes without speaking. We weren’t speaking because we were being spoken to. Rich’s music has a finely tuned resonance. Some people hear his songs and miss the vibration completely, while others, like myself, are rattled to the bone. Driving today in the shadow of the mountains, my bones were rattling with the Gospel, and it was the Gospel according to Rich. He sang about a God who bares his holy arm in the sight of the nations, who roars and smites and laughs from heaven at his enemies. A God to be reckoned with. But the God Rich knew—the God he knows—is also one of tenderness and deep mystery and patient love. He’s a God who thought to make the color green, whose mercy rains down from heaven and trickles even to the brown brick spines of our dirty blind alleys. I remember Rich saying in a live recording from years ago that God is like the kid who beats you up and then gives you a ride home on his bike. I’ve learned a lot about God from Rich, mainly because he put to words the things I already knew were true: I have been beaten up, and I have been carried home. I could write all day about the ways God has blessed me and changed me by way of Rich’s music; I could write all day about the ways I have missed his wry, odd wisdom in the midst of the industry I find myself so often befuddled by; I could also write about the way Rich’s writing craft leaves me awestruck and humbled; or about the countless stories I’ve been told by those he either knew or was known by; or about the uncanny number of artists I know who point to Rich as one of their chief influences, both spiritual and musical. But today, after that glorious drive through the West while listening to him sing about America and Jesus and the very truth of God, I can only here express my gratitude to God for Rich’s ability to remind me that it is to God alone that I am to be grateful. There’s nothing else an artist could better aspire to than to leave that legacy. I have sung his songs and read his writings and stood at his grave and am convinced that in his barefoot, quirky, grace-filled wake he left a pair of shoes that no one will ever fill.

In the twelve years that Philip and I have been married, there are only two New Years Eves we’ve spent at home. Once, early on, we had my parents over for a formal dinner. We toasted with champagne cocktails and set off a few decorous little fireworks, and Daddy chased Philip around the backyard with a flaming Roman candle, laughing all the way. The other saw me in bed with a cold, asleep well before the stroke of midnight. Every other year we have been in company of lifelong friends, gathered about a familiar hearth for an evening as comfortable as it is refined. But this year I was too sick to go out. The kind of sick that called for soda crackers and painkillers. Philip picked up takeout that I couldn’t eat and a bottle of champagne at the grocery store, just in case. We played backgammon by the fire and listened to a stack of Christmas records and reminisced rather drowsily over the highlights of 2011. I kept threatening to go to bed and Philip kept nudging me to stick it out. Nearing midnight he disappeared into the kitchen and came back with toasting glasses: Coke for him and ginger ale for me. The perfect accompaniment to my saltines. In many ways, such a quiet, reflective evening seemed to me an appropriate way for this year to go out. It was a wonderful year, rich and heavy with blessings, and we had many treasures to turn over in our talk by the fire that night. But 2011 also saw the continued deferment of a hope long-cherished, one which the very marrow of my soul was worn out with waiting for. January after January I have seen the new year as a fresh chance, a clean slate upon which the Lord just might create the desire of our hearts—a miracle, no less, but one which His lovely character has given me courage to keep looking for. But this New Year’s I just couldn’t seem to find my hope. It was exhausted: buried away like a tired bird in its hidden nest, head tucked under its wing and a veritable thicket of impossibility screening it from view. I had been asking the Lord all that afternoon to show me what faith looked like in this place I am in, what shape hope might take as a symbol for her beleaguered campaign. I so wanted to end the year on a positive note; to know the radiance and splendor in the darkness, even if I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want this Christmas season to go out—and thereby be defined—by sadness and disappointed hopes, but by joy, and by a confident expectation in His ultimate goodness. I wanted the statement of faith I had endeavored to make with this holiday, the deep confession it had been of His perfect love and faithfulness, to shine out strong, not in spite of disappointment and deferred hopes, but in the face of them. But I was so tired. “If I can’t run to You,” I told the Lord, “then at least I can lift my head and hold out my arms.” So midnight came, and not a moment too soon for my taste. We listened to the clock in the hall roll out the long chimes and clinked our soft drinks and laughed about how tame it all was. And then I said I was going to bed in earnest. I hoisted myself up and took a last glance at the Christmas tree, all stars and magic in the gloom. And it was then that the fireworks began. It has been so long since we have been home on New Year’s, we had no idea what a spectacle our neighbors had cooked up in the interim. I dropped back down beside Philip on the sofa and we sat there listening for a while, expecting it to end any moment. But the bangs and reverberations only escalated. Philip suddenly sat up. “Those are big—I’ll bet we could see them!” So we jumped up and hastened outside into the cold, and there, across the road and all along the winking line of neighboring house lights, we saw the blooming explosions of color and light flaming out above the trees. Red and green, blue and gold: all profusions of falling stars with joyous booms to accompany. It was glorious, and completely unexpected: fireworks that had undoubtedly crossed the state line from vacations and holidays, flung recklessly out into the night for weary, unknown souls to feast upon. I could hardly conceive of such benevolence. Joy simply blazed up in both of us—it was as if we had never been tired; I had never been sick or sad. Philip ran to gather all the fireworks we had and I ran in the house and came back out on the front porch (in my coat this time) with the bottle of champagne and two glasses. “I don’t care if this makes me sick,” I laughed as Philip poured mine and the bubbles foamed up and ran down over the sides of the flute. It didn’t. I sat and watched the show over the trees and the beautiful little spectacle that my husband was staging for me there on our own front walk, sipping my champagne and looking up at the real stars overhead in the clear, cold sky. Our fireworks were not as impressive as our neighbors’, but they were exquisite to me. They were radiance in the darkness and a splendor in my own heart. Glory flaring out with a sudden beauty that made us laugh, and also made me want to cry a little bit. A bird woke in our holly hedge and protested all the noise. I shushed her back to sleep with a smile. Joy and sorrow—twin eggs of the same nest. They make their home together and sorrow will always wound and ply her merciful steel upon the human heart. But it’s the joy that breaks it. It wasn’t the New Year’s we had planned or expected—even a few moments before. But there we were, sitting out in the cold on our own front steps in coats and pajamas, drinking cheap champagne and watching a New Year bloom in a sudden exultation of falling stars and kindling hopes. And although this January was scarcely half an hour old, my mind was filled with the words of The Innocence Mission song July: the man I love and I will lift our heads together… the world at night has seen the greatest light: too much light to deny…

Christian Storytelling: Part I Christian Storytelling: Part II In our journey through the Christian story and Christian storytelling, we have to take a look at the Bible. Since we’re all big fans of Sally Lloyd-Jones here, I don’t think I’ll have to do much convincing when it comes to talking about the Bible as a story. But whenever the subject of interpreting Scripture comes up, lots of very strongly-held opinions clash. I want to say that at the outset, because I think we can have a very gracious and charitable discussion about how to approach the Bible. What we think of the Scriptures will dictate how we interpret them. I want to propose some ideas (mostly not my own) about how to approach the Bible as a story, but first, I’ll start with two often-held views of the Scriptures and their interpretation. 1.  The Bible is God’s personal letter (or “love letter”) to each of us. The method of interpretation that usually follows this point of view goes something like this: A small group Bible study sits around with Bibles open and reads a verse or a passage. Then the small group leader says, “Let’s go around the circle and share what this verse means to you.” Then each member says a few things about how that verse touches his or her life, and the whole group sits around in amazement that the Scriptures can mean so many different things to so many different people. Now, I don’t want to disparage this outright, because undoubtedly, the work of the Spirit can and does apply the Scriptures to our hearts, even in a given moment in a small Bible study. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest about the potential problems, or the incomplete nature of this method. The Bible is neither addressed directly nor written directly to you or me. Genesis 1 doesn’t start, “Dear Travis.” It is not a letter, but a collection of a wide variety of literary genres, all of which communicate truth in a different manner and require a different set of rules for understanding. You would totally misunderstand Dickens, Shakespeare, or any other writer if you took their book as a personal letter to you; the same is true of the Scriptures. This method can really mess up our theology and Christian practice. So let’s conclude this: The Bible is definitely to us and for us, but it is also a collection of writings in a wide variety of contexts and needs careful consideration for understanding. Taking the Bible as “God’s love letter” lends us to the idea that “It’s just me, my Bible, and the Holy Spirit, and that’s all I need.” In fact, we need the whole community of believers and those who have gone before us. 2. The Bible is a sort of “Guidebook” for our lives here on earth.  It is God’s instruction to humanity. While many would not word their view this way, many folks who reject view #1 hold some form of this view. We’ve all heard that the B.I.B.L.E. is our “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” The Scriptures are all too frequently employed as a rulebook or a topical guidebook to get through life here on earth. Have a problem with patience? Look up every verse that mentions patience. You’re aware of this method. It’s the medicine cabinet method, or the magic book or grocery list method. The method of interpretation that follows is usually centered in some way around the grammatical-historical principle. We understand, contra view #1, that the Bible was written at a certain time and in certain genres.  So we apply a two-fold method of interpretation: (A) “What did this passage mean when it was written?” and (B) “What does it mean to us today?” If we follow step A, we will arrive at “biblical principles.” Once we have extracted the biblical principles out of the biblical narrative, step B will apply the principle to our lives today. The problem with this is that it misses key elements of the purpose and nature of the Scriptures. The Bible is not a book of life principles or “keys for living.” It is not a self-help book or a systematic theology book. It is, by and large, a narrative about Christ told in various forms and genres. This undoubtedly makes interpretation and application more difficult (more about that in Part IV). Now, on to an alternative approach to Scripture and its application. 3.  The Bible is an unfinished drama.  This is the view of the Bible I plan to expound upon in a coming post. N.T. Wright has offered, I think, a much more helpful view of the Scriptures than either of the two views above. Here is how he summarizes this approach to the Bible: Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves. While there are obviously potential weaknesses with this approach, I think there is much to commend it as well. I will explore its strengths and weaknesses in Part IV. In any case, we must keep one thing primary, and this is really the whole point of this post: The Scriptures are about Christ and his story. And it’s about our invitation to participate in that story, which is why this third view is attractive. The Scriptures are meant to show us Jesus and lead us to Jesus. Any approach to the Scriptures that is not centered around seeking Him “that we may have life” will result in the error of the Pharisees. We can extract principles and apply the Bible personally all day long, but if we haven’t started with the understanding that the Bible is the story of Jesus, and that “every story” in the Bible “whispers His name,” we’ll miss the real magic of the Scriptures.

Like I said in part one, this isn’t meant to be a definitive piece on record making, because there are a zillion ways to approach it. I just did the math and realized this is my eighth studio record. That doesn’t include live stuff or Walk or the Slugs & Bugs CDs, nor does it include occasional shorter recording sessions like “Holy is the Lord” (for City on a Hill) or the appendices A, C, or M. I only say that to say that as I look back at all those sessions, one of the only patterns that emerges is a lack of pattern. This may be super-boring, but just for fun I’m going to try and remember a thing or two about the making of those records. Back to pre-production. It was hard work. Since I was so unused to playing with a band, it freaked me out to suddenly hear drums, bass, and perc on my little acoustic songs. I thought they would lose any hint of their acoustic folkiness, which in hindsight is silly in light of how big the drums can be on some of my favorite artists’ songs. Now I’m used to imagining a rhythm section on the songs even as they’re being written, but at the time it was unsettling. (Side note: this album has always been a bit of an underdog, partly because it released on 9/11/2001, and partly because, though I fought it tooth and nail, the label insisted that my face be on the cover—something I swore I’d never do. Still, every now and then I hear from a listener that this is their favorite of my albums. Those same people are probably Cubs fans, like me.) I don’t remember there being much pre-production on this record, either, but we did record the demos at Andrew Osenga’s studio. I barely knew Osenga at the time. He was finishing up an album called Photographs, and played me a song called “High School Band”, which was only about half finished, as I recall. After we finished recording the demos, I asked Osenga offhand if he had any extra songs lying about; I felt like I needed one more for the album. He shrugged and played us an unfinished version of “After the Last Tear Falls”. On the way home from his house I pulled into a mall parking lot, sat in the back of my van, and worked out the chorus. One of these days, for my own jollies, I’m going to put down everything I remember from each record. For now, that’s a quick look at the beginning of the process for each. This album, though, has me feeling delightfully less comfortable for a few reasons. 1) A few years back we watched a documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (one of the best music docs I’ve ever seen), and Tom’s producer joked that every three records you should fire your producer, lest things get stale. There’s no way on earth I’d fire Ben or Andy G., but in light of that comment we all thought it would be fun to see what would happen if we invited our friend Cason Cooley into the process. Cason’s a great producer and a great friend, and he and Ben have wanted to work together for years. I’ve grown really comfortable with Ben at the wheel. Gullahorn’s input is vital, too. Andy and Ben are both amazing, AMAZING songwriters, but their approaches to songs are really different. They hear different things in my songs, and different aspects resonate with them. That makes for a wonderful tension. We don’t always agree, but because of a deep mutual respect, we always truly consider the other guy’s ideas. Bringing Cason into the mix stirs things up a little. He’s listening in a totally different way than I’m used to, and I think it will bring a new color to the paint on the wall. 2) The other thing is, none of these songs have been road-tested. Usually, I’m touring during the writing process. That means I can test the new songs out to see how well they connect. Playing a song for someone tells you volumes about the song. So often, I finish a song in private, feel great about it, then as soon as I play it for someone I see a thousand weaknesses I was blind to before. I think most songwriters feel the same thing. But since I was touring with Steven last fall when I was writing these songs, then I went straight to the Behold the Lamb tour, which doesn’t afford me much time to play my own stuff, and now I’m on the road with Steven again, I haven’t had a chance to play any of these songs live. (I played an unfinished version of “Shine Your Light On Me” at two Christmas shows, but that’s it.) 3) Finally, while Counting Stars was made in concentration (nine days with no distractions), this new album is practically the opposite. We started three weeks ago, then we stopped because of scheduling conflicts. For the rest of the spring we’ll be working here and there, on our days off from the tour. The bad thing is, we can’t gain much momentum. The good thing is, it gives me time to listen to the songs fifteen thousand times, tweak lyrics, mull over arrangements and instrumentation. It also gives me time to write. We have eleven songs, but it’s nice knowing that, should inspiration strike, I have time to add another few to the pot. I said this in the last post: as soon as you think you know what you’re doing, you’re in big trouble. It brings to mind this quote from Rich Mullins, one of my heroes: “I would rather live on the verge of falling and let my security be in the all-sufficiency of the grace of God than to live in some kind of pietistic illusion of moral excellence.” Sometimes it is at the edges of things, at the brink of destruction, at the love-drunk moments before that first kiss, that we feel most alive. Maybe that’s where God wants us: where we’re most vulnerable, and thus most willing to ask for help, to cry for rescue, to joyously admit defeat. Then we know the work is his, not ours. —————————————————— I had a few things in mind for part three, but I’m curious: what would you guys like to hear about? Would you rather I dug into the specifics of the process? Would you like a play-by-play of a day in the studio? The interplay of songwriting and song-production?

A pearl-bright morning lit the sky my first Sunday in England as I set out to find the church in the village where I spent my first few days in the UK. A walk down deserted, cobble-grey lanes brought me and a few friends to the open door of the church. The main door, sturdy as fortress gate, was still closed for “choir practice,” so we turned through a narrow entrance to our right, thinking it would lead to the balcony. But the higher we climbed, the farther went the stair, and the narrower too. Lancet windows let in a cut of light now and then, but the passage narrowed and darkened as we climbed the chipped stairs until we were almost on hands and knees at each step. Go back? Never. The height and mystery egged us on, faster and faster, until, with a startle and stumble, we arrived at a square little room. It was crammed with people. We eight joined eight more, six elderly men and two women, all of whom stared wide-eyed at our accidental intrusion. The bell pulls looked like caterpillars. But there was no time to tarry. “Mind your feet,” rasped one old man with a wild halo of grey hair.  “Stand back against the wall!” cried another in a neat, fair isle vest, his pleasant, square face red with excitement. We obeyed in an instant, wondering what was about to fill that little room. The wild-haired man nodded emphatically, catching the eye of his comrades and with a sudden coordinated movement, they were off. And it was music that filled the room, for we had stumbled upon the village bell ringers. Each held a sturdy rope threading up through a small hole in the plaster and beam ceiling and with jerks of solemn purpose, they now tugged and released. The ropes sprang upward through their hands as the bells above leapt to life and bellowed a Sunday greeting. Rosy in face and panting a little more each minute, the ringers glanced back and forth at each other, eyes quick and lit by their effort. They began to call, back and forth, with words that sounded to me like sailors guiding a ship, merry sailors steering great bell ships to the port of fine music. “Heave one!” cried the bushy-haired man, his shirt now untucked so that it billowed with every vigorous lift and tug of his arms. Round and round they all went, brisk, business-like, all self and sinew given to their work until with one great lift of his eyebrows, the serious man cried, “and HOLD!” The ropes ceased their rodent like dart into the ceiling; the bells swallowed their music and the eight solemn ringers wiped their wet brows. We peppered them back with kindled curiosity in this rare, tower world into which we had stumbled. They answered back in slow, friendly words, passing a basket of candy round and round the room. The  man with the expressive eyebrows made an eager and kindly host, proffering a binder with countless sequences of six numbers, each a tune or pattern for the bells. “There are countless permutations,” he rumbled, his face still smileless, but his blue eyes flashing interest with every peek at us they got from under his brows. “We must practice hard once a week… when the village will let us.” He rolled his eyes and the rest of them laughed and the flashing of his eyes seemed almost to provoke a smile. One glance at the clock nipped that in the bud. The time had come for the next round of music and he made a rush for his bell. “Stand back!” they started again, but this time we needed no prompting. My eyes roved more freely this time as I stood in stiff-muscled silence in the corner. The room was tiny; we sixteen filled almost every inch, but it was a tower room with a high ceiling and narrow windows sliced through the stone so that the high cool walls were washed in daylight. The sun made a muddy gold of the dust on every surface; books and papers piled on sills, old pictures impossibly crooked on the wall, their frames filled with the proud, sturdy faces of ringers past. On the stone just behind me, I found this framed prayer: Gracious Lord, source of all skill and beauty, who has entrusted to us the ringing of your bells, give to us the needful skill and grace for the faithful performing of our art, that the sound of the bells may awaken in the hearts of all who hear them the desire to worship you in spirit and in truth: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen This last round of ringing proclaimed the start of service, so we prepared to troop down the stairs lest we be late. Our hands were cordially shaken a dozen times, more candy was pressed upon us, and, if we could ever make it back from our studies, the offer to come of a Monday evening and learn to ring the bells ourselves. If I can ever defeat the mountain of essays to be written, I just might do it. To learn “a needful skill and grace for the faithful performing of my art,” is good practice for writing, for learning. For life. And the fun of joining that merry group would be a gift in itself. Bless those bell ringers. The Oxford Chronicles: Bod Card The Oxford Chronicles: The Tutorial

The painter, my husband, considered the primed surface before him. He made a decision, selected a brush, and began. It was his fourth year of undergraduate study, and already our home was filled with the offspring of his education. His taste was bold and abstract. Chromium oxide green and cadmium orange, large format, palette knife, and heavy strokes – these were his signature elements. On this new canvas, he melded the tendencies of his favorite artist with the professor-prescribed style: abstract expressionism. And as visions of Jackson Pollock danced with Wayne Thiebaud in his head, all the best of his skill and style came together. Color, composition, and technique – he wielded them well, and the result was his finest work yet. The painting was highly favored. We deemed it too valuable to sell. But in time, a high school art teacher asked to buy it, and her offer was high. After some discussion, we reluctantly sold what my husband had made. I was surprised at my own sadness when his masterpiece left our house. I really did love that painting. It would now hang on a strange wall, admired by some and ignored by others, but never so deeply cherished as by the one who made it and the one who shared the joy of seeing it made. It was still ours. Not in ownership, perhaps. But in the stretching of its form and the cutting of its frame, in every sweep of color, in every bend of line, in every choice of making, it was ours. In affection, it was ours. Years passed. The painting hung in a teacher’s lounge. We moved away. My best hope was that we might one day produce a print of it from slide film. A month before Christmas this year, my husband crowed that he already had my gift. I complained at not knowing what to get him. He assured me that he needed no gift. In fact, he said, my gift was really for both of us. It had been that costly. On Christmas morning, he waited while the children gaped at their gifts and ravaged their stockings. And when the excitement had faded, he presented me with a small box. Inside was a postcard, and the photograph upon it brought a flood of memory. The university quad. A white pickup truck. A diamond ring. This was our painting. He’s finally done it, I thought. He’s made a print of his finest work and framed it for me. Sure enough, on the back of the postcard was a note: “Look in the garage.” I knew what I would find. It would be like his painting, but it would only be a shadow. Too flat, too sterile, and pressed behind too-perfect glass. I felt a flicker of fear that I would not be able to react well enough. In the garage, a blue blanket concealed a 3-foot rectangular form. Here goes, I thought. While he watched, I pulled back the blanket at its corner. Brush strokes. I couldn’t help it – I thought of Thomas Kinkade. Had my husband made one of those add-a-few-brush-strokes-on-top prints? Had he really made a cheap copy of his own work, and then tried to dress it up? To hang in our own house? The idea seemed obscene to me. What I had feared was going to come true – I was not going to react well. The blanket fully fell. Hang on. I knew that cherry frame. And there was no glass. And this was more than a few brush strokes. And no printer could dream of daring to lay down color that rich. It was home. Our beloved image was home from across the miles and the years. We joyfully prepared its place and raised it up to glory and to rest. I imagined that if this painting could speak our language, it would have quite a story to tell. But it does speak our language. Beheld once again by the ones who first knew it, the painting tells how it was wrought of glory, and owned, and loved. It whispers of when it was lost. It creaks and moans at the memory of the long solitude, the greenness of fluorescent light, the eerie red glow of the exit sign at night. It shudders at the noise. It grimaces at the memory of cold cement on its back. It never belonged there. Now it sings, telling of warm hands on its frame. It is covered and carried. Voices speak from behind the veil. It has heard these voices before. It laughs, for it has not been forgotten. It is still known. It is still loved. It shouts, for it has been sought. A distance has been closed. Someone has come to close it. And now it weeps, for a price is paid. It is no small price. The painting sighs at the touch of new hands – oh, but not new at all. Firm, sure, and so blessedly familiar. And now it stops and says no more, for no more need be said. It simply is, and just by being, it tells a story. Of being made. Of being known. Of being loved. Of being home.

Our favorite family ice cream stop is the Pied Piper Creamery. Tucked away in Berry Hill, one of Nashville’s quirky business districts, the PPC expanded from the original that has blessed East Nashville for years. With flavors like Baklava, Pancakes, Halepeño, or Red Velvet Elvis, we always taste four or five before deciding which to order. Last week was fall break for the kids, so we made an afternoon run to the PPC for what is probably our last ice cream outing of 2011 (I got two scoops: Baklava and Mocha). On our way home the sun hovered bright and low over south Nashville’s hilly spine, and from the back of the minivan my ten-year-old daughter said: “Hmmmm, what a beautiful sunset on a cloudless sky.” To which my eight-year-old son proclaimed with gusto: “The perfect time to watch a horror movie!” I’m laughing now, even as I type it–it was so incomprehensible. Then my daughter asked: “What’s that about?” We were all wondering. This is part of the magic of children. Though they see differently, they see clearly. In fact, you could argue that they are sharper and more aware than we old-timers at five, or six, or seven times their age. Where our minds are cluttered with habits, fears, plans, and presumptions, they are blessedly unencumbered by life experience. That’s why finding your “inner child” is not a quaint notion to simply disregard. It sounds hokey, but I re-learn how to live when I listen to my kids. They have things I lack. They are more honest, more transparent, more spontaneous, and more needy than I allow myself to be. So, what was Jonah talking about? Why was that the perfect time to watch a horror movie? Here’s what he said: “Because it is so beautiful outside that you wouldn’t be scared.” When he’s 16, do you think he’ll still acknowledge his fears with such careless ease? What about when he’s my age, or yours? When you spend time with children, whether they are yours or not, look for ways that you aren’t like them. They are our model for the charge Jesus gave his disciples in Matthew 18: “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

Do you ever listen to a record and think, Wow, why doesn’t everyone know about this? That’s what comes to mind when I listen to Jill Phillips’ In This Hour album. It’s crazy good. Here’s one of the ten reasons why. “Find The Way” by Jill Phillips

Randall Goodgame: Buddy, I can’t wait to talk with you about Harmonica Anthology. My whole family loves this record. Buddy Greene: Do they really? RG: Heck yeah. For about three months, whenever I drove the minivan it was always in the CD player because my wife and kids love it. I mean I know you call it a harmonica anthology, but there’s so many other great musicians on there—it just feels like great music with the harmonica blended in. BG: Man, that’s great that you say that because I wasn’t trying to create a harmonica record. We were trying to create a great musical experience for people. So that’s a great compliment. RG: There’s so much about it that I love. There’s a few old classic fiddle tunes on there that I didn’t even know had words to them. Like “Old Joe Clark”—that’s one of the first tunes my daughter learned when she took up the violin. And I love that I can hear you laughing when you say “I stuck my nose in the butter.” BG: Actually, I stumbled over the lyrics there, which is why I laughed. It was just a fun moment so we left it. RG: I love that. That moment sums up a good portion of the record for me. It sounds so much like a room full of brilliant musicians just hanging out and having a ball. BG: It was fun, and that was a pretty live track. All the musicians were in place, and we were just having a blast. That’s a song I’ve known forever, and we’d put this funky feel to it for the first time, so I was loving every bit of that moment. RG: Okay, how about “The Train That Carried My Girl From Town?” That’s my daughter’s favorite. I hear her singing that one in her room while she’s getting ready for school. BG: I love that one. Some West Virginia fiddle player back in the ‘20s made the first recording of it, and then Doc Watson recorded it a couple of times—and I’m a huge Doc Watson fan. It also gave me a chance to turn Bryan Sutton loose on banjo. He’s known for his guitar but he’s a really good banjo player too. And Stuart Duncan’s fiddle on there is unbelievable. RG: What about the Irish tunes? Can you talk a little bit about them and why you chose them? BG: “Butterfly” and “Kid on the Mountain” are both slip jigs, which is a 9/8 feel. I’ve had this great interest in Irish fiddle music, and those two melodies fit together so well. I knew I wanted to cut a couple of songs with some of our great Irish musicians here in Nashville: Bill Verdier, and of course Jeff and Jim Prendergast, and John Mock. And, “Haste to the Wedding + Silver Spear” [PP1] is another Irish set that I loved. RG: How did your musical education unfold? BG: My first instrument was the ukulele. That was 1963-64 so it was The Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul and Mary, and all those songs—“500 Miles” and “If I had a Hammer” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”  And then the Beatles came out. I was a big Beatles fan and loved Motown and all that stuff, but by the time I got to college I was listening more to bands like The Allman Brothers and some of the great groups like Cream and The Rolling Stones.  They were doing all these nods to the pioneers of blues and so I’d hear names like T-Bone Walker and Elmore James and Robert Johnson and I’m going “Who are these guys?” So I started investigating great blues pioneers and man, I was loving what I was hearing. Then The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released Will the Circle Be Unbroken and they had all these cool guests on there. Roy Acuff and Jimmy Martin, and Doc Watson, Vassar Clements, Merle Travis, and these guys were icons. Up until college I had dismissed country music as hick music, and then I dipped into the roots and found Hank Williams and Jimmy Rogers and realized how great those guys were. So many of my heroes were into the stuff. George Harrison’s whole style was based on people like Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins. Those guys gave me the education I wasn’t going to get on popular radio. RG: Is that when you picked up the harmonica? BG: Yeah. I was nineteen and in college, but all the really cool harmonica players were old guys or dead guys—except Charlie McCoy. Charlie was a huge influence on me and probably every country harmonica player in the last half-century. He played for Elvis, Bob Dylan, Sinatra. I mean he’s been on everybody’s record. When you hear the Boxer by Paul Simon, that’s him playing low harmonica. He’s probably my biggest influence, and now over the years he’s become a great friend and was a guest on this album. RG: That’s him with you on “Orange Blossom Special?” BG: Yeah. And I learned my version from listening to his. He has the classic version of that song on harmonica. I played it live for years, and people would ask for it, but I refused to record it because Charlie McCoy broke the template on that tune. But then when Charlie came in I figured out a way that I could set it up for him and give him the spotlight. And “Minor Miner” is a Charlie McCoy original. That’s really why I wanted him to come in—to revive some of his beautiful old instrumental songs. We worked out a nice duet arrangement on that. RG: What can you tell me about “Oh Shenandoah?” BG: Well, “Oh Shenandoah” is a really sentimental song for me because my dad passed away a few years ago and he loved it when I played that on the harmonica. It’s a really poignant story. This trader is coming to buy an Indian chief’s daughter and take her away. You really see this American saga being played out.  Shenandoah is the chief’s name. Oh Shenandoah, we’re bound to leave you, and Oh Shenandoah, we’ll not deceive you. It’s almost a parable of the American tale. We did deceive them—so it’s got all this extra weight to it. RG: Tell me about your original, “Riding out the Winter.” BG: Hey, thanks for asking about that. Musically, it’s another one of those live takes that just turned out great, and lyrically, it’s empathizing with the homeless. I was driving around one day, and the winter was coming on, and I started noticing a lot of homeless people. I was thinking: I’m sitting pretty in the suburbs and here’s a guy with a golden retriever at the end of an exit ramp. He had his guitar and his dog and few possessions in a sack and he was looking for a ride. That’s hard, you know? But he’s got his guitar; he’s got his dog. I love the Nashville Rescue Mission, and I’ll go down and play for a chapel service now and then, and I always learn something from those guys living on the streets. So all that just played into this song. RG: And I love that you put the classical melody on there. BG: Oh yeah, with Ron Block on banjo and Jeff playing accordion and Bryan Sutton on guitar and Ben Issacs playing bass. It was so much fun to hear that come together. RG: You played that at Carnegie Hall, right? BG: Yeah, with Bill Gaither. RG: Right. How did that come about? BG: You know, it was totally an afterthought. I was supposed to be sitting with all the other artists and playing harmonica fills here and there. But Bill and I were standing on the stage, looking out at the empty Carnegie Hall and I said, “Bill this is so cool. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this video.” And right there on the spot he asks me if I’d like to do a little feature something. I said “Gosh yeah, I would love to.” We used to do a little off-the-cuff bit back in the 80s that ended with the William Tell Overture medley. So I brought that up and said, “Let’s just let it happen off the cuff and it’ll either be fun and good for your video or we’ll just have a good memory for our grandkids.” So we did it, and it just clicked and made the video and made YouTube and went viral. RG: So stinking cool. BG: Another fun thing about that evening was Paul Simon came out and did a little cameo appearance. RG: With the Gaithers? BG: Yeah, he’s a friend of Jessie Dixon’s. RG: Wait, who’s Jessie Dixon? BG: He’s a black gospel singer that traveled with Paul Simon in the 70s and early 80s.  Jessie’s been a part of these Homecoming videos for years and he lives up in Chicago. He told Bill: “You know, Paul Simon lives here in New York. How would you like for him to come hang out?” And Bill says fine, so he makes sure Paul’s not going to be bothered and he’s got his own separate green room and he can watch everything on the monitor. He says, “I don’t want to be a part of the video but I’d love to be a part of what you’re doing for your audience.” So he came out and did “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “Gone At Last.” It was so cool. RG: And how did you get connected with Bill Gaither? BG: On my first album the executive producer was Bob McKinsey, who was a big mover-shaker in Christian music and an old friend of Bill’s. He had produced the Bill Gaither trio back in the 70s so he and Bill were real close friends and he introduced us while I was working on that album. And Bill liked me. He liked my background—that I didn’t have all this Christian music influence and I was relatively new to Christ. He liked the bluegrassiness and country side of who I was and he thought that I would be a good fit for his crowd. I had been with Jerry Reed for four years and that was kind of running its course, so it was a real smooth segue into Bill’s thing. RG: Wow, and that’s been going 20 years? BG: Actually, it was ‘87 when I started touring with them steadily as a regular part of the tour, and since ‘92 I’ve done praise gatherings and videos and occasionally he’ll call me out for a Christmas tour or—we went to Europe a few years ago. We became great friends, and through that friendship he still calls on me to be that sort of specialist that I am. RG: What are you reading these days? BG: I’m re-reading The Everlasting Man by Chesterton, which is a fascinating book. I picked it up the other day and it’s been 20 years since I read it the first time. I read the introduction and it just grabbed me again. What a thinker this guy was, taking on the materialists of his day. He’s talking about the proof of history, and the Judeo Christian idea of truth, and the reason it’s not going away. It’s in a time when the Darwinian argument was really gaining momentum, so he’s coming up against some pretty powerful stuff, but he’s so brilliant and sounds so unlike the strident evolutionary creationists today. He argues very intelligently from more of a classical standpoint, looking at the evidence from a common sense point of view. I remember reading C.S. Lewis and he talks about myths and how they really prepare men for the one true myth. You can tell that C.S. Lewis was very much a student of Chesterton because that’s Chesterton’s tack as well. He wouldn’t use the myth language as much as Lewis would but anyway it’s been great to dig back into that book. And I’ve been reading the Bible a lot because I picked up a copy of the Book of Common Prayer and there’s a daily office in the back where you read the whole bible in a couple of years. There’s Old Testament reading and the Psalms in conjunction with the New Testament either an epistle or the Acts and then you end with a gospel reading. So it’s really been a neat way to read the whole bible at once without just starting in Genesis. I’ve always been struck by Jesus’ question to the expert in the law. That guy asked him. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and Jesus says, “Well you’re an expert how do you read it?” and so he gives the “love the Lord your God with everything you’ve got and your neighbor as yourself” answer and Jesus says yep, and then the guy says, “So who is my neighbor?” and he tells him the good Samaritan parable and exposes the guy to how he’s reading scripture. I always love that question: “How do you read it?” and I remember it was probably 15 or 20 years ago that that question of Jesus really arrested me. I realized that’s the important question. It’s not if we’re reading or what we’re reading but how we read scripture. The devil reads scripture and uses it any way that he wants to and we often do the same thing. We can build our arguments and slam our enemies or whatever we want to do, but I think if we read it the way Jesus reads it then it blows your world apart. So that’s about it. I wish I was reading Shakespeare or something so I could really impress you. RG: Sure, Chesterton and the Bible are for lightweights. So you and I met a few years back at a Square Peg Alliance concert, and a lot of us have gotten to know you through Andrew Peterson. How did you get to know AP? BG: Jonathan and Amanda Noel. We’re good friends, and we went to church together and they used to talk about the Christmas concert down at the Ryman. I went online and checked out a song or two of Andrew’s and thought, wow this guy’s a great writer. I got Love and Thunder and I loved every bit of it. That sort of introduced me to all of you guys, The Gullahorn’s, Ben Shive, Osenga, and I just started paying attention because I was sort of cynical about Christian music—even though I’ve been a part of it, I was a part of the mess. I liked the writing, the music, the integrity and I remembered reading something Pierce Pettis had said about Andrew’s writing. He said, “You know, if more Christian musicians wrote like this, I’d listen to the stuff,” and I knew what he was talking about. RG: So, to wrap it up, what’s coming around the bend for Buddy Green, musically or otherwise? BG: Well, we’re empty nesters, my wife and I. RG: Since when? BG: Since about a month ago when we took my daughter to college. I’ve got two daughters. My youngest is at UT and my oldest got married this summer and we’re happy for both of them. We’re in a really good place with just the two of us full time, and it’s making me think about how much time we’ve got left. I’ve never had more fun making music than I am now. I just love the process and I love playing. I’m more of a local musician than I ever was. I play 3 or 4 times a year around town. I’m really enjoying being a part of the local scene. I’ve also been wanting to get more established in places like the UK and Ireland because I love that part of the world, so I’d love to go over there and make music and learn from that culture and history. Those are just dreams. Jeff (Taylor) and I are having a great time making music, and he’s been without a doubt the best help I’ve ever had doing what I do in the studio. He’s a great friend so I’m really thankful for that relationship, working relationship and friendship. So that’s it. I’m going to keep trying not to dream too big and just be thankful for what I’ve got and answer the call. RG: Buddy, this has been fantastic. Thank you for breakfast and for making this great music. BG: Hey, thanks for wanting to talk about it. I love the Rabbit Room and the cool community going on over there. And this is the record I’ve always wanted to make. I’m always looking for ways to subvert peoples’ stereotypes about the harmonica and what it can and can’t do.  And there are so many great players out there that folks don’t even know or think about. Stevie Wonder, for example, is one of the greatest harmonica players in the world. And to have Charlie McCoy playing on the record with me is part of the mission I was on in creating a work like this. Those guys make great music. They just make it on the harmonica. [Check out Buddy’s website. If you’re in Nashville this Friday night you can see him live with an all-star cast of musicians at the Station Inn.]

The first snow fell in Nashville this morning–though it might be a disservice to snow to call it that. It wasn’t anything more than a few wet flakes floating around in the miserable rain. But it was snow nonetheless, which means, of course, that there’s a reasonable need for Christmas music to go along with it. Until I listened to this song again a few days ago, I had forgotten just how awesome it is. I’m thinking of writing Zooey Deschanel a letter to let her know that regrettably, the original song will no longer remind me of her shower solo in Elf, or of a cotton-headed ninny-muggins, or even of Santa deposed from a throne of lies, but instead of Andy and Jill’s priceless duet. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” by Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips

One of my greatest joys as a writing pastor is that every year I am obliged to spend several weeks focusing on the two most earth-changing events in history–the birth of Jesus Christ, and his death and resurrection. You cannot make sense of one without the other. I’m currently working on a Lenten Narrative to follow last year’s Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative. With the season of Lent starting this week, I thought I’d offer here a chapter from Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative that looks at the incarnation of Jesus through the lens of his purpose for coming: to defeat the death I deserve and raise me to newness of life with him in his resurrection. Behold the Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative Chapter 24: The Hearts of Many Revealed The old man was a member of the old guard, the last of a generation of faithful ministers in Jerusalem’s temple. He was something of a fixture—the kind of man who seemed to have always been there. It was hard to say whether Simeon smelled like the temple or the temple smelled like Simeon, but the minds of those who passed him in the street would often drift to notions of smoke and blood and a guilty resolve to attend to their worship more regularly. The old guard to which he belonged was on a permanent watch. They were waiting for something in particular, something unique, something wonderful. The years had taught Simeon patience, so he was good at waiting. Still, he felt an unrelenting sense of urgency. He always had. He was waiting for the consolation of his people Israel. He had been waiting a long time, and his people even longer. They were a nation of sorrows, acquainted with grief. They were despised, afflicted by God. They were wounded. They’d been crushed. They were like sheep that were better at getting lost than staying near their shepherd. And they needed consolation. God would send it. And when he did, Simeon would be at his post, watching and waiting, poised to respond. This was his life’s work. Simeon was a case study in the benefits of careful examination and devotion to the word of God. He was devout—a description best reserved for the aged. He knew how to want what God had promised. He knew how to delight in God’s goodness. And he knew how to wait. He worked in the temple because he believed God was near. He knew God was near. He knew this because God had visited him, telling him he wouldn’t die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. (Lk 2:26) And at his age, it would have to be soon. Joseph and Mary were young, but they were believers. The generations before had taught them well. They journeyed to the temple for two reasons, both ancient—Mary’s ritual purification after childbirth and the redemption of their firstborn son from the Lord. Why did they need to redeem their son? Because God said in his law, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” (Ex 13:1) The consecration of the firstborn son was much more than a shallow routine asking God to give the child a long and happy life. They were recalling their history of slavery and deliverance from Egypt, where God traded the blood of a lamb for the blood of their firstborn sons—a life for a life. This was the basis of God’s claim that the firstborn sons belonged to him. When the parents accepted the sacrifice of the lamb on their son’s behalf, they forfeited their son’s life to God, along with every generation that would flow from him. From that point on, when any first son was born to a descendant of those families, the parents brought that boy to the temple to present him to God because he belonged to God. The parents presented the boy in order to purchase his release and buy him back. (Ex 13:13-15) Joseph and his wife answered the call of their ancient faith to observe the rite of purification for Mary and to redeem their son. Dark flecks of iron-scented blood spattered Mary’s garments as the priest sprinkled her. Stained now with the fresh blood of her sacrifice, she was pronounced clean by the priest. Then she and her husband took up their boy. It was time to purchase his release with more blood. As they moved toward the place where he would be redeemed, they passed an old man with searching eyes and purpose in his step. He clearly belonged in the temple. He looked official. He smelled official. But as he drew near, they could hear him mumbling. He reached for the child. Mary, surprised but willing, handed over the boy. Simeon’s joyful hope was in the promise of a glimpse of the Christ, but God had something better in mind. Simeon actually got to hold him. This mumbling member of the old guard took this new life into his arms as his words rose to a cry of praise. “O Lord, my God! Father of all blessing and honor and praise, you have been so good to your servant. You have been so good to your servant! I’m an old man, my days have been long, but I’m your son. And today, you have blessed me. I can’t believe how good you’ve been! Do you see this boy? Do you see him? Because I see him, Father. And what’s more, I know who he is. As surely as I live and breathe, I’m holding in my arms the Redeemer. With my very eyes I’m beholding your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of a dark but watching world. He will be the light by which the Gentiles will see you and come to know you. He will be the light by which your people Israel will again see the glory of how you have loved them with a love that will not let them go. O great and glorious King, Shepherd of My Soul, Captain of My Guard, I have kept my post. I have not turned my eyes from the horizon because you have promised that your Messiah would come on my watch. And I have seen him. I have held him. I have kissed him. Now I can die in peace. So honorably retire your watchman, O great and glorious King, and bring me home.” (Lk 2:29-32) Joseph and Mary were speechless. They weren’t expecting Simeon, and his blessing wasn’t the standard fare. Most blessings were marked by warm petitions for success in life, but Simeon’s wasn’t a petition at all. It was a proclamation. He wasn’t asking for what might be. He was declaring what was. Every word spoke to this child’s purpose. There was something this child had come to do. They had brought Jesus to this place to redeem him, but before them stood a man proclaiming that this baby would, in fact, redeem them. As his words sank in, Mary and Joseph marveled at what he had said. This moment was a meeting of hearts. For Simeon, the white-hot coal burning in him was finally exposed and began to die out. This was a happy moment. But his smile faded. The joy never left his eyes, but gravity pulled at his countenance. He grew serious. There was more to say because there was more to this little life than met the eye. All that Simeon had said so far was about what Jesus would do. Now it was time to broach the subject of how he would do it. Simeon had a sense of what awaited Jesus. He told Mary a truth she must have already sensed: that Jesus would turn this world on its ear—and it would come at a great cost. Her baby would facilitate the ruin of many in Israel. Like a stump from Jesse’s root, he would jut out and break the toes of any who dared tread upon the purpose for which he had come. Jesus would reveal the hearts of all mankind. The light of the world would shine in every dark corner of every dark heart, exposing every dark secret. And this was a world that had grown quite fond of darkness. It was no surprise that he would be opposed. (Lk 2:34) He told her all these things, but she couldn’t help suspecting that he was holding something back. There was something else on his mind. Something less general, more pointed—pointed at her. And she was right. He had something to say, something that would hurt. But it had to be said, and he was the one appointed to say it. Simeon leveled his wrinkled face to look directly into the young mother’s eyes. “Mary, what awaits your son will be like a sword that will pierce through your soul.” (Lk 2:35) If Mary kept things spoken about Jesus in her heart, this must have been one of them. A sword would pierce her soul. It was the price of being the mother of the Christ. She had to raise this baby, knowing that he belonged to the Maker and had come for the purpose of saving God’s people from their sin. Everything in her culture told her that sin offerings were a bloody business. And thirty-three years later, she would find herself at the foot of the cross on which her son hung. With her own two eyes, she would watch him die, despised and rejected, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. (Isa 53:3, Jn 19:16-27) If her son was the salvation of Israel, then he was her savior too. Later, when he was a man, she must have thought about the way he talked of God’s salvation. The way he spoke with such authority. “No one takes my life from me. But I lay it down of my own accord. And I alone have God’s authority to lay it down and his authority to take it up again. This is why he sent me.” (Jn 10:18) There was purpose behind everything her son ever did. It was in his words. It was in his ways. It even seemed that he hung on that cross because he meant to. Her son wasn’t simply dying. He was doing something.

If you’re not familiar with Josh Ritter’s music, here’s a piece I wrote about my discovery and ensuing fandom of his songwriting. He just released a new EP of lullabies called Bringing in the Darlings, and this video from one of the songs was fairly mind-blowing. Here’s what one of the folks at Etsy.com had to say about the making of the video: The stop-motion animation for “Love Is Making Its Way Back Home” uses photographs culled from over 12,000 pieces of construction paper to animate a nighttime drive. A team of nearly twenty artists, editors, directors and product assistants ushered the video into being. The group started with storyboarding and computer animation before converting the digital graphics to paper cutouts (frame by frame), photographing those 12,000 cutouts and then stitching them together into four minutes of paper animation. As production designer Sam Cohen said, “We had to determine ahead of time which images to cut as positives or negatives, how to anchor the cutouts to the paper frame that surrounds it so the pieces wouldn’t fall out, as well as a host of other problems. It was definitely the most labor intensive video we’ve been a part of.” It was produced by Erez Horovitz. I haven’t heard the record yet (I bought it on vinyl and am awaiting its delivery), but I dig this song in all its moody happiness. The video is inspiring in the best way. Makes me want to get busy and make something beautiful. Check out Josh’s website here.

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

[For a while now I’ve been following a blog called Kingdom Poets, written by a Canadian poet named D.S. Martin, whose writings have appeared in a number of publications including Ruminate, Books & Culture, and Image Journal. He’s the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They’re both available at: www.dsmartin.ca. He tells me his next book will feature poems inspired by the life and works of C.S. Lewis. Mr. Martin agreed to let us re-post occasional entries from his blog, which he describes this way: “The Kingdom Poets blog is a resource of poets of the Christian faith, regardless of background; there is no attempt made to assess orthodoxy, but simply to present poets who speak profoundly of faith in God.” This poem by Betjeman does just that.  –The Proprietor] Sir John Betjeman (1906—1984) was more popular with the British public than he ever was with the literary establishment. His verse did not share the modernist characteristics of his peers, but reflected the techniques of earlier times. He received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1969. He was also appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate in 1972 — a post he held until his death. As a boy he attended Highgate School in London, where he was taught by T.S. Eliot. His school career was less than impressive, though. At Magdalen College, Oxford, his tutor C.S. Lewis thought of him as an “idle prig” who spent his time socializing rather than doing his work; Betjeman ended up leaving Oxford without a degree. Even so, he managed to gain the attention of Louis MacNeice and W.H. Auden, who both influenced his work. Over time, Betjeman became committed to the Anglican church and Christian faith. He said: “…my view of the world is that man is born to fulfil the purposes of his Creator i.e. to Praise his Creator, to stand in awe of Him and to dread Him. In this way I differ from most modern poets, who are agnostics and have an idea that Man is the centre of the Universe or is a helpless bubble blown about by uncontrolled forces.” His poetry often has a satirical tone, and is characterized by references to English localities and particularities of culture that are already becoming dated. Betjeman was public about his faith, although he readily admitted his doubts, as in the following poem. The Conversion of St. Paul What is conversion? Not at all For me the experience of St Paul, No blinding light, a fitful glow Is all the light of faith I know Which sometimes goes completely out And leaves me plunging into doubt Until I will myself to go And worship in God’s house below — My parish church — and even there I find distractions everywhere. What is Conversion? Turning round To gaze upon a love profound. For some of us see Jesus plain And never once look back again, And some of us have seen and known And turned and gone away alone, But most of us turn slow to see The figure hanging on a tree And stumble on and blindly grope Upheld by intermittent hope. God grant before we die we all May see the light as did St Paul.

A week ago I’d never heard of Josh Garrels, but after seeing 1001 people chattering on Facebook about his new record, Love & War & the Sea in Between, I gave in to peer pressure and investigated. I have to admit that the first thing that won me over was the design on the album cover. I’m a nerd for great typography, I’m afraid. Then I started listening to the music–and I just can’t stop. Listen to this song and you’ll see why. Enjoy. “Beyond the Blue” by Josh Garrelshttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BeyondtheBlue.mp3 Download the entire record for free at JoshGarrels.com.

[Editor’s note: Please welcome our latest guest writer, Josh Shive. We’ve been pestering Josh to write for us for quite a while now and are delighted that our merciless pestering has finally paid off. You might recognize his last name, but then again, you might not. Either way, check out his review and welcome him to the Rabbit Room.] “Clementine” by Carousel Rogueshttps://rabbitroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Clementine.mp3 When I was in high school, Sixpence None The Richer and Fleming and John were two of my favorite bands. In many ways, the groups could not have been more different from each other. Leigh Nash’s vocals were ethereal, angelic whispers; Fleming McWilliams’s sometimes sounded like they should have been delivered from a flying trapeze, for all of their emotional swings (sorry, folks, the jokes don’t get any better). Sixpence’s lyrics were introspective and poetic; F&J’s could be downright goofy. Matt Slocum played Fender guitars; John Mark Painter played Gibson guitars. (I could do this all day.) For all of their differences, the two groups were alike where it mattered most. Each featured a strong female presence at the microphone, catchy melodies, and enough electric guitar candy to choke a sixteen year-old Josh Shive. This brings me to Carousel Rogues. “I will still come home/’Cause I can’t leave well-enough alone,” Caitlin Nethery Anselmo confesses in “Fishtail,” the third track from Carousel Rogues’ self-titled debut. The album, a collection of gorgeously-arranged alternative rock and stargazing pop, explores the ways relationships bind and set us free. It’s easily the most promising debut I’ve heard all year. In 2009, Caitlin, a graduate of Hood College’s music composition program, wrote a song inspired by Andrew Peterson’s book, On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness. She sent the song to Andrew, who played it for Andy Gullahorn and Ben Shive (no relation to the author, except that Ben is my brother). Andy G. listened to Carousel Rogues’ demos on MySpace and suggested that Ben consider producing the band. Last year, the group (vocalist/guitarist Caitlin Nethery Anselmo, vocalist/guitarist Zach Anselmo, vocalist/keyboard player Dan Wiley, and drummer Patrick Fulford) recorded the album at home in Maryland with Ben at the controls. When members of Carousel Rogues visited Nashville last summer to record vocals, the band played a surprise set at a Square Peg Alliance show. They released the finished album in February 2011. At the center of Carousel Rogues’ sound are the lead vocals and harmonies of Caitlin Nethery Anselmo and her husband, Zack Anselmo. Caitlin’s voice is expressive and powerful, with a warm, breathy tone that brightens as it enters its upper registers, as it does in “Little Ones.” Zach’s voice is lighter, an unassuming tenor with a natural falsetto that shines in “Chin Up” and “We Should Meet.” The twelve songs on this record are handmade puzzle boxes, intricate constructions featuring melodic electric guitar work from the Anselmos and jigsaw-cut piano parts from Dan Wiley. In “Chin Up,” Zach’s strummed acoustic guitar rides shotgun to his voice on a past-midnight drive under a sky thick with stars and radio interference. “Little Boom Boom” is a musical infinite loop built on a repeating electric piano figure that dead-ends in a swirl of programmed drums and synthesizer-generated waves. In the album’s closer, an Eisley-meets-Fleming-and-John showstopper entitled “Little Ones,” drummer Justin Levy’s snare stutters until it reaches the chorus, a rambunctious groove that slows to take a breath at its midpoint before crashing ahead again. This is an album full of songs that reward repeated listens—hummable after the first play, eye-opening by the third. One of the things I love most about the record is the interplay of Caitlin’s and Zach’s voices. I mentioned previously that the two are married; this record feels like the document of a new relationship, with all of its joys and complications. In “Clementine,” a slice of summertime power pop (complete with electric harpsichord), Caitlin and Zach trade lyrics until they end up finishing each other’s sentences. In the song’s second verse, the duo stand at a graveside and look forward to a restoration of relationships: “And there beside you I will rest, together-tethered/And from the dust, we’ll rise up free of blame.” Here’s wishing for many more years for Caitlin and Zach and many more records from Carousel Rogues. Carousel Rogues is available in the iTunes store.

It’s rare that people pay a first visit to our old farmhouse without asking if we have ghosts. I can hardly blame them; I wondered the same thing the first time I came here. It’s certainly haunted with its own past, standing there under its trees, brooding gently over vanished things like a wise old woman holding tryst with memory. It arrests me every time I pull in the drive. If my husband is present I cut him a sly smile. We love to creep each other out occasionally in the night watches—an impishly easy task, with all these shadowy corners and creaking floorboards—and then laugh at ourselves the next morning. But he knows that I’m not fool enough to tempt fate with a bald-faced commitment beneath the very roof I have to sleep under that evening. Instead, I usually reply with a shrug of the shoulders and an ambiguous, “We-ell…” that could go either way. If I’m feeling particularly sure of my company, I may quote C.S. Lewis by adding playfully that, “if my house is haunted, it’s haunted by happy ghosts.” Indeed, the folks who built this place over a century and-a-half ago were good, God-fearing Methodists, and apart from some serious Civil War action in the front yard, the rowdiest times it’s seen were probably Wednesday night prayer meetings in the front parlor. But any home that’s been around for as long as ours has undoubtedly seen its share of things worth telling. The romance of an old house is its story, and it still happens from time to time that some descendant will show up on our doorstep bearing a thread of the tale we haven’t heard—or, at least, that version of it. Not too long ago, a grandson of the last generation of the original owners came by for a visit and held us enthralled a full summer morning with a running narrative as we wandered over the lawn, down to the barn, up to the house again and through the cool, high-ceilinged rooms. We heard the old, familiar ghost stories, told with such an artful relish that Philip and I couldn’t help exchanging a few grins of genuine glee. There were flesh-and-blood accounts, as well, tales of the men and women who had once been as alive in these rooms as we are today. The old gentleman’s stories made them live once more, if only in the sudden match-flare of the telling. But there was one story I had never heard before. We were standing on the front porch saying our goodbyes when our guest paused and looked at me with an appeal in his eyes. “Just one more.” We fairly begged for it, while his wife tilted her head and shifted her purse on her arm with an indulgent smile. She must have seen that eager boy-light on his face just as plainly as we did. “Well, it happened like this,” he began, with the drawling ease of the raconteur at home in his calling, “back in the old days it’d get so hot in the summer it was just unbearable, and the folks all used to sit out here on this porch in the evenings trying to keep cool. One night my daddy was sitting with his cousin, who’d come for a long visit. They were just rocking and talking and everything was still—it was long about sunset. All of a sudden, my daddy’s cousin jumped up with a shriek and took off running towards the road. You know the old road used to come down right through the middle of your front pasture there,” he gestured with a flourish, not waiting for a reply. “Well, my daddy just sat here watching her with his mouth gaping—he thought she’d taken a sudden fit as he couldn’t see a blamed thing. And when she came back, she was crying like her heart was broken.” “’It was my brother,’ she said through her tears. ‘I saw him standing there right at the bend, but when I got to him, he wasn’t there anymore.’ “That would have been strange enough,” said our narrator, in a voice that sent a cold crinkle up the back of my neck, “but for the fact that they got word the next day that her brother had died unexpectedly, to the very hour and moment she’d seen him standing there at the bend in the road.” The hair stood up on my arms and I felt the goosebumps chilling down my legs. It wasn’t fear I felt so much as awe—a trembling wonder at the thinness of the veil before which we’re all disporting our lives away with so little thought for the mysteries on the other side. I walked along the drive after our guests had gone and stood leaning on the fence, gazing at the spot where so extraordinary and inexplicable a thing had reportedly occurred. A soul taking leave of an absent loved one on the cusp of its long flight? Was it really possible? We sat out on the porch that night, long after dark, watching the fireflies kindle their elven lamps in the trees around the house and along the old, memory-haunted roadbed through the front pasture. I eased my rocking chair back and forth and then tucked my legs up under me in the cane-bottomed seat. “Why doesn’t it happen anymore?” I asked it soft, whispered in the warm gloom, but my husband knew exactly what I was talking about. Why do all such stories seem relegated to the distant past? Why is the average modern life so strangely insulated from the unexplained? Is it because we’re all inside watching TV? “Distracted from distraction by distraction”? Or have we grown too old and wise as a race to admit that there are things in this world—things Scripture is silent on and Science can’t explain—that we will never understand till we shake off this mortal coil? As Christians we are fortified by the promise that we’re peering through a glass on the eternal verities, that God in his grace has given us a view from a window the world can’t see. But it’s a dark glass, and things pass before it that our time-bound vision just can’t distinguish yet. Like a character in a George MacDonald fantasy, we’re all growing into our eyes and learning the meaning of a dual citizenship. We’re learning to see what’s at the end of our nose. I’m no theologian, but my guess is that modern Christianity has lost much of its romance simply because we think we’re already there. We’ve talked the mystery out of it and we’ve slapped a tidy label over the imponderables. Anything that can’t be explained is suspect or tossed on the rubbish heap. We have lost our fairy birthright of the What-If. What if souls were really permitted impossible leave-takings? What if there was life out there in the star-hung heavens, in another galaxy than our own? What if the scrim were really so thin and time so nonlinear that one could experience a sense of place deeply enough to actually share it for one fleeting moment with the ones who had once loved it as they do—or at least catch the rustle of a silken skirt in the hallway behind them? I’m not making a case for ghosts, of course, but for the mere character of a God who can do anything. Who is more fierce, more wildly tender, more untamed and untrammeled than our craziest dreams could make him out to be. Not different than what our Bible so faithfully tells us, but more. We’re all trembling on the brink of a wildness that is terrifying and exquisite beyond anything our earthly experience could prepare us for. But I have to wonder if God doesn’t occasionally drop hints of the surprises he has in store: glimpses of a goodness we couldn’t bear even if we were able to conceive of it. A few years ago I had the inexpressible privilege of watching at my grandmother’s deathbed. I was holding one of her tiny hands, still so lovely and ladylike yet strangely ashen with a marble pallor. My mother had her other hand and Daddy was at her head. I will never forget the peace of that place or the curious sense of joy that kept tugging at my grieving heart. I remember there was an April breeze coming in at the open window, lifting the sheets lightly and fanning wet cheeks, and the day outside was pale and silvery, as if too much sunlight would be an insult to our sorrow. We had been there for hours, noting the least change and talking quietly about the things we loved best about her, when suddenly I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of how beautiful it must be to die surrounded by those who love you so dearly—to be escorted thus from one love to Another. What a crown to a life, wiping away all the ravages of suffering and disease and leaving only beauty and blessing in its wake. I saw the tired features relax; an unmistakable calm came over the dear face that had been agitated by Alzheimer’s for so many years. It was incredible—like a healing before our very eyes. And it was then I knew beyond all doubt and misgiving that there was a Presence in that room: a Glory that would be our undoing if it were fully revealed. The air was heavy with it, yet not oppressed; I looked at my mother and I knew that she sensed it, too. I have heard people speak of such things; I have read of it in books. But I know now what their accounts have been fumbling for. I could never explain it to another. But eternity was so, so near. Or, rather, a curtain was lifted, wavered a bit, and I saw how near it’s been all along. It was an experience that marked me for life and I thank God for such a peep behind the scenes, fleeting and fragmentary as it was. But we can’t dwell in such sublimities, of course, or we’d be no good for the ordinary blessedness of the common hours. To live unceasingly aware would be, as George Eliot so prudently put it, “like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.” It is good for me, however, when I find myself too “well-wadded with stupidity,” to be shaken out of my complacent notions of a safe universe and a tame God by a nudge of the incomprehensible. Even if it’s only a bump in the night that makes me think that the lights can stay on upstairs just this once.

When the first printing of The Fiddler’s Gun surprised me by selling out in early December, I jumped at the opportunity to revise the book rather than merely reprint it. There were several aspects of the first edition that I wasn’t happy with, and I was anxious to set them right. So I hunkered down in January and worked through a fresh edit of the book. As soon as people heard there was a second (and improved) edition in the works, they started to ask what was new. The answer is: a lot–and not so much. If you are wondering whether there’s a different ending or new scenes or characters, I’m sorry to have to disappoint. The new edit was primarily to address some pace and flow issues at the sentence level. The result is that this edition will be a much cleaner, more compelling read for the first-time-reader. Although there are some scene changes and rewrites, you’ll not likely see much difference unless you have a keen memory. However, I’ve also taken the book formerly known as The Fiddler’s Gun: Letters (previously only available digitally or as a limited printing of 100 copies) and added it as an appendix. These seventy-five pages of extra content contain a sundry collection of letters and ships’ logs that, taken together, illuminate sections of the primary narrative from the first person perspective of Fin Button and a select few other characters. If you’ve ever pondered the vast conspiracy surrounding the Brandenburg Strudel or wondered who the Boot Snuffler is, these letters contain valuable insights, and more than a little humor. The careful reader may also wish to pay special attention to the expanded glossary–it’s positively indibnible. We’ve also given the book a facelift so that it matches the quality of Fiddler’s Green. The colors on the cover are more vivid, we’ve added cover flaps, and the interior typesetting is more appealing. All in all, I think it’s turned out wonderfully. It wouldn’t be complete, however, without a beauty mark. Much like a certain mole on Marilyn Monroe’s lip, I’ve added a delightful typo to the first page (entirely on purpose!) that does a marvelous job of accenting the beauty of the book as a whole. Be sure to snatch up one of these specially flawed copies. They are true collector’s editions. If you don’t believe that story, well, there’s always the third edition to look forward to. The second edition is also available on the Kindle (sans appendix) for just 99 cents. Why? Because I’m out of my mind. The iPad version is on its way. The Fiddler’s Gun (second edition) in the Rabbit Room Store. The Fiddler’s Gun in the Kindle store.

I’m in the throes of writing a biography of Flannery O’Connor. Since I’ve been working on this project, I’ve talked to a good many people who feel that they are supposed to like (or at least appreciate) Flannery O, but they just don’t see what there is to like or appreciate. Just the other day I was talking to a guy (I won’t tell you his name, but I will tell you he’s planning to build a spaceship in the fall) who said something to this effect: “I’ve read Flannery O’Connor, and I just don’t get it. People are always saying how great she is, but her stories are so dark, I can’t see any hope or grace in them.” People like that are the audience I picture as I write this book: intelligent, well-read people who just aren’t feeling the love for Flannery. I’m out to win some of them over. I suspect there are a good many of you among the readership of this august website. So, would you do me a favor? In the comments to this post, would you ask some specific questions about Flannery O or her work? Or try to articulate what you don’t get about her? I want to know: What’s your problem with Flannery? By the way, I’m not offering to address your remarks today in this forum. I’m covered up with book-writing. But your questions and remarks will help shape this little biography of Flannery O’Connor. Thanks in advance for your willingness to take part.

Conversation one: I was talking recently with a high school student, a girl I’ll call Keisha, who lives in a single parent home with siblings and a wonderful, caring mother who has done a praiseworthy job of loving her children and raising them “in the way they should go” — a task, she would tell you, that takes strength and wisdom which she does not possess on her own. Keisha and I were sharing thoughts about the Christmas holiday when our conversation turned to her dad, a man whom she rarely sees and whom she only talks to a time or two a year, despite the fact that he lives less than a couple of hours away. I asked her if she misses not having a father in her life. She does. Enough to tear up at the question. She said that she misses having someone to help her make decisions. She misses having someone come to her special events at school and celebrate holidays and birthdays with her and her siblings. She misses knowing that someone is helping her mom with all that goes into keeping a household, providing for and raising children. She misses a lot. And then she added, almost as an afterthought, that she wished she had a dad to give her a “special nickname.” I’ve never thought of nicknaming as a parental duty or a child’s expectation but, in Keisha’s mind, a daddy-born term of endearment is obviously some sort of treasure lost. It is symbolic perhaps of the countless small things – the shared experiences, the unique language, the inside jokes, the quirks and habits — that make each family different from all the others, and every child seem one-of-a-kind in the eyes of their parents. I couldn’t help but wonder as I listened to Keisha how a dad could ever walk away from a daughter and essentially disown three children. And I wondered what their nicknames might be if their father had chosen to be part of their lives. Conversation Two: Last night, I had dinner with an old friend and his wife. We’ve not visited, at any length, in a couple of decades and had lots of questions about where the years have taken us. He’s a well-known and respected surgeon who is the proud, and very involved, father of three children, two sons and a daughter. She’s a full-time mother and does the work necessary to run a busy household. I asked them about their children. When the dad started talking about his daughter, an eighth grader who is the youngest of the three, he simply could not find words to describe her. “It’s as if she belongs to another world.” I think he might have used the word “angel” a time or two, might have said that her feet don’t touch the ground. His praise of the girl made me want to write her a letter just to remind her how blessed she is to be the object of such a deep affection. Maybe I will. I would imagine he has a nickname for her. And while I am sure that my old friend would be quick to recognize her imperfections, they obviously do not dominate his perception of her or overshadow the good things that he believes to be true about her. The contrast between the two girls, their dads, the realities in which they live and move, could not be more stark. I wish Keisha had a dad who believed in nicknames and who was committed to the hard work of parenthood. For now, I pray and trust that God can and will be the father she needs. And he calls her, and us, by names that only a doting father would choose for his children: beloved, little one, saint, bride, friend. A few nights ago I was tossing and turning about something, something not worthy of sleeplessness but bothersome just the same, when I began to think of how God loves me. I brought to mind some passages that remind me of how, as a loving father, he wants good for me, always good. And as I thought of those nicknames and titles he gives to his children, so help me, the knot in my stomach eased up and sleep returned. I belong to a father who might well tell inquirers that, despite the spots and blemishes, his children “belong to another world.” I pray that you can hear the God of all creation, the one who showed himself to us fully in Jesus, “rejoicing over you with singing” and calling you by name.

Today I’m excited to introduce you, if you haven’t met, to a guy named Dave. Dave Bruno. Dave is the author of a new book, The 100 Thing Challenge. Dave and I met at Hutchmoot (The Rabbit Room retreat/conference/whatever) and spent a wonderful weekend not talking at all. He really regrets this as do, I’m sure, all those people who kept avoiding me the entire time.  Weird. (Actually we just didn’t get to connect and both hope to remedy that next time. There were so many wonderful people there. By that I don’t mean Aaron Roughton. I mean, Aaron was there, but…) I think Dave has some real wisdom for us and I hope you’ll give his answers a read. 1. Tell us about how you got from ChristianAudio.com to the 100 Thing Challenge and a little about yourself. I tell the story in chapter 2 of my book (plug, plug) about how I’m a reluctant entrepreneur. Sometimes I feel like a tired out labrador retriever who wouldn’t mind taking a long nap, but there’s always someone throwing sticks to fetch. It’s in my blood to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, especially when it can bless people in the world. Here’s a secret, I’m not personally a big fan of audiobooks. I’m a reader. I like to underline and write little notes in the margins. But when my buddy Cory Verner (now ChristianAudio’s president) approached me with the idea of starting a company to publish thoughtful Christian titles that had been overlooked as audiobooks, I couldn’t resist. There was a market need to fill and we’d bless people by being successful with the business. No brainer! The whole ChristianAudio experience was great. My plan was to try to spend about 5 years growing the company and then sell it or my part of it to free myself up for “the next thing.” Well the next thing, the 100 Thing Challenge, came along 4 years into running ChristianAudio. I’m a writer and a huge believer that average Americans need to pursue simplicity instead of affluence in order to generate economic and cultural wealth. When my crazy idea to live with only 100 person possessions turned into a worldwide movement and an opportunity to publish a book, there was no way I wasn’t going to fetch that stick. 2. What is the 100 Thing Challenge and wouldn’t the 101 Thing Challenge be just a bit better? Just one more thing; that’s all I need to make it “just a little better.” Right? Well, I think the 101 Thing Challenge — the Just One More Thing Challenge — would be a perfect match for what I call “American-style consumerism.” That’s the kind of consumerism that always wants to get more in the hopes of arriving at the dream life. The problem most of us have faced is that we’re always getting, but never getting there. It never stops. 101, 102, 103, and on and on. So I conceived of the 100 Thing Challenge as a way to break free from the bondage American-style consumerism. My theory has been that if I remove myself from the routine of excessive consumption, my behavior would change. And it has! The “official” 100 Thing Challenge that I write about in my book has been over for a year now. But I still have about 100 personal possessions. I’m happy to say that I’m no longer a participant in the unending cycle of acquisition that used to characterize my consumer behavior. The 100 Thing Challenge isn’t about “100.” It’s about helping people who feel stuck in stuff free themselves. 3. But Dave, things aren’t bad are they? Didn’t God make the world? Your book is a thing!? 🙂 Can you contrast your position with the dangers of Gnosticism (the body, pleasure is bad) and Asceticism (enlightenment, spiritual elevation comes from denial of food, pleasure, things!)? Sam, I think all of your readers should flee from Gnosticism . . . right to Barnes & Noble to buy my book. 😉 Seriously, though, I do have strong theological convictions here. There’s a lot to say about this. But I’ll just mention that Ecclesiastes was much on my mind during the 100 Thing Challenge. It says, “There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt.” Seems like riches are bad, right? But Ecclesiastes goes on to say, “Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them . . . this is the gift of God.” That is the guiding principal, I think, where possessions are concerned. It’s all from God. Not just the things, but also our power to enjoy the things. American-style consumerism says that the things come from brands (preferably luxury brands) and the power to enjoy the things comes from within ourselves. That attitude doesn’t square with a Christian worldview. 4. The Bible is filled with admonishes not to envy, but politicians (“You have a right to what your neighbor has”) and advertisers (“Your life is incomplete without this thing I’m selling”) are continually working to encourage just that. How do you call on Christians to simplify, while making it clear that God does call some to the responsibility of greater wealth and all to contented thankfulness? Well, God’s yet to call me to the responsibility pursuant to tens of millions of dollars, so I’m just guessing here. I do have a couple of thoughts, though. First, fill your ears with admonishments that don’t encourage envy (and other vices). How? Ditch the TV. I wish I had more time to extol the glories of not owning a TV. Look, I truly believe that Christians are fighting a losing battle if they fill their minds with hours of television. It’s like a law of the universe: watch a lot of TV and you will succumb to American-style consumerism. It’s not worth it. Get rid of the TV. Second, in America we’ve come to associate wealth with outward displays of affluence. But that’s not the biblical perspective. A Christian should be rich on the inside, regardless of outward display. Christians in American need to retrain themselves to not only believe this (we all say we believe it) but to actually act like we believe it. This cannot be theoretical. So I strongly believe most Christians in America should pursue simplicity for an extended period of time, a year or more. It’s the only way to deprogram ourselves from the consumer conditioning we’ve received and accepted. A life of simplicity leads to a life of contentment. 5. Any helpful tips for parents during Christmas on how to avoid (even with good intentions) training our kids to become slaves to envy/thanklessness/idolatry/selfishness etc.? Time. I’m really serious about this. Time. Put a five-year Christmas plan into action. Aim for this: after five years of a concerted effort to prioritize Jesus’ incarnation and family time and charity during the Christmas season, your children are glad to celebrate Christmas without being showered with consumer junk. Don’t try to “make a point” this Christmas. Parenting isn’t about making points every now and again. It’s about passing on a heritage of virtuous behavior and healthy emotions and strong faith to children. This takes time. That’s my main “tip.” Commit to training up your children over time. And be gracious. They’re just kids. While they don’t need lots of junky toys, neither do they need lots of lectures. Celebrate Christmas with them. Thanks so much, Dave. Here’s Dave’s website. Dave on Twitter. Dave and The 100TC on Facebook. Again, consider getting David’s book. Note: Originally posted at my website, which is like The Rabbit Room, only dumb. -Sam

The other day my sister, a teacher, was trying to help a student fill out some form or other. The form asked for Date of Birth. The girl knew her birthday, but the idea of a birth date, a specific day of a specific year, had her baffled. “The day you were born,” my sister said, a little exasperated, “what year was that?” The little girl was exasperated herself. She gave my sister a squint and, teeth clenched, said, “A little baby don’t know what year it is.” When I sat down to write The Charlatan’s Boy, the first sentence I wrote turned out to be the first sentence of the finished product: “I don’t remember one thing about the day I was born.” Grady, the narrator, is grappling with the same epistemological dilemma that was troubling my sister’s student. Anything you think you know about your birth, your origins, is something you got second-hand. Somebody has to tell you where you came from and how you got here. Grady’s troubles stem from the fact that the one person he knows who might be able to tell him anything about his origins is a liar and a fraud. The seed from which The Charlatan’s Boy grew was a story a friend told me some twenty years ago. His grandmother grew up in California to a Scots father and a German mother. She was pretty typical California girl, but there was one unusual thing about her: she dreamed of kangaroos. She had never seen one in her waking life. There were no kangaroos in the wilds of California, of course, and there was no zoo in her little town. Did she see them in books? Perhaps–except that the first time she saw a kangaroo in a book, she recognized it from her dreams. When the girl had grown into a woman, she learned some secrets about herself. She wasn’t a California native. As it turned out, she was born in Australia. And her mother wasn’t her mother. The “mother” had been the girl’s nanny in Australia. When the little girl was only two or three, the nanny ran off her employer (a Scotsman who had immigrated to Australia with his wife), and they took the girl with them. They started over in California, telling the girl nothing about her origins. She dreamt of kangaroos because she had seen kangaroos in an earlier life she couldn’t remember. That story fascinated me from the first day I heard it. The girl had a clue to her origins, but in the end she couldn’t really know where she came from unless somebody told her. Identity isn’t just something that comes from inside us. We get our names from somebody else. I pondered this business for many years, and eventually my ponderings became The Charlatan’s Boy. Bonus Story: My grandfather, Abe Ross, Jr., used to say that his parents didn’t name him. They called him Abe Junior until he was old enough to talk, then they asked him what he wanted to be named. “Abe Junior’s fine,” the toddler said. “I’ve been answering to it all my life anyway.” [Editor’s Note: Today is Audience Participation Friday over at Jonathan Roger’s blog and he’s looking for a few star-crossed Feechiefolk to write some Feechie love poetry. Here’s a sample: She smells just as sweet as a mud turtle’s feet. Her hair is as soft as a possum. Once I walked by her side, but she knocked me cross-eyed. It took me a week to un-cross ’em. Visit the blog to add a stanza of your own.

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

Have you ever been enamored of a book because of who wrote it? The story may be good, excellent, even, but the sheer force of the personality behind it lends the book an extra “star” or two or whatever is your cosmological equivalent of a good rating. Such is the case for me when it comes to Brian Jacques, author of the Redwall series, which recounts the epic struggles of good and evil between rats, mice, stouts, weasels, cats, badgers, moles, hares, and other woodland creatures in the land of Mossflower and beyond. Think The Lord of the Rings meets The Wind in the Willows. Now, in my self-imposed literary “reeducation” process (in which I forego the literature that makes me look and sound smart and instead find enjoyment, once again, in a darn good yarn), I stumbled upon Redwall. My curiosity was immediately perked by the picture of the author on the back cover. This is Brian Jacques: I know, right? He looks like the grizzled old captain of a whaling ship, not a children’s author. Downright scary. So I did a bit of googling, and found some audio/video of him speaking at a Borders and as a keynote speaker in Liverpool, his hometown, and seriously, if my first choice of which author to have a pint of beer with is C.S. Lewis, a close second is Brian Jacques. A truly infectious personality, he tells bad, corny jokes and laughs at them himself if no one else will (“What creature goes ‘zubb, zubb, zubb’? A bee flying backwards.”); and he’s self-deprecating (“I originally thought all authors had first names of “Sir”- Sir Walter Scott, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle- I didn’t realize I could be one.”). He’ll retell the same stories about himself over and over like he’s saying it for the first time. There’s an old-fashioned sense of uncontrolled vitality about him- keen, refreshing, like a good, sharp, chilly Northeasterly wind. He’s decidedly old-school as well. A definite “medieval dinosaur,” as CS Lewis once put it. “My chief delight and satisfaction,” Jacques once wrote, “is annually to desert the world of modern technology.” Delivering milk to a school for the blind, he was eventually invited to read to the students, and noted that publishers used to send books for the kids, and, as he tells it, “I didn’t like those books. Technology, teenage angst. Ugh. They were all about the now. What happened to the books that I used to read? What happened to the magic?” It comes out in his books. Amid the clutter thrown at us in our daily lives, when modern technology seems to yell in a digitized voice that disrupts all quiet conversations over a pint of stout, a Jacques book invites a warm fireside to illuminate its pages, rather than the glow of a computer screen. It sounds quaint (and incredibly ironic, as I write this on my laptop), but Jacques writes the kind of books we need for an “out,” from our daily hustle and bustle. Not, let me be clear, as an “escape,” but rather, like all good literature of its sort, as a “recap,” or reminder of what being human is truly all about: fidelity to friends and family, sharing of food, discovery of purpose, and acknowledgment of the worth and value of those who may be different from you. And as the prospect of becoming a dad begins more and more to fill my everyday reality, it’s good to know that books like this are still being written. “Questing, feasting, singing, and battling to defend good against evil,” as Jacques puts it. What a marvelous concept for a post-modern age. All this from a man, who states, quite simply, that an author is “a person who can paint pictures with words.” [Editor’s note: Today’s guest writer, Greg Pyne, is the author of the Wandering Tree blog located at wanderingtree.wordpress.com. Do yourself a favor and watch the videos below in their entirety.] Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five